Random Rants
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How things have changed. 35 years ago, I was consulting to Unilever, they have twinned head offices in London and Rotterdam, so I spent a lot of time going back and forth. Once I went through passport control at Heathrow, as they returned the passport to me, I noticed it was my then wife's passport. I decided to not point it out to them, and worry about how I got through passport control in Rotterdam when I got there. No problem, all I had to do was show my Unilever badge. I cant remember what happened when I travelled back to UK, but I had no problems either end.....
"OK face up to it - you're useless but generally pretty honest and straightforward . . . it's a rare combination of qualities that I have come to admire in you" - Geo 2011
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@Giles hope she doesn't forget it again in a couple weeks.
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@Anesthetist cold thoughts my friend…hopefully just a couple more weeks
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@Giles I had a funny experience at Zurich Airport. I was leaving for Moscow with my wife. She handed our international passports to the border officer; she was waved through, but the officer started saying something to me in German. The only German phrase I know is "hands up," so I couldn't figure out what he wanted from me. Passport, visa, departure—everything was in order. Eventually, I was taken to an interrogation room. There, the officer opened my passport and showed it to me: it was my domestic Russian passport, the one in Cyrillic. My wife hurriedly fished out my international passport, and we all breathed a sigh of relief and laughed.
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The first time I went to Moscow, shortly after the dissolution of the CCCP, I was quite nervous about how I would be treated by immigration. I had heard some bad stories. Entering, no issues. When I got to passport control on the way back, the large, not particularly attractive female guard, took my passport off me, hardly glancing in my direction. She proceeded to pore over my passport, and tap away at her keyboard for what seemed like ages, eventually she looked at me, and opened her mouth. My heart sank. Then her scowl turned into something loosely resembling a grin and said "You have the same birthday as me", handed me my passport, and motioned me through.....
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@GoodtimeJohnny brilliant
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@GoodtimeJohnny sometimes, a little attention and affection is all you need
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@Tago-Mago "a brite spot" in the day if you will!
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Semi-rant while I’m waiting on my wife to get ready so we can go meet one of her clients for an early-ish dinner and drinks.
Made a reservation a few days ago for tomorrow night at a Japanese/sushi place that’s supposed to be really good over on the west side of Atlanta. Wake up this morning to an email saying they canceled it. No call, no hey we can do 30 minutes earlier or an hour later, just canceled.
I booked it through an app tied to my Amex, so I called concierge. They couldn’t get anybody because the restaurant wasn’t open yet, but said they’d keep trying. Around 3:30 they call me back and magically my 6 PM reservation is back. Apparently the restaurant admitted they canceled it but wouldn’t really say why.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but part of me wonders if they needed the table for somebody else and figured if I didn’t complain, oh well. Who knows. Either way that kind of stuff annoys me. At least call the person before you just cancel their reservation. Props to Amex though, they handled the whole thing and got it fixed.
And yes, some may ask why I’m making anniversary plans only a few days beforehand. If you knew my wife, she wouldn’t even remember our anniversary if I didn’t remind her every year, so I’m actually doing pretty damn good here considering I’m usually the one who forgets everything. Sunday is our anniversary, so the plan is sushi Saturday night, Laughing Skull for comedy, then staying at our usual spot in Midtown. And yes, I double checked the hotel reservation and the tickets for the show.
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I fucking hate that crap. 'We've got some one we need to suck up to who can we dump?". I'd have written them a shittomail and told them exactly why I was never going back, they do not deserve your business.....
If we had taken an order and then decided that we needed that item for someone else and canned the order with no explanation, we deserve to never hear from the customer again and suffer all the attendant reputational damage.
good man 
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