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Country List: 88

September 28, 2013 by deirdre Leave a Comment

Main count from Traveler’s Century Club

UN list from here.

  1. United States (UN 1, ISO 1: US) 1959
  2. Canada (UN 2, ISO 2: CA) 1962
  3. Mexico (UN 3, ISO 3: MX) 1968?
  4. England (UN 4, UK, ISO 4: UK) 1986
  5. India (airport overnight only, ISO 5: IN)
  6. Singapore (UN 5, ISO 6: SG)
  7. Hawaiian Islands (not UN, not ISO) 1987
  8. Indonesia (Java) (UN 6, ISO 7: ID)
  9. Chile (UN 7, ISO 8: CL)
  10. Bahamas (UN 8, ISO 9: BS) 1989
  11. Ireland (Eire) (UN 9, ISO 10: IE) 1990
  12. Northern Ireland (Ulster) (part of UK #4)
  13. Virgin Islands, US (part of US #1, ISO 11: VI)
  14. Jamaica (UN 10, ISO 12: JM)
  15. Puerto Rico (part of US #1, ISO 13: PR)
  16. Haiti (UN 11, ISO 14: HT)
  17. St. Maarten (part of NL #30, ISO 15: SX)
  18. Leeward Islands, French (part of FR #36, ISO 16: MF)
  19. Martinique (part of FR #36, ISO 17: MQ)
  20. Barbados (UN 12, ISO 18: BB) 1991
  21. Aruba (part of NL #30, ISO 19: AW)
  22. Venezuela (UN 13, ISO 20: VE)
  23. Colombia (UN 14, ISO 21: CO)
  24. Panama (UN 15, ISO 22: PA)
  25. Honduras (UN 16, ISO 23: HN)
  26. Belize (UN 17, ISO 24: BZ)
  27. Cayman Islands (British overseas territory, ISO 25: KY)
  28. Wales (part of UK) 1992
  29. Scotland (part of UK)
  30. Netherlands (UN 18, ISO 26: NL)
  31. Germany (UN 19, ISO 27: DE)
  32. Austria (UN 20, ISO 28: AT)
  33. Italy (UN 21, ISO 29: IT)
  34. Liechtenstein (UN 22, ISO 30: LI)
  35. Switzerland (UN 23, ISO 31: CH)
  36. France (UN 24, ISO 32: FR)
  37. Greece (UN 25, ISO 33: GR) 2007
  38. Ionian Isles (Corfu) (part of GR #37)
  39. Egypt (UN 26, ISO 34: EG)
  40. Crete (part of GR #37)
  41. Turkey in Asia (UN 27, ISO 35: TR)
  42. Turkey in Europe (part of TR #41)
  43. Denmark (UN 28, ISO 36: DE) 2008
  44. Estonia (UN 29, ISO 37: EE)
  45. Russia (UN 30, ISO 38: RU)
  46. Finland (UN 31, ISO 39: FI)
  47. Sweden (UN 32, ISO 40: SE)
  48. Norway (UN 33, ISO 41: NO)
  49. New Zealand (UN 34, ISO 42: NZ) 2010
  50. Australia (UN 35, ISO 43: AU)
  51. Spain (UN 36, ISO 44: ES) 2011
  52. Morocco (UN 37, ISO 45: MA)
  53. Canary Islands (part of ES #51)
  54. Madeira (part of Portugal, so UN 38)
  55. Bermuda (British overseas territory, ISO 46: BM) 2012
  56. Hong Kong (UN 39, China, ISO 47: HK)
  57. Macau (UN 39, China, ISO 48: MO)
  58. Dubai (UN 40, United Arab Emirates, ISO 49: AE)
  59. Luxembourg (UN 41, ISO 50: LU)
  60. Costa Rica (UN 42, ISO 51: CR)
  61. El Salvador (UN 43, ISO 52: SV)
  62. Faroe Islands (part of Denmark, so UN 28, ISO 53: FO)
  63. Iceland (UN 44, ISO 54: IS)
  64. Belgium (UN 45, ISO 55: BE)
  65. Guatemala (UN 46, ISO 56: GT)
  66. Nicaragua (UN 47, ISO 57: NI)
  67. Virgin Islands, British (UN 4, ISO 58: VG)
  68. Montserrat (UN 4, ISO 59: MS)
  69. Leeward Islands, Netherlands (UN 30, ISO 60: BQ)
  70. St. Barthélmy (UN 24, ISO 61: BL)
  71. Japan (UN 48, ISO 62: JP) (2013)
  72. Thailand (UN 49, ISO 63: TH)
  73. Sumatra, Indonesia (UN 6, ISO 7)
  74. Vietnam (UN 50, ISO 64: VN)
  75. Guam (UN 1, ISO 65: GU)
  76. Micronesia, Federated States of (UN 51, ISO 66: FM)
  77. Marshall Islands, Republic of (UN 52, ISO 67: MH)
  78. South Korea (UN 53, ISO 68: KR)
  79. Sri Lanka (UN 54, ISO 69: LK)
  80. Maldives (UN 55, ISO 70: MV)
  81. Malaysia (UN 56, ISO 71: MY)
  82. Myanmar (UN 57, ISO 72: MM)
  83. Bulgaria (UN 58, ISO 73: BG)
  84. Romania (UN 59, ISO 74: RO)
  85. Ukraine (UN 60, ISO 75: UA)
  86. Alaska (UN 1, ISO 1: US)
  87. South Africa (UN 61, ISO 76: ZA)
  88. Isle of Man (UN 4, ISO 77: IM)

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: country-list, travel

Words of Wisdom from Mackieman

September 16, 2013 by deirdre Leave a Comment

For a friend of mine who is having, shall we say, brick issues:

Being die-hard loyal to a company is like being in an intimate relationship with a brick. The brick cares nothing for you. Do not love the brick; the brick will only cause you pain when it forgets about you. The brick serves only its interests and nothing else is of consequence.
The brick does not love you.

(source)

Filed Under: Important Things, Travel Tagged With: wisdom

Finland and Spokane: More Commentary

September 8, 2013 by deirdre Leave a Comment

First, Lisa Hertel corrected me on my previous calculations: Finland’s hotel price was €80 ($106), not $80, but it also included breakfast and taxes. Thanks for the catch.
Rick Kovalcik additionally pointed out that Finland’s hotel rate also included wifi and taxes. Thanks!
I’m not going to do the re-calculations, but you get the point: it tips things more in Finland’s favor despite my gaffe.
Then, the other night, a friend of mine and I were doing travel window shopping on Facebook chat, and he booked a one-way ticket from Oakland to Oslo for under $300 on Norwegian Air Shuttle.
I’d missed the news, later posted to my blog entry, but Tommi added a comment to my post: Norwegian Air Shuttle (a low-cost carrier) has just announced US routes. Their five US cities are: Fort Lauderdale, Los Angeles, New York City (JFK), Oakland, and Orlando.
More on that in a minute.
Next year’s Finncon, the Finnish national convention, is going to be in Jyväskylä, the 7th largest city in Finland. It only has air service from Helsinki on Flybe, but people generally get there by train or road.
Airfare from Oakland to Helsinki one-way is $576.40, but that includes (remember, low cost carrier) no bag, no meal, and no assigned seat. That’s $94 extra.
One plus was that there’s zero penalty for flying only one way (verified by checking other cities).
I don’t know why it wouldn’t show return flights (suspect their site can’t handle long connects), but I didn’t dig too deeply into it. Flying to/from Sweden (ARN) was $1265 on Norwegian with basic extras. Flying to/from Helsinki same dates (July 8-18) on SAS and partners was a hair under $1500. It was $1510 looking on United, but all segments were actually on Lufthansa. I don’t generally book LH for long haul as I like my economy plus thank you very much. For long haul, it may literally be a lifesaver.
Also, I’ll note that there’s a lesson in this: when searching for the least expensive of non-specific dates, as I was in my last post, is a very different problem space than searching for specific dates. If you don’t need to be anywhere at any time in particular, you can always pick the best fares.

About Those East Coast Fares

For JFK-GEG (Spokane), the lowest fares next July-Aug are $590 rt on Alaskan, basically 10% more than the fares I found out of SFO. 10-20% higher than that was not unusual, though. In general, Spokane’s numbers vary a lot, which indicates that they are frequently hitting capacity even this far out.
Cheapest flights to HELsinki are $914 on Turkish, meaning a change of planes in Istanbul, or about 15% less than the fares I found from San Francisco.

Filed Under: Conventions, Travel Tagged With: conventions, helsinki, helsinki2017, spokane, travel, world science fiction convention, worldcon

How The Fuck Are We Supposed To Live in Space When You Lot Won't Even Fly to Finland?

September 1, 2013 by deirdre 4 Comments

Okay, I’m being obnoxious with the post title. Granted. And I will concede that there are many good reasons to vote for a particular site over another, one of which is that you think that a given committee will deliver a better convention.
I’m not talking about those reasons.
I know I’m an experienced traveler (and known for same), so I tended to hear people’s travel-related objections to the various proposed Worldcon sites more than other people did.
Here are some of the actual objections I heard about the Finland 2015 Worldcon bid:

I don’t like the TSA

Well, then you should actually only vote for Worldcons outside the US because when you travel there, you’ll only have to deal with the TSA half as much, assuming that your last flight is an international flight. (Example: Helsinki-Frankfurt-San Francisco rather than Helsinki-NYC-San Francisco)
If you don’t have to connect to a domestic flight in the US, then you only have to deal with the TSA on your outbound flight.
Or you could move to San Francisco; we don’t have the TSA there (we have CAS).

I hate the hassles of airport security

So apply for TSA Pre-√. (This assumes Southwest is not your carrier of choice.) For US Citizens and permanent residents, I recommend applying through Global Entry, which also gets you quick immigration. Other programs like NEXUS (Canada) and SENTRI (Mexico) can participate.
And, bonus, Global Entry also means you get the fast immigration line into New Zealand, so you’ll be all set for 2020.
What does Pre-√ get you? The front of the line, even at airports with no Pre-√. The short line (I’ve never seen it more than 4 people long) at airports that do. No taking shoes off. No porno scanner. No unpacking into six bins (I seriously am not exaggerating here, I’ve actually needed six bins more than once). Most people will not need to unpack anything.
On the way back, you can skip the long immigration and customs lines. Stand at the kiosk, answer the questions, look at camera, fingerprint scan, take the receipt, you’re done. It has saved me over 20 minutes at times, though the minimum it’s saved is about a minute and a half.
Recent report from a travel friend, arriving back in the US from Rio:

At IAH (Houston). Sprinted to USCIS (US Customs and Immigration Service) because I’m a noncitizen and I had to beat the São Paulo flight that arrived at the same time as us. Managed to be first in line at immigration, and jetsetr still beat me through using Global Entry after sauntering down from the aircraft.

English isn’t Finland’s first language

English isn’t the first language of aliens, either, but we supposedly love them and crave first contact.
There have been four Worldcons in countries/regions where English was not the first language: Heidelberg (1970), The Hague (1990), Yokohama (2007), and Montreal (2009).
I’d argue that average Finnish command of English easily exceeds that of the average in Montreal. Like the Netherlands, English is very commonly spoken. In fact, I’d argue that the average Finn speaks English at least as well as the average American.

But transit … in a foreign country

Look. I’ve been to a lot of airports in a lot of countries. I think I can safely say that if I can find my way around airports in countries where the non-Roman alphabet makes no sense to me, so can you.
Much as English is the international language of aircraft controllers, almost every sign in almost every airport in the world is in whatever the country’s native language is — and also in English.
Every flight readerboard I’ve ever seen is also in English. Every ATM I’ve seen has English as an option, even in countries that don’t get a lot of American tourists (e.g., Myanmar).

But I’d rather drive/train/bicycle

Fuck Isaac Asimov.
You can have your NASFiC wherever. Let the Worldcon location be freer.
Even Asimov knew how to take a ship. (Hint: Cunard still offers the same transatlantic service it did in Asimov’s days, just less frequent. If you want to go to Europe and don’t want to fly from North America, that (or another line) should be part of your plans.
(For those who don’t know, Asimov never drove or flew. Ever.)

But I need a CPAP on my flight

Get a travel battery. Call the airline, tell them your CPAP’s model number. They will have their medical department clear you. Call to re-confirm 72 hours prior to flight.
It’s not rocket science.
I will admit to having screwed this up once. I’d had a ticket glitch on a United award ticket (during the merger last year) and my clearance got disconnected from the reservation when my ticket blipped out of existence. I’d called to reconfirm one ticket but forgot to check the second. The Swiss airline captain had to call to ground to get clearance. Fortunately, there was documentation on my other non-glitchy reservation. It is possible to get it cleared in flight like that, but I wouldn’t recommend it — it’s awfully embarrassing.
From a perspective of someone who flies a lot — a 10-11 hour flight, like one to Europe, really is the best length. Shorter flights break up sleep habits too much.

I have another medical condition that makes travel difficult

You know what? It happens. Maybe this particular Worldcon isn’t meant to be for you. None of us know for sure we’ll be able to do anything two years hence, so why hold up other people’s fun? Vote “No Preference.”
I know of people who’ve been to Worldcon under some pretty gruesome medical situations — mid-radiation, mid-chemo, and, in the case of a friend, post-terminal diagnosis.
Some conditions are showstoppers for travel, some aren’t. You’d be surprised at what people can travel with, though. I’ve heard stories about extreme medical tourism to Thailand in particular (and if you’ve been to Suvarnabhumi airport and seen the ads, you’ll understand).

Finland’s too expensive

I once heard the Hugos disparagingly described as an award ceremony held by “people who can afford a thousand dollar weekend.” He wasn’t wrong.
San Francisco to Spokane is $546 for next summer. San Francisco to Helsinki’s $1079. Spokane’s room night rate was $139. Helsinki was $80.
For one person, a flight and five nights would therefore wind up being $1251 for Spokane and $1479 for Helsinki. True, Helsinki’s higher, but it’s not as much higher as you might think.
Yeah, but I’m not traveling alone, you say. Fine, for two people sharing a room, Spokane would be $1787 ($894 pp) and Helsinki $2558 ($1279 pp), or $385 more per person.
Or, put another way, from San Francisco, one person going alone to Spokane is pretty much a wash, cost-per-person-wise, with shared accommodation in Helsinki.
Now, I’m not saying the costs aren’t real, or that they’re insignificant. I’m just saying that people were probably not looking at the whole picture or considering that they have two years between now and then.
I’m also going to say: consider the inverse case. Consider how many foreigners would come if it weren’t for the TSA, if costs weren’t so daunting, and if there weren’t language barriers.
I, for one, would like to hear more from the rest of the world, and that means holding Worldcons there.

Filed Under: Conventions, Travel Tagged With: conventions, fandom, fantasy, rants, sf, travel

How You Know You're a Natural Novelist

August 30, 2013 by deirdre Leave a Comment

You and your spouse have been discussing going to Worldcon and Eurocon next year (London and Dublin), possibly with side trips to Jersey, Guernsey, and Isle of Man.
In the simple form:
map
Or:
map-1
And then you talk about a place you two would like to go, and you think, well, it reopens right during Worldcon, so that would be convenient (as if anything like this ever would be) and so we could go on the way home.
Like so.
map-2
And that’s kind of what it’s like being a novelist: never seeing the simple arc when there’s a more interesting and involved complicated route to find.

Filed Under: Travel, Writing Tagged With: travel, writing

Using Your Powers for Good

August 7, 2013 by deirdre Leave a Comment

Look, I’m an imperfect person. I also am not a huge complainer, even when there are plenty of things to complain about.

It took a lot of anger and disappointment to write this complaint about my stay in Puerto Rico and send it off to the CEO.

What did I hear?

Nothing.

So I called a few weeks later and was offered a “Be My Guest” coupon for a one night stay. Fair enough.

However, what actually finally made me really happy?

This notice from Hilton that the Conrad Condado Plaza was being rebranded as a Hilton. Sure, they didn’t announce it as a demotion. My letter may have had absolutely nothing to do with the outcome.

However, it seems that Hilton does, in essence, agree with me: a Conrad it wasn’t.

Kendra, I hope you’re doing well and they realize how awesome you are.

Filed Under: Hotels, Travel Tagged With: caribbean, puerto-rico, travel

Mistakes Were Made: Losing an iPhone

July 30, 2013 by deirdre Leave a Comment

How My iPhone Was Stolen: A Risk Analysis

The afternoon I left Cape Town, South Africa, my iPhone was stolen by my cab driver. I made a bunch of mistakes that put me at risk. This is an analysis of the ones that have occurred to me.

  1. If you have a personal relationship, cultivate it. I do have a friend in Cape Town. It’s possible I could have asked her for a referral. I did not, so the days that I was in town and she wasn’t able to see me, I went with whatever cab driver I could find. I could also have asked for a referral from a friend of a friend.

  2. If you create a personal relationship, stick with it unless you have a compelling reason not to. A bad feeling is a compelling reason. My cab driver on Saturday was Sharon, who was kind of one of those bossy mom-like cab drivers. I really liked her, but when it came to exchanging phone numbers, I chickened out. I’m sorry, Sharon. It’s not that I didn’t trust you, it’s that I just get weirdly shy sometimes, and that was one of those times.

  3. When you have an item you carry with you at all times, guard against overstuffing it. My purse had too much paper in it. Therefore, it was too full. Therefore, when I needed to stuff my phone somewhere at a moment’s notice, there wasn’t room for it. Therefore, I covered it with my palm and put it in a thin nylon bag that the taxi driver stuck in the trunk. See where this opened me to risk? He may not have even seen my gesture, but the fact that it was there, out of my direct control, made it risky.

  4. When you have an appointment (e.g., for a taxi pick-up), be ready far in advance. My taxi driver arrived 12 minutes early. My bar tab wasn’t paid. I had to dig through the overstuffed purse for my neck wallet with my remaining South African currency. This created unnecessary stress and distraction.

  5. When your possessions are in the hands of other people, always watch the full transaction end-to-end. Now, as a matter of habit, I do watch taxi drivers load and unload my stuff, but I never really thought about why I did it. And so, my purse being overstuffed, I was stressed about something falling out into the taxi and my losing control of it, and that included things far more important than a phone (like my passport). So I paused by the rear door of the cab to finish stuffing the paperwork inside and zipping it closed. It took me no more than a few seconds, but I was fully engaged in what I was doing, you know?

  6. Weirdly, I didn’t trust the taxi driver, but I didn’t double-check the contents of that carryon, either. I did have an instinct that I should have. I don’t know that that would have actually accomplished anything, though. What would have happened if I’d discovered it then? Would the police have sided with me? Or would it simply have gotten worse? I don’t know.

So, an iPhone 4S with scratches all over its face from sliding across the floor of the Conrad Puerto Rico, a constant memory of my ill-fated stay there, was stolen by someone who was far happier to have it than I was to be reminded of it every time I looked at my phone.

Street value used for it was $50, so I’m more annoyed than hurt.

One other tip I’ll impart: if you are in a situation where you’re traveling remotely like that, make sure that your international data is enabled when you have the phone out of your possession. That way, you have a chance to remote wipe it when you deem it a total loss (assuming they don’t just power the device off immediately). Instead, I spent a lot of happy fun time changing my email passwords (first, because that’s what you get password resets sent to, right?), bank site passwords, my DropBox password, my iCloud passwords, and, most importantly, my 1Password passphrase and PIN. I have since changed all my other passwords — they were overdue — but that was a lot of tedium I shouldn’t have had to bother with.

Apart from that, the most practical immediate loss (since I had a cellular iPad with me as well as a wifi iPad Mini) was that all my tunes were on my phone. I have my devices somewhat segregated, and my iPads are more for video where my iPhone was used for music. So that part sucked, especially since I didn’t have time to download very much to listen to before my 11 hour flight to London.

Still, that’s a pretty small complaint, all things considered.

Filed Under: Travel Tagged With: safety, travel

SFO's Adventures Saturday and Travel Tips

July 7, 2013 by deirdre Leave a Comment

I don’t have anything to add to the Asiana flight 214 crash, but I’m incredibly thankful that there was so little loss of life, especially given that it was at my home airport.
My friend Rob said the following:

I cannot quote this enough. Shoes on until the double chimes, and shoes back on after the double chimes. Not something you want to be fumbling around with if you need to exit in a hurry.

With that in mind, may I make a suggestion: have everything absolutely essential with you on your person before the last few minutes of the flight: passport, credit cards, currency, driver’s license, list of prescriptions, a day’s worth of pills if you have meds you need, and your cell phone.
If you ever need to exit a plane quickly, make sure you have what’s most essential, because you won’t have the time in the chaos to get anything else.
I use a neck wallet from Eagle Creek. I prefer the silk ones because they breathe better. Some people prefer belt wallets; some prefer travel vests. Whatever works for you.
You are almost certain to never need your items in such a circumstance, but if you do, it’s nice to have good habits in place.

Filed Under: Important Things, Travel Tagged With: travel

Hotel Program Points Expiration

June 7, 2013 by deirdre Leave a Comment

I logged into Award Wallet the other day and noticed my Hyatt points were about to expire. Because I’ve been pushing to re-qualify for Hilton Diamond, my hotel stays have lacked diversity.

This post from Million Mile Secrets has links to a bunch of hotel affinity program expiration policies and how to keep your hard-earned points from expiring.

Filed Under: Hotels, Travel Tagged With: travel

Pounding Abalone

May 25, 2013 by deirdre Leave a Comment

When I was in college, I took a memoir writing class, and one of the in-class writing exercises we were to do was to write about “our mother’s cooking.” Or, if not our mother, who did the substantive cooking (which turned out to be a non-mother for a couple of people in the class).
There was a sameness to the stories: long, white kitchens, large meals of poultry, rather a blandness of cuisine that my family never shared.
Me? I wrote about the trimaran we built when I was a kid and the smell of the butane stove, the fun when people would go diving and bring back abalone. Then I got into an extended description of cutting abalone into pieces and having it still crawl across the cutting board, even while I was whaling on it with a meat tenderizer.
Abalone’s tough, you know. Really have to pound the everloving crap out of it for it to be tender enough.
Oh, and the island we were at (San Clemente) was being shelled by the military in training exercises at the time. From five miles out. Whoosh, boom!
Bonus.
Naturally, we had to read our little pieces aloud. As I read mine, I pounded the conference room table at the appropriate points.
At the end, everyone was a bit stunned, and the teacher said, “Okay then.”
It was not until that moment that I realized there was anything the least bit unusual about my upbringing. Truly.

Filed Under: Home, Travel Tagged With: family, travel

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