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July 10, 2005

detour; gulf

for those who are just tuning in, lately i've actually been reduced to bitching about airlines, which well way meh yes but so check this huh:

the fuck! you know. so as per one expects, KLM got us (i'm travelling with a colleague) as far as amsterdam, which is always good, but not so much out of there, which wasn't too bad either. the fuckups kind of compounded and we followed the flow though so at about the time we were supposed to be in kuwait, we were accidentally in leiden. which turned out to be a tad "eeerrmm.." so we headed back to ams:

BUT. the hotel they placed us into for the night (it was a solid 24-hr delay) was called, romantically, the A4, which four-star establishment had the appeal of like madeira-sautéed toe funk. i won't dwell on that institute of decay any more than to say if you ever get stranded in amsterdam by KLM and they try to foist the whole A4 experience on you, run, don't walk, to a respectable establishment.

howsoever it's kuwait now and everything's all chill. in the sense of the word "chill" where the temperature hovered today at a pleasant 48°C (that's 120F) today and work is batshit nuts and fun. but as ever it's downright out of the ordinary all around like right now there are not one but two engineer type dudes in hotel uniforms who came up to my room in about 30 seconds flat from when i called front desk to ask why exactly--and if this is not the type of thing to complain about in a hotel, what is--the speaker in the bathroom from the TV is not working, because i want to be able to listen to fox news when i'm taking a dump because someone has to.

there's a poster in the hotel elevator saying "above and beyond--it's the marriott way." and this may sound like so much hyperbole but let me give you an example of how literal the exceeding-expectations business is at this joint: we checked in sometime after midnight a couple of days ago, and uncharacteristically one of the things i wanted to do before going to sleep was iron one of my shirts for the first workday. there's a, what do you call it, well an ironing iron i suppose, in the room that says AUTO SHUT-OFF on it. you think you know what that means but ooooh shit no, think "above and beyond": when you plug it in and it not only instantly shuts itself off, along with it go the power to your electronic devices, all the lights in the room. and the air conditioning. it's just the marriott way. (again, engineers scuttle in within seconds as soon as you call front desk about the sitch, fix the fuse, and as they leave they thank you emphatically.)

more reporting to come from kuwait i'm sure, and again, more photo material available at your nearest flickr.

Posted by matti at July 10, 2005 10:16 PM

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Posted by: careygrrl at July 11, 2005 12:56 PM