Travelling to NY

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Vuelo a NYTraveling again. As you can imagine, this is one of the few time I have to write without any emergency jumping out of the sudden…

After a very long weekend, perfect weekend with good friends and enjoying the good weather, good food and the family, it is even harder to go back to the stress of the day to day job. And what a day! Jeeeeez, I almost (only almost!!) preferred to leave home and go traveling… but only almost… these trips are not pleasure at all and I come back even more stressed than I left!!!!

A very long personal and professional task list, and the worst (or not worst but surprising) is that many of the things in my list are things that I don’t really “have” to do but things that I do because I want to do them, but of course, if everything was just a “to do / must do” list… all that positive energy that makes what I am, would be gone… and we don’t want that do we????

Today, I was really really short of time when I got to the airport, and when I got there, the girl was just “Closing the checking”… Thanks God that we are in Bilbao and the airport is very small and the staff is very nice, because if I had the same in NY I would have lost my plane…..

Talking about NY… let me tell you my last trip to NY…

Today I leave to NY, business trip, one week there!

We didn’t start very good at all, I almost missed my plane because I stayed a very long time in the “Brussels” checking gate instead than Paris (me.. you know.. I never travel at all….)… and when it was my turn they couldn’t find my reservation, so I started to get very nervous – “Come on! I have to be there!, I have the confirmation number, and even a seat number…. I had an email with the confirmation look let me look for it… ahhhh I can’t find it…. Mmmmm Air France sent it to me…. look… confirmation flight Bilbao-Paris, Paris-NY….. ahhhhhh mmmmmm right…. ahhhhhh this is the flight to Brussels….. and… where is Paris checking gate????” at this time, there was already quite a few passengers looking at me with a not very friendly face…. “Here it is the town girl who has never travelled before….!”

My “good turn daily” was to leave my seat to a very very tall man, who was sitting next to the window, next to me, but since we were in the emergency seat, he didn’t fit with his long legs and he wanted to sit in the middle sit of the 3 seat row we were at (which we had free to be more comfortable), so I told him that I could change him since I was small and we could still have the middle seat empty… he even gave me a candy when I started coughing and couldn’t stop, although maybe he wanted to kill me! How can they sell such “HOT” candies? i have never tasted anything so hot in my life!!!!

Already in NY JFK airport, waiting for my taxi, and after having go through customs and immigration with my best smile (even if I think that my appeal would not have helped here), and praying please please please don’t open my suitcase, after I declared “no food” in my luggage and I have “ham, cheese, anchovies, chorizo, lomo….” (I look like Tesco!), my taxi driver would not appear. In theory he should have been waiting for me with a paper with my name but nobody around…..

Then a man from a race I could not identify come next to me and he says “Are you lady?” so I reply “Mmmmm no, well yes, I am a lady obviously but who are you asking for?” he looks at me as if I am crazy and leaves.

Now there is this elderly woman near me waiting with her suitcases to her taxi and she tells me “I’m so sorry to bother you… but I have an issue… my mobile is not working and I can’t contact the taxi driver I booked who told me to call him whenever I got out….”

Me, with my very best will instead of “guessing” that she wanted me to let her use my mobile phone, I told her… “ok, let me see what’s wrong with you mobile?” And the nice lady says “look… it is on and in Paris it was working ok, but now when I press “call” it doesn’t do anything… and I work in a museum analyzing paints and you can ask me anything you like about paintings but this technology….” .

So there it goes Itzi “technology wizard”… “Don’t worry don’t worry surely we fix it!!! In these situations what you have to do is to turn it off and turn it on again (you know, I call support now and then  and know all the tricks!), look let’s do it, turn the mobile off….” Nothing, we try to turn it off and no way we can’t so I continue with my “technical knowledge”… “Look, when this happens, what you have to do is to take the battery off the mobile and put it back again… ahhh you don’t know what the battery is…..? Look this is the battery in the back of your mobile, let’s do it…. ok, let’s put it on again… great, there we are (OMG what is this red light on and off on and off? That doesn’t normally happen….)… now turn the mobile on… aahhhh you are trying to turn it on again and it won’t turn it on?…… (OMG, OMG, OMG!!! I think I have screwed her mobile and we are in the US!!! This woman is going to call the police to claim damages on me!!! and she will get an iphone5 in compensation!!!!).

Here Itzi, “the cool”, without even blinking… “Ok, let’s do it again, these things you normally have to do many times to make it work…. Ahhh look, now it works ok and it turns on… cool…..now you have to enter the pin number…. Ahhhh (OMGGGGGGGG) you don’t know what A pin number is……” Right. We were very lucky this time because the phone didn’t have a pin number set so….. the poor elderly woman could finally use her phone to call her taxi driver, and so grateful and nice… “You have saved my life, I would have had to buy a new mobile…. let me take you to wherever you go…. ” too bad we were in different directions since I could have save big money!

5 min later, again the same man from a race I could not identify appeared saying “Hi, did you ordered a taxi?”, my answer “Yes, I obviously I’m waiting”Y yo “Obviusly yes, I´m waiting”, and he contiinues trying to communicate with me “Ok, are you… mmmm. mmmmm itxpewfefesiiiir?” me… “well….. I ‘m not very sure if I am that one…..”. They guy startting to get nervous… “Are you going to Hoboken?” so my answer “Yes, yes that one I know, yes I am going to Hoboken”, so there I jumped into the taxi thinking “Well, if he knows where I am going it must be my taxi right????” (Crossing fingers)

So that was my trip to NY, and the return one was my worst trip ever… just wait for the post!

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