So, my vacation has finally come up and I've started enjoying all the thrills of travelling.

 

My flight was booked for Saturday, Apr 28 quite early in the morning - 7.25am, and due to the costs of London's taxi services, I have chosen to go ahead with public transportation, which would get me to the airport for 'only' 17.50GBP (out of which 15.50GBP is the London Heathrow Express 15mins ride = the customers pay more than a quid per minute for that marvelous attraction!).

 

Anyway, I somehow figured out on Friday, that I couldn't sleep well before the trip, so I went to see two movies in the cinema in the evening - 'Next' and 'The painted veil'. Movies were good, then I came back home, had a little chat with my flatmate and at 3.30am I was up there waiting for the night bus to take me to Traffalgar Square, then another bus to the Paddington station and then above mentioned Heathrow express to the airport. The trip went sooo smoothly, I couldn't believe it ... everything went even better than expected, all was on time ... the slight thrill came in Madrid when the operations at the airport took more than an hour of my time to get from London - Madrid Iberia flight to Madrid - Miami Iberia flight. For some reason one has to go through another security gate - not sure why, as I must have been logically scanned at Heathrow already ... well, there's probably never enough carefullness around us, so there we go ... I got the the Miami flight just in time, got on the plane and waited ...

 

... The flight took of with a 45min delay, but that time I thought that was a planned procedure to sit on an empty runway with no other planes visible anywhere near us ... Yeah, right ... so we got to Miami 45mins late. Unfortunately the Miami change was already a known bottleneck of my trip and that's where all the bad luck started piling up ... gosh ...

 

... first the operations would open the aircraft's door for about 20mins (most of the customers inside the plane were bound to change of course, so the nervousness rose by the minute). Once off the plane, I thought I would out-smart everyone by sprinting to the customs. And yes, I got there maybe first, and as a prize I could pick any one of the 1hr-like queues around. Worse than that, people who came later were somehow grabbed by this independent advisor, who walked around the place constantly searching for people from the 'Madrid' flight, who were in danger to miss their connecting flight. I just happened to raise my hand when he was passing by and he kind of didn't really pick up why I'm so worried ... apparently the lady in London who checked me in provided me with a boarding pass already ... what he didn't know though was that lady also only checked my luggage to Miami, instead of Panama ... the flipside of this approach is that I all of the sudden, instead of simply walking to my departure gate, also had to pick up my baggage, check it back in and then walk to the gate ... yes, and this was the show-stopper right there ...

 

As Murphy would certainly describe it better than me, 'what can possibly go wrong will go wrong' ... my bag turned out in the very last batch, so then when I finally got to the American Airlines stand, the very unpleasant and unhelpful staff just said that if I came 10mins earlier, they would have checked me in, but now that I've managed to get there 50mins before the flight, I'm 10mins too late ... so if I wished to maybe line up in the queue of other unhappy travellers, I can feel free ...

 

... I did as I was told, waited another 30mins, then got a chance to normally speak with AA staff, who informed me that I should rather speak to Iberia than to them. So I said thank you and went ahead to look up the Iberia stand. These guys told me that I must be really unlucky today 'cause I just missed another flight to Panama through San Jose, which would get me there tonight ... so I said something about being 'upset' (diplomatically speaking), received a voucher and here I am ... sitting in a hotel in Miami, writing up my first blog of my anticipated Central American trip. And Panama is still waiting for me ... tomorrow will be the day instead ...

 

Anyway, I'm knackered, so will take this opportunity to relax a bit and tomorrow we will need to spead up the sightseeing in Panama City a bit ... I'll go spend my $25 dinner voucher ...

 

Will be back ...

I thought my first real blog could be about what had happened before I created this respective blog (makes sense???)

 

Well, just a quick dump of what happened in my life recently.

 

Beginning of March I got promoted to a Consultant (yupee!), which I have been impatiently awaiting - well, probably as much as everyone else did. Three weeks after that I've managed to get on a central training called - Core Consultant School, which is a great event organised by the employer for staff on 'Consultant' level from all over the world to gather together, pick up some central co-ordinates as to what to say and how to behave, but predominantly, to socialize and make friends. And that's always cool! On top of it one gets all-you-can-eat meals 3 times a day + morning and afternoon snacks so that the students aren't starving in the class. So, yes, I gained weight

 

As apparently being on a Consultant's salary I probably feel richer than I am actually, I've planned myself a trip to New York to enjoy a lovely weekend in the US. You can see a few snapshots in the Picture galery to check it out - I'm nowhere to be seen as I somehow missed on the fact that documenting that one has actually BEEN there is a good thing to do (now it could as well be that I've stolen the pics off someone else )

 

I returned back to London on Monday morning and went straight to work. Yeah, you can imagine the day. I even managed to put in some overtime. Good man!!!

 

On Wednesday evening I was sitting on a flight to the Czech Rep to see my family. Had a great time there. Ate maybe even more than in Chicago, gained more weight, but also met a few friends and simply had great time. Then I made it back to the UK, on Thursday moved back to London and by Friday I was signed off from my project (this was planned - no worries). Now I'm in the middle of some studying ... we also call it being 'on the bench' or 'on the beach' (Consultant speak) = 'the others' call it unassigned

 

Ok, this is it for my first blog. Back to my Content Management System installations and configurations .. wow ... ! U take care.

Hi everyone,

 

so I just managed to set up my blog account here on Live Spaces. Microsoft seems to have some good / user friendly and neat interface. Let's see how it works out.

 

So, I'll be adding some photos and news pretty soon. Just need to get around the functionality of this site. Looks good ...

 

Take care and I'll check in soon.