Occasional Observations

Here's a funny one - the Bremen-based brewer Becks has produced an
Oktoberfest beer for the US market! I spotted it on the shelf of the
restaurant / store where I had lunch today. This is stretching things
quite a long way - traditional Oktoberfest beer is only brewed by
Munich-based breweries, and not by breweries in nearby towns, and
certainly not by Pils breweries on the north coast! How bizarre.

No way did I buy a bottle.

I've come to the USA for a master class in adding extra charges to the
basic price of things. My current hotel offers in-room breakfasts
starting from $17, plus the small print: "A $3 delivery fee, applicable
sales taxes and 20 percent gratuity will be added." That's a 20 percent
gratuity for delivery, I take it? So what's the $3 delivery fee?

Wow.

Attended a training sesh last night, in the role of expert interviewee, and was grilled by some 20-something consultants.

Two of the three crashed and burned - the third took some flak but stayed airborne, completed his mission and landed safely. What did they learn? That they'd come up against someone who could out BS them. Not sure if I'm proud or ashamed or both.

It was inevitable and I got a push email-enabled device, a Nokia e61. It's my biggest mobile phone since the NEC P3 back in the early 90s, but also packs the greatest punch.

I wanted the BlackBerry Pearl until realising that it only has half a QWERTZ keyboard, which means a double press for W, R, Z etc and that's one step too far. The E61 has got WLAN (although utterly complex) instead. The Nokia has official BlackBerry service.

Before you ask, no I do not have a "sent from my BlackBerry" sig on my mobile emails. And no, it doesn't mean more frequent postings, as I'll have less time offline to dedicate to spouting forth.

Airborne somewhere between Barcelona and Munich: This is the first of
four recent short-haul flights to have reclining seats. So recline is on
the decline - perhaps it's different in business class.

I'm reconsidering my entire approach to mobile devices. The Dell was maybe the wrong move as an iPod replacement since it underlined the many benefits of an upmarket PDA. Windows Mobile 5 is really a big step forward (as, by what I've seen so far, are both Vista AND Office 2007 - what is in the water in Redmond?) and makes it possible to have a Windows-powered phone.

The second factor was spending quality time with several BlackBerry users and watching how they used the technology to communicate, on-the-fly, about changing plans. Yes, you could phone someone but having stuff in writing is nice, too, when you've got to give the new details to a taxi driver or find something on a map in a strange town.

The tipping point was seeing the new BlackBerry Pearl, which is no bigger than my RAZR but much more functional. I was about to go ahead and order one when I saw a demo or two of the latest Windows Mobile phones ...

I'm going to dump the RAZR and get an integrated phone/email device which probably means the Dell is redundant, too ... the shopping list is rather long but there is an increasing number of devices that make the grade and include Bluetooth, MP3s, wireless LAN, push email, GSM, GPRS, and of course can receive calls.

From Munich Airport: Sorry Lufthansa but the "only way to fly" is stress-free. It was a refreshing change to arrive (accidentally, I hasten to add) some two and a half hours early for the flight I'm waiting to board, having spent the last 10 years arriving late and speeding through airports.

Usually I'd have been scared off by the prospect of downtime at the airport - where shopping isn't much of a chance to go bargain hunting. Therefore normally I'd go straight from the car park to the gate and board within minutes.

With time on my hands this time I resisted the temptation to dial into email, instead going for a long-overdue (and excellent quality) haircut before beer and pasta, then a stroll (yes, a stroll) to the gate.

Friends, family and colleagues traveling with me will no doubt be disappointed to hear that today, I didn't need to do any of the following:

• Try and jump the queue to do anything
  
• Get frustrated by someone taking too long (although how much time do Some People need to check in???)
  
• Break into a run within the airport

Tonight's is a Lufthansa flight, so I have a pre-assigned seat, as do all the other passengers ... and it doesn't look like the flight will be full. So why are people already lining up at the gate, a good 10 minutes before boarding will start? This one has always had me puzzled, especially as boarding will be done in accordance with seat rows.

Ticket inspectors on the First Capital Connect trains in the UK's East
Anglia have a new name: Revenue Protection Officers. I guess that the
old title was just too specific for Modern Britain.

There's a whiff of scandal about the new EU regulations for commercial jet passengers. PAX can't take more than 100ml bottles through security screening, but once inside, a full range of drinks is available, as ever. Is this a revenue protection officer's idea? A liter of water inside an airport is more pricey than a liter of gasoline. And the entrances to screening are littered with abandoned bottles: it's a mess.

Finally did my first-ever EasyJet flight and the lack of pre-alocated
seating was actually OK: most people prefer a window seat. Since I'd
always prefer an aisle, it worked for me.

There's a really clever ad campaign running in Munich right now - it's a play on words which gets the message across that people should sort their rubbish better, taking more care of recyclable and paper waste.

They've taken long German words such as Medikamente, Unkraut, Grillasche and my favourite, Kaffeefilter, and hyphenated the line break in the wrong place. "Besser trennen" is the slogan - divide better ... in German the word trennen can be used to divide rubbish, or words.

The ads are viewable online and certainly made me smile. There's also a funny flash-based game for those with time on their hands to sort virtual rubbish.

No big deal really, but our first snowfall of the winter has arrived. This year we really went straight from summer to winter - none of those grey in-between days when the weather's not really doing anything.