No safer, but a lot more pissed off
Posted on August 16th, 2006 by Jackie Danicki
I’m always wary of stats which are prefaced with up to, but: Up to 20,000 missing pieces of luggage thanks to our new ’security measures’? Dayum.
Everything should be relatively normal by the time I fly to the south of France the week after next. Right? It also looks like I’ll be flying back to California (LA this time) almost as soon as I get home from France. Then, Egypt, if it’s still there in October. I swear I’m not a masochist, though I know all the evidence contradicts me.
One of my colleagues “lost” a $3000 laptop last week.I know safety must be paramount but this is getting silly.
Glad you got home ok.
Couldn’t agree more. What a pisser. I’m off to Italy at the end of the month and was planning on finally having a proper grown up glamorous holiday, which involved many changes of clothes (and not all from Matalan, either :wink:) and shoes and proper jewellery. And lots of Nars cosmetics. Lots of luggage, lots of liquids, lots of nice handbags bought recently on ebay for no small amounts of money, either. I had actually talked Simon out of NOT bringing his laptop on holiday this time to relax. Now he’s thinking of bringing it on a point of principle, and we are making plans to drive down, which I would probably enjoy more, to be honest. Of course, there will be some sort of Ferry Scare next, or Eurostar scare, or anything else guaranteed to make normally rational people insane.
What kind of ‘security’ doesn’t think of looking for potentially dangerous lip balms secreted in hoodie pockets, but then can’t provide secure transit for the tagged items passed into their possession with their knowledge ?
Looks like we might have to investigate FedExing luggage ahead of time in the manner of Donna Karan…
Have you had any “you’re brave, going to Egypt” comments yet?
Oh, I love the all-Irish commenter thing going on here. Reprazent!
Anyway, no, we’ve had no “You’re brave, going to Egypt” comments yet, but plenty of “You’re stupid, going to Egypt” comments. Antoine and I have actually discussed cancelling the trip so that we can go to Ohio for Thanksgiving instead (he has only one day of holiday time left, after Egypt, and we’re gutted to miss the holidays at home with my family). But I think we’re going to try to work something out so we can go to Ohio at Christmas, because 1) I don’t want to lose the money I’ve spent on the trip, 2) I have already purchased swimwear for both of us and am fantasising daily about the lovely pool, five-star hotel, and view of the pyramids from ouru room, and 3) I want to go to Egypt! Eff the terrorists, dude.
Terror attacks are like plane crashes. Because they happen rarely, but kill lots of people, they make big news. The higher risk of travelling by car is not exposed because it’s a large number of small incidents.
When I was in Egypt, in a tourist hotel, we heard of no-one being robbed. Luxor felt very safe all the time. Compare that with the “compounds” in certain other tourist destinations around the world.
One suggestion from the travel editor at the Today Show is that you FedEx or UPS your packages ahead of you.