There was a time in the past when going on a cruise meant that you were far removed from everyone including your work. No phones, no follow up, just time to sit back and enjoy your vacation. These days we have the luxury of not only going online in our ship’s internet cafe or kiosk, but we can use the ship’s wifi and even our smartphones. I was reading a post on the Focus on Fun blog about this very topic.
In one of my earlier blog posts, I gave instructions on how to turn 3G off on your phone to save money. If you need to have your phone on, consider leaving it on for emergency calls or even texts, but skip surfing the web altogether unless you like those hefty phone bills. We always try to find an internet cafe in port and spend a little time there checking email and anything else we need to do for a few dollars instead of several dollars per minute. I know the cruise lines offer “great” deals on internet packages, but I can’t justify spending hundreds of dollars on the internet for a slow connection when I am on vacation. Can you?
Tags: checking email, internet packages, ipad, word processing program
Air Travel and Speaking Up When It Counts
Sometimes you have to do a double take at what people consider acceptable behavior. For example, I was recently on a flight when a man got up from his seat and started complaining. The strange thing is that he never started out grumbling first and then moving into loud complaining. No, he moved right into obnoxious complaining that everyone on the plane could hear. Why? Apparently the flight attendant requested that his bag not go in the overhead bin, but get checked at the gate. This was enough for him to lose his mind. His anger was directed at the woman who put her bag in the overhead bin where his bag was initially going to go, the flight attendant, the airline, and I guess all of the rest of the passengers on the plane who were subjected to his ridiculous tirade.
He continued to snarl and toss his nasty comments in the air at whatever subject he felt at the time was appropriate. As a result, boarding took far longer than necessary and people were getting fidgety waiting to board. The initial angry client’s bad behavior now started to rub off on other passengers who were starting to lose their patience. One man fired off a fowl expletive as he walked past me, but it was directed toward the airline so I guess that makes it better. I can’t imagine getting so angry that I can’t contain myself around other people, especially children who really don’t deserve to hear or see this kind of behavior.
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Tags: acceptable behavior, angry man, nasty comments, overhead bin