Aurélien Gâteau

Pissed off. Deeply. Pissed off

written on Thursday, May 21, 2009

(Sorry this is a rant)

I am in an amazing hotel 40 km near Barcelona right now. I arrived on tuesday evening to attend "All Hands", a Canonical event just before UDS Karmic. The weather is really nice, the tracks are challenging and stimulating, and I get to meet coworkers coming from 26 different countries.

So why I am pissed off? Because apparently, stupid Air France/Roissy Charles de Gaulle employees were not clever enough to put my luggage in my plane. They announced it would be in Barcelona at 12:30 on Wednesday, then delivered to the hotel in the afternoon, but this turned out to be too complicated for them and my luggage did not arrive. It was then scheduled to arrive in the evening, then maybe by night. At 2am I got to bed, tired of waiting for it. This morning it was still not there. Apparently it arrived in Barcelona at midnight, and they still need to bring it to the hotel. Right now it's 11:30, it's still not there and I feel more frustrated than ever. In fact, it would have been more efficient for me to rent a car, drive to Paris, grab my luggage and then drive back here.

I wear contact lenses and my eye drops are in my luggage... if I didn't took the precaution of bringing a pair of glasses with me in the cabin, I would be essentially blind right now. Since the hotel is quite isolated, it takes quite long to get to town and buy essential stuff like toothpaste and toothbrush, underwear and clothes... and of course since they keep promising me it should arrive soon, I have not taken the time to go shopping yet. If it was not for Ken Wimer, I would be without fresh socks and tshirt at the moment. Thanks Ken!

So, lesson I learnt from this fiasco: try to pack as much as possible in the cabin. In particular:

  • Minimalist toilet bag
  • Some underwear to live one day or two
  • Daily doses of contact lens eyedrops
  • Anything else?

And I probably need to study this site: onebag.com...

Update: Got my luggage at lunch time! Hurrah!
This post was tagged life and rant