Another way to cut down on pesky calls

Hopefully you have already registered on the National Do Not Call List: https://www.donotcall.gov/confirm/conf.aspx

Your state may also have their own Do Not Call List, which may prevent some calls that are allowed by the National laws. In Texas you can find this at: http://www.texasnocall.com/

but these don’t prevent all unsolicited calls. 

One of the ways telemarketers and others try to reach you is by using a predictive dialer which is technology that uses a computer to dial different phone numbers and when one answers, connect the call with an operator (i.e. telemarketer).  This frees the humans to spend more of their time talking to pestering people.  It also explains why when you sometimes answer the phone and go “hello?” and find there is a delay before you are speaking to a real person, if you can call cold-calling telemarketers real people, that is.

By law the predictive dialer is supposed to connect you to a human being within 2 seconds of hearing your voice or else they must play a recorded message.

Here’s what I’ve noticed – when I get a call from a suspicious number, I could of course just let it ring to my answering machine.  Problem is that sometimes this might be someone whose number I don’t know (perhaps they’ve even blocked it on their end), or it could be the likes of a telemarketer or other unsolicited call. 

Even if I let a telemarketer’s call ring to voicemail, a lot of the time I will see on my answering machine that their system hung up without leaving a message and I will likely get a call back at another time.

However, if I answer the phone, but don’t say anything, an interesting thing happens.  Most of the time, the call is just silent.  If a real person is calling me, they will say something.  If this is a friend, I’ll typically recognize their voice, or else they will tend to use my name.  Telemarketers will often just hang up, or if they do speak, it is usually “Hello? Mr. or Mrs. Finkel?” My turn to go click.

So what’s new here?  Telemarketers use calling lists and realistically they have no real way of knowing if the phone numbers they have are good or not.  They are working in bulk – this is why they buy large lists of phone numbers and why they use predictive dialers. It’s a numbers game – they just need some of them to answer in order to do their business.  By not speaking when I answer the phone, I believe I am confusing their system and acting more like a non voice number, such as a fax machine. 

What I’ve noticed is that I don’t get a call back from these systems when I use this technique.  I suspect that when they don’t hear a real person or a voice on an answering machine the number gets flagged as no good in their database and they ignore it.

Works for me!

Tinto de Verano

Literally “summer wine”, this is a popular cocktail in Spain and Portugal, similar to sangria, but easier to make.

The ingredients are just red wine, gaseoza (fizzy water, sometimes flavored), sugar or honey, and maybe a slice of lemon or orange.  Serve over ice.

You can make an even simpler version at home using just red wine and Sprite or 7up. 

When served in Spanish households people pour their own wine and gaseoza mixture together making the drink to taste, as opposed to sangria, where all the ingredients are pre mixed.  Sangria usually has additional hard alcohol such as a liqueur as an ingredient.

Quick and simple to make, very delicious, refreshing, and easy to get a bit schnockered on as it doesn’t taste at all alcoholic!

In praise of socks

As a working photographer I spend a lot of time on my feet.  And when we travel during the summer, we tend to do a LOT of walking.  Its a great way to see where you are and a decent substitute for the regular exercise we’re not doing that we normally do at home. But boy did my feet get tired.

Learning to wear comfortable shoes is something I figured out a long time ago.  But more recently I started paying attention to the socks I wear.  Kelly discovered Thorlo socks a while back and really likes them for hiking.  I’ve had thick woolen hiking socks (and artificial fabric versions) for years that did me great service when hiking in cool locations like Ireland, but these are very uncomfortable in the hot weather of Texas (and Spain and Portugal) and tend to get itcy.

A while back, I came across cotton socks with very thick, toweling-like soles, and the difference they make is amazing.  For one thing, I find that after a long gig wearing these, my feet don’t ache as they used to, even better than wearing gel insoles. Also, in hot weather, I find them very agreeable – more so than wearing sandals without socks.  When in a hot climate, they absorb any sweat and keep my feet dry and comfortable.

You may find that you need a slightly larger shoe, but if you achy feet at the end of the day, try some extra thick cotton socks!

How to Get a Better Seat on a Plane.

Or at least avoid the bad ones.

Long gone are the days when sweet talking the gate agents at the airport would get you an upgrade, so this isn’t about moving from coach to business class without paying for an upgrade (if you know how to do that let me know!)

Even within the same class of service, there are better and worse seats.  The worst may be smelly (next to a kitchen or toilet), busy (used as a passageway), unusually cold, without a view, uncomfortable (narrower or with less legroom than others), non reclining, or in some other way sub-standard.

I recall years ago travelling from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Vancouver, Canada on Malaysian Airlines, a journey of something like 20 hours with a short stop in Taiwan.  Being on business for Dell in Asia, I got to fly business class (we had to fly coach to Europe!) and I had a business class seat upstairs on a Boeing 747.  After boarding, I got to my seat and for some reason that I still can’t figure out why, I reclined my seat while we were still parked a the gate.  It moved about 1” then stopped.  I figured something must have temporarily blocked the recline, so I fished around and figured out that the seat was hitting the flight attendant’s jump seat right behind mine.  In other words, the seat wasn’t meant to recline. Not looking forward to 20 hours of sitting bolt upright, I had to create a bit of a stink to get them to move me to another seat.  it is actually not unusual to have coach class seats that don’t recline, often these are just in front of emergency exits, or at the end of the cabin, but there are also better and worse business and first class seats.

Contrast my Malaysian experience with our Madrid to Chicago flight today.  Although we are flying coach, we have about four times the leg room of regular seats and no one wandering through our area.   How?  We’ve got the exit row over the wing.  And this isn’t an accident.  Last night when I checked in, I specifically chose these seats.

There are a few websites that give you good info about seating on planes.  The one I like best is www.seatguru.com.  Once you enter your airline and plane type, it will show you a seat map color coded in white (normal), green (preferable seats), yellow (warning, such as a very cold seat) or red (avoid).  For many flights it will also show you the location of seat based power points if the plane is equipped with them.  If you want to use a laptop on a long flight, this can be very important.

How can you find out the airplane type?  Seatguru now has a feature where you just enter your carrier and flight number and it will find the aircraft that should be used.  Alternatively, go to the website of the airline and look up your reservation or the flight schedule and you should find the information.  Worst case, you can call the airline and ask.  Sometimes they call this “equipment” and use a code, e.g. 346 means an Airbus A340-600.

If you use the seat map in conjunction with your airline’s online reservation management system, you can pick your own seat and avoid the bad ones. These days when I make a reservation with an airline, the first thing that I do after the reservation is booked is go online and reserve my own seat, using seatguru’s recommendations.  You might be surprised how many times you get given a poor (yellow) or bad seat (red) by default. 

The best seats are usually exit row or bulkhead seats and these are often not available to reserve far in advance.  Some airlines restrict reserving these seats to their premium passengers.  When I fly American Airlines, as long as my travelling companions are on the same record as me, I can book all of us in the exit seats or seats close to the front of the cabin.  If someone is on a separate reservation, I can’t.

Most airlines will make the exit seats available about 24 hours before your flight, so it is a good idea to check in online for your flight as early as you can (usually 24 hours before) and check the seating maps again so you can snag the good seats.

So, with a little forethought and a few minutes of online work you can have many hours of greater comfort in the air.

Ham-a-mania

Spaniards love their pigs, or more precisely dead pigs in form of ham, or jamon.

You see it everywhere, but Madrid seems to have more shops selling this local delicacy than anywhere else we visited.  Apparently every home has a special device designed to hold ham legs for slicing. You find places like “The Museum of Ham” on almost every street.  

According to those who eat such treyf, jamon iberico is the pinnacle of a pork ingesting experience.  Black pigs are allowed to forage for acorns before ending up on the end of a fork after a number of intermediate steps.  However, in all our country driving we didn’t see any pigs.  Seemingly they are very good at hiding from tourists, but evidently not so good at avoiding the butcher.

The number of pig legs in shops, supermarkets, and restaurants is truly stupefying.  Interestingly, we didn’t see a lot of the other parts of the animal in markets or on menus, so I kind of wonder where they go.

The local predilection for all things porky mean that one has to look out for lard where you might not expect it.  Particularly in the south, we found a number of bakeries use lard rather than butter or vegetable oil when making sweet pastries.  Luckily, there are lots of panaderias and pasterlerias so usually walking to another was all it took to find something we could eat.

With the Jews and Muslims getting expelled in the 15th century, it is probably no wonder that the Spaniards have developed an orgy of ham eating.  What did surprise me was when we were in Corodba we ate at a tapas bar that specialized in Sephardic and Andalusian specialties.  For the most part the Sephardic food, indicated by a star of David, wasn’t all that interesting, but I was hoping to try some of the Andalusian specialties until they told me the ones I liked the look of contained pork.   Having a crescent and star icon for these seems a bit deceptive to me and you have to wonder if some poor Mohammedan has found a nasty surprise after they’ve taken a few bites of their dinner. 

If you eat kosher style (i.e. no pork or shellfish), here are some phrases that might be helpful:

• No como carne de cerdo. I don’t eat pork.
• El tocino.                        Bacon.
• El jamon.                        Ham.
• Manteca de cerdo.           Lard.
• Los mariscos.                  Shellfish.
• Pulpo.                             Octopus (a common food here).

Vegetarian food isn’t all that common in Spain, although we did find some good organic vegetarian places in Tarifa and Madrid.  In particular the place we ate at in Madrid, Yerbabuena, did some very creative and tasty food.  Big portions too.

Thankfully fish is very common, so with a bit of effort, there is always something to eat.  We certainly didn’t go hungry!

Breakfast

Desayuno in Spanish, petit-dejuener in French, pequeno almoco in Portuguese and a whole host of other names in other languages.  Breakfast is one of the stranger meals when you travel.

For one thing, it is sometimes included in your hotel rate, but often not.  On a recent trip to France, most hotels’ rates for breakfast were upwards of Eu15 per person – more than $20.  For coffee, juice, croissants and jam.  Sheesh.  On another trip to France when you booked your hotel online, they gave you free breakfast.  What a deal!

I remember my first trip to France, with my parents around 1976 and how my father was outraged at what the Novotel wanted to charge for breakfast then.  It hasn’t changed!

Rates in Spain and Portugal are a bit less, but still no great value.  We generally find a coffee or pastry shop, get a few good coffees and some fresh pastries for less than half what they would want to charge for one similar breakfast in the hotel.  If you find a good patisserie you have a wider choice of options than your hotel and the pastries are fresher. 

Breakfast habits and tastes vary wildly around the world.  I’m not a huge fan of salami, cheese, and plain yogurt in the morning, which I’ve been served in the Netherlands.  Salad isn’t high on my preferred early morning list of comestibles either, but the Israelis seem to like it.  In Laos, I started my day with a Dragon fruit shake. 

Dragon fruit is an exotic fruit found quite commonly in SE Asia and Central America.  The first time I ever had it was at the Raffles Hotel in Singapore, no less. It has a strange purplish scaly exterior (hence the name) and the interior is usually either purple or white with tiny black seeds as if the watermelon textured flesh was evenly studded with poppy seeds.   The few times I’ve had Dragon fruit at home it has been very disappointing – like watermelon with no flavor.  But in Guatemala and Laos, the fresh fruit has a subtle but distinct flavor that gets lost in shipping.

Perhaps my favorite place for breakfast is Malaysia.  Most hotels include breakfast, and it is usually much more substantial than most European offerings.  What makes it fun is that they try to cater to all their guests.  So they have cereal, toast, tea, sausages, eggs, etc. for the Americans and British, various Malay dishes including spicy noodles for the locals, and things like congee (rice porridge) and miso soup  for the Japanese.  And since most of the hotels cater to Muslim guests, there is no pork (the sausages are chicken). 

Of course, since all kinds of tropical fruits are grown locally, the fresh fruit and fruit juices are amazing.

Where else can you get baked beans and curry washed down with Starfruit juice to get your day started?

Leaving Madrid

Getting to and from airports is often a hassle in many parts of the world.  The worst are those where the airports are a long way from the city and the transportation options are limited.

The best have integrated rail transportation and make it quick and easy to get to and from the airport.  And this is the case in both Barcelona, where we arrived, and Madrid, from which we are leaving.  The airports are well served by metro lines.

In Madrid, it is about 15 minutes via the metro line that goes from the city to airport terminals 1,2, and 3.  Terminal 4 is about another 5 minutes away and is Iberia’s hub, along with their Oneworld partners, so this was our destination.  You pay a EU1 per person extra tariff at the airport metro station before you exit, unless you have a transit pass such as a Metro Tourist card.  Even with the extra tariff, this had to be one of the least expensive city to airport transfers I’ve had anywhere.  Numerous airports have rail connections to the city, but at most of the major airports I’ve used (Heathrow, and Gatwick come to mind especially), the cost pretty steep.  In fact, with some of the low cost airfares, you can sometimes pay as much or more to get to and from the airport as your flight cost .  Kudos to the Spanish for making it quick, easy, and cheap to get in and out of their major cities.

Terminal 4 is architecturally very interesting with a sinuous roof made up of wood spars, which softens the hard industrial look found in most new airports.

But unfortunately from a functional standpoint, there are a number of things that struck me as silly, if not downright stupid, especially for a new airport terminal,  For starters, I asked the agent after we had checked in our bags how long we needed to allow to get to the gate – he said 45 minutes.  Hmmm.  We cleared security pretty quickly, but for some reason, they have the section where they give you the plastic trays separated from the X-ray machines, which means you have to carry the tray(s) with your stuff for about 30 feet and go through a door– not big deal, except if the people in front of you are slow, you’re left standing trying to juggle everything  I can’t think of any other airport where they don’t use some sort of conveyor system to do this function.  A sign tells you that it is 23 minutes to the U gates.

Then we had to descend about 4 escalators to take a train to the satellite from which the international flights depart.  At Hong Kong’s new airport they designed it so that in most cases you never need to leave the level you are on.  Even the trains to the city are integrated into this concept – arriving trains come into the departure level and departing trains leave from a level below, which is the arrivals level.

Even sillier is that they have arriving passengers exiting from one side of the train, then the train moves along the track to come back on a parallel track for departing passengers to board the other side of the train.  Why they didn’t just have one platform and open the arriving side doors until the train cleared out, then close them and open the departing side doors to let departing passengers in, I don’t know.

Next you arrive at the satellite terminal and go through passport control, a formality and thankfully very quick in our case.  We are departing from gate U74, which ends up being the farthest possible gate.   For some reason, they have the end of the U terminal roped off so you have to show your boarding pass and passport yet again.  This appears to be only for flights departing to America.  Why?  We’ve already shown our passports to get here and flights to other locations don’t seem to have to do this.  Effectively it means you have to wait short of this barrier until they open it, then relocate to your gate.

The acoustics in this area were awful, so trying to make out the gate announcements (with the added challenge of a strong Spanish accent) was almost a lost task.

We were able to get a decent cup of coffee and a pastry for the same price as it costs in town, so that was good.  But the selection of shops for a major international airport was disappointing.  Plus, they don’t signpost where the toilets are.

My guess is that with the good ground transport connections, the arrival experience would be better, but in the end, an airport is a means to an end, and we’re looking forward to coming home.