My Transportation Experiences on Vacation

source: Norweigan Cruise Lines

My last vacation for 2019 ended yesterday. It was a 7-day cruise (see above picture) with family and longtime friend Stan to celebrate our nephew's first birthday. We stopped at the same ports not in the same order as Norweigan did.

Despite being eaten alive with insect bites on my legs and arms, the time went too fast. From Miami, we traveled to Costa Maya (Mexico), Harvest Caye (Belize), Roatán Bay Islands (Honduras), and Cozumel (Mexico).

Cindy and Stan got to spend time with the little guy on visits they made to New York in the past 2 months. I was worried he'd be terrified of me since my last visit was in February for Chinese New Year.

Turns out I had nothing to worry about. He smiled and/or laughed almost every time we made eye contact. I could get him to laugh hard whenever I made funny noises. As the youngest passenger, he was probably the most popular person on the cruise aboard the Oceania Insignia.

source: Getty Images

To get to our cruise, I flew non-stop from San Francisco to Miami on American Airlines. I haven't flown on AA in at least 15 years. Like United, I'll do whatever I can to avoid flying with them. As they offered multiple non-stops from San Francisco to Miami, I ended up booking with them. After this trip, my experience only reinforced why I don't fly with them.

AMERICAN AIRLINES SUCKS.

From San Francisco, I went to a kiosk to do a bag drop for a single piece of luggage. The $30 charge is typical of most airlines, so this didn't bother me.
What bothered me was the surly attitude from several service employees.

When I got to the bag drop area, I proceeded to the counter after the passenger before me in line headed to the boarding gate. The counter person then immediately scolded me about coming too soon. He told me next time I should wait until I'm announced.

After the flight took off from SFO, the attendants came around to serve beverages and snacks. I was wearing my earphones watching a movie so I wasn't exactly paying attention to what was being offered. So when the flight attendant got to my row, I asked what was available. He snapped in front of me a packet of biscuits in one hand, then in the other hand with the same snappy attitude, a small bag of pretzels.

On the return flight back, I noticed the newer looking seats. Found out as I was sitting down, there was no viewing screen (learned today it's been this way for newer AA planes since 2017). We were told to download the AA app from one's phone and look for AAinflight as the wi-fi name. I connected to the wi-fi but tried without success to get to the entertainment.  I missed the part about entering aainflight.com in the web browser.

Kind of hard to do when everyone is repeatedly reminded to board a FULL plane to meet an on-time departure. My seat assignment was in the LAST row, 33C.

So I ended up watching no movies, painfully slow wi-fi access and charged $10.99 for it. The constant browser search spinning drained my phone's battery quite quickly. I couldn't charge the phone because the jack to plug in the charger already had the earphones. We received one lousy beverage and food cart service for a 6-hour flight.

AA may have saved plane weight and labor and maintenance costs. I'm all for cost-cutting. But not at the expense of customers. Namely this one.

source: YouTube

To get to and from the airports, I used ride sharing apps.
Up until this month, my ride sharing app was exclusively Lyft. When I upgraded to American Express Platinum in August, I added Uber to take advantage of the $15/month credit.

As a passenger, I found Lyft to be faster and cheaper than Uber in San Francisco. I found Uber much more responsive in Miami. I used Uber from the airport to the hotel, and from the hotel to the Port of Miami.

The biggest highlights of the vacation:

• bonding time with nephew
• unlimited availability of char-grilled steak and lobster tail at the dinner buffet
• ziplining in Roatán

I'm not yet ready to go back to work tomorrow. But it will be less painful as it'll be a short work week due to the Thanksgiving Holiday.

Switch to Toric Contact Lenses

L: Dailies AquaComfort Plus (Toric)
R: Dailies (Classic) 

I first began wearing contact lenses a few months before I turned 16. My dad didn't want me to get them. He thought I was too young to handle wearing them. I told him with as much sports that I played, I'd break eyeglasses. Plus, with my flat nose bridge, I fog up lenses constantly. Dad couldn't put up much of an argument.

Diagnosed with astigmatism, the optometrist recommended hard lenses. I wore blue tinted ones (easier to see when putting them in). I then moved to gas permeable hard lenses until 2002 or so, when allergies constantly left deposits on my lenses making them uncomfortable to wear.

From there, I moved to daily disposables, Alcon's Focus Dailies.
So much better. No weekly cleaning. No worries about replacing lost lenses. Every day, a new pair of fresh, clean lenses to wear.

I picked up a 2-week sample of a new type of daily disposable lenses, Toric Dailies AquaComfort Plus. Toric lenses are specially designed for astigmatism. Which I've had most of my life and only has gotten worse over time.

Wore the new toric lenses for the first time today. With a stronger prescription, I can definitely see a difference. Comfort level is good. Biggest differences between standard disposables and torics:

• Thicker lens
• Insertion of lenses are in a specific position
• Higher cost due to more details required for the prescription

Whether or not this will be a long-term solution remains to be, ahem, seen.

Lots of Gray in the Gig Economy

Three days ago, I shared on LinkedIn New York Times writer Patricia Cohen's article "Lots of Job Hunting, but No Job". Ms. Cohen has been with the New York Times since 1997.

Laura Ward is the woman pictured in the article. Ms. Ward has been unable to find permanent full-time employment for the past 3.5 years.

Sounds awfully familiar.

I resigned willingly from my job in June 2010. I didn't return to full-time work until January 2014 (see February 6, 2014 entry). I probably applied to 200 different jobs.

Before 2010, it never took me more than 6 months to find a new employer.

During my job hunting phase, I told everyone I knew I was looking for a job. Managed to get a few referrals from friends and former colleagues that led nowhere. Secured promising phone interviews every 2 to 3 months. A handful of those made it to a second interview. If I really got lucky, my third interview would result in a face-to-face. Got about 6 of those in the 3.5 year span I was looking. A few of them were notably large well-known companies such as VISA, BART, and Dignity Health.

But no offers. Many rejection emails, sometimes a rejection phone call.
Most times, absolutely, positively nothing.

Here are my top 3 reasons why I didn't get the job:

1. Lacked the qualifications
2. Wasn't a cultural fit (too old)
3. Overqualified (too experienced)

My sister was laid off her job after 27 years in 2017. She finally returned to work to her former employer in another division. She's among thousands of others that were/are unable to find a full-time permanent job that pays a livable wage.

As of this writing, Ms. Cohen's article shared on LinkedIn has been viewed over 80,000 times in 3 days. That's 41% of my total views on this 13-year old blog.