I only really care about NBA Finals because of one person: Jeremy Lin.  Sure he might not have played in the NBA finals… but his team is playing in the finals.  Sure he might be a journeyman player who’s played for 8 teams over 9 seasons… but his current team is playing in the finals.  And most importantly, his team… the Toronto Raptors… just won the NBA finals.

And Jeremy Lin now has an NBA ring.  How many Asian American’s can say that?

There are a lot of travel deals that allow someone to travel relatively cheap. These deals come usually in the form of discounts which require you to pre-pay. I’ve noticed that you can get up to 20% off of the current rate. The discounts are even better than the loyalty member rates sometimes. But remember you have to pre-pay.

At this point, you’re probably wondering: “Why not? A cheap deal is a good deal. Money saved is money earned.” And normally I wouldn’t really disagree with you. But lately, I’ve been finding that booking these discount rates are getting to be a hassle. All the fine print with their limitations and exclusions just doesn’t seem to justify the price anymore. Who actually reads the fine print? I’ve been burned a few times because of the fine print. Fortunately, it hasn’t been huge monetary loss after calling and complaining.

I’m also starting to get annoyed at the pre-payment requirement. I understand why companies would want to get paid since getting paid first is always better. Who wants to pay first in full before getting any benefit from the actual trip? I certainly don’t.

On a recent road trip, I found this hanging on the wall of a restaurant.Interesting no? We humans can learn a lot from our four legged friends.

April has been a pretty crazy month.  A personal trip followed almost immediately by a quick work trip.  With all the travel, I noticed the flight attendants of different airline companies vary significantly.

On the personal trip, all the flight attendants except for maybe the head attendant were all young females… probably all less than 30 years in age.  They wore matching uniforms with matching hairstyles.  They also had a very similar look irrespective.  Most spoke at least 2 or 3 languages fluently enough at a conversational level.  Many smiled at the interaction with the customer before speaking.

In contrast, on the work trip, none of the flight attendants were young nor all female.  Their uniforms varied to signify the different “jobs” each uniform performed.  From what I can tell, one uniform interacted with the customers solely as a “busboy and kitchen microwave” role while the ones wearing the more traditional flight attendant uniform interacted with the customers handing them food and dealing with issues.  Regardless of their roles, not all the attendants smiled when they interacted with the customer.

I think the difference is ultimately the type of culture that’s trained by the airline company.

This is a bit annoying.  Half of my pictures that I transferred from my phone to my computer are gone.

I find jet lag to be a pretty funny biological circadian anomaly.  For me, it feels like it generally takes up to two weeks to fully adapt to the “normal” circadian rhythm of the timezone.  Just coming back from a trip across the Pacific, I’m getting my normal 6 hours of sleep yet still waking up at ~4am.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

As a music junky who enjoys alot of different musical genres, listening to a proper high end music setup is a pretty unique experience. Unfortunately the music selection is pretty sparse. The CD I was listening to was a “Greatest Hits of Andre Bocelli.”

The inside speaker system (Focal) were the only ones hooked up. I don’t know why there’s a second outer one. But the Focal speakers handles the mid and upper ranges pretty well. The notes were crisp and clear. Con te partiro with Sarah Brightman really brought out the musical range. The bass ranges were not pushed enough for a good assessment.

I should bring some CDs next time with more of a musical emphasis… Hamilton anyone?

How do you frustrate travelers? By overselling non-reserved tickets.

As background the Taiwan High Speed Rail (HSR) mirrors the Japanese Shinkansen. The trains speed through the Taiwanese country-side from north to south in about 2 hours. That’s approximately 400 km. Each train line contains 12 cars of which cars 1-7 for patrons who reserve seats. Cars 8-12 are non-reserved, first come first serve seating.

Because of a National Holiday, the HSR was packed full of travelers. And as it turns out, they over sold the non-reserve seating so much that to compensate for the overflow, the HSR authorities opened up the reserve cars to non-reserved with a small caveat…. Non-reserved ticket holders can only stand.

For a traveler after crossing the Pacific, having to stand for 2hrs is an annoyance. But to oversell something is just gross stupidity in my opinion.