sleep

Up for 32 hrs then sleep for 16 hrs, it all works out right?

The reason, requiring several hours of work and a loss of a flight (tens of thousands $):
Kingston USB disks suck.

Squishy

That's the best way to describe the rental car here. It's a Fiat Punta.

The steering feels squishy, the accelerator feels squishy, the clutch feels squishy, and the gear shift feels squishy. The brakes are very non-squishy.

The acceleration is squishy. Somehow it has nearly zero power at low RPMs. Once the rpms get higher then it seems to have some power. Someone suggested it may be a turbo diesel which performs like that. The accelerator is weird in that you can't use it keeping the heel anchored and depressing the toe. If you want real acceleration you have to extend your leg, the pedal seems to have about a full foot of motion.

The car has neat features though. For example, when the front window-wiper is on, if you change gear into reverse, the rear wiper automatically turns on! There are controls to adjust the tilt of the headlights in low-beam mode. There are various radio tuning and volume controls on the steering wheel. In the middle of the dash is a button with a steering wheel on it which makes the word "city" appear, can't feel any difference so I'm not sure what that's about. There's a phone button which I think might be a bluetooth handsfree phone link to the car stereo, but I haven't tried. The very last button I noticed, and perhaps the one that frightens me the most, is a button with the windows logo on it. Not sure if I want to press that one.

As for driving here... whatever, doesn't seem too bad, I'm pretty comfortable. People are aggressive and yet somewhat courteous at the same time. Drive crazy highway speeds, cut people off a lot, use the horn at minor disturbances, but go a snail's pace over speed bumps, and allow people to enter and exit roundabouts relatively easily instead of fighting for your position. And then there are really weird situations in which there'll be 30 cars in a row in one lane, going slow cause of congestion, while the lane right beside them is completely empty! (so I take that lane and pass them all). Then suddenly, it's the other lane with all the cars while the original lane is empty.

Another few days on the sunshine coast

Another few days of cloud, rain, and wind. Just had that one nice day so far, kindof sad. I also got really busy with work, it became nothing but work and sleep, with eat fit in where it could. And so my exercising ended after just those two days. But because of weird schedules and timings and business, I've generally just been eating two meals a day, so maybe that's good. At least it ends up saving some meal alowance. Spain (outside of mardrid and barcelona which are more expensive) is expected to cost over twice what canada/usa costs.

Security at the airport is pretty annoying, but I guess it's good in a way. Still, it's like going through your regular airport security, taking off your coat and taking your laptop out of the bag and everything every time you go to work. Got my swiss army knife temporarily confiscated one time, which is annoying cause I often need to use it. So I got it through the next time just by putting it in my bag instead of pocket. I should be glad I don't have to take off my shoes every time. Boy they're gonna freak if I ever have to take the sensor support kit out to the aircraft, a suitcase sized pelican case of RF components and tools.

Not much else to report here really.

On a funny note, air traffic control kept calling us "golf alfalfa" last night :)

Torremolinos so far

Yeah I'm actually in Torremolinos, but it's right by Malaga.

For the first few days here, it was generally windy, rainy, and overcast. Things felt very gloomy and heavy. Yesterday, the sun actually peaked out for a little bit, it was quite exciting, though we also had the worst downpour flooding the streets on the same day. Today, it's been bright and sunny and blue skies almost all day, calm water, pretty nice. Though still pretty breezy and about 15 degrees, so it's not like real beach weather. Still, if sheltered from the wind, and in the sun, you could get by in a t-shirt.

Work has still been little odd jobs, as the plane has not yet arrived. But it arrives within the next hour, and then it becomes busy again. Will be flying with it the next four nights to train people, and sometime will be testing a new laptop and software and mounting it in the plane. After that, we'll see, maybe not much again, since I won't be flying every night like I was on the previous rotations.

Most importantly, during one of the nice periods yesterday, I went out jogging! Yay, much needed exercise! Today I went again. Hope to keep it up.

This place is totally a retirement place though, everyone seems to be seniors.

Walking around, some interesting architecture... lots of clothing stores and such, just like everywhere else in the world really. More restaurants I think. Feels european inside places in that it's really not spacious and seems kindof dimly lit in general, doesn't feel as relaxing in my opinion.

Foods been fairly uninteresting, though I get the impression (from restaurants and supermarkets) that they eat more meat and more sweets than us.

There are some small "mountains" nearby, I think I will try to check them out sometime. There's some big bullfighting thing at the end of the month, I don't really support that, but might check it out, since it's something spanish at least.

Not much

Saw some simpsons in spanish. the voices are so bad.

This hotel doesn't have an exercise room! And I was going to make a serious effort to use it.

But, apparently the hotel (or associated spa) does have this service, for a fee: http://www.hotelmeliacostadelsol.com/images/contenido/gr1192722232.jpg

On the costa del sol

There appears to be a complete absence of sol.

My luggage arrived, guess it wasn't very lost. From what I can tell, the MAD agents were not fast enough (busy trying to eliminate gadget?)

Trip to Malaga

Things started out good. Actually better than good, it was great, I got bumped up to business class! I think some of the other passengers were looking down upon me for playing with all the toys and not acting business-classy. Things were layed out all weird (I was facing rearward), there was lots of space, and the chairs would even go ho!

In transit in heathrow was boring for a few hours.

Flight to madrid was uninteresting.

Transit in madrid was short but not rushed.

Flight to malaga was also uninteresting.

In Malaga... where's my luggage? At least this time I was smart and brought a change of underwear in my carry on at least. When malaysia lost it, it was kindof understandable cause there was weirdness with the original booking and then late flights made a connection that luggage would never make. But I don't see a good excuse here.

I thought it was interesting that I never had to go through customs anywhere (or if I did I was unaware of it). In madrid as I exited the plane someone glanced at my passport for about 2 seconds and that was all the immigration stuff I noticed. Seemed a little too convenient.

Now in spain I'm trying to remember all the vital spanish words I learned in costa rica last year... lets see... maraculla en leche? arroz con pollo?

ps by go ho I meant go horizontal, fully recline.

Darkness on the horizon

A recent operations schedule estimate shows all three planes working in the USA by June... Boo...

Photos

Should have mentioned sooner... Photos from KK and Malta online at http://members.shaw.ca/scottfieldrotation2/Work_KK/index.htm
Better formatted for 1024x768 screens (but uglier) at http://members.shaw.ca/scottfieldrotation2/Work_KK/index_lowres.htm

Malaga

I'm going to Malaga, Spain, on friday feb 15 (yay alliteration!). First time in continental Europe (other than a KLM transit 20 years ago).

Airline points

I had accumulated 8405 aeroplan points before. Assumed there wasn't enough for anything, didn't pay attention, they all expired. But today I actually looked at what these points were worth. Turns out 6000 aeroplan points will get you a $50 gift certificate at a variety of places. Pretty nice actually. Too bad I didn't realise it before. I'll have to pay more attention from now on.

That is, if I can figure out how other things work. Especially the "star alliance" and "one world" things. I think somehow many programs are inter-related... so since I have "asia miles" with cathay, a one-world member, I can collect more "asia miles" on my british airways flight instead of collecting whatever british airways rewards they have... so rather than having a few points with several different ones, you can just collect with a few. But are they worth just as much? Is it a pain in the butt to do? Should I use British airways flights to collect asia miles, or should I use Cathay flights to collect British airways miles, or does it even matter? It seems just messy.

I remember Scott Adams writing about the airlines and their reward programs, and I'm starting to see what he means.

I've got aeroplan miles, asia miles, skymiles, skywards miles, and enrich miles.

Now onto the hotels, I have Hilton HHonours, La Quinta Returns, Marriott Rewards, and Starwood Preferred Guest.

At least for car rentals I only have emerald club.

Super Bowl XLII

Ok, normally I don't watch sports, but I watched the last 8 mins or so of the super bowl. It was pretty exciting actually! For a few years in the 90s Tecmo Super Bowl on the super nintendo was my favorite game, so I actually know more about football than probably any other sport, although the knowledge is almost 15 years old. Hmmm feel like playing that game again, but it really wouldn't be the same without the couple friends I used to play with.