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Friday, December 05, 2008

Report From O'Hare United Business Class Lounge - WTF with WiFi?

The lady with the exceptionally puffy eyelids finally relented and allowed me a card for 24hrs free WiFi access. "It should be free, but it ain't," she said as she handed me a Red Carpet Club password scratch-card.

Because I am flying Economy Class domestic (to connect at International Business on Singapore Airlines in Newark ), not International Business on United Airlines and am not a RED CARD CLUB Gold member, only a SIA/StarAlliance Gold member, the other people in the lounge are allowed to access the WiFi, but not me. I am a second class citizen (well, you knew that) all of a sudden. It provokes one of those petulant throat-choking reactions in me. I read the instruction twenty seven times, and despite realizing my ineligibility by these bloody stupid rules, still push the issue.

Rules were meant to be broken, right ?

What could possibly be the reason for this , does it costs them so much to give everybody free to use the WiFi? Is there a bandwidth issue?

That sympathetic lady with the puffy eyelids (I am talking PATHOLOGY here) though, what a nice person. Ugly though.

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Beer must also be paid for. What sort of stupid lounge is this? Why not just sit in a bar downstairs? What's the point of having the SIA/Star Alliance Gold Card? You have to pay for the WiFi, pay for the beer… Muthfucka!

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A similar conundrum confused me at Heathrow once. I could use *THEIR* PCs to access the internet for free, but it would cost me money to use *MY* own laptop and the WiFi. WTF?

People just don’t have the right attitude to WiFi in my humble opinion.

Or beer.

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In my only free time in Chicago, I went shopping for...

Books and CDs of course.

Grabbed some Buddy Guy that I only had on cassette (where ARE all my cassettes, BTW?), some Wes Montgomery and some Oscar Peterson at the Jazz Record Mart.

The second hand bookshop next was also good. Stuff I'd been meaning to buy at at some stage - some Banana Yashimoto, some Nelson Algren, that controversial book about Rasputin from a coupla years ago - and of course they look like I've owned them for a while...

This is important, right?

E@L

3 comments:

Indiana said...

The look is the most important part...a library must look read, and not just read once.

expat@large said...

I should do that more often, buy second-hand books. It makes me feel that their printing has been worthwhile. Mind you, the author gets zip from it.

Skippy-san said...

Welcome to my world with United Airlines. Those cheapo fucks could be a lot better off if they just provided some decent service-and the whole pay for WiFi pay for beer things just blows.

Whoever told them it was a good idea should be shot.

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