Training at Zurich.

I have been quiet for the last weeks. But that had a reason: I was away for two weeks. My company had sent me to Zurich in Switzerland to undergo a training. Why? Because since the 15th of November we are handling the ticketing for Swiss Air Lines and they work with a completely different computer system than the one we have at our airline. So all our ticketing staff have to be trained for that. So, together with my colleague Gaby I went to Zurich. I had a great time I must say! It was really a lot of fun with Gaby and we enjoyed the training and having the possibility to learn something new! We were really lucky with our hotel which was brand new and after a fabulous breakfast every morning (with real good fresh bread, soooo good!) we felt prepared for a long day of training ;-) Swiss had a great training facility and the course was really interesting (though I must say that we felt like going back in time, their system feels so outdated and complicated and way too lengthy). What I always like about these trainings is the international atmosphere. This time, we met colleagues from Yaoundé, London, Florence, Montreal, Copenhagen, Zurich (but native japanese), Auckland, Nairobi and New York! I really enjoy this every time I attend a training. Beginning of next year our own facility will reopen (after some years of rebuilding) in Seeheim in Germany (close to Frankfurt, our main hub) and everybody is already looking forward to the new trainings there! ;-) We ended our training with a test, luckily though we were allowed to use all our materials so it was not that difficult. But still I managed to make a slight mistake in something (that's at least one thing I know for sure already) and I am really mad at me since I had all the time in the world to check it or avoid it but unfortunately I didn't realize it... oh well, I hope I still passed... :-D

Besides the trainings 

we did not have much time to do anything in Zurich. In the first week Jelle visited us and together with him and Gaby we had a great dinner in the city center. During the weekend break (in 

which 

we could fly home) I opted for a short visit to Madrid to my lilbro Dani but I will tell you later in a dedicated post about it. At 

the end of the second week Gaby and I decided to "celebrate" the end of our training with a nice dinner in town (all other nights we ate in or close to the hotel in the airport's food court or at the staff 

cantine). It was a great evening out and a good end to our two weeks. It truly was a pleasure to have had the possibility to attend the training together with Gaby, a first for me to go on a training together with a colleague. It was so much more fun and you also had the possibility to exchange your thoughts and worries about the system and problems. I would not call it a vacation as some colleagues but still it was a great experience and I enjoyed it. ;-)

Thanks Gaby for the great time together, I enjoyed your company a lot!

Elvis lives!

If it wasn't so sad it actually would be funny: a hacker was able to fool the system that reads electronic passports at Amsterdam airport. He was able to let the system read a manipulated passport and the system did accept the false ID without any problem. So all the security hype (especially of the americans) about stricter controls with electronic passports is basically for nothing... it does not even seem too complicated to do that as the hacker even demonstrates on his website in a video:

When I see this it really makes me angry as the authorities always make you believe it's for my own best and protection and blablabla... but it's not safe and it's only costing a lot of money for nothing - it's all about pure cosmetics to simply fool the general (especially american travelling) public to make them think all became much safer and the government has everything under control - not...

A hug.

A fresh new look, courtesy of Dani

May I proudly present my new blog design to you? 

I am pleased to announce that with immediate effect the look has been changed to a new template that was kindly designed and installed by my beloved and very talented lilbro Dani! 

Since quite some time I wanted to change the look of my blog and bring up the first design change since I started this, not quite a year ago. I was trying to establish a three column design but I don't have a clue about these things if it's not drag & drop... So my lilbro kindly offered to help me and now came up with this splendid new design! I especially love the header which Dani designed for me as well. It's pretty cool and I love the resemblance in style with Dani's own blog.

I don't plan any further changes to the cruisair blog content, I am quite happy with what I have on it now. I might fine tune one or the other sidebar item but in general I have what I wanted.

I love it very much, I hope you all do too, lets give him a big round of applause (and I promised him something else as reward...hehehe)! Many many thanks Dani, I appreciate it so much - besitos! 

Hugs for all of you.

Compiling.

"Compiling" © xkcd

I swear this came up randomly! With a special dedication to Dani... :-P

Stupid!

I was just trying to reserve tickets for the cinema. I want to go see "Sweeney Todd" tonight, together with Jelle (I am amazed, 'cause he actually doesn't like musicals, Johnny Depp and no film musicals). I have a prepaid card that's giving a 30 percent price advantage and you can reserve online, in order to avoid standing in line at the cinema. Now I know that it can be done 'cause I've done it once before. But this time? It's impossible, I simply cannot find a way to reserve the tickets on this card. Either I turned into a complete moron or they changed something on the site or for some other reason the possibility won't show up on the site. I don't succeed. So let's hope not too many people want to see "Sweeney" tonight, I'll just be a go-show. In case it's full I have plan B which would be "The other Boleyn Girl" which is showing around the same time. Read tomorrow what movie I saw. ;-) What a stupid site!

Rage.

Yesterday, I got really upset at work. Well, there are many things at work momentarily that upset me. Where do I start? Let's begin with yesterday. To explain what happened I have to tell a little background so you will understand.

Beginning of the month our company introduced what they call the CitP (which I refer to as "shitpee"), a "common IT platform" that must help make bookings, check-in, etc. within our company and between us and our partners easy, faster, better, cheaper... you name it. Together with introducing this background software they also forced us to work on a different program to access this CitP. Until now, many of us used an old program provided by Unisys where you had to use codes to get the information out of the systems. The new program they now force us to use is based on a graphic user interface (GUI). You push some buttons and don't need to know codes anymore. All those managers even think this program does all by itself and you don't need to know anything anymore... which is not the case but that's a different story...

Anyway, to get to the point of my post: most of us hate the new GUI program and we all prefer to work on the old system. However, they disabled it for everyone, except for some colleagues who also work in a different department where they can't do without the old program. So though they tell us it's not working anymore, the truth is it still is. They just don't want us to use it anymore. So then don't bullshit us. And don't think we are stupid. The GUI based program is simply an interface that only "translates" the push of a button on the screen into the required code of the underlying original code based program that we would love to use... so what's the deal? Arggghhhh.

But, what made me so upset yesterday is the following. A colleague asked me if I knew why another colleague (my Jelle actually) could still use the old program. I answered I didn't know that but that I could imagine it had to do with his position (having to work in the different department as well regularly). She is in the same situation as Jelle but obviously felt jealous that he might have something that she hasn't because she immediately jumped up and went to the boss! I watched amazed and asked her what's the deal, what's wrong? She would not say a word to me, just went straight away. So another colleague and I just watched astonished and I called her again to ask what's wrong but she went away with a red head! So I said "She is crazy" to my other colleague. Some time later she came back to the counter. She did not say a word. I didn't look at her. I refused to speak to her, luckily she did not address me either. When I went home moments later I only greeted my other colleague, not her. It's the second time this girl has potentially done something on Jelle's cost just to get better herself. That's the first thing that upset me, because she only asked me, not Jelle and I even did not know what she wanted to know... how can you rely on this and make a complaint to your boss? That's plain stupid! And then, this girl really has the guts today to call me at home on my day off to aks if I was willing to change shifts with her on saturday so she can meet people that have to do with her horse... Can you imagine? My ass, your horse! Of course I refused to swap. Bad luck for her. I am better off with my late shift. She didn't even offer an apology that she refused to speak to me yesterday, she did as if everything was fine and normal today... Women, arrrggghhhh! Sometimes I feel I am surrounded by morons.

Ah, this feels good. I told you why I was upset. Another thing that had an influence on my mood yesterday.