To Cruise or Not to Cruise, that is the Question

So after the absolute disaster of last February (Norwegian Cruise Line is clearly not on my preferred vendor list), I for some crazy reason agreed to join my friends for a cruise in the Caribbean this December. In deference to the fact that my head still spins when someone says "Norwegian" and "cruise" in the same sentence, this cruise will be with Royal Caribbean. Since we haven't gone yet, it's a little early for a trip report, but I think I'm finally capable of talking about the last one without swearing.

Norwegian Jade - "Morocco" and Canary Islands, February 2011

Morocco is in quotes as this trip (and only this trip, not any of the ones before or after) did not go to Morocco. And therein lies the problem. But I'll get to that.

Travel: US Airways, award tickets in Business / Envoy class. MHT to BCN (Barcelona) by way of Philadelphia and Madrid. Outbound trip in old envoy, so no sleep for me. I don't know why US still insists on flying those horrible barcalounger seats, but they do, and I hate them. Not catastrophic, but not a good start. Madrid to Barcelona was on Spanair: for what it was (note: first class within Europe is typically economy with an empty middle seat), a pleasant, short and unobjectionable flight.
Return via the same route. This time the Madrid to Philadelphia flight was in the new Envoy configuration - unlike the other config, this one is truly a premium experience. So, when flying US to Europe, be careful with your aircraft selection.

Cruise Ship:
The Norwegian Jade was formerly one of their Hawaii ships; I think either the Pride of Hawaii or the Pride of Aloha. This isn't a problem, but it does explain why a ship in the Mediterranean is decorated in a Polynesian theme. The Jade follows the same general plan as most other Norwegian ships. It's not the newest ship in the fleet, and it is showing some wear and tear (particularly the stateroom carpets), but the crew absolutely does their best to keep things clean.

Amenities:
2 main dining rooms (the Grand Pacific and Alizar), a buffet, and two grill-type restaurants (included). Coffee bar and numerous specialty restaurants (Tex-Mex, Italian, French, Teppenyaki, Asian/fusion, and a steak house). Casino (smoking permitted, a deal breaker for me), library, spa, gym (microscopic) and 2 pools.

Entertainment:
Changes nightly, always packed. Most of the shows were quite good. Elements was Cirque de Soleil style, and well executed. I would recommend you skip the magician, but then I'm not much for magic tricks

Itinerary:
And here is where I get angry. Supposed to be Casablanca and Agadir in Morocco, followed by stops in the Canary Islands, Madeira and Spain. At 5:30 on embarkation day, they announced we would not be going to Morocco due to unrest. Ok, I get it. In hind sight, it was a bit of an overreaction, but they had no way of knowing that at the time. The problem was, they sent us to Lanzarote, a teeny tiny little outpost in the Canary islands where they roll up the sidewalks at noon for a siesta. Very little to see or do. And that is our "alternative" to not one but two Morocco ports. They also added an extra day at sea.

Madeira and Malaga were my two favorite ports of call. In both cases, we got really good tour guards, including a university professor in Malaga who did a great job adding dimension to what could otherwise have been a long bus ride to the Alhambra (which would have been worth it, even without the great guide). Absolutely stunning. I plan to go back to both Madeira and Spain.

Needless to say, many of the passengers (us included) did not think that the substitute port carried equivalent value and were not pleased that the company seemed to think we should be satisfied with a second class itinerary. From what I could tell, there was no attempt at service recovery, just a "thanks for the money, sucks for you on the itinerary change" attitude. I felt like a walking wallet the whole trip.

So what, you ask, do I think they should have done? Well, there are some options. First, and most preferable, they could have gotten an adequate alternate port; maybe Gibraltar or Lisbon in Portugal or an additional port in Spain or one of the Western Italian ports. Considering the issue was decided before we left Barcelona, they had a huge swath of the Mediterranean to work with, and they chose.. Lanzarote. Not ok. Next choice: offered a significant stateroom credit. Since we were losing 2 port days, out of 6, I would say a credit equal to 15-20% of the fare paid per person would do the trick. It would be fair to the passengers (those who paid more would get more and they could use that money on extras to make up for the additional sea time) and good for the company. It would have given a good impression while not actually costing them anything. Ok, it would reduce their revenue, but a credit is better for their bottom line then a refund. On that theme, option 3, offer a significant (again, 20% or so) credit on a future cruise. Finally, there is always the refund option. Of course, they did none of those things. So... avoid Norwegian unless you are 100% certain that your trip will go flawlessly (and if you're that sure, there's this bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you... )

Post Cruise:
Stayed in Barcelona three days post cruise - made the entire trip worth it. Go to Barcelona. It's a wonderful city full of a huge variety of different styles and types of attractions. The museums are great (recommend the Maritime museum and City Museum of Barcelona in particular), the architecture is stunning (the old cathedral, the Sagrada Famiglia, the assorted Gaudi houses) and hte parks are fantastic. Also, the food is wonderful; tapas are possibly the perfect way to experience a new cuisine because it allows you to try a little of everything without turning yourself into a bowling ball.

As usual in Europe, I did not rent a car but instead used public transportation. The metro in Barcelona is great, very convenient punctual, clean and the signage is easy to follow. One thing to note, in Barcelona, they speak Catalan as well as Spanish; actually, they speak Catalan primarily and will switch to Spanish as needed. Also, if you have studied Spanish in the US, be aware that the accent and pronunciation in Spain are significantly different then what is common in the Americas.

Washington, DC - March 2009

Ok, technically Arlington, Virginia. My latest business trip that just happened to coincide with the cherry blossom festival.

Next, the actual travel part:
Airline: US Airways (MHT to DCA by way of PHL on the outbound and LGA returning)
Hotel: Hyatt Regency, Crystal City
Rental Car: None, used Metro
Touristy Things: Freer and Sackler Galleries, Museum of American History, Tidal Basin, Jefferson Memorial, FDR Memorial
Restaurants: Charlie Chang's, Italian Cafe, Chilis

I love DC because it has great public transportation, it's very walkable and (when your coworkers are agreeable) it has a great selection of restaurants. Sadly, I only managed to convince them not to eat at a chain one night in three. Oh, and there is a museum basically on every corner, most of which are free and almost all of which are interesting.

On the air travel side of things, it's definitely nice to be able to get an inflight water again. Legroom would be nice, but at least I'm not hobbled and thirsty anymore. In fairness, I did rate an upgrade from DCA to LaGuardia (always nice) and the little puddle-jumping Saab to Manchester was so empty that I could have stretched out in the back row and taken a nap if the flight were slightly longer. The LaGuardia terminal has improved (of course, I was there at noon on Thursday, so I was seeing it at basically its best), but Philadelphia really is beyond helping. Scary bathrooms, poor layout, people hocking credit cards (sky high rate and an annual fee, and I somehow managed to pass that opportunity up) when you're running for a connection and, my personal favorite, the 45 minute wait on the tarmac. Oy.

Hotel was great, though. The Hyatt is about two blocks from the Crystal City shops and it features shuttle service to both the airport and the Crystal City metro station. I noticed that this year the shuttles are more frequent, always a plus. The staff is still great and the rooms have been recently renovated. Think Asian fusion, very modern with a particularly nice bathroom setup. Best of all, the in-room coffee is Starbucks...great for those of us who need real coffee in the morning.

The Sackler gallery (generally a favorite of mine) was in the midst of preparing for the cherry blossom festival, so the main exhibit area was not open. For that matter, the main gift shop wasn't open. Also, most of the Smithsonian museums close at 5 pm. I would think they would get more visitors (and more eager purchasers of souveneirs and thus more revenue) if they stayed open an hour or so later. There are a few museums (I believe one is the portrait gallery) that are open until 7.

In a vaguely related aside, our Republican friends announced today they want to move for more tax cuts. So, here's an Independent perspective. The national debt is in the trillions. Pay down your debt then cut the taxes. So long as your solution to every problem is to endlessly quack "tax cuts" the way the advertising duck quacks "Aflac!" you will continue to lose support. Real, innovative solutions that are fiscally responsible (that's responsible, not dogmatic, knee jerk reactions) will go farther and with more people than the same old, same old. One would think you'd have gotten that memo before now. And for goodness sake, be quick about it because we're about one poorly thought out bailout away from anarchy.

Taking Care of your Parents

The past few days, I've been visiting family and helping to take care of my (quite ill) stepmother. Let me say right now that I have a whole new respect for all kinds of caretakers... particularly those who take care of people in hospice. Personally, I am very grateful such people are out there to help my (none too young) father and stepmother to cope. I don't know how they do it, honestly, but I know it must take a special kind of person to choose that as a career.

For me, I am now about 2/3 of the way through my fourth day as the blood pressure taker / personal hygiene assistant / wheel chair operator / walking lift / short order cook / housekeeper / launderess / dog walker / cat feeder / plant waterer / server / etc. and it's exhausting. All the more so because this is someone I care about and knowing how much help she needs forces me to be aware of how sick she really is.

What really disturbed me, though, was a comment from one of the nurses about how kind of me it was to do this. I told her that that's what you do for family and she responded that many times she had seen that not be the case. That's upsetting on many levels. First, for those who don't have family, second for those who's family is too far away to help, third for those who's family wants to help but can't afford time off of work and, most disturbing of all, for those who are so alienated from their families that no one will come. It seems to me that this is something my generation is going to be facing a lot of, as our baby boomer parents get older and need more help. I wish there wasn't such a stigma attached to being "put in a home". Because I look at things here, and it's ok for now because my aunt and I are switching off so there's always someone to help my dad (who has to keep working, btw). But what happens if Stepmother doesn't get better within the next 4-6 weeks? By better, I don't mean a miraculous recovery, I mean well enough to stay home alone? A home health aide, wonderful as the service is, can't stay the whole day and what happens the other, oh, 7 hours that dad's not here?

What a thing to have to be worrying about at Christmas... Here's another fine thought. Why is my stepmother, who is a wonderful human being, dying while plenty of human scum are healthy and mobile? I know, I know, life isn't fair. But it irks me to think of people who's sole contribution to the human race is, oh, killing other people or stealing cars or blowing up buildings, will live for decades while my family will be lucky to have this one last holiday together.

Who cares if math is cool?

My (great big defense contractor) employer is one of many companies on the "Oh my god, we have no engineers!" bandwagon. We sponsor one of the thousands of programs aimed at making math and science "cool", just like pretty much every technology company in the lower 48 (can't speak to Alaska and Hawaii, but I don't imagine they're different). Some background on why I think this is idiotic; when I was in, oh, 8th grade or so our guidance counselors came into my science class (yeah, honors, I'm a geek) and told us all about the need for people in science and technology and how many opportunities there would be and how we should keep taking science and math (which become elective after two years in high school). A few years later, around the time I was juggling AP Chemistry and AP Physics (told you I was a geek) the teachers started bringing in people to tell us about all the cool things you could do with math and science degrees.

Now, you might say that something clearly worked because here I am, an engineer but if you survey my classmates (and we had our 10 year high school reunion a year or two back), you'll find that I am an engineer, one teaches physics and the rest are doctors and lawyers and bankers and other successful people, but not engineers, mathemeticians or scientists. Why do I mention this? Because the Engineering is Cool movement clearly goes back in excess of 14 years with a success rate of less than 1%! If it was going to work, than the first generation of students to be exposed to these programs would have their PhDs by now and you'd see some kind of demographic bump indicating success in an increase in engineers...but no, you see a decrease.

Now, like any young engineer I have a fairly good idea of why this is (hint: it has to do with capitalism), but it isn't politic for me to say so, since doing so would reveal that I have not drunk the "kids just don't think math is cool" kool-aid. I did, however, have the distinct pleasure of attending a conference last March where a very bright woman from Morgan Stanley pointed out the painfully obvious to a room full of people who weren't really listening... young people don't go into engineering, and particularly don't go into defense, because the payscale sucks.

When I say no one was listening I don't mean no one heard her. They did, but they all were shaking their heads and grumbling about how that's not really it and how she was basically off her rocker. The questions asked were sharp to the point of rudeness, all basically saying she needed to go back to the drawing board with this theory. But here's the real rub... she analyzes DEFENSE stocks; she probably knows the business better than many people who are in it and I've looked her up and seen her record and reputation and this woman knows her stuff. Plus, I'm a young engineer who is considering leaving the business because I can make twice the salary and have a lot less stress if I go into patent law or stock brokerage, where my math and engineering degrees are actually valued.

Let's pretend, for a second, that we're actually open minded about this and do what engineers are supposed to do best... the math. I went to a public college and received scholarships that covered my tuition. Thanks to books, mandatory fees, room & board and the fact that my financial aid office wouldn't acknowledge that a court-mandated legal emancipation meant my mother wasn't supporting me financially I still graduated about $20k in debt. So every month I have to pay my student loans. I also have a mortgage (because who wants to put up with stomping upstairs neighbors and 2 hour waits in the laundry room at almost 30?) and a car loan (my clunker barely survived the move and did not survive its first New England winter) and other expenses... property taxes to educate other people's children, income taxes to subsidize aid to countries I don't live in or care to visit, utility bills, registration fees and all manner of other things. So I have a budget. I live by my budget, but trust me I'm getting a little tired of sitting down at the end of the month and thinking "if I had gone to work for someone else, I could go on vacation this year". Note the if.

So, the real solution isn't to raise the number of H1B visas or to throw more money into middle schools (the visas further depress wages and convince still more students that engineering isn't worth the time, expense and trouble and the middle schools, well, we've already establishe that's been tried before and hasn't worked yet). It isn't to get people (who aren't engineers) to talk about how cool engineering is because, let's face it, if you can take your engineering degree and be an engineer or a professional skateboarder, how many people are really going to be engineers if the pay is lower and the work less fun? It's time for the industry to face reality... you created this problem and no amount of government aid is going to fix it for you.

Hotels - The Good, The Bad, and the Radisson

Like many of the denizens of younger corporate America, I am a road warrior. Last year, I spent 123 days on the road.... just for business (I know this information for state tax purposes). Unlike many of my office mates, however, I don't really mind. I enjoy the change of scenery, the chance to go to places that don't perhaps make the usual tourist circuit and, of course, the free airline tickets and car rentals that I accrue that help me to afford real vacations on my entry level salary.

Many of my travel experiences have been good. For instance, I thoroughly enjoy staying at the Four Points Sheraton Airport in Huntsville, AL. I know it's a hotel in an airport... in Huntsville, but the rooms are always clean, the selection of amenities is nice, the mattresses are comfortable, and you have the unrivaled convenience of being able to roll out of bed and check in for your flight before heading back upstairs to shower and make yourself travel ready. For the convenience alone, I would enjoy it. But what the Sheraton does superlatively well is customer service. I have never failed to find a pleasant, helpful staff member at the desk, even when cheking in at 2am from a very delayed flight. I have frequently witnessed "above and beyond" service, as when I arrived at 10 am (instead of 7:30 pm the previous day, thanks American Airlines) for a 12:30 meeting and desperately needed to change into work clothes and freshen up. The staff found me a room, even though it was hours before the standard check-in time, helped me extract my suitcase from AA and get to where I needed to go. Even the little things (a complementary bottle of water when it's 98 degrees and 98% humidity, say) are taken care of. A great hotel (I'd recommend it, but I go there frequently for business and I'd hate to not be able to get a room). And, for the record, Huntsville really isn't a bad place... they have a missile and rocket museum. No place that has a Darth Vader suit and a Saturn V rocket can be all bad.

Sadly, other places decide that since I look young, my business isn't particularly important to them. For instance, another place I have to go to frequently is El Paso, TX. Here, I am at the mercy of the corporate travel booker who decides which hotels are officially approved. This year, I was vastly upset to learn, I am no longer allowed to stay at the Embassy Suites. I find this depressing because, while the Embassy is perhaps not the newest hotel in Texas, it is well maintained and has a helpful, professional and more than competant staff (since I can't stay there any more, I'll freely recommend this one). Oh, and they offer a shuttle bus so that I don't always have to drive my micro-brewery enthusiast colleagues to Jaxons (I am a woman, but I'm a woman who likes beer and ice hockey and video games... my boyfriend appreciates this, though I can't promise my mother does).

Now, though, I am relegated to the Radisson Airport hotel. Unlike the Sheraton, this property is merely near the airport not actually in it (the El Paso airport is generally fairly lame, so this is not actually surprising), which isn't great, but isn't a tragedy either. I've stayed in plenty of not-at-the-airport hotels that were quite nice (the Hyatt Regency in Crystal City, VA and the Holiday Inn Express in Belen, NM spring to mind). This place, though, has to have the worst booking record in hotel history. I have stayed here no less than 11 times and at least half of those, my reservation has been messed up. Today, for instance, I am staying in a first floor room with double beds with inner spring mattresses near the pool when the reservation was for an upper floor room with a king Sleep Number mattress away from the pool.

The staff's attitude is also horrendous. Last time I was here, I checked in and got my room key (first floor again). After tramping down the hall, out the door onto the patio (where I was promptly accosted by 2 wet children and one very large bug, to say nothing of 90 degree heat), I got to my patio room (I hate the patio rooms because they are unsecure, hard to get to and noisy) only to discover that my room key didn't work. So, back inside and down the hall to the desk I went. I waited on line and then asked, I thought quite reasonably, for two keys, just in case there was a problem with one of them. The delightful little girl behind the desk snapped at me "there's only one guest in that room, so I can only give you one key". Now, I totally understand asking for ID before duplicating a room key, or not giving out 50 copies to one person, but asking for a duplicate key when one key was already messed up so that I wouldn't have to do another lap to and from the front desk is hardly an outlandish request. Alas, that's the El Paso Radisson for you.

This trip wasn't a total loss, though. The past 10 days I stayed in a Marriott property in Las Cruces (the Springhill Suites) that was quite nice. Not, perhaps, as lively as the Springhill in Arlington, TX, but very nice all the same. For their frequent visitors (and I am becoming one), they provide water and cookies. Who can go to a desert and not appreciate the water? Any who anywere doesn't like to be given free cookies?

Being a Rational Mastermind

As part of my career planning fun, I took a Jung Personality test (http://www.humanmetrics.com/) and my personality type is:

Your Type is INTJ
Introverted - 56%
Intuitive - 88%
Thinking - 88%
Judging - 78%

This apparently means I'm a moderate introvert and strongly intuitive, thinking and judgemental... can't win them all. This type is also known as the Mastermind Rational and, apparently, makes up just about 1% of the population. There are a couple of descriptions of the type:

http://keirsey.com/personality/ntij.html

http://typelogic.com/intj.html

http://www.personalitypage.com/INTJ.html

http://www.geocities.com/lifexplore/intj.htm

There are even interest and support groups for my personality type.

This happens to be one of my favorite quotes (I had to pass through several links to get here, so I do not know the original source of the material, but thank you whoever you are):

"INTJs are natural leaders, although they usually choose to remain in the background until they see a real need to take over the lead. When they are in leadership roles, they are quite effective, because they are able to objectively see the reality of a situation, and are adaptable enough to change things which aren't working well. They are the supreme strategists - always scanning available ideas and concepts and weighing them against their current strategy, to plan for every conceivable contingency. "

The general concensus is that INTJs like to organize things and tend to wind up as engineers... so there is a reason why my CDs are arranged alphabetically by genre and there's more to my being an engineer than just needing to pay off my student loans.