I’m in Hyderabad, India preparing to work on the Microsoft campus this week and I feel like I’m in the movie “Groundhog Day.” My luggage didn’t make it with me. When this happened to me in Europe last year, I went for almost a week without my luggage. Each day I would call the airline and each day I was told that my luggage would arrive tomorrow. Yesterday KLM told me that my luggage would arrive today. Today KLM tells me it will arrive tomorrow. It’s deja vu all over again.
The smart international traveler brings a few basic necessities in his carry-ons. I brought my toothbrush but not much else because I carried on my laptop and many countries are anal about limiting you to one carry-on (England and India being the worst). I bought a pair of shorts yesterday because it’s over 100 degrees in Hyderabad right now. Since I’ve been wearing the same shirt since I left home Thursday afternoon, today I’ll probably buy a shirt.
The trip over here wasn’t without glitches, either. About an hour from Amsterdam, the passenger next to me knocked over a full glass of orange juice, soaking my pants and my seat. I dried off as best I could and let my body heat dry my pants. By the time I boarded the flight to Hyderabad, my pants had finally dried out. But shortly after take-off, the flight attendants served orange juice, and–you guessed it–the person sitting next to me knocked his over and soaked me again! I ended up changing seats and wearing a pair of sweat pants borrowed from the flight crew for the remainder of the flight.
So let’s see…in the future, I need to bring at least one change of clothes for the airplane (preferably two, since there’s no rule limiting you to one beverage spill), and at least one or two more to tide me over while I wait for my lost luggage to be delivered. But wait…some airlines won’t let you bring that much baggage on board unless maybe you’re willing to check your laptop and other electronic gear.
No wonder the airlines are going bankrupt.
To top it off, Vista is giving me fits again. I installed a Logitech Webcam on my wife’s new Vista PC so we could do video calls while I’m in India. It worked fine for a day or two, but now something else fails each time we connect. Either the video doesn’t work or the microphone doesn’t work or something else goes wrong. I’ve had my wife download and install new drivers, so far without success. I don’t know for a fact that the problem is Vista, but it’s not much of a stretch to believe that the camera would be working fine on XP. I’ll find out for sure when I get home.
And if I verify that the problem is Vista, I think I’ll repave her PC and install XP until Microsoft can release an operating system that works with brand-name devices.