Ashtag, Apple, trains, planes & boats

Strap on your sympathy hats folks, I’ve a sob story to tell. No, nothing dire, awful or significantly traumatic per se. I’m sitting here in a cool room in a reclined chair sipping a warm mug of tea while contemplating the last week.

Anyone who regularly keeps tabs on me from my Garda Pulse system records or twitter will know that I recently bribed and slept my way into a new high powered job inside Ireland’s only Apple Premium Reseller as a tech nerd. Such a job involves jetsetting off to the UK for training. I needed to become Apple certified in order to be allowed to use Apple resources when repairing Mac units. This is the same type of training Apple Genius bar people do in America. Except while they have weeks to do this training, we have 4 days. This could be our collective brain power being greater then of the average American, or it’s Europeans figured out you can cram the course (or 2 courses, as it was essentially) into 4 days and do it cheaper. Darwin will look after the weaklings.

This training involved an intensive 3 day hardware course. Included was what tools to use, what issues to fix and how to diagnose a sick Mac. All very useful and relevant. Then an exam. Multiple choice questions that are designed to catch out the weary and non-attentive made it a difficult exam, but only getting 2 or 3 questions wrong was a good achievement. This exam was taken on Thursday evening last week.

The online exam is run through a system Apple design. However, while that tab was being used to answer questions in the allotted time slot of two grueling hours, another tab was open with a live feed of news coming about this horrific mass of Icelandic glass-like ash looming over Europe like some sort of evil overseer that was determined to keep the airline industry in debt. I will say this, though, twitter came into its own for the first time ever. The cleverly-titled hashtag #ashtag was not spammed, misused or filled with useless natter. Instead real, relevant information came through to people like me, people who needed this information. I commend twitter users for getting their act together when required and not talking about Justin Bieber – whoever he is.

Royal Mail: Probably not working too well without planes. This was my hotel room view

I had discovered, through the news, that my final day (Friday) may not end as whimsically as I had thought. Indeed, as I followed the press releases and news fodder through to 2.30AM on Friday morning, it was ever-apparent that I would not be flying home. The company were kind enough to pay for me to stay the extra night in the hotel while I tried frantically to find a way home. Which I did.

Saturday. A 6AM start isn’t the best idea after a stressful day of cramming 250 odd pages of software troubleshooting and in-depth looks at OS X before another exam, but so be it. I discovered the best (and only) option for me was to book rail & sail tickets. Fine, except the UK appears to be utterly inept with its use of the internet. Rather then book the tickets and collect them from a machine in the station, they post these tickets to you. Tickets which cannot be purchased if you live in Ireland. So I only used the rail & sail sites to check the timetables to make sure my separate-entity purchases would align in such a way as to get me home.

Fog, or Ash, at 6.30AM on the morning I left

My 7AM private-hire cab arrived as expected and whisked me off to Euston station. While I had booked the cab and ferry online, the Virgin Trains site would not accept my credit card because I did not have a valid UK address that matched my card, despite me trying to tell the system I wasn’t English and was staying in a hotel. It’s incredible that they did not acknowledge us filthy fenians would be trying to get home with their wretched service. The cab driver was lovely, chatty and very London-ish. The hour-long journey didn’t seem so bad as he nipped around short cuts and routes that skipped and hopped past traffic. He told me that his company has 3000 drivers who normally drive business people around to/from airports but currently he was the only one who had work in the last 2 days. The economy, it appears, is buggered.

Euston was a train station. There’s not much to say. It had more platforms then Irish stations but the idea is the same. Stand in the lobby and wait for the big departures signage to tell you which platform to go to for your journey. Holyhead sat on the board for 30 minutes before getting a platform assigned to it. The buzzing people running around, waiting, making calls and generally moping about the wide open area in Euston was a true testament to urban living. Us city-dwellers are like bees. An un-announced negation on how to pass through our grouped expanses shone in the organised chaos of Euston. However, when the platform number came up for Holyhead, it was very apparent that everyone was Irish as the huge crowd suddenly moved to platform 2. Nearly everyone cleared the space within seconds to grab a seat.

Departures board in Euston station, central London

Once we got to the second stop on the train journey the train manager announced the journey was de-classified. This means first class cabins were open for business for anyone to sit in because so many were standing. They apologised over and over again for the fact that so many were using the service as an alternative to flying. Surely they could have anticipated this? It’s a direct train from London to Holyhead port, for god sake. So not only did Virgin trains fail to allow Irish people to use their website, they also stank in terms of organising a train that could carry all the extra passengers. If not for customer service sake, they could have put extra measures in place to make more money. On top of this, the food carriage on the train closed half way through the journey. My senses and ability to focus my brain stopped very quickly, and there was nothing I could do. A huge sense of helplessness overtook as the journey dragged on. I wanted to punch the old woman who was hogging an extra seat for her bag across from me as people stood around her. To top things off, Virgin decided today was the day to have a mid-journey engine change. This added a 15 minute delay to the proceedings. On any other day this would be fine, but on a day when people were scrambling home in a transport disaster, what the hell were Virgin thinking?

The experience on this train shows exactly why Ireland should never privatise anything. These companies didn’t give a shit about their passengers, given the circumstances. Like I said, even ignoring customer service, they could have made extra money by adding more space with a bigger train and running a 5-hour food service for people. Keep in mind the train left Euston at 8:50AM, meaning it’s prime time for people to get some lunch by the time the train finished the journey.

Arriving on a now-packed train that reminded me of Indian trains, Holyhead was a nice break. Getting into Holyhead involves passing beautiful vistas in Wales. And on a sunny day it made for stunning viewing that made me instantly regret not bringing my camera. Once you disembark from the train it’s a mere 5 minute walk from the platform to the ferry check-in. Those of us who managed to pre-book rambled through, but the queues for tickets were so long it was evident there would be disappointment and anger today.

Irish sea was busy with stranded airline passengers

The ferry had a bizarre way of getting foot passengers onto the boat. Rather then have us walk on, we had to get a coach onto the boat. A 2 minute coach journey. And yes, we couldn’t merely walk off either. We had to get on the same coach to get off the boat and get to land when we arrived in Dublin. No explanation why. We were just herded around.

The boating experience was nice because it had nice oceanic views. However, the staff were terrible and the boat appeared unsafely full. Hundreds of tired, grumpy, cranky and confused people were occupying the boat, yet somehow Stena thought it would be good practice to send one of their staff around with a fake ferret to play practical jokes on people. Some laughed it off, but there was a clear sense of contempt for this moron as he floated around from table to table. He also picked the start of the journey to do this. You know, the part where people who’ve been on a train for 5 hours were trying to get some food into their system.

On top of this eejit running around, the small cafeteria had one of the most disinterested, fat bitches I’ve ever seen manning a customer-facing job in my life. She had literally no interest in serving the ever-expanding queue of people seeking refuge from the prick with the ferret. She even managed to scowl openly at the rather wealthy man who gave her a tip. She gave me a dirty look when I asked if I could pay in sterling for my coffee and crisps (which would save me from collapse at that point – I couldn’t even see my money at this point with the disorientation). Why? I have no idea.

Stuffed people trying to get home, finally

The experience of land-based transport is a prime example of why these companies are in tatters. In extraordinary circumstances they failed to step up to the plate and show why people should use them in future. But no, their terrible plans, terrible staff and horrid prices are a keen reminder as to why air travel is still the great white hope of humanities ability to traverse the globe. Keep in mind in times of diaster airlines are scumbags, but they’ve never raised their prices when people really needed their help. Eurostar has raised ticket prices from around €60 to €200 since this. No reason why. They’re just profiteering scumbags.

Finally back home from my odyssey, it feels good. Though I’m a little annoyed that KLM’s findings that it’s safe to fly aren’t being published in the news that prominently. It appears the American idea of news reporting has taken hold here. If it’s not horrifically bad news, it’s not news.

Getting into my house I was greeted with one bit of news. I won the mug from the blacknight competition for my blog post “The Mug.“. Unfortunately the mug arrived smashed up, as per below. Such a shame, though the kind guys at Blacknight reckon they can get a new one out to me. Those folks are good peoples – but stuff from them

Ironic I won this for writing about a mug I had smash on me!

I started in the CompuB outlet today, running around like a normal “expert” since there’s nothing to fix and the work area I’ll have is still being built, it was nice to get going. The store is lovely and a good example of how retail should be done. The Apple methodologies really work here. The colleagues are good people too, which helps. I’m looking forward to working there. Hell, if a company hires you and then pays to send you off on an expensive certification course, you’ve got to be happy, right? Especially in this economy. It’s good to have a job, but a good one? That’s golden.