-
Directories
Just how privileged are you?
I got this meme from Barbara over at Home in France. It was developed for a research project (and copyrighted) by Will Barratt, Meagan Cahill, Angie Carlen, Minnette Huck, Drew Lurker, Stacy Ploskonka at Illinois State University (see their project’s website here). They ask that you PLEASE acknowledge their copyright if you use this meme.
Bold the true statements.
1. Father went to college.
2. Father finished college.
3. Mother went to college.
4. Mother finished college - Is an Associates degree finishing college?
5. Have any relative who is an attorney, physician, or professor - a husband is a relative right, so I guess I do…
6. Were the same or higher class than your high school teachers.
7. Had more than 50 books in your childhood home.
8. Had more than 500 books in your childhood home.
9. Were read children’s books by a parent.
10. Had lessons of any kind before you turned 18.
11. Had more than two kinds of lessons before you turned 18.
12. The people in the media who dress and talk like me are portrayed positively.
13. Had a credit card with your name on it before you turned 18 - it was just for emergencies, I swear, of course, I sometimes considered my lack of the latest CD to be an emergency…
14. Your parents (or a trust) paid for the majority of your college costs.
15. Your parents (or a trust) paid for all of your college costs.
16. Went to a private special high school - No private school, but I went to a magnet school that was just named the number one high school in the US, so I’m guessing that I should count this one as another privilege.
17. Went to summer camp.
18. Had a private tutor before you turned 18.
19. Family vacations involved staying at hotels. - Not ALL the time, but the occasional vacation did.
20. Your clothing was all bought new before you turned 18 - I guess buying flannel shirts at the Salvation Army to get that Grunge-look *just right* doesn’t count.
21. Your parents bought you a car that was not a hand-me-down from them - ummm, where does giving you the down payment on the car you bought after finishing your Master’s land? Hmmm, not sure how to count this one. I guess it’s a privilege still.
22. There was original art in your house when you were a child -I don’t think the Franklin Mint and Hümmel figurines count as art.
23. You and your family lived in a single-family house.
24. Your parent(s) owned their own house or apartment before you left home.
25. You had your own room as a child.
26. You had a phone in your room before you turned 18.
27. Participated in a SAT/ACT prep course.
28. Had your own TV in your room in high school - Oliver will never have a TV in his room. I used to stay up all night watching HBO. Our family rule is no TVs in bedrooms.
29. Owned a mutual fund or IRA in high school or college.
30. Flew anywhere on a commercial airline before you turned 16.
31. Went on a cruise with your family - not till I was 24, but I guess that still counts.
32. Went on more than one cruise with your family.
33. Your parents took you to museums and art galleries as you grew up - we lived in metro-Washington DC, the Smithsonians are free, so, yeah.
34. You were unaware of how much heating bills were for your family - apparently they were quite high.
Good God, I’ve got 27 out of 34.
Well, I guess I’m one privileged gal who should be very grateful for the country and family I was born into (and I am very grateful about this). It’s just genetic luck that I was born where I was and not in Darfur or Nairobi or Kabul or a million other places on this Earth. I am planning to make sure that Oliver does not grow up with quite as many privileges as I did though. I think my parents were a little too giving to us kids.
I’ve given up tagging people, since it’s pretty hit or miss that I actually have time and can think up answers pretty quickly to memes that people tag me with anymore, but this one did catch my eye. Post a comment if you do this so I can check out your results.
If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
How do my views match up with the candidates?
86% John Edwards
83% Dennis Kucinich
82% Mike Gravel
82% Barack Obama
81% Hillary Clinton
80% Chris Dodd
75% Joe Biden
72% Bill Richardson
41% Rudy Giuliani
35% John McCain
24% Mike Huckabee
24% Tom Tancredo
23% Mitt Romney
13% Ron Paul
13% Fred Thompson
2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz
Interesting… and in case you’re wondering, I support Obama. I’m ecstatic that he creamed Billary in the South Carolina primary yesterday. I want a Democrat to win in November and I think Billary will just mobilize the right and turn off many independents. Never really liked John Edwards though, and I lived in NC. He kinda has the rep there of being an ambulance chaser. The quiz did get my Republican choice though. If I had to vote Republican, I woulda wanted Guiliani. Actually, who the heck is Mike Gravel?
Thanks for the quiz, Rita
Random Regensburg Pics
Both pics taken in the Peterstor area.
I’ve got another cold, and Oliver has developed separation anxiety, so that’s all I got time for at the moment. Hopefully there’ll be more time for posting soon. Oh, and Oliver turned 6 months old yesterday. Cheers!
Regensburg Expat Dinner - February 17
The next Regensburg Expat Dinner will be on Sunday, February 17th, starting at 5pm at San Daniele Ristorante in Regensburg (Prüfeninger Schloss Str. 2). There is parking available at the restaurant.
I went ahead and reserved a place for about 25 people and told them I would call back closer to the date with an exact count. Leave a comment or contact me if you’re coming. Look forward to seeing you there!
In attendance were:
- Rainer, Oliver and I
- Tammy and Matthias
- Cliff and Sarah
- David B.
- Peter, Joan, Wolfi and Hannah
- Andrea, Alex and Benjamin
- Kevin and Laura
- Natasha and Tommy
- Lindsey
- Matt
- Paul
- Cynthia, Stephan and Lucille
- John Castle
Update (12 Feb 08): Here’s a map that Cliff made for people taking the bus to the restaurant (Thanks Cliff!) - San Daniele - directions from bus stop
Do not EVER fly Iberia Airlines
So here it is, the full story with all the gritty details. From cancelled flights to unannounced delays, from death marches through the Madrid airport to sleeping in moldy hotel rooms.
Chapter 1: The cancelled flight
Our tale begins in the fall, shortly after booking four tickets with Iberia Airlines to visit my family in the US this Christmas. Normally when I go home for a visit, I go for 4-6 weeks, since I so rarely get to see my family, but this year we were bringing along Rainer’s nephew, who had school off from December 20 through January 7, so we had to limit our visit to these dates. I wasn’t quite ready to fly alone with a baby yet, I was going to save that for my next trip back. We ended up booking our trip from December 20 to January 5, to maximize the time I would have with my family and that they in turn would have with Oliver. A few weeks after we booked, we received a letter that our return flight had been cancelled and we were rebooked on a flight later in the week. This wouldn’t work because Rainer’s nephew Paul had school. We called and complained, how can they just cancel our flight and move our dates? Apparently, as the agent explained to us, there were more important routes that the planes were needed for, and Iberia would not book us on another airline (we asked), so our only option was to fly back two days earlier than planned. I hadn’t been home in 18 months and instead of 16 days, I was now only going to have 14 days with my family! Was there an apology at least? Nope, only a, “Tough luck. You should have read the microscopic fine print.”
Chapter 2: Customer service? Iberia don’t need no stinkin’ customer service!
We flew out of Frankfurt, through Madrid, to Washington DC. In Madrid, I went up to the Iberia gate agent to ask if there was a way for us to get seats next to each other for the long trans-Atlantic flight, since we were not seated together. He ordered me to, “Sit down and take a rest,” because the gate agent had more important things to do than work, like chat with a Madrid airport security guard (who doesn’t have to do much apparently, there was no addition security and our passports weren’t even checked as we boarded the flight to DC - so even if the rest of my story doesn’t deter you, there is probably a higher risk of being blown up by a terrorist if you fly Iberia). During the flight, the attendants didn’t seem interested in clearing away our dinner trays, I guess if all the passengers are pinned in their seats, it makes a lot less work for the crew!
Chapter 3: The Waiting Game
Our vacation came and went much too quickly. Our flight home to Germany was to depart Dulles Airport at 8:55pm. At 6:00pm, I called Iberia’s 1-800-number from my mom’s restaurant to check whether the flight was on time. I called 5 times and was hung up on 5 times. I went to the computer and checked the Internet. Everything was set, the flight was on time. We made the 20 minute drive to the airport and my brothers dropped us off.
We should have gotten suspicious at the enormous line, or the fact that it wasn’t moving. We didn’t reach the Iberia counter until 9pm, 5 minutes after the scheduled departure of the plane. It was not until we reached the agent that anyone bothered to inform us that Iberia had sent the wrong plane from Madrid and it was not large enough to accommodate the number of people booked to fly that evening. We needed to wait for a larger plane to arrive, our new departure time was 2:30am, arriving in Madrid at 3pm the following day. Why they couldn’t tell everyone waiting in line when we first got there, I don’t know. It would have been nice to have my family there to pick us up and take us home for the wait… but back to the check-in: Three Iberia agents were needed to book our connection at 4pm to Frankfurt. We strongly doubted that it would be possible to make this flight. We asked if there wasn’t a later flight they could book us on, but no, they assured us that this would work - after they spent 30 minutes trying to rebook our seats because they insisted that we had booked e-tickets for Rainer, Paul and I, while booking a paper ticket for Oliver. I stated that I booked all tickets online at the same time, but somewhere this got screwed up and, it seems, the employees were doing this for the first time (this is a recurring thought throughout our entire experience with Iberia).
By the time we were out of the line and able to get to a pay phone (since our German cell phones don’t work in the US), my family was heading to bed and it wasn’t worth it to drive out, bring us home, then drive us back to the airport, so we headed out to the gate for the long wait.
To make the 5.5 hour delay up to us, Iberia issued us $36 in credit ($12 each) for any restaurant in the airport. The thing was, the restaurants and food places had all closed or were in the process of closing. The only place open was a Starbucks, so we bought $36 worth of muffins, cookies and coffee to tide us over.
The boarding time came and went. The flight took off after 3am. The flight attendants didn’t seem to know how to install the bassinet for Oliver, and they never brought us the flight pack with diapers, wipes, a bib, and blanket, or the two jars of baby food that we received for him on the flight to DC two and a half weeks earlier.
Chapter 4: The Madrid Death March
We arrived at 4pm, the same time that our Frankfurt flight was departing. Just outside of the arrival gate was a customer service desk, where we joined the line of all the other passengers who also needed to be rebooked. After about 45 minutes, Rainer made it to the front of the line, where the agent informed him that we needed to change terminals and go the the help desk at the H gates. “Why?” Rainer asked. Apparently this guy wasn’t in the mood to rebook people anymore and decided to just send the rest of us to someone else. He refused to help any more people. Nice.
We had to take the shuttle and walk forever to get to the next customer service desk. Here we were informed by a female Iberia employee that we needed someone in a red coat and she was only issued a green coat. We needed to leave this desk and find another service desk. It only took her directions, a janitor, and three info desks to direct us to the appropriate counter. During this time I had to remove my shoes due to the screaming blisters that had developed on my feet. We arrived at 4pm and had been looking for help since then, what time do you think we were finally helped? 5pm? 6pm? 6:30pm? Nope, we (and many of our fellow passengers who’d made the march with us) finally got to someone willing to help us at 7pm.
Chapter 5: A Birthday to Remember
We wanted to be in Frankfurt that night. It was Paul’s 16th birthday and he was completely miserable. The agent told us to calm down, if we raised our voices at him, he would be forced to yell at us and then there would be hell to pay and we wouldn’t like that at all. He informed us that the last flight to Frankfurt with Iberia was already full and we wouldn’t be able to get to the gate in time even if it wasn’t. So we told him to book us on another airline. He proceeded to list slowly, one-by-one, all the flights that would have gotten us to Frankfurt if the first guy had helped us, but that by now, we had already missed, or wouldn’t be able to catch. Thanks dude, that’s so helpful.
In the end he booked us on a flight the next morning and promised us a 4 star Madrid hotel with dinner and breakfast included. And what was his response to the fact that it was Paul’s 16th birthday? An apology? A weak Happy Birthday? Nope, he just shrugged his shoulders. Did they even get us a taxi to the hotel? Nope, we had to wait 20 minutes outside in the cold with a baby for a dingy hotel shuttle.
Chapter 6: The Final Chapter a.k.a. Let’s just get this sad story over with
Not only did the hotel room smell musty, there was mold growing in the corners, the paint on the bathroom ceiling was peeling off and underneath was a nice layer of rusty orange mold. In the basement restaurant that reeked of chlorine bleach, we were given a choice of two options for our dinner. Paul’s dinner was still slightly frozen, none of the dinners were very appetizing. We went to bed to try to get some rest, until 10pm came along and we found out that our room was directly above a nightclub. When morning came, we had to leave for the airport before breakfast was served, not that we really cared at all at that point.
The final leg of our flight was uneventful, except for one humongous security violation. The reinforced cockpit door stayed open for much of the flight. Ummm, you’d think that with the Madrid bombings and all, Iberia would take security a little more seriously.
At least our bags made it.
I’m still here
Sorry, I’ve been a slacker lately. I’ve had a lot of ideas for posts, but I haven’t had the time or if I did, the inclination, to write. Oliver and I have gotten over our colds, but since we’ve been back, Oliver has been very needy. Maybe he got used to the constant attention at my mom’s house and can’t deal with being left alone to hang out in his crib or playpen now? I dunno. Also, I used to be able to have him in the sling while I typed on the computer, and now he thinks that if mama is typing, he needs to type too. So no more blogging with Oliver on my lap!
Let’s see, what have I been up to. Oh yeah, we had a great Regensburg Expat Dinner on Sunday with 17 people (18 if you count Oliver). Does anyone want to propose a date for the February meet up? I know there are several people who are bummed out that they haven’t been able to attend yet, so here’s your chance to have your say! And any suggestions on place? I love Meiers, but I’m kinda ready for a change. I think there was also interest in a Girlie Luncheon, so any thoughts on that?
Now I gotta go childproof our apartment. I think Oliver is gonna be crawling any day now. Yikes!
Hacker losers must die!
I figured out why I wasn’t getting notified when I got comments on the blog. I hadn’t been getting any email, but I figured, it’s the holidays, people are busy. Then I noticed just now, that I hadn’t been getting any spam and I thought, wait, spammers don’t take holidays, do they. I got to investigating, and discovered that some loser a-hole had hacked my account and set it to forward all my mail to another account. I’ve now rectified the situation, but I just spent the last several hours changing every password for every account and verifying that our financials were all in order. Everything was fine, but it seems that the loser accessed my PayPal account. PayPal detected them luckily and shut down the account (PayPal, you guys ROCK!). We just cancelled the credit card number attached to that account anyway, just in case. Man, this sucks. Anyways, the point is, if you sent me an email between 9:10pm on December 28 and 10:36pm this evening, I didn’t get it, the loser hacker did. You should resend your message to me. Also, point number two, is to be vigilant when it comes to securing your information. I am an 8-10 digit, random letter/number/symbol, changing every three months, kind of password gal and this happened to me. (Here’s a good password generator)
Okay, now I need to go take a shot of NyQuil and collapse. I’ll respond to comments tomorrow. Man, what a sucky couple of days it’s been. (But Nordstrom is refunding me for a package that never arrived - without giving me a hard time - yay Nordstrom customer service!)
-
Subscribe to AmiExpat
creativecommons License
Blog under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 License.
