| 
  • If you are citizen of an European Union member nation, you may not use this service unless you are at least 16 years old.

  • You already know Dokkio is an AI-powered assistant to organize & manage your digital files & messages. Very soon, Dokkio will support Outlook as well as One Drive. Check it out today!

View
 

NovemberTwentyOneTunis

Page history last edited by PBworks 18 years, 4 months ago

3:26am Tunis local time

Location: gate 54, Tunis-Carthage Int'l Airport

 

I'm here at the gate, after an hour in a very short line for LUfthansa.

The inefficiencies of international checkin are really nothing short of

stunning. The counter clerks spend an average of around four minutes

per person to do nothing more than tag the bag, print the pass, and

verify the identity of the passenger. This is something that should

take no more than a minute and could take about twenty seconds with a

passenger-assisted checkin.

 

There are big signs advertising WiFi here, but as with most airports,

it ain't free. (Oh well, I had hopes they'd be trying to cater to the

WSIS crowd.) It's 15TD (~$12) for two hours and they've self-signed

their SSL certificate. Well, that's not entirely correct. There's

actually a Tunisian Certification Agency (certification.tn) that has

signed the certificate and isn't a trusted root CA. I guess it must be

mandated installed on all Tunisian OSes or something. They've also

mismatched thier domain with their cert, prompting another warning.

The payment form mangles everything I've put in so far and their OK

button is a broken GIF. Oh, and did I mention that the interface is

all in French, with no English option? claps weakly I decide not to

fork over my credit card to the Tunisian government.

 

J and W have done a great job hosting me, really going amazingly out

of their ways to make sure I was looked after and entertained. It's

pretty impressive. I've left with a positive impression of Tunisian

architecture, food, and hospitality, if not so much of a rosy view

towards the other parts of Tunisian culture. While the tour and

conference were atimes a bit whirlwind, I feel like I got a solid

taste for the country, much more so than a brief stay at a hotel

would have offered. All the same, I'm ready to return home. I think

than ten days hit my tolerance point for having *anyone* with whom I

could speak American English and be well understood. It's a fun and

challenging experience to make yourself understood in a foreign

country, but the fun wears off in a hurry. This makes me wonder

about my hopes to travel the world and how I should time it to not

drive myself crazy.

 

Richard Stallman has just stumbled into the gate, looking grizzled

(as always) and a little bit dazed. Heh. I won't let him see that I

am using Notepad on Windows, God forbid. The guy might go apopleptic

on me.

 

There is so much to write. More on the plane, or sleep. We'll see.

Back to Frankfurt for a three hour layover - I'll probably have a

bit of time to sit down there.

Comments (0)

You don't have permission to comment on this page.