On a snowy sunday from Logan International

It was the first winter, yet it didn’t offer anything more than spectacular display, and has been more of a nuisance. OF course there were few other factors that influenced me to choose california for winter break instead of spending the holidays in my new home – Cambridge. I flew to california on snowy sunday morning in the United airlines from Logan international airport – Boston to Los Angels. Following a simple pattern I had adopted [link] recently, I will tell the story in three parts – concerning three different people.

I, being someone who likes to be organized and prepared in advance, purchased and collected all I needed for the trip a week advance, did laundry in four days advance, and packed everything three days in advance; indeed I had been wearing the same clothes at home for last three days. I checked-in online Saturday afternoon and made the payment for the checked-in luggage. Over a surprise call on Saturday evening, I was informed by a computer voice that my flight from Washington to San Diego (I had the connection at Washington) had been cancelled. I was shocked as I had been preparing and eagerly waiting for Sunday – the day of my flights departure. I made few attempts on buying a new ticket, rebooking, calling customer care, and even considering taking the flight to Washington (which was just delayed), camp there and look for the first flight to leave, yet at no avail. Fortunately there was another friend of mine who also had his Sunday morning flight to Chicago cancelled. We decided to go to the airport and check, as per previous plan, at the early morning, and here I am typing this blog from the flight from Boston to Los Angels.

United airlines, something rather picked by Bing Travel rather than my personal preference, may not be the best. I was really annoyed by their computer operated service which couldn’t recognize my first or last name – of course my machine learning background helps me understand the complexity of HMM models and their less perfectness. Yet, voice recognition is theoretically a solved problem, and there are alternate ways of confirming the customer – perhaps by asking the customer to enter eTicket number and date of birth, still following the protocol of two independent identification methods – one public and one private. The lady at the checkin counter appeared as if she really wanted to do something to help me get out of Boston, yet didn’t convince me in doing so. She tend to get offended when was politely asked to check for different connections – Texas, Arizona, LA, etc, different number of stops (I didn’t care about how many stops it would take, rather I just wanted to get out of the fully snow carpeted Logan international), and different destinations in California. She was rather interested in finding a route that exactly matches my original itinerary (of course this means less effort and computer does the searching). Finally she was able to find me to book me for Wednesday three days from my expected departure date.  Having noticed two direct flights to LA being not cancelled, but rather only delayed, I offered to take a chance on standby which wasn’t neither suggested by her in the first place nor enthusiastically welcomed when I suggested, I took the chance, and United Airlines staff did their best to help the place take off. While other airports in New England and east coast, have ceased their operations owning to this massive snow storm, Logan was still operating, occasionally canceling few, and trying the help as much as plans get off; the airport staff deserves a big applause for this. The flight attendant at the boarding gate was, in stark contrast, extremely friendly, and yet managed to help as many as standby passengers board, and here I am realizing how United could still manage to hold few loyal customers and succeed in attracting new frequent flyers.

Omar Ramos, is a friend I came to know through Google Summer of Code 2009. Out of my applications to this competitive open source coding program, Joomla wasn’t my first choice, nonetheless, now I am glad that I chose it. Omar was my mentor in the project, though we started to get in touch in casual terms only after the end of the project. Perhaps, we shared the same profile, we both expected the same from other,  or rather we both wanted a brother – perhaps younger brother, yet we managed to make the acquaintance a friendship in no time; I met him for the fist time at JDC 09 at NYC, he came stayed with me for couple of days and checked out places in and around Boston. Also he invited me to his place, offered to pick me up from San Diego airport – which is about 2 hour drive from El Centro. And this latest mishap had made me seek an alternate destination – LA which is 2 hour drive from San Diego. Still he enthusiastically offered to drive upto LA which puts me in a greater debt than I anticipated, and later I learnt that he was even waiting at the airport for 2 hours. This quality, not very common in America  - or for that matter even in my native country – Sri Lanka, where family, relationships and social life are valued the most, is something makes the friendship invaluable – which must be cherished and preserved.

There is only a narrow line between liability and feasibility, and it is we who choose to view through either glass of paradigm and everything appears accordingly.