Britain Grounded

It was a sunny, albeit mildly chilly, Thursday morning, and I was sitting in the hostel lounge, trying in vain to revise for exams. A few French people, all armed with massive backpacks, had just walked into the hostel. They looked like any other group of backpackers, except they had something interesting to say: they went to the airport early in the morning, but were sent back because their flight got cancelled. And to add to that, all flights in the UK and Ireland that day had been cancelled.

What was this? And would my flight, scheduled for the following evening, be able to take off? I asked the girl at the reception, and was told that a volcano had erupted in Iceland, and that the ashes were covering the skies of Britain, posing a safety hazard. It sounded like a joke, but having seen the people that had just returned to the hostel, I decided to believe this.

It was no joke. More flights were cancelled, and there were talks about booking ferry tickets out of Ireland. To make things worse, the internet stations at the hostel were down, so I couldn't even check live updates on the spot. All I had were updates from people that were scheduled to leave Ireland that same day.

Time went by. My flight hadn't been cancelled as of lunchtime, so I went out for a tour as planned. When I got to the Temple Bar and was about to dig into my dinner, however, some people standing next to me flipped out a newspaper with the Icelandic volcano story on the first page. They noticed that I was trying to read the article, and asked if I was supposed to travel anywhere today. These gentlemen were from Birmingham, their flight had been cancelled (I forget their destination), so they had decided to take a ferry to Dublin instead. After a half hour chat with one of them, I was advised to go and book a ferry ticket.

Upon returning to the hostel, I found out that all flights leaving up until 1pm on Friday had now been cancelled. Most people were taking advantage of free rebooking services or were looking for alternate ways out. Most guests at the hostel were panicked, but in a sense, things were normal. People were still bringing cans of beer to the kitchen to drink together, complaining about how expensive everything is in Dublin.

If anything, this chaotic situation gave guests an excuse to bond with each other. All you had to do to start talking was to ask, "Are you travelling today?" We were all in it together, and strangers were helping strangers so that everyone could get out of Ireland in due time to their next destinations.

I found myself saying "Good luck! See you tonight if my flight gets cancelled." to the group I'd just met the previousn ight. Maybe I jinxed things -- at around noon today, I got the following text message from Ryanair:

URGENT-Your Ryanair flight has been cancelled - please visit www.ryanair.com for free rebooking/refund

And now I too was stranded in Dublin for a while. In an hour and a half at an internet cafe, I managed to notify my dad of the situation, cancelled a dinner appointment in London, and after multiple tries, rebooked my flight. All the weekend flights to London were fully booked, so the earliest I could get was Monday morning. That would leave me with a mere 1.5 days to explore London. So instead, I booked a flight straight to Edinburgh for Sunday evening.

News reports say Scottish and Irish skies are clearing up gradually, so hopefully I won't need to reschedule a second time. It's a pity that I've had to give up London, but I do appreciate that the industry cares about passenger safety, especially after what happened to Poland a few days ago. Plus, at least I'm stuck in a city where I am fluent in the language. Not to mention accommodation is decently cheap here... (It's one of the few cheap things in Dublin)


Update: I shouldn't have spoken too early. My rebooked flight also got cancelled, so now I have a ferry ticket and a bus ticket. All I need is a bus or train ticket from Dublin to Belfast, and I'll be on my way home, safe and sound.

A Quest for Bank Statements (gone horribly wrong)

The Canadian bank I have been dealing with for the past 3.5 years, CIBC, is supposedly there "for what matters". Under normal circumstances, everything seemed okay. I'd go to the branch on campus every now and then and be greeted with smiling faces. The bank machines never gave me any trouble. Sure, I got locked out of online banking every time I moved houses or came back home for the break (at least 3 times a year), but I could tolerate that. After all, they did say security matters. Better than having some random hack into my account, I guess. Life was peaceful, and I had no problems with the bank.

Until November 2009. I was finally ready to apply for a visa extension to stay in the UK till the end of May, and one of the required supplementary documents was "a bank statement covering at least 28 days". I was also told that if I could get my documents early enough, I could avoid the December rush and possibly get the visa extension before the Christmas break, which would have enabled me to travel to Paris or some other European destination I've been eyeing for years.

I was in Edinburgh, and my bank has no branches outside of Canada. The average person would think, 'yes, there is telephone banking, and there are customer service agents; it'll take some time but I'm sure I can get the documents I need.' Being my average self, this is precisely what I thought. I first switched options on my online banking account so I would get monthly statements sent to my parents' house, an option I had always turned off for the sake of saving trees. Then on the morning of November 6, I called CIBC, saying I need bank statements for both of my accounts, covering a month, rather urgently. I was told that it will cost $5 per sheet, and that it would take 10 business days. I thought, 'not the best, but it'll arrive by November 20.' So I gave my Edinburgh address, and double checked that the person on the other end of the phone had written it correctly. I was also advised to try calling my home branch and talk to the manager directly to see if I could get something faster.

I opened my account in Toronto, my parents now live in Vancouver, and I (normally) go to school in Waterloo, so the concept of a 'home branch' is foreign to me. Regardless, I did call two branches: the one in Toronto and the one near my parents' home. I came home during the school day multiple times when I could have stayed on campus to do work, as I knew this was the only way I could reach the branches during their business hours. I even avoided lunch hours to increase my chances of getting through. No response, ever. Neither branch answered. Things were starting to look bleak.

I waited till November 20. 10 business days. No sign of the statement that was supposedly headed my way. I waited for a few more days, and then made another phone call on November 26. I learned that "it will take 10 business days" actually meant "it will take 10 business days to process here before sending to you", and that the statements had been mailed out on November 23. Given the average mailing speed for regular letters between Toronto and Edinburgh (it had taken a bit over a week on average to send or receive letters), I expected the statements to arrive within two weeks at the latest.

December 7 marked the two week point from the day the statements were supposedly sent. No sign of the statements. And it continued to be that way for an entire week after that. I was getting anxious, as this visa extension application had to be mailed out by December 18, and what seemed like a head start had dwindled down to another last-minute case. I was even considering a last-minute trip home during the exam period, which would have cost $1400 CAD round trip, in the hopes that maybe I could at least print off a statement from my online banking account and have it stamped on every page. (That was how I got through my initial visa application, when I used my Bank of America account)

In the meantime, as a result of the change in my bookkeeping options, CIBC had first sent a bankbook for one account with my transactions from March 2009 to November 4, 2009. As my entire family knew I was pressed for time, and we were not aware that the envelope contained a bankbook and not a statement, my parents used express mail to send this to me; this incurred over $50 CAD. And a few weeks later, a statement for my other account arrived. My parents also sent this over, incurring another $50+ post office bill. Yet, the statements CIBC was supposed to have sent directly to Edinburgh were nowhere in sight.

On December 18, the statements still had not arrived in Edinburgh. I had no choice but to go through with a bankbook and the other bank statement. I was advised that day that the bank statement does not cover 28 days, and that my application will likely be rejected (Someone else's application had come back that same day, rejected fo the same reason). The bankbook was not even a valid option. The only other option I had at that point was to come home to Canada before my visa expires on December 26, and apply from home and pray that the visa extension will be issued before the new semester.

I had originally planned to stay in the UK for Christmas--go down to London for a week and spend the remaining two weeks in Edinburgh--as I expected this to be cheaper than flying home and back. I had prepared everything from accommodation, transportation to musical tickets for the week I would be spending in London, and now all of a sudden I had been hit with news that it was all going to dust. And on top of that, I now had to book a trip home. Around Christmas, of all times.

Christmas time is quite possibly the worst time to travel for budget-conscious travellers. Sure enough, when I went online to see what kinds of flight tickets I could get from Edinburgh to Vancouver, the cheapest I could get was for the morning of December 20, $1700+ CAD. ONE WAY. It cost less than that for round trip tickets, departing the week before. But I had no option, so I had to rely on my parents for financial aid, and take what may just be my most expensive economy class trip between Canada and the UK... ever.

I arrived in Vancouver on the evening of the 20th, which gave me up to 3 days to get my bank documents and hopefully get a visa appointment before the Christmas long weekend. At this point, my balance had dropped considerably since early November (not surprising), so I also needed a bank statement from my parents to meet the application requirements. Their accounts are with a different bank.

I went to the nearby CIBC branch on the afternoon of December 21. I was told there was no option to print out statements on the spot, and that all statements get printed out on the 24th of every month and get mailed out. However, the most official thing I could get from the bank proving that I have a certain level of funds would be a letter, which would take 2-3 business days to get. This was not what I came all the way from the UK to hear. I had already wasted more time and money than I was willing to admit to, and I was not going to back out. I asked to see the manager of the branch.

Upon meeting the manager, I was told that even he did not have the power to print off statements, and that printouts from the online bank account would not even display the account holder's name or the full account number, both key pieces of information. He offered to waive the fee for the letters I needed, put a rush on it, and add in lines that would say I had held these funds from November 1 to December 21.

At this point, I was glad some form of action was being taken, but at the same time I was disgusted at the limitations of the system. Customers that opt for paperless bookkeeping cannot get paper statements right away when they need them. Customers do not have the option of printing statement-like papers online that they could get stamped at the bank to use like official statements with the bank letterhead. And official statements can only be printed once a month from a single central office. No room whatsoever for flexibility, which I view as a critical flaw in today's fast-paced world.

The letters that were ordered the evening before came in on the morning of December 22. When I picked them up, I noticed the part about the funds being held from November 1 to December 21 was missing, but I knew I was not going to be able to get anything better than that. It would have to do. On the other hand, when my dad went to his bank to ask for a bank statement, he was able to get a copy printed right at the branch, covering the right time period, with all required information displayed. This took him less than half an hour, whereas even after a month and a half, I was unable to get documents that met all the requirements.

I have paid more than my fair price in order to go through with this visa extension application, and I cringe in disgust every time I hear the name "CIBC" or see an advertisement. Every CIBC branch I have seen recently seems to emphasize "if you are not extremely satisfied...." Yet, if the system itself has severe limitations, just how much of that can its employees cover with smiles and small talk? Not much, I say.

I believe I deserve to be compensated for the unnecessary waste of time and money over these bank statements, but at the same time, I am aware that I am but a powerless consumer in the market. At the very least, I vow to switch banks as soon as I get a chance, and CIBC will not have any business with me in the future. And so can you... before you end up like me.

In-flight Food

If one were to ask me about my fondest memories of flying, I'd probably reply, "Food." In other words, flights themselves are pretty boring. Just about every flight I have been on has provided 1) pretzels, peanuts, or a snack mix, and 2) a choice of (or rather, the lack of choice) juices. Due to sheer boredom, this distribution of miniscule edibles becomes an event to look forward to.

Though, to be fair, I've had more than pretzels and juice. My first real memory of plane food dates back to April 1996, on a flight from London to Seoul, which was also my only time flying business class. It was a grueling 14 hour flight, and in the middle of the night, I woke up to find myself and my brother the only two passengers that weren't completely passed out. It's fascinating to see what privileges come with being children -- we were offered sweets, as well as stick biscuits with cheese dip. By no means are these special items in everyday life, but in the confines of a plane, these were rare delicacies to be savoured and talked about for years to come.

The real fun of plane food comes at mealtime. I'm sure anyone that has been on an intercontinental flight can recall receiving a tray with tiny plastic containers of bread, salad, and some not-so-aesthetically-appealing entrée. Or a tray with just an omelette, in the case of morning flights. The omelette I had on a domestic flight through the USA in September 2002 still holds the title of "Worst Omelette I've Ever Had", without a single contender, seven years later.

Fortunately, some airlines have introduced different items to make our tastebuds happy even on light. The two major Korean airlines (Korean Air, Asiana) introduced Bibimbap on flights not so long after the turn of the century, and from what I hear, it's been a smash hit. Sure, it's never going to come sizzlin' in a stone bowl, but with instant rice that tastes as if just cooked, pre-cut veggies, and chili paste in tubes not unlike those of acrylic paint, it was a refreshing change from the same old pasta. In 2004, my family liked it so much that we even came home with a box of 10 of those chili paste tubes.

Today's flight to London marked my first intercontinental flight in over 5 years, and my booking reference email also mentioned in-flight meals. Hooray! While I was fully aware that I'd be flying with a non-Korean carrier (read: no bibimbap for dinner), the promise of an in-flight meal was a reason in itself to be excited. Even as I was falling asleep by the window, I was telling myself not to sleep too soundly, lest I miss this rare opportunity.

After an hour or so, I woke up to the smell of food. Curried chicken, but not quite. Mmm... If the food tasted as good as it smelt, I'd be one happy traveller today. (I had also been blessed earlier with food that wasn't a pre-made, overpriced sandwich in layers of cling wrap) I saw one of the flight attendants serving dinner a few rows ahead, and sat upright in anticipation. When he got to about three rows ahead of mine, he went to the far rear of the plane with a non-empty cart. I was left staring at where he had been standing 15 seconds ago, sniffing other people's chicken dinners, and thinking that even within the same economy cabin, some people must be more equal than others.

A few minutes later, the same flight attendant resurfaced with a full cart. Now that he was closer, I could hear my dinner options: "Chicken or pasta?" After the lady in front of me got her chicken dinner, I was also asked the same question. I replied, "Chicken," waiting for a silver and green tinfoil wrapped meal to come out of the cart. But alas, the chicken was all gone! I was left with different dinner options now: Pasta or Starve? I am no fan of pasta, and in theory, I should not be eating cheese. Yet in situations like this, survival instincts trump all. In the mean time, a pasta tray had made its way onto my open-up table, and I found myself eating it without second thought. At least the salad came with tasty sesame ginger dressing.

In-flight dinner: Dinner roll, pasta, salad, and an "oatmeal chewie".

At the time of writing (on paper while in the plane), I have 2.5 hours left till my next in-flight meal: Breakfast. Maybe my omelette from 7 years ago will find a successor for its title, or solidify its position as reigning champion.

Though really, in-flight food isn't bad, given all the restrictions of a plane...


Epilogue: An omelette breakfast was actually quite a good in-flight breakfast. Today I got a small banana loaf and raspberry yogurt. Even that I got because the guy next to me was nice enough to hold onto mine while I was asleep...