[Plone-conference] Rare exports

David Glick dglick at gmail.com
Tue Oct 16 09:12:55 UTC 2012


I am glad to hear I was not the only one who missed my flight home from Budapest to a different continent. In my case I set my alarm for the wrong day in my Ploneconf-induced sleepiness (damn calendars, amirite, Lennart?) But it meant I got to stay for the 2nd day of sprints and see a friend in London on the layover, so....all's well that Plone's well.

David Glick
(mobile)

On Oct 16, 2012, at 6:22 AM, Dylan Jay <djay at pretaweb.com> wrote:

> myself, my sister and all her flatmates also pissed them selves laughing. Your lost flight $$ gave joy to the world Mikko.
> 
> BTW. This reminds me that I meant to post a cautionary note about missing flights since the Budapest. If you ever miss one part of single flight booking then all consequent parts of the booking are automatically canceled for you (and they won't tell you) and if you got a low fare you can not get them back and will have to pay lot to get yourself home to Australia. This is despite my pleading with finnair that it has their staff who told me all I had to do was get to Hungry and my return journey would be fine. Let's all invest in better alarm clocks and bigger luggage for next conference :)
> 
> On 16/10/2012, at 7:14 AM, Mikko Ohtamaa <mikko at opensourcehacker.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi all,
>> 
>> Thanks for the great conference! I have never had this super fun - and for myself the conference had the end climax it deserved. I had some of the most interesting moments of my life today. You were there so it's true story :)
>> 
>> Namely, we went to a pub yesterday after the sprint. There was a "junk bingo" where everyone could participate for free and win stuff. Lucky-Franco won a vinyl and a drinking game. But I got the main prize, a katana sword after trying really hard to beat Franco in the game. A really cool sword, which soon ended up being full of Plone related stickers (don't know how this happened). I was thinking it makes an awesome souvenir for the conference.
>> 
>> ... fast-forward 12 hours to the next and the airport. I was carrying the sword wrapped in black plastic bags as I really had to do some improvisation how to carry it - it doesn't fit into any luggage. I have imported swords before to Finland from Czech so "I know what I am doing". They'll put a special sticker on the sword "DANGEROUS" and either let it go in the luggage or given it to the cabin crew.
>> 
>> It was almost success. I went to the special items desk and told I have a sword to declare in my luggage. I got it approved by KLM (the fee was 55 EUR but I thought it's worth it). However they needed the dangerous sticker from the airport security. So a military police (or whatever it is its equivalent) comes here and check my sword. Still everything going well, besides having an epic hangover.... I got even checked in with tickets and everything.
>> 
>> But then the police gets somehow confused. Because the sword doesn't fit into the luggage, it is a separate item I was carrying around. The police makes a radio call and a lot of Dutch discussion ensures with the KLM representative. A senior KLM representative comes around. More Dutch discussion ensures. In this point I actually miss the chance to reach my flight in timely fashion. 
>> 
>> Then the police tells me "we need to take your sword and give you a fine". In which point I feel the things are not going to end that well anymore... the KLM lady asks me do you know what I am accused of. It was something along the lines that I was carrying the sword with me when I arrived to the airport (basically carrying a weapon) which is against the local law. This of course makes some sense as it is not nice for the airport security to have hungover Finns carrying ninja tools around. However the police and KLM had procedures how things are supposed to be done and we were doing it by the book. They have rules to export dangerous items, but those dangerous items should not reach the airport in the first place...
>> 
>> So I am taken to fill in a lot of paper forms... and they ask the question "How did you end up to the possession of this item?"
>> 
>> ...in which point I quickly think in my head: I am already in some shit. It probably doesn't make things better if I tell the truth that on Sunday night, after programming 12 hours on in a music hall, me and my Australian, US, Brit, Argentina and bunch of other friends from bunch of other countries went to a bar where we drank beer called "Hell and Damnation", patched something called Templer and played junk bingo. 
>> 
>> ... so I told the police "I won it in a competition".
>> 
>> It was awesome conference.
>> 
>> In the end they didn't give me fine. It was little embarrassing for the polices too as they apparently wouldn't have wanted to go through the mess more than I did, so in some point of the filling paper work they stop doing it, just tell me "please forget this little incident and move along." Then I got personally escorted by a nice KLM lady to get my flights rebooked (which I actually had to pay). Now I am thinking how could I explain this to my travel insurance company to get the money back...
>> 
>> 
>> See you in Ploneconf 2013!
>> 
>> Ps. Rare Exports movie, from Finland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RQlikX4vvw
>> 
>> -- 
>> Mikko Ohtamaa
>> http://opensourcehacker.com
>> http://twitter.com/moo9000
>> 
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