Tiago Mata

This summer I got stuck at the airport with a delayed KLM flight. The plane to fly on a Sunday afternoon, had to wait for a mechanical part coming from the Netherlands in the evening. So we could only fly on the next, Monday, morning. Because I was stranded in Lisbon, home town, I did not need the “complimentary” hotel or meal.

Enraged by the delay and missing a meeting on Monday morning, I checked the Customer Care Policies of KLM to see if I was entitled to any compensation. This is what I found:

passengers will be offered free of charge:
- meals/refreshments in a reasonable relation to the waiting
time
- hotel accommodation in cases where an (additional) overnight
stay becomes necessary (transport included)
- 2 telephone calls, fax messages or e-mails.

The item that merits comment is the 2 phone calls. I wonder what is the rationale to this. In cop movies, suspects have the right to make one phone when they are thrown into jail. KLM treats its costumers with only one more degree of generosity.

P.S. It turns out that if you don’t take the hotel, the (reasonable) meal or the 2 emails, you get nothing.

The new manifesto on the left: L’Insurrection qui vient has sparked great controversy more about the authorship than the content. Today I was surprised to find it published by semiotic Princeton University Press, with a blurb by Glenn Beck:

“I am not calling for a ban on this book. It’s important that you read this book. [...] And let me tell you something: Don’t dismiss these people. Don’t dismiss them.”

Violating copyright, the text is also pdfed online.

From the 22nd of June to the 4th of July, with a break for a academic conference in Denver, Colorado, I was on the road with Yann and Julie. In previous posts I have made notice of our progress using google maps, tracking our 5750 km.

Maps locate but don’t do much to give a sense of the experience. I was too tired by the end of the day to provide more than a brainless post from whatever motel we ended up at. We did however record 22 audio commentaries, at least one on the morning of every day, plus some audio curiosities of the trip. The quality is not great. As it turns out, having the car radio on creates a lot of background noise on the recording – rookie mistakes.

First commentary:  
Last commentary:  

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