Waiting is an annoying activity that travellers have to deal with. It seems that especially air travel is plaqued by long unwelcome waits. Some people have the necessary money or status miles to travel in style and avoid queues. Mere mortals, however, can conduct a study on how boarding for example is being conducted in different countries.

Here I only focus on my observations from New Zealand and the U.S.A. I have the impression that boarding an airplane takes longer in the U.S.A. than it does in New Zealand. Are the NZ travellers just faster or more disciplined? Seeing that there are many international travellers in both countries, I doubt that there is a special national traveller mentality.

I think the main reason is the way boarding takes place. In the U.S.A. passengers are boarded according to priority groups. First class and priority access can always board and then there are groups 1 to 4 with 4 being the lowest priority.

Coming from New Zealand, you would think that the groups were formed according to where people sit. But far from it. It is strictly according to priority and that means that you can sit anywhere in the airplane. It can easily be that group 1 are passengers primarily in the first rows and a few in the back rows. Having to wait until the ones at the front are seated before the ones in the back can proceed does take time. On one flight I was in group 4 but sat in a third row window seat behind the business class. As my fellow row neighbors had a higher priority they were already seated and had to let me in which held up everybody else.

In New Zealand the general system is the following: Passengers in business class (on international flights) and with priority access as well as those that need assistance board first. They are followed by the travellers in a window seat. That’s very smart because then 2 others don’t have to get up later. On bigger flights, the rest of the passengers are asked to board according to their row number starting with the higher numbers thus filling the plane from the rear to the front.

This system seems to work well and the boarding of planes takes place swiftly and is faster than in L.A. and San Francisco in my opinion where I observed the U.S. style of boarding. Though that is just a very unscientific observation from observing a few flights.

2,200 students, approximately 180 staff: That’s whom you will see at the formal assemblies at Westlake Boys’ High School in North Shore City on Mondays and Fridays. The auditorium, which was also the place for the two TEDxAuckland events in 2009 and 2010, is filled with students in their uniform of dark green or red polo shirts and green shorts. They all listen attentively to what’s going on on stage.

On stage, student achievements are celebrated, be it in academics or sports, perfect attendance, perfect behavior, or any other area where the students have excelled.

I was at Westlake Boys’ for a Moodle workshop because the school is going to roll it out soon for all their students and staff. During a break, Dave Hayden, the ICT Director at the school, told me that they have students from 65 different nationalities and that their staff is comprised of approximately 60% teachers from countries other than New Zealand. So far away from all these countries you encounter them again in New Zealand and can have your own microworld in a school of high reputation and a great location on the north shore of Auckland.

May 27, 2010, 5:02 p.m., has turned into a milestone for me. The embassy employee responsible for visas at the New Zealand embassy in Brussels left a message on my answering machine letting me know that my work visa  for New Zealand had just been granted and was ready for pick-up.

My temporary work visa was issued very quickly for which I am very grateful because having to wait for the news of whether I got it or not for already 4 weeks was the most excruciating time in my life so far. I would have surely gone insane had it taken longer. Going for the temporary work visa (valid for three years, and it can be extended) was the quickest way. Other visa options would have taken much longer. However, I will apply for residency to avoid having to go through the temporary visa process repeatedly.

Before I can finally start my new job as e-learning specialist with an IT company in Wellington on 15 June 2010, I have lots of things to organize, wrap up, etc. It will be a hectic 2 last weeks in Luxembourg for me before I go on the 19,025 km journey to Wellington via Singapore and Sydney.

Everything will be new for me: the job, the country, and the hemisphere. But what about the continent? I had wondered if New Zealand belongs to a continent, but it is already too far away from Australia. Geo-politically, it is grouped under Oceania, but does not belong to the continent of Australia. It is just a group of islands. Thus, no continent for me.

I am very excited to embark on this new adventure. Thanks to the internet, staying in touch won’t be a big problem though I will miss face-to-face encounters.

Let the adventure begin.

I haven’t set foot on my blog for a long time, but enjoyed the summer on the Hawaiian island of Moloka’i. Although I have been back for three weeks already, the summer feeling is not entirely gone yet. It’s rather quiet on campus because many others are on vacation now, and Luxembourg in general is on congé collectif (annual holiday).

Soon (September 14, 2009), however, a new semester will start in which I will give 17 workshops on Mahara to our students and teachers until mid-October. Furthermore, on the ed tech front, EC&I 831 with Alec Couros and CCK09 with George Siemens and Stephen Downes will start on September 8, 2009, and September 14, 2009, respectively. I am looking forward to these two courses, the discussions, and especially the synchronous sessions though I won’t be able to participate in all of them. Better to gather all my energy for this hot fall.

Until then I keep dreaming of paradise.

[flickr-gallery mode="photoset" photoset="72157621911616026"]

y vacation this year is already a few weeks ago, but only thanks to today’s holiday I can reminisce a little bit. This was my first true summer vacation in a very long time. I was on vacation near Toulouse, France, from July 15 to July 28. In the past years while working in Munich, I was lucky to be able to go on vacation in the off-season as I did not have to stick to the university semester schedule to much as I have to now. Thus, I explored Maharashtra and the western Himalajan region (India) in the heat of April / May in 2007 and 2005, Gozo (Malta) over Christmas and New Year’s in 2005-06, the Landes (region near Bordeaux in France) in April 2004, and Dingle Peninsula and Dublin (Ireland) in September 2003. However, this year’s vacation couldn’t come at a better time: right after finishing grading student productions and before all our student assistants started to work at the beginning of August.

As you can see from the following screenshots, I had no activity online whatsoever between July 15 and 28 (OK, Friendfeed and Swurl do not track everything, but you get the gist).

Screenshot from my Friendfeed page taken on July 31, 2008 (“Tuesday” stands for July 29, 2008). Incidentally, both bookmarks are links sent to me by Bob.

However, Swurl “messed up” my nice offline time view from above in the timeline after I uploaded my vacation pictures to flickr. You can see it as a nice feature that Swurl does not place the pictures on the day of the upload (as Friendfeed does), but on the day the pictures were actually taken.

Coming back from a conference in Passau, I had two sensations of déjà vu. The winter storm “Emma” that swept over large parts of Germany on Friday, February 29 (and Saturday) reminded me of “Kyrill” last January. As in 2007, I was caught up in it and had to struggle to get from Passau to Luxembourg via train.

The last day of the conference in Passau had actually started out nicely: I did not have to worry about my presentation anymore as I had nailed it the evening before, the rain had stopped before I left the hotel, and it was going to be a nice day. I did not worry about the weather too much as I only read the news on the TV briefly where it said that there were high speeds in the mountains, but that the storm did not grow to expectations of the evening before.

However, when we wanted to go to the train station, one of the conference attendees said that there were no trains and no rental cars available. What to do now? Well, we went to the train station to get the latest information and were told that busses were on their way to take us to Nueremberg as the train tracks could not be used for at least two hours due to fallen trees. So we waited in the cold and somewhat windy weather outside of the train station for the busses to arrive.

An hour after our arrival at the station, the first bus showed up and I was lucky to be able to board it right away. However, despite a three-hour bus ride ahead of us, we could not leave immediately as we had to wait for the other two busses because the drivers did not know the way as they were regular city bus drivers. At least we did not have to wait in the cold outside anymore. Finally, we set off, did not have any traffic jam on our way and even made it to Nueremberg in 2.5 hours arriving there at 5 p.m. That was way too late to catch my train to Koblenz. However, it was right on time for the regular train schedule to kick in with only a few delays and changes.

(To better understand the individual stops, you might want to look at a map of Germany, e.g. via Google, while reading this.)

The next train going to Koblenz came at 5:30 p.m., but it was not the regular ICE. It was an IC that usually goes a bit slower. All went well up to Wuerzburg. There we were told that we could not go straight to Frankfurt, but had to head into a slightly different direction that would lead us further north: to Fulda. That would cost us about 40 minutes. In the end, this was a detour of approx. 80 minutes. The locomotive had to be switched because we needed to change directions. This would have been much easier and quicker in an ICE as they are designed to have one on both ends. Anyway, on our way to Frankfurt, I already realized that I would not make the train that a kind gentleman next to me had looked up on the internet when he could access it because the conductor was not able to give me any details as he said he did not have the schedule for trains crossing the border. What a liar, but I come to that later on. He even had the nerve to ask me why I had not looked up the trains beforehand. I wondered why I should have done that when I had booked specific trains that I had to stick to before setting out for Passau. In Nueremberg I did not have the time to check with the service staff as the lines were very long and I would have missed the train.

Once we arrived in Frankfurt, we had to switch locomotives again because Frankfurt has a dead-end station. Lucky for me, we also picked up new conductors and I tried again to find out whether I would be able to make it home that night. I went to the conductor and she had clearly not been informed by her colleague that I was headed to Luxembourg. However, she had all necessary means to help me: train schedule, electronic organizer with all train information, direct telephone connection to the dispatcher in her moving office. She called the dispatcher immediately and we learned that on top of everything there was a scheduled construction site between Mainz and Koblenz that weekend and that would cost us a detour of about 40 minutes. The last train to Luxembourg would have left about one hour before we would arrive in Koblenz. Nevertheless, she said she would try to find a solution for me.

When we were ready to leave Mainz, the conductor told us that we could not do so due to the lack of train schedule information. We thought we were in a bad movie or that April Fool’s Day had been moved one month ahead. What did we need a train schedule for when there was relative chaos everywhere?

We arrived in Koblenz at 11:10 p.m. and the last train for the night left for Trier (note: not Luxembourg) at 11:18 p.m. That was the slowest train you can imagine. It stopped every three to five minutes in every tiny village (in German we say that the train stopped at every “Milchkanne” [milk can]) and thus took two hours to reach Trier. Usually, you can make it to Luxembourg from Koblenz in about 1.5 hours (and Trier is about 45 minutes by train from Luxembourg away). Thus I was stranded in Trier at 1:16 a.m. today. I could take a hotel room that will be paid by the train service because there was no way of me getting to Luxembourg that night. Thus, I continued my journey home this morning.

All in all, it was not horribly bad because I could have also been stranded in the train in the middle of nowhere, but still, it took 12 hours trying to get back home and then being stopped 45 minutes before the final destination was not so appealing.

Let’s see what will happen to me in 13 months. I hope, I do not have to travel because then chances are high to be caught in yet another storm.

In the beginning I wrote about two sensations of déjà vu. The second one was also in Passau. When I went to Passau for the first time, we were tremendously delayed and going back to Munich we also had to wait at the train station to board a bus (again in the cold and when it was windy) as the tracks between Passau and the next station could not be taken due to a bomb alarm if I remember correctly. So far, I only reached and left Passau without problems once out of three times. What may happen the next time I will be there? Will everything be alright or will hell break loose entirely? I will keep you updated.

This picture does not need a comment, I think This street can only exist in Paris, right?

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Dieses Bild benötigt eigentlich keinen Kommentar, glaube ich. So eine Straße kann es doch nur in Paris geben, oder?

The City of New York has proposed a new regulation dealing with photography and filming in the city. Although geared towards professionals, the border between professional and amateur photography are fuzzy, and thus, many tourists would have to forfeit their photography or filming to obey the proposed regulation because most will not have US$ 1 million insurance policy. The NY Civil Liberties Union protests this new regulation and hopes to achieve a revised version or a drop of this proposal.

According to the proposal, if two or more people congregate in one place and film or take photos for 30 or more minutes (including set up and breakdown) or if 5 or more people use a tripod for such activities for more than 10 minutes (including set up and breakdown) would require a license (which is free) and proof of the possession of the US$ 1 million insurance policy.

My advice to you: Visit New York on your own and take photos quickly (also to avoide congestion at favorite photo spots). If you travel in pairs or groups, disperse before taking out your equipment. It’s not safety in numbers.

I just wonder who would look after the inforcement of this law and how it would be done.

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Die Stadt New York hat einen Gesetzesvorschlag vorgelegt, der das Fotografieren und Filmen in der Stadt regulieren soll. Obwohl das Gesetz primär Profis im Blick hat, ist die Grenze zwischen Profi und Amateur fließend. Viele Touristen dürften nicht mehr fotografieren oder filmen, wenn sie nicht ein Versicherung über 1 Million US-Dollar nachweisen könnten. Die New Yorker Civil Liberties Union (Zivilrechtsunion) protestiert gegen dieses Gesetz und hofft auf eine Lockerung bzw., dass es gar nicht verabschiedet wird.

Der Gesetzesentwurf sieht vor, dass 2 oder mehr Leute, die an einem Ort für 30 oder mehr Minuten filmen oder fotografieren (inklusive Auf- und Abbau) oder 5 oder mehr Leute, die ein Stativ zum Filmen oder Fotografieren für mehr als 10 Minuten (inklusive Auf- und Abbau) verwenden, eine (kostenlose) Lizenz benötigen sowie die 1-Million-Dollar-Versicherung nachweisen müssen.

Daher mein Rat: Besucht New York nur allein und macht Bilder schnell (so wird auch Stau an den Touristenattraktionen vermieden). Wenn ihr schon zu zweit oder mehreren Leuten reisen müsst, dann geht auseinander, bevor ihr eure Ausrüstung aufbaut.

Ich frage mich nur, wer dieses Gesetz wie durchsetzen will.