Essentially it says that because I didn’t open my bag and check that nothing was stolen before leaving the airport, that there is nothing they can do, and that I should claim it from my travel insurance.

Unfortunately, email replies to this address cannot currently be accepted, responses can be sent by fax to Ryanair Customer Services on +353 1 5081702

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10/12/2009

Private and Confidential

Mr Jacob Hawkes
4/41 King Edward Rd
Osborne Park
6017
AUSTRALIA (AU)

NRNSVQ
Our Ref. 289334/DFNQHE
jacob.hawkes@telvent.com

Dear Mr Hawkes,

I acknowledge receipt of your letter dated the 9th of December 2009.

Unfortunately as no loss was reported to our representatives immediately upon collection of your baggage, I regret that we are not in a position to proceed with your claim.

Perhaps generally it would be helpful if I referred you to the Ryanair General Conditions of Carriage 15.1.1 where it states:

‘Acceptance of Baggage by the bearer of the Baggage Identification Tag without complaint and without completion of a Property Irregularity Report at the time of delivery, is prima facie evidence that the baggage has been delivered in good condition and in accordance with the contract of carriage”

Given the above, I regret that we cannot consider your claim. We would suggest that any compensation be claimed from your travel insurance policy.

I am sorry that I cannot be of further assistance.

Yours sincerely

For and on behalf of
RYANAIR LIMITED

_______________________
Maciej Ostrowski
Customer Services

Ryanair Customer Service Complaints Department
PO Box 11451 Swords, Co Dublin
Ireland
Fax +353 1 8121676

Reservation Number: XXXX
From: Dusseldorf (Weeze)(NRN)
To: Sevill (SVQ)
Flight: 8622
Depart: Dec 8, 2009 16:55
Arrive: Dec 8, 2009 19:40

Luggage Tag Number: 00006XXXX
Excess Luggage Reference Number: 0000XXX
Excess Luggage Fee: EUR120

Re: Theft of item in Checked Luggage

To Whom It May Concern: I am writing to report the theft of a personal item that was inside a piece of checked baggage on a recent flight from Weeze to Seville.

The ryanairbaggage.com website does not include an option to report this.

The item in question was a 125mL bottle of Davidoff Cologne, valued at EUR40, and was taken from my shaving kit. It was obvious that the thieves inspected the camera case that was also in the bag, but not finding a camera, took nothing.

Both the camera bag and the shaving kit were left opened. I have attached a photo of the inside of my bag as I found when I opened it after arriving at my hotel.

It is extremely upsetting to have ones bag interfered with, as anything could have been taken or added.  In these days of heightened security concerns, this is a gross violation of personal security.

I demand an apology, replacement of the stolen item, and a reimbursement of my full fare, including the excess baggage charge.  To think that I paid extra for the privilege of having my baggage rifled enrages me to the extreme.  You can be sure that you will never see me on your airline again, and I intend to make this experience known to as many people as I can.

Yours in extreme dissatisfaction,
Jacob Hawkes
December 9, 2009

This photo was taken after arriving in the hotel, and opening the bag for the first time since the flight.  The black shaving kit is opened, as is the blue camera case.  The cologne was taken from the shaving kit.  Both were left open.

Update: Well, nowadays you’d probably just use the Wifi Hotspot feature of iOS 4+.  This is supposedly coming to the latest Blackberry OS too, but we’ll have to wait and see on that one.

Also, testing Scribefire…

Frankfurt is a dismal airport. Nowhere to sit, a bad smell seemingly everywhere, and unless you want to go through security a hundred times, nothing to eat.

AirCanada – well, I guess they are trying, but really, I ran out of movies to watch, the flight tracking has never worked, there are no games to play, the TV selection is a joke. Not the mention the general rudeness of the staff.

The bureaucracy deepens, and we were hit with further paperwork requirements while we were in Calgary. Unfortunately, these are going to take a ridiculously long time to fulfill.

The Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade have only one office that can authenticate a document. This is the act of stamping a document with an official seal that says that the notarisation of the document is legit. If you take the document to them in person, they can do it while you wait, otherwise you mail it to them and it will take 5 weeks, plus postage time.

Oh, but it doesn’t cost anything. Except if you are in a hurry, then it will cost you a flight and a hotel room.

I had just finished the marathon system introduction conversation, and I was asked when my flight was. It wasn't for another two and a half hours, so I was invited to come and see something “cool”.

Now, this could mean anything, but in Kuwait it means you should expect just about anything. I literally can't even begin to tell you what kind of things you should expect in Kuwait.

It turned out to be something pretty conventional by some standards. It was a shooting range.

We paid our money, handed in our drivers license, and selected our weapons of choice. I of course had no idea, so just let the other guy do all the choosing. We had a choice of about 8 weapons, a selection of handguns and rifles, all the way up to some sort of fully automatic machine gun. My partner told me was there is no fun in shooting those type of guns because there is no skill involved, just the act of moving of lead through the air, and shredding your target.

Having decided which weapon we wanted, a 357, we then decided how many bullets we wanted to buy, and away we went.

Into the range then, but before you go in, you must wear hearing protection. They wont let you in otherwise. Even with the ear muffs on, the first couple times someone fired, I became airborne. It is so loud. Louder than I imagined. And there is no long reverberating recoil like in the movies. In fact, there is very little in common with the movies at all. It is just a short, sharp BANG that you feel in your chest

“Have you ever fired a 357 before sir?”

“No, I've never fired anything before.”

“OK, it's quite easy. Safety first: you always point the weapon down-range.”

“Got it.”

And on it went. I got my 1 minute safety induction, and had a few dry runs. I practiced cocking the hammer (in order to make the trigger lighter), aiming, and gently squeezing the trigger.

As I loaded in the first 6 bullets i found myself contemplating how weird this all was. In a few short hours time, I would board a flight to Dubai, and here I am lading a 357 handgun, and strongly resisting the urge to say, “…. well do ya? Punk?”

The first couple of discharges with real ammunition was an overload of sensations: the fierce bucking of the gun, the sparks and flame out the front, and the huge noise.

The most surprising thing of all though was the act of pulling the trigger. Because we were cocking the hammer prior to firing, the trigger was very light. So light in fact, that it was really quite impossible to tell exactly when it was going to go off when you are squeezing the trigger as gently as possible in order to keep your aim. This fact alone gave me the feeling that I wasn't in complete control of it.

In spite of all of this, I did quite well. All my shots where in a pretty tight group in the top left of the target, which I brought home with me.

My hands shook for hours afterwards, as I burned off the adrenaline.

No alcohol, therefore no DUI laws, but plenty of drinking going on, and plenty of drunk driving accordingly.

A lot of people who like it there seem to running from something, hence the wild west kind of atmosphere.

The wealth is obvious: high end cars, well dressed people, expensive adornments, but it is all set against the backdrop of a country whose civil infrastructure is barely hanging on.
We drove by roadworks that started years ago, and haven't progressed further than a hole in the ground. Sidewalks out the front of buildings that just end in mid-air because no-one thought to make sure that the next building's ground level was the same.

The war was a long time ago now, there was no evidence of it. It was long enough ago that things should be back to normal by now.

The apartment we stayed at was not connected to city water. A water tanker came every night to fill the building's tank on the roof, which incidentally gets so hot in the summer, that you use the cold water as hot, turn off your hot water system and use it as cold, because it is inside the air conditioning.

The parking lot was filled with luxury vehicles, but the road leading up to the parking lot was dirt, and filled with rubbish.

The flight in over the tank farm lasted minutes, and the dessert just behind it looked like someone had dropped pickup-sticks everywhere: the pipelines were all randomly crisscrossing the dessert.

Mobile phone towers were all of the temporary, trailer kind. All fenced in, and burning diesel to keep the and equipment running inside an air-conditioned mobile hut.

A confusing mix of swaggering and excessive wealth, utterly wasteful use of resources, and all still trying to catch up to the rapid growth of the country.

• 11MW of electricity at full power
• 4 MW/m² of thermal energy on the collector, at the top of a 100m tower.
• Nuclear reactors only produce 400kW/m² of thermal energy, 10-times less.
• The collector is made of 5 panels, 5m x 12m. Their construction is a closely guarded secret and we were very privileged to be taken all the way to the top of the tower directly under them!
• The 624 heliostats have mirrors that are 120m² and are curved to focus a beam up to the collector. The closer heliostats have a greater curve than those further away.
• The heliostats are not always all focused on the collector. Sometimes, they are pointed at a “standby” point, usually during system start up.
• The heliostats are moved into the collector in stages so as not to destroy the tower in the process.
• At full power, the thermal energy at the collector is equivalent to 8,000 suns.

We were near the outer edge of the heliostat field, and had our photo taken with the tower behind us at full power, and the bright spot was painfull to look at, it was almost as if we were looking into another sun.

• How to break Veritas
• How to fix Veritas
• How to break a machine that’s booting from a mirrored root device, being managed by Solaris Volume Manager, so that it’s root filesystem is being mounted read-only, and some how the filesystem type is not known or discoverable (?!? this messed me up for a good long while)
• How to hack said mirror and fix it
• How to get a sun box to see network interfaces
• How to navigate Melbourne freeways and tollways
• How to configure a 3com switch for 100full etc
• How to create a RAID 0+1 (striped mirror) volume using Veritas
• Japanese fighting fishes fight to the death, and some asian schoolboys used to bring them to school, dump them in a bowl and gamble on the outcome
• Sybase 4.9.2 is a really old bit of software.
• Sybase does not carry any documentation for the above software
• You can get sick of Tim Tams and BBQ shapes
• It takes many many hours to load a 17g database from DDS3 tape on to an E220R server

• Resigned
• Submitted what should be my last expense cheque
• Started the afterwork drinking, or rather, stepped it up a notch
• Made contact with an immigration agent
• Made contact with 2 different shipping companies
• Had some of the longest discussions with coworkers ever
• Learnt so many new tidbits about the company that make me say “god I”m glad I'm outa here”
• Cleared up the last bills for the cancelled utilities and unused credit cards in canada
• God access back into the australia bank
• Attempted without success so far to transfer funds from Canada to Australia using only PayPal
• Cleared out the laptop
• Backed up files and documentation onto the personal server and the USB drive

The following are roughly in chronological order

• My Grandfather turned 90 and we all had a party for him
• My family converged on Calgary for this party
• We went up to the cabin in the Shuswaps and had a great time
• Mum and Dad went to Vernon to visit old friends Mike and Jane
• Lisa and I cut short our trip to Vancouver and Nelson to help with transport back from Vernon
• She returns to Oman and prepares to return to Adelaide
• The trip to Cuba goes haywire when the company threatens not to send Lisa to Cuba with me
• The company's policy changes to reflect my demands
• Since I am scheduled to be in Spain for the Factory Acceptance Testing for the Cuban project, I am asked to perform a demonstration to a prospective customer while I am there
• The demonstration is actually a certification so that our company can be on the approved vendor list so that we might bid for the upcoming upgrade project
• The customers are Saudi Aramco, and the upgrade project could be the single biggest project my company has ever done.
• There is not a single backup of the previous demonstration system used for the previous certification
• We have 2 weeks to have the system operational, and at that point there is no hardware or RTUs to use
• I plan to arrive in Spain Saturday August 12th.
• Mum's cardiologist scheduled valve replacement surgery for Monday August 21st.
• I make the decision to still go to Spain, and then Lisa and I will go to Adelaide.
• A friend at work asks me if he should forward my name to a company in Australia that is currently hiring.
• I say sure.
• The company from Australia call me and we have a preliminary interview on the phone.
• We leave to Spain the next day.
• First day in Spain, I get a head cold that knocks me flat the whole day.
• Lisa explores Madrid, and visits the museums and parks.
• The hardware doesn't arrive until the night of Friday August 18th. The demonstration is supposed to start Monday August 21st.
• Lisa and I leave Spain for Adelaide Saturday August 19th.
• Mum is admitted into Ashford Sunday August 20th.
• Lisa and I arrive in Adelaide Monday August 21st.
• Mum emerges from surgery later that day, and from then until now is on a steady path of recovery.
• I call the company in Melbourne and inform them that since I'm here, maybe we cold set up an interview.
• They agree.
• Lisa and I travel to Melbourne Monday August 28th.
• The interview on Tuesday goes very well, they ask me to come back the next day.
• They offer me the job in Perth.
• Lisa and I deliberate for about half an hour.
• We decide to take the job in Perth.
• I sign papers and shake hands and walk out the door as an employee of Tusc.
• We return to Adelaide 2 hours later, and break the news.

That's about it so far. We left Adelaide on Sunday September 3rd, overnight-ed in Singapore then arrived in Calgary Tuesday September 4th.

I tendered my resignation today. Now it's gonna start getting interesting.

The following applies to employees who will be on a temporary assignment for a minimum of 6 weeks up to eighteen months, with the intent that the employee will be returning to their home base and maintaining their resident status. This only applies to employees of the Company, and for the purposes of these assignments, will not cover the costs for spouses or family dependants.

I had been preparing to go to Cuba for the last two and a half months on the premise that it would be handled just like any other extended site trip, and since the policy became official in September 2003 I could probably list a dozen instances where the company had paid for the spouses of employees to travel for less than 18 months (myself included). I appealed to the dickbag's sense of family by saying, “c'mon man, I know you're a family guy; you can't tell me that if you were going somewhere for a year and a half, you wouldn't expect the company to send your wife and your new baby with you”. To which he replied:

“If it was important to me, I'd pay for them to come with me, or I wouldn't take the position”

What are you supposed to say to that? My reply was going to be: “fine, then I don't accept the position” but didn't get a chance because the Regional Business Manager stepped in and said that they should be able to work something out. The dickbag said that he would prefer it to be official.

I pretty much ended the discussion with this:

Well, I find the policy unreasonable, and I don't accept it.

Three hours later, I'm informed that I will get everything I asked for, and further, that dickbag will change the policy to match what I asked for.

3 Aug
17:55 to frnkafurt 11:20 flt 9639
14:00 to cairo 18:55 flt 588