High crimes inside ivory towers

What is going on with our society and what is going on with our schools? I maybe exaggerate the situation here, but these days high-school-shooting events are so frequent they hardly count as breaking news anymore. And believe it or not, after each of these episodes we always ponder the same question: What happen to our students?

This morning, however, I wonder what happen to our professors? Today’s headline news is a nationwide hunt for University of Georgia professor George Zinkhan. Zinkhan is the Coca-Cola Company Professor at the Department of Marketing and Distribution of Terry College of Business, University of Georgia.

According to a news report from the Associated Press, the 57-year-old George Zinkhan is suspected of shooting his ex-wife and two other men to death outside a theater near campus. ”Zinkhan argued with at least one of the victims prior to the shooting, then walked away before returning with at least two different guns and opening fire. Each victim was shot multiple times. After the shootings, the man described as an introverted, respected marketing professor dropped his children off with a next-door neighbor and vanished in his red Jeep.” Since then he remained at large, as “he wasn’t in his home or office and hadn’t used his credit or ATM cards.”

When I clicked the homepage of the University of Georgia, there is even a UGA alert about the off-campus shooting.

I am still absorbing the shock of this sad news. The school told the media, “Zinkhan, who has a doctorate from the University of Michigan, … had no disciplinary problems. Before joining the school in the 1990s, he held academic positions at the universities of Houston and Pittsburgh.”

This is where I get confused. The guy has tenure –which literally means he can never be fired unless there is a severe misconduct (of course, murder definitely counts!); he is a chair-professor –the top of an academic position a faculty could achieve; and he is the editor of one of the top marketing journals (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science). Do I need to mention that the faculty members at business schools also tend to be paid much more than other schools (say, Liberal Arts)? Unlike many ordinary people in America who struggle with job opportunities and security in this economic downturn, this guy has everything — job, fame, and wealth. Yet such a horrendous crime he did ended up on the headline news of this country.

In 2006, just three years ago, Rafael Robb, a well-known (and also tenured) economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania killed his wife. Now the 58-year-old earned himself a spot at Wikipedia and a sentence of five to 10 years in prison for bludgeoning his wife to death. The rumors are, the professor — specializing in game theories — even tried to fake a crime scene, which was detected easily by the police later. At that point, I thought this is just an isolated incidence.

These events now seem to be so puzzling to me. Schools, especially those of higher educations, long carry the ivory tower image. It is a place where knowledge is expanded and passed on, and research is advanced to understand the new unknowns. It is almost automatically assumed that only the best, the brightest and the most morally-qualified individuals in our society are able to teach and research at these academic institutes.

But since when we begin to worry about our safety in places like schools? Sure, people could attribute the college campus shooting to the stress that a college student may have to put up with, but a well-established professor of a business school goes on a killing spree? I dare not to speculate the cause here, but unlike these struggling untenured assistant professors, these people are so accomplished; it would be very hard to convince me that the stress and depression are the main cause for them.

Friday night, relaxing night

What a nice weather today! I have been waiting for this kind of weather for a long time.

My girlfriend just completed her busiest moment of the year, speaking of an accountant having no life during the tax season. Now it is the R&R time. To reward ourselves, we sat outside the restaurant and had a couple of tasty Margarita.

I did not stay for too long though: have to take a visiting colleague for dinner later.

This colleague has known me for a couple of years already — time flies — and for some reason he always feels like my mentor.

It was a great dinner. When we walked out of the restaurant, the night was still young, and people were partying on the street.

All these make me feel that spring has finally arrived. For some reason the topic about Jane Fonda popped out during our dinner conversation. This reminds me when I watched the episode of Stephen Colbert’s interview with Jane Fonda.

Check-up list prior to overseas travel

Even for someone like me traveling so frequently, trip preparation can be stressful. Finding the right connections and right deals for hotels can take forever. Given these days how strict the regulations on air travel and the limitations on what you can put into your carry-on luggage are, packing is always one of my biggest headaches, especially if it is an overseas trip and it involves more than one passenger.

Before any of our overseas trips, I always follow our check-up list to ensure that (i) necessary and important documents are on-board with us and that (ii) there is no over-packing.

So here is my check-up list prior to any of my overseas trips:

(1) Valid passport (of course!) with valid visa (if necessary). Some countries require at least six months prior to the expiration date of the passport.

(2) Print out the airline itinerary, hotel reservation records, and/or car rental receipts. Keep also these documents online (via emails, or Google documents).

(3) One or two days prior to departure, call the credit cards (Capital One) and banks (Charles Schwab) to inform them about potential overseas charges.

Capital One credit card and Charles Schwab bank card are the only cards we use overseas. The former does not charge any foreign transaction fee, and the later does not charge ATM fee, even if you withdraw from an overseas ATM.

Capital One also has an automatic system to allow you to enter the duration and destination of your travel. Even better, you can customize your Capital One with your pictures.

(4) Two or three days prior to departure, arrange mail hold with the postal service. This can be done from https://holdmail.usps.com/duns/HoldMail.jsp.

(5) One day prior to departure, update the iPod Touch. Load it up with tons of free games and applications. So far this is the best gadget available to kill the boring wait-time at the airports.

(6) If we fly the economy class and it is a long flight, then we also pack noise-cancellation headphones.

(7) Converters for all electronics (especially laptops).

(8) Double-check the locations of airline lounges if there is a connecting flight and a long layover. I am a firm-believer that these airline lounges make a long flight so tolerable. On top of that, many airlines tend to share one lounge in foreign airports, so your money gets extra mileages.

Things that I never bring:

(1) Money belt. I do not see the point here and do not know why every tour book would advise Americans to take this ugly and naive thing with them. Whenever I see someone wearing a money belt, it is like he or she has “I am a first-time tourist” written all over the forehead. One could be better off with a thin and stylish messenger bag, which does not take a lot of luggage space nor add much weight, but provides far more functions than a money belt.

(2) Inflatable pillow. Unlike they are extremely cute, wearing this thing around the neck and walking back and forth in the cabin just looks so… (while, you know what I mean). They are comfortable to certain extent, but not worth the hassle.

Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart always make my day

I get so bored and tired today. Having worked over the entire weekend plus twice the round-trip to the airport, the whole morning has been exhausting.

Plus, after having some beautiful 60s and 70s, now the whole day has been raining and windy. Haven’t I had enough of this winter already? This is almost late April, for God’s sake!

Thanks to Hulu, I catch up several episodes of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report during the lunch break. In fact, Hulu has a devoted page for the Daily Show and the Colbert Report, respectively. That has brightened up my day so far.

Among all the recent episodes, I really enjoy the April 20th’s “We don’t torture” and the April 14th’s Colbert Report about NASA’s decision of naming the space station node Tranquillity. I noticed that the Daily Show nowadays tends to get into a more serious/heavier topic. It is still amazing that Jon Stewart can pull laughters for such kind of topics.

There is also a hilarious youtube video about the two comedians teaming up to present the award for Mini-Series at the 2008 Emmys. The short conversation between Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart was not about politics, but about prunes.

Unless you go down to the last bullet point of the definition of this word from the online dictionary.

5 things I hate about Qantas: #5

Reason #5: They treat you like an idiot, even if you are a frequent flyer.

At the check-in counter of Melbourne, that Qantas bitch — pardon my French here – first declared that our normal carry-on bags were considered overweight and had to be checked, then, after I asked her to check for the availability of bulkhead or Exit seats, still threw me two seats in the row of 84.

I told her that either she gave us the seats that were assigned to us originally, or please gave us seats in relatively front rows of the economy class. Here is what she said repetitively: “But it is a bigger airplane.”

Do I need her to lecture me about the size of the aircraft? I flew an A380 on the way to Australia, and she can clearly see that from the computer screen right in front of her!

I insisted. Then she said: “I cannot assign you the seats, you have to talk to the Service Desk.”

So what kind of logic is this? She is the one who gave us the lousy seats in the first place, and she cannot assign seats?

Then she asked for our connecting flight information, which we bought ourselves a separate ticket, and told us that she can print out a luggage tag that would check our bags through all the way to the final destination. Knowing that all the passengers entering the United States have to collect their check-in bags in L.A. anyway, and that our bags would have no problem at all for a carry-on with the connecting flight, I told her politely and coldly that there was no need; we only wanted the bags to be checked through L.A.

Then she stared at us like we were idiots: “Why not?” She said, “You only need to collect your bags at the L.A. airport and then re-check your bags, then you are done.”

Yeah, like we would need to wait to collect our bags at the L.A. airport, and then wait again to collect our bags at the airport of our final destination!

I told her again: “Our bags are carry-ons. We do not have to check them for our connecting flight.”

For some reason she just could not get it, repeating that our bags are check-ins and that we should have a through-check-in. Does it ever occur to her that airlines other than Qantas would have different rules — something other than that pathetic 7 kg rule — for carry-on bags? In the end I gave up, watching her print out a luggage tag indicating our final destination and stick it to our bags.

See, this is the difference between Qantas and other airlines. In America, yes, sometimes you do run into some check-in counter agents who try to get rid of you, but as soon as you speak nicely and professionally, they immediately realize that you are a frequent traveler (even not the one associated with their airlines) and they know they cannot and should not screw you over.

This Qantas bitch, on the other hand, treated us like idiot, even after seeing my Platinum Elite tags from 2003 to 2009 tied with my normal-carry-on-but-according-to-Qantas-normal-check-in bag, and after knowing that we’d fly first class with our connecting flight.

The only conclusion I can draw at this point is that apparently there is an IQ issue for her; therefore Qantas, please warn us in advance nex time that we will be dealing with some mentally-challenged employees of yours, so that the entire check-in process in Melbourne would have been less annoying. Oh, I forgot; there won’t be next time…

In the flight over to L.A., we once chatted with a flight attendant. Obviously this gentleman holds an impression that traveling in a regular economy class, we know nothing about business class. While he was describing about the luxury associated with the business class of A380 with such a superior attitude, I almost cannot help laughing.

Having been flying the business class of 747s and 777s regularly, I really do not see the true difference here. However, none of the flight attendants in the airlines that I fly often would lecture on and on with such an attitude to an economy-class passenger about how comfortable the business class seats are.

This blog post is associated with “A380: Nice; Qantas: Not even close.”

See also “5 things I hate about Qantas: #1, #2, #3, and #4.”

5 things I hate about Qantas: #4

Reason #4: You cannot get the seat you prefer.

Let’s face it. It is a 15-hour-plus flight. As a frequent traveler, we all know how important seats are, especially if you fly economy.

Oops, Qantas does NOT allow you to choose your seat online if you buy your ticket from America — Later on, someone told me you can choose your seat online from Australia, which did not work for us. It seems to me that as long as your tickets were issued in America, there is nothing you can do with Qantas online.

I even tried to register with American Airlines (Qantas’s US partner) and go from their website to retrieve my record. That did not work either. Apparently, the so-called “OneWorld” alliance is really a separate world.

So in cases like this one would call their agents. Here is the most ridiculous thing: All their agents seem to be in a hurry all the time, and while they assign you a seat — and indeed you do see your assigned seat numbers on the printed schedule – they warn you that Qantas cannot guarantee these seats.

What kind of twisted and pathetic airline is this?

In America even if you do not have an elite status, you can either choose your seats online or call to get the seats you prefer, and all the airlines here honor their commitment.

So guess what, when we got to the check-in counter, all our previous assigned seats were gone. Even when we presented them with a printout of our schedule, clearly indicating the assigned seats, all they did was to shake their head and gave us some other seats regardless— and definitely not these that we prefer. Let me also point out here that the flight from L.A. to Melbourne was almost half empty in the first place!

Excuse me, Mr. Qantas, if you cannot honor your promise, why bother make one?!

This blog post is associated with “A380: Nice; Qantas: Not even close“.

See also “5 things I hate about Qantas: #1, #2, #3, and #5.”

5 things I hate about Qantas: #3

Reason #3: Overweight or not overweight, that is the question.

Is my bag over-weight or not over-weight? Well, it depends on their mood, not weight scale.

Remember this is Qantas. So as long as you buy your ticket in America, you cannot do online check-in as with other airlines in America. Therefore you have to go through their check-in counters.

On the way back (from Melbourne to L.A.), I “had to” check my carry-on bag because, according to the Qantas agent behind the check-in counter at the Melbourne airport, my red-colored, 19″ standard Swiss Army bag exceeded their weight limit.

I had the SAME bag with me when I flew from L.A. to Melbourne, and the Qantas gate agent behind the check-in counter at the L.A. airport told me my bag “was fine, no problem”.

The only weight difference on the way back is a 2″ stuffed animal — a Koala — that I bought in Melbourne. Hello! Tell me that fluffy Koala is the criminal here!

Koala bear, you have "sinned"! Qantas "upgraded" my everywhere-else-carry-on bag to a must-check-in bag because of you.

By the way, although Europe has much more restricted rules for carry-on luggage, I have never had any problem of breezing through all kinds of countries and airports, let alone being considered carrying an over-limit bag!

Here is the catch: After we were forced to check in our normal carry on bags, we saw plenty people around us with much bigger and heavier bags and they did bring their bags on board!

This blog post is associated with “A380: Nice; Qantas: Not even close.”

See also “5 things I hate about Qantas: #1, #2, #4, and #5.”

5 things I hate about Qantas: #2

Reason #2: Good luck with your check-ins.

If you fly Qantas’s A380, then good luck! It takes FOREVER for a check-in luggage to come out once you arrive, unless you are the lucky one.

A simple math: Because of their pathetic carry-on bag limit, more passengers have to check in their bags. On top of that, A380 carries much more passengers than any other aircraft.

In our case at the L.A. airport, the record is 40 minutes plus for us to collect our bags.

Let me also remind you that this is an international arrival. Which means unlike domestic arrival, you do not have the right to use your cell phone or listen your iPod while you wait. And be prepared for the Protector of U.S. Agriculture to sniff you around.

May I add that in the past, they used to wear this cute and bright yellow jacket with a red-colored line such as “Protector of U.S. Agriculture”. I rarely see these jackets on them anymore.

A young guy were waiting next to us for his bag, and when we left, his bag was still no where to the sight. Good luck, pal!

This blog post is associated with “A380: Nice; Qantas: Not even close“.

See also “5 things I hate about Qantas: #1, #3, #4, and #5.”

5 things I hate about Qantas: #1

Reason #1: Carry-on weight restriction.

They impose a 7-kg weight restriction on carry-on luggage.

Hello! On a 15-hour flight? Are you kidding me?! Many carry-on roller bags themselves weigh more than 7 kilos! By the way, do I need to mention that the overhead compartment space in their A380 is much larger than in an A330?!

In my humble opinion, many commerical airlines in the United States, which do not have the monopoly as Qantas has, won’t nickle-and-dime their passengers to this kind of extreme!

Frankly speaking, prior to this trip, I really have no idea that passengers in America are truly blessed!

But then, if my geography is correct, there is much more land per person in Australia than in America, which means that space specification, be it personal or luggage, should be more generous with Qantas than with airlines in America. They are the one that fly the largest commercial aircraft anyway. Why would I see the opposite?

Does this sound at least semi-reasonable to persuade Qantas to change their motto to “Not the Spirit of Australia?”

There is also a serious consequence, see “5 things I hate about Qantas : #2“.

This blog post is associated with “A380: Nice; Qantas: Not even close“.

See also“5 things I hate about Qantas: #3, #4, and #5.”

A380: Nice; Qantas: Not even close

Stinky monkey has asked a couple of times: “Have you written about your experience with Qantas?” I always replied: “Not yet.”

For a while I do not know where to start. During our last trip to Australia, we flew Qantas for a particular reason: Airbus 380-400, the ultra-jumbo aircraft that has caused several major airports to modify runways and gates to accommodate its size.

During its first around-world flight, an A380 made a stop at the Pudong airport of Shanghai, China. At that time I happened to be at the same airport watching my flight being delayed for no reason. Later, we were told that the control tower had to hold off a couple of flights: The A380 is so big and its wings so wide that it would need two runways to be cleared out during its take-off.

Because my most anticipated aircraft — Boeing’s Dreamliner 787 — has been delayed forever, A380 has long become one of my most wanted “gadgets” to play (travel) with.

Initially, I was debating between Qantas and Singapore Airlines. Both have Airbus 380. However, as everyone knows, Qantas has almost the monopoly for international flights in and out of Australia. If I wish to go with Singapore Airlines — another airline known for their service and that I long to try out some days — we would end up with 2 additional overnight layovers, no matter how I play around with the flight schedules across different airlines.

My Australian friends have warned me a couple of times about the poor service of Qantas, and I did hesitate for a while. In the end, the less-layover time won and we decided to take a gamble: We all have heard some horrible stories about the airlines in the United States, so how bad Qantas can suck compared to its American peers?

So far Qantas has only 3 Airbus 380s, and only flies direct between U.S. and Australia with these jumbo babies on Mondays and Wednesdays, it took me a while to get the planning and schedules done. That is where “the journey to the hell” begins. Now we are back to the United States via A380 both ways. Here is the short version of my summary:

Airbus380: Nice, but a bit over-rated and over-hyped.

Qantas: They really should paint their motto as “Not the Spirit of Australia.” Believe me, Australians are much nicer!

Here is a longer version of my summary. I will start with the Airbus 380-400.

What I like about it:

• Better air: I flew to Asia all the time, in Boeing 747 and Boeing 777, and my skin feels so dry. The air in Airbus 380 seems to have more moisture.
• Quieter: The noise is much more bearable than in a 747 or 777.
• Cleaner: I can see dust flying in the air inside the cabin of Boeing 747 or 777. But again this might not be a fair comparison because most 747s and 777s operated by the airlines in the United States are much older.
• The 10″ touch-screen entertainment panel: I have been on A330 as well, but A380 is equipped with a 10″ touch-screen LCD panel, and has much more programs and tricks to play around. For example, it has a sky cam, where you can see the outside of the aircraft via your screen.
• Seat materials are better.

What I do not like about it:

• Maybe this has nothing to do with Airbus, but with Qantas. They claim there are more leg rooms in economy, but it feelts virtually nothing extra. I felt just as crammed as in a 747 or 777. When the guy in front of me pulled his seat down, it almost hit my face.
• Nearly the same number of toilets as these on an A330, but A380 carries much more passengers! So the toilets are almost consistently occupied. Let’s face it: A330 is used to make 8-9 hours flight, whereas A380’s flight is over 15 hours.
• The service areas (those near the Exit rows) are the same narrow as A330. So do not count too much on stretching your body there.

Here is my longer version of summary for Qantas:

What I like:

• They gave you a full size pillow and blanket that you normally can only enjoy in a 747 or 777 business class
• They provide you a bag of snacks and toiletries that have long disappeared from trans-pacific flights operated by the airlines in the United States
• The Australian acent of flight attendants

What I hate (see my separate blogs about these issues)

• They impose a 7-kg weight restriction on carry-on luggage. As a consequence,
• It takes FOREVER for a check-in luggage to come out once you arrive, unless you are the lucky one.
• Is my bag over-weight or not over-weight? Well, it depends on their mood, not weight scale.
• You cannot get the seat you want.
• They treat you like an idiot.

The good news is, there is no way that I will fly Qantas again, not even for the sake of A380.

If I wish to stick to an A380, I will go for Singapore Airlines. If I wish to get the seat that I want, then even better: Delta will soon start an L.A.-Sydney direct flight with 777s. At least I can get the seats I want and their promise is guaranteed.

Honestly, I do not miss that much of that entertainment LCD touch screen. With a power seat and my beautiful Sony Vaio, and my sensationally priced authorized copies of movies and soap operas, I could have a better time!

Auf Wiedersehen, Qantas!