Tuesday, November 15, 2005

BGG.con: Monday, Nov 14 - The End

Well, I'm home.

Monday morning I made my goodbyes and my friend drove me to a mall near where he works so that he could take me to the airport during his lunch hour. I would have tried to go by public transport, but we know how well that works out, and the shuttle service from North New Jersey costs about $60, compared to $11 from Manhattan (???).

There was a little board game stand in the mall with Settlers, Ticket to Ride, and otherwise the usual games. In the meantime, the local Borders had Lord of the Rings. I didn't get any games, but I bought some discounted videos ("Logan's Run" and something animated called "Waking Life" that looked interesting).

Incredibly enough, I had basically no problems during my entire return trip until we landed in Israel itself.

Apparently the cab system at the airport works as a queue, where the driver waits in a line of about 70 cabs until it is his turn. This can take hours and can't be that profitable. Unfortunately for the cab driver, I needed to go literally right next door to the airport (exit airport, enter driveway). The cab driver was extremely upset when he heard this, as it meant that he would have to lose his place in the queue for very little return. He started yelling at another cab driver to take me, and then at the dispatcher. He finally threw my bags into his cab, and as he pulled up along the dispatcher, he opened my window, leaned over me, and yelled at her again. The rest of the (thankfully short) trip he just yelled into the air. Luckily I don't know enough Hebrew to understand all of the cursing.

Next time I'll tell him (in front of the dispatcher) that I need to go to another terminal, which doesn't lose the cab driver his place in the queue.

Home. Tired. Happy. In the evening, I played Yinsh with my daughter and loved it. And tomorrow is game night.

Yehuda

1 comment:

Rick said...

Waking Life is an experimental film by Richard Linklater. The visual style is pretty unique - he captured digital live-action footage, and then had artists hand-draw over the video. This creates a dreamy, vaguely psychedelic experience. The story goes that at the premiere of the film, Linklater asked the audience "who of you in here are high?" and when a few people raised their hands, he said "good, this is for you; everyone else, please bear with me."

BTW, if you're a fan of the fabulous Before Sunrise/Before Sunset films of Linklater, the leads have a cameo on Waking Life.