The airport professor. with rod and gun through darkest chengdu
- Book ID
- 101711383
- Publisher
- John Wiley and Sons
- Year
- 1988
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 131 KB
- Volume
- 9
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0265-9247
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The above is the title of a piece I have been contemplating for some time, following a visit to China last August.
I have yet to organize my thoughts on the matter, but I am prompted to say something, however briefly, for this issue of BioEssuys since it is the one that members of our sponsoring organization ICSU (International Council of Scientific Unions) will have to hand as they travel to Beijing for ICSU's biennial General Assembly. They will also have the opportunity afterwards, as I did, to tour the country. A week spent in Xian, Chengdu and Guilin provided an extended insight into China and the way in which science and society in this remarkable country are changing at breakneck speed in the attempt to catch up after the bamboo curtain of the cultural revolution. Society is undergoing Westernization in many ways but parts of China remain untouched. For me, the ultimate in culture shock was to spend 24 hours in Guilin, where, on the obligatory riverboat ride, one could imagine that one was back in the eighteenth century, so simple was the life in the bucolic surroundings of the Karst countryside. Then to take a one-hour plane journey to Guangzhou, a bustling, exploding mirror of Hong Kong, was like a journey forward through the centuries. On the whole, I preferred Guilin. But my purpose is to provide tips for the wary traveller. I have three which my readers may find helpful.
The first of these concerns the obligatory labeling of luggage with tags or stick-on labels. If you use tags and you are visiting China, let me recommend that the next time you are at the airport check-in counter and your friendly airline provides free plastic tags, take a handful and use only this or any other inexpensive variety when in China. Certainly if you value any tags or other attachments to your luggage, remove them or they will be removed anyway before you see your baggage again.
When, at the airport, you are boarding a plane for an internal flight, your boarding pass will bear a number that is more important than the number of your flight. It is the number of the plane, printed on its tail. You are ushered out on to the tarmac and, with boarding pass in hand, you shop around for the aircraft bearing your number. Don't worry about seat selection. It does not exist.
The third piece of advice, if you are travelling from city to city, is to buy one of the gadgets that claims to be a universal plug for an electric socket. These ingenious devices have pins that drop in and out. Some also act as transformers, although that aspect is unnecessary if your appliance is dual voltage. It was with a U.K. product, the 'Traveller's Super-converter ', that we made the aforementioned journey and encountered every possible variation. One theory was that the British and Australians had separately colonized the country because we encountered the British 13 amp. ring-main plug, the obsolete British 15 amp. plug with round pins, and an Australian-type socket, as well as the U.S. 2-pin type. Our converter dealt with them all. A frequent occurrence was that of two different outlets in the same hotel room.
In this last respect, my piece on 'Variety is Not the Spice of Life' brought forth the following comments from our colleague Gillian Page, Director of Pageant Publishing and consultant to the ICSU Press, which I reproduce verbatim. Commenting on Ms. Page's proposed survey of electrical sockets I think the only answer is, as for China, expect anything and everything and take a universal adaptor. We would, nevertheless, all benefit if readers could draw attention to cases where the multi-adaptors are unable to help.
'Standardization is, I suspect, a long way off, since it would require rewiring most of the world. Could the Airport Professor conduct a survey so that travellers could know in advance what to take with them? Many publications give details of the voltage, but not of the sockets. I was stunned in Jakarta to meet UK-type sockets; fortunately enterprising stores sold very cunning adaptors so that virtually any plug could be used.
'If Anders Martinsson were still around I think he would have told you that there is a standard for dates: year, month, daybut only the Scandinavians seem to use it.
'How about a standard for the way in which doors open? In the USA external doors open outwards, so you can get out in a fire; here (U.K.) they usually open inwards.
'As for taps/faucets, wouldn't it be nice if chambermaids did not almost always leave them so that when you turn on the bath tap you get a jet of either very hot, or very cold, water on your head?
'Another travelling frustration is self-service buffets at airports. It is often not possible to put down the carryon luggage, the duty-free shopping or the newspaper anywhere sensible and within sight -but how does one cope with them and a tray with a cup of coffee and a sandwich, particularly when it comes to paying?' Thank you Ms. Page. More such letters to this column will be welcomed as well as requests for factual surveys. The Tipping Guide that we recently published was triggered by one such request.
CORRESPONDENCE
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