Some little things encountered today (Friday 7th March Australia), that stopped the smooth transition from Point A to Point B:
- Not sleeping well last night. I woke several times during the night. Was it the rich, chilli-hot Indian food? Possible. Was it that I knew I had a plane to catch tomorrow? Likely. For some reason, even if I have a long flight ahead and whether I get to bed early or not, I just never sleep very well the night before. I wonder if the alarm will fail on the only day it’s not meant to fail, or if I won’t get to the airport on time. I don’t know where this irrational fear of missing a flight comes from—I’ve never missed one in my life (well, one, but that was totally out of my control—I landed 3 hours late and I missed the connecting flight but got on another within a few hours… and that was more than 20 years ago).
- Taxi rank being used by other vehicles. Right outside my accommodation in central Brisbane is a cab rank. When I came out on to the street with my luggage, there were no cabs there, but the stand was filled with other vehicles—couriers, service vehicles, delivery vans, and the like. I missed one cab as he didn’t see me try to flag him down (some of those vans are high). For the second one (some 5-10 mins later), I actually stood out in the road to flag him down, then he had to stop in the middle of one of Brisbane’s main streets to load my stuff into the cab (well, I loaded it—he wouldn’t get out of the vehicle). Designated taxi stands should be for taxis, not other commercial vehicles. The signs clearly said this was a taxi zone. Grrr…
- Over-cautious drivers. The taxi driver was a very cautious driver—hesitant to the point of nervousness, IMHO. He touched his brakes many time when it wasn’t necessary. His nervousness about driving in traffic made me nervous!
- On a more positive note, the Qantas check-in desk at Brisbane’s international terminal was a breeze, as was Customs and the carry-on luggage check.
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But another negative was the lack of business facilities in the Qantas Club Lounge. For the 100+ (maybe 200+) seats in the Lounge, there were only four computer terminals. Only three worked, and the one I eventually got, wouldn’t print to the printer. The guys at two of the terminals were having a conversation they could have had in the lounge seats, which added a little to the frustration.
None of this is earth-shattering, and normally none of these incidents would raise a blip on my radar, but for some reason they annoyed me this morning. As I said, it’s the little things…
Rhonda Bracey: At Random 
I guess I’ve been lucky in the Bris International lounge, I’ve rarely had issues with using the PCs there (waiting time). I often find in any lounge you can get annoying people having chats or even reading a book while they’re sitting at a PC!! Why not move somewhere else???
Although, my last time to LAX, the incoming flight was 4 hours late (when the bushfires were happening), and we ended up being 5 hours late leaving, so I had plenty of time to be patient about terminals opening up.