Rhonda Bracey: At Random

The only annoyance in our room suite at The Westin Seattle was that a power outlet’s ability to work was reliant on a light switch being turned on! I’ve had this once before, in a cheap motel somewhere in the US, but it was the last thing I thought of when the power outlet next to the desk stopped working and thus stopped charging my laptop etc.

There were lots of power outlets and light switches in this suite, but for some reason the one near the desk was chosen as the one to be linked to the light switch near the main door — some 10+ feet away! Go figure. You had to turn on the light switch for the power outlet to work…

How did we find this out? After the first night, I realised my laptop’s power light wasn’t on and nor was the light on the power board. So I tried the power board in other outlets around the suite and it worked fine. It just didn’t work in the power outlet near the desk. The top outlet was connected to a power board that ran the router, desk lamp etc, so I couldn’t swap it out. Anyhow, I called maintenance and the very nice man said that probably at one stage a lamp was connected to that outlet that turned on when you came in the door and turned on the light switch (one of TWO) near the door. Well, the lamp is no longer there, and there are PLENTY of other lights in the room. So why are these things still connected. You’ve got to think that they get regular complaints about this, so how come they don’t fix it?

I’m waiting in Alaska Airlines’ ‘Boardroom’, their club lounge, for my short flight to Vancouver which boards in about 40 minutes. Qantas Club members don’t have reciprocal rights with this lounge, but they do sell a US$30 day pass (and it took them a while to let me know about it after I’d exhausted all other possibilities!). As I was leaving within 2 hours, the girl kindly let me have a day pass for half price. But it included the usual stuff — free wireless, basic breakfast food and drink, etc. Oh, and they appear to have Aeron chairs (or similar) at all the workstations.

My flight to Vancouver is only 50 minutes or so, then I have a 5 hour wait for the flight to Hong Kong. Fortunately, Qantas has reciprocal rights with Cathay re: the lounges, so the wait shouldn’t be too arduous. The flight to Hong Kong is about 12-13 hours, I think. Whatever. I don’t arrive in HK until around 8pm Friday night (it’s Thursday morning now), and pretty much miss most of April 3 — it’s like it never existed for me (but then I got two March 25ths, so I guess I can’t complain  😉 )

Snow falling in Seattle in April

And no, that’s not an April Fool’s Day joke! I went up to the room suite during the mid-morning break and saw snow flakes dropping past the window. Seriously. I then thought that maybe they were up this high (40+ floors), but at ground level they would be gone. Nope. When I got to the next session (on the 4th floor) the snow was still coming down. It doesn’t appear to be accumulating on the ground, so I expect it’s melting pretty much straight away.

And right now at 12:30pm it’s still coming down (though more lightly now).

But it IS snowing. In Seattle. In April. Sheesh.