Autodesk University 2004 ~ Heading Home
It was bizarre that Mike Burke (Connell Wagner Wellington) & I managed not to meet all week. Thanks to Beau, we got in touch and had breakfast together before flying out. Turns out we were both traveling on the same flights back to NZ. During the Las Vegas/Los Angeles we caught up with how we thought AU had gone. (Photo: Gambling in Las Vegas goes right to the boarding gate!)
Once in the international terminal at Los Angeles it was a bit of a worry to find the board listing flights had nothing other than the Flight Number and Destination. All the others had boarding gates, times, “status” etc that you usually see. What’s that about, no flight? Went around the corner to find another display with the full information, it was just a bad line on the LED screen!
Got to the gate and there was no sign of a plane but we were early. Over an hour or two several hundred people built up but at boarding time there was still no plane. It arrived after a while then they announced a delay. They were boarding using two lines & machines and as they called the sequence I joined the shorter line but it turned out to be slower. I presented my boarding card and the machine spat it back out. They tried again with no luck then keyed in the info. I could see the screen and was a valid passenger with no seat allocation available. I then heard “The credit card has been rejected, he can’t board” which caused a heart flutter till I remembered I didn’t pay by card. It was the people in the other line who seemed more than a little agitated. They now had a late plane; both boarding lines stalled and were looking a little stressed. I was handed a different boarding card and told, “You’ve been upgraded to business”. I didn’t argue!
It was nice up there and the extra space, better food etc was lovely on such a long flight. Reclining in Bose Quiet Comfort silence I decided that I could get quite used to this!
I was sitting next to a comedy writer for NBC who was heading to NZ to script a pilot show for “The Flight Of the Conchords”. NBC saw them at the Montreal Comedy Festival and signed them up. The concept for the show sounded great and we had a long conversation about NZ comedy, culture and how a Kiwi reacts to arriving in the US.
He had worked on Larry Shandling, NewsRadio (I loved that show), and recently a US adaptation of “The Office”. I told him it was one of my favorite shows and hoped he hadn’t wrecked it! I gave him a list of my favorite comics/shows and he hadn’t heard of many (Little Britain, League of Gentlemen, Black Books etc). When he checks those out will probably wonder what kind of psycho he was sitting beside!
It will be great to see what becomes of this deal. A great end to the trip but now its back to the real world again!
