Threat to Omi

Each year I travel to Hungary, if nothing else comes in my way, such as held up vacations or running short of financial means or others on this line. Each year I call Air France and order my plane ticket reservation going over dates, making last minute vacation calculations to see if I can squeeze in one extra day, and then always, always telling the lovely young lady at the other end of the line that 1. I will spend the night in Paris when I'm coming back and that 2. I will take the AF 2694 flight when I'm going because I would like to see Paris during daylight "now this time for real" ^_^. And each time the only moment I lose my smile is when I cathegorically insist that I'm flying through Caracas or Bogotá. All South, nothing North. Put me on Taca, never on American Airlines. It's my thing. I don't care that flying through the U.S. I can carry up to 40 or 43Kg of baggage while goutn through Caracas or Bogotá I'm allowed only to 20 Kg. I don't care for times and schedules or the fact that I have a valid American Visa, which I have used only twice in my life, and it was to, yes, do transbording from Miami to my plane going to Paris. I don't like the Airport, and don't even care to know its name or code. People is rude, from the custom officer to floor sweeping dude. I don't want my passport to be messily stamped without any order, with a seal oozing so much ink it stains several pages. I'm used to the neat Costa Rican customs that orderly open the passport, go through the pages and angle the stamp in such a neat manner that it takes little space, it is nicely visible, the ink is rightly measured, so it doesn't stain and other stamps are allowed in the other pages. Like it should.

I don't like the fact that custom officers look so shabby. I remember the first time I stared in horror at this guy, MORGUE-WHITE, skin so translucent I thought he would glow in the dark, with HUGE tatoos, close cropped bond hair and camouflage uniform worn in almost drunken disarray. I was shocked, and back then I was quite a vision of carelessness myself, I cut my ouw hair and wore baggy, male clothes. (I was in the University, so I was allowed to live my "hippy" style.) Yeah, yeah, ugly guy... whatever... who cares? Well, try not to care when a dude like that glares down at you because you slipped him a Costa Rican passport and you would like to smile and wave your Air France ticket and say: "Worry not. No money would make me stay here..." The flux of mean people actually start at the plane, where the flight attendant SHOUTS at the passangers:

"Seatbelt! Seatbelt!"

Well, yeah, forgive me for being so delicate and expecting EVERYBODY to be like the flight attendants of Taca, Air France, KLM and Malév, who silently walk up and down the aisles with their hands neatly behind their backs and then politely lean forward to the passanger who has not buckled him or herself up and say:

"Madam/Sir, please fasten your seatbelt."

Odd... I can't remember the English word for ... when the airplane leaves the ground. The word always comes to me in French: "decollage".

So, mean people. At the Airport of Miami people bark at you and pointedly ignore you. Not a smile. If you speak to them in English, they will force Spanish on you, and if your speak to them in Spanish, they force English on you. They should walk around with a billboard disclaiming the language they are willing to speak. The stores have NOTHING your would like to buy, and talk about "selection", the same useless Revlon lipstick in EVERY store and the same Disney sweat suit. Coke cans are HIDEOUSLY expensive, and Dude, I have had coke at Paris, so I KNOW expensive, restaurants are STINKY and conveniently located next to the bathrooms, which STINK so fucking much, nor angels or idiots would venture into its stench-soaked guts. You rather wait for the plane and take a leak there than venturing into those torture pits of stench.

So, in a nutshell... through the U.S.? HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Never.

Well, more to the point, in today's Washington Post (which is neglecting to send me the full newspaper and is sending me only sections) I came to read this article that says that as a new order from the DHS (the folks that will be now in charge of spying instead of the good ol' CIA), all travelers Laptops will be detained for unspecified time. The contents could be copied and the computer searched away from travelers all they want. This applies also to U.S. Citizens. You know, more anti-terrorist measures. Geez, might as well do as the Chinese and censure the Internet! I mean, what the fuck? They can't do that!!! I mean, loads of people are not terrorists, but they do have WORK files in their laptops, for mostly laptops are carried around for working purposes, and a lot of that information is classified. Financial statements, contracts, sensitive market information, agreements... Just to give you an example: when doing the Roaming agreements, operators keep in secret the discounts they offer to some counterparts. You can know the "face value" fee charged, known as IOT or Inter Operator Tariff, which must be disclaimed and can't be changed, but you can't know the agreements which operators do with each other to stablish a discount or some arrangement based on this fee. If executives have to surrender their laptops at the border, what would stop the DHS from copying the contents and then blackmarketing the information among interested corporations? Or let's go less conspicuous. I'm Company A and Company B is messing with my market share. I take a group of my executives and infiltrate them in the custom office. I have them copy the contents of the laptops of some Company B executives and the CEO (why not?) and then forward it or deliever it to me and my analysts and so, smack Company B out of mah turf... and while I'm at it, take his old turf as well.

I don't keep company secrets in my beloved laptop, Omi, and sure the custom officers would have a hell of a time starting him up, since I still haven't fixed his DIM card problem (but he's such a sweet, he still works for me and does everything just perfect!!! My baby is simply PERFECT!!! ^_^ I love him so much!), but once they get there they will gauge their eyes out due to the brutally large amount of NC-17 slash fics and stories, as well as my ongoing novels, which are, really, so hard to read due to my overly tight-packed style. (A lot of introspection, which makes the reading heavy.) In other words, they would gain nothing by copying my laptop. No secrets and certainly no terrorism, only slash, economics, letters, downloaded legal codes, all kinds of projects and procedures... old homeworks, drafts upon drafts, more drafts, loads of music and the history of Internet searching which will invariably go on a loop of: Amazon.com, Yahoo, Gmail, Google, Cuil, Mail.com, Facebook... and the blogs on Blogger and Freeblog.hu I religiously check. Hehehe... this reminds me of this tee shirt I want to buy. Hyne, I swear, I'm so close to buying it!! (If I can talk Jetty into getting one too, I'll SO BUY IT!!!) The tee says: Get a Taste of Religion, Lick a Witch. For a Lutheran like myself that could be too heavy, specially because I adhere to my Lutheran church for tradition and family reasons, but as I was telling my good friend Márton over the Facebook, God, religion and church are not the same. The last two are man-made. So, why not? Plus, the tee really looks so cool! and it looks awesome to wear at the gym.

Where was I? Oh yes, U.S. customs plotting to take our laptops. The way I see it, this whole "anti-terrorist" strategy has actually achieved the goal of the terrorists. I don't know any terrorists, nor I follow conversations with them, or know what are their goals, but as I look around, what have they achieved? If they did what they did because they hate the U.S., well, now the Government have finished the job for them and made the U.S. unlivable. Would anyone like to go there? No. What sense of security will the population have? Which foreign executive would risk to go to a meeting or a seminar in the U.S. or give information to any executive who would be flying to the U.S.? People travel with their WORSE shoes because U.S. customs are known for ripping shoes off, destroying them and not paying any compensation. Now working isn't possible either? And if you fly in today at 5 am and have to give a seminar at 8 am and your laptop his held up? Then what? When will you get it back? Will you get it back? Are you sure it will be in pristine conditions? Can you be certain it hasn't "developed" some vyrus, maybe files have been damaged... you never know... maybe it was opened, closed and now it won't work. And if it was new and the service won't take it, the warranty won't apply because it has been opened by unauthorized people? You know how it work! This could void a whole fucking lot of very, very important warranties!

The abuse atthe borders isn't something new, and while anywhere else custom officers are nice and polite (you should see the ones at Charles De Gaule! The smile, and are so extremely polite! In last December this lovely Custom Officer paged through my Hungarian Passport when I gave it to him.

- Quelque probléme, monsieur? (Something wrong, Sir?)- I asked.

He smiled and gave it back to me.

- Pas du tout! J'ai jamais vu un passport hongrois. C'est jolie! (Not at all! I have never seen a Hungarian passport. It's beautiful!)) in the U.S. you have to endure being treated like a Jew in the hands of Nazis. Your belongings are destroyed, you are held up and delayed and your humam rights are trashed. This is just icing.

I can avoid it, and I systematically do my traveling through South and avoiding any visits there, whether by job or pleasure reasons. I don't go visiting my friend Roo, who lives in California, and I just make sure my boss don't consider me for seminars in the U.S. I guess I would go to the extent of denying to have my visa to avoid going, and if they send me to get it (can't because I already have it) I might take the morning off, go shopping and then say that it was denied because I .... "popped up on the system as a Nazi Officer sought for war crimes"... or something of the sort. But now, with Omi in danger, when my first thing after getting my boarding ticket and locating my gate (it's always THE SAME, so I don't have to do much locating), the first thing I do is locate a power outlet, hook my beloved Omi and sit either doing some work (because, really, I'm such a natural workaholic), or composing on word the entry I'll publish in the blog as soon as I get in the vicinity of Internet. I can't and wouldn't survive if Omi is taken away from me. Hyne, the first thing I do is carefully unpack Omi from my hand baggage and tell the customs:

"It's my laptop... are you sure the X-Rays won't damage him? It's very, very important for me!"

And then, when he comes up the other end I hurriedly pick him up, kiss him (yes, I'm a looney who kisses her laptop) and carefully pack him back into the handbaggage. I even bother flight attendants when they try to help me put the luggage in the overhead compartment.

"No, no! My laptop is in there, and he stays with me."
"It will be safe up here, Madam, and it will be more comfortable for you too during the flight."
"You can put the luggage up, but the laptop stays with me. My peace of mind depends of that."

I guess I'm not the only one who feels this way. After this, I'm sure I won't be the only one avoiding U.S. customs to avoid the extra pain of traveling, and also to care for what little privacy and personal posessions I have. It's kinda ironic that in a world where all State assets are being "privatized", private individuals are being deprived of their own privacy. "Private" is something allowed only for those who have the capital and political means to afford it. Now, it not only a matter of money, but a matter of corruption as well.