Our Tax Dollars at work..

It has been an interesting week to say the least.

Left San Jose last Sunday afternoon to visit a few Texan cities and came back Friday night.

Needless to say the kids were happy to see daddy back, the wife expected daddy to be his 100% as though he has not left the couch after a week of hectic work, and the work just continues on..

While this is all expected and is being handled with some deep breathing and selective shutting off of various senses at various times, the trip did have its tense moments.

My drivers license, god bless the DMV expired in November. Anticipating this had gone and stood in line for a few hours at the DMV in late October and received an extension (which is a piece of paper with my signature and DMV seal etc.) which lasted a few months.

We keep waiting for this license that never showed and have traveled multiple times with the expired license and this piece of paper. As it so happens, the paper also has an expiry date and it had "expired" recently!

Without realizing this, yours truly keeps showing this piece of paper and travels.. the typical conversation when I show my ID will be :

ID'er (TSA agent, Car renter, Hotel lobby clerk, etc. ) : This license is expired. You know that right ?

Me : Oh Yeah. Here is my extension. Waiting for the license to come in the mail

ID'er : Okay, go right on..

So on this trip, got waived through San Jose TSA, Boarding card checking dude, AVIS car renting dude at counter .. and finally when I was about to go out of the parking lot some kid who probably gets paid a minimum wage at AVIS to verify your identity against your contract says :

Sir, your license has expired

Me : Oh Yeah. Here is my extension. Waiting for the license to come in the mail

MWD : Sir, your extension has also expired. I cannot let you drive out with this vehicle. I have to cancel this contract ASAP.

Me : WTF !!!

So had to think on my feet, call a colleague to the airport and get him to rent me a vehicle.

Subsequent to that the same Drivers license was used at two different hotel lobbies and they waved me through while my friend couldn't contain his laughter watching me hand it over nonchalantly. What else could I do?

That got me worried. What if the Austin TSA flagged this and don't let me fly back to San Jose without a "valid" photo ID?

Spent a few hours on hold with the California DMV and finally reached a person in Sacramento headquarters who was nice enough to send me another extension by FAX !

The funny thing was Austin TSA dudes who looked at my expired license and waved me through as well! I did have the extension in my pocket if asked and was ready go through the "Oh yeah..." routine..

While I was contemplating all this tax dollars at work, an older lady (in her early seventies is my guess) who happened to be just in front of me on the security line was pulled out because she had a tub of skin cream. The conversation with the agent was

TSA : Maam, we need to take you and the bag because there is something in your bag which should have been in a separate ziploc bag..

Lady : It is skin cream and it is almost empty

TSA : 100ml or less maam. You know the rules

Lady: The tub says more but the amount left in the tub is way less than 100 mL

TSA : You have two options. Either we throw this away now or you go back in line to the counter and put it in your bag and check it in and come back through the counter.

Lady : Fine. Throw it away ! (and shakes her head)

That sparked a different thought in my head. With technology being so advanced why cannot they

a. detect that it is indeed skin creme
b. make the lady put some on her skin to show it is indeed skin creme
c. check it to be really <100 ml

and send it on!

Better still do away with this 100mL bullshit because I am sure the real terrorists who bring explosives will manage to pack a punch in <100 mL and will be whisked in with good valid ID's!

Took one look at the drum where the skin creme went and was appalled by the sight of so many tubes of diaper rash creme, face creme, shaving cremes, perfumes, colognes, etc. etc.

How much of value is wasted across the United States with this stupid rule? We seriously need to reevaluate the security policy that continues to harass folks and does not do what it is supposed to do..

Until then we continue on with thought like "Hmm.. didn't know we could blow up planes with diaper rash cream!"

As irony would have it, the new drivers license arrived by post on Saturday afternoon!

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My name is Bombay Paati and I am not a ...

Wait..

maybe it should read

"My name is Bombay Paati(grandma) and I am probably on the errorlist!"

The MIL landed here yesterday. Her flight landed at 11:30. As usual went to the airport at 11:30 and by the time I walked to the arrivals area it was 11:45. Usually MIL is the first one to come out because she gets wheelchair assistance. Long flights make her feet swell and an accident has left her ankle buckled.

This time I waited till 12, then 12:30, then 1 then 1:30 and finally started worrying.

What can one do when someone doesn't come out two hours after the flight lands and everyone else seems to have come out?

Who do you call?

Then finally she comes out in a wheel chair at 2:00!

Apparently she was randomly selected for a Department of Homeland Security screening.

The line for people who went for this screening was 1 hour!

Then the guys asked her some routine questions, thoroughly checked her suitcases and said "fine, go."

Some dudes got paid good money for doing this and the tax we pay went towards that good money.

Meanwhile my feet started hurting after standing for 2 1/2 hours in the arrivals area. There are only a handful of seats and they were all taken by elderly people waiting for their loved ones.

Was so glad to be home a good 4 1/2 hours after leaving for the pickup!

Dear DHS agents,

Sari wearing grandmas who cannot walk fast enough do not pose a threat to national security.

Surely, you must have some stats on the number of south Indian grandmas who have successfully done any damage. What does that data tell you? Or does it not matter.

In the meantime someone who really poses a threat would be getting away for lack of scrutiny, because you are too busy questioning grandma, no?

On a side note, I was asked to finish drinking all my water and all my coke at Hong Kong or toss it before getting on a plane. this in spite of my drinking samples of both and showing the search dudes! Granted it was purchased on the coupons Cathay Pacific gave us because of the flight delay, but still a waste of good money, no?

Apparently this is only for US bound flights. All other outgoing flights do not have to go through this.

You surely make us feel very special!

Luckily for us, grandma has been here long enough to not hold this against the US of A. She knows that this is standard operating procedure here, however stupid it might be. In her words, this is nothing compared to how you asked my MIL's MIL (our kids eighty year old great grandma) to take off her Mangalsutra and when she gave you a WTF stare, you insisted on frisking her in a booth!

Oh well, time and a continuous education process for the ways of other cultures will heal all this. They say the world is shrinking. We sincerely hope the USA becomes a nice part of this shrinking world.

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Security...

Security is a double edged sword!

Take for example the full body scanners that are going to be at most major airports in the near future. You pretty much get an x-ray picture of everyone's nakedness (be it man, woman or child) and the airport security people get to watch you and your dear ones naked on the x-ray machine.

1. This is a violation of privacy in the name of security

2. Reminds you of those Holocaust movies where the Jews get paraded naked past a checkpost and they have that bleak resigned look on their faces and their biggest concern is not the nudity but the fear of losing their life. (except the irony here is you are being stripped bare on a machine by the supposed good guys!)

3. Apparently this doesn't work as intended.

4. These machines are made by companies which have a connection to the officials who is responsible for putting these machines in the airports. . . (this is like politicians who are on the boards of weapons manufacturers pushing for the Iraq war). Looks like somethings never change)

Someone posts an inappropriate comment and we think of turning on comment moderation. Then we realize the hazzle it becomes and turn it off. (Wish google would publish stats of how many people turned off comment moderation after turning it on for the first time).

People start violating my openness in facebook and I stop using facebook! There are only so many things where you can go into a shell.. you choose your options based on the bandwidth you have to handle all these security vs. freedom compromises!

Have pretty much stopped using facebook, twitter etc. and this blog is the only online thing I do. So imagine my surprise when I was presented with this security thing to read...

and I failed!

On a sidebar note, why should all these different sites have different logins, userids, passwords etc.

The way the world is going, the best thing would be to ask for the dad and mom to request a userid for the kid the day it is born, along with the birth certificate, social security number etc.

That way the kids birth certificate will arrive in 2 days.

The Social Security number in a week

Passport in 6 weeks

UUID (Universal User ID- I am patenting this concept if it hasn't been patented already) will arrive same day with premade google, yahoo, hotmail, twitter, facebook, myspace, etc. etc. accounts...

The kid will be able to use this ID on his/her 10th birthday?!

In any case, back to the topic of security, I think if we take the first family, and the top 10 Homeland security officials and post their full body scan pictures on the internet, this thing will go away real soon!

What do you think?

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The one that always gets away

As most of you have seen in every form of news media, there was another plane bombing attempt over the Christmas break, which thankfully was not successful.

Now, the agencies which should focus more on "how the hell did this guy get the explosives on the plane" have instead focused on "how can we harass regular folk more" after this incident..

The latest reports read(this is from Times)

"In the final hour before landing in the US, plane passengers are now banned from standing up, using toilets, opening lockers and covering themselves with blankets."

What next?

In the final hour before landing in the US, plane passengers will have to get naked and freeze on their seats when the pilot says "freeze". They will not be allowed to move till the plane lands and the pilot says "unfreeze"?

Unfreakingbelievable!

One stupid dude gets through and now every airline passenger will suffer for it the next three years or so. Especially pity those who now have to travel with the elderly or small kids.

I still remember,

a. having to throw away my baby's milk at a security counter only to find that the plane carried no milk

b. my wife's 75 year old grandmother having to remove her mangalsutra(thali) at the check point and her refusal ending up in extra searches

c. so many shaving gels, toothpastes, etc. being tossed for their size (I still think if you are really a bomber, you would figure out a way to do the damage within 100ml of volume!) and the fact that the toothpaste clearly smelled like kids gum, had Dora on it and my little one was ready to even eat and show it was indeed toothpaste all falling on the deaf years of the security inspectors whose only qualification seemed to be a healthy hatred for humanity..

d. the extra long double, triple safety checks at international airports, for US bound flights only

e. my relative who was standing in his undies in front of everyone because his pant was not able to hold on its own when he removed his belt at the security checkpoint (come on now... if you have a big tummy which expands and contracts with every meal, you have have one of those wide belts and you try holding a boarding pass, a wallet and your pants all at the same time and trying to have your hands flat so the security dude can do his metal detector thingy on you!)

More security measures will be underway over the next few months they tell us.

If I cannot be part of the solution, would like to be part of the problem.. not the terror problem, but the airport security problem!

Going forward they should make a new rule that all passengers will be given a plastic poncho/jump suit kind of thing before the flight. It will come with a "built in undie" and that will be the only thing they will be allowed to wear on the flight. The jump suits will be color coded by airlines and will have advertisement logos on them from sponsors.

All other things like poonals, aranaikayars, thalis, etc. etc. will have to be packed with the clothes and jewelry and put in the suitcase. No carry on baggage of any kind will be allowed.

You will be weighed before and after you come out of any restroom and MRI'ed to verify that there are only expected changes in your body after your restroom session. As an added bonus, airport doctors who watch your MRI will give you a free prescription for your problems they find during the scan. They might even reassign your seat with respect to the bathroom location, based on what they find in the scan.

This way no need to search anyone.

Time to start "airclothing.com" and start getting those sponsors for the jumpsuits and make some money.

Oh wait, isn't that how they transfer prisoners on airplanes in the movies?

Next time maybe if our entire family takes swimming lessons and starts rowing fast enough, we could go visit relatives in India by boat?

Seriously, flying is going to be soooo overrated!

On another note, what was this guy thinking? Blowing up a few people on air and a lot more on the ground is going to do what? (other than make those TSA inspectors snap on new gloves and smile their evil smile). Also, even with all the convoluted logic of 70 virgins waiting for this dude after he kills himself and everyone around him (all media tells us that the number 70 is accurate, although no one seems to have come back from the dead to verify the headcount of the virgins), what use are 70 virgins if you have blown your groins to smithereens?

More than a quarter of a million people perished in a Tsunami five years ago and the world keeps turning.

Now what can we do to stop more of these "undrawer" bombers from getting on planes? How can an average airline passenger dude like me help? ( No, I will not stop complaining about how airline travel has become a crappy experience..)

Please tell us how to make things normal again or at least go in the right direction?

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When life gives you lemons

You just take it to Seattle..

No. I am not making that up. The MIL is in Seattle now, spending time with her new Daughter in law, and of course her son.

Unfortunately, neither of them blog and the unique MIL-DIL bonding relationship which is something as primordial as a man woman relationship, will not be chronicled! We are guessing that many SUN TV episodes worth of material may have been created by now. As usual, I digress..

This has been an extra long two weeks at work for me and a real hard time for San, who took the brunt of the kids boredom attacks, but we have "Prevailed"!

Now for the title of the post. When the MIL went to Seattle, not only did she take some lemons from here, which had to be moved around the bags, but she decided to take a "thenkuzhal maker" (refer this post.. the thing on the bottom right in the photo).

After opening her hand bag, the screening dudes were shocked. They had never seen an assorted item list like this. The MIL freaked out and she waved for me and the little one to stay a little longer outside the screening area. A team of people were now working on her with hand held gizmos that beeped all over the place. They checked her bangles, her thali, aranakayar, etc. etc. and finally after making sure that she is just another heavily jeweled middle aged desi woman, moved her aside.

We breathed a sigh of relief and started to wave goodbye, and she gave us the "Stop" sign with her palm, again! Now a lady started to wear gloves and walked towards the MIL. While we were worried that they were going to put her through hell, we saw a sigh of relief from the MIL. They were just wearing gloves to go through her baggage. That is when they pulled up the "thenkuzhal maker", for everyone to see!

To the untrained non-desi eye, it looks like some instrument that would be more at ease on a shelf in a physics lab, and the inspector (who looked like he was of Korean origin) was absolutely clueless. Somehow he let her go after a brief conversation.

Once in Seattle, we asked the MIL, "So what did you tell him?"

"I told him it is a mini pasta maker and he was convinced!" was the answer.

Mini pasta maker, indeed.

Note to self : Screen MIL's baggage at home when traveling with her the next time.

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