Word: airports
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Muna Farah (Nisreen Faour), the Palestian single mother who moves with her son from the West Bank to Illinois in the new film Amreeka, is painfully unprepared for the world outside the West Bank. When the customs agent at Chicago airport immigration asks for her occupation, she answers "Yes" with great enthusiasm, referring to the political state she's lived in. She's the sort of person who, if confronted with the anti-immigrant sentiment "Why don't you just go home?" would naively attempt to give an earnest answer, explaining about the limited educational opportunities for her smart teenage...
...final destination. So rather than wait in line at the lost-luggage counter, I took a phone number to call in the report later. Which I did - only to be told sternly that lost-baggage reports cannot be taken over the phone, only in person at the airport. (See 50 essential travel tips...
...lost by the airline: its return free of charge. But after three calls to the baggage folks, the best I could do was get the bag tracked (it eventually made it to LaGuardia). I was told that I had to either pick it up myself at the airport or pay a hefty delivery charge. Three times I asked for a supervisor to whom I could make an appeal. Three times I was told the person I was talking to was a supervisor. (Big labor news: at Delta Airlines, everyone is a boss!) Finally, I asked for a customer-service number...
...planned, I landed in Colombo with my wife, two kids, and our luggage. To my astonishment, the customs had no clue about my transporting the robot to Sri Lanka. They decided to detain it in the airport and ordered me to bring a special letter from the Ministry of Defense to reclaim the box. They also told me to bring along enough Sri Lankan money to pay a fine and tax. I agreed to the fine but questioned why I should pay tax on a university prototype with no commercial value. Based on arbitrary criteria, one officer estimated a value...
...After one week, I went to the airport with the letter given by the Ministry of Defence. I paid a fine and the arbitrarily calculated tax. Interestingly, the cashier did not return my balance. An accompanying air force officer volunteered to get me the balance. Later, I found out that it was standard practice for the cashier to keep the balance for detained items...