The next days I will have to finish my work here. However, the advantage of the internet is that you can pretty much work anywhere. So to some degree this is not a concern.
Yesterday morning there was some concern, because Gurunistha, one of the monks living here, was stuck at the SF airport. American Airlines decided to cancel all his flights or to delay them. You won’t see me in one of their planes anytime soon. It is ridiculous how they treat their customers. When you book a ticket, you can’t even count on what time you will land. Swami’s was supposed to be on the same flight, but his was cancelled and his rebooked flight got cancelled but finally made it last night to San Francisco. He will come back today to Audarya and we are looking forward to that.
But back to Gurunistha, he had little money and was calling us from a payphone. The whole story is still a mystery to me, but I called his booking agent Travelocity for 2,5 hours to rebook his ticket. This was what the United Airlines people had told him to do. Of course Travelocity had a foreign customer support which didn’t ease the rebooking and I lost the connection once. When I finally got someone on the line who was able to help me out, she told me that Gurunistha didn’t have an itinerary even though all the other operators had been able to see it. The lady seemed fried when I told I could still see it online, because she replied saying that “I could do the change online then.” She forced me into being an obedient customer, because after having to wait so long, I couldn’t dare lose this connection. Bad customer support in other words.
Finally Lufthansa, the company with which Gurunistha had booked the ticket with, was able to help him out and after having spent more than 24 hours with little money at the SF airport, he flew out last night.
Lesson for the day: service is priceless. So make sure you really want to pay less to get less.

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