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Also in case you decide to stay longer to do sightseeing or piggyback other travel while you're already overseas.
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Dec 15, 2015 01:13
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OK, I get you guys. I already have an offshore banking account with credit card so I'm not too fussed about that aspect. Really basic question but how do mileage/point systems work? Is it just a matter of racking up miles on a network and converting them to free tickets? I've seen a lot of mention of "status" on these plans. What does that mean? shrike82 fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Dec 15, 2015 |
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Dec 15, 2015 01:15
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shrike82 posted:OK, I get you guys. I already have an offshore banking account with credit card so I'm not too fussed about that aspect. That is an incredibly loaded question and the defintion varies widely based on where you're going and what is most important to you (upgrades, ease of redemption, nonstop options, etc). If you want to post where you're based and where in Asia you go most often, that's a decent start on what airline(s) make the most sense and we can dig deeper from there.
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Dec 15, 2015 03:06
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If you're being paid in USD instead of in different currencies, an HSBC Premier account is actually a pretty bad deal. (Their debit card has an FTF, for pete's sake!) A Schwab checking account lets you use any ATM, anywhere, worldwide, no problem. It comes in extremely handy. Get a Schwab checking account and abuse the hell out of it. Also, get and use a personal credit card and be reimbursed for everything you can. Points can be worth at least 2% of spending back in your pocket (and much much more if you're willing to earn miles instead of cash.)
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Dec 15, 2015 04:47
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Any tips on staying fresh while travelling all the time for work? I started a new job a month ago where I'm flying every week and in hotels Sun-Fri. By Friday the lack of sleep starts to get to me. I'm not in sales so coke is out, and caffeine can only do so much. I'm hoping I'll get used to the rhythm, but any advice for staying fresh would be appreciated.
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Dec 15, 2015 06:47
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Mulatto Butts posted:Any tips on staying fresh while travelling all the time for work? I started a new job a month ago where I'm flying every week and in hotels Sun-Fri. By Friday the lack of sleep starts to get to me. First, fly home Thursday or fly out Monday. Second, your home routine should be to shuffle one week of clothes out and another in and maybe some laundry. Have a 2nd of everything your travel pack so you don't have to repack. Repack equals stress. Third, stop spending time after work with your coworkers. That is time "on" and is going to wear your rear end out. Ditch them as soon as you can each day. Fourth, stop trying to make each week a vacation / exploration. Do your poo poo, go to the hotel, watch some TV, sleep. You can use those miles to come back for a vacation in the future. I don't know how much that really applies to you, but when I figured it out for my last job with that kind of travel it really eased things up for me.
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Dec 15, 2015 06:59
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Pick up running. Exercise is good for you and stay in good shape. Eat light as well so you don't feel so bloated and need to be having booze all the time. I actually don't mind the vacation or exploring part. Then again I don't really do that stuff much anymore because I keep on going to the same cities. Goon meets. Goon meets are cool, you meet up with a local host who are less pretentious than couch surfers. So you end up eating burgers and Mexican goon food all the time but it's fun. Oh and of course pack and extra electronic and clothes bag
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Dec 15, 2015 08:36
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Heading to Germany in a couple of days, got some questions for anyone that's been there: 1) What is the best option for navigation while driving around? I use Navigon while in the US and Canada and really like it since it downloads the maps on to my phone, so I don't have to rely on a data connection. I'd rather not pay $50 for Navigon for 5 days though. 2) I fly into Munich on Sunday morning, and I'd really like to use the arrivals lounge to shower and clean up before heading out for the day. Does anyone know if the arrivals lounge is after customs and baggage claim? Or do I need to keep some stuff in my carry on, and get my checked luggage after going to the arrivals lounge?
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Dec 15, 2015 14:42
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FunOne posted:Third, stop spending time after work with your coworkers. That is time "on" and is going to wear your rear end out. Ditch them as soon as you can each day. A million times this. After eating breakfast together, and working together, and then commuting back to the hotel together, I'm usually ready to ditch everyone and do my own thing at night. Luckily for me, most of my co-workers feel the same way. I usually do 1 nice dinner with them a week, but other than that, we are usually on our own after work.
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Dec 15, 2015 14:43
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Yeah, it's tempting to go boozing and/or fine dining with coworkers or clients/customers, but it really wears you out in the long run. Think about a normal week at home, would you substitute two hours of sleep with 2000 calories and a bottle of wine on three consecutive weekdays? And if you did, would you expect to not feel like poo poo?
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Dec 15, 2015 15:15
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DJCobol posted:A million times this. After eating breakfast together, and working together, and then commuting back to the hotel together, I'm usually ready to ditch everyone and do my own thing at night. Luckily for me, most of my co-workers feel the same way. I usually do 1 nice dinner with them a week, but other than that, we are usually on our own after work. I usually try to do one dinner with client side folks and one dinner with colleagues in a given week, but both tend to be pretty low key. Exercise, eat right, and limit drinking helps. Also, nthing to stop doing Sun-Fri, that's brutal and unreasonable. If you are continually going to the same place, consider leaving laundry with the hotel to reduce what you have to take with you and to lessen your packing stress.
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Dec 15, 2015 15:17
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DJCobol posted:Heading to Germany in a couple of days, got some questions for anyone that's been there: I've used maps.me. It's free, allows downloads of regions and provides routing without data.
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Dec 15, 2015 15:34
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bolind posted:Yeah, it's tempting to go boozing and/or fine dining with coworkers or clients/customers, but it really wears you out in the long run. Think about a normal week at home, would you substitute two hours of sleep with 2000 calories and a bottle of wine on three consecutive weekdays? And if you did, would you expect to not feel like poo poo? This is the biggest thing. I travel a lot more than most of my coworkers so when we travel together I hate it when they want to go out for a multi-hour dinner. If we get back to the hotel at 10 (and have an hour or two of work to do before even getting ready for bed) and have to be ready to leave at 7 or 7:30 that doesn't leave enough time to get sufficient rest. And you're dragging from having a heavy meal and booze every night. Plus like FunOne posted, those long meals are "on" time and mean you're basically working a 14-16 hour day with no time to relax. The downside if you decline the meals though is that you're missing out on what can be important networking opportunities, so you have to strike a balance. I use MyFitnessPal as a tracking app and it works wonders to stop me from over-eating on the road. Though your mileage may vary on that. You have to be disciplined about actually entering everything you eat.
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Dec 15, 2015 15:46
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Yeah I spent about six months back and forth to Luleå, Sweden last winter (usually three weeks there, one week back home) and by the latter end of the project I was eating at Max or taking some meat and cheese back to the hotel most nights because I got sick of group dinners eating up my entire night. Didn't help that my job lead was one of those fuckers that is seemingly incapable of ever being on time. And there's no such thing as a quick sit-down dinner in Sweden, those fuckers live at a goddamn glacial pace. It once took us four loving hours to eat a single-course meal just because of how slow service is there.
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Dec 15, 2015 16:40
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DJCobol posted:
I used Here Maps a bit in Germany, and even Google Maps has offline navigation now. Both are free. I'd give both a shot.
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Dec 16, 2015 00:07
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DJCobol posted:Heading to Germany in a couple of days, got some questions for anyone that's been there: Goons were giving me so much poo poo about not spending 50 bucks on a sat nav last year  I drove around the country a few times. Best navigation by far is actually google maps. If you rent a hertz car they provide a free wifi hotspot which you can take to your hotel room. And get a data card as a spare for your phone. Honestly, sat nav devices have horrible UI and loading times.
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Dec 16, 2015 04:18
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caberham posted:Goons were giving me so much poo poo about not spending 50 bucks on a sat nav last year National was $45 for the week, so I just sucked it up and bought Navigon Europe. I love the US program, so hopefully the EU version is just as good. It should be since they are a German company. I'm going back next year to go to Germany, Italy and a few other places, so I'll get my money's worth out of those 2 trips. I don't want to pay for international data, and my phone is locked since I'm still under contract so I don't think I can just get a different data card for it.
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Dec 16, 2015 14:38
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I've only rented from Hertz in Germany twice. But both times a GPS unit built into the dash came for free.
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Dec 16, 2015 15:50
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American locked phones are gross. But guys get a wifi hotspot. Great battery life and you can connect multiple devices without tethering.
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Dec 16, 2015 16:06
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caberham posted:Goons were giving me so much poo poo about not spending 50 bucks on a sat nav last year I think we were suggesting you get a standalone to avoid possibly expensive data rates on a SIM since you were concerned about saving your company money but we agreed you definitely needed something: caberham posted:We will also drive from Stuttgart to Nuremberg, to Dresden, and then to Germany. Hope I don't die
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Dec 16, 2015 16:54
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My route isn't exactly the same, but I'll be doing a lot of driving. Day 1 is Munich to Stuttgart (Porsche Museum) and then I'm staying the night in Heidelberg. Next day I'm going to a museum in Sinsheim, and then driving to Davos, Switzerland to stay at the Intercontinental to go skiing for the day. Then back to Munich for the BMW Welt, Dachau, brewery tours, the Christmas Market, and other stuff the last 2 days.
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Dec 16, 2015 23:41
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Be careful about driving on Swiss Roads. Non Swiss Plates need to pay for a daily highway toll as far as I know. You can go to a convenience store and buy a sticker and slap that on your windshield. If you are spending multiple days in Switzerland or driving around the roads a lot, do get one.
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Dec 18, 2015 04:55
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caberham posted:Be careful about driving on Swiss Roads. Non Swiss Plates need to pay for a daily highway toll as far as I know. You can go to a convenience store and buy a sticker and slap that on your windshield. If you are spending multiple days in Switzerland or driving around the roads a lot, do get one. This is correct though I think it is all cars. It applies to motorways only, is 40 Swiss francs, and is valid for 14 months. You can find more information at the Swiss site. If you're renting a car you could get lucky and already have one.
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Dec 18, 2015 10:35
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caberham posted:Be careful about driving on Swiss Roads. Non Swiss Plates need to pay for a daily highway toll as far as I know. You can go to a convenience store and buy a sticker and slap that on your windshield. If you are spending multiple days in Switzerland or driving around the roads a lot, do get one. Thanks for the tip. I'll see if the rental car I get has one, and if not I'll stop and pick one up. I'm only there for 2 days before heading back to Munich.
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Dec 18, 2015 14:12
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caberham posted:American locked phones are gross. Trade offs. Choices.
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Dec 18, 2015 14:46
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DJCobol posted:Thanks for the tip. I'll see if the rental car I get has one, and if not I'll stop and pick one up. I'm only there for 2 days before heading back to Munich. It's called a "vignette". Which is good to know unless you wanna be like me on my first trip and fail miserably in an attempt to use rudimentary German to explain to a gas station attendant who speaks no English that you want a toll sticker.
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Dec 18, 2015 14:58
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DIA is a goddamn clusterfuck today. e: haha jk, TSA basically just said gently caress it and let everyone go through metal detectors and didn't require shoe or laptop removal Noctone fucked around with this message at 19:06 on Dec 18, 2015 |
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Dec 18, 2015 18:13
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AgrippaNothing posted:But more gadgets mean less noodles. I was in in CDG for 3 hours from 21:00 ~ 24:00 in terminal G. Most of the stores were closed and the selection of food was limited. Normally you can't go wrong with any cafe and sandwich in Paris but I was out of luck  I saw a group of mainland aunties and uncles huddling around the hot water dispenser. Some were making noodles and man I was jealous. Then there's this guy who is ultra hard core http://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/1735023/cash-strapped-migrant-worker-who-became-online-hit-after-rustling-meal
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Dec 18, 2015 20:30
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Noctone posted:DIA is a goddamn clusterfuck today. Hoooo yeah I almost missed my flight today. The family of four in front of me just started to unpack luggage and throw it around everywhere at the bin pick up part of security. The TSA agent just came up and was like what the gently caress. The lady had like 3 carryons somehow and tried to go through with her shoes after all that. This is sky priority too augh.
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Dec 18, 2015 22:48
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Yeah if there's one thing I've become completely loving jaded about in my life, it's flying. And I only fly maybe a couple dozen times a year at most, I can't imagine how terrible it must be for those of y'all that fly much more often. American airports in particular are always an amateur hour shitshow.
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Dec 18, 2015 23:15
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Pre check alleviates a lot. Not that there isn't problem airports/seasons/days but I do feel like it works out to a net benefit far more often than not. Before that existed and after 9/11? Ugh.
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Dec 19, 2015 03:25
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aaaaand done for the year!
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Dec 19, 2015 04:19
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sellouts posted:Pre check alleviates a lot. Not that there isn't problem airports/seasons/days but I do feel like it works out to a net benefit far more often than not. Chinese airports are pretty bad as well. Everyone gets really close to each other, more shoving, more crying and fighting flight attendants and worst of all, a lot more delays. Thankfully public transportation is decent and people take high speed rail as an alternative. The saver is that security is seen as theatre so no one really gives a poo poo and dont power trip you like TSA
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Dec 19, 2015 04:23
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shrike82 posted:I'm joining a strat consultancy soon (an MBB) and expect to be spending 50% of my time abroad. Are there any basic business travel tips I should be aware of?  KYOON GRIFFEY JR posted:How are you an EP and low value?  The 8 SWU's definitely make it worthwhile. After this year, likely not. 4 is a lot less.
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Dec 19, 2015 05:41
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shrike82 posted:I'm joining a strat consultancy soon (an MBB) and expect to be spending 50% of my time abroad. Are there any basic business travel tips I should be aware of? Anyone you were working with and thought was even halfway decent is in fact a giant shithead for not mentioning that you need to looking to airline programs. Well, solid in for my Bangkok treat for yet another year of having a pretty poor excuse for a life, losing my partner and finding it impossible to maintain social relations with anyone that I'm not working with and mashing my elbows with other assholes on the horrid new slimline seats that are near ubiquitous or worse, tore up RJs. SEA - IAH (f) - NRT (F) - BKK (J) - FRA (F) - IAH (F )- SEA (f) Really looking forward to experiencing both ANA and TG in F, the TG Royal First lounge with spa at BKK is going to be amazing. Then of course many hours of pleasure and astute service that comes with LH F ground and air service. This will be my 5 quack There you have it, down 260K and I still have 350K in the bank with no plan in 2016. Perhaps I will fall in love and then I will be able to do something amazing for us with all the miles i pile in the coming year. I'm a very sad person. Whatever. Just don't loving leave your miles on the goddamn table. AgrippaNothing fucked around with this message at 16:44 on Dec 19, 2015 |
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Dec 19, 2015 16:32
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Dude. I give you poo poo but that is a bummer. You made a bunch of F tickets depressing. Hang in there and have a relaxing trip!
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Dec 19, 2015 18:54
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It'll be a cool trip and just look at it as the reset button for a good 2016!
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Dec 19, 2015 20:17
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AdrenalinG posted:
I have never understood people who MR but hey good for you I guess?
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Dec 19, 2015 20:18
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sellouts posted:Dude. I give you poo poo but that is a bummer. You made a bunch of F tickets depressing. We're cool and thanks. I'm fleeing Christmas this year in style and I'll feel stupid as poo poo if I mope and don't make some good memories. The overall message is that this poo poo is rough on people and if you got people that love and put up with your absentee rear end, hug 'em for me. Takes a special kind of person to do this and takes good one to put up with someone that does it. I'll do some reports cause with all the F and the Conrad, this is gonna be pretty amazing I think. What image service to posters usually use now that waffle images is gone 
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Dec 19, 2015 21:12
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AgrippaNothing posted:We're cool and thanks. I'm fleeing Christmas this year in style and I'll feel stupid as poo poo if I mope and don't make some good memories. Imgur is pretty good for hosting. Sorry to hear it was a bad end of the year, I hope your vacation is fun!
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Dec 19, 2015 21:17
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