Costa Rica was great but Spirit Airlines was no picnic. (Unless the picnic involved lots of bugs of varying stickiness while your ice cream melts and fourteen babies surround you bawling at full volume. Then, yes, dealing with Spirit is very much like a picnic). After reading countless blogs/articles about the horror that is Spirit Airlines I figure why not one more to add to the campfire tales? So here it is, light a fire, turn on the scary music and get the marshmallows roasting as I share my scary Spirit story.

The Time Line for our 6pm flight: [Fri. 4pm: Get boarding passes] --> [Fri. 5:30pm: Wait to board] --> [Fri. 6:00pm: Flight delayed. --> [Fri. 6:30pm: Flight delayed: -->[Fr. 7:00pm: Flight delayed]-->[Fri. 8:00pm. Flight delayed. Please take train, go all the way back to the ticketing counter and re-book for another day] -->[Fri. 8:20. Ticketing counter] -->[Fri. 9:00. Still in non moving line. K dashes to explain time crunch. Jason sends us to gate. We go through security, board train, run to gate] -->[Fri. 9:20. Gate folks: go back to ticketing. Our seats are given away. No room. After 20 minutes of pleading and agreeing not to ask for a hotel, food we can go. After a 35 minute hold we're booked on an 11am flight Saturday and reach Ft. Ld. atmidnight] -->[Sat. 11am. Flight delayed] -->[Sat. 2pm. Flight delayed] -->[Sat. 2:30pm. Flight delayed]-->[Sat. 3:00pm. Plane arrives, pilots are tired. Flight cancelled] -->[Sat. 11:00pm. 31 hours later board flight]

I know things happen, I "get it", BUT this isn't a fluke. It happens constantly. And its not just the cancelled flights. The Spirit Airlines ticketing counters are beyond words. Think cute red barn of normal barn proportions. Picture it filled with 62 goats. 12 cows. 13 sheep and 4 fish flopping while the hay catches fire. That would be a less chaotic place to be than the Spirit Airline ticketing counter. The line isn't a line, its a jumbled mass of people, swirling around in a strange maze practically out to the street. There are suitcases abandoned or unattended in the middle of the aisles, the exits blocked while people nap or chat on the phone. Where does the line begin? Where does it end? Who knows? Certainly not anyone who works for Spirit. Each person is helped at the counter for 5-15 min. (Yes, I timed it). This nightmare existed EACH time we dealt with ticketing. On the way there. On the way back one week later.

And they Lie! In Atlanta, they said it was chaotic because a huge storm in Ft. Lauderdale had busted their computers. My brother who spent a good portion of the day in Ft. Lauderdale (and was our hero that day, thank you lil' bro) told us it had been an unusually beautiful sunshiny cloud free day. Why the lies?

But Aisha, you may counter, Surely once the higher ups find out this stuff will stop. Well, if you thought that, you'd be wrong. Here's an excerpt of an e-mail Spirit Airlines CEO, Ben Baldanza, wrote in a "reply all" response to a complaint by a customer affected by Spirit's delays: "...we owe him nothing as far as I'm concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He's never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny." Yep, the higher ups at Spirit really care.

The PR response to the debacle? Even more caring: Alison Russell a spokeswoman for the Miramar-based airline stood by Baldanza's response..."No, we really don't believe we have anything to apologize for regarding Ben's e-mail," Russell said. "I can tell you that Ben cares enormously about our customers and our customer service. Ben said what is exactly true: we don't owe the customer anything. People can and do post whatever they would like on the Internet."..."Truthfully, I'm genuinely not concerned," she said. "People are going to have a blog for good things or bad things. We are very pleased with our customer service,we are very pleased with what we do."
Mr. Baldanza, saving a penny's great, its a reason to fly your airline BUT its not the only reason. We also fly to get where we need to at a reasonable time and deserve respect. Just because I saved $20 going with you doesn't make up for being treated like I'm part of an anarchist cattle convention.

Perhaps Mr. Baldanza, you can dismiss this since you don't have to deal with it. You dont have to endure your ticketing counter when you check in for flights. Customer service doesnt put you on hold for 34 minutes. Perhaps its hard to understand what you dont experience but if your airline keeps it up I dont know how its bad rep will balance the "cheap" tickets. Yes, you you may be cheaper but I know one thing, after what I went through, I will NEVER fly Spirit again. Period. Treat others how you want to be treated Mr. Baldanza, its not only nice, but it makes good business sense.

posted by Aisha @ 12:45 AM || 8 comments

To celebrate the end of the Bar Exam (hopefully) the hubby and I went on a trip to Costa Rica. Despite the 36 hour flight delay (never fly Spirit) the crooked cops (always refuse bribes) and the flat tires (spare tires rock) it was 100% worth it. Frommer's Guide said: More than mere recreation, travel is a far more important human function, a time of learning and introspection an essential part of a civilized life. It never ceases to amaze me all the different ways we inhabit this world yet how we can still connect on the basic level of human kindness, in the language of smiles, and warmth.

The most beautiful moments? Waking up as the early morning rays grace the sky and watching a family of Toucans far above encircling, singing, joyful, or gazing at the reddish brown squirrel monkeys inches from your face leaping from branch to banana tree, or stepping out from my hotel room to find myself before a three toed sloth looking up at me most curiously as we both observe one another afraid to move and spoil the magic of the moment.

The Saddest? Seeing the same animals you saw joyful, roaming free, sitting behind bars as throngs of tourists snap pictures and speak loudly. The memory of the caged Toucan shrieking for a full thirty minutes and then falling into silence not eating any of the food before him... having seen Toucans joyful and free, and to see the contrast as they sit listless in caged "nature" is enough to break your heart and swear you off enclosed exhibits be they aquariums or zoos, forever.

Unfortunately along with coffee and other random souvenirs it seems I brought back a cold. So until I get rid of it, please enjoy some pictures of a country so beautiful you can't help but be overwhelmed by the beauty in this world and how great He must be to have blessed us with so much varied and diverse life.


posted by Aisha @ 12:33 AM || 7 comments

In January I wrote of my fear of writing. Its August, and I'm finally writing. Strangely enough I began writing around the same time I resigned myself to the fact I'd likely never do so. But there I was, about to go to bed, when out of nowhere, she came to me.. I could see her eyes, her smile, her circumstances. Never since I was 14 had a character simply appeared in my mind's eye, asking me to share her story.

As the days pass and the pages increase, I can't help but wonder, why now? Why when I suddenly gave up did the idea come to me with such clarity it feels as though she is my sister? For so many years I feared failure. Images of a carefully packaged manuscript mailed to publishers only to be tossed carelessly in a bin by the dumpster paralyzed my creativity. The critics in my head taunted me when I deigned to form a sentence towards story telling. I could not escape the mental image of Stephen King and JK Rowlings laughing, tummy hurting, tears streaming down their faces as they looked with horror at sentences composed by me.

But Stephen King says not when he was penniless and practically homeless, and not now, when he has millions to his name did he nor does he care about the money. He wrote and writes for the sake of the story. And therein lies the truth of the matter, her story deserves to be told, and she has blessed me with the task of telling it. I know she is fictional but she is also strangely real. I no longer care if a line will wrap around the bookstore seeking a copy of this ultimate book, I just want her story told. If her story is read by even one other person, it will be success for me. Releasing myself from the trappings of fear, the fear of failure and finally writing not to publish, not to win recognition or admiration, but just to write for the sake of writing, watching with awe as sentences form and imagery is conveyed on what was once simply blank nothingness- that is when I truly began writing.

Why do I share this? I say it first to explain my infrequent postings which will likely remain so until this novel is compete, and second, I hope it provides someone struggling to write with hope. Not hope of financial success since as of now I don't have that, but hope of actually writing, because writing is after all, the whole point isn't it?

Labels: writing

posted by Aisha @ 3:40 AM || 15 comments

Today I walked into the bedroom and into an episode of Dr. 90210, a show following doctors performing plastic surgery. I watch the show from time to time if I'm folding laundry and absolutely nothing else is on. Sometimes the patients are compelling such as when Dr. Rey travels to Mexico to help kids with severe deformities and in urgent need of surgery to alleviate their pain and/or disfiguration. But mostly the show is about beautiful people striving to become more beautiful. I admit I have little sympathy for a beautiful blonde bombshell weeping before the camera that her lips just aren't pouty like Angelina Jolie's and her bottom isn't the exact shape of J-Lo's.

However, what irked me today was the statement Dr. Rey made to a patient undergoing plastic surgery "Now you won't be an ugly duckling anymore!" My jaw dropped. First, the girl was not in any way ugly, though the lack of self esteem was clear upon her face. Second, he just called her UGLY! Fine, she wants to be prettier, but should a doctor chime in to confirm her defeated self image?

There was a time when plastic surgery was spoken of in hushed voices. Shows like these make plastic surgery seem normal, desirable, the thing to do and their effect is resulting in higher rates of plastic surgery. Is it responsible to show 100% happy customers 100% of the time with no side effects or problems? There is a darker side to plastic surgery and the fact that none of these shows really talk about that reminds me of shady side effects swept under the rug by drug manufactures such as "Requip- helps restless leg" and as images of happy restful legged people prance through the screen a hurried voice reads the side effects dismissively such as how Requip can cause the random urge to gamble? But aside from the physical side effects that can happen, what about the emotional consequences? People can get addicted to plastic surgery, and plastic surgery is SURGERY, not without complications. Instead of a society encouraging women to respect themselves and their unique beauty and to ignore the assault by the media of the adulation of youth, instead of telling women to not fall into depression and anorexia because they don't look like airbrushed Victoria Secret ads, society is instead encouraging new ways to get that uniform look? What does that say about us?

Sadder still: How will the daughter whose mom paid $10,000 to obliterate and refigure a nose feel about her own identical nose? What will that tell her about who she is?

Labels: current events, gripes, media, plastic surgery, television, women

posted by Aisha @ 12:46 AM || 14 comments

Its been a while since I last posted. Where have I been? Let's see: Taking the bar exam, freaking out because a glitch almost prevented it from being graded resulting in an overnight vigil, sleeping and then sleeping some more, reading the final Harry Potter, and Khalid Hussein's latest novel, scrap booking, making tea on the hour every hour and consuming massive quantities of watermelon (an admittedly odd combination), cleaning the kitchen, and the tub, cooking, resuming running 2 miles a day, rewatching Veronica Mars in Spanish! Studying for the ethics exam on the 10th of August. And best of all writing. Really writing fictional fiction I've talked about, and complained about and feared for so long but finally started doing. Its so hard to shut the critics in my head up as they stand over my shoulder disapprovingly clucking at the words and thoughts that flow onto the page. But I have decided that even if my inner critic is correct, that I can't do it, I must try and I must try by doing, because thinking to try will get me nowhere, but trying to do might.

Be back soon.

Labels: bar exam, blogging, life, thoughts

posted by Aisha @ 12:59 AM || 12 comments