On and on and on


Today I borrowed a red Toyota Prius-C and drove it a couple of hundred kilometres.

It’s an acceptable car for driving long distances on a freeway; the soundproofing isn’t great, but it’s got cruise control (surprising on such a small car) and the fuel consumption is incredibly frugal, even when we were chugging along at 110 km/h. I borrowed the picture from here, where you can read much more about it.

What I liked less was the faint dashboard, and the failure of aesthetics. Take a look at that picture. Note that the door handles for the front and rear doors aren’t aligned. They’re not at the same angle, or the same height, and there doesn’t seem to be a nice arc that explains why that is. For a company like Toyota, which has a reputation for Japanese perfectionism, these little blemishes are surprising. But it has Bluetooth on the stereo and that performed flawlessly, and on the way back our kids fell asleep, so that was good.

Sorry, so that was terrible because half an hour asleep meant an extra two and a half hours before they fell asleep. My wife had got me to put them to bed every night since I got here, and mercifully took over duties tonight. Which meant she had to put up with Destroyer asking her questions like “how many mirrors in the room?” and “how many hair on the lion?” I’m sure we’ll treasure those memories in a few decades. Meanwhile I was downstairs contenting myself with talking to airlines. Or trying to talk to airlines.

Because I booked flights on Air Canada but with a Singapore Airlines loyalty number, and because Air Canada doesn’t believe in middle names, the two airlines can’t figure out that I’m the same person, and so Singapore Airlines sent me grumpy emails telling me to fill in forms. So I went and filled in the forms, and then had other grumpy emails from Singapore Airlines telling me I’d filled the forms in too early. Oh come on… Still, this was a warm up for trying to get Air Canada to give me a vegetarian meal when I fly from Montreal to Tokyo. Air Canada give 150%, by which I mean if they tell you the wait time is 20 minutes, you’ll have a full half hour of dreadful on hold music to listen to before a bored person lists the different vegetarian options, and then tells you there’s no food on the Halifax-Montreal leg, as though that were your fault. Never mind. I’ll probably get chicken and rice on the plane and an angry flight attendant telling me nobody requested a vegetarian meal. Or they’ll confiscate my bags of medicinal jujubes. Or both.

Did I do anything else with my evening?

No, so I can’t complain about the children being a distraction, as evidently there’s nothing to distract from. And so to bed.


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