Crastinate

I was in Sydney, Australia for two weeks last month working out of the Google Australia office and attending Web Directions South. I had a great time. Sydney is a wonderful city - I really enjoyed walking through the neighborhoods, the CBD, and around the harbor.

I was also able to take a train out to Katoomba and hike into Blue Mountains National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was beautiful! I hiked down into the valley and back up the Grand Staircase - 900 switchbacking steps straight up a rock cliff. There was a sign that marked the halfway point and I couldn't decide if they were being helpful or cruel. Despite the name, the area is really a bunch of sedimentary mesas. If it weren't for the thick covering of eucalyptus, I imagine it'd look a bit like parts of northern Arizona or Utah.

I flew to Sydney on United. I've expressed disdain for United in the past, and my sentiments remain unchanged. Fourteen hours on a cramped, aging 747 with crappy projection screens and even crappier CRT monitors spaced every 30 feet or so. The movie selection was awful, the sound system broke on both of my flights, and the videos had the squiggly lines that come from having played a VHS tape too many times. And don't even get me started on the food. Next time I head Down Under it is Air New Zealand or nothing.

Upon arrival in Sydney, I waited in a customs line for about 60 seconds and then was greeted with a pleasant "G'day." We had a brief conversation about my visit and then I was on my way. Upon arrival in LAX, we were greeted by a man shouting at everyone to "FACE THE WALL!!!" Americans and foreign visitors alike froze in confusion. There were no signs, just maze after maze of ribbon barriers. The man shouted for us to turn and face the wall several more times.

He was apparently trying to get a very large crowd of slightly dazed people to spontaneously form a line that zig-zagged across the room because a single file line would have been impossibly long. No one had thought to deploy more ribbon barriers, despite the fact that knowledge of the plane's impending arrival was known at least 14 hours in advance. Eventually we all figured out where we were supposed to be and then endured, in my case, a twenty minute wait.

I had plenty of time to think about the awful customer experience for people arriving in the United States. How a country handles visitors says a lot. The lack of resources was evident. There were more arrivals than could be accommodated by the allocated officers, baggage carousels, customs inspectors, and space. There was a lack of signage, of attention to the details, and of any effort to actually make people feel welcome. Lacking. Where do all of the resources go in the richest superpower in the world?