The situation was as follows: I was already slightly late for a plane out of Porto’s Francisco Sá Carneiro Airport on the return from part of the Camino de Santiago (more on this in future posts), and had planned on taking the metro out to the airport, since I was told this was the most convenient way. Problem was, I had just before spent the remainder of my cash, planning to pay my metro-ticket by card.

I get to the metro, use the machine, 2 euros for a ticket to the airport – so far so good. This is where my troubles start. First, the machine would not take payment from my Visa-card. Figuring it was a glitch with the machine, I went to the ticket office, only to be told that the Porto metro does not have an arrangement with any international card companies, so I would have to either use a Portuguese card or pay in cash. Had I known this earlier, I would have had no trouble having 2 euros on me at that point for various reasons, but again, I had planned to use my cards to pay for that ticket. I felt rather frustrated that I had to take out cash again – paying a 5-euro fee – only to pay a 2-euro ticket, not to mention the time-crunch.

I look at the time, and it’s getting dangerously late past the time I had planned to leave for the airport. Granted, I always have more safety margin than most, but then again, I was in a town I did not know at all, with a language I did not speak at all, and having spent some time earlier on getting into the town centre, which was not a trivial thing.

I walk out, start looking for an ATM, and see none. I see two people who look to be likely to speak some English – a man and a woman, probably mid-thirties, who seem rather urban in their appearance.

I approach the couple – I assumed they were a couple first, though later I got the feeling they weren’t – and ask the man if he speaks English. He confirms, is quite friendly, and I ask him where I can find an ATM. He thinks a bit then points to a couple of streets down. I think at that point the whole time-thing had got me so panicked, plus the ridicule of taking out a 10-euro note – with fees – to pay for that ticket, that I ask the man: ‘I’m really sorry to ask this of you, but I only need 2 euros for a ticket to the airport’. I don’t remember exactly what line followed after, but it was probably something along the lines if he could possibly spare that.

The man looks at me – sunglasses and suddenly a rather startled look on his face – in disbelief. He seems very surprised, and almost displays a suppressed outrage. He answers something along the lines of ‘well … that’s not my … I don’t have 2 euros’. He then starts telling me that there are like 10 banks down the street if I only go a few streets down. It’s not overt, but it seems rather clear he doesn’t buy my story, and that he just wants to point me to the nearest ATM asap and get rid of me – quite possibly to continue his conversation with the woman. Though I’m not quite fixed with the cronology, I think I added at this point that the train company would only take Portuguese cards.

At this point I’m pretty sure the hopelessness of the situation is emanating from my face, and I mutter something along the lines of ok, thanks, and start turning to find a bank.

Then the woman starts talking. She asks if I have time to reach my plane then. I don’t think I even register it consciously at that point, but in retrospect, it was such a breath of fresh air to have someone who actually takes my story at face value break into the conversation. I don’t remember what I answered, but I think I displayed frustration again over only needing 2 euros and having to find ATM’s and go through that whole thing. This could have been the time I told them about the cards as well. The woman thinks only briefly, and then says she has a metro-card that should have enough credit on it to get me to the airport.

The guy did not seem to appreciate this turn of events, and started looking decidedly frustrated. Thinking they were a couple, I took the cue and said it didn’t matter, I’d just find an ATM. She insisted, however, it was no trouble, in fact, she had 2 euros that I could have as well as the card. That way, the ticket would be cheaper – 1,5 euros – since an extra 0,5 euros is paid for the chip-card. So the woman gives me the travel-card – and the 2 euros, in spite of my objections due to not wanting to displease the guy. I take it, not knowing what else to do. And frankly, it solved a big problem for me. So there I am, from having nothing and having little time to get to the airport, to suddenly having all I needed to get there, due to the trust and kindness of a complete stranger.

I called this post ‘from the other side’, since I am rather more used to being on the side of the road where I’m asked for money as I pass by people. Do we believe people who have a good story to tell and wants money for a ticket? I certainly had my doubts a few months ago when I paid a not too expensive train ticket for a couple of girls at 2am on a train station, where they claimed their Visa-card had suddenly stopped working. Are we generous enough to meet their needs anyways? I have an inkling feeling that even if she hadn’t bought my story, that woman might have still given me those 2 euros, and that guy may not have, even if he did believe I was in that fix. Of course, those 2 euros were ultimately my responsibility, but that’s not the point. The point is that I had a real need for them, and due to the kindness of a stranger, I was saved from a lot of hassle, and possibly – or at least so it seemed at the time – a missed plane.

The experience also left me feeling a bit weird as I sat on the train. I almost had the feel and posture of a beggar accepting money as I took the 2 euros and thanked the woman. It definitely did something to my pride to have to ask someone for that. I am not sure that’s a bad thing, under the circumstances. I most certainly did not want to go back when I found out that I did not need the travelcard she gave me after all, but it seemed like the right thing to do. It seemed strange approaching those two people again, expecting one to await me coming to up the take, while the other to openly await what I had to say.

The ironic part of the story is that as I’m sitting at the airport writing this, I just found out Portugal runs on GMT, as opposed to Spain where I traveled from this morning, so I was altogether an hour too early in the first place.. In any case, the story and its content at the time is no less real.

I will keep that ticket as a reminder. To the stranger, whoever you are, I thank you. This made my day!

First, there is the scene where the main character takes a bottle of Smirnoff out of the fridge. Which turns out to be a bit odd, since for the rest of the film, he tends to prefer more brandy-like spirits. And in any case, the bottle catches the eye so nicely, there is no doubt of its intent. Second, the scene where the main character is reclining in an extremely spacious and comfortably-looking first class cabin onboard an airplane, only to have the camera zoom out on the plane, which happens to have a Virgin-logo on its tail. And lastly, when our friend starts the engine of his borrowed car – a BMW – only to have a voice go ‘BMW ConnectedDrive – Traffic is clear to your destination’. This incidentally happens to be the same car that opens the film itself.

Like I said, an ok film, but the product placement really was a bit too obvious here. A little more thought and subtlety would be appreciated in the placing of those logos! Not to mention more effective in reaching the audience through more unnoticed placement of those material items.

However, when I got to the security line, I started to get the feeling something was different here. Big posters sporting full-body scanners were put up, saying something to the effect that at this particular airport, enhanced security measures were in effect.

Being slightly concerned about the radiation effect of said full-body scanners, I thought to myself that I can always opt out, as is possible in the states, believing this to be an option in the UK too. Sure, an enhanced search is not altogether pleasant, but better than receiving an unnecessary dose of radiation.

However, while I was in the queue – a long queue – I looked up some info on my phone. It turns out that if you refuse a full-body scan in a UK airport, travel will be declined. And that, while the airport maintains that the scanners are completely safe (stating that the amount of radiation received is equivalent to that of 5 minutes of background radiation), highly competent researchers have posed serious questions with regards to the potentially cancer-inducing effects of these scans.

As I walked through the queue, I considered my options, should I be selected for a body-scan. Having some time to reflect, I came to the conclusion I had none. If I resisted the body-scan, I would not be allowed to travel. £100 out the window, and no way to get back to Denmark. If I went through the scanner, potential long-term health-effects. I looked with envy on the business-class travellers, and the aforementioned couple with the kids and the pram, who somehow got onto the fast-track security line, which, besides providing a vastly more expeditious security process, was completely devoid of these scanners.

I was not selected for the body-scan. Unlike many of my fellow travellers. The worst thing about the experience was that I did not have a choice. Had I been been selected, I would have been compelled to go through with the scan.

On reflection, this is probably the first time government agencies have resorted to imposing potentially health-damaging security checks on its population, let alone the vastly upgraded privacy intrusions. Sure, the liquid restrictions were annoying, but they did not impose any harm on me, other than having to throw out the occasional face-wash that I forgot to take out of the hand luggage Nor are the metal-detectors or the x-ray machines harmful to us in any way. Enter the body-scanners. Radiation-exposure is now mandatory in order to fly.

The reality is that there is some debate on the health effects of the scanners. In addition to the mentioned expert comments, there is a recent case of scanners in the US having emitted much higher radiation than they should, or at the very least being measured incorrectly. And there are the comments of scientists in this wired article, not exactly inspiring calm. As the icing on the cake, Bruce Schneier, a well-renowned security expert and cryptographer, makes some interesting comments on the effectiveness of these new security measures (though he admittedly elsewhere believes them to be safe health-wise).

Bottom-line, I am sceptical towards new technology that is being rushed in, proclaimed safe, and put to mass-use in the name of security. Mass x-ray scans of vast amounts of people is certainly not something to be undertaken lightly.

For now, I have noted the public services available, having been at the library tonight.

For one, I now no longer need any sort of DVD-rental stores, since the public libraries lets you check out loads of mainstream movies – for free. I even got a bag for carrying them in.

While I was there, I noted a poster saying something along the lines of ‘Divorce – something you’ll do 0,4 times’. I thought great, perhaps finally a campaign to bring down divorce stats, but alas, the punchline was that now you can do all the paperwork online through ‘NemID’. (the latter being a topic in itself)

I walked away noting I get all sorts of things from the government here that I really don’t feel every Danish taxpayer should be providing..

So:

Symptoms of the problem: Outlook 2010 starts with the message “verifying data integrity” (and some small turning wheels in the lower right corner of the status bar). In this particular case, emails will potentially be lost. On a deeper level, it seems that for whatever reason, any changes made to the PST-file by Outlook within the last 10-15 seconds before you shut it down remain unsaved to the file. This will cause for instance newly received mails to be gone, deleted emails to be present, and so on. Depending on the speed you shut down Outlook with after changes are made, corruption may or may not be present. (if Outlook is shut down so fast it can’t save anything, no ‘corruption’ at the technical level will occur, it only appears it’s if Outlook is working on writing it while shutting down). The issue will only be present in Outlook 2010.

Potential solutions: The standard solutions is to deactivate all add-ins, and/or run the scanpst.exe tool to fix the PST-file. This should be tried first. Details of this can be found using google, and is rather trivial. This is not the case I am describing.

The solution I have not found anywhere else: If you have PGP 10 installed on your system, it can cause issues due to its incompatibility with Outlook 2010. Even if (as in my case) you have not enabled the messaging components, it will still cause issues. The solution is to uninstall PGP and then reinstall it without the MAPI and LSP components. This is obviously a problem if you are using the messaging feature, but if you are not and just want the basic PGP features, this is quite handy.

Details: Uninstall PGP and reboot. Locate the PGPDesktop.MSI install-file located in your temp-directory (%temp% in an explorer-window) under a folder called something like PGP[...]. If it’s not there, you need to run the proper installer and exit it when it has extracted the files (before the actual install). Run the following command in the command prompt, in the folder containing the msi-file:

msiexec /I PGPDesktop.msi PGP_INSTALL_MAPI=0 PGP_INSTALL_LSP=0

(see also documentation at pgp.com)

Let the installer finish, and it should install PGP without the MAPI or LSP components, and fix this problem if you have both Outlook 2010 and PGP 10.x installed (while I am writing this, the PGP version is 10.0.3, and as far as I can tell from the PGP support engineers, Outlook 2010 support is not coming out for a while).

It is interesting that after spending a couple of months with Microsoft engineers, I was the one to note the link with PGP (though I must admit the last Microsoft-guy was rather helpful). The case has been escalated to the Microsoft development team now, so I hope they are able to put some pressure on PGP to actually make a product that is compatible with the new version of Office. I must say I am happy with the quick response of the PGP people though.

On a more overall note, this highlights the problem with multiple companies developing software, none inclined to take responsibility for incompatibilities. Microsoft can hide behind ’3rd party software’ causing issues, though one may question whether it’s the architecture of their application that is really the problem, if 3rd party software can cause such glitches in their file-saving operations – in their own brand new OS, that is. PGP can hide behind ‘this version is not compatible with Outlook 2010′. I am sorry to admit that Mac-people do have a strong point on this. Of course, they pay a high price for a monopoly in multiple ways as well

In any case, it was great being here again for the celebration. Happy May 17!

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