To begin, a joke: What do you call someone who speaks three languages? Trilingual. What do you call someone who speaks two languages? Bilingual. What do you call someone who speaks one language? American. On my flights to and from Shanghai, I had the same crew. They were perfectly adequate, but I was a little…
Links to stories #1, #2, #3, #4, and #5. I’m a bad Asian. My parents are from Taiwan, but I don’t speak Mandarin very well, and I’m pretty much illiterate in Chinese. So I was a little nervous heading to Shanghai and trying to rely on my subpar Chinese skills. At one food stand, I…
Here are a hodgepodge of thoughts about my last round of credit card applications. 1) It seems that most of the telephone numbers listed on blogs for Bank of America’s credit card reconsideration line have all been disconnected. Both 866-458-8805 and 888-503-6090 connected me to messages saying that the lines had been disconnected. The line…
See part 1 on cultivating gratitude and part 2 on traveling more. This point is similar to part 1, but flying in coach makes flying in first class even better. By experiencing the inadequacies of coach, we are better able to appreciate the abundances of first class. If we were to fly in business or…
See Part 1 regarding cultivating gratitude. This is perhaps obvious, but flying coach can be good because it’s cheaper than flying in business or first, which means you can take more trips using the same sum of money or number of points or miles. Frequent flyer miles are wonderful because they make first class much…
Lots of travel bloggers out there focus on aspirational travel redemptions, and for good reason too, since flying first class is much more accessible/affordable via points or miles than via cash. But I think there are a number of reasons as to why it’s important to fly coach from time to time that are often…
I wrote previously about the newly enhanced benefits of the Chase Sapphire Preferred card, but I thought I’d today share some of the more interesting tidbits from the Guide to Benefits. 1. Trip cancellation insurance applies if a terrorist action or hijacking cancels your trip, but not if your trip is cancelled due to declared…
Links to stories #1, #2, #3, and #4. Continuing on the Hungarian theme, this story takes place in Szentendre, a sleepy, quaint town a short train ride north from Budapest. An Asian female friend and I were walking around Szentendre. It was November, so it was quite cold and there weren’t many tourists. Since the town…
When calling airlines to make or change award bookings, you usually need to tell a phone agent a confirmation number. And it’s often necessary to use some sort of spelling alphabet (e.g. “A” as in “alpha”) to communicate the letters of the confirmation number to the phone agent as it’s very easy to confuse letters…
Links to stories #1, #2, and #3. Near the end of my freshman year of college, I shaved my head completely bald. Soon after, when walking around campus with my newly bald head, a random woman stopped me and said, “I know where you’re from. You’re from Tibet!” Me: “Ummm, no, I’m not from Tibet.” Her:…
