A major surprise in אירוויזיון

I have been a fan of the Eurovision Song Contest since 1998, when Israel won it with Dana International singing "Diva". But, to be honest, I became a BIG fan of it in 2001, after Antique made it to the top three representing Greece, being greek pop/dance music and especially with heavy influences of τσιφτετέλι (Tsifteteli, or greek belly dance music) and now I can boast of having become a quite good critic of the ESC, being able to predict the winner on 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. Yes, I even dared to predict that Marie N was going to win with such a crappy and "regular" song!

But this time myself, as millions throughout Europe and beyond, got surprised. None of the big favourites of the audience, media and critics, Mihai Trăistariu from Romania (singing Tornerò), the Théa Anna Vissi from Greece (singing Everything), the Bosnian group Hari Mata Hari (singing Lejla) and Carola Häggkvist from Sweden (singing Invincible) were the winners.
Of course forget about the Big 4: The crappy british rap sung by a DJ who is just 32 but looks as old as my father, the German parody of a texan country song, the sad, slow and boring french entry (who do these guys continue sending poor balladists? Get real guys, the ONLY true french-language balladists is Céline Dion) and the worst song Spain could ever send, destroying Las Ketchup's career once and for ever (who the hell thought that was a good song?).

Not even some songs I liked won: neither the Croatian folk dancers that sung Moja štikla with Severina Vučković; not even the one-eyebrow armenian version of Ricky Martin, André. Not even Sibel Tüzün singing a great song in in greek, english and turkish! Forget about Eddie Butler representing Israel -bring Shiri back to stage, בבקשה!-

But let's get real: The Finnish monsters won! OMG! I was so f***in' shocked that so many people were voting for the finnish band Lordi, whom to me looked nothin' more than hard rock singers dressed as monsters that could perfectly fit in a Halloween chapter of Star Trek! But then I had to admit, the guys gave a very good show with those costumes and the lead singer's wings opening at a precise moment, not to mention his double-hatch/sceptre that spitted fire!
The funny thing is that you could actually see the horror in the faces of Maria Menounos and Sakis Rouvas when the local presenteres were reading the results of their national vote. They were terrified! I can imagine all my greek peers wondering "will these monsters topple our goddess? why in hell?" the question could have never been so appropirate :-D and what was even more appropriate and FUNNY, was when the Dutch presenter Paul De Leeuw started making sexually direct moves and comments to Sakis, whose heterosexuality has been questioned quite a few times. Oh, those on-air seconds were so funny! Kalísperma! HAHAHA (kalispera means "good evening" in greek, and sperma stands for .. "sperm") Typical a thing to do for Paul, gotta love him!


I almost peed my pants when he rushed to give the results and OMG..."I like your blouse, Sakis" "You look like Will & Grace, you two" "Will you have my mobile number now or after twelve points?" And trust me..if you have ever seen Paul..you would know it wasn't planned in advance. It's just the way he is. And let's be honest -there's never been anything fun about the ESC and now there was! He was really funny. After the drama that was 90% of the voting and so many people in Europe wishing at least Russia (with the help of its allies Estonia, the Ukraine, Armenia, Belarus, Latvia, Moldova and Lithuania) could win the finnish monsters, this was a breath of fresh air!! I bet Queen Beatrix was laughing her a** off! hahahahaha! Paul, Europa houdt van u!
But let's be serious and look at what happened. Sadly for many of us, the best act won. That many of us don't like Hard rock? True, but the guys did it pretty well. I hate to say that but, none of the rest gave a world-class show. The Finns did, so, let's wait until 2007 in Helsinki! No need to talk about Athens because they organised everything perfectly, offered a prime-class show and well, I think I was a greek in my previous life. Υεια σου Αθήνα! σ' ευχαριστώ πολλί!

Visiting סבתא for Mother's Day

We venezuelans celebrate Mother's Day on the second Sunday of May, and this date for me has always been special because I am blessed by having two moms (Graciela, the one who brought me to life, and Angela, who is also my granny and the one who raised me) and also, as time has passed by, I have gained another mom, Roraima, my stepmom. The three of them are SO different to each other, yet they have quite a few things in common, apart from being very sui generis women and moms.

So this time I decided to spend the whole sunday with her, instead of leaving right after lunch. C'mon, it's HER day! But I needed to find a way to come back as fast as possible after sunday, without having to take a day off since the semester is about to end and my work load increases a lot. What to do? I inmediately thought of buying an airline ticket. I started browising the web ..

• Aeropostín? (slang for Aeropostal where "postín" stands for "delay") Nah, 180,000 Bs. and I could face the risk of having my flight delayed 2-3 hours, which at the end would make me get to work at noon.
• Aserca Airlines? they quit flying to Barquisimeto without notice (too bad, I took my internships there and I felt you know, like being "home")
• LASER? Too bad, they just fly between Caracas and Margarita Island and their service is impeccable
• RUTACA? They don't even know Barquisimeto exist. It's a Eastern-based airline
• Conviasa? Very affordable prices, but they're a start-up airline and haven't started flying to Barquisimeto yet
• Santa Bárbara? No way! 240,000 Bs. for a tourist class ticket!
• Avior Airlines? Small planes, but they boast the newest fleet in Venezuela. Flying these tiny Beechcraft 1900Ds can be funny. let's give it a shot. Wow, nice website, load very fast, totally optimized, uodated info .. the price is just OK, 159,000. Let's try online shopping .. very fancy, I can even "see" how the allocation of seats is in the plane. The frequen flyer program is very fancy, although lacks more alliances, but that's OK for now. Let's flight with these guys.

Everything was so good until 2 days later, I received a voice message saying that my flight (departing at 6:15 am from Barquisimeto) was cancelled and I was assigned a seat on the next flight, at 11:15 am. That I couldn't take! So I called them and explained that I cannot take that late flight and that I ought to take an early morning flight. The operator told me I could get a voucher valid for one year on the same route, which I rejected because I need my flight. Then I thought that I could have it changed to that saturday then, on the opposite direction. She agreed. But then, I realised that it's not worth it, so I called them back and they connected me to one supervisor, he told me he would try to find a transfer to another airline serving that route on Monday morning (either Aeropostal or Santa Bárbara) .. he never called. So I called the next morning, and asked for a solution. They connected me to the same operator that had called me first, and she was NOT polite at all and stated clearly that she had "cleared all matters" with me and that she won't take any responsibility. Man, that pissed me off! What a bitch! I reminded her that as a flight agent, her first duty when a flight is cancelled is asking the passenger if he/she can fly with another airline, on a similar route/schedule, which she did not do. Oh, she hated that! and I was right! So we argued for a minute, and I told her that as a former airiline employee, I was dissapointed of her attitude and lack of professionalism. She told me then that I could get a 75% refund, which I rejected because the flight was cancelled by them, not by me! After arguing that, she told me I could e-mail and call the cusrtomer client support manager, which I did, with a LONG and detailed e-mail (CCing the presidency and Reservations).

The Customer Support Manager, a very nice lady, accepted all my arguments, and told me she was going to help me and call me before 5 PM, and she later sent an e-mail copying all parties involved on my case uring to solve it. 4:30 pm. No phone calls. I called her and she told me she was going to call me ASAP. She did, and she got me an Aeropostal flight on the schedule I had bought with Avior and apologised for the inconveniences, since apparently the girl at the Call center was new and did not command all of the protocols, which I reminded her as a former airline employee I am. Of course I thanked her for all the support and reminded her that I have always supported Avior Airlines because they do serve like a world-class airline. It seems it worked commanding all the airline jargon :-)

Avior rocks!!! סבתא, here I go! :-)