RE: All these discussions about meeting venues

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Mary Barnes [mailto://mary.ietf.barnes@xxxxxxxxx]> writes:

Glen,
> 
> I had zero expectation that Maastricht would be anything like the city
> I live in.  However, it never crossed my mind to think that the city
> would be so deserted when I arrived, nor that I would end up on the
> last train.  So, you are correct that i did not come prepared with a
> list of taxi numbers, but that's because I have never had to do so on
> any of my many trips to Europe.  My expectation, however misfounded
> you believe it to be, is that the places where business meetings are
> held, should have facilities suitable for travelers arriving at odd
> hours from international destinations.  

The problem seems to me not that such facilities did not exist in Maastricht
but that there was some planning and effort required on your part to access
them (the list of taxi service phone numbers being an example).

> Certainly, I have learned a
> good lesson and I will just rent a car if we ever have cities at
> smaller towns again.

Certainly better than googling "taxi Maastricht"!

> 
> While I may seem to be the only one with these issues, I know for a
> fact that others feel much the same as I do, they just would rather
> not be be harangued in the way that I have been by business
> "colleagues".  And, it's very, very sad that this hostility gets
> extended to anyone that might actually have some empathy and is able
> to actually understand what it's like for someone to encounter the
> situation that I did.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that the _actual_ situation
was that you got a taxi immediately; the problem is that you _imagined_ that
you would have been stranded had it not been the case that that taxi had
been dropping someone else at the station.  At the risk of being labeled as
"hostile" (not to mention sexist), I find it to generate a lot of sympathy
for imaginary problems when so many people have real ones.  That said,
however, I have a great deal of empathy for people who actually are
stranded, since it happened to me @ the Hiroshima airport (due in some part
to flight delays but mostly my own stupidity -- I had thought about buying
yen during my layover @ Incheon but thought that I would get a better
exchange rate in Japan).  In any case, when I arrived the currency exchange
was closed and I had no yen, so could not buy a ticket for the bus to town.
A taxi would have been much too expensive, and again, I had no yen to pay
for it.  Fortunately, an overly friendly Japanese person approached me &
after asking several questions about things that were arguably none of their
business (including my hotel) arranged for a free ride to town on what was
the last bus and provided very good directions from the bus station to my
hotel.  The point is that none of this was the fault of the IAOC or anyone
but me.  I understand that you have certain requirements WRT food;
similarly, I suffer from a medical condition that requires me to ingest
several different medications daily, at fairly precise intervals.  For me to
go to Beijing w/o an appropriate supply of medicine would be extremely
stupid (if not outright suicidal) but if I did so I cannot imagine why
anyone would think it reasonable for me to blame the IAOC for not
co-locating the meeting with a pharmacy that carried the correct, American
brand of drug.  Note that, contrary to Melissa's assertion, this is not the
same as dismissing accessibility: no amount of planning can make a
paraplegic able to walk, for example.

...

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