Galley Gossip: IndiGo flight attendants forced to cut their hair – or wear a wig

by Heather Poole on

Meet the flight attendants from IndiGo Airlines. They’re young, chic, and might be wearing a wig. Well that is if they refuse to cut their hair. According to Anindita Ghose in the article A Curious Case of Stewardess Hair, the airline’s new uniform includes a grey tunic with an indigo corsage and a hat to be worn with a uniform bob. The new look was launched on August 15th.

IndiGo Airlines is a private domestic low cost carrier based in Gurgayon Haryana, India. It’s main base is Delhi’s Indira Gandhi’s International Airport. In 2008 the airline won the title “Best Domestic Low Cost Carrier.” I wonder if the airline is trying to reclaim that title by having their flight attendants sport what the airline reports is a more sophisticated and international look? According to the stylist for IndiGo airlines in an interesting article, long hair or hair buns do not go with IndiGo’s new image, a look the airline believes makes their flight attendants appear younger and smarter and, in my opinion, quite French and very vavavavoom! But in a vintage way.No doubt about it the IndiGo girls look great! But the new short do apparently has them preoccupied with their hair. Passengers have noticed them either constantly messing with the lock that curls midcheeck or adjusting the wig to keep it in place. All I can say is I’m glad the airline I work for doesn’t make us wear the exact same hairstyle, or worse, wear someone else’s hair! Imagine serving hot coffee and PLOP! There’s a wig in a lap and a flight attendant sprinting into the galley to hide. It’s only a matter of time, ya know. Let’s just hope no one gets burned in the process. As for the spill left behind, passengers can just mop it up with that sharp looking wig! But don’t ring the call light to ask the flight attendant to dispose of it as she’ll be passing through the aisle shortly with a pick-up cart – that is as soon as she figures out what to do with her hair! Priorities, people.

While it was initially mandatory for the flight attendants of IndiGo Airlines to wear the bob after the airline launched its new image, they now also have the option of wearing their own hair in a “French roll or tie bun.” This after they put on what was reported as “a brave front in the face of severe scrutiny by curious passengers” known to love long hair. Thankfully things have changed. If it were me, I’d go with the French twist. It’s just as sexy and a lot more practical.

Photo courtesy of LiveMint.com

Can mobile 4G broadband work for a travel writer? Mostly.

by Grant Martin on

One of the difficulties that I have in living a travel lifestyle is paying for utilities when I’m only home half of the time. Water, gas and heat I can deal with, since those are mostly used upon consumption, but what about internet? Paying $50 a month for service on top of the mobile Boingo/Hotel/Airport wireless is an irritating and costly measure, especially when I’m hit with egregious hotel wireless fees.

My solution came in the form of wireless broadband internet, in my case, 4G+ mobile hotspot provided by Clear (full disclosure: I pay for my own service). Basically, a small device the size of a deck of cards streams 4G service and then converts it to a wireless signal picked up by my computer or mobile phone. Statically, I can leave it in my apartment turned on 24/7 and pretend it’s my home wireless internet.

But if I ever leave home, I can unplug the widget, take it with me and stream the signal on the road. A three hour battery life keeps the data pumping while away from a power source and I can connect up to five devices to the unit at a time. As far as speed, I’m currently downloading at 7Mb/sec, which is plenty of bandwidth for a few Youtube videos and this travel editor’s needs.

The critical point in the whole operation though is reliability. After I first got the 4G+ mobile hotspot in June my service was rife with faults and disconnects. I was only able to connect to the internet some 70% of the time, which is far too seldom to stay in tune to a travel blog. But ever since late August (plus a new modem plus a firmware update), service has stabilized and I’d rank my service at about 97% connectable. That I can deal with.

As for taking the service on the road, Clear doesn’t provide service countrywide but will operate well in larger metropolitan areas. My recent trips to New York, Los Angeles and Dallas have provided 100% coverage, and I’ve even loaned my service out to distraught, roaming wireless users.

To that end, Clear’s 4G+ has provided a great deal of use over the past few months and I have high hopes for continuing the service. Next month my defunct, home internet goes into the dumpster.

GadlingTV’s Travel Talk – Torontonian Exploration!

by Stephen Greenwood on

GadlingTV’s Travel Talk, episode 30 – Click above to watch video after the jump

For those of you that attended this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, you may already know just how cosmopolitan Canada’s largest city is. Upon arriving, it’s safe to say that we completely underestimated the fifth most populous municipality in North America, but quickly realized its vast cultural offerings upon exploration.

There’s more than meets the eye in Toronto, so watch as we shake off the Virgin America party from the night before and explore the exciting neighborhoods of the world’s ‘most diverse city’!

If you have any questions or comments about Travel Talk, you can email us at talk AT gadling DOT com.

Subscribe via iTunes:
[iTunes] Subscribe to the Show directly in iTunes (M4V).
[RSS M4V] Add the Travel Talk feed (M4V) to your RSS aggregator and have it delivered automatically.

Links
Check out Gadling’s own guide to budget travel in Toronto!
Visit the tallest free-standing structure in the Western Hemisphere! The CN Tower.
And whatever you do, don’t miss out on Kensington Market – full guide available here.

All images used under a Creative Commons license. All music used courtesy of Nonstop Music.

Wiki catalogues pay-as-you-go SIM cards by country

by Grant Martin on

Our good friend and technomad Paul Oppenheim stopped by this week with a dispatch from Germany and some more info on his current holy quest: to find an international phone plan that supports data and that doesn’t cost more than the mortgage on his condo in San Francisco.

Those familiar with data plans and roaming charges outside of the US might be familiar with the sad details: taking one’s smartphone outside of one’s home country can be an expensive endeavor. Sure, there’s international infrastructure and partnerships to forge, but is that all worth a twelve thousand dollar phone bill? Probably not.

As a result, many opt to use a different Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card while abroad — something, perhaps, with less aggressive data charges. The problems with that notion though are that you need to have a different (local) phone number and that until recently there wasn’t a great place to research carriers internationally. Spanish providers, for example, tend to provide all of their subscriber info and instructions on local, Spanish sites.

Part of that has changed with the paygsimwithdata repository over at wikia. There, travelers can leaf through a wide spectrum of providers sorted by country and service, with many vendors broken down by availability, pricing and value. And yes, it’s all in English.

Bear in mind that while traveling you’ll still have to suffer with a different, local phone number, but having connectivity for a reasonable cost is a small price to pay.

[Flickr image via mroach]

The Best Inspirational Travel Quotes

by Aaron Hotfelder on

As an inveterate quotation-hoarder, I am always on the lookout for concise yet powerful expressions of wit and wisdom related to travel. Here are ten of my favorites, followed by a couple comments on why I find them so memorable and meaningful…

10. “We are sad at home and blame the weather and the ugliness of the buildings, but on the tropical island we learn… that the state of the skies and the appearance of our dwellings can never on their own underwrite our joy nor condemn us to misery.” – Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel. Travel is many things– mind-altering, exciting, challenging– but it is not a panacea. Those who travel abroad because they’re unhappy at home will find that travel does not cure all of life’s ills.

9. “When one is traveling, one must expect to spend a certain amount of money foolishly.” – Robertson Davies, as quoted by Chuck Thompson in Smile When You’re Lying. It happens. Whether it’s indulging at the hotel mini-bar or being ripped off by an unscrupulous taxi driver, people often see their money evaporate at alarming rates when they’re traveling. Expect it, and most importantly, budget for it.

8. “Very many people spend money in ways quite different from those that their natural tastes would enjoin, merely because the respect of their neighbors depends upon their possession of a good car and their ability to give good dinners. As a matter of fact, any man who can obviously afford a car but genuinely prefers travels or a good library will in the end be much more respected than if he behaved exactly like everyone else.” – Bertrand Russell, The Conquest of Happiness, as quoted in Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding. A reminder that it’s your money and your life: do with it what you want. Every dollar spent at home is a dollar that can’t be spent abroad.

7. “There are two things to do in Juneau, drink and get drunk.” – Chuck Thompson, quoting a friend, in Smile When You’re Lying. It isn’t just Juneau; there are only two things to do in a lot of places. Not every travel destination is a winner, and sometimes you’re left in the middle of nowhere splitting a bottle of booze with a friend. Still, there are worse ways to spend an evening, or a week.

6. “Sublime places repeat in grand terms a lesson that ordinary life typically teaches viciously: that the universe is mightier than we are, that we are frail and temporary and have no alternative but to accept limitations on our will; that we must bow to necessities greater than ourselves.” – Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel. In our normal, workaday lives, the experience of being “humbled” is often an embarrassing or upsetting one. But standing in the midst of Angkor Wat or Machu Picchu, we are happy, ecstatic even, to be humbled. It’s a great, great feeling.

5. “You must kill ten hours to make two hours live. What you must be careful of is not to kill ALL the hours, ALL the years.” – Charles Bukowski, The Captain is Out to Lunch and the Sailors Have Taken Over the Ship. The most powerful force in most people’s working lives is inertia: we do what we do because it’s what we’ve always done. But surrendering one’s life to inertia is a tragic mistake.

4. “As for the idea of a native country, that is to say, of a certain bit of ground traced out on a map and separated from others by a red or blue line: no. My native country is for me the country that I love, that is, the one that makes me dream, that makes me feel well. I am as much Chinese as French, and I don’t rejoice about our victories over the Arabs because I’m saddened by their defeats.” – Gustave Flaubert, in a letter to Louise Colet, The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830-1857. As true today as it was when Flaubert wrote it in 1846, travel provides a window into the lives of the oft-derided Others: illegal immigrants, people from the Middle East, Asian factory workers who “steal” American jobs. Travel reminds us of what shouldn’t need reminding: these are people too.

3. “The fool, with all his other faults, has this also: he is always getting ready to live.” – Epicurus. Couldn’t have said it better myself. If not now, when?

2. “We have a new joke on the reservation: ‘What is cultural deprivation?’ Answer: ‘Being an upper-middle class white kid living in a split-level suburban home with a color TV.'” – John Fire Lame Deer, Lame Deer: Seeker of Visions. Ouch. Okay, this one hits a little too close to home. Still, it’s a reminder that there’s a hell of a lot more to life than watching TV and clicking aimlessly on the internet. A whole world awaits.

1. “Often I feel I go to some distant region of the world to be reminded of who I really am… Stripped of your ordinary surroundings, your friends, your daily routines, your refrigerator full of your food, your closet full of your clothes, you are forced into direct experience. Such direct experience inevitably makes you aware of who it is that is having the experience. That’s not always comfortable, but it is always invigorating.” – Michael Crichton, Travels, as quoted in Rolf Potts’ Vagabonding. I can’t tell you how often that final sentence pops into my mind whenever I’m hanging on for dear life during some insane taxi ride, or arriving in a new town after midnight. No, travel isn’t always comfortable, but it’s always, always invigorating.

Got a favorite travel quotation of your own? Share it in the Comments.