The Great Mystery of the NAB Melon Platter

I’m not sure whether it was the second or the third consecutive Celine Dion song that finally broke my spirit. Working on a Saturday is a painful concept to grasp, one made harder to accept when it is a Saturday morning in Las Vegas. Add a little Celine Dion audio torture to the mix and all I could think was screw you Snow White. There would definitely be no whistling while I worked.

Welcome to the latest chapter in my annual NAB pilgrimage – where I set some new records of achievement. Most notably, this was my longest duration in Sin City, a baffling seven days of meetings, schmoozing, and melon platters. Why the melon platter? I’m still trying to figure that out myself. It is akin to all things Vegas and tradeshows. Don’t cantaloupe and honeydew melons EVER go out of season? It is always the same bland, tasteless crap too. If you’re lucky, some sour pineapple and unripe red grapes are tossed into the mix. You can count on two things with every NAB, sore feet and melon platters.

More cantaloupe please!



I grossly underestimate how long it would take me to get from my suite to the conference room where we were executing “Operation Bag Stuff.” By the time I arrive at 9:15 AM, a dozen skinny and gorgeous mostly French Canadian coworkers are sitting around a table eating breakfast, defying all logic by eating sugary breakfast pastries. I silently curse them as I help myself to the above-referenced mandatory melon platter, bypassing an almond croissant that is eagerly calling out to join the rest of my ass fat.

“Bonjour Kristen,” says Sophie, greeting me with the customary Montreal kiss on each cheek. “We are so happy to see you!”

I am happy to see them too, although not happy about the task ahead of me. I have been at my job for over five months now, and I really like my coworkers to the North even if they’re all unfairly smart, skinny, beautiful, and have a disturbing fondness of sappy Celine Dion tunes.

Our mission that morning is to stuff goodie bags with jackets and literature for our user group meeting the next evening. We also have VIP gifts, PR bags, and bags for our channel partners that all need to be assembled as well. I sigh and get to work.

My only motivator is that on this particular Saturday, I have my one and only significant block of free time for the entire week. After the bags are stuffed, we have lunch and a mandatory staff meeting, and then we are free to do whatever we want. I’ve already arranged for sunbathing out by the pool, catching a performance of Spamalot at the Wynn, followed by dinner at the Mesa Grill. Every activity will occur with several girlfriends from work. As NAB is a male dominated show, the idea of a ladies night in Vegas is unheard of and it sounds like a great time. But first, I have to get through those damn bags.

It takes almost three hours of hard physical labor and enduring an entire Celine Dion CD, but we get the 900 bags stuffed. Our euphoria turns to rage during lunch when a marketing manager discovers a formatting error on one of the flyers we stuffed, and makes us remove all 900 of them from our completed bags. I spend the next hour multitasking – as I help remove the flyers, my coworkers teach me how to swear in French. Fourche! Pétasse! C'est des conneries! Somehow the afternoon isn’t a complete loss with my language lessons keeping me entertained.

By 2 PM, “Operation Bag Stuff” is complete. I head poolside with my friend Shea, where we order beers, dodge date offers from two hairy rednecks sitting across from us, and breathe in the fresh air. While the next six days will bring additional cheesy pick-up lines, opportunities to show off my new French vocabulary, a dry throat from breathing in stale air conditioning and cigarette smoke, and sadly, more melon platters, I know all too well there will not be another moment of to relax like this. If there was more free time, this would be any ol' trip to Vegas, and not NAB. I smile and take it all in. For all my grumbling, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Window on the World

It seems my window on the world is looking a lot like this lately:

I'm sandwiched on an Air Canada Airbus 319 en route to Montreal on the first of four business trips I am taking over the next six to eight weeks. I am one of approximately 100 coach class passengers trying to stake out precious cubic inches of personal space as my own. The woman in seat 18A has already exercised her right to lean her chair back into me and evoke claustrophobia I didn’t know I possessed. The man behind me in 20A can’t sit still and has ensured any attempt at a nap will be thwarted by him kicking my chair or fidgeting. And while the ladies sitting next to me in seats 19 B and C seem lovely, they’re both asleep right now and currently blocking my access to the restrooms. This will be an issue in approximately 20 minutes when my bladder declares nap time is officially over. Maybe Mr. 20A can kick their chairs for me as a wake-up call.

Ah, coach. Gotta love it. At least the baby stopped screaming (for now).

I suppose I should count my blessings. For some inexplicable reason, I couldn’t get over this feeling of doom about my departure last night. I called the airline and learned my flight was indeed experiencing mechanical issues, and at that time had been delayed by 3.5 hours. The delay wasn’t as much an issue as me missing my connecting flight in Minneapolis.

One call to our corporate travel agent got me on the previously unavailable and ONLY nonstop flight from SFO to Montreal. Getting a seat on this flight means not having to change flights and do the dance I’ve entitled the “connecting flight Extreme Cha-Cha.” This dance is the one where your arriving flight lands at the gate furthest from the gate of your connecting flight. The journey is a well-choreographed dance through terminals, dodging slow walkers, moms with strollers, old people, and the general oblivious population while towing a 10-pound laptop, paperwork, and all the other superfluous crap I couldn’t get into my checked luggage all within a tight timeframe. In the last six months I’ve perfected my cha-cha to the point that I’m ready for a spin on Dancing With the Stars.

Such is the life of the business traveler. I was randomly selected to go through the extra invasive TSA search this morning, which included getting a blow job by the explosive detecting machine. For those who haven’t experienced this yet, you walk into a booth and are blasted with a couple air blasts (you dirty birds who thought I was talking about something else need to get your head out of the gutter). While this is done in the name of Homeland Security, I can’t help but suspect it is the universe continuing its campaign against me ever having a good hair day. As an added bonus, I also received the cheesiest pick-up line ever from the security officer tasked with examining my bags for explosive residue (funny since the only thing about to explode at this time was my patience). He asked if I knew why I was being randomly searched, and when I answered no he told me the TSA was conducting a special screening for adults ages 22-27 only. Then he winked and smiled.

Smooth buddy. And sure, I can be 22 to 27 years old today. No problem. Why stop lying about my age today?

Economy passengers get no respect. No leg room. Bad movies (Norbit? C’mon! Are you kidding me?) Bad food (I just purchased cashews and carrot sticks – two of the only semi-healthy food options outside of Pringles and Cup of Noodles. My considerate neighbor in 19C opted for tuna fish and crackers, because everyone enjoys a smelly fish stench in tight quarters. And it truly compliments the fumes from the guy who bathed in his cologne this morning sitting in an undetermined seat around me).

Ironically, for a woman who loves to travel and thinks travel is one of the best parts of her job, I hate flying. The fear is truly irrational – I know flying is safer than driving, but the idea of dropping 30,000 feet out of the sky and dying in a huge fireball makes me grip my seat handles with every take-off and bout of turbulence. The fear hasn’t stopped me from boarding a plane yet, but I have rituals I must go through before take-off that are sanity self-preservation tools. This includes being really nice to the flight crew and studying them for any signs of fear, locating the nearest exit (easy since I appear to be destined to always sit over the wing), and saying a little prayer that typically includes the words, “I’m not ready to die today.”

Beyond the fear, crammed quarters, and funny smells, I love the idea of getting on a plane in San Francisco and a few hours later, arriving in a foreign country. I am told by many that this will get old and tiring in time. Until then I’m still enamored by the unintentional comedy that is business travel and enjoying my window on the world, even if it looks a lot like an airplane wing these days.