mike carey

Here too. Does it give you Avis and Hertz status as well?

Good points raised by Benjamin and also @Pensanton the benefits offered by the Amex Platinum card (what I get in Australia is different so I didn't know for sure what they were in the US). Also @tassojunioron the different value of hotel program points, and some travel redemption ideas. (On hotels, if one program's points are worth twice another's, make sure you aren't getting just half as many for each dollar spent.) Bear in mind that a hotel or airline card will credit all your points to their loyalty program, but you will receive a set of benefits at that hotel or airline. Make sure what they offer is what you need, and that you're happy with how that limits how you can redeem them. Chase, and others like Capital One, and Amex offer benefits that aren't brand specific and allow you to transfer your points to other programs. The travel cards have flagship cards (like Amex Platinum) but they also have a range of cards with lower and sometime zero fees (and lesser benefits) that work the same way. You can pick the level at which you enter, and move to a higher (or lower) price point later if you need to. You may find it's worthwhile to have both types of cards, but only you know if you have the discipline to use each for the purposes for which they are best suited.

Oh, he is! Twenty-six and some months. It's right there at the top of his ad.

I've only just recovered from had my first booster, so not something I've had to consider yet. I'm not sure what the protocols are here for fourth and subsequent shots. It may well not be possible to have a fourth. I won't mention taking the one after that.

From what I've seen RM profiles continue if an escort changes his profile name without leaving the site. You see this if you buddy list someone and they change their name, they are still in your buddy list. So, reviews would probably remain if they change their handle.

Not at the standard retail outlet, although there used to be some that they did (more common with ointments than drugs taken by mouth). There are businesses called 'compounding chemists' that do that.

I hope only the bed deflated.

A minor point of clarification, these flights are on Air Tahiti Nui (TN) not Air Tahiti (VT), which is the domestic carrier in French Polynesia.

Are you talking about their B787 or former A340 J class (I haven't flown with them at all)? Air Tahiti Nui have stopped flying to Sydney but they codeshare with QF across the ditch and I've seen them on QF searches SYD-LAX.

I thought of, but omitted a comment on that in my previous post. That counter would usually be called the dispensary here. There is a distinction here between things that require a qualified pharmacist and those that don't, but that isn't reflected in what the shop is called. The Safeway issue doesn't arise here as the pharmacists' cartel (the Pharmacy Guild) has successfully lobbied to retain a ban on people who are not qualified pharmacists from owning a pharmacy. I suspect that when that changes (or one of the big retailers finds a way around it) that will be called something like the pharmacy counter but 'Chemist' will continue to be what the specialised shop is called no matter what else it sells.

Interesting distinction (to me at least). The word 'drugstore' is not used here at all (my spell checker even puts a wriggly red line under the word). Pharmacy, chemist's or chemist shop are the usual terms, although they don't sell the same range of goods that US 'drugstores' do.

I'm perplexed by the commentary that's been going on about 'hoarding'. The situations where taking a test might be appropriate have changed as infection levels and perceived risk of doing things when infected have been changing over recent weeks. Different people face those situations with different frequencies. So, is there any 'appropriate' number to have in the cupboard? When needing to self administer a RAT (as opposed to having one administered in a clinical setting) became a thing here it was impossible to find them in shops, so people would buy several if they had the chance and the money. If you buy 10x20 roll packs of toilet paper, that qualifies as hoarding, but is it hoarding if you buy enough groceries to last a week rather than a day? What about if you shop once a month? I wouldn't apply an absolute test that says having 12 tests on hand is too many, but it probably would be if you had established a pattern of needing one test every two weeks and you bought 12 more now.

In my accustomed penny-pinching public transport friendly manner, I investigated Amtrak as an option early on. As you suggest, the Palm Springs Amtrak station is a non-option. There was, however, an option to catch a train from LA Union Station to Fullerton then a Thruway (i.e. Amtrak) bus from there, but there were, I think, only about two of those a day. As I've said here before, I've just opted to take a connecting flight to PSP via some convenient city that isn't Los Angeles (nothing against LA, last time I rented a car at PSP and drove to LA via other places in the region for my flight home).

As @Epigonos noted in the Palm Springs Weekend thread, Australia will be opening its borders to foreign travellers from 21 February. Nobody is expecting a rush, but Qantas, at least, is bringing forward its plans to resume flying to many destinations, and possibly bringing forward plans to operate some new routes. They anticipate a fair volume of overseas based VFR traffic, in much the same way that Australian based VFR passengers jumped at the chance to travel late last year when Australians were allowed to leave the country (new routes to Delhi sold out in record time, and they had record redemptions of flight rewards). Qantas has already resumed flying A380s on the Sydney to Los Angeles route and will resume flying Sydney to DFW in a couple of weeks (using B787s not A380s). They are also considering bringing forward San Francisco flights from their current planned July resumption. Elsewhere, they plan to resume flights to Rome after almost 20 years. The one part of the country not open is Western Australia, which remains effectively closed not just to foreigners but also to Eastern Staters. WA's closed borders mean that non-stop flights from Perth to London are leaving from Darwin. Prospective travellers must be double vaccinated and have a negative PCR test within 72 hours of their scheduled flight departure, or a negative RAT (also referred to as a lateral flow test) conducted under medical supervision within 24 hours of scheduled departure and certified as negative by a medical practitioner. VFR = visiting friends and relatives, not visual flight rules.

As I recall, when I've been looking for fares on the QF website, SYD-LAX-SFO-PSP fares have been effectively the same as SYD-SFO-PSP. Also, via LAX-PHX. But yes, SFO is better for connections to PSP than LAX is. When I book from Canberra, flights via Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, and then via any of their US gateway cities have been essentially the same. But what happens on this side of the pond is off topic.

And is that for a US (3.78L) or Imperial gallon (4.54L)?

As I noted in an earlier reply, if fares from Australia are anything to go by a connecting flight is a modest additional cost on the same ticket. On QF the fare is roughly the same via LAX, SFO or DFW, their three US gateways. (I once even saw a competitive SYD-PSP fare on UA via IAH.) I suspect that US and international carriers would offer connections via any of the international gateways. None of this is of much use if you are already in LA.

I have been allowed to leave the country since last October. Yesterday's announced changes apply to foreign visitors to Australia (and from 21 Feb). I wasn't ready when the changes came in last year, and I've left my run too late now. I don't even have a current passport. (There would be time to get a passport, we are not having the ridiculous wait times I've heard applicants in the US are having but it's another level of uncertainty to add to airfare and accommodation availability.)

As far as I know, the only options are Amtrak/Amtrak buses, or other bus lines, not a shuttle or anything like that. As others have said, renting a car at LAX for the duration of your stay in SoCal is likely the best option. Other airports in the LA basin may be better options than LAX. I'm not the best person to ask, as my Qantas options to fly from a west coast port of entry to PSP are competitive, and no more than it would be to other nearby cities in the west/mountains (typically AUD100 each way on top of my trans-Pacific fare). For internal US travellers, just sucking up the higher airfares into PSP that I know US carriers have, and using Uber/taxis in Palm Springs may be a reasonable option.

I can speak to my experience with the gallery. If I use the 'unread site content' view, items no longer appear there if I've looked at them individually. If there is an album view in the unread list and I open that, all the items there that otherwise appear individually in the unread list are deleted from that list. It's not the same as viewing an album and being able to see which items you had already seen, but it fulfils a similar purpose.

There's no indication whether this is petrol or diesel, and in any case I don't know the price difference in Spain. However, I paid AUD1.809* yesterday for diesel here (as opposed to the EUR1.815 in that tweet), and on my drive back from Sydney today it was AUD1.709* in the biggest town on the way ($1.779 at the highway service centres outside town). Still, AUD1 is EUR0.62 now, so that Spanish price would still be serious sticker shock for me. (* I had a 4c/L discount voucher, and that would have applied to the $1.709 price as well. Those discounts are applied at the checkout, the full price is shown at the pump.)

Standard English lacks a singular second person pronoun (well it does have one, now considered archaic, 'thou'). There's another pronoun that English also lacks, that some other languages have (such as Chinese), and that is a separate first person plural pronoun that means 'we but not including you'. If you say, 'We are going on to Aspen' to your neighbours, your meaning is clear, but if Mum and Dad announce the same thing to the whole family it is not.

Hmmmm ....

Same thing's been happening here for the summer of cricket. The commercial and pay-tv commentary teams were often in a central studio but with some members of their teams at the various grounds. The radio commentators for the most part were at the grounds but for the first test against England, the Queensland border was closed (quarantine required, to be precise) so the whole ABC and BBC commentary teams were in a studio in Sydney. In Adelaide, several of both commentary teams contracted or were close contacts with Covid cases so had to isolate in their hotel rooms (as did the Australian captain, incidentally, ruling him out of the game), so there was a single combined ABC/BBC commentary on both networks (they were used to working with each other as they normally do stints in each other's commentary).