Good Ol' Days: Movie Queuing

In the good ol' days of my youth, we went to watch the movies a lot - me and my friends. The movie theatres are usually located in the malls. Back then there was no internet yet and there was no ticket machine (only VHS movies where one can rent from VHS movie rentals), so the only possible way to buy movie tickets was to queue in front of the ticket booths. For some weird reason, though, the ticket booths would only start opening up about an hour prior to screening time (if I remember correctly) and if you want to buy a ticket for the later showtime, then you had to queue later (not possible to buy a ticket for a later showtime earlier). The problem was that for popular movies, people would start queuing at least two hours prior to screening time. For popular movies, usually there would be such a LOOOOONNNNGGGG line of people zig-zagging like a snake and because we couldn't possibly reserve any seats beforehand, that meant that if one wanted to get the best seats, one had to queue in the front.

I remember going to some popular movies with my friends and to make sure we got to choose any seats we wanted (usually the back middle seats), we had to be there already 3-4 hours prior to screening time. And to make sure we didn't get leg cramps, we'd just sit on the floor right in front of the ticket booth and usually once we sat there, other people would start doing the same thing behind us LOL LOL!!!

One possible way to "skip through" the line was to find someone you know who was queuing already and then pay him/her for your ticket(s), but after some time the officials found out about this practice and so they limited the amount of tickets that each person in the line could buy (for example max. 5 tickets/person). We never really did this a lot, though. I only remember one occasion when we had to do this 'coz my friends had some classes at that time that they couldn't really skip, so we were there rather late and the line was already WAY too long. Fortunately one friend's boyfriend found a friend in line and he could get us the tickets he he he he...But all in all it was actually a FUN thing to do because my friends and I could chit-chat to our heart's delight for hours. Yeah, I know, women!!! LOL LOL LOL!!! And I suppose we talked even more when we were teenagers 'coz there were less distractions (no kids, no spouses, no jobs, etc.).


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Ahhhh...the good ol' days...I also remember one time I was there with two other friends and not long after the movie started, one of them kept on leaning to my side of the seat, whispering that the guy sitting next to her smelled so bad that she just had to try to get as far away from him as possible. Apparently it seemed as though the guy had stepped on cat's dung or something 'coz she claimed that it smelled just like that. Fortunately for me, I didn't even smell anything throughout the movie LOL!!! My nose is notorious for not being sensitive at all he he he he he...

The same friend was also once laughing too much during a movie (even after other people had stopped laughing) that somebody from the back threw some popcorn at her he he he he he...

Another time I managed to spill my Coke on the seat in the middle of the movie, so I had wet my jeans and I had to sit in the most unnatural way for the rest of the movie. Definitely not nice! I tried to dry up the wet part with some tissue, but it was too hard...so I just resorted to covering it up with the plastic bag that I had with me to make sure that the person who was coming after me wouldn't get his/her pants wet. I sure hope the person who came after me realized that it was wet, though!

Back then nobody had a mobile phone, so it was nice to watch movies without the distractions of having bright small screens in the middle of a dark theatre. However, I must admit that it's nicer to buy movie tickets these days 'coz one can do it online or through a ticket machine and the ticket booths are open non-stop, so one can buy the tickets for whichever showtime one wants. BUT there's another big issue I don't like about "modern" movie theatres. Back then we could bring any food we wanted (that we bought from a supermarket for example), but these days they wouldn't only let us bring the food and drinks sold inside the theatre complex. It wouldn't be such a big issue if it hadn't been for the outrageous price, you know? The prices for food and drinks sold inside the theatre complexes are just horrendous!


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Rome Trip: Vatican City Tour #1

A day before leaving to Rome, I accidentally found out while browsing online for "things to see in Rome" that these days you can buy online tickets for tour groups in Rome from the official Vatican Museums site. This way you'll avoid having to queue for a long time outside the area because they had provided a separate line for those who had online booking vouchers. I had no idea what the tour group would be like, but I chose a 3-hour tour that included going inside Vatican Museums, St. Peter's Basilica, and the Sistine Chapel. The tickets cost €74 for the both of us. After booking the tour online, I received the voucher and I had to print it out and bring it with me. 

A day before the tour started, we went to visit the site because the article online suggested that we drop off at Cipro metro station instead of Ottaviano because the line in front of Cipro was normally shorter than that in Ottaviano, so we went there to find out how long it'd take for us to go there from the hotel (because our tour would start at 10.45). There weren't too many things to see around Cipro, so after checking out the place and finding out where we should queue, we went to Ottaviano to check out the place. There were so many stores around Ottaviano and true enough, there was such a LOOOONNNGGG queue of people there. I suppose it didn't help that the Vatican was closed for 2 days on Easter holidays, so it was really the right choice to buy the tickets online.

Anyway, on the appointed day we arrived MUCH earlier and we tried to get inside, but the guard who scanned the barcodes on our voucher told us to go back and come back only 30 minutes before the appointed time. So we sat on a bench outside a church because the shops nearby weren't open yet and when they were open we just went to look around a bit and I found a cheap T-shirt LOL!!!!! 

Once we got inside the place, we had to go through security screening and then R2 decided to leave the backpack in the cloakroom and then we queued in front of a line of separate booths to exchange our online vouchers with the real tickets. We queued right away, BUT again we were told to go back and only get back there 15 minutes before the appointed time. GAAAAHHHH!!! I don't understand why they had to do it 'coz it just doesn't make any sense (because we couldn't have gotten in without our tour guide!). Anyway, we waited for about 10 minutes and finally we could get our real tickets and we were told to go to a certain desk to get our headphones and wait for our tour guide. We did that, but the tour started rather late because some of the tour participants were a bit late. So apparently there should be 30 of us in the group and we had to wait until everybody was present.

There were other groups of people with their own tour guides in the whole place, so it was rather chaotic because there were so many people, so the tour guide told us to stay close to her. She was holding a kind of banner as a sign as you can see in this pic below:

Anyway, we started the tour by standing in front of this screen that showed the magnificent artworks in the Sistine Chapel. She explained the history a little as well as interesting tidbits about the artworks (that some of the faces were those of the popes during that time, etc.). Fascinating stuff...She said she had to do it first because we wouldn't be allowed to talk in the Sistine Chapel nor take any photos. Only after she had finished the presentation (it took about 20 minutes or so) did we get inside the museums (we had to scan our own tickets to the machine). Again there were so many people around us with their own groups, so we really just had to follow the tour guide.

I was a bit disappointed in the fact that it was such a crowded place in some parts that we didn't really have time to enjoy anything much. I couldn't even listen to her explanations properly because I used the time to take pictures and videos of the whole place. VERY overwhelming, actually. SO many things to see...awesome paintings, statues, etc. Not enough time to check everything out. We couldn't even stop by to admire everything too much because of time limit and whenever I wanted to take a pic of something, usually there were already a throng of people in the way, so I had to focus on taking pics VERY quickly by trying to bypass all those people while still focusing on making sure I knew where my group was. There were lots of AMAZING ceilings that I just couldn't capture properly in my photos or videos.

After we finished looking around at the museums, we queued into the Sistine Chapel and that was where the crazy crowd was (in some places it was HOT/stuffy because of the crowd and the lack of ventilation - can't imagine how it'd be like at the height of summer!!!). We moved very very slowly forward along the long, narrow corridors and the Sistine Chapel was an awesome place, though again the problem was we couldn't really enjoy it properly because it was so full, so mostly I just looked at the ceiling (my neck was seriously sore from all the lovely ceilings and taking pics and videos of them LOL!!!). Inside the Sistine Chapel, the guards kept on yelling every now and then, "NO PHOTOS!!!!!!!!!!! SILENCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" over and over and over again he he he he...

OK, I'm going to cut this here because otherwise it's going to be such a long post. Meanwhile, enjoy these photos: 

 

Culture Splish Splash

After writing my post on Bandung, Singapore, and Sodankylä, one of the comments reminded me of something else that I've experienced on my trip to Indo and Singapore last October.

First of all, let me tell you our flight schedule:

Rovaniemi - Helsinki - Hong Kong - Jakarta

Jakarta - Singapore - Jakarta

Jakarta - Bangkok - Helsinki - Rovaniemi

Well, on the first leg of journey, once we landed in Hong Kong, we only had about 1,5 hours there, so we didn't have much time to browse around the stores. The minute we arrived at the airport, it felt surreal to see SO MANY Asians and especially to hear Indonesian language being spoken by many passengers boarding to Jakarta. Why? Because I was so used to hearing Finnish all the time during the 1,5 years of my life in Lapland. Arttu kept on joking, "Look, YOUR people!" LOL LOL LOL!!!

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Oh yeah, I also felt the pace of the life changing so drastically when we arrived in Hong Kong. As usual, we had to go through baggage check before we could find the boarding gate to board the plane to Jakarta. There were two baggage check points, but the aisle to queue was so narrow. I stood behind R2 and I noticed that on the other baggage check point there were two people in line already. However, the woman right behind me just couldn't wait to go there, so she said "excuse me" and bumped me a little bit to queue there.

I think I must've been so used to the Finnish mentality (or Lappish mentality?) 'coz right then and there I thought to myself, "Hello? It's not like somebody else is going to STEAL that spot, you know? Especially since the aisle is so narrow. If I were in Finland, those people queuing behind me wouldn't have done such a thing. They would've waited patiently."

Funny thing was that I think if I hadn't lived in Finland, I would've thought that it was a normal thing to do. Why? Because in Indonesia, for example, if you want to go to the toilet in one of the malls, you don't really queue according to who comes first. You just stand in front of one toilet booth and if you're lucky, you'll get in quickly. If not (maybe if the person inside the toilet in front of you is busy making "bananas"), then somebody else who comes later might be able to get in the toilet right in front of her more quickly than you do. And sometimes some people might try to steal your toilet booth, even though they come later than you do!

In Finland, NOTHING like that ever happens! If there are so many people who want to go to the toilet, you'll find a very neat line of people, so whichever toilet booth door is open first, the first person on the queue will go there. So you don't have to "fight for your toilet booth" like in Indo.

Another thing that I had to remind myself and R2 before we landed in Jakarta was TO BE ALERT. We were so used to walking around feeling safe in Lapland and we CAN'T do it in Jakarta or Bandung. We really have to remind ourselves that there are pickpockets out there and some of them are SOOOOO good at what they do that you won't even feel it.

When R2 and I were in Singapore, I found that plenty Chinese there talked to me in Chinese. And I always replied in English, whether or not they would respond in English ha ha ha ha ha...

And on our way back to Finland, when we board the flight to Helsinki, the Thai flight attendant spoke to me in THAI!!! I think she offered me Thai newspaper to read during the flight. I was flabbergasted and speechless for a while until I could finally spoke to her in English, "I don't understand."

This experience reminds me of when I was doing the training at the local tourist info office. It was sometimes DIFFICULT to find out whether or not the tourists were Finnish or not. Sometimes I made the mistake of speaking to them in the wrong language (either Finnish or English).

Funny thing was that my brain was still in "Indonesian language mode" when we were stranded for 10 hours in Bangkok airport. There were a few times when I ALMOST blurted out something in Indonesian. The thing is that Thai people resemble Indonesian people in appearance. PLUS remember that we were still SO sleepy back then, so my brain wasn't working properly.

When we were on board the plane to Helsinki, I was again transported to "Finnish land" as most of the passengers were definitely Finnish. The first and second time I flew to Finland, I didn't experience this kind of thing, since I was still in "Indonesian language and culture mode" all the time, I guess. But it's changed ever since I've lived in Lapland.

Okay, I think that's all about culture splish splash for now. It's been VERY interesting indeed he he he he he...

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