on French strikers and Chilean miners

France is my new Iceland- a country continually wreaking havoc on my travel plans. At least the Icelanders could blame nature, the French are making a mess of everything by themselves. Over the past several weeks, their air traffic controllers have been continually going on strike, causing a massive decrease in the number of planes allowed to fly over French airspace, and thus obviously causing massive delays around Europe. It was due to this that I found myself with a 6 hour delay this past week in Heathrow, as my flight to Madrid got caught up by the French mess. I was well annoyed, as I got to Madrid around 4am, when I had to be up again at 5:30 for an early meeting outside the city. I had dozed off a bit on the plane, once we had been finally allowed to board it, although I had heard the announcement that our flight was a code share with Lan Chile, and that the connecting Lan flight would be held in Madrid, as 40 passengers on our flight were connecting to it. but I was still amazed by what I saw as I disembarked my plane in Barajas: Chilean flags everywhere and people sobbing and shouting CHI CHI CHI, LE LE LE at the top of there lungs. In my tired state, and rather perpetual state of geographic confusion, I wondered for a moment if I might have got off in the wrong country. But no, our plane had parked next to the Lan one, and we disembarked just in time to see Florencio Avalos, the first miner to be rescues, emerge in the rocket like capsule from the bowels of the earth. It was an amazing moment, and as tired as I was, I was glad I could witness Chile’s tremendous accomplishment.