mike carey

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).

Risk levels are obviously different here than they are in the US, different numbers of cases per million, different levels of adoption of non-pharmeceutical precautionary measures and different mandated isolation protocols for confirmed cases and close contacts. I have travelled twice in January, both times by air, with public transport to and from the airport. On both trips I was cautious but not overly worried. I would have chosen not to travel for Christmas, although that was a decision I ended up not having to take. What changed for me over those six weeks was not my perception of the level of risk, although that was lower when I took the last of the four flights than it had been for the first, but the level of clarity that public health authorities had on the nature of the Omicron surge. So, I'm happy to travel, and I'm off to Sydney tomorrow, although driving this time. Not sure I'm ready to travel to or in the US, but that's through the prism of my experience here and a distant view of the situation in the US. If I had spent the last two years there, I'd probably be ready to travel now. I had a casual contact alert from the NSW check-in app a few days after I returned to Canberra, but the exposure period was so short, and in such a small area of the shop that I doubt there was any actual chance of contact, much less infection. But still, I came down with something that may be related to the contact, maybe not. I misunderstood the guidelines for publicly available testing, and RATs couldn't be found for love nor money so wasn't tested. I isolated for seven days anyway, the time that would have been mandated if I'd tested positive, and whatever it was cleared up. (I became eligible for my third shot during the seven days.)

Yes, I was aware of that. I should have been clearer, I regularly [but not necessarily frequently] see new threads that include a link to an older closed thread that is relevant to the new discussion being started. That tends to be done only by experienced members of the forum who remembered the old thread, and [importantly] knew how to find it. They will likely continue to do that. That's why I said it would be useful but marginally so.

@RadioRobis the purpose of this to alert the creator of a thread to another related thread or does it continue on and include links to those threads in the new thread that is being created. If the latter can you override its selections so only threads you think are relevant are displayed? (Although your last bullet point tends to suggest this capability is only a reference for you to see while you are creating the thread.) It's not clear whether the 'last year' relates to when the tread was created or to when it had last had a post added. I would be inclined to have it set to include any active threads, so any that have had a new post in the last two years (IIRC). I can see some value in displaying older threads, but not all that much. Whatever the details of how this works, it's a great idea.

I too have had a meeting with a Hungarian (in Vegas no less) and the experience was a delight, and one that I would repeat in a heartbeat.

I had seen that reported on the ABC News Channel this morning, although they were careful to say it was hearsay reporting. I was thinking of posting about it here when the thread came up in my feed, but you had already done so. The three year ban is automatic but the minister has discretion to waive it. I can't imagine that even this minister would not do so, and if it's a Labor minister it's almost certain that they would.

If I'm not mistaken several forum members will be taking the short flight to Palm Springs in a couple of months.

I went to Jersey but I didn't get off the train.

To be specific, I live in Australia and use the rent.men address to access the site (I have also entered via rentmen.eu) and that information (specifically text comments in RM reviews) is visible to me via both those URLs. Rates are visible for escorts who are not in the US, but not for US escorts. I have assumed that rate information is not allowed for them rather than hidden from US readers of the ads. (When I have been in the US, rates for non-US escorts, visible here, were not displayed.)

I'm not sure that is part of the problem. I use the rent.men version of site from outside the US and see the information that is hidden in the US.

Bon anniversaire!

EWR perhaps? Emirates probably have availability from airports other than Newark. If you have enough points, your airline's award site would be the place to start. Whichever airline that is, seats on Emirates may be available from them (I don't know which US carriers that is true for), but they all offer seats on their partners' flights as well as their own. If you have transferable points in a credit card account then you can look for deals on a range of airline programs (including non-US carriers). If you're looking to pay money for your tickets, start checking on the travel aggregator sites or a site like Amex travel for the dates you're interested in. Discounted fares pop up in all classes frequently, and you'll recognise a good deal after watching the market for a couple of weeks.

Not something I could have posted in here. Not that I would have thought of doing so anyway.

I've done an Antarctic cruise, expensive but worth every cent, in 2003. It was on a small ship, 57 pax, for 14 days. The entire time from shortly before first sight of land smelt of penguin poo.