A to B with speed and comfort

The world's transportation system is really a wonderful thing.

Today I finished up at the office in Munich and caught the underground - the U-Bahn - from the suburban station to the central station or Hauptbahnhof. There I switched to the S-Bahn for the 40 minute ride to Munich's airport. On arrival I walked to Terminal 2 and checked in for my flight to Bangkok. Eleven hours later, the big Boeing landed at BKK and I had few hours to kill before my flight to Kuala Lumpur. On arrival in KUL, I jumped in a taxi and arrvied some 30 minutes later in downtown KL.

Including walking, I employed six different modes of transport and was safely transported from one side of the planet to the other in comfort and safety and with relative speed. That's cool!

But something isn't cool. Let me explain.

Airport security checks. They´re not pleasant, but they're a fact of life. I really can't comment on how effective they are at eliminating security risks - sometimes the process seems slack and the security staff disengaged - but that's a topic for another day. What I find frustrating is how most travelers don't seem to use common sense to speed up the unpleasant security check process!

"Take your laptop out of your bag and place it in a separate tray. Remove metal objects and electronic devices, such as mobile phones, from of your pockets and place them in a tray."

We all know the airport security check drill. So why is it that people INSIST on waiting until they're right at the front of the queue before they think to take out their laptop and remove electronic devices? I just don't get it.

Smart people (benefit of the doubt given) reach the front of the line and then it's "oh, I better take out my laptop... do I need to? ... oh, I do?... well OK" and it's another 30 seconds before manage to remove the laptop from their bag which is locked up tighter than a thing that's locked up very tightly.

"My mobile phone and the 0.64 kg of coins I' carrying? They set off the metal detector? In a tray you say? Well OK."

And around we go again...

People! Prepare for it! Get ready! Have your laptop ready to go in a tray of its own! Get metal objects and electronic devices out of your pockets! Then we'll all clear security that much more quickly... and I wont need to vent using blog that barely no one reads.