From Iceland with love

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Aftermath of Earthquake in Sakhu - Nepal

Three Hours Lunch Break - Only in Spain

Do you really need three hours lunch Break ? Okay, maybe not in other countries but in Spain they probably need extra two hours more for their lunch break :)

I am currently in Spain - a small city one hour drive from Alicante, for Bio-Hpc research collaboration. The place looks normal and pretty much agriculture area. You can see orange trees everywhere in the city. Well, Murcia is the biggest orange producer in Europe :). While working with my Spanish research group, they started work on 9:15 am in the morning and by the time one O'clock they go for lunch. And, very surprisingly the lunch hour is three hours (from 1PM to 3PM). For me, it was very strange to me and some of my colleagues from Nordic countries also agreed with me. Then, I asked my project promoter about such a long hours lunch break - he has nothing to say on it but  highlighted this is the way it is in SPAIN.

For me and probably many others this might be the discouraging lunch break, well nevertheless when you work with your partners you have to follow the flow of the culture of the country- I guess. 

TNT Iceland bad service - Nightmare

I have used TNT express delivery service once before. First experience was good so decided to use again but it turned out in nightmare.

I posted my important document on 27th January 2015 from Iceland to Hayes, UK for the next day

delivery. I had asked my mate to be in the address to receive the delivery. But TNT UK called him next day 28th Jan 2015, and told him that they could not deliver ! -  reason they gave him was they missed the connection. My mate been advised that they might deliver the day after i.e 29th January 2015 and at the same time he been alerted they are not sure though. Again on 29th January 2015, my mate was waiting for the delivery but TNT UK called him telling him, your documents cannot deliver today either. This time they did not gave him neither further reason nor another delivery date and time.

So, I called TNT Iceland, inquired about my documents and asked why it has taken so many days. TNT Iceland neither could tell me where my documents is nor the status of the delivery date and so forth. TNT Iceland put me on dark, and made me extremely  worried person. She said I will be informed later on the day by phone or email. I waited the whole day but receive nothing. As one can think - how much worried & anger person I was !! It has been already 4 days since my documents left from Iceland and have no clue whatsoever where my documents has gone. Next morning I received an email from TNT Iceland, explaining your documents got stuck at the Dublin Airport because TNT plane got hit by Truck on the ground. They gave me assurance my documents will be sent to UK later that night. I was very disappointed and called TNT Iceland asking about the situation. My frustration did not really matter to them - I felt.  Customer support TNT Iceland could  say nothing much but in response - "we understand your situation bla bla". After few hours I received email again, nightmare began. 

TNT Iceland now told me, all the posts that had left on 27 Jan 2015 from TNT Iceland will be returning back to Iceland because it was a wrong container. Agony is,  they still don't know whether my documents are in that container or not. Can you believe this ? I am nearly crying because of this negligence services by the TNT Iceland.  It was 14:30 on last Friday, I received yet another email saying, your documents has been found in the returned container but it has damaged, what you want to do ? damaged picture attached. -- I could not believe this. When I opened the attachment my document was all wet. Simply simply could not understand this TNT Iceland.

I was running out of time, therefore my priority  was to deliver this document back to UK. I went to TNT Iceland office. When I saw my wet documents, my eyes were full of tears - I could not talk for 10 minutes. Water was all over in the documents. Well, you can read the letters so I decided to send them back.

When I returned back to my work and wrote a one full page of complain about the TNT Iceland handling documents like this as well as compensation. I been told my complain has been forwarded but heard nothing until today. This is how TNT Iceland express delivery service works in Iceland.

Unlike others, I used express delivery service so that my documents be delivered on time ,however, this nightmare experience and extremely bad service by the TNT Iceland has not just ruined my time but destroyed my whole future prospects that I was about to do.