Travel Agents

Travel agents are a separate species. I've been speaking to them for the past two weeks or so. And they gave me a unique confusion as to who the salesperson and who the customer was. I had to make a sales pitch to each of them just to get them to talk to me and I had to convince them to give me the fares to India. One experience was real amusing. I called this person up and he asked me to call back after 5 minutes. Again, I call and he told me he was real busy and maybe I should call up after 30 mins. I call up again after 30 mins and he informs me rather coolly that he is having lunch and would appreciate it if I called later (what???! I am scratching my head wondering if I am really the customer? He'd appreciate it?!!). Hell, I thought to myself, this is like talking to a boyfriend who's about to dump you! Not that I'd know much about that anyways.
And finally, the bargaining phase. Once they start talking, you have to literally extract information from them with- what's that thing dentists use to pull teeth out? Pliers? Nope, I think pliers are used by mechanics. But as I am writing this, I got this strange mental image of myself in surgical masks and gloves wielding whatever dentists use and prying out some decayed teeth that simply won't come loose....if that imagery seems gross, blame it on "Harold & Kumar". It falls in the twilight zone between a sick, gross movie and an amusing, silly movie (It's like Seinfeld, a movie about nothing!). I don't know which. But I certainly won't forget it.
And I finally finished off a webpage that I was developing at my workplace. It was a particularly challenging task and it feels good to have finished it.