February 18th: Are you sure you are really Ansel, because we don’t believe you.

Day 33, 8PM: So my amusing story for the day is as follows: How hard is it to buy a plane ticket with your credit card? Then consider the fact that called my credit card company and told them I’d be in Hong Kong until the end of May, meaning that they are expecting me to be using my credit card in other countries. So you would think the answer would be: not hard. As usual, you’d be wrong.

So I decided my next trip to another country would be to go to Thailand and as such needed to order tickets. This shouldn’t be hard so I went online, and tried to book my tickets. So my friend Brian and I find really cheap airline tickets on Sri Lanka Air and I try to book them with my visa card. After going through all the booking stuff it tells me my card was declined. OK, I must have typed something in wrong. I enter all the stuff in again. Still declined. Next thing I know my parents message me on Skype and tell me my credit card company just called our home phone and asked if I was really trying to book tickets to Thailand. My mother told them yes, I was actually trying to buy tickets. So after this I enter the information yet a third time now that they know I’m trying to legitimately book tickets. Declined again. Just great.

I do what anyone would do next, I call my credit card to tell them to let me book these tickets. They start out and ask for my name, my credit card number, my address, and the last four digits of my social security number. So, after all that info you’d think they would be happy considering the fact that my mom also told them I was trying to do this when they called my house. Nope. So then they ask me for my phone number. I give them my cell number out of habit and the guy sort of says “uh…” and I correct myself and give him my home phone number because apparently that’s the number listed on the account. Next, he asks me “What’s your mother’s maiden name?” I didn’t even know that they knew that! Apparently my phone volume was on the loud side because Brian just starts to laugh at this point. So I tell them her name and he asks me “What elementary school did you go to?” At this point the entire conversation so far is just absurd and ridiculous. Next they ask me for my checking account number (I have no clue why) and several other piece of information about me while my friend Brian is cracking up.

Eventually, I manage to convince them that I am indeed Ansel Misfeldt and they let me buy the plane tickets. At least one thing is done now. Or not…

So, about an hour after we finally book these tickets Brian comes over to my room and says we have a problem. Oh great. So, his mother is in charge of Global Security for Deloitte and won’t let him fly on anything that Deloitte won’t put one of the employees on. Apparently, Sri Lanka Air is not on their ‘approved’ list. So after all that hassle we have to cancel our travel plans, which is hard to do when you had a typo on your email address where they sent you your ticket number… but that’s a whole different story.