While removing footwear and loading it along with your carry-on baggage for checking goes on automatically thru x-ray vision or whatever, you (with your worn jewellery) are made to stand separately from others (who are just kind of checked with a probe that beeps).

They call out loudly for "special assistance", make you stand on some foot marks, make you turn this way and that,(kind of feels like ballet in slow motion), and basically run the same probe all over you. Its a laborious thing for someone to do, and the person doing this check sometimes even apologizes for frisking you. How this tells them whether my jewellery is especially dangerous I have never understood.

Its the same probe and the same me. But I am sure 10% of the people watching this , probably feel thankful that a dangerous type has been detected ….:-).

But this doesnt happen in Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul etc. Maybe because they are more clued in, to Asian social customs etc.

When Greg and I took a flight to Maryland, Greg lost the sticker on the back of his driver's lics that proved it wasn't expired. He had to go through a sniffer machine and they tested his shoes, which had chemicals on it, because… hello.. he is a chemical engineer! He was given a line of questions and thankfully he had his business card and airport badge to prove his line of work, etc.

I'm sorry that people go through this and at the same time… I understand it IF it's handled professionally and not as if it's the Spanish Inquisition.

Is it arrogance or fear or government that has to make up for not being more guarded in the past and hence Sept 11th and now is going the opposite way with too much regulation..