Exciting arrival in US

I am finally settled down in this totally different place after two days of hassles. Life here has been really exciting with friendly peoples, beautiful landscapes and comfortable home asides from a series of unfortunate events.

Firstly a boring 18 hours long flight from Sg-Tokyo Narita-LA-Salt Lake turned everyone into a lazy and sleepy pig. And as expected, upon arrival in LA, I was detained to be registered specially for a reason. (You are making a wrong guess if you relates it to my look, ^^) Thanks Louis for his fine message and I did estimate at worst I would miss my flight.

It wasn't an unpleasant experience as you might think of but just paperworks, echoing the sigh from the young ABC officer. We even talked about which airlines' flight attendants look most beautiful (FYI, he give his vote to SG airlines). However, the process was much longer than normal because of the stupid fingerprint scanner or software or computer or whatsoever. It was a little bit frustrating to repeat "left hand first, right hand next, look at the cam" for about 20 times while you are catching the plane.

When it's done finally, all passengers were gone with me alone standing rooted to the alien ground. I have to admit I was directionless at that moment but forced to act calm to deal with weird attentions from other officers. Hey, I am not the culprit of making myself late, you think what? (Of course this is a monologue, so as below)

Miss flight? No no no... sure die. Connecting baggage? Hmm...Should I check in my luggage? Don't care la, give. Check info board. Where's my flight no? Ahh...go out. Streets? Damn. Go up. Where's my gate? Freak out. Ask. Oh, terminal five. Where? Go down and take shuttle. Go down. There's no sign board with number of 5!? Ask. Cut through streets and parking lots? Don't care liao, all out running. Terminal 5 arrival. Ok. Go in. Check info board. Gate 61 - Boarding. 15 minutes more. Security check. Can I bypass the crowd? I am afraid I am late. NO!!!? Grrr........ Fine. Take out laptop. Remove shoes. Hold boarding pass. Every second counts! Wear shoes. Take back laptop. Drop. Damn! Sigh. Run. 50, 51, 52, 53,... 60-69 turn right. Ok right turn and open door. What the hell? Why so long a corridor? Run. No one else. Pak pak pak pak. All my running sounds. I'm tired. Where's the end? Go out, escalate up. Run. 64, 63, ...finally...there's someone I recognize for the first time in 3o minutes. Last few minutes boarding. Finally, I've made it. Is it all scripted? Phew........................

(Although I've made it, I think I could done something better by telling Ramnik that I don't have my phones roaming, as different to most of us, so that they don't need to have extra worries for unable to reach me. Anyway, it's over.)

After the near miss of flight, luck was yet to shine on me, or, to my luggage. Both of them were still at LA, delayed. Good. It had been already 30 hours since I last bathed, and I would continue to suffer for an unknown period with uncertainties looming around. Furthermore, being the last to be dropped off because I live the furthest at south and to be late to the departmental welcome dinner weren't really big deal but weren't relieving either.

And so when I finally back to my home, it was already 1030pm. I waited for 10 minutes. There's no sign that my luggage were on the way and I had to call delta for information. Oh, both are found and will be delivered to your address by 230pm tomororw at the latest. What a fake voice! I couldn't spare much excitement for this voice recognition and generation programme but go on to check it online. Wait a minute! Why my address was wrong? Sigh, Debbi gave the wrong address at the airport's counter. I should have check it myself, instead of allowing them to give the information. But what to do if the service provider provide the wrong piece of information? Suddenly I felt like only myself is reliable. Sigh.

I called again to change the address and got the update that the delivery company would deliver it around 3 A.M. 3 A.M. then 3 A.M. la...I was exhausted. But it was so confusing whether they would deliver it or not, as different operators said incoherent things to me and another friend Pei Wen who also had one lugggage delayed. Luckily it still came at the midnight, right before the sun rose, at 530 A.M. So happily and refreshed that I went on to unpack nicely and planned my schedule, until to be picked up at 9 A.M.

So today I am extremely tired, not because of jet lag, but because of a mere sleep of less than 2 hours. I just found that my hp spoilt, and so my last option to take photo was gone too. Why must life be that exciting huh? Though it's unique experience anyway.