Stampede Design
January started magnificently. I spent a week in the wonderful city of Kuching, visiting places such as the Sarawak Cultural Village in Santubong and picking dragon-fruits at my best friend’s little orchard. It is a city with diverse ethnicity background, colorful culture and not to forget, pretty people too. It’s my second time around.
At Narita Airport
The highlight of the month however, was my trip to Phoenix, AZ. It was a personal invitation from one of our clients – A.J. Brown of Trading Trainer – who wanted me to be on-site for the training and integration of their existing website with a third-party software, Infusionsoft. Infusionsoft is a hosted web-based solution that specializes in email marketing and CRM. It also provides support for e-Commerce and affiliate programs.
This being my first trip to the States, had me drove back and forth to the US embassy in KL as part of the visa application procedures and with the Kuching trip and all, it was pretty tight. Interestingly and well, fortunately too though, I had my visa issued on Friday 23rd at 3pm which was on the same day I was flying. I flew out of KL at 1130pm. Yes, it was pretty tight.
Well hello, Tokyo!
The journey itself was an epic adventure in its own. As you might have guessed it, it was not a direct flight. I bid “sayonara” to KL close to midnight, bound for Narita, Tokyo. (I just have to let my thought out loud on this one though. This is definitely my favorite flight to date, MAS operated 777. Really superb in many ways!).
We reached Japan air space right around 6am. Rolled up the window shades, looked outside and guess what you’d see. Yeah, sunrise in the land of the rising sun right from the cabin! Every second of it was breath-taking. I may not seen a lot of sunrises in my life, but I’m not sure if they can come any better than this one.
The ground temperature at Narita was around -1°C. I’m supposed to board my connecting flight to San Francisco (SFO) here except it was not to leave ground until 10 hours later. Man, I hate long layovers. Thankfully though, they have rooms that weary travelers like me can rent by the hour. I had 5 hours killed. Fast-forward a few hours, and we were all set to board the SFO flight.
This is when it got hairy. I went into the plane and saw my seat was occupied. Little did I realize that I got the wrong boarding pass issued to me while I was checking-in. It was for my other connecting flight, SFO to Phoenix (PHX). Both flights were operated by the same airline, thus the passes look similar. In spite of all the confusion, they still managed to put me onboard in a different seat close to the rear. Well, that’s cool. Kudos to the Narita ground staff for handling the matter professionally, Japanese-style! *
* That is to say very briskly, trying really hard to explain in English with plenty of apologetic gestures.
The San Francisco Connection
The flight was really long. Going back against time, we reached SFO about 12 hours later. The SFO airport is really huge with planes coming in and going out literally every single minute. As active as the air traffic may be, I was there stucked at the Homeland Security gates. For a first timer like myself, plus all the recent developments regarding enhanced security for US bound flights, it’s understandable though. Even so, my connecting flight to PHX is just 2 hours away and by the look of the queue length and speed, I doubt I could make it in time. I texted Shaza to let her know of my little situation so she can relay the news to A.J.
As expected, I missed my PHX flight. I did receive some good news from the security officer that the airline should be able to rebook me on the next flight to Phoenix. What a breather! Well, it’s lunch time in California, and with 2 extra hours to spare, Mexican did the job.
Phoenix, Finally
Arizona Airport
Phoenix Marriot
By the time I touched down in Phoenix, the only thing I had in mind was to get some serious rest. It was a very long day indeed and I was drained. Had a long hot shower and went straight to bed.
To be continued in Part II…
