Saturday, August 25, 2007

The Land of Opportunity (Part 2- off to LA)

As you can in the photo, there were a lot of people who would be flying off to Los Angeles from Taipei International Airport that night.

Our flight from Taipei was 9.00pm, 14th August but we arrived Los Angeles Airport at 7.05pm,14th August. Kinda weird, right? The flight from Taipei to LAX took for like 12hours. So, 12+4 = 16hours.

Back To The Past. Hehe...

It was a very tiring journey although I slept many times, watched few movies, ate two meals on the plane. After a freaking tiring + long journey, we finally arrived Los Angeles (LAX).


We waited for quite long for immigration because there were a lot of people. We had even been waiting for our luggages for half an hour. We were kinda fortunate that day because it happened that two MARA officers based in Washington were waiting for us there as they had to go to Washingon D.C. but transit Chicago, which was also our transit. They brought us for check in and we went to the departure hall together.

The security in Los Angeles is strict. I was asked to open my bag, take out my lappie, took off my shoes and suit (not pants and shirts). They checked every single thing that I had in the bag. Luckily, it merely took 15minutes. The funniest part was when the security officer, a pretty young lady, asked me whether I came to the United States for a business trip. LOL! I just said "No." Do I look like a businessman???

After settled everything, we walked to the boarding gate. They seemed happy.

While we were on our way to the gate, I stopped at starbucks to buy "Hot chocolate" and some cookies because I was too hungry. I was surprised to see the price because it was way too cheap compared to Msia (if you don't convert). I just spent 4USD for that and I received my first resit from US. Haha..

At 2300hrs sharp, we boarded the United Airline plane.

On the plane...

So, the flight took for like 4 hours and I just spent my time sleeping again. We reached Chicago O'hare International Airport at 5am(Chicago time) although it took for only 4 hours (actually, we were supposed to reach at 3am).

to be continued...

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

The Land of Opportunity (part1-transit taipei)

After being lectured and advised by family, relatives, and even friends, I have finally arrived in the United States of America, The Land of Opportunity. Yea, opportunity of getting whatever you insist of getting. I shall begin with my journey from KLIA - 14th August.

Yea, 14th august was the date I flew to America. The night before, I was so engrossed with stuffs like luggages and all. That night was also the night I received the most SMSes in my whole life ever. Though, I was so busy arranging my clothes and stuffs till I didn't manage to reply some of my friends' messages. I'm sorry..:( Surprisingly, I slept well that night. Kewl...

So, that morning on the 14th august, I woke up early and prepared myself for breakfast since my flight was 3.15pm bound for Los Angeles (transit Taipei). My uncle brought my parents, uncle and I to the KLIA airport that morning around 11.30am. I arrived there early to weigh my luggage and to my amaze, it was 28kg!
Overweight!
It should not be more than 23kg for each luggage. Luckily, my father brought a small and empty luggage to the airport just for in case. Hurriedly, I transferred some my clothes and stuffs to the small luggage.

Thus,1st luggage = 19kg, 2nd luggage = 9kg. COOL!!!

Oh ya, aiman, the funny guy , went to the airport to send me off as well.
After a few minutes, everyone was in the airport already. There were ten of us flying to US on that particular day. We gathered, took our flight tickets+allowance and checked in. At 2.30pm sharp, we said goodbye to our parents, friends and relatives. All the faces that I saw that day were gloomy. I just smiled and said goodbye to my parents and uncles. Hehe...no crying okay??

So, ten of us went to the International Departure Hall by the aero-train. When we reached there, we were already asked to board the plane. hmm...kinda fast.

Alright, so basically my route was KLIA-TAIPEI-LAX-CHICAGO O'HARE-INDIANAPOLIS.

Four stops.
LAX(Los Angeles Xpectations) = Los Angeles International Airport.

The flight to Taipei took for about 4hours and I managed to eat my dinner and watch a movie on the plane. When we arrived in Taipei International Airport, we were stunned to see the airport. It is kinda like a big yet old airport And the funniest thing was...

In the photo, I was actually drinking plain water by using a paper cup! It was not a normal paper cup we have in Malaysia but...

to be continued...

Thursday, August 9, 2007

Sayonara

I have been bombarded with a lot of advice since I finished my summer semester in INTEC. I have been counting days since the Day1 I finished my semester. As the time has almost come, I feel the pressure almost everyday.

Honestly, I don't feel elated, excited and glad at all...

What I can feel or sense every second is pressure...tension...

Some people just don't understand me at all. Yes, I might look happy. Face is deceiving, rite? Some even more annoying. I ask to stop talking about that but that person just continue.

As the time has almost come, people have been mentioning and asking me about the same thing - "How do you feel since you're leaving soon?". When they ask me this question, what I can reply is just "okla..". The next response would be "O c'mon, you don't feel excited at all, do you?"

How would u feel if you were me?

Ok, I stop here before I feel even worse.

This would probably be my last post before I'm leaving. See you all soon, my friends...I don't know when I will be back here...

Friday, August 3, 2007

Becoming a millionaire...Cool!

Let me blog about something funny for me (don't know whether you guys think it's funny or not) which happened to me last year...

It was on Saturday evening and I was on my way to St. Francis Xavier church in Petaling Jaya by bus. I was alone because Pete went somewhere (I forgot already but I know he was busy). On the bus, I was so somnolent since I didn’t have any friends to talk with. So, since I was alone, I tried to sleep for a while since the journey to Petaling Jaya by bus was so tedious and it took 40 minutes for the bus to reach there.

When I was about to close my eyes, something attracted my eyes. It was an advertisement which was advertised along the road. It suddenly conjured up a topic taught by my lecturer the week before about advertisement. This advertisement had indeed caught my attention. I became quite animated. The advertisement went like this ...

“Be a Millionaire! Win 4.8 Million Rupiah @ RM2000!
Name the most popular or hottest place in Shah Alam.
For more information, call 016-xxxxxxx.”

(Actually, I translated it to English. It was actually in Malay.)

This advertisement seemed exotic to me. It was pretty ambiguous. I could not really understand the sentences in the advertisement.

There were few questions that made me think...

1. Is it for Malaysian or Indonesian?

2. If it was mainly for Malaysians, how was it possible for Malaysians to be millionaires by winning 4.8 million rupiah which is in fact equivalent to RM2000 only?

3. Then, if it was for the Indonesians, why did they want to advertise it in Shah Alam, the capital city of Selangor? Why not in Jakarta or any other states in Indonesia?

4. Why did they want to ask question about Shah Alam to Indonesians?

5. If they wanted to promote Shah Alam to the Indonesians, why did they want to advertise the commercial in a place where there are less population of Indonesians?

p/s Please feel free to answer my questions...

I kept on asking myself what the commercial was all about.

I was grinning when I saw the advertisement and all those weird questions came into my mind. It was really funny especially when I thought of ‘unthinkable’ thoughts. A lady who happened to sit beside me in the bus suddenly laughed when she saw me smiling without any reasons. I laughed as well. She didn’t know that I was in fact plumbing the huge commercial. The gigantic advertisement was actually situated beside a traffic light. So, the bus stopped there for few minutes before the light turned green.

Therefore, I took the chance to copy the sentences in the commercial so that I could go back and had a look at it. After the light turned green, the bus continued the journey and I eventually fell asleep in the bus.

p/s So, you guys can see how bored and lazy I was at home writing this blog...