Back in Hohhot :: home :: Google Dropping Some Science
* 24 Hours to China *
comments
12/11/2004 5:00am PST: Hongyun and I leave our home in Santa Clara for our impending journey through various lands to reach China.
12/11/2004 8:10am PST: We board Air Canada 561 bound for Vancouver
12/11/2004 10:40am PST: Arrive in Vancouver
12/11/2004 12:00pm PST: Begin boarding Air Canada 029 bound for Beijing
12/11/2004 12:30pm PST: Scheduled departure time, but we are delayed since there was a late connecting flight and we missed our first window to enter Russian air space.
12/11/2004 1:00pm PST: We're finally on our way.
12/11/2004 6:00pm PST: After playing with the Zen Portable Media Center for most of the trip and being in and out of sleep, Hongyun and I decided that it's time we stayed awake to begin acclimating ourselves to China time. So what do we do? We bust out the laptop and watch The Apprentice 1st season DVD. The laptop had enough juice for the first 4 episodes and more (about 3 hours)...pretty impressive.
12/12/2004 4:15pm CCT (12:45am PST): We finally arrive in Beijing. Customs, baggage claim, finding Hongyun's friend, etc was surprisingly easy. We hang out with her friend for a while in the airport. I exchange some cash...we get some over-priced beverages. We showed her some of our wedding videos that were stored on the Zen PMC...neat. Mental note: Start importing Haagen Daaz to China...the standard size (1/2 pint) goes for 11 bucks here!
12/12/2004 7:50pm CCT (3:50am PST): We decide to go checkin for our business class Air China flight to Hohhote. We approach the check-in counter and they inform us our flight has been cancelled. Awesome. Simply awesome. So they scramble to find alternate flights and luckily another airline offered a flight leaving 10 minute earlier than their cancelled flight. The nice (weird for China) lady at the counter offered to take us to a counter where they could switch out tickets. The other lady at the counter looked at our tickets for a while and when the first lady who walked us over left, the counter lady just handed us back our tickets and said to go somewhere else to change the tickets (didn't even tell us where to go). Ahhh...yes...good to be back in China.
Hongyun went back over to the first class check-in lady to ask "WTF?" That lady rushed over and told the counter lady "WTF?" and stood there to make sure she switched the ticket. Nice. Finally figured out how to get decent service...pay for first class tickets.
After getting our tickets from bastard-counter-ticket lady, we went over to check-in for the other flight. Everything went smoothly. There was even a separate security checkpoint for business/first class passengers (by the way, the business class tickets cost us 10 bucks more per person...worth it). We went through the checkpoint at which point we discovered my liquid soap had leaked out in my backpack. Mad dash to the first class lounge. Dumped everything out on a coffee table and grabbed a stack of napkins. Hongyun's computer was half covered in goop...uh-oh. After a while of wiping stuff off, everything seemed to be ok. More to follow...gotta have breakfast now...
Post Your Comments (scroll down). Jump back to archived comments or the top.
2008EuropeTrip
4815162342
AdobeIllustrator
AdobePhotoshop
AdobePremiere
AJAX
Amazon
Amtrak
Apple
AroundTown
ArtDesignPhoto
ASP.net
Backup
Berkeley
BlackFriday
Bloglines
BlogTech
Books
Buddhishm
Business
Camping
China
China2004
Cinema
Commute
CoolTechnology
CSS
Culture
Customers
DailyLife
DeepInCode
Diabetes
DIY
Drupal
EastBay
Education
Energy
Entertainment
EVDO
ExcelTips
F'edUpToys
FamilyandFriends
Fashion
FireFox
Flickr
FoodandDrink
Fraud
FreeStuff
Fun
Funny
Gallery
Games
GoogleDocs
Halloween
Hardware
Hawkers
HipsterPDA
HomeStuff
HongyunArt
HuntingBeauty
InfoViz
InterestingWebsites
InTheNews
iPhone
iPod
iTunes
Japanese
Javascript
Lego
LifeHacks
LinkedMe
Linux
LongTail
Mambo
Mapping
MBA
Microsoft
MobilePhones
MoneyMoneyMoney
MovableType
MSNSearch
MSNSpaces
MusicFromCommercials
Nintendo
OfTheDay
OpenOffice
OpenSource
Organizing
Origami
Outdoors
Outlook
Paypal
Phishing
PlugIn
Poker
Politics
PPC6700
PreFab
PSP
PVR
Rabbits
reBlog
ReverieSoundRevue
Robots
Ruby
SanDisk
SanFrancisco
SanFranisco
SansaConnect
Science
Shoes
SiliconValley
SiteUpdates
SmallWorld
Society
Sony
Spam
Spoof
SQL
StarWars
Stupid
Sustainable
Sustainale
TEDTalks
TestDrivenDevelopment
Thailand
Thailand2003-2004
Thanksgiving
Travel
Tshirts
Tutorial
Ubuntu
Vista
VisualStudio
Vlog
VroomVroom
WebDesign
Wii
Wiki
Windows
WindowsLive
Wireless
Xbox
Yahoo
YouTube
ZING
Zune
