As Simple As Black & White: Hello From Singapore :D...

Due to my lack of a photo editing program, all my photos are going to be 2048x1536 or vice versa... they should load reasonably quickly still :)

Hello, hello!!! Greetings from lovely Singapore :D

I arrived in the wee hours of the morning... 1:10am roughly :P We were supposed to arrive @ 1:30am but had a tail wind all the way from Tokyo :)

Soooo... I guess I should keep up with my blogging so that I can detail my trip :P. The night before my flight I went out with AK and DL to BubbleWorld... I had to put together a list of things I was going to bring, and AK wanted to study up on his Korean, lol.

I got home and finished off packing... I guess I should have seen this coming, but I was still a little surprised by all the random goods that I was to take along with me. hmmm... how should I put it? OK, less than 1/4 of the things that I brought with me were my personal effects. hehe :P

Left: nothing belonging to me...
Right: Half belonging to me...

I made it to the airport well in advance and was surprised to see that the lineup for the etickets booth was retarded long... I should have snapped a shot of it.. but by the time I remembered I didn't feel like walking all the way back and wading through the crowd. Let's just say that Air Canada needs to get their act together...the queues were all over the place and there was no order among the chaos. No one could tell where the hell they were supposed to be standing and the people that should have been standing at the info counter were not there.

My dad met up with a client and finished a transaction (in the airport) wierd... apparently they've had this crazy arrangement for awhile now. Every year his client passes through Vancouver airport and does his RRSPs before continuing on to his connecting flight :P

I started queuing when I realized that the line into the security check was getting longer. Good thing too, I stood in line for @ least 15 minutes before I got into the door, then realized that the line continued on the other side of the door. For the first time I passed through the metal detectors without having to be patted down :)

I had a terrible sore throat which had me worrying for a bit. The last thing I wanted was to be sick on this trip... I was already worried because 2-3 people @ work missed the majority of the week due to illness... I was worried that I had had something passed on to me :( I stopped into one of the tuck shops on the way to the gate, and when I was searching for lossanges they did the final boarding call :( I had to run for the gate so no lossanges :'( Oh well, as long as I was on the plane, who cares, right? :) Yahoo~! Singapore here I come!!!

After finding my seat 21C, if I recall correctly, I got sat down and settled in for the flight. My neighbor turned out to be a UBC Student :) Kat... we began talking after we heard the Frenchie yammering away to the poor little Asian girl sitting in the center aisle... wow :/... it was blah blah blah... "I come from Toronto and I just took this flight into Vancouver... now I'm going to Tokyo on this flight with you and then I'm going to be going onto the Philippines..." OMG... I was sure that I was going to be driven mad with his drivel... I was also sure that she was just smiling and nodding but not understanding 60% of what was coming out of his mouth. As soon as we heard him going on, we both turned to each other and said, "This is going to be a long flight." :P

It turns out that she's a Political Science / Literature student and we had much to talk about. We REALLY started chatting after I pulled out one of the novels that I had brought along for my trip :) The Picture of Dorian Gray. I won't get into the details of the conversation... it was along the lines of politics, religion and all the things that you're not supposed to talk about in public :P It was great! Our 10 hr flight turned into what felt like a 2-3 hr flight :)... What am I trying to say? Um... we were talking for 8 hrs straight which is a first for me... usually as soon as I get into my seat in a plane I just put my head back and sleep the whole way, LOL...

I didn't take too many pictures on the way there, so I'll speckle random pictures throughout this post to make it more interesting... later :P for now I'm going to sit back and watch 'The Haunted Shop Cop'

* continued *

The flight into Tokyo was as any Air Canada flight is... sub-par by most peoples' standards. Don't think that I'm trying to take a pot shot at them... the truth hurts. Sometimes more than others :P The food was blah, no selection and waaay too salty. Still, beggars can't be choosers :(

So after I landed in Tokyo I prepared for my 3 hour wait. After we alighted at the airport I walked down the ramp and on to the walkway... Lo-and-behold there was a little Japanese lady with a sign that had my name on it... I'm still amazed at how organized the Japanese airport is. Upon indicating that I am me :) she proceeded to tell me that my bags were only checked until Tokyo, and not any further.. nice. Then she asked me for my boarding pass, but all I had was my fancy-printed-out-ePass and not one of the normal little coupon booklets :( I explained to her that that was all I had and she proceeded to ask me again... interesting...

So I showed her my eTicket with the itinerary on it and she stared at it for a good 5 minutes before passing it to another agent. Within 1 minute the other agent was tugging on the first's clothes asking her why she was holding me... She had found the part on the eTicket that said that I was scheduled to be on the next Singapore Airlines flight from Tokyo to Singapore. I'm not sure how the other one missed it, but she did -_-;

To make a long photoless story (post) short, the 2nd leg was more or less uneventful. The only thing was the Singaporean woman with her little boy (apparently an Italian citizen)... I felt kinda bad for the old guy sitting in front of him... the kid had his feet on the guy's chair for most of the flight and he was watching his cartoons screaming when there was something amusing and fully stretching his legs and kicking the seat in front of him. What amazed me most was the lack of concern that his mother showed. It was a pretty sad show of parenting.

I landed and had no problems with customs OR locating my bags :) I FINALLY got to see Jacqueline.. and before I had a chance to snap her photo, ran out of range :P