From Calgary to San Francisco - Aug. 13

It has been a while, there were some techincal difficulties with updating my blog, so here it is, in all its glory: my life for the past few weeks.

My journey back to Tokyo, Japan, began with a painfully annoying experience of the competencies and incompetencies of airline companies. Newly installed in certain airports are so-called 'Self Check-in Booths', which I first encountered at Vancouver International. You stand in front of this slick machine, and swipe your passport or your airmiles card, and on the computer pops up your flight information. After a number of confirmation messages, the computer prints out your boarding pass, and all you have left to do is to take your check-in luggage to the counter and off you go. Solid. This efficient process was a nice welcome at Vancouver International, and again at Calgary International. Yet, what thwarted my all-encompassing admiration for this small glimpse into our near future of flying was nothing more than a single wake-up call. That is to say, United Airlines made it, literally, boldly clear on their website that passengers were to arrive a stunning three hours before departure time. For my 6:33am flight, this meant I had to be at the airport at a stomach-grueling, faint-inviting, vomit-inducing hour of 3:30am. There was no point in sleeping, so Al (oh, poor Al) and I stayed up all night, playing pool, watching Forrest Gump, making a song, and dozing.

Anyhow, the most frustrating part was that, despite the bloody early hour, responsible passengers like myself arrived promptly at the airport at 3am, only to be welcomed by not a single staff member of the airline companies. That certain security measures undertaken at this time (being post-9/11 and with the recent, successful aversion of the 'terrorist attack', which apparently took 12 years of planning and its instigators allegedly included a man 18 years of age...which meant this man had been planning this supposed attack from the age of 6, which is in itself a scary thought) take a long time is understandable. But to demand passengers to be up at 3am and not have the staff ready to check them in until at least 4:30am is ridiculous, and makes no logical sense. What was the point of making us wait an hour and a half?

This annoying logic was, of course, one of the many frustrations that haunted my journey. It took an additional 40 minutes to get through U.S. customs and security on the Canadian side (as it has been arranged), followed by carry-on luggage security, at which not only was my Legacy Games memorabilia swiss knife taken away (for obvious reasons; it was foolish of me to forget, but again, it was early), but I was selected for a thorough search which included taking everything out of my bag and getting a body pat-search. Of course, one wonders why I always get selected for these allegedly 'random' searches. In frustration I downed a tall caramel macchiato in under 15 minutes. I finally got on the plane, slept for 2.5 hours and landed at San Francisco International...on time!

At San Francisco I had a 3-hour layover. I treated myself to a bowl of udon for lunch, which was yummy, as I was fairly starved at this point. I had to go through carry-on luggage check again, and again I was treated to a thorough searching...and I didn't even beep when I walked through. Seriously, there must be an alarm siren ringing on top of my head and "I need to be searched" written across me. Two searches in under 5 hours is too much. Oh, and of course, they had to take my deodorant. Great, I thought, I'm cranky already, and now I have to smell. It passed U.S. customs the first round? As did my white-out pen. They almost took my mascara and my concealer, but the security officers had a 'debriefing' this morning, and they were told that mascaras and cosmetics as such were okay. But the deodorant and my white-out pen were confiscated the second round.

Lastly, Canadian loonies and toonies are globally useless. I have $12 in toonies left and have no idea what to do with them, as the currency exchange depot stopped taking them. I am at least 900 yen less than planned. Brutal! I tried to reason it out with the duty-free shop attendant, but she declined to listen. "Only bills, only bills," she said. Bah! F*&% you. Al, I'm sending you $12 in change, plus a handful
of dimes and nickels and pennies.