I went to drop my sister off at the airport today. On the bus ride there, we noticed police officers at every intersection and a bunch of people with professional telescopic cameras standing on a bridge facing the runway. I jokingly told my sister to keep an eye out for the new Airbus 380. From the massive media coverage of the New York test flight a few days ago, I knew the plane was making a trip to Hong Kong some time in these couple days.
Anyway, we didn't give it much thought after that. After checking in, I saw my sister off. I then went to the bus-stop to wait for my S1 bus back to town, and lo-and-behold, what's that big cargo plane taking off? On closer inspection, is that A380 on its tail? OMG!!! Whip out my cellphone to snap a picture. #$!#@$!@#$. It's my Hong Kong cellphone... how to use camera?!?! Seconds later, that beautiful plane flew off into the clouds and left Tochi with his mouth gaping.
From my 10-second encouter with A380 @ 9:21 am, the most amazing aspect of the jumbo jet isn't its size. The plane is definitely larger than a B747, but its size just resembles a big cargo plane, i.e. a plane that I'd expect Fedex to use currently. However, this plane is QUIET! I was listening to the other planes take off after that (I can't really recognize any planes aside from B747, they could be B737, B777, A300's, etc.), and they were all so much louder than the A380. Imagine you are standing on the side of a road. The noise pollution of the A380 is like a BMW driving by (a long steady ZOOOOOOOOM), while all the other planes are like big trucks (loud rumble rumble rumble).
I'm still a little disappointed that I didn't get a picture. If I knew it was leaving HKG this morning, I would have waited with my camera ready. However, it's still pretty cool to see the A380 first hand. Who knows if and when I'll be able to ride one. :)
P.S. The huge police presence were for the Hong Kong Elections at the Asian Expo. There seems to be some debate or polling work today. Protestors, police, press, lots of people just mulling around. I found the protestors quite amusing. One group had about 10 cars decorated with huge yellow banners calling for the incumbent to step down.
Ever wonder what to do if your flight is cancelled? You hear such news every now and then. Freak snowstorm hits the Northeast or Midwest or Colorado. Thousands of flights cancelled. Millions of travellers stranded in airports. You pity those poor souls for half a second and move on. Until it happens to you. :(
One of the most stressful all nighters I've ever pulled.
Saturday, March 17:
00:23 - Check flight status online: CO 2136 from YYZ to EWR - Flight CANCELLED.
00:24 - OMG. WTF.
00:25 - "Due to severe weather system in the NorthEast, New Jersey is expecting up to 6 inches of snow. All flights before 12pm on March 17th in and out of Newark have been cancelled"
00:27 - Scramble mode. It's past midnight, what to do?
00:28 - CO's website is utterly useless. There are no instructions on what to do. Only find CO's reservation number online... dialing.
00:28.5 - "Thank your for calling Continental Airlines. All of our agents are currently busy, and you have been placed in priority sequence. Expected wait time is 290 MINUTES."
00:29 - Phone on hold. Listening to bad music. Preparing for a long night.
00:30-3:30 - Using cellphone, tried calling various hotlines, including the Cantonese hotline. Found out Continental Airlines is called "大陸航空". I had to hear it twice to believe it. lol.
04:05 - "Hello? Hello? Anyone there?"
04:05 - Wake up and "ME! I'm here! Hi Hi" - scrambling to find my itinerary. Connected to Reservations Agent! (after only ~200 minutes! yay!). I was so tired by then. "Sorry sir, for weather cancellations, we can only arrange you on other Continental flights. The earliest I can fly you out to HKG is on Wednesday, and you'd arrive on Thursday." -_-;; I asked if there were other routes that can get me to HKG earlier. "I can fly you to Houston on Tuesday, then off the Guam, with a stopover in Honolulu, then towards Japan... and I don't have a CO flight from Japan to HKG." Okay okay, Wednesday is better than nothing. "Sorry, someone took the last seat on Wednesday's flight. This is not good.... Earliest is Thursday now." After 15 minutes, the Wednesday seat was available again. Take it! "Please hold sir, let me get my manager to approve this arrangement"
04:20 - "Sir, I'm very sorry. Did you buy your ticket from a travel agent? Because the ticket code is BULK (I have no idea what it means), we cannot do anything to your ticket. Your best bet is to call your travel agent tomorrow morning. Thank you, and good bye."
04:21 - Shocked.
04:25 - Still shocked.
04:30 - This is ridiculous. If I were at the airport, they won't ask me to call my travel agent. I have nothing to lose, so loaded up my stuff in the car, and off to the airport!
05:09 - Got to the airport. There were 5 people in line at Continental check-in.
05:15 -
Me: "Hi, my flight to EWR this morning was cancelled. I want to see what other arrangements I can make."
Lady: "Where is your final destination?"
Me: "Hong Kong"
Lady: "Oh my God"
Me: --- I didn't need to hear that again ---
Lady: "Let me see,... our earliest flight out is Wednesday, that's not good. Let me see what else is available."
Impatient guy next to me: "Hi, I have to get to EWR today, get me on a flight"
Agent to impatient guy: "You know your flight has been cancelled, why are you at the airport?"
I really wanted to interject and comment about their useless reservations hotline. However, I didn't feel sorry for the guy, and I didn't want to jeopardize my position with my agent.
Lady: "Northwest has a flight today, let me check with them to see if they have a seat."
Me: "Today?!?"
Lady: "Darn, they won't give up a seat. Not good."
Me: :(
Lady: "I can fly you on Air Canada to Narita, and you can fly NorthWest on to Hong Kong. Let me call Air Canada."
Me: "Is this today?"
Lady: "Yup, you'll leave at 2:25pm and arrive in HKG at 10:29pm. "
Only 3 hrs later than planned. I'd take that!!
Lady: "Air Canada isn't picking up their phone. :("
Lady: "Tell you what.. I'm here all morning. You just run over to Air Canada in Terminal 1, and try to check in! If it doesn't work, come back here and look for me"
I could kiss this lady on the spot.
05:35 - Train to T1, went to Air Canada check-in. My booking wasn't in the system, as expected. Fortunately, they have enough seats available, so they confirmed my new flight plan for me. Since my flight was in the afternoon, it's too early to check-in my bags. I had to come back around 10am. While my heart was filled with relief and joy, my body just sagged - too tired to express anything else.
06:15 - Got back home to finish packing... I didn't dare to sleep, in case I won't wake up in time.
To answer that question on "What to do when your flight is cancelled?" Go to the airport (weather permitting, of course) and skip the reservations hotline.
Got back to the airport at 10am to check-in. Instead of a stopover in New Jersey, I have a stopover in Japan now. I would say this is a better arrangement than before. :)
The Air Canada flight to Narita was only 2/3 full. The seat beside me was empty, so I was able to lie down (legs were bent tho) and sleep pretty comfortably. The air hostesses were awesome. I asked for another Cup Noodle (since I was so hungry), and on top of the noodle, they brought me some sandwiches as well. They also offered to give me another Salmon meal later in the flight. One cannot refuse such a kind offer. Watched the Prestige and Tomorrow Never Dies on the flight. Wanted to watch The Queen, but was too tired. The air hostesses all thought I was Japanese (I need a haircut). Spoke to me a couple times in Japanese. My confused look must have been too similar to my tired look. When they were handing out the Japan Immigration cards for non-Japanese residents, the hostess said, "Japanese?" and walked right on! I had to call her back to make sure I didn't need one for the stopover.
In Narita, my stopover was only an hour, and I still had to check-in to Northwest! By the time I got there, their line was so long! No time for shopping!! After talking to some folks, I found out that the Continental flight to Hong Kong on Friday (I was suppose to take the Sat one) had been cancelled! These folks had spent the night at Newark, and got re-routed to Narita as well. Their luggages were in limbo, since they weren't re-tagged.
By the time I got my boarding pass, they were already boarding the flight. I quickly ran around looking to pick up some "grass biscuits" or other trinkets. Then I saw this snack stand, selling ramen for 700 yen. I really really wanted one, but I couldn't take it on the plane. :(
The last leg of my flight went smoothly too. The guy beside me was a fellow Canadian, a Habs fan from Halifax. He was going to China to teach aboard. We shared some stories, etc. He went backpacking to Europe last year - Rome, Turin, Venice, Florence, Saltzburg, Vienna and Prague. Showed me some pictures from his trip, and gave me some tips on what to do and what not to do. The Canadian flag on the backpack helps! I need to get one. I cannot wait for the Euro2008 trip! :):):)
Got into Hong Kong at 11:09pm. Made my way home. It's been a really long day but at least I got in today (with my luggage). That's all that matters.
Badminton Tourney is over for moi. Final round results placed me at 4th out of 5 in Pool B singles, and 3rd out of 4th in Pool C doubles. In singles matchup, I did pretty well, given the strength of the competition. I was definitely the underdog in the round, and my lone victory was a mini-upset to everyone. I love upset victories. The win really boiled down to me making the shots I wanted, and my opponent being forced to block and defend most of time. Easy clear, easy drop, easy clear, smash short side, smash far side, POINT! The opponents to whom I lost were just technically superior. In all but one of the matches, I was giving them a run for their money though. Playing someone better than you in competition really gives you a good sense of what to improve. Hopefully next year, I'll be able to get improve my game enough to be more competitive. :)
In doubles match, it was a different story. We could have won all the matches, but ended up falling short. I'm rather disappointed that we only came through with one win. In doubles, you try to exploit the weaker of your two opponents. My partner is one of the more aggressive type hiters, who is prone to make unforced errors. In our two losses, he definitely got exploited, when he ended up getting the majority of the shots. To add to that, we failed to execute on some of our strategy. For example, we knew our opponents were aiming to get the slower guy to play "front". I asked my partner, who was serving to the slower guy to make a long serve, so the slower guy would start out at the back. My partner didn't listen for some reason. :( Oh well, I still get a prize for finishing in 3rd place.
It's also unfortunate that I'll miss next week's single's final match. The top two players are really really good. I can only forward to the next badminton tourney!
On a similar note, these badminton players are really really good too. An amazing rally at the AEO 2007 competition:)
Went to Blue Mountain for skiing today with 2 coworkers. Weather forecasts predicted freezing rain and +5 C temperatures today, which scared most people away. This was the last chance the three of us had at skiing this season. At 7:30am, we decided to go-ahead with the trip. BM had a snowbase of 140cm, which should have been enough to take on the freezing rain.
The rain stopped by the time we got to Collingwood. However, there was a dense fog around the area. It was bad enough that we couldn't even see the top of blue "mountain" (aka hill). More on this later.
Blue Mountain totally upgraded their IT facilities from last year. For rentals, you walk to one of many computer terminals, and enter your personal info, weight, shoe size, height, etc. When you go up to collect your rental equipment, they just call up your information, and the computer has all the appropriate equipment and settings laid out for the staff. The overall process was very efficient, and I was out on the slopes with my equipment in 15 minutes.
We started off at Central Lodge, and took fast chairlift #2 up to the top. Halfway up the mountain, we entered the dense fog, which was eerily cool (unfortunately, I didn't take a picture. :(). Everything had a haze around it. The snow was very slushy and sticky, definitely sub-optimal conditions. With the fog, everything just looks like slush. We decided to head north over to chairlift #3 area, as it was less crowded in that area. The north area happened to be where all the black and double black trails were located.
As a first run of the day, we decided to take on a blue trail, just to wet our appetite. I stopped at the top of the hill, looked down (visibility maybe 10m). The slope didn't seem so bad. I started heading down, then felt huge bumps in the hill under my feet. Two seconds later, I realized I was on the moguls. Two more bumps later (you really can't make out any of the moguls), I flew off the top of one of the bumps, panicked, and fell face forward into the snow, lightly spraining my right thumb (racquet hand :-( ). Ironically, last time I went skiing, I had promised that I would go on the moguls on my next "ski trip". I didn't expect to try them on the 1st freaking run of the day. After getting back up, I made my way down the moguls very slowly. Almost fell a few more times. This first run really shook my nerves. Later on, we found out that the blue trail was called MOGUL ALLEY. When the sun came out and you can actually see the moguls, it's really amazing how I only manage to fall once going down that thing.
Rest of the morning, I did the rest of the northern trails, except for Elevator Shaft and the Expert moguls (I'm not going anywhere near moguls in the near future). I went down Spectacular (double black), came out of the steepest part fine, but somehow lost my edge later, likely due to a combination of speed, and lack of concentration. During the fall, I lost my skis, and slid on my back for a good 30m. Fortunately, some good Samaritan collected my skis for me. When he handed them back to me, he said, "That was a spectacular fall!" -_-;;;; My coworker was laughing, "You fell on the FLAT part" and "Stay away from the green trails!" -_-;;;;
Unfortunately, during this particular fall, I jammed my right knee into the snow, and re-aggravated a latent injury. My knee really started acting up. I took it easy the rest of the day, and just stuck with blue and single black diamonds. The day got progressively better, and the sun actually came out. The temperature was a balmy 6C, which is a nice change from the freezing temperatures. I was sweating a lot, and actually wanted to take some layers off. If only the snow wasn't as slushy.
Finished the day off at 4:30pm. I was dead tired. Since I didn't have to drive this time, I was zzzz for most of the trip back. I tried really hard to stay awake too. Waking up tomorrow is going to be interesting.
Lesson of the day: Always read the trail NAME. If it's foggy, study the trail map first.
My initial impressions after a few days with Tochii:
Wii
The Good:
- Wii Sports - Tennis rocks. Boxing is tiring, but a KO is awesome.
- Fast startup time - 2 seconds to boot up, 5 seconds into channel menu.
- Channel Menu is simple and intuitive
- Controllers
- Internet channel is cumbersome. If you have trouble connecting to their "site", your Wii takes forever to time out. You cannot "cancel" midway (Wii Menu button is disabled!).
- Long updates - 40 minutes to update my Wii "software".
- Download times are very slow. Took 5 minutes to download the Wii Opera browser. It maybe be some sub-optimal router or wii settings, but as customer, it's annoying.
The Good:
- Air Hockey and shooting ducks is pretty cool.
- All the other games are crap.
Zelda - Twilight Princess
The Good:
- Hyrule Field isn't as big as in OoT!
- Aim with the Wii-mote is so cool. You get the boomerang so early in the game. :)
- It's Zelda, non-cartoon version.
- Perhaps it's FF influence, but the lack of voice-overs really stands out. The "AHH"s and "Hey"'s just don't cut it.
- The fighting controls could have been tuned a bit better. I'm just waving both controllers, and I'm still winning.
I've only been limited to the single player missions. Will give the party games a try very soon.
The Good:
- Very intuitive gameplay.
- The ability to "jump" makes going off the edge so much easier :-)
- That banana collecting mini-game during game credits is way too long.. 400 bananas!?!! My arm was sore afterwards.
Gonna keep this short and sweet. Tochi got his Wii, fittingly nicknamed Tochii! Got up at 5:30AM, found out there were at least 40 people who got to the local Toys R Us before me (only 20 Wii's) Drove 20 minutes to Newmarket (another township), and found only a little kid in line. Tochi was #2. Waited till 9am to get my hands on the Wii (which ironically, was 30 minutes BEFORE my local Toys R Us store opened). Also picked up another nunchuk, Zelda and Super Monkey Balls.
Stupid Amazon decided to ship my Wii Play, at the last possible minute - last night at 11:29pm. I could have just brought my Wii Play along with the system today. However, since I can't cancel my Amazon order now that they've shipped.... I won't have a second controller until Monday... sigh.
Tochii is really taking its time to update. Reminds me of FFXI days. -_-;
UPDATE: The reason why Newmarket's line was so much shorter is their lack of Asian population... The entire line had 3 asians including myself. Those crazy asians who get up before 5:30AM for a Wii....
Last night, I was chatting with a couple friends from Seattle area, where they apparently got 3" of snow yesterday. We were making fun of how the west coast is so poorly equipped such that "the smallest snowstorm would paralyze the whole area." Even if Seattle doesn't use salt on the roads, I'd say de-icing fluid as a replacement is pretty nifty. Canadian taxpayers can never afford such a luxurious solution.
Anyway, a day after making fun of our west-coast friends, I found it really ironic that Toronto got slammed with a pretty bad snowstorm this afternoon. I came out of a meeting, looked outside and saw only a white WALL of blowing snow. I could barely see 10m out the window. The wind must have been 50+km/h. "OMG" "Holy Crap" "I'm going home now!!"
Driving home was essentially sitting in traffic and moving 5m per traffic light. Took 1 hour to travel 1 major intersection block. After the long trek home, Tochi mobile was able to make it up the driveway and into the garage. Unfortunately, I then spent the next 30 minutes shovelling the driveway. Better now when the snow is fresh and light.
Man, I admit defeat. I'm sick of these storms. I'm really looking forward to getting away from this cold weather now.
UPDATE:: Right after I finished this post, I heard some loud sounds outside my house. The freaking city snowploughs paid a visit and left behind this:
They really need to give me a break. If you are wondering how tall that bank is, let's just say it's above my knee cap. I am amazed at how quickly the city got to my street, which is probably the least important street in the neighbourhood. At least the drive tomorrow should be pretty good. My back is so sore right now. I have no idea how I'm gonna survive four games of badminton tomorrow.
ETAA: Don't let this scare you from Toronto.
ETAAA: Nothing beats the sense of accomplishment when you have one of the few cleared driveways on your street. The sore back is worthy price to pay... until the next morning.
The Toronto Star reported some guy's quest to find the location the following default Windows XP background titled 'Serenity' was shot. After an exhaustive search, he found it in Burlington, a stone throw from Toronto.
While the $300 Windows XP background is certainly a nice picture, I didn't have to go all the way to Burlington to find 'serenity'. Just last week, the most beautiful snowstorm swept through Toronto. The snowflakes were so big and fluffy. They just floated down slowly from the sky and settled. A stark reminder of how how beautiful winter can be. The following 'serenity' photo was shot from Tochi's street.
TOCHI PHOTO