15000km
If you poke a hole down your feet straight through the center of the Earth, you might see me!
Finally, I reached this new place called Troy in New York in 52 hours after I left Miri with all the flight time and waiting time included. The journey certainly did not start perfectly with with all the rushes and emotions that came along, a little bumpy in the middle and actually become worse towards the end, but I would say that everything went well. The flights did wear me out but it did not kill my spirit. Most importantly, I did not contract H1N1 XD.
The longest waiting was at KLIA where I had wait for 10 hours. The wifi there was very unstable and connection to windows live was banned, so I resorted to walking around the once world best airport. In the middle my exploration, I discovered the viewing area at a deserted part of the airport. It is a very quiet section of the airport in contrast to the departure area. From there, we could see planes taking off in a distance, MAS planes for local departure, the international aircrafts parked at the satellite building in a distance, the aerotrains and also, a number of people sleeping on the couch. If you have a long waiting time but cannot afford the lounge, this would be a good and quiet place to sleep through the wait!
MAS employed airbus A330 to fly from KLIA to Incheon, Seoul, Korea. In my disappointment, it is not a big plane with good in flight entertainments and the korean speaking air stewardesses were not attractive lol. Anyway, it's better than the Boeing 737 I usually take to commute between KL and Miri. Nothing much was interesting, so I just slept through the flight except waking up for MAS delicacies and the sunrise.
Incheon Airports was a great masterpiece of airports architechture, they sure have put in a lot of efforts and money into building it. It is uniquely situated on a isolated piece of island located 70km away from Seoul, or should I say two islands because the airport was actually built on a landfill that connects two separate smaller islands together. The aiport houses the plane terminals as well as a lot of shopping outlets along its stretchy hall. In contrary to my belief that things in the airport are more expensive than the shops outside, shopping seemed to be very popular there. There were a lot of people mostly shopping for the luxury or branded goods, mostly Koreans. It is either that the merchandise are really cheap or Korean people are very rich. Of course, I would not miss the chance to try out the reowned internet infrastructure in the country. The wifi at the airport had certainly impressed me after my agonizing experience with wifi in KLIA. I had enjoyed so much that I somehow lost my mind and unconsciously left my laptop behind when I left, oops. Thank God that it is still there when I went back to look for it. The security camera in the airport must have caught the images of me ransacking the airport anxiously.
Then finally it was time to leave Asia and head to the States. The long and seemingly unending flight was made pleasant thanks to the excellent service provided by the Korean Airlines. The boeing 747 was very similar to MAS's 747, the in flight entertainment equipments, schedule and even the catering service were almost the same, except the language. However, it is so sad that I was seated and sandwiched in the middle seats, rendered me unable to see the view outside the plane windows while we cruised through the continents. So I could only sleep and watch movies throughout the flights (short videos review: "ghosts of girfriends past" is nice to watch, "the international" was crappy, "more than blues" is fine and yo yo ma is an amazing cellist. The plane travelled towards the west making a turn through the artic. The flight time was rather fascinating becase we departed at 11++am in the morning and embarked at 11++am in the morning too, gained 12 hours for free. Also, due to the Earth's round shape, we got to experience two sunrises in one day.
Finally, arrival at the JFK New York was quite a disaster. The plan to stroll around the airports and take nice photos was spoiled by the immigration officers. I was pulled aside for an additional registration of the program called nseers. Basically it is one of the new security protocols introduced after the 911 attack to monitor the entry and exit of certain aliens with apprehensive background. I do feel sorry for the 911 lost but the procedure was so upsetting. I had to sit aside waiting patiently for the seemingly computer illiterate officers to gab around and take their sweet time to finish up the computerized registration with my transit time ticking nearer and nearer. Well, I could not complain because I did not want to jeopardize my entry into the States. So be careful, people around me, I am a potential threat with criminal look...
In the end, I had to rush through the terminals at JFK to board my transit flight to Albany. My last flight is a short 34 minutes flight in a small plane of Delta Airlines. So this is the my first travel with an US arlines. There was only one flight attendance whos a kind elderly lady, as expected in the land which rejects discriminative hiring policy unlike MAS or KE. I basically slept through the flight again as the long flights had already drained so much of my energy. The plane was pretty steady and the pilot did a good job to land me at my final destination, Albany.
So, here I am, safe and sound in the States. Thank you everyone back there for your prayers, blessings and wishes. I will definitely miss everyone and the food. Keep in touch please! All the best. Before I end, thank you for the company in flight and helpful local host for picking up my half dead body from the airport.
Up next, life in Troy.
