day - arrival
Alright, I’m now a bit sobered after crashing and passing out for 2 consecutive days. I guess my fatigue can be called a jet lag - although I claimed that I’m not suffering from it.
That day, when I arrived at Dallas airport, I only had like 1 hour and 20 minutes to transit from an international arrival to a domestic flight. During this period, I have to go through the immigration, pick up my bags, go through a series of mind boggling procedures of security check and check in my bags again .. and get on the plane. And all that location was segregated from each other on different buildings… you know, old American airports. They’re always big and confusing.
When I was at the immigration, I was brought into a room. No I don’t think I look like a terrorist but, somehow, I was ‘required’ to take an oath .. and register a series of information about myself - like where do i live, what’s my father’s name … have I ever killed someone… things like that. Was kinda surprise for me as the few japanese dude before me who looked like mutated insects didn’t get to do all that. So, I think this must be the capital M thing about our country. (hint: a religion)
So, by the time I’ve completed all the series of procedures with a computer illiterate immigration officer (which I’ll have to teach him some shortcut keys to cut down the time), I was left with only like 10 minutes to rush for the flight … and I’ll have to take a 5 minutes bus ride to another terminal, checkout and checkin my bags and perform a few hundred meters of marathon. Did I make it ? Fucking no. There’s a big queue at the security check points where everyone had to take out their notebooks .. take off their shoes .. etc and that process alone would take me 10 minutes.
But I got myself another flight alright - which was located on the other side of the airport. And have to travel allll the way back to where it began. This time, luckily, I was not required to go through any security checks. No they don’t perform strip search on anybody. That’s a myth. I think.
Arrived at Austin at about 1pm. Have to search for my bags as I checked them in through the earlier flight that I’ve missed. After spending like 20 minutes doing that, I finally located my bag and proceeded to the rent-a-car counter.
Got myself a Camry, with a navigation device called Never Get Lost (or something like that). All I have to do is key in my hotel name, and that sucker will direct me to the destination .. which at my first impression, was kinda cool. But i was so wrong. That hotel that I made a reservation with? actually had 3 branches in Austin. The Never Get Lost doohickey got me to the 2 other locations except the correct one. It was darn fucked up. I finally got myself a map from a blonde chick who sported a strong Texan accent and managed to get myself to the correct hotel (chick tried to explain verbally to me but, I can only understand half her jargons. She can’t speak English for fuck).
Upon arrival at the hotel, I tested the free broadband out, and blogged a brief entry below… and slept until the next morning.