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After dinner at Ootoya at 313, I went home to finish my packing, last minute paper work and double checking some of the important stuff I needed to bring. I left the house at ~2.45am since the meeting time at the airport was supposed to be 3.30am. Only when I arrived did I realise that the mentors were just being kiasu and told us to report more than an hour ahead of the check-in time at 4.40am!

Waiting at the airprot… bored.

Queuing up for check-in took a long time since US flights require passengers to clear a primary security check BEFORE u even enter the check in counter! After finally checking in, I received my 3 tickets and saw my seats. I was getting a aisle for the Singapore-Hong Kong flight, a window seat for the HKG-Chicago flight and a middle seat for the last leg to Boston.


After bidding our farewells, we went through immigration and into the airside part of Terminal 3

Our carry-ons

We had breakfast at the Burger King near our gate before the flight (and for good reason – you’ll see later)

After breakfast, we happened to walk by the butterfly garden and had a little look-see…

It was still dark, but we could see several butterflies resting on leaves… There was also this huge tower of cocoons (in some sort of incubator) just waiting for their metamorphosis.

Our gate!
At security, I got flagged! Firstly for wearing a belt – that one they just asked me to take it out and walk through the scanner again. Then as I was collecting my bag from the scanner, the officer told me to open up some compartments in my bag and scan some stuff separately. The whole process took quite a while and was pretty annoying (although this is only Singapore, the worst of the security nightmare was yet to come)

We didn’t get to sit in the waiting area for too long before we were allowed to board! I sent out some goodbye smses (not sure if anyone got them?)

Settling in our seats

Note the distinct lack of personal television one would expect on a long haul flight!
Since I was seating on the aisle for this leg of the journey, I wasn’t able to capture anything from the outside….

And this is our in-flight meal! Not quite what you’re used to huh? (Can you say super uber cheapskate?) There was frozen cut fruits, a cold muffin & bread given to me a blue cardboard box! This was why I ate Burger King before the flight.

Despite its appearance, the food (the bread in particular) was surprisingly edible! Not fantastic, but still reasonable.

The cabin mid-flight

With nothing to watch and only an airline magazine to read, the only other form of entertainment was the 13 in-flight audio channels… sigh…

It was boring enough (and I was pretty tired too since I didn’t get any rest the night before) that I fell asleep soon after the meal and before I knew it,

we had touched down in Hong Kong International Airport!

Deplaning

I got a view of the cockpit

Me in the pilot’s seat!

The business class seats I saw on the way out!

Walking around the airport (looking for lunch before we board our next flight)


My boarding pass for the next flight (35A is a window seat)!

A photo of people taking photos

2 Kingfisher Planes

We ended up eating at some Taiwanese Beef Noodle shop…

Price was a bit steep, but we couldn’t quite find any regular priced food at the Hong Kong airport & we were running a bit late for our next flight, so it had to do.

The beef noodles were AWESOME! Worth every penny – even the pennies that we didn’t have. lol
In the end, we settled the bill with me paying HK$205 and another friend coughing up HK$40 odd (The rest of them had to pay us back in USD). And even after taking out every last Hong Kong coin we had, we were still HK$0.20 short! (or about 4 Singapore cents!) We were about to give the rest in SG coins when the nice shop keeper just told us she’d just round it down for us.

Boarding our 14.5hour long flight to Chicago! We had to jostle for overhead cabin space since this was a long haul flight that was almost 100% full!



Cabin View.. You probably won’t find any empty seats

Since I got a window seat, it was snap snap away~


And we have lift off!

After taking off, the first meal we got was this! A small bag of mini-pretzels and a drink.
After that meal (around 1pm SG time or 1am US time), I fell asleep and woke up 6 odd hours later (around 7+am US time) but it was still dark at wherever we were flying over.

Shortly after I woke up, we were served our next meal consisting of (a really small!) terrible tasting cup noodles and Pecan Biscuits

The instant noodles next to my laptop… I watched two movies ,Kick Ass and some other show (its name just slipped my mind) on my laptop. After which, I didn’t have any more movies to watch even though my laptop still had about 2.5hrs of juice left…

So I decided to fill in the very L-O-N-G american customs and immigration forms….

The sun ‘rising’ in the distance

Peeking out from my window…

At this point half the cabin was still asleep…

Fast forward several hours later, and it was clearly day time!

Pasta was served for Lunch… Not the best tasting pasta ever, nor the largest either…

I had some tea to go along with that

The biscuit that came with the meal was pretty good though!

Overland…

The TV some rows ahead of me showed that we were very near Chicago~

On approach pattern…

The cabin before landing…

Touch down! “Welcome to Chicago O’hare International Airport!”

Little United


Sticking his head out!

Deplaning~
US Immigration was just #$#(&$…. I won’t go into the details….

Our first photo on US soil! (Outside the airport terminal) The weather was really nice, around air-con temperature!

An array of flags outside the terminal

Stretched limo!

We took the train from terminal 5 to terminal 1 where our next flight was…

Being a tourist…

The other terminal

Inside Terminal 1

Map of Chicago
We had to go through security yet AGAIN to go into the ticketed area of Terminal 1. This time we had to remove our shoes, laptops, ALL liquids, belts, etc before even reaching our turn at the machine! We also had to walk through the new ‘See-through-clothing’ Xray machine thing! (They basically can see you naked on the monitor without actually having to strip you… though Im not sure thats a good thing!)

No, this is not Disneyland or Genting Highland, this is the walkway inside the terminal!

We found someone else’s air ticket on the floor for a flight to San Fransisco… lol

Early Dinner at the Chicago Airport Jazz Food Court


Pop Corn!

Waiting at the gate…

Our flight got delayed 4 times (by 5 minutes each time)…

The Chicago – Boston flight was on a much small A320 compared to the 747s we took earlier. I was stuck in the middle seat for this 2.5hr flight… so no pictures…

We arrived at Boston Logan Airport on time (despite the delay)! From there we took a shuttle bus to the MIT Senior House Dorm where we queued up to get our dorm room keys…

The room I got was a suite! Which means that there is a common area outside my personal room~ The common area is shared by all others in the same suite which in my case, meant 4 other people.

Theres even a small TV n fridge in the common area!

(This is my friend’s room) Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite open my room with key they gave me (even after going down and changing the key twice!) So they gave up and assigned me a temporary room for the night (it was already 1am, so yea). The temporary room I got didn’t look anything like what you see in the above picture… it also had no bed sheets, pillows or blankets. And to top it all off, it had this horrid smell of rotten bananas that just made me want to puke! But oh well… the staff assured me that the temporary room I got was just for the night and they’d get everything sorted our the next morning…
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On a side note, its already Day 4 here (at the time I’m writing this post) and work has already started. I’d love to write more, but its already 1.20am here and I need to get up at 7.30 in the morning, so until next time…. =]