New York Travel Diary 8th May 2010

New York Travel Diary 2010

Saturday 8th May.

In my typical fashion, I turned up to the airport with plenty of time to spare and checked in my luggage without problems. This time, I had two full suitcases, and when I say full, I mean full, where I had weighed in at home at just over 20kg and just under 20kg. The limit for me is 23kg/bag with two bags per person plus carry-on luggage. The check-in counter scales weighed the bags in at 21.1kg and 18.5kg, so pretty good. What I had to bring in terms of goodies for other people this trip was a big woollen blanket (thankfully shrunk with a space bag, you know, the kind you use with the vacuum cleaner to suck out the air), plus the usual stash of Tim Tam biscuits (of different flavour variety), some miscellaneous items and a twelve pack box of Lanolin wool oil moisturiser. I ponder what the true weight of my clothing and accessories weighed, but it would still be quite a lot since I brought along both cameras and bits.

What did however fill a considerable bulk in volume but not weight, of my luggage was two suits, my nice suit I had bought last visit from Brooks Brothers, and my Kelly Country dinner suit/tuxedo. The reason why I had both this time was because the primary function of my trip was to attend the graduation activities of my girlfriend, Fang.

So, checked in, through customs without fault, into the waiting area where I dozed at the same gate, Gate 31, as last time. They have been doing renovations at the airport, and the new area is much better as the seating is no longer in the walkway but in an alcove that has been built/extended next to the gate. Considering the size of the airplane, it is actually still too small to accommodate the number of people waiting to board, but as usual, people will come at the last moment, and be happy to stand in line to board first.

Since last year however, I had purchased Marco Polo membership, the frequent flyer program for Cathay Pacific, my preferred airline of choice. This gives me certain privileges and one of them is preferential boarding, so when they call for the First Class, Business Class, they also call for the Marco Polo Club members, i.e., me. Even though I’m riding in economy, it just lets me get on board leisurely and have a half decent pick at stashing my carry-on near me since these days, a lot of people have crazy amounts of carry-on and they generally don’t even check for the size or weight of them unless it is insanely obvious that it shouldn’t be onboard, and even then, they will check it into the hold. My carry-on is actually about 5cm too big in one dimension due to the wheels, but it still fits within the overhead locker space, and it isn’t generally crazy heavy.

So, away the plane goes, my first segment, in my usual 70G seat, I’m next to two Asian guys, one of them sleeps the majority of the flight, and is obviously not familiar with western utensils as during the meals, I see him trying to eat his yogurt unsuccessfully with the tea/coffee stirrer spoon (LOL, Fail...) and basically poked about at the bits of meal that were obviously asian (e.g. salad, cakes etc, only eating the rice/congee options). Meals were usual, service was usual, some slight turbulence but nothing really of note.

Entertainment on board was pretty standard also for the Cathay flights and I had seen the majority of the New Releases already, so I ended up watching through some older content, classics if you will, and tv shows. It’s all a bit mixed between the two segments but I do know I ended up watching through all the Family Guy and CSI/CSI:NY episodes, plus movies, but besides that, I did sleep, and was tired enough (since I didn’t sleep that night before) to fall asleep during the boring start of the Godfather XD.

Arrival in Hong Kong was fairly ordinary, passed through the transfer section, but then discovered that my jeans set off the metal detector. While the metal studs alone singularly didn’t raise much of a blip with the hand-held metal detector scanner, their overall amount tripped off the metal detector fierce and I got hand-scanned and patted down before they let me in.

The highlight of my stop-over in HK was however the first time I’ve been to the Cathay Pacific Lounge. With my membership, to advance to Silver level, you need to accumulate 30 000 miles in a 12 month period. For me, a return trip to NYC-JFK accumulates 24 000 miles, so while I had flown in April last year and December, only my December trip was a fare earning class (Doh), so I had 24 000 miles. I had accumulated lots of other miles through work as each eligible return flight was 424 miles. By the time I boarded my flight on Saturday, I only had 1914 miles to go to make the Silver status (up from Green) and the Sydney to HK route is worth 4000 miles. I had previously emailed the Cathay Pacific Marco Polo Club customer service staff about this, if upon arrival at HK, if I would be able to use the lounge due to my points earning. While it is normal for them to take two weeks to process points, they told me that it would be okay for me and they would inform the lounge people about my situation.

So, when I went to the lounge desk and showed them my boarding pass, they told me I wasn’t eligible. Well, I then explained the circumstance, and they called up someone to ask. The reply was that I shouldn’t be allowed in but they’d make an exception for me. I was a bit hmmm at this, and thus, opened up my email on my netbook to show them the communications I had received to let them know that their system had faults. Then headed upstairs.

I had seen pictures of the lounge before, and they reflected nicely. It’s a beautiful open space, soft leather lounges everywhere, a cafe bar with drinks/coffee/cake and small sandwiches, and a restaurant inside. The first thing that I did however was head straight to the showers section. The showers are nice self contained units, a overhead shower with a massive shower head, granite floors. A toilet sink and mirror, with towels, cotton buds, toothpaste and tooth brush, hair dryer and coat hangers. It was a really nice feeling to have that shower and be refreshed after a nine-hour flight first thing in the morning. I then went back and settled in a cubicle to do my emails with the free wireless available within (no different to wireless outside though) while having a iced milk tea, a brie sandwich and some crackers before heading back out to the boarding gate.

At the boarding gate though, they’ve now changed procedures slightly. In the past, you could pass through the gate and boarding pass check, then get your carry-on luggage inspected for liquids and aerosols by the HK security. Now however, they’ve switched it around by roping off the segment for flights going to the US, and your carry-on is inspected prior to entry to the gate area, after all the shops. This makes it smoother and stops the blockage of passengers boarding, a far better way than before thats for sure. So, back on board, this time in 66C, also by choice, where the lady next to me was a US citizen, and a Catholic as she did the usual cross symbol by hand across her chest, twice in fact, upon take-off and landing. Possibly a slightly nervous flyer maybe.

The HK to JFK flight segment was the usual long 15-16 hour flight, but there was a period of some quite strong turbulence where I think we had the seatbelt sign up for over an hour and the staff were shutting down peoples attends to get up for anything. I actually managed to get some sleep, about four or so hours overall I think, but I wanted to be awake for the standard US time to try and reduce the jetlag effect. It was however a bit bizarre though since it is now approaching the summertime here so the flight over the Artic was pretty bright, where it was pitch black last time in December.

Landing and passing through customs was pretty standard, no problems at all. I asked the immigration officer how long I could stay and they told me 90 days, with my last day being August 6th, should I decide to stay that long, but advised against me staying the full duration on a regular basis as it would raise suspicions of the immigration officers of strange activity if I did. Fair enough, so at the moment my return date ticket is still the 26th May, but I can extend with given time/space allowances on the same fare class.

The weather in NYC has been a bit wishy washy, being cold and windy at times, with spots of sunshine, though in a way, it is fairly typical for a spring time type of behaviour though. Pretty much that was it for the Saturday, I got to the apartment, unpacked the goodies and offloaded, had a shower and went to bed. A long day, a very long day.