About making an effort for IAC 2008

I knew from the start that this trip would be a long one. And as usual, before I go somewhere, something happened to the place I'm about to go. A typhoon had struck Mexico recently and I heard it's flooding. Well, never know what's real until you see it anyway! So, I chose not to worry about it. Afterall, this kind of thing happened too often to me, I got numb already =P

So, I managed to meet Nining at KLIA. We both managed to push her travel agent to put her on the same flight with me, so, she'd not be flying alone. Both of us were excited about going to Mexico, but also a bit worry about the long flight. Especially the 6-hour lay over in Los Angeles. What are we gonna do??? Six hours seems long, but it's not long enough to do a city tour or so. In fact, it's too long to sit around.

We had an amazing route for this trip: Kuala Lumpur - Taipei - Los Angeles - Mazatlan - Mexico City. And for Nining, it started from Jakarta, so her trip is even longer than mine! The transit in Taipei was not bad. They had a very nice smoking room in the airport, where we spent most of our transit time there. And then the long journey begun. Taipei - Los Angeles. It was a 12-hour flight. Geez... Thank God, I slept along the way and woke up only for meal! That trick does me just perfect!I had to skip all the favorite movies that shown in the in-flight entertainment and put on some music instead. I filled up my jukebox with songs from Moby, Ministry Sound of London and Retro Future. Those musics put me to sleep right away... Hahaha...!!!!

Arriving in Tom Bradley International Airport and getting out from there was quite painful. First, we had to go through the paranoid-USA-immigration officers. Second, we had to pick up our luggage and take them to the connecting flight drop in area. Third, we had to check in and get our boarding pass to Mexico City. Fourth, we had to put up the 6-hour lay over at the airport with absolutely boring duty free shops and almost nothing to explore. Fifth, after our boarding time has come, we had to take off everything for security check and the queue was crazy. Sixth, we had to put up with very mean ground crew of Mexicana Airlines who didn't even bother to tell us that we were at the wrong side of the airport. Seventh, we were very pissed when we find out that it wasn't a direct flight from LA to Mexico City, as we've been told at the ticketing counter. Eighth, we had to get off the plane in Mazatlan just to go through immigration counter. Ninth, we had a dreadful flight almost half way from LA to Mazatlan and from Mazatlan to Mexico City. Tenth, we had to bear with a bad landing twice [in Mazatlan and Mexico City].