I will go to Pudong Airport, again, tomorrow morning, heading to Seattle via Tokyo. Good luck to me. I hope I don’t meet any problem at the Seattle when I enter U.S.
P.S. I started my Skype journey and my id in Skype is jianshuo. My friends, you can add me to your contact list. I will also follow Isaac Mao’s practice: I do not accept request with name I cannot recognize. The voice is super and I love the conference call function.
It is a bad day. In the morning, I arrived at Pudong Airport early and waited in the line to check in for ANA flight NH960 from Shanghai to Tokyo. At the counter, the ANA staff checked the ticket and passport then informed me that they cannot let me get on board the flight because there is no Japanese visa. Although there is regulations to allow transition visitors to stay for up to 72 hours, there is still risks to get rejected at the custom. Many passengers did so (visiting Japan without a visa in advance) but not the recent month. ANA needs to ship me back to Shanghai the same day if does happen. So they refused my request to get onboard. :-( So I gave up my plan to visit Tokyo on the way to U.S. and have changed the flight to Dec 6 so I transit to United Airlines flight the same day. The rest of the trip in U.S. is not changed. I slept the whole morning when I am back home.
To make the U.S. trip more memorable, I am going to buy a more professional camera than my Sony P8. Sony F-828 appeared on my landscope. I sells at 6800 RMB (or 829 USD), including tax. It is all the money I need to pay to get a full package of F828. Good deal, isn’t it? It is cheaper than any of the online store I can find.
The most attacting features of F828 are:
BTW, I cannot find out a reason why my page My New Camera – Sony DSC-P8 is still within the top two results in Google for search term Sony P8. Google seems like my pages very much. It makes sense if people are search Pudong Airport since it is a relatively less mentioned topic in the cyber world. But Sony P8 is a popular product selling around the world. Wired…
Wendy got her U.S. visa smoothly. Not many questions were asked at the visa office. The only exception is, the printer to print the U.S. visa broke down again so she needs to get her visa the next day.
We also booked flight tickets. Both of us fly with United Airlines. It seems Northwest is better but there are no seats available on the date we fly. Although we fly to U.S. on different date and different flight, we go back together. That is great. There are only middle seats, while I always love window seats.
Here are my itinerary.
1. WANG/JIAN SHUO
2. NH960 W SA04DEC PVGNRT HK1 0855 1235
3. UA876 Q MO06DEC NRTSEA HK1 1725 0850
4. UA938 Q SA11DEC SEAORD HK1 1409 2001
5. UA648 Q MO13DEC ORDEWR HK1 1330 1650
6. UA835 Q TU29DEC LGAPVG HK1 0900 1715+1
I like the format of the itinerary very much. Simple. Concise. It is a good balance between the computer world (the reservation system) and the human world (the people’s understanding ability). It is nice!
Stays
I will stay in Seattle for 3 to 4 days, and stay in Chicago for 40 hours (almost two days) and start the two-week long east coast journey after meeting with Wendy in NEWARK LIBERTY airport (EWR). I may spend 3 days in Boson, 2 days in Washington D.C. and the rest in New York. It is based on the suggestion of the readers to spend as much time as possible in New York. Wendy loves New York after reading the National Geographic book on New York. So do I.
Audio Blog on the Trip
“Pacific Time“, a radio program on public radio heard all over the US, kindly offered me to conduct some kind of audio blog for them. Their focus is about Asia and America and the connections between them. This focus matches the propose of my trip perfectly. It is more like a research project to learn the difference between the two countries than a vacation. Recording the first impression of the large cities in America is meaningful for me and for readers/listeners. I have accepted the offer and hopeful, you will hear the story soon.
They will lend me a MD (MiniDisc) recorder and a microphone and I could record my impressions and even a few bits of sound from the trip as I go along, and I also plan to go to the their studios in Boson, and Washing D.C and conduct the interview via ISDN lines. The plan is to broadcast the three installments in Dec by three weeks. When I arrive in Seattle, I guess the equipment will already wait for me in the hotel I stay. We agreed that I can publish the part they don’t use onto this blog. Maybe I can get some $ for this to buy Wendy some really nice meal. If someone can sponsor a nice camera, I don’t need to buy one in a hurry and I can share some of the digital photos with the sponsor. Just an idea… My Sony P8 is good but I need a more professional camera to take more digital pictures.
The Terminal, the Movie
I watched the The Terminal, the movie, tonight. It is a nice film – funny story, and nice actors and actress. I guess it may become another classic film like Sleepless in Seattle. However, I sensed a little bit unfriendliness in the film against China. Why at the beginning the flight has to be from Beijing and they mentioned China in a wired way in the film. It seems China is still the best eye-catching topic if the director has to find some mysterious and not-like-America land.