October 2005 USA Trip - First Week
I was in the USA for the most part of October 2005, both on work and then the remaining time spent to visit. Was just sorting out some of the photos earlier on and did some thinking back... so I decided to blog it down to share my experiences with everybody.
Well the story goes like this. I had two major work-related tasks to accomplish on the trip, first was to setup a series of machinery in our Los Angeles facility for expansion purposes, and secondly I was invited to give two speeches (well one tutorial speech and another keynote) at a conference in Anaheim. We never did visit Disneyland though we were literally just a few steps away, due to the hectic conference schedule and lotsa interesting discussions going on, I decided to do what I do best - Being A Geek :)
Week 1
I arrived at LAX after one of the longest flights in my life, yet was surprisingly refreshed. The new A345 Leadership certainly lived up to the buzz it built up for being one of the best "Executive Economy" package. Indeed, I was kept so occupied during the flight that 15 hours whiffed past like a normal work day. Managed to catch a few winks of sleep but then I decided to make use of time and brush up on my German with the inflight simulator. BTW I'm continuing on German from where I stopped in primary school... gee i should have just finished it there and then :)
I never like Customs.... this isnt an exception...
The first encounter at Customs was quite hair raising. I had actually written two different addresses where I will be staying in the USA into the immigration form and was promptly greeted with a bark by the customs official "Where aboust are you going???"... I squealed a tiny "Los Angeles.." reply which was quickly blasted back by "BUT YOU STATED FOUNTAIN VALLEY IN THIS FORM, WHATS UP WITH THAT?". For the next 15 mins I had to stand in front of the officer (who btw was comfortably rooted to his chair) and explained that I would be visiting different places in the USA, how I am planning a mix of hotel stays and visits, road trips, staying over at friends' places, etc. FINALLY, he decided to let me off. I pulled my checked baggage from the carousel and headed straight to hail a cab.
The Cab Driver..
I had many interesting encounters with cab drivers on this trip, but the first was rather boring. Hopped onto the cab, "G'day sir, how're you doing today? I need to get to the Wilshire Grand, do you know the way?". The reply was a "No problemo, get you there in a jiffy." That was a relief, I thought things would be going on fine for once.. but i spoke too soon... our dear friend apparently was the very talkative type... wait.. talkative complain king type more like it. You know those taxi drivers in Singapore who always like to complain about why NTUC raised the price of toilet paper by 1 and a half cent type of thing? Yes, this is exactly what I got.
The Hotel..
For the first 3 nights, I stayed at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles. LAPD was just across the road, and every night without fail I would hear the cops at work dutifuly. Now the hotel experience was generally good, they actually gave me a room with 2 beds (DONT ASK ME WHY, I MYSELF DONT KNOW TOO), a nice big living room, two toilets (Guess again...), a big couch & HUGE walk in cabinets. Now I know some girls would simply love the walkin cabinets, why? because even I liked it haha.. General look of furnishings was more towards the OLD side.. but I think they renovated my room considering it was on the executive level. A very nice feature I felt at-home with was that the lifts were security locked to only allow those with cardkey access to my floor to get in.
Picture of one of the toilets, with mirrored closet doors.
The living room... in my bedroom :)
Talk about home offices.. I had literally everything needed to run a SOHO on that table... Laptop, Phone, Data port, wireless LAN, cellphone (2 in fact), headset, VoIP adapter and the TV remote :) Ok the remote was for "recreational purposes". One must know when to take breaks, right?
So you would think that my experience at the hotel was generally good? NOT.
I was in for a shock the next day. Being the usual late morning type of person, I only left myself half an hour transport time between the hotel and workplace for meeting in the morning. So when the alarm rang, I jumped into work mode and went down to concierge.
Concierge: "Gooooood morning, how may I help you?"
Me: "Gooooood morning to you, you're looking good today! (It was the same helpful guy who helped me with all my bags the previous day). Could you kindly notify the limo that I'm ready to get on the road?"
Concierge: "Sure, I'll check with front desk."
After 10 minutes of waiting and frantically checking the time...
Concierge: "I'm sorry Sir, we did not receive a request from your company to get a limo booked for your transportation"
Me: "Are you sure?"
Concierge: "Positive"
Me: "Where's your manager.."
Manager: "I'm sorry sir, your company management has to sign to authorise the transport. We do not have this on file at the moment."
Me: "I AM the management"
Manager: (looking at me sheepishly) "You're kiddin me... come on..."
Me: "You can check, I am from room XXXX booking made by my company, I was the one who signed the approval on the paperwork to even approve the booking!"
Manager: (with the sheepish look again) "Righttttt..... but I still can't help you."
Fine. I decided that this conversation wasnt getting anywhere and time wasnt on my side either. Considering the fact that workplace was only 5 streets across, I decided to walk for it -which wasnt such a bad idea afterall.... Korean Airlines stewardesses alighting at the front of the lobby ;)
I did make a mental note of the manager's name and purposed within myself to shoot a really long email at the end of the day BUT then again reality set in.... there really wasnt a need to make a mountain out of a molehill although it was obviously a problem with them. Suddenly, I felt a silent joy within myself, you know, the type of i-knew-i-could-have-made-my-point-but-chose-to-forgive feeling deep inside. At times we get so mad at even the tiniest of things when they obviously dont go along the lines of how we plan them out to be. Therein lies the challenge. Some people call it being HUM (singlish phrase for cowardice) but take a step back and think again. My violent actions could have cost somebody along the line their job or a potential end of year bonus which they would so badly need. Trust me, the hotel sales manager was lobbying hard to get our annual contract to put employees there everytime we travelled on business.
Feeling quite sour and "disturbed" about my earlier decision to let things go (i'm human afterall) I headed for the Executive Floor Lounge and to my surprise met somebody who brightened up my day... well night to be exact... The lounge waiter was actually packing up for the night (I had arrived 5 mins after closing time) yet upon seeing me walking in with dull face, walked up, introduced himself and asked to serve some food. He promptly brewed me a SUPER-DUPER-REFRESHING mix of Starbucks coffee! We spent the next half an hour chatting about things like getting around Los Angeles, which places to visit, even how to get cheaper rates at that same hotel in future haha... I had made a new friend on the first day, his name was Francisco. See, I dont just remember names of females unlike what Hanwei always assumes ;)
I would love to continue blogging about my first couple of days, but they were generally uneventful. Adding to that, I shall spare you the anguish of trying to understand my work technicalities :)
Next post shall be on events for the following week..
Well the story goes like this. I had two major work-related tasks to accomplish on the trip, first was to setup a series of machinery in our Los Angeles facility for expansion purposes, and secondly I was invited to give two speeches (well one tutorial speech and another keynote) at a conference in Anaheim. We never did visit Disneyland though we were literally just a few steps away, due to the hectic conference schedule and lotsa interesting discussions going on, I decided to do what I do best - Being A Geek :)
Week 1
I arrived at LAX after one of the longest flights in my life, yet was surprisingly refreshed. The new A345 Leadership certainly lived up to the buzz it built up for being one of the best "Executive Economy" package. Indeed, I was kept so occupied during the flight that 15 hours whiffed past like a normal work day. Managed to catch a few winks of sleep but then I decided to make use of time and brush up on my German with the inflight simulator. BTW I'm continuing on German from where I stopped in primary school... gee i should have just finished it there and then :)
I never like Customs.... this isnt an exception...
The first encounter at Customs was quite hair raising. I had actually written two different addresses where I will be staying in the USA into the immigration form and was promptly greeted with a bark by the customs official "Where aboust are you going???"... I squealed a tiny "Los Angeles.." reply which was quickly blasted back by "BUT YOU STATED FOUNTAIN VALLEY IN THIS FORM, WHATS UP WITH THAT?". For the next 15 mins I had to stand in front of the officer (who btw was comfortably rooted to his chair) and explained that I would be visiting different places in the USA, how I am planning a mix of hotel stays and visits, road trips, staying over at friends' places, etc. FINALLY, he decided to let me off. I pulled my checked baggage from the carousel and headed straight to hail a cab.
The Cab Driver..
I had many interesting encounters with cab drivers on this trip, but the first was rather boring. Hopped onto the cab, "G'day sir, how're you doing today? I need to get to the Wilshire Grand, do you know the way?". The reply was a "No problemo, get you there in a jiffy." That was a relief, I thought things would be going on fine for once.. but i spoke too soon... our dear friend apparently was the very talkative type... wait.. talkative complain king type more like it. You know those taxi drivers in Singapore who always like to complain about why NTUC raised the price of toilet paper by 1 and a half cent type of thing? Yes, this is exactly what I got.
The Hotel..
For the first 3 nights, I stayed at the Wilshire Grand Hotel in Downtown Los Angeles. LAPD was just across the road, and every night without fail I would hear the cops at work dutifuly. Now the hotel experience was generally good, they actually gave me a room with 2 beds (DONT ASK ME WHY, I MYSELF DONT KNOW TOO), a nice big living room, two toilets (Guess again...), a big couch & HUGE walk in cabinets. Now I know some girls would simply love the walkin cabinets, why? because even I liked it haha.. General look of furnishings was more towards the OLD side.. but I think they renovated my room considering it was on the executive level. A very nice feature I felt at-home with was that the lifts were security locked to only allow those with cardkey access to my floor to get in.
Picture of one of the toilets, with mirrored closet doors.
The living room... in my bedroom :)
Talk about home offices.. I had literally everything needed to run a SOHO on that table... Laptop, Phone, Data port, wireless LAN, cellphone (2 in fact), headset, VoIP adapter and the TV remote :) Ok the remote was for "recreational purposes". One must know when to take breaks, right?
So you would think that my experience at the hotel was generally good? NOT.
I was in for a shock the next day. Being the usual late morning type of person, I only left myself half an hour transport time between the hotel and workplace for meeting in the morning. So when the alarm rang, I jumped into work mode and went down to concierge.
Concierge: "Gooooood morning, how may I help you?"
Me: "Gooooood morning to you, you're looking good today! (It was the same helpful guy who helped me with all my bags the previous day). Could you kindly notify the limo that I'm ready to get on the road?"
Concierge: "Sure, I'll check with front desk."
After 10 minutes of waiting and frantically checking the time...
Concierge: "I'm sorry Sir, we did not receive a request from your company to get a limo booked for your transportation"
Me: "Are you sure?"
Concierge: "Positive"
Me: "Where's your manager.."
Manager: "I'm sorry sir, your company management has to sign to authorise the transport. We do not have this on file at the moment."
Me: "I AM the management"
Manager: (looking at me sheepishly) "You're kiddin me... come on..."
Me: "You can check, I am from room XXXX booking made by my company, I was the one who signed the approval on the paperwork to even approve the booking!"
Manager: (with the sheepish look again) "Righttttt..... but I still can't help you."
Fine. I decided that this conversation wasnt getting anywhere and time wasnt on my side either. Considering the fact that workplace was only 5 streets across, I decided to walk for it -which wasnt such a bad idea afterall.... Korean Airlines stewardesses alighting at the front of the lobby ;)
I did make a mental note of the manager's name and purposed within myself to shoot a really long email at the end of the day BUT then again reality set in.... there really wasnt a need to make a mountain out of a molehill although it was obviously a problem with them. Suddenly, I felt a silent joy within myself, you know, the type of i-knew-i-could-have-made-my-point-but-chose-to-forgive feeling deep inside. At times we get so mad at even the tiniest of things when they obviously dont go along the lines of how we plan them out to be. Therein lies the challenge. Some people call it being HUM (singlish phrase for cowardice) but take a step back and think again. My violent actions could have cost somebody along the line their job or a potential end of year bonus which they would so badly need. Trust me, the hotel sales manager was lobbying hard to get our annual contract to put employees there everytime we travelled on business.
Feeling quite sour and "disturbed" about my earlier decision to let things go (i'm human afterall) I headed for the Executive Floor Lounge and to my surprise met somebody who brightened up my day... well night to be exact... The lounge waiter was actually packing up for the night (I had arrived 5 mins after closing time) yet upon seeing me walking in with dull face, walked up, introduced himself and asked to serve some food. He promptly brewed me a SUPER-DUPER-REFRESHING mix of Starbucks coffee! We spent the next half an hour chatting about things like getting around Los Angeles, which places to visit, even how to get cheaper rates at that same hotel in future haha... I had made a new friend on the first day, his name was Francisco. See, I dont just remember names of females unlike what Hanwei always assumes ;)
I would love to continue blogging about my first couple of days, but they were generally uneventful. Adding to that, I shall spare you the anguish of trying to understand my work technicalities :)
Next post shall be on events for the following week..
posted by Caleb at 12:58 AM
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