More Chicago heat...

That psycho cat woke me up at 4am : she was scratching/pawing at the bedside table, i sat straight up and switched on the light, paranoid that the pawing indicated she'd peed/pooped in the table and was trying unsuccessfully to cover it up. Thankfully, that wasn't the case - she was just being her usual psycho self. Tried to get back to sleep, but she then hung out under the bed, and dunno what she was doing there, but her tags were clanking against each other AND the wooden floor... in the end I gave up and got up - at 5am. grrrrr!!

Switched on the tv to WGN, and looks like the main news is about a power outage which occurred last night, people of the affected area being evacuated to other homes or hotels, especially the senior citizens.

The entire Chicagoland is under a excessive heat advisory for today and tomorrow. yesterday it went up to 99F (heat index of up to 116F!), probably more of the same today. Heck, at 5am it was already 81F!

Bottom line: i think i'll be sticking to the apartment for another day or two :-p

Anyways - a quick capture of the journey here:

@ KLIA: Parents insisted on doing the airport send-off, with visiting aunt in tow. Got there about 4 hrs before departure, only to find that check-in opens *three* hours before departure. Will have to keep that in mind for future trips - having comfortable buffers is one thing, waiting unnecessarily is another! So did the dinner thing before checking-in.

Then, at check-in, the person at the counter musta been totally new or something, took forever to get my boarding passes - I think it was because she didn't know the code for my destination (ORD - Chicago O'Hare: definitely not straightforward...). And no eyebrows raised on my luggage weight! grrrrr!! I coulda put more stuff in, maybe? Oh well,

Then, with still lots of time to kill, the parents (and aunt) stayed on for "coffee": ugh, McD's hot milo is so sweet it'll send even the hardiest of non-sweet-toothed people into a major sugar high! Over which was an awkward attempt by the parents to communicate that they would like me back in Malaysia as soon as possible. Yeah, you read right. Going as far as asking about chances of Kosh coming to work in the medical field in Malaysia. Totally ignoring so many factors that have already been taken into consideration; ignoring what I'd already told them of the few plans I do have for the future. I suppose I should not be surprised at this. And neither should they be surprised that I sure am glad to be halfway around the world from them. So sue me.

@ plane:
KUL - Seoul : awesome, I had 4 seats to myself, so I took full advantage and lay across them all for some shuteye.

4 hr layover in Seoul: had no idea what to expect of the Incheon airport, and wondered if it was going to be something like the Taipei airport. Boy was I mistaken! It's a great airport! Bright, lots of shops, and even a transit lounge for travellers to sleep / relax between flights. The only drawback was that I couldn't get any signal for my phone: i suppose maxis doesn't have roaming there? surprising, eh?

Seoul - ORD: crowded, i think every seat was taken! And a family a few rows ahead of me had an obnoxious boy screaming and shouting through most of the trip. I felt like slapping the living daylights out of them ALL! Entertained myself by playing yahtzee, creating a song playlist of rock ballads and 80's pop. And watched the only movie that appealed to me in the entire list: Dirty Harry. Wow. Only bits and pieces of the movie were familar. I remember watching a whole series of Dirty Harry movies on tv when I was much much younger, and totally loving the tough anti-hero character. This time around, I'm cringing at the whole 70's feel to it all, and amused at that husky raspy voice of ol' Harry's :)

@ ORD: The Immigration officer I got musta been bored, and glad at the "diversion" of something other than the usual tourist/business B1/B2 visa coming through. I really didn't like how he had this smirk on his face looking through all the papers, and I certainly didn't appreciate him saying "So, let's see who this guy is," then proceeding to laugh at Kosh's picture, even holding up the pic to me asking "He doesn't always look like this, does he?" I just smiled... sabar je lah... The jerk then got to the medial report, and declared "Well, according to this your are free of disease," I just answered "Well, that's good to know" in a slightly sarcastic manner - after all, if there had been problems, i wouldn't have gotten the visa in the first place! What a jerk! After reminding me that i can't have a Halloween wedding (gotta get hitched by Oct 28th), i was free to go.

Whoohoo!

Then had to wait for Kosh for a while ... combination of the plane arriving early; immigration, customs & agriculture control taking less than 30mins while I'd budgeted for 1hr; Kosh working that morning; Kosh making poor choice of roads to get to the airport... but hey, he got there, and we proceeded to take a long way back to the apartment (making a stop at Lenny's Denny's for a shared meal). During the drive, i made a phone call to my Swiss grandma, and another to Kosh's mom, to "check-in" and say that I'd arrived. Had already checked-in with folks by text message, knowing that they were probably freaking out at not hearing from me during the Seoul layover :p I was not mistaken :p

Overall, I was nowhere near as zombified as I expected - not having additional domestic flights to deal with helps A LOT!

Got reacquainted with Kosh and the psycho kitty, and explored the new apartment here in the Medical District of Chicago... later, did a spot of shopping, followed by a light dinner while watching a small percentage of what Kosh had recorded for me: in this case, the first few DVDs of Angel, Season One. I was falling asleep by the time we were at the end of the 2nd episode, so I hit the hay soon after. That was around 1030pm.

So... now it's my Tuesday, 550am. Will probably spend the day getting caught up with blog updating and reading. And am thinking of throwing some chicken into the crock pot, drown said chicken in a pack of the rendang curry or kapitan sauces I'd brought back with me, so that once Kosh recovers from being on call, if he's hungry, we'll have something more exciting than lunchmeat and bagels or pizza, heeheheh! :-) Will get going on that now.

ciao!