Nov 22 2010
11/24 has been announced as National Opt-Out Day! I will be flying out of Boston Logan which, of course, has the backscatter x-ray machines. I get enough radiation from the dentist x-rays so it sounds like I will choose to opt-out of the scanners at the airport.
An “enhanced pat down” probably won’t be horrible. I’ll just imagine myself as some sort of criminal. It will be my deterrent from becoming a bad guy someday.
Check out Daniel’s blog post about the TSA.
Feb 09 2010
Aug 04 2009
My flight from BOS to JFK was pretty uneventful. However, it did get delayed by about 30 minutes or so. I arrived at JFK and was so happy to see Daniel! He had already arrived from his flight and picked up his baggage so we went to pick up mine. We had a driver that took us to our timeshare on West 57th St. at 6th Ave. in Midtown. I had a nice first impression of the West 57th Street Hilton Club. There was a guy who opened the car door for us, brought our luggage inside to the lobby and another guy that brought us and our luggage up to room.
After we settled in and relaxed for a few minutes, we headed over to Angelo’s Pizza for a quick late lunch. There I experienced a new kind of topping for pizza. We shared a large mushroom pizza that came with basil leaves ontop. I had removed the basil automatically since I never eat basil. Then I somehow got a whiff of the basil and it smelled really nice so I proceeded to peel the basil leaf into pieces and spread it out on my pizza. It was delicious!
After some real NY pizza, we returned to our room and picked up the Nikon D200 and D300 cameras! I took a couple of practice shots.
We then walked over to Central Park and Daniel taught me some photography stuff and I tried to take some good shots.
For dinner, we walked a block or two to Lili’s 57 which served non-authentic Asian cuisine. I got a wonton noodle soup. It tasted fine but it is nowhere near the real thing. I don’t plan on going back.
To view more of my NYC photos, please visit my Flickr.
Dec 30 2008
I had a flight scheduled with United at 7:24pm on Sunday, December 21 and on that day (well – weekend), Mother Nature decided to send a Nor’Easter. I had to work TKD but it was a slow day because of all the snow so I was able to check the status of the flight all day. I was surprised to find that it was not delayed at all – at least that’s what it said online. So, I decided to leave early at 2pm to get to Logan airport just in case. I arrived at the check-in kiosk and it told me that the flight I checked into has been cancelled and asked if I wanted to go on standby for another flight that was going to leave at 2:45pm but had been delayed until 4:30 or something – that flight didn’t end up leaving until like 5pm.
So, my baggage got checked in with the flight I was standing by on. Perfect. I got to the gate and asked the gate agent to confirm that I was on standby for that flight – he said yes, so I sat around and waited for like 3 hours. Finally, they called the standby names and my name did not get called so I confirmed with the gate agent that there are no seats left on the plane for standby. Then, I went to another United desk to get standby on a flight for the next day (Monday) since all of the flights for Sunday and Monday were booked full. The lady finally got me a standby for 6am Monday… she said she would put me on a higher priority – not sure if it was because she was just nice or because I had Premiere Associate status with United. Either case, I didn’t believe she’d put me on higher priority for standby.
I headed back to Quincy, without my baggage since it flew to Washington, DC on the flight I didn’t get on. I had dinner with my family, then, I got home and there was a message on the machine from United. It was the lady that I talked to at the desk at the airport. She said she found me a confirmed seat on the 6am flight! YAY! United came through for me 
So I finally arrive, just shy of 8am, in Washington, DC, and I find Daniel and run into his embracing arms! YAY! So began my Christmas vacation week in VA. On Christmas Eve, we drove up to Brian and Brandy’s place in Pittsburgh, PA for dinner – which was very nice. We slept over at the Red Roof Inn somewhere, which was… subpar compared to the hotels Daniel has introduced me to :-p Anyway, we went back to Brian and Brandy’s house for breakfast and gift opening! After we did that, 5 or 6 hours later, we were back in Winchester.
All in all, another wonderful trip to the South – can’t really complain when I get to spend all that time with Daniel <3 oh yeah, he is up here in Boston with me for this week. Looks like I’ll be getting that first kiss when the clock strikes 12 after all! 
乾杯!
Cheers!
