Flight Preparation

I don't know why I thought arriving in California 24 hours before my flight to Hong Kong would be a good idea. Maybe I never thought this; rather, I believe I thought that I'd enjoy a few extra days in Provo with Diane rather than spending a few days with mom and dad in California. Anyway, the next time I plan to travel to Asia and fly to NYC afterwards, I'll need more than one day to prepare. The morning came earlier than I hoped (still trying to recoup on sleep). I spent some time IM'ing Yale (in the Philippines at the time) and other friends.

Afterwards, I stepped out to take care of some last-minute business details with Merrill Lynch. Dad was a little concerned that I was waiting to the last day to complete some required paperwork, but I assured him that all would work out. I started by going to a local medical center to get a urine analysis. Not to be too graphic/detailed, but I should had not gone to the bathroom before arriving at my appointment. It was one of the most stressful experiences in recent memory (OK, so I live a pretty sad life at times). I chugged who knows how many cups of water. All I could think of was Elaine from Seinfeld. There's an episode when she is planning to travel abroad and needs to do a urine analysis. Unfortunately, she ate a poppy seed muffin and is afraid of failing the test. So, she begs a few people for their urine and finally gets Mrs. Seinfeld to comply. While I didn't think my results would test positive for opium, I wasn't sure if I'd have enough to comply with the test. Fortunately, I passed (not that you care—you're probably saying to yourself, TMI Fernando, TMI).

After the ordeal at the doctor's office, I got fingerprinted at the Orange County Sheriff's department in Aliso Viejo. What made this trip special was the fact that my vehicle registration had expired in April and I'm awaiting the new sticker. So, I showed up and prayed that I wouldn't get cited for this violation. After all, the parking lot was filled with police cars. Even though I knew the odds of getting a ticket for this were low, it had me worried for the entire trip home (from Utah to California). I kept thinking that I might be pulled over for speeding and that the officer would notice that I had expired registration.

Interlude

OK—taking a short breather. I'm sitting on the Boeing 747, row 63/seat G somewhere over the Pacific Ocean (2 hours into my 14.5-hour flight). It's 2:00 am and I'm pretty tired. However, since it's only 5:00 pm (Hong Kong time), I'm trying to stay up so that I fall asleep during normal HK hours. I hope what I write makes sense...Hitting turbulence right now...my laptop is shaking vigorously right now. Anyway, I was originally seated in row 58, seat E. This was a "middle seat" (there are two middle seats in the middle section of a 747—it's 10 seats across, 3x4x3) and I was quite disappointed because I had people on both sides of me. They were very nice Indonesian gentleman who worked for Holland America (cruise line). Fortunately, one of their friends was seated by himself a few rows back and I was able to make the switch. To make the switch even better, there was nobody seated next to me! Now, I had an aisle seat with room to my left for my travel pillow (I forgot my nice, Brookstone pillow, but I bought another one at LAX) and laptop. While I haven't taken the time to counts seats, I did a rough calculation and there are approximately 450 economy class seats—most of which are filled. I had one of the handful of seats that had a vacant seat next to it. So, no empty plane like the one Yale flew on.

Post-Interlude

After leaving the Sheriff's department, I headed over to the Merrill Lynch building in Newport Beach. I met up with dad and he introduced me to the person I needed to speak with. Now that I had taken care of my paperwork, I set off to eat at Panera Bread (one of my favorite restaurants that I first learned about in Bentonville, Arkansas). Zupa's in Provo is a similar restaurant. However, I think Panera is better. Anyway, it is on the corner of Culver and Barranca (Crossroads Plaza), so I headed down Campus drive thinking that I'd hit Culver. Well, for whatever reason, I became disoriented (after all, I don't spend much time around UCI) and it took me about 20 minutes to find the restaurant. I kept getting confused when traveling on Campus, Culver, and University. I passed by Mason Regional Park in Irvine and knew that I was off track.

After a delicious meal at Panera, I had to get back home so I could start packing. I brought home way too much clothing and I had to figure out what was going with me to Asia, what was going to New Jersey, and what was going to stay in California for the summer. Sadly, this took all afternoon to figure out. To make a long story short, I ditched the duffle bag I was planning on taking to Asia for a slightly large suitcase. I packed 2 weeks of clothing for NJ and I left for LAX hoping that I didn't forget anything.