Monday 1 May 2006

23:42 -- Just got home from work. My first day back. I went to work today straight after coming back late from the trip. The trip back was ok, but tiresome. Suyen is now feeling ill from a headcold. She's lucky though that she has today and tomorrow off. We had five segments coming back. The worst part was Manila. That airport is a disaster. The collect 550 philippine pesos (about $11.00 usd) from everybody who passes through that terminal on the way out, and at any time there are thousands of people there, and yet they only have one terminal serving every airline and a seperate domestic terminal that is really nothing more than a commuter terminal. The worst part was waiting in line for ever. We left Cebu Sunday morning at 07:30, arrived Manila about 08:30, got on a bus to the Manila terminal, then from about 09:30 to about 12:11, we were standing in one line or another. There seems to be one drop off area for all cars, two doors and one security check in for the terminal which serves all the airlines. From there, once you get through all that, you walk to your gate which has no ammenities -- not even restrooms, which would be bad if you were stuck there for hours. Once we got off the ground -- Oh yeah, Manila is down to one runway because the other is under repair, then we had an uneventful flight to Hong Kong. The new Hong Kong airport is in complete contrast to Manila -- it is a beautiful new well organized terminal. After an hour and a half there -- part of it spent in the shops -- I was looking for a drugstore for something for my headcold but didn't find one -- we took off on our 747-400 for San Francisco. We got to frisco but had a snafu at the luggage claim area -- one of the conveyor belts broke and we waited for over an hour to get our luggage. Many people who had connecting flights were quite cross and let the poor stewardices from Cathay Pacific know it. One stewardice was very helpful and did all she could, the other seemed to not care. Overall I like Cathay Pacific and I don't fault them for this snafu -- it was more the airports problem as their baggage handlers should have formed a chain gang to get the luggage out but instead they just rode around on the converyors a little but did nothing. However, San Francisco's main airport still beats LA's by a loooooooong shot. United was nice and quite organized when we finally got there. It was nice to be back in the ol' US of A. Our flight to Denver was pretty over the snowy mountains. There were very few bumps into Denver's new airport and into KCI. Mom and dad were there to greet us and we drove them home then went to Wal*fart, then home. I took my Nyquil as did Suyen and we slept solid until it was time for me to go to work.

At work I was with Steve and we went to Liberty Memorial to do the Immigration rally. My opinion is that they should make immigration more ammenable especially for guest workers, but they should be really harsh on people who hire illegal immigrants. We had a live at 5. I had some camera problems with my back focus and lens, and Fritz brought me his camera. I did a liveshot for John, then Steve and I finished shooting our package. We ate at the Bronx on 39th street, and then we were in-house for our lives.