cdrum

I am sitting in the United Airlines Red Carpet lounge at Los Angeles’ LAX airport, waiting for my flight to Singapore (via Tokyo/Narita).  No, I am not flying Business or First Class, nor do I have status on this sub-par airline.  Since I had more than 2 hours to kill at the airport (which, by the way, is pretty lousy), I decided to buy a single day pass.  $50 USD or 7,000 miles, I chose to use miles.  The lounge certainly does NOT come close to Northwest’s lounges.  For one thing, alcohol is not free.  But, at least there’s free WIFI.

Reality Calls as my 3-week “quick trip” in the U.S.’s West has sadly come to an end.  I think I could have spent even more time here, and I would have liked to make my way out East to see my Sister, among others.  Next time! The great thing about going to Singapore now is that I get to see Melanie again!  UNfortunately, she’s off to Taiwan for a business trip for 2 days, so I won’t get to see her until Wednesday.  Oh well.  What’s another 2 days?

When I arrive in Singapore, I will have plenty to do.  Life will essentially start anew.  I need to get “legal” by getting my long-term visit pass.  With that, I can open a bank account, get a mobile phone plan (iPhone 3G S here I come), get a driver’s license, find an apartment, etc.  Oh, and get a job!!

Some friends of mine who live in Singapore tell me the job market is o.k., not horrible as with elsewhere (such as the USA).  So, hopefully that is true and it won’t take me too long to get a job.  Am I dreaming?

It seems I have drawn a blank and cannot think of what else to write about.  I suppose I’ll wrap up this post here.  I am going to try to write a bit more often once I arrive in Singapore.  New country, new writing habits! Will see how that goes!

I landed in Portland, Oregon in the early morning of Friday, 6:30AM to be exact. Immigration and Customs was a breeze. My next flight, to Las Vegas, isn’t until 7:15PM this evening.

So, I took the light rail downtown – will be meeting with an old college buddy who lives here (although not for long) for lunch. Right now, I’m killing time at a Border’s bookstore cafe on a 24-hour US$10 internet connection.  Stupid country with their non-free WIFI….

As I said, it’s Friday morning, and the city is quiet. I was expecting lots of activity: people going to work, getting their starbucks coffee, etc… But, I suppose that as Portland isn’t Chicago or NYC, (it’s much much smaller), there isn’t a whole lot of activity downtown any way… It’s a nice quiet city…

This is my second time coming to Portland – the first was last year (2006) in September. I was in the U.S. on a business trip with my former company (specifically Michigan and Texas), and decided to fly through Portland on the way back to China to see Matt (who I’m seeing today), his wife Joanne, and another good friend Loren, who unfortunately for me, no longer lives here. I liked the city last time – Loren took me to a nice microbrew… If you’re interested, have a look at my Portland flickr set. I’ll try to take some more photos today – if something looks interesting, that is.

Portland sort of reminds me of Seattle (Melanie and I went for the first time in October of this year), in that there are a lot of scruffy looking people here – I’m going out on a limb here and assume most of them are tree hugger types… I know many of them aren’t homeless bums as they are enjoying their US$4 Starbucks latte while chatting with friends on their Apple MacBooks, but why they choose to dress like bums is beyond me. I’ll ask my friend Matt when he finally gets downtown, maybe he has some insight. I remember last time I visited, he told me Portland, as well as most of the Pacific Northwest, tends to attract environmental-types…  Maybe because of the excessive logging in this area…  Or maybe environmental types like rain…

But hey, whatever floats their boats… Who am I to judge?  (Quiet!, those of you who know me…) But, regarding the “bumness”, maybe it’s a way to reduce the risk of getting mugged – if you look scruffy and poor, why would a thief bother you? Kind of like buying a 200 RMB local-brand bicycle in Beijing instead of the fancy 2,000 RMB Giant from Taiwan – everybody and their brother has a crappy bike – no need to steel yours… O.k., maybe this analogy is a bit far fetched… Anyone care to comment?

Any way, changing the subject so I won’t dig my hole any deeper… If it weren’t for the strange Oregon State law regarding gas pumps (it is ILLEGAL to pump your own gas in Oregon), I would add Portland to my “short list” of acceptable U.S. cities for living, should I ever decide to return…  The list is short…  This strange “law” sounds like a socialist strategy to reduce unemployment, you know, methods countries like China “employ” (no pun intended) to “hide” their unemployment.  Hmm, I’ll stop this subject right here because I’m not really sure where I’m going with this…

Great, Matt just called saying he’s getting on the train to come downtown soon – ETA: around an hour.  He lives out in Intel and sushi country – Hilsboro, you could say a suburb of Portland.  (I say Intel county because apparently Intel employs some 10,000 people in the area.  Who knew that chip designers were environmental types?)

Wow, this is actually a pretty long post… Maybe I’ll stop here.  You can thank me in the comments for not continuing on blabbering about nothing.  I’ll write a post tomorrow or Sunday about Las Vegas.