Goodbye St. Paul, Hello Singapore


These last few weeks have been completely a blur, from trying to pack up all my things, studying for my Chinese exam, and doing all the pre-reading during the Christmas break. Just seemed like a couple of hours ago, I was at the airport, and now here I am, 6am, writing a blog entry in Singapore because I can't sleep.

Travel here was crazy. There was a snowstorm that went through the Detroit area, so my connecting flight into Detroit was diverted to Saginaw (small airport with only 4 gates!) because they were plowing the runways in DTW. From there, we waited without any information about what would happen next, but within about 30 minutes, they had us departing again for Detroit. I was so worried that I would miss my connection to Tokyo, but the timing was perfect. What was originally a 3 hour layover in Detroit turned out to be more like 20 minutes. Too bad - I didn't get a chance to go to one of my favorite Japanese restaurants (Sora) in the main terminal.

Then, the flight from Detroit left 1 hr late due to de-icing, and waiting for other connecting passengers. THat meant we were also late coming into Tokyo, which gave me a close connection to Singapore. By the time I arrived at the gate in Singapore, most of the plane was already boarded.

Then, finally made it to Singapore - but more problems! Turns out that the rental agency forgot to leave the keys to my unit at the guard desk, despite my email clearly giving my arrival time. The guards were really helpful, called up the agents, and they were able to put me in another unit (un-occupied) until the morning, where I'll get my keys from the agent.

So, we'll see what happens from here, hopefully this is not a sign of future problems.

On the plus side, the flat is REALLY NICE. Maybe a bit too nice -I'll need to find something cheaper for the 2nd half of the year...

Welcome to Singapore...