Other Side of the World: Day 1.3 : The Kestrel Has Landed!

I have a whole lot of long overdue posts of the BIG ADVENTURE and it's been more than a month (oops). I apologise and shall SLOWLY remember, rekindle and put up every single day of the B.A.

12 July 2014

Continuing from my previous post (where I cannot stop raving about my in-flight jakunism), I eventually arrive in JFK. It's funny how if I am sitting at my desk I would be raving and hyperventilating that it is THE JFK, but when I landed all I thought of was "Oh, finally!".

And since I am writing this after (close to) two months, what I remember of JFK was there was an extremely long queue for immigration, there was a King Kong ad, and the immigration dude was exactly as stereotyped: big grumpy white guy. It took so long to get through immigration (because of the long queue) that half of the luggage from my flight was already off the belt and it took me several panicky moments to find my suitcases.

LONG queue and King Kong ad

Emirates being Emirates and their first class service provides complimentary chauffeur service to and from the airport, in selected cities, and within a fixed radius, for their Business and First Class passengers. I thought there would be a guy holding my name on a placard, you know, like in this picture:

Photo from Emirates

In reality it was more like this:

Oh well, maybe because I am not Mr. Rossdale (badumtish) but it was a nice black Cadillac and the chauffeur looks like an FBI agent. So all was well. I can't remember his name now but he is a really nice guy and he pointed out sights to me, asked me about Malaysia, told me about his kids. And when we arrived at Cattano Avenue, there was this dropdead gorgeous hunk standing on the pavement and my heart almost burst with happiness. Mr Chauffeur said to him "I have a present for you" and was tipped $20 by the hunk.

And that's the happy reunion. The end.

Ha. Kidding.

Before the day ended, Luv and I had this geeky thing planned: we were going to get on the NJTransit, head to the Big Apple and catch the last Manhattanhenge of the year (disregarding the fact that I've just traveled across continents and was all wonky). So we were on the 'party train' to NYC on a Saturday evening, and since I was rather tired I wasn't like "OMG OMG OMG I'M GOING TO NYC!!!". We got there and...stupid clouds were in the horizon and just basically ruined any awesome shots of the sun setting along the Manhattan grid. Oh damn.