So at the moment I'm sitting at Chicago airport, I arrived at 10:30pm, it is now 1:20am, I still have about 3.5 hours to wait until my next flight. It's really kind of eerie, there's been this one old man polishing the same strip of floor with his machine for the past 20 mins, people sleeping on seats, no doubt also waiting for their early flights. So what adventures did I face to get here and what adventures are to follow?
So as you may know from my last report I had sent off my passport application to London and was waiting on it's return with anticipation. What you don't know is the following Monday the 26th your heroine recieved an email from the London Embassy which very vaguely (and unprofessionally, I mean, who uses '...' in official emails?? That made me think he was trying to hide something.) stated that "We recieved your application everything is fine with that" but could we charge you 15 Pounds for courier because we don't use Fedex (which is the return envelope I sent along). Ok, I think to myself, but I wonder if they mean everything's fine as in it's finished and they are sending it the following day or what? And why didn't they send an email stating that they recieved it on Weds or did they just open it today? All these questions but nobody to answer until the following morning because the timestamp on the email was 12:06pm which, over in London, is 5pm home time, thanks guy (this is another reason I thought something was up). So of course most of Monday is spent stressing out because I have no idea what's going on. What better way to handle stress than to bake, so bake I did. Mango and coconut muffins which didn't have that much flavour in them, probably because my mango wasn't that ripe, and spinach and feta pastries, which also went wrong because I bought the wrong kind of pastry =( Oh well. I also cooked myself a proper meal too, which I hadn't done for a while - herbed turkey breast, kumara mash with onions and steamed brocolli, mm. (I'm getting hungry sitting here in the terminal)
So anyway, it's 1am Tuesday 27th and K's overnight show on CKLN is coming up and since it was always an idea that I go up or call in and talk to them about the NZ music scene I decide to join her and PAH on the radio since it would be my last chance to. My first time in a studio and it's kind of crazy. K thought I was just going to call in and not physically go up with her so she didn't tell PAH that I was coming and they still had their theme of the night which was "If you could only have one mix tape what 6 songs do you have to have on there?". The lists kept them both pretty busy as they tried to find one or two to play from each person who submitted. The songs ranged from Maddonna, Alt 80s pop, classical instrumentals, indie and obscure 18 min long synth. I'm just watching them for a couple hours, I even have a couple songs that were requested, and then it's my turn for an interview and a few NZ songs here and there. So I get set up in the next room by myself, looking at the two through the window, headphones on and a big red mic in front of my nose and everything goes totally fine (probably because I know not that less people are listening then what there could be?) except my laptop kept asking for a pw whenever it woke from sleep so K couldn't play my songs straight away, and something was wrong with the equalizer when they did play so they sounded terrible! But alas, such is equipment sometimes, these are the things you learn while working on radio.
So it's still Tuesday morning, we get home about 8am and I have not slept yet. It's just about time to call London and ask them what the deal is before passing out so I call them via Skype and some woman answers. I wanted to talk to the guy who emailed me but she said he was away (spineless in my opinion) so how could she help me?
Me: Yeah so Mark sent me an email regarding my passport and I want to know what the status of it is.
Woman: *laughs* uh, no, he sent you one about the courier.
Me: Well, yeah, but essentially about my passport, what's the status of it, is it ready, are you sending it today?
W: Well no, not today, we only got it on Weds, it'll be the end of the week at least, you didn't mark Urgent on it.
M: Well the payment I made for the ETD said it included the passport processing fee so I didn't mark any of the payment details..
W: No, that payment is only for the 10 day regular service, you would have to pay extra for urgent.
M: Well shit, is there anyway we can speed this up or is there no point in asking that?
W: *laughs* (grr) well we would have to charge you 80 GBP and then we can send it out today.
M: *sigh* fine.
So basically I had to bribe them to send my passport that day otherwise they would have held onto it for another week, how fucked up is that? Note for anyone who goes through this, just go straight for the urgent passport it will be faster and cheaper because this new passport cost me about $600NZD to get and took 3 weeks from when I declared my other one lost. *sigh* So lame. It's ok though because I got to pass out for a couple hours before waking up feeling extremely ill from some kind of food poisoning and feeling nauseous for the rest of the day (and day following) as I tried to sleep it off. Wednesday was basically housekeeping things, constantly checking my passport tracking number, packing, booking the rest of my trip with Si and exchanging music with K which brings us to Thursday, the longest day ever.
I am all packed up and ready to go. I am super tired from not having enough sleep the past few days and tonight is not looking any better. I wake up and call DHL to check what time my package was arriving and he says between 9 and 1 which is a fairly large window, so I ask if maybe he could call if he gets nearby or here since we are downstairs and he says to call back about 11 and he'll page the driver. I decide to stake out the front window in case he comes before then, so I have my laptop out and am copying a few more of K's cds and admiring the snowy rooftop across the road which has blended in with the sky, the phone rings, it's the driver! He totally slipped by me, I am a terrible spy. I scramble up the steps (as they are covered in snow and very awkward) to sign for it and rejoice, 11am, not bad, there's still time to change money, eat, finish stealing music and say goodbye to the cats. I swear Demetrius knew I was leaving because he was spralled out all over me and generally he's a wild tryrant so that was a nice change. It finally reaches about 5pm and it's time to head to the airport. I should have been sad to leave but I was more relieved to move on from the whole passport mess than anything. My flight is not scheduled until 8:20pm but I decide to get there earlier in case I have a problem with customs (which I have a feeling I might) and yup, I do. I was trying to get away with a visa waiver (since I haven't got my b1/b2 visa reissued yet) on a one way ticket "And you know it's against the law to do that?" says the big black man in a loud voice. Oh boy. A few questions later a "WHAT?" here and there from him (I think he was semi deaf? But it was kind of intimidating, maybe that was the point?) and a weird look when I explained the concept of a 'working holiday' like wtf would want to do that? He says "Ok, I'll let you off this time but NEXT TIME YOU KNOW NOT TO DO THIS AGAIN" and I am all "yes sir, thank you, sorry, won't happen again. (hopefully I can get my visa reissued without any problems...)" Good thing I was still on time for my flight to board! A few delays later, a gate change here and there and much confusion we finally get ready to board the flight to Chicago while in the meantime I make friends with a 2 year old. That brings us to Chicago, now almost 3am. When I got here there were announcements about closing down the terminals from midnight - 5am except for staff and ticket holders which had me worried for a while because I had nowhere to go if they were kicking me out for 4 hours. But everything turned out ok, I asked a staff member and she says I'm fine in the public area of the terminal and maybe I want to go to Terminal 5 because they have food (which I think she forgot was inside so I am starving.) and it's much nicer over there, which it is! For starters they have nicer seats and power points so I don't have to make the terrible decision to use my battery power here or on the ferry (since there are no power points until we get to Juneau). I said for starters but I think that's about all. So that brings us to the question, what's coming up?
In about 40 mins I am going back to terminal 2 to see about checking in and finding something to eat. My flight leaves at 5am to Phoenix and then from there to Seattle, landing at 10:37am. From there I have to take a bus downtown to the greyhound station where I meet Sibod and we travel 2 hours north to Bellingham ferry terminal. From there it's 2 days on a ferry up to Juneau, I'm hoping the scenery is stunning on the way up, I'm hoping I don't miss too much when I pass out upon boarding, although I'm not sure how much luck I'll have since we didn't hire out a cabin and we'll both have to sleep in public areas... I'll probably be able to find a quiet spot somewhere. We're in Juneau until the 8th in which we fly over to Anchorage and stay until the 13th and then it's back to Seattle for a day or so, we'll do the underground tour, Si will go up to catch his flight home from Vancouver and I, I am thinking of putting my Portland/San Fran trip on hold because I'm not sure I can afford it straight after this trip because of all the money I lost with this mess. I'm sure they'll both be nicer in the summer anyway. So I'm probably going to spend some time with Joey before landing in Vancouver myself to settle in for another few months.
And that's that! The next update will be about how terribly cold but awesomely awesome AK is probably. Thanks for keeping me entertained for about 2 hours, you're the best!
xx.
Ogod I'm hungry.
