The You Ask “A”

This had been one of the country that I am longing to visit and had a chance this year when ION GNSS presented me with a student prize, meaning that the conference organizers will cover my expenses. This year’s conference was held from the 21st till 23rd September 2010 at Portland, Oregon. There were lots of drama in this trip with the first one occurring just before my flight.
Just hours before my first United flight to San Francisco, an iPhone push notification from my Trip Case App popped up informing me that my flight has been cancelled. Panicking that I might miss my presentation, I rushed to University and then to the travel agent to ask about the situation of my flight but ended with nothing as this problem will be handled by the airline itself. So I headed off to the airport and had a glance at the departure information monitor. To my surprise there were check-in counters available so i thought an alternative flight on the same day was arranged for us but ended up that the check-in counters were trying to arrange for an overnight stay at a nearby hotel and changing our flights schedule. A quick ask and the guy at the service counter told me that the reason my flight was cancel was because the pilot was sick. Bad luck… but it earned me an additional day to prepare for my trip as up until the day before my flight, I was still rushing and printing out hotels reservations, travel plans etc. On that night, Vinda, Jane, Joon Wayn and I had a ‘leftover’ dinner at Vinda’s. Although leftovers, but still nice.
So the airline arranged for us to stay at Mercure Sydney Airport and the flight out to US at 10am the next day. The impression that I had for United Airlines was not that good from the start as few friends of mine who took United before complained about how rude the air steward/stewardess were and the in-flight entertainment systems was from the Jurassic era. With this flight cancellation, United impression just went from bad to worse.
The flight from Sydney to San Francisco was a normal and classic one. As expected there is only a shared screen for all passengers to watch but the service is still acceptable. There is also an advertising during the flight by Microsoft… renting out their new Zune media player.