Archive for November, 2008

madrid

Tuesday, November 11th, 2008

daryl and maureen’s wedding was great. so much fun. flew back to toronto at 2:30, went home, started packing and then Lora came by to hang out for a bit.

Guillermo and Sergei met me on a subway platform and we took the ttc to the airport. we had a very smooth trip from toronto to jfk and then from jfk to madrid. the flight was an hour quicker and i was able to sleep a little bit. we were in madrid at around 8:30am (2:30am home time!) and then we took the metro to the city centre. our hotel is so central, it’s awesome.

since we were early we couldn’t check in but they did allow us to leave our bags while we started walking. we saw a bunch of stuff, took some pictures, had a starbucks, then went back to the hotel, but they still weren’t ready for us.

anyway now we’re in the hotel room and it’s so tiny! but it’s cool, we are only here for 3 nights and we’ll do fine. gonna relax for a bit now before going out tonight.

flyporter

Friday, November 7th, 2008

my friends daryl and maureen are getting married on saturday. i’m in the wedding party so i am here (thursday night) for tomorrow’s rehearsal. my dad flew in to toronto today to attend meetings and he changed his return flight to 9:30 so that we could fly together. we were supposed to have dinner together but then he decided to visit his mother and siblings in scarborough and it was too much of a rush for me so i was able to have a last-minute dinner with lora instead.

i had no idea that Porter had its own little ferry dock. So I just assumed that it was the same one as centre island, which the bathurst streetcar does not go to! so after waiting for the bathurst streetcar for a few minutes, i took the subway to spadina, then got on the spadina streetcar and just sat there waiting for it to move. when it did, it was so slow! all i can think about is how my dad is just waiting for me at the airport thinking “dammit, my son is always late.” got off at Queen’s Quay, called my dad and he said “i’m at the top of the escalators waiting for you” and i was like… huh? where are you??? so i had to take a cab to the correct place. sheesh. at this point it is shortly after 9pm… cutting it a little close.

so then i’m at the airport and i go to the metal detector thing and she’s like, “boarding pass please”. so i give her what I have and she’s like, “this is not a boarding pass, this is just your itinerary.” so i was like… ok. i just printed out something and wasn’t paying attention. i did the online check-in but after selecting my seat i didn’t pay attention to what to do next. this was probably because i am always rushing in the mornings. woudln’t have made a difference anyway as my printer hasn’t had ink in it for over a year. so glad i bought that thing, anyway, i digress. i had to haul ass back around the corner to the check-in while I hear them calling for “mr. chu” on the PA.

so i go to go through the metal detector and some dude is like, “are you mr. chu? ” and i say yeah, and he goes “they are calling for you”. i’m like, yeah i know, but i can’t get there any faster than this, there are 2 people in line ahead of me… i go to through the metal detector and have to take off my belt and try again. go up to the counter to get onto the plane and my dad’s like, “where’s my boarding pass??” So he goes back to find it and the guy says, “are you mr. chu?” and i say yes, well there are two of us, i am jason. and he says, “there’s only one mr. chu on this flight” and i’m like, no… the other one is eddie. he says, “no”, i say yes… he looks it up and says, “oh the other mr. chu is on the plane already” and i say, uh.. no, he’s right there.

my dad comes back and thinks that somebody accidentally took his boarding pass. actually he thought he had his but he was holding mine. for some reason he took it from me and even though his was a computer print-out and mine was from the check-out counter, he still thought it was his. anyway we got on the plane at 9:29. I was quite grateful for the free can of stella.