Lost Luggage

Sigh... I knew that security lapse at LAX is a bad sign. After getting off the plane at Chengdu, I waited and waited and waited for my one bag and it didn't show up. I had checked it in from LAX and the tag said it was checked all the way to CTU. That means I'm now stuck in China without any of my clothes and also all my power adapters for both phones, extra batteries for the camera, and MP3 charge cable. My guess is that my bag didn't get a TSA X-ray sticker and somebody held it up. Cathay Pacific has 3 flights per day from LAX to HKG and even more flights from HKG to CTU so hopefully my bag is coming soon.

Since we have a business meeting tomorrow, Leon thought I should get some clothes since I only have what I was wearing on the plane (white t-shirt and khaki shorts). We ended up going to a Wal*Mart down the street and I bought a shirt, a pair of beige colored dress pants, a belt, and some underwear for ~RMB300. The shirt was okay but the pants has a small metal thingy with Chinese characters on it. I felt like a FOB just holding it... :(

Chengdu is hot and humid, just like last time. This time, we're staying in a hotel inside the Southwest Jiaotung University. It's not as nice as the one downtown but for only RMB220 per night, it has a working A/C unit and Internet access so no complaints. The cigarette smoke smell is not even that strong! :)

Leon also got me a SIM chip for my Motorola RAZR so now I have a phone number in China. However, my phone only has support for a few languages and Chinese is not on the list so there are a lot of black boxes where Chinese characters should be. We also recharged the phone with more minutes but I couldn't figure out how to check the number of minutes available. It'll probably run out during an emergency call or something. Since I've been up for the past 30 hours, I'm going to sleep and dream that they found my luggage.