Monday, September 22, 2008

Chengdu Trip #6 - Hong Kong Airport

I got a call at around 11pm last night from Cathay Pacific telling me that my flight back to LAX from Hong Kong was canceled. Since there are only two flights out of Chengdu to Hong Kong, I had to get up real early this morning to catch the 8:20am flight. I was a bit pissed off since I had to rearrange my shuttle from LAX and coordinate with my parent's friend to pick up my car at their house. I thought that perhaps Cathay Pacific canceled the flight because there weren't enough passengers on it since it's a Tuesday. However, I just found out that there is a typhoon due to arrive in Hong Kong around midnight so I'm actually glad that they got a hold of me and put me on an earlier flight home.


Typhoon Hagupit, currently ~100 miles from Hong Kong with 130+ mph winds.

There was a huge thunderstorm this morning in Chengdu. It started at around 3am and continued on and off. At times, the lightning was pretty much continuous. I had to run out in the pouring rain to catch a cab at 6am; actually my friend went out with an umbrella and hailed a cab for me while I hid in the building lobby. The cab ride was pretty freaky since we could only see out the front windshield. Of course, people still drove crazy; someone honked at us from behind because we did not run a red light.


I was bored this morning so I tried to capture some lightning with my point-and-shoot camera... not very successful.


Starry Night function with 15 second exposure

I'm sitting in the Cathay Pacific lounge waiting for my flight to leave for LAX. Normally I have a 7 hour layover in Hong Kong and sometimes Leon and I go into Hong Kong Island for dinner and meetings. This time, it's only a 2 hour layover, just enough time to get some food from the lounge.


Won-ton noodles and some steamed baos from the Cathay Pacific lounge. The Noodle Bar is not French/Italian food at the IFC but since Lehman filed for bankruptcy, I'm not sure if we'll get any more dinners from Leon's cousin. :(

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

keep hope alive.

Nomura is buying out Lehman's operations so maybe the free dinners can continue.