I was away in Chicago for the annual RCAR2009 conference. Presented 3 papers for MRC Malaysia. This was a rather strange and slightly a bit out of the normal of my business trips. First, getting the visa from the US embassy was one hell of a hassle, unlike those days in the late 90s where your travel agent do it for you. Now, you have to log-in, do everything yourself, get the appointment for interview and then fill up your details..it must all be done online....
I should have taken the KL-London-Chicago route instead of the KL-Stockholm-Newark-Chicago flight path. Not only was you arrive like a zombie after about 20 hours in the aluminium capsule but what irks you most is, your luggage keys are gone and you realise it only when you get into your hotel room. After more than 20 over years of flying international occasionally, this is the first time my luggage didn't come home with me. Even after I got it back in less than 48 hours...most if not all of the souvenir were gone. I have yet to make a pilferage claim with MAS.
Describing the whole sequence of events since landing at newark and not having extra funds while in the US would only bore you. And can you beat it? I had to text and call my chaps back in KL to remit extra cash into my CIMB account. Lucky thing before I left I made a new ATM card which was also a cirrus debit mastercard. So I could 'cucuk' any ATM in Chicago and get cash. So much so, I forgot to even get some souvenir tshirts from the universities, planet hollywood or hardrock cafe (which was the standard operating procedures for tourists....errrm but again..I was no tourist right? hehe).
I will upload some great pictures when I receive them from our colleagues at all-state and state-farm insurance companies of America. The weather was just great. Cool, bright and sunny. Of course, if not for the wind blowing in from lake michigan, Chicago would not have been called the 'windy city'. What amazes me is the entrepreneurial spirit, the free-enterprise market economy that transformed this once 'lakeside swamp' into a skyscraping megalopolis...and was the icon of the mob and gangsterism or the era of 'the untouchables' if you may, during the roaring 20s...The efforts made and bringing back Chicago river from the dead was most interesting to me. We should learn from them and bring back to live, our dead rivers...
Its quite quiet in Chicago...must be the the economy..I guess they have not fully recovered from the global financial meltdown that began last september 2008. People in general are either still worried about the jobs or are away for their tail-end summer early autumn holidays . Or at least no more reckless shopping sprees..haha. I found a good Thai restaurant just a day before its time to leave. Didn't have time to visit the Malaysian Student's dept at Evanston and the plan to visit Firuz (finishing her PhD)and her family in Nebraska had to also be aborted.
Actually, come to think of it, I should have flown back via LA, stop by at San Francisco a couple of days and fly back to KL via Osaka...haha..that would have been a round-the-world-trip. Or perhaps detour to Vancouver. But...ah ha..you must have a Canadian Visa...or they will fine you US300.
More on Chicago in my next posting...its almost 2 in the morning..enjoy the rest of the weekend folks...
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