We woke up very early, 2.00AM, because late for the plane was the last thing we would ever want to happen. We then went to Changi, and at around 3.30AM, we already arrived there to do the usual check-in ritual.
Before doing check-in, each passenger would have a little interview. It was just some requirement for US security, I guess. He asked about what you brought, whether you brought meat, whether you brought laptop, etc (I don't remember all the details). After we got our boarding pass, we still had lots of time, so we accessed the internet, checked email. Just when we were about to board, there would be another security check. It was a very thorough check, you even had to take your shoes off and let the officer check them. Fortunately my shoes were new :).The flight to Narita, Tokyo took about 7 hours and we arrived there at 14.15 PM Tokyo Time (2 hours ahead of Surabaya). The NorthWest plane was very comfortable and clean. I was glad that there was no smell (but just plain fresh air) on the plane, as I think I'm very smell-sensitive and a little smell could easily make me sick. Each seat was equipped with a TV, I watched "Fantastic Four" on the flight, while the rest of the time I just slept (to cover-up my morning sleep).
Narita is a very comfortable airport too, although I must say that Changi is more spacious and hence feels better. We transitted there for about 2 hours, so we had some time to browse around and try some Japanese lunch (hot tofu + noodle). While browsing, I found some interesting gadget: a JVC camcorder with a hard-disk as its storage. It was something like 40/80 GB and could store about 40 hrs of movie in MPEG-2 format. Cool, but the price was hefty (> USD 1000).At 16.00 PM, our flight departed from Japan, headed to San Francisco, the farthest we'd ever step our feet on. We were so excited. The trip would take about 9 hours. We'd be crossing the international date so when we arrived at San Francisco, it would still be Oct 9th 09.00 AM daylight time (Oct 9th 23.00PM Surabaya or 14 hours before Surabaya time). During the flight, we were given two meals (dinner and breakfast or was it lunch and dinner, whatever) and lots of snacks every so hours. I watched "War of the worlds" here, very cool movie, not a satisfactory ending though. The rest of the time, we spent it with sleeping, hoping that when we arrived at SF, we wouldn't feel jet-lag.
Btw, the plane was not crowded. It was a 2-4-2 seat in each row. I noticed some people were sitting alone on the 4 seats and could use all 4 of them as a bed. How nice. So next time you took a flight alone, you might want to consider this strategy.
Somehow, I also managed to crash the TV set on my seat, it rebooted and I could see it rebooted Linux and tried to connect to some multicast server. Interesting. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of this.
That's all for now, see ya at San Francisco :).
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