My Road To American Idol 2009 Part 2: The Trip to LA

Ok, ok… I better start getting into putting my American Idol Finale experience down before I forget all of it. I’ve got a memory like a sieve after all.

I’ve already covered how I accidentally won the ticket, so I’ll cover just quickly cover the journey over.

Winning the ticket actually caused a little bit of a dilemma for me. You see, firstly my application for leave in July was just shot down the week before so I didn’t know whether I could get 1 week off at the end of May. Secondly, I couldn’t take the kids into the show and we didn’t know any babysitters in LA, nor did we think that Rei would take kindly to being left with any stranger. Thirdly, H1N1 (aka swine flu) that was spreading and LA was one of the hotspots, so we didn’t really think it was wise for the kids to fly.

“So why can’t we leave the kids with the in-laws?” I hear you ask.

Well, we weren’t sure how the kids, especially Rei, would take to being left without their parents for an extended period of time for the first time, so we were worried that my mum couldn’t keep up with taking care of 2 screaming kids. In the end, we had to rely on a combo of my mum and also Futaba’s aunty who stays here on the “Malaysia My 2nd Home” programme. We left the kids with my mum on the Sunday that we flew off, and they would head over to Futaba’s aunt’s place a couple of days later when she returned from Japan.

Rei had a teary farewell and after we had checked in at KLIA, we called home to see how was everything – The kids were asleep! Not only that, but Rei fell asleep happily watching TV with my mum! We thought “Hey! This might not be so bad after all!”, and kept our fingers crossed that this would continue for the rest of the week.

Anyway, Futaba and I were pretty much one of the only handful of people actually taking precaution and wearing face masks at the airport! The barista at Starbucks even thought I was returning from overseas and had been given the mask by some other airport or in the airplane (as if…).

Needless to say we got a lot of funny stares and snickers from the people around us. Hey, you would point and stare too if Cobra Commander walked by…

Cobra! REETREEEEAT!

We had a few hours transit in Japan on the way to LA and were put up at the Nikko Hotel in Narita for a few hours. Futaba took the opportunity to call friends and family and found out that one of our friends was actually recently transferred to be the GM at Nikko Narita! What a coincidence! Anyway, we met up for a good chat and catch-up session and he was nice enough to send us off at the Airport Bus.

Thanks Tanaka-san!

LA - Here we come baby! (Ok, ok, I know it’s in the past, but “here we come” just sounds better, so there!).

To be continued…