Bags packed, immunizations received, and parents calmed, A&W left cold-ass Boston for Singapore, via Minneapolis/St. Paul (MSP) and Tokyo-Narita...all in all, uneventful.
We passed our five-plus hours in MSP chillin at Rock Bottom Brewery, stealing Sweet'n'Low from Starbucks for Wisam's insatiable coffee fit, witnessing victims of the recession try to relentlessly upsell everything at Brookstone (Wisam bought a highly enviable travel pillow and blankie. I recommend the slim travel speaker. We decided our Kindles are way more fab than the Sony e-reader!), making fun of Midwesterners (Man at newsstand taking my bottled water money: "Would you like a giant bag of peanuts today?" wtf?)
We also spent a ridiculous amount of time making off-color jokes about swine flu...this would prove fortuitous. Arianne (who, thinking ahead, stole some from the student health center) thought it would be funny to put on medical masks and take pictures in the airport. Indeed, many folks on our flight had them on all the way to Tokyo.
Upon arrival at Narita, the announcement is made that government authorities would board the plane with thermal scanners as a swine-flu precaution...even the flight attendants seemed surprised at this. Suddenly our jokes became less palatable. Japanese in hazmat suits walked by, scanning us and dismissing individual sections (which makes no sense, given the recycled air). A man two rows ahead of us was escorted off the plane in a hurry (!) by authorities, and those surrounding him, us included, were given red dot stickers (!) and masks and told to sit tight. Needless to say, we became quite unnerved! Still, jokes persisted - including many about the Toyota Production System and finding a way to pull the g@dd@#n andon cord!
All of a sudden, we were informed that we were free to go, after no further inspection and no added explanation. We realized we had missed our connection to Singapore, but this turned out to OK. NWA agents assured us that we were rebooked on the next day's flight and would be put up in a Tokyo hotel for the evening. After standing outside in the freezing rain, minus Arianne's bag (sad face), we defected from the group and took a rogue cab to the Radisson, where we dined with our new friend, Tim Allen (not THAT Tim Allen), a software consultant from our flight that insisted on buying us champagne to celebrate our upcoming graduation. Apparently not only HBS kids pop bottles...I've been in the bubble too long. We also met a "Main Street" woman that proceeded to tell us how Wall Street bankers and "poor people who couldn't afford the houses they were living in" had decimated her retirement fund. Ah, global financial crisis explained...
On the upside, we got to shower and get a little less frazzled before boarding another long-haul flight on ANA to Singapore the next day.
Click here for complete MSP/Tokyo Pics
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