It’s time to travel again. My flight from Phoenix to London (via Minneapolis) for a conference in Cambridge was scheduled 2:54 pm. I had a meeting at 9 am this morning and at 10 am I had a meeting of home inspection, so I thought I’d just go to the airport directly from the last place.

The home inspection went much longer than I thought. The termite inspector only finished by 12:30 pm. I wasn’t so nervous, though, thinking that I’d just go directly to the airport which was only 10-15 minutes away, since I had only carry-on luggage and was all eady for the trip.

As I finished the last meeting, I did the last screening. All documents, laptop, etc, were in my backpack. All were checked. Then I looked down and my eyes were stuck on two set of naked toes! What? Apparently all morning and noon I was wearing sandals — that meant I met my Director with those sandals too! Not fancy sandals, these were Sandal Jepit (open-toe slipper, or sandals with a thong, or japonki)!! Well, I don’t think it’d be a problem to fly with japonki, but how could I speak at the conference at the University of Cambridge without shoes? Or perhaps it’d be ok as well. The only problem is that British April weather might kill my bare toes!

This meant I had to go home to pick up my boots. So I did. I got things ready by 12:55 pm, but ouch, it was so difficult to get a taxi. My address is confusing, especially if the receptionist of taxi company wasn’t a native speaker. Ten eleven Ve Ella…. what? Ve Ella….. like v…..e…..e…. l…. what again? Veal? No V like in Victor… then E like Echo…… then second word…

It needed five minutes just to spell my address! The first taxi company I called was AllState Yellow Cab. Alas, after successfully spelled the address, the receptionist said that there’s no taxi staying around at this moment in Tempe so it’d be 25 minutes waiting for the first available taxi! Yikes. I canceled it right away! I then called Taxi Express Ali based in Tempe. I shut the phone off as soon as I heard the other end spoke with accent. I just needed to figure out how to deal with this crazy spelling problem. Aha! I got an idea. I’d ask to be picked up at my friend’s place, whose address is really easy, 700 W University Drive….. and it’s not far from the airport. Then I’d park my car there so I’d leave all of my keys at her place as well — this avoid me from accidentally leaving my keys in the United Kingdom!!!

Yes, the plan worked. I called the Taxi Express Ali and it went well. The taxi showed up in less than 10 minutes. I was a bit panicky as it was already 1:30 when I left my friend’s place. Luckily there’s no traffic so at 1:40 I had arrived at the airport. Using my celebrity track… hehe… (aka First Class line), I managed to arrive at the Gate on time!

So, here I am, reporting from Minneapolis/St Paul. So far so good