made it to philly somehow
the next side quest 🇺🇸
my semester in singapore has come to an end and i’m spending a few days in philadelphia now before heading home.
by some stroke of luck, i made it to phl on time (early even) and with all of my checked bags safe.
my journey was supposed to begin at 8pm (singapore time) on may 3rd. my flight connected from singapore to sf, and then phl. i had set my alarm for 10am yesterday and for some reason woke up 2 hours early. when this happens, i normally just go right back to sleep. i decided to unlock my phone and go through my notifications and my heart fell to my stomach when i read the email subject line from united airlines: “we’re sorry about your recent flight to sf…”
wdym…
surely you’re talking about my flight to sf from months ago, right?
wrong.
my flight had been cancelled and there was no rebooking. i panicked. that woke me right up and i immediately hopped on a call with an amazing united airlines customer support agent. she was an angel, truly. an hour and a half later, she successfully rebooked my flights. now, my itinerary was: singapore → hong kong → san francisco → philadelphia.
it was 9:30am by now. my new flight was booked for 1pm. i still had an hour’s worth of laundry to do and a few miscellaneous things to pack up from emptying out my dorm.
so cooked.
i scrambled like my life depended on it (kind of felt like it did). i was out the nus campus by 10:30, airport by 11, and successfully reached my gate by 12:15 after checking in two bags (one which ended up being 4kg overweight, so that was a whole other ordeal).
the flight was fine, so was hong kong to san francisco, but we took off over an hour late because it was storming. that ended up nearly cooking my layover in san francisco. it was supposed to be a 3 hour layover, but now i had to pick up my bags, recheck them, and pass immigration within two hours.
thankfully, the sfo airport had a separate bag recheck which made everything really quick. the flight had nearly finished boarding by the time i made it onto my flight, but i did indeed make it.
the final weight was lifted off my chest when i picked up my bags at the phl airport baggage claim. no losses, and even made it 30 miunutes early with a $200 united airlines voucher. ;)
today’s drops 🔎
check out this builder residency in sf (applications due june 1st)
video algorithms internship @ netflix
go all in on your idea fully-funded, no-strings-attached, and in finland