a wrap on the vx launch of maui

just finished checking-in the last few maui guests bound for san francisco and i'm throughly BEAT.
earlier today, 5 minutes into opening the ticket counter, our entire system came crawling to a halt.

an hour goes by and still nothing. at this point we're about to start checking-in guests the old school way, which is hand writing manual boarding passes and bag tags. luckily our IT team found a fix moments before we pulled the trigger and we quickly checked everyone in. 

our entire VX team at OGG stepped up big time and we were able to knock out the whole flight way before we even began boarding.

this whole day has been nuts. our inaugural flight from sfo to ogg landed at 1340 and you could sense the jitters; not just from our own vx team, but from the rest of the ogg vendors around. our bird landed and was greeted by two water cannons provided by the ogg fire dept.

it was a beautiful sight to see, especially with the backdrop of the mountain accompanied by blue covered skies and fluffy clouds lingering behind.

im here for another 3 days and now that the biggest hump is behind us, i think ill start exploring a bit more and start working on my tan.

mahalo!

bangalore to los angeles via hong kong

today is tuesday

november 24th, 2015

im currently debriefing inside a starbucks a few blocks from home after a long long day of traveling from bangalore, india back to los angeles, california. 

the day began yesterday but technically yesterday is still today from the point from where i started.

ok,
moving forward...or backwards? 

bangalore time: monday nov 23th

we hopped on a cab at 9pm monday night. 2 hours later, after a bloc of akon and eastern european dance music along with close calls dissecting through the horrific evening bangalore traffic we made it to the airport. it was 11pm and the flight to hong kong was scheduled at 1:15am the next day.  

hong kong time: tuesday nov 24th

our flight landed at around 10am and the connecting leg was scheduled at 1:35pm. we walked around the airport for a bit and grabbed some some iced tea/coffee along with some pastries and waited for the flight. we found a good spot with chairs down at arrivals and relaxed a bit. the exhaustion was beginning to show in brianne's hair and eyes and in me through my speech; i tend to slur and not make cohesive thoughts when i dont get enough sleep.
we got our seats late so we had to move fast. when we reached the gate i noticed that boarding had just begun. we took a breather and i looked at my boarding pass, seat 72E, the middle seat at the last row on a boeing 777-300ER. i dreaded the flight at this point, which was estimated to take a little over 12 hours. before take-off, as i sat on my seat, i said a quick prayer to my Maker and off we were.

los angeles time: tuesday nov 24th

we landed at around 9:35am that same day, 4 hours before our flight took off. i got around 4 hours of sleep on the flight, not nearly enough. my shoulders were soar, i felt a bit groggy but we were back. i got home at 1pm and what was to be an hour nap became five. my shoulders didnt hurt as bad and the warm white chocolate mocha that sits comfortably in my right hand is taking a little of the edge off. the journey back home was long but when youre traveling with good friends while make new ones, there is nothing else id rather be doing. 

now back to the grind. i think