Uh huh, i am going to LA with my mom!
I was checking out the flight schedule to KL on SIA website and saw a promotion banner for flight to LA. It is a direct flight from SG to LA on A380 and cost almost SGD5K for two persons. It was actually considered quite a good bargain, but before i bought it, i decided that perhaps i could check out zuji.com or asiatravel.com websites to see if there were any cheap tickets like the ones we got for my Japan trip.
And there was when i saw this super deal on MAS. SG to KL and then KL to LA only cost less than SGD3k for two passengers. It really can't get any cheaper than this and so i quickly grabbed it.
It's gonna be a really long vacation for me, with 14 full days in USA. I'll be away from work for 19 days (from 27-Jul to 14-Aug), and that will take away 12 days of my annual leave. I am now only left with about 3 days of annual leave for this year.
The main purpose of the trip is to bring my mom to visit my elder brother who is in LA. We've not seen him for almost 15 years or so; it has been so long that i don't think i'll recognise him even if i bump into him on the street. We hardly keep in touch, and i know my mom misses him very much. I'm not too sure when will be the next time for her to see him again after this trip, and so i decided to stay there the longest we can just so that she can have more time to be with her precious son. I was jokingly telling my colleagues that since year 2012 is the end of the world, i might as well bring my mom to see his son before we all vanish.
This trip is gonna cost me a bomb for sure, as i'll have to bear all the costs of the travel for two persons. Anyway, if this can make mom happy (which i'm sure it will), then it's all worthwhile.
The next step now is for her to get the U.S. visa, which is a headache for me. As a Malaysian and non-Singapore PR, she gotta go to the U.S Embassy in KL to get it done. She is not working anymore, and does not have a huge bank account balance or any fixed deposit to prove that she will not stay in USA to work illegally. I'm asking her to find out more details from an ex-neighbour who runs a tour agency.
As for me, the visa i applied for my previous business trips carries the validity of 10 years. I've renewed my passport and i just need to carry the old passport that bears the visa with me for this trip
I am really looking forward to this trip. Besides the long leave from work (even though i'm sure i will still be checking my work emails when i'm there), it's a mixed feeling for me to be meeting my only sibling whom i've not seen for so long. There is a story about how our situation would come to this today, and i'll leave that to another day.
For now, i've added a countdown widget to my blog for counting down to my trip. As there will be no more public holidays for the coming two months, this is gonna be the motivation to last me till July.
