Newark Airport to JFK – The Most Stressful Airport Connection

Note: Just left Chile and returned from traveling in Peru and Bolivia. And upon returning home in the Philippines, my family had two funerals in our hands. More about that later. 

It’s Christmas Day and I’m sitting in Lima airport waiting for the most stressful flight of my life.

Around me people are wearing Santa hats. Families hugging and giving each other besos. Christmas trees beamed brightly with its gimmicky LED lights. The air is filled with Christmas song and cheer.

Not me.

My Christmas Eve was filled dealing with bureaucratic crap from United airlines and then finally falling asleep exhausted only to have anxiety filled dreams of missing my flight.

Four months ago I spotted this cheap flight to get out of South America from studentuniverse.com. For a second I saw the note “Airport change – Newark, NJ – JFK, NYC” and thought surely there would be an easy train connecting the two if people make a lot of transfers between these two airports and that I won’t need to exit immigration to make this international connection. And so with that my eager fingers quickly clicked BUY.

What happened next was the worst airline nightmare I could imagine.

Turns out there wasn’t a train connecting Newark to JFK airport.

Turns out even though I was in transit, I still had to clear immigration and customs in the States.

All within three hours and thirty minutes. I found that this was the minimum amount of time necessary to make a connection from Newark to JFK.

Which fool created this?

By the time, I would clear immigration and customs in an hour, I have to make the journey from New Jersey to New York City in snowy weather which takes 60-90 minutes. Not including traffic and finding a taxi. That means I’ll get to JFK at 10 AM. Check-in time for my international flight is 9:15 AM. My flight leaves at 11:15 AM. Then I have to go through security and find my boarding gate.

Cutting it a little too close.

And if I miss my flight? I don’t want to imagine the worst case scenario. I have bled myself dry in terms of finances in South America. The thought of staying in one of the most expensive cities in the world makes my head burst with crazy what-ifs scenarios.

If you’re in NYC, perhaps expect to see an Asian girl with a begging sign and auctioning off her suitcase by the streets.

I’ve called United several times to no avail. They wanted me instead to buy a new ticket worth more than a thousand dollars. Then I called the travel agency student universe that issued the crappy connection and they wanted me to do the same thing.

At the United counter in Lima airport, they wouldn’t change my flight so it looks like I’m destined to do this connection.

I can only pray to God that I make it.

Flight Update- Newark- JFK Dec 26, 2012

It was nothing short of a miracle.

United arrived half an hour ahead of schedule at Newark at 7 AM. It took me 45 minutes to go through immigration and customs. Then I spent a good 15 minutes calling and looking for the Dial7 taxi service I reserved. Then we sped off via the Holland Tunnel and cut through Chinatown at NYC to JFK airport. There was little traffic at NYC since it was a holiday (Dec 26) otherwise those tunnels will be jam packed.

The taxi driver said that if I was making the connection on any normal given day, I wouldn’t be able to make it to JFK since it would’ve taken a little more than 2 hours because of the traffic. Also, the weather should’ve sucked today as there were predictions of snow but it was a clear crisp day. All in all, the drive from Newark to JFK took 50 minutes and I arrived in time for my check-in at 9:00 AM (I had expected to get there at 10:00 AM). But boy, that was the most expensive cab ride ever was I forked USD 113 for that 50 minute ride ($80 for the fare, $13 for toll and $13 for the tip). That’s already a two hour plane fare from Philippines to Hong Kong.

Still, either that or forking USD 200 for a helicopter to get me to the airport. I’ll stick to the cab thanks.

I consider myself really luck and blessed to have been able to make it to JFK on time under all these fortuitous conditions. I have God to thank. Next time, check the fine print for airport transfers.

This is one connection I’ll never forget.

Holes, Monks, Scams and My Best Friend in Burma- Travel Article

my best friend Jess and I at Bagan, Burma

My travel piece about Burma just got published at the Pink Pangea website – a travel resource community for women travelers. I also officially became a Foreign Correspondent for them.  My aim is to interact with those other women in the community and help fellow female travelers. Hoping to contribute more travel articles or copy to other sources in the future. Spread the travel luuuuurve!

So check the piece out- below is an excerpt:

When you’ve found a best friend who is also your best travel buddy, cherish them because they don’t come often.

I met Jessica in China through our ex-boyfriends who at that time were roommates. Later on, Jessica and I became teaching colleagues and roommates ourselves. We’d often bike around in our small town in China and spend our nights eating spicy tofu and chao fen (fried noodles) while evading the sleazy Chinese men’s invites to ganbei (toast) nauseating baijou (rice wine that simply reeks).

During Chinese New Year when we had a whole month off from school, we wanted to try something different and off the beaten path.

The next thing we know Jess and I found ourselves on a bumpy road, our bus kicking up clouds of dust and cutting through thick foliage of jungle and monasteries of Northern Burma.   Continue reading- click HERE

How Not To Get Bored With Your Work Overseas

“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities”

- Shunryu Suzuki

 

Dec 20 2010 I stared outside my window into the smog clouding the skies in China. I was about to celebrate my 4^th year being in this country but I wasn’t looking forward to spending another year filling my lungs with Teflon flavored smoke from the factories and marking endless essays from my students.

In other words I was stuck.

I felt I was going nowhere with my teaching career in China. Teaching wasn’t what I envisioned myself doing in the long term and I kept doing it year after year because it was safe, it was stable, it was damned good money.  I felt if I lost it, it would be hard to find another job. But I wanted something new. I wanted to experience what it was like to be a professional writer. I wanted to live and experience another country that wasn’t China.

Sept 20 2012 I stared outside the window at the snow covered peaks of the Andes Mountain Range of Santiago, Chile. After 6 years of doing the same thing, I finally quit my job and moved to Chile and enrolled in a university to study Spanish. It wasn’t stable. I had no job. I had no steady flow of income. It was scary.

But quitting that stable career opened me to many possibilities too. Finally writing projects fell on my lap.

I’ve copyedited and helped designed a marketing brochure for a Chilean wine brand. I’ve created marketing and public relations materials and website content for an American start-up called Scholaroo in Chile. I also did some copyediting for a travel magazine called Patagon Journal. I wrote direct marketing emails for a client (due to a NDA- I cannot name the identity). And recently, I won a scholarship for a Business Writing course and a free month membership at the Writer’s Den in Carol Tice’s popular writing blog.

I also met brilliant and inspiring people who were into entrepreneurship, graphic designing, start-ups, tech, neuromarketing, microfinancing, nonprofits and yes, even elephant sanctuaries.

All because I opened myself to a new environment.

Which brings me to a topic my uber-wonderful friend Leslie taught me about Convergence and Divergence for an international career. Let me put it this way-

Divergence – means a sky’s the limit all you can eat buffet of ideas. It’s a state where you’re all over the place. In projects, this is the brainstorming stage. In writing, it’s mind mapping. In travel, you’re backpacking all over the world. In careers, you might be at a transitional point where you’re experimenting with different jobs.

Convergence- means you’ve browsed the selection of food at the all you can eat buffet, salivated over the goodies and realized that you can only eat so much. It’s about filling your plate with what you can handle and then eating it.  It’s about refining your ideas – selecting what’s best. So if you’re in a team, you choose the objective and the best strategy to implement it. If you’re writing, this is the time you edit. If you’re traveling, this is the time you choose a sweet spot and settle down for the time being. And in careers, this is the time you settle on a job or a more straightforward career path.

I’m currently on a divergence point after so many years of convergence. I’m trying different projects of writing and seeing which ones I like. It’s exciting to be freelancing and seeing if I like it. Eventually I have to converge and settle on a niche or a job that involves a specific writing task. It all depends on the person how long he can spend diverging and converging. I think in my case convergence would be the longest – 2 years tops before I find a way to diverge again.

Divergence and Convergence are like Yin and Yang. It’s a balance and it’s a sequence. One comes after the other and they should never be performed at the same time.

So if you have a good paying stable job and still wonder why you feel bored and stuck, it’s your inner divergence calling. It wants something new and fresh. It wants a challenge. There is nothing wrong with that. It’s perfectly natural.

MY TIP: BREAK THE MONOTONY!

my friend Seamus dancing to the beat in India

Try  something new. Like a new hobby like Vietnamese cooking. Or getting a part time job on doing what you like. Enroll in a new class offline or online – there are tons of free course on the internet. Volunteering or doing an internship in another country. Embark on a new project. There are many things. You have to get those going so you won’t feel bored.

What I should have done was after 2 years in my job was to try an internship for 2 months. Or move to another city in China. Or take a part time writing job. Anything to break the monotony of the stability.

By doing so, you look at things in a brand new light, your mind gets fed with fresh ideas and best of all, you open yourself to many new and wonderful opportunities.

By the way, my friend and fellow blogger/traveler/freelancer Leslie Forman will soon discuss more about convergence and divergence in your international career in her blog soon. It’s going to help fellow travelers, expats and those thinking of a new career path overseas. It’s going to be a movement.

Photo by: The Fertile Unknown