Of Hilton, Northwest, and PowerBook

So, I recently found out that I will be staying at Hilton Tokyo Hotel instead of Keio Plaza Hotel. Apparently, every new JET except those going to Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki, Saitama, and Chiba prefectures are staying at Keio Plaza Hotel.

Keio Plaza Hotel seems to be notorious for its slow elevators, and sharing them with thousands of other JETs for 3 days doesn't seem very appealing. However, the orientation is going to be held at Keio, so those staying at Hilton must walk over to Keio in blistering Tokyo weather. Good thing it's only a 5-minute trek.

An unwelcoming piece of news found its way to my inbox today. I am 1 of about 40 people chosen to ride Northwest instead of American for my trip to Tokyo. Mind you, I don't really care which airline carries me to Japan, but considering that Northwest doesn't have a direct flight from Chicago to Tokyo whereas American does, you can see why I'm kind of upset.

About 160 new JETs leaving from Chicago will ride American nonstop and arrive in Tokyo at 2 p.m. on 7/24, but I'll have to transfer in Minneapolis and arrive in Tokyo at 5:30 p.m. More hassle getting there and less time to relax and meet friends on Sunday night which we have off.

Also, I have about 15,000 miles accrued with American and only about 5,000 miles with Northwest, so flying on Northwest doesn't really help me towards a free ticket any time soon.

By the way, I got my PowerBook back from repairs in 6 days. I was told that the voltage on the video card wasn't set correctly, rendering the video card useless, but I wasn't too impressed with the explanation/excuse. It's working OK now, so hopefully I won't encounter any more problems in the future. If I have any problems before the warranty expires in 1 year, I will consider getting the AppleCare Protection Plan which extends the warranty up to 3 years at $239.