OSDI was fun..was a nice short break. Seattle is a nice little place. The return journey took my entire day, this happens when you plan a trip a month before :| After many people insisting, I couldn't afford missing visit to the Space Needle (wikipedia entry is better than the official site ;)) and the EMP (thats Paul Allen's another toy house, Experience the Music Project). Although I had planned to visit both, they are just side-by-side, I could only visit Space Needle and with around 45 minutes left to spare, the ticket vendor at the EMP generously advised me not to rush through it, as it won't be worth it. The architecture of the EMP is as crazy as it could be! Letting the EMP visit go, I wandered around more, collecting sovenirs and stuff.

I thought I was on track and on time. I didn't anticipated the time it'II take me by bus to get to the airport. I had to hop around to get to the airport, and boy, I now just have 30 minutes to take-off, and I haven't even checked-in! The guy making the boarding pass gave me a pale look and said, "Let me see if you're not too late." He checked me in saying, "This is the closest you could ever get! Run, and get checks done." I had to. The line for the check was tooo big (SEA is a small airport, smaller than KCI!) finally I got the checks done and it was 10 minutes to the take-off and I was still outside searching for the right gate. On finding it, the boarding pass checking lady saw me and stopped another guy entering the plane gate saying, "Another customer showed up." So close! Finally I got in the plane just couple minutes to spare, with the officer's words echoing in my ears, "this is the closest you could EVER get!"

Rest of the journey was fun, and now continental is on my "preferred" list of airlines. They screened Little Man!

(originally written a week ago)