19 days to go… less than three weeks before I leave L.A. to Taipei and eventually to Fukuoka, Japan. This week has been pretty exciting last Tuesday we finally got our certificate of eligibility which enabled us to apply for our Japanese Student visa the next day... We were told that our visa is available for pick up today, Friday 09.04.2009… we planned to get our visa before 12:00 PM because the consulate closes for an hour for lunch… which brings us to today’s adventure…
11:08 AM …Eddie finally got to my house from Pomona… he initially said 10:30 but oh well…
11:09 AM …We hopped on señor coop and drove to the City of Lynwood to pick up Sketch.
11:24 AM …With Sketch as my co-pilot we head to downtown L.A. by taking the I-105W to I-110N
11:39 AM …The Gang exits the freeway and we were all in the prowl for a parking spot…
11:40 AM …Almost made a right turn onto opposing one way street… thank s to my co-pilot I didn’t….
11:45 am …Pulled in to the Wells Fargo Parking structure… got off and started to jog… mind you it was like 90 somewhat flipping degrees!!!
11:46 am …Oh Sh*t… The Angels Flight – this is an L.A. Landmark that has 150+ steps that we had to run… but half ways we all started to slow down… and that’s when we realized that we are not in shape at all… and by the time we reached the top we were sweating, thirsty and tired…


(photo: angels flight's)

11:52 am …Heaving and a little bit dehydrated… we present our I.D’s to the security to get name tags that will allow us enter the building… there was a couple of people before us so we had to wait and when it was our turn, the printer ran out of sticky paper… it was a little hiccup which was quickly resolved…
11:54 am …Still somewhat out of breath we hopped on the elevator to the 17th floor…
11:55 am …After going through the metal detector… the sight of an empty consulate was comforting… we can make it after all…first up was Sketch, then myself then Eddie…
…and when the clock struck 12:00 nn the consulate windows were shut close and what was left In the office was a tough-looking Hispanic Security Guard and Three elated but tired, sweaty and dehydrated architecture students with their Japanese visas in their hands!
…ahhh so desu ka!

(photo: Eddie, Sketch and I)