I left Los Angeles on Saturday afternoon (to the great sadness of my cousin’s kids: sorry Kevin and Kallista!) for the windy city of San Francisco. For the first time evar, LAX did not completely suck. Traveller’s tip: if you can, try catching an afternoon flight from LAX. There are no queues. Since I’m sure frequent LAX travellers will be stunned after reading that, let me repeat that: no queues. I had maybe five people in line before me at the check-in counter, exactly two people in line before me at security, and that was it. I was a very happy camper on that LAX visit.

The flight itself was fine: a tiny little aircraft (three seats per row; one on the port side, two on the starboard side) with complementary beverages (I love Coke, Cokey Coke Coke, Here It Goes Down, Down In My Belly, Mmm Mmm Mmm). I arrived in San Francisco around 4:15pm; strangely enough, that was one hour ahead of schedule, but I ain’t complaining. By the time I arrived at the hotel (the Courtyard Marriott, for those interested) and settled in, it was about 6pm. The Moscone convention centre where WWDC was held was kinda very hard to miss (that’s the 2004 image, but 2005 is more-or-less the same), so I grabbed my fancy WWDC badge from there, and had dinner at the Sony Metreon building across the street. (What is it about the USA that gives rise to meal names such as “croissandwich” and “chickenshroom”?)

After that, of course, I visited the Apple Store, which was a mere 5-minute walk away from the Sony Metreon building. As usual, I didn’t end up buying anything there, but it was just one of those mandatory things I had to do when you’re in a North American city. What was more intriguing was the Virgin Megastore that was right next to the Apple Store: after spending around half an hour there, I picked up a James Lavelle Global Underground mix CD (Barcelona #023, not the more popular Romania #026 one), and the new DJ Rap album named Bulletproof: we’ll see if the oldskool jungle and drum’n’bass girl is still as good as she was in the late 90s!