This Saturday I spent 2.5 hours sitting in Calgary airport’s USA Customs and Border Protection’s Secondary Inspection waiting room. Said room is as boring as the name implies. I cannot blame anyone and the long wait was 100% to blame on only only having one person working. From what could tell everyone was putting in long hours yet they were all kind & friendly which must require effort when scaled to such volume.

My roommate, David, says the Vancouver airport had a full staff at nine employees compared to Calgary’s one. He spent only 15 minutes in secondary inspection.

The 2.5 hour wait forced me to miss my flight. Alaska Airlines tried their best to book an alternative flight but that did not work and I waited until Sunday for Alaska’s next direct flight. It was apparent the Alaska employees cared and had the authority to fix the situation. So thank you to Alaska Airlines for getting me to Seattle before Monday’s orientation.

Snapshots of the flight itself:

Our plane before loading

A random Calgary suburb

This river will join Calgary’s main river and will flow into the Hudson bay.

Most of the flight between Calgary and Seattle is over mountains. This is the mesmerizing top down view of mountains no game has quite replicated.

That clump of buildings in the photo’s middle is Microsoft’s Redmond campus. One of the squarish buildings is Nintendo of America.

Update 2013-10: If you are still interested please consider reading through the overview of my internship.