First Days in SF

Arrived at San Francisco International Airport in Tuesday morning 27th Dec at 10am after an 18 hour flight from Singapore with a 1+ hour stopover in South Korea's Inchon airport where we had a couple of bowls of noodles. It was Nathan's first flight and we are thankful that we managed to get a seat with a bassinet so that we could sleep in it. Matthew's video console didn't work very well on the first leg of the journey to Seoul and had to be rebooted a few times. Still it didn't work well and kept hanging on the games. In the end he gave up and went to sleep.
For Nathan, he wasn't quite used to the flight, but was generally good on the trip. Only when we were landing at Inchon did he cry a lot due to the pain and pressure in the ear that he wasn't used to.
On the second leg from Seoul to SF, the tail winds were very strong, reaching 200 knots or 350 kmh at one point. This made the flight a bit bumpy especially when we passed over 2 storms in the Pacific Ocean. Those storms have now followed us to SF and is raining down hard right now.
I spoke to the leading stewardess and she said that there were 15 babies on this trip but only 8 bassinets, so we are not really thankful. Thankfully, Matthew's video console worked this time and he was able to watch a few shows. Well, the strong tailwind helped us arrive in SF 1hr 20 min ahead of schedule.
When we went through immigration, the officers don't come across too many people with H1B1SG visas, so it took us quite some time to clear. In fact, we were the last ones on the flight to clear. Also, we found out that although the visas were valid for 18 months, we can be admitted for only 1 year at a time, so it looks like we all have to fly back to Singapore before Christmas next year. Now I have to look at saving and raising funds for the trip back. Originally, we didn't plan to go back until April 2007 so hadn't budgeted for that.
We had quite a lot of luggage, 6 checked in and another 3 carry on. So when it came to collecting the luggage and handling 1 boy and 1 infant at the same time, it was very challanging. We finally got a porter to help us in the end for USD30 for all the bags. A bit expensive, but I think it was worth it cos we wouldn't have managed otherwise.
Our friends Phil and Alex from the church came to pick us up in 2 MPVs and Phil brought his 3 daughters who have become good friends with Matthew during our last trip here in August. We went to the church and moved all the stuff to the rooms and then went to a nearby Vietnamese restaurant for lunch. It was rather cheap according to American standards and quite good. We bought some take aways as well for dinner.
After lunch, we went back to the rooms and then I went with Phil to his house to pick up the cara, a Saturn that he is lending to us until we get our own car. The car is a compact sedan and just barely fits the family inside. Also, it's manual and Li Soon can't really drive it in SF's hills.

After picking up the car, I went back to the rooms and showered and slept as we didn't sleep much on the plane. Had a late dinner and continued to arrange the place and unpack a little.
One of the challenges we faced immediately was taking care of Nathan. He is extremely active and likes to explore everywhere. In Singapore, we had 2 maids to take care of him when we were busy - ours and my aunt's. Also, we had the play-pen to put him into so that he would not get into trouble running and climbing. We didn't have those luxuries here the first few days, and had to spend a lot of energy taking care of him and chasing after him. Unfortunately, being in a new place, he didn't know the dangers around and fell several times, once from the 4ft high end of the bed, thankfully onto a carpeted floor. That really scared him and us.
Also, he started to miss the people at home including the maids, aunty Iris and our parents who came to visit a lot just before we left and developed a bond with him. So Nathan was having difficulty sleeping and kept crying after 1 hours of sleep. He was feeling homesick and insecure due to the change of environment that he didn't understand. I had to carry him for quite some time before he would go to sleep again. Fortunately, he is very close to me, so I was the only one who could calm him down after some effort. The consequence of this was that both Li Soon and I were very tired for the next few days.