12/24 Tuesday - Home!

Phew.

I'm now in New Hampshire for the week with my family and am finally in a condition to write. I spent the entire weekend with what I only imagine was a badger living in my lower digestive tract. The badger finally died of asphyxiation and as a result I can eat solid foods again. Not a day too late either because tomorrow is waffels with strawberries and whipped cream for breakfast and then turkey for dinner.

I'm happy to be back and sleeping in a soft bed again. Last night I slept through the entire night without encountering a mosquito. And my mom assured me that we won't be eating any frog this entire week. But I'll miss things. The food was mostly incredible, I made some good friends, and a guy gets very used to being saluted every morning.

The above photo is me eating raw sugar cane on my last day.

Thanks for reading!

12/20 Thrusday - Waiting in San Fran

Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored. Bored.

12/20 Thursday - Final Judgement

It's upon me because I'm in Hell already. The Air China customer service rep told me, as far as I could understand, to go fuck myself. Then the flight attendants all started yelling at me in Chinese when I made one last attempt to plead my case. The guy whose lens I broke was an old dude from China. So I gave him a hundred bucks which is what some photog on the plane said the lens is worth.

To make matters worse, not 10 minutes later I had a massive quantity of yak jerky seized by US Customs because apparently it's not ok to bring in Chinese yak meat. That one really ticks me off because I brought that back as gifts to all my friends.

I was really pissed off and am glad I held of writing this until I ate half an Italian sausage pizza and watched an episode of scrubs. That helped my mood considerably.

Now more waiting. My next flight is 4 hours from now.

12/20 Thursday - Disaster over the pacific

The flight started off great. I have a window seat and have no one sitting next to me. But 60 minutes into the flight we had an accident. Flash back to when the plane was done boarding and about to taxi... A flight attendant came by with a carry-on bag, opened the already full overhead storage containing my bag, shuffled things around, put the new bag in, and then crammed the door shut. Back to the accident now... I got up to retrieve my bag from the overhead storage so I can watch Snakes on a Plane on my laptop (good in flight movie I figured). On grabbing my bag from the overhead, a precariously perched camera bag that I didn't see came tumbling out and crashed on the floor. On being yelled at by a Chinese guy that doesn't speak English I immediately deduced that it was his camera that just took the fall. I passed him the bag and after inspecting things, he concluded that two lenses were now broken. We called a flight attendant and I explained what happened. I don't know how much got through though because I could tell she was having a hard time understanding me. Then the Chinese guy explained his side of things and they, along with some other flight attendants, spoke at length for the next 15 minutes about presumably the resolution to this issue. The flight attendant then told me I should pay him $100 for the broken parts. On explaining that I don't have that much cash with me she then tried getting a credit card number from me. At that point I decided it's best to resolve this properly so I requested a customer service agent on reaching San Francisco. I have nearly 5 hours to kill so that's as good a way to spend the time as any.

First off, I don't think this guy should have to pay for his camera equipment. But I do think that Air China should just cough up the money since they were the ones that repacked the overhead bin and crammed too much stuff in there anyway. If Air China won't do that, then I will arrange to pay him for the damaged lenses and announce to Air China that I will be boycotting their airline from here out. Past boycotts include Tia Liu's (in progress), the Microsoft cafeteria (in progress), and the karaoke guy at the Comet (smashing success - he got fired). So Air China better watch out becasue I will make them pay...

Random Thought 6 - Stupid Bejing airport

To the laptop owner looking to charge up this place is a nightmare. They very clearly (for whatever reason) don't want people drawing power in the airport. It took me literally 15 minutes of wandering around the terminal to find a power outlet that was available and worked. Finding the outlets is a hard enough job as it is. And then any outlets without anything plugged in have been turned off. I developed a good system though. I walk around looking for vending machines and then see what they're plugged into. I'm currently sitting next to a soda machine and an "Intelligent Card Dispenser" that are plugged into a power strip with one open spot. That spot, it appears, was heavily covered with electrical tape until some enterprising young travelor liberated it. To him I give my thanks.

The Beijing airport is hella expensive by the way. Prices here for food and drinks are about seven times what I was paying in Shenzhen. Rip off. Even though it's corporate money I'm spending I still resent getting a bad deal. Our shareholders would be pleased to know that.

Time to walk around and stretch my legs before the big trip.

Random Thought 5 - Treasure found!

Bag located! And I was, maybe, the fourth bag off the carousel. That has to be some kind of record. I was so convinced that the airlines always dump out fifty or so dummy bags first to give people hope while the real bags are in reality still being unloaded off the plane.

Random Thought 4 - Purgatory

I wrote about this as I waited in the L.A. airport a week and a half ago. As I continue to sit in the Shenzhen airport it's clear I'm back. But that's not quite right. It actually feels more like I've never left and am still awaiting judgment. I've never quite felt at ease on this trip like I have visiting other countries. One reason is that I've often been quite helpless. The different character set of their written language presents challenges that don't exist in other countries in the Western world, even where I can't speak the language. All of a sudden street signs are useless and it becomes trivially easy to get lost. In restaurants I can't recognize a single word and just ordering food becomes a challenge. If I need to take a cab somewhere by myself I can't tell the cabbie where to go because I can't pronounce place names properly. I'm not complaining, mind you - these challenges are what make traveling fun. But for this trip having someone else with me would have made the maddening experiences easier (and more fun) to handle.

Throughout all of this I've had the occasional glimpses of life at home through emails or chats with friends and family back in the states. That has me wondering if perhaps my plane to L.A. went down last week and I am in fact in Limbo. My occasional contact with the world I know through the internet is merely me being channeled through our generation's Whoopi Goldberg.