No permanent damage.

Now I'm in Santa Cruz. In this picture, can you guess which one of us had just gotten off a twelve-hour, three-part flight?

Here is what happened with the airline, ATA. Although none of the confirmation emails I got from them said so, I had to switch to Southwest at my layover in Chicago. Also they made me check my bag, even though it wasn't too big. Can you guess how those two things are related?

Actually, the layover in Chicago was fine. It was the secret, second layover in LA that caused problems. They didn't feel like telling me this, but between Chicago and San Jose (the closest airport to Santa Cruz) there was a second layover in LA. I didn't have to change planes and we were only there for fifteen minutes, but that was apparently enough time for an overzealous baggage handler to get my suitcase on the luggage carousel at LAX. Southwest got my bag on another LA-to-San Jose flight coming in right behind my own, so I only lost about an hour to that particular problem. Still, I did NOT want to be entertaining thoughts of a luggage-free trip to China.

My overall impression here is that ATA sucks because they seem to enjoy withholding information from their customers. For example, I didn't know about the switch to Southwest until after they'd wrested my bag away from me and put it on the Conveyor of Doom. Also, I feel like they should've said something in their confirmation emails about the LA stopover. Southwest, however, gets five gold stars and a grape scratch n' sniff sticker. Not because they handled my baggage mishap in a quick and professional way (although they did), but because they gave me Handi-Snacks (TM) in-flight. I haven't had that stuff since I was thirteen years old, but let me tell you: the cheese still tastes exactly the same.

I like being in the same town as my girlfriend, you guys.

Back 2 Cali

No post yesterday - my internetz were broken. I broke them.

Today at the lab there was a one-hour crash course in "survival" Chinese. I've been trying to teach myself a little, so it was mostly review for me. The *one* thing I didn't know already was how to say the name of the conference's hotel in Beijing. Can you guess what I forgot immediately after I left?

Last winter I started trying to teach myself Chinese, mainly as a way to keep myself occupied during long drives. Language CDs are even more absorbing than books on tape and I highly recommend them. So I got a set of Pimsleur CDs from the library and they're very good , but lately the lessons have had an inexplicable emphasis on how to pick up women in bars. Here is a short sampling of phrases I've learned in the past few lessons. For reals.

Would you like to drink something with me?
Where would you like to go to drink?
Would you like to drink some beer?
I would like to go to your place.
Would you like to go to my place?

To be fair, the most recent lesson is all about how to count money, which is certainly useful. But I can easily imagine a scenario in which I desperately need to go to the hospital, but all I can think to say is "Miss, I would like to order two beers." Of course, this is nothing new. I started out in 6th grade Spanish with "La abeja tiene ojos simples y ojos compuestos" and that eventually led somewhere...

I managed to fit everything I need for a month into a 22'' carry-on suitcase, which makes me feel unreasonably manly. Train travel is not so exciting, but that's what was on the menu today. I'm in Arlington now and I'll be in California tomorrow.

"If you want the creator to laugh..."

How's the rest of that one go?

Today I got a paper cut and a plane ticket to Hong Kong. Hey, do you want to see my itinerary? Let me tell you guys my plans!

10/04 : Newport News, VA to Arlington, VA
10/05 : Arlington, VA to Santa Cruz, CA
10/05 - 10/08 : visit with Anaïs in Santa Cruz
10/08 : Santa Cruz to San Francisco
10/09 : San Francisco to Beijing, Chiiiiiiiiiina
10/09 - 10/19 : SRF2007
10/20 : Beijing to Hong Kong
10/20 - 10/23 : visit with Michelle Pardini
10/23 : Hong Kong to Beijing
10/24 : Beijing to San Francisco to Santa Cruz
10/24 - 10/27 : visit with Anaïs in Santa Cruz
10/27 : Santa Cruz to Arlington, VA
10/28 : Arlington, VA to Newport News

This is roughly 20,000 miles, give or take 50 miles. If you follow the equator, the Earth is 24,901.55 miles around. It's a lot of carbon I'll want to offset later, but in relative terms I guess it's no more driving than people do just looking for parking spots.

Want to hear something crazy? My flight back from China to SFO departs at noon and arrives at 8:00 am. That's right, I'll be traveling back in time. If there are some early-morning horse races in San Francisco, email me a list of the outcomes and I'll split the winnings with you 60/40.

Tomorrow is my last (full) day in Newport News before I leave. I ought to get some sleep, huh?

That didn't take long.

That didn't take long. Yesterday I alluded to a fair amount of tumult surrounding this trip to China, and today things completely tumultified. I was working all weekend on a simulation I've been writing and on which this conference paper partially depended. And when I say working, I mean working and not sleeping a whole lot and generally running myself ragged.

Although I did give myself a break for a Henry Rollins spoken word show on Sunday night. It was like dipping my poor, battered brain in espresso brewed from weaker espresso. Shook his hand afterwards. It was fun.

Today my advisor came into my office and said that, based on the preliminary results from some film samples we were testing, it didn't look like we were going to be ready with our paper in time for the conference. So this sets off a lot of conflicting and/or complementary emotions. I had really, really wanted something to be ready for the conference, and going empty-handed is going to feel sort of cheap and anticlimactic now. On the other hand, now I've got all this free time (read: evenings) in which to plan my trip to China, as well as do all the other things I'd been neglecting in favor of this paper. On the whole I'd rather take more time to present something really good than do a rush job on something I won't be proud of later. It's just an abrupt transition between working flat-out towards a deadline and sitting back to relax and breathe.

Enough of that. Tomorrow is a day for cracking Baskes' 1992 MEAM paper wide open. Plus I'm going to get myself some business cards. You know, with my name on them and everything. Tomorrow is a day that will not suck!

PS. Antibalas is one of the best bands I've listened to in a long time.

The setup.

For me, October is going to be a month of craziness. I will:

• finish or not finish a body of work that will eventually go in my thesis;
• go to California to see Anaïs (on her birthday!);
• go from California to Beijing, China for a conference;
• travel around in China after the conference;
• head back to California for a few more days;
• go home just in time to catch Halloween.

Since this is likely to be a strange month full of strange experiences, I figured I would write everything down. A traveblog, if you will.

Ok, so we'll see how this goes. Tomorrow is October, and the first official post.