I'm back.

Home, Thoughs on Airports

I'm home! I mean actual home, not Newport News home. There was no post last night because after I had dinner with my parents, I sacked out at 9 pm and slept for twelve hours. Knowing me, I'm not prepared to say this has any bearing at all on my jet lag.

It must be the most thankless job in the world to run an airport. It must be sort of like being a domestic servant - if you do your job well then nobody notices, but if you screw it up then all of a sudden people are screaming at you. I mean shamelessly, unreservedly screaming at you. Think of how hard it must be to coordinate thousands of flights each day, to make sure all those flights have the support they need to run on schedule, to make sure the hundreds of thousands of people on those flights know where they're supposed to be and when, that they have the right transportation and wheelchair and toddler assistance, to make sure those hundreds of thousands of people are distributed evenly throughout the airport and not stacked all at a few gates, and to make sure on top of all that that nobody does anything illegal or dangerous. No smuggling, no terrorism, no craziness, no importation of hoof and mouth disease, no theft. No pressure!

This is what you start thinking about when you spend more than 48 total hours in a week at airports / on airplanes.

So there were maybe two hundred people crowded around this tiny carousel at National airport yesterday after my last flight, and of course fifty of those people absolutely had to be right at the spot where the bags come out. This meant a lot of suited jerks pushing through each other and nearly clobbering each other in their attempts to manhandle their golf club cases off the carousel. This one huge guy decided he was too important to wait so he shouts "SCUSE ME SCUSE ME SCUSE ME SCUSE ME" and literally shoves his way to the front, towing behind his four year old daughter who, just so you know, was dressed like Snow White. Not that he had seen his bag or anything, he just wanted to be in front. So then one of the guys he'd shoved actually sees his bag and tries to do the same shoving-scuse-me move to get it, but accidentally gives the other guy's tiny little daughter a bump in the process. The other guy gets furious and starts yelling about how he was going to knock the other guy out for daring to touch his little girl ... I just moved well away from that nonsense and waited for the TSA people to rush out with their tasers, but they never came.

Welcome home!

I also wanted to mention, since I'm talking about airports, that if you find yourself in Hong Kong or Beijing airports and you want some gum or toothpaste or something before your twelve hour flight, you should probably get it beforehand. At the airport they don't sell things you might need on airplanes. They definitely have a lot of luxury stores. You can shop for $800 sunglasses or $2000 purses no problem, but if you want a neck pillow or earplugs you're out of luck. Just so you know.

Anyway, now I'm home and well-rested. Glad to see my parents and my sister. I guess tomorrow I'm headed back to work, just like this all never happened.

Halloween!

First: Oh my sweet goodness I am jetlagged. I can't really sleep for more than four hours at a time, but I feel most of the time like I could curl up in a corner and sleep for about four hours.

Today I woke up and realized that Anaïs and I had a Halloween party to go to tonight. I especially wanted to go - if just for a tiny little while - to met her fellow grad students. But this meant we had to get costumes, which meant we had to go shopping.

Let me make this clear: I am usually dead set against buying a costume. My tastes are most certainly not store bought. Still, I wasn't going to carry a Halloween costume all the way through China just for two hours of party afterwards. So anyway, we went shopping.

There are three or four costume shops all within walking distance of Santa Cruz's downtown area, and they are all identical in that they only sell costumes for girls with low self-esteem. There were, practically speaking, no costumes for boys. And all - absolutely all - of the costumes for girls were of the Sexy _____ variety. Sexy Cats. Sexy Nurses. Sexy Cheerleaders. Even - I swear I swear - Sexy Bumble Bees. Where are the creepy tasteless masks? Where are the vampire costumes? (I mean besides the Sexy Vampire costumes.) Clearly we were not shopping in the right places.

So I went with the perennial favorite Sexy Cat (see first photo). Although judging from what people said I'm not sure I really "got" it. Anaïs is more original-minded than I am and made her own costume: Sexy His Holiness The Fourteenth Dalai Lama (see second photo).

The party itself was loud and full of drunk undergraduates so we mainly talked outside. Happy Halloween everybody!

My flight back to DC leaves from San Jose tomorrow morning at 7 am. I imagine this will not help my jet lag situation.

Back in the States.

Here is how I feel: bleahbleahbleahbleahbleah. A twelve-hour flight preceded by a four-hour airport experience will do that, I guess.

Two days ago, I was seriously planning on spending the night at Beijing airport. My argument went like this: I'm going to get back from Hong Kong late at night on Tuesday, and there's no point in paying a bunch of money for a hotel room that I'll only be able to stay in for six hours or so. (I was assuming, here, that any hotel I would want to stay at was at least 30 or 45 minutes away from the airport.) This would've meant 12 hours or so spent in the lobby of Beijing airport. I was thinking that it would be a good idea since after staying up all night on Tuesday I would definitely for sure be able to sleep on my flight all the way back to the States.

Ha.

When I got off the flight from Hong Kong I sort of booked a hotel room at the airport without really realizing what I was doing. So tired. I was so tired I said this to the poor airport hotel reservation lady: "Are there any airports near the hotel?" She got very confused.

I ended up paying around US$60 for a tiny room in the "Beijing Olympic Airportel", which to its credit was clean and cheap and very close to the hotel. I mean the airport. Two comments:

1) The Beijing Olympic Airportel was obviously converted from a trashy apartment building. The room had a balcony, but the balcony was walled off and I would've had to kick out the window screen to get to it. (See first photo.)

2) The Beijing Olympic Airportel was so small that there wasn't room for a shower stall/bathtub. (See second photo.)

The flight itself went smoothly but now I'm sleepy. I'm sleepy and in Santa Cruz with Anaïs and I'm glad to be home.

Hong Kong, Day 3

Oh I am so tired.

Today was a day for gift-buying and culture-absorbing. I went to the heritage museum. The first picture you see is shoes worn by women in the Cantonese Opera. They're stilt shoes and they're supposed to emulate the foot binding that used to go on here. I saw a picture of how these shoes are put on, and there doesn't seem to be much difference between these stilt shoes and actual foot binding.

Dots Obsession, Soul of Pumpkin

Back in the city after our hike, we were confronted with several inexplicable sights which can speak for themselves.

Hong Kong, Day 2 (cont'd)

More photos from our Peak hike. The first is a view south from the top of Hong Kong island, away from the majority of the skyscrapers. The next two are mall-related. The last is a little shrine to the Goddess of Mercy (says Michelle) that was so tucked-away that we missed it on our way up.