So we had originally been planning to take all our stuff with us on this move back. When we first made the move over some year and a half ago, we managed to fit into 8 suitcases, including carry-ons. We had a little trouble with getting one of our carry-ons to count as a carry-on due to size constraints, but since we were all coming to the same city we left whatever suitcases we couldn’t bring with my father to bring over for us like a week or so later when he went to China as well. Now he offerred to do the same, but since we’re going to NYC it wouldn’t have worked out quite as conveniently. And obviously, given the length of time, we’ve acquired some new things. So as I said, we had been planning to take all of our stuff with us on this move back, as in on the plane, and just pay the 150USD per luggage fee to check in more than 2 pieces per person. Well, little did we know how much stuff we actually had it turns out we have 10 pieces of luggage, NOT including carry-ons. At 6 pieces over that’s 900USD, plus 60USD because one of them was over-weight also (the one with the books). Pricey.

So began the entire process of figuring out how to ship everything, as slowly and cheaply as possible. We did some research online, and there were some forum posts about how to do this, but I found them to be rather uninformative actually, though they did provide the basic framework necessary for us to figure out the rest as we did. I will post everything we now know about shipping boxes from China to the US to save you all the research in the future.

1. The company you use is China’s normal Postal Service, called like China Post EMS or something like that. You see locations for them all over the place. Their hours seem to be pretty normal, no break in the middle of the day for lunch, and I think open 7 days a week. Don’t bother trying to call their telephone number unless you speak very good Chinese or have someone to translate for you (I’m not even bothering to put the number here as it was useless for us, I got a translator; it’s a massive phone tree that I couldn’t navigate to save my life).
2. You do NOT need to go to any special location (it was hinted at in the other forums that you need to go to the fancy international one out in the East part of town but we just picked the closest one to us right next to the Drum and Bell Towers).
3. There is no pick up service for your boxes, gotta get them to the post office yourself. There are also no dollies at the post office to use. We managed everything in 2 cabs with 3 people riding as well, so figure 4 large boxes per cab.
4. You DO need to use their special shipping boxes. They come in 3 sizes, but we just got the largest, which cost 12RMB each. The box construction is good if excessive (all the flaps overlap instead of fitting together), but it felt very sturdy and strong. They’re oddly shaped though, kind of thin and tall, but overall probably as big as the large sized UPS boxes in the states. You can buy them before hand so you can pack at home but you CANNOT seal them as they need to be inspected, however cursorily, by the post office staff.
5. The cost to ship is about 5RMB for a shipping label (more on that later), about 85RMB for the first Kg, then 20RMB per Kg up to a MAX of 30KG. Most of our boxes fell within the 10 to 20Kg range, though the box of books was actually 30Kg. This meant our cheapest box was just about 200RMB and our most expensive was just over 600RMB.
6. The shipping label they make you use is in septuplicate, if that’s even a word, meaning there are 7 CARBON COPIES. I suggest you write down AS HARD AS POSSIBLE so you make it through (we didn’t, and had to retrace all of them). They want the shipper’s address (return address) in Chinese and the shipping address in English, though it’ll need the words 美国 (US, “MeiGuo,” in Chinese) written as well.
7. You also need to have written on the box the Chinese shipper’s address and English shipping address with the Chinese for US. For those of you who are like me, you’d want to make this as clear as possible and probably even print them from the computer. DO NOT TAPE THEM ON BEFORE HAND, as these labels need to be on the side where they put 3 Chinese seals and it seems to be random which side of the box that will be. Plus, they do the fancy thing where they wrap the boxes in that thick plastic band in a criss-cross pattern that makes it really strong, but if you label your box first, these might cover up vital points. We didn’t know this, and ended up writing on the box where we could the relevant addresses in ball point pen. This on top of the re-traced 7 carbon copied shipping label means our addresses are probably not as clear as they can be, but ya do what ya can…
8. They don’t really examine the contents, just kind of quickly glance over everything. The shipping label (the 7 carbon copy one) also needs you to do a customs declaration on it of items in the boxes. Feel free to generalize (the post office staff wrote “clothes” and “books” for all of ours, and either “30″ or “20″ for the quantities of each).
9. Once everything’s labeled and sealed and wrapped and ready, you pay at the counter, they hand you a copy of the receipt, seal the rest of the label onto the box, put them in large cloth bags for the mail carriers to handle, and you’re done!
10. In total we paid just under 3100RMB, which amounts to just over 50USD. We’re still over one piece of luggage because we just wanted that much stuff with us (we shipped non-important things that we both don’t need immediately or will mind too much if we lose permanently), so add in 150USD we’re still only at 650USD as compared to the 960USD we’d have had to pay if we wanted it all with us, plus the added hassel of having 10 pieces of luggage to get to and from the airport and cart around (remember you need to claim everything when you land in the States if you have a connection, then re-check for the connection). In short, well worth it, and if you can ship everything, meaning minus the extra luggage like we have, even more worth it.
11. Apparently you can track these by box label number online (there’s a barcode on the receipt), but I haven’t tried that yet. That will be next and I’ll update this post accordingly. Also, it will take just about 2 months the guy said. I will also update then when we receive everything (I hope).

All in all not the worst process I’ve ever been through, they were all very helpful, but it took a couple of hours mostly because we had so much that couldn’t be done until you got to the post office. And not that we’ll hopefully ever need to ship things by mail anymore, but at least I’m now pretty well versed in how. The big hope is that everything gets there, but I’ll update this post accordingly when I know more.

As the rest of the post says though, we only have 2 days left, and my sleeping schedule is completely whacked. Yesterday was spent taking care of all this shipping stuff, and the day before was packing it all and the rest of our suitcases. We are actually basically completely ready to go, just some very minor small stuff to put into carry-ons left. We’re going to the Great Wall in just over an hour (yes, I should maybe sleep?). We’ve managed to delay going until now, but well, we’re leaving, so I guess we should. We’re going with a tour group leaving out of one of the local hostels. Tonight when we get back we’re going to take care of some last minute purchases, then tomorrow, on our last day, we can hopefully hit up the 798 Arts District, some place I’ve really wanted to go, then it’s Adios China! We’ve been trying to also get in the last of the Chinese food we’d want to eat. Last night was Indian food :P

First, we’re moving back to the States! NYC to be specific. That’s what the countdown is for. We leave early morning Christmas Eve for our new but temporary home in the Upper East Side at 75th and 3rd. We have many exciting and grand plans regarding getting jobs that actually pay when and what they say they will yet aren’t that overbearing on the rest of our lives so that we’d have time to maintain an active non-work life in the evenings and on weekends and take vacations throughout the year. I have grand plans for a balcony where we can grow fancy vegetables and set up a fire pit on which I intend to cook hearty soups with my cast iron pot, skewer vegetables and meats, grill different kinds of fish in one of those neat looking fish-grilling-baskets, and roast marshmallows, all under the glow of any and all seasonally appropriate skies. I’m going to be more revealing here than anywhere else public on the inter-webs, but you know, I’m feeling excited about these new prospects so any unforeseen consequences of my openness be damned. We’re also going to be stopping off first at Maria’s parents place in Ohio, and though it’s seeing her side of the family again in a relatively short amount of time, we feel its appropriate as it’s quite close to NYC and we intend to take possession of her parents old minivan. Yes, I will be driving a minivan, feel free to start the ribbing on that one. But I’d just like to point out the obvious benefits of one:

1. we can carry STUFF! (Costco, free stuff from Craigslist, people, moving)
2. we can go on ROAD TRIPS (which I love, and if necessary even sleep in the van)
3. it’s obviously free (they have more cars than drivers right now)
4. it’ll be reminiscent and nostalgic of those days when I owned a pickup truck, but minus the tiny little seats in the cab that faced each other whenever I tried to haul more than 2 people

We’re in the gigantically messy process of packing up our entire lives, once again, like we did a year and a half ago for our move to China. Feels kind of full circle in a way. We were lucky, having never settled that well, which was actually a problem in and of itself but at least it’s come to benefit us now in that though we’ve acquired some more things than before, we still don’t have that much stuff. We used to fit in 8 suit cases, we now fit in 10, and we still don’t have furniture. That means our temporary apartment in NYC is actually furnished (thanks to you know who!), and we’ve tentatively given ourselves 2 months to figure it all out, permanent jobs, permanent apartments, permanent routines, etc. This does also mean that we may have to remove our blog from the expat blog listings, but I’ll comfort myself by creating new NYC centric categories and tags. I will most likely still be working within the web programming field, and Maria’s thinking of re-entering law or perhaps finance. We will both of course still work with our fancy little Enterprise Consulting company in whatever fashion that “work with” may mean.

The explanation for the lateness of this entry is that we’ve been kind of sub-consciously messing up our sleeping schedules, I think so that we’ll have an easier time when we get to the States adjusting to US time again (civilized time?), but it’s not been easy these past 3 weeks actually, ever since we got back the last time to China after Thanksgiving. Immediately after landing we found ourselves smack in the middle of final negotiations to close our JV VC deal, a process that involved many Chinese lawyers and lots of legalese and staying up to the middle of the night every night hammering through all the details involved and trying to explain it all to our partners who aren’t native English speakers and were giving themselves headaches just trying to parse the individual sentences. I discovered I have quite a knack for this stuff actually, an innate ability to understand those massively long and complex legal sentences, and if nothing else I provided good translation services because wouldn’t you know it, though the JV is international and the governing documents are in English (and even governed by NY law), Maria and I were the only people with any thorough command of the English language and the negotiations even happened in Chinese, something brand new I’ve never experienced before in my life. Lots of fun, though insanely tiring, and happening all at the same time as my IFC concert. When it rains and all that. We did close, on time even, or basically, terms and conditions met and documents signed and all, and I had my concert, which I mentioned in an earlier post was a success, then I had another concert in Shanghai of all places which I also mentioned, and we go to see our new Enterprise Consulting company’s facilities at that incubator (which I also mentioned?), and well, the sum of it all was that in the span of 3 weeks, we’ve managed to:

1. negotiate and close a JV VC deal
2. sing Handel’s Messiah twice in Beijing with the IFC
3. sing Handel’s Messiah twice in Shanghai with the IFC
4. inspect our company’s holdings in Shanghai (at least some)
5. end Maria’s MBA program (I won’t say more than just this stated fact, though there’s obviously SO much more details that can be had here, but suffice it to say we’re obviously not continuing with the program if we’re leaving the country)
6. pack and finalize moving details
7. sing at the British Ambassador’s residence (did I mention that? We sang carols. It was good)
8. move all the furniture in the apartment back the way it was (we had optimized it, but now we need to un-optimize it since we’ve not going to be using it)
9. have a tiny little family oriented engagement party (yes, that’s the other thing, we got engaged! I don’t want to dwell too much on this point either as I’m kind of running out of blogging steam, but it’s self explanatory isn’t it? We’ve been together for almost 3 years now! This upcoming February! And we look forward to the infinitely better water pressure and hot water temperature that the States has to offer)
10. have a massive Beijing friends oriented engagement/going away party in which we either drank through or gave away all of our remaining booze, of which there were, and somehow still are, lots
11. actually get my work visa and residence permit (yes, I realize the irony involved in 3 days before leaving a country finally getting the necessary paperwork and documents in place to stay in said country easily and indefinitely really. Let’s chalk it up to “well now I can come and go as I please”)

What else happened? I think that about sums it all up. The plan for these remaining days is to finish our packing, close some necessary accounts (telephone, internet, cell phone), actually ship everything we want, then do some last minute tourist stuff like see the Great Wall and the 798 Arts District. It takes something like moving out of the country to really motivate you to do those little touristy stuff that you never had a chance or the motivation to, though that’s mostly me. Maria’s been wanting to do these things for ages, but I guess we had planned to be here for a lot longer so there was almost always more time. Ah well, we’ll take care of it. I also plan to, once we’ve finished getting everything shipped, have a proper blog entry on the details regarding said process as at the moment the inter-web’s information regarding how best to cheaply but slowly ship your material from this country to the States is limited. I will rectify this missing bit of much needed information. Oh, and in the process of packing, I managed to kill one of my computer’s hard drives, but it’s ok, it was the system drive which for some stupid (but in the end alright) reason also housed the backup of the system drive. Chalk it up to me forgetting which partition sat on which physical disk, but it means I actually didn’t lose any DATA, of which I had a lot, and would have been very sad were I to have lost it. My RAID drives are fine, my one off data drive is fine, I only lost my system and the backup of said system. I couldn’t have actually planned it any better if I were trying, otherwise I could have lost my one off data partition…I hate data loss, and considering I was very careful with the drive even and can’t imagine why or how I managed to mess it up so much, it really just points out and highlights once again the necessity to own a massively large NAS. I’m shooting for the 8-bay QNAP NAS with 2TB drives. Haven’t decided what RAID level I want though, maybe just Mirroring, maybe 5 + hot spare, maybe 6 + hot spare. At minimum, with Mirroring, I’ll still have 8TB of storage versus my piddling little 1.5TB now, and it will be wonderful. Today was the first time I realized but Maria pointed out how there’s a sort of religious aspect to technology. It’s “thank God” I didn’t lose my data, and the appropriate feeling of “relief” and “fulfillment” from having a really good plan and system to handle it all. It’s like “fate” or “destiny” that I messed up where my system backups were stored, otherwise I would have lost data. So once again I thank whatever technology God(s) there may be.

Oh, and I fully intend to keep up my QQ accounts. Gotta grow and steal those vegetables, those “farm” animals, and now maintain my little vegetarian restaurant.

It’s been a busy month though, to my credit. The last entry was just before we decided to head back to the States again. What happened was, on the 18th of November, my visa proper expired, as in, no more entries, no more time in China, do not pass go, if you stay in the country you will go to jail and you do not want to go to a Chinese prison. So right around my 27th birthday (yes, that happened also on November 15th), we left. It took a bit to figure out where best to go, but we decided on NYC. Maria processed her student visa there, it’s close to her sister and nephews, I have lots of very good friends there as well, so it seemed the most logical choice. We even managed to secure a nice place of our own to stay in through friends we made in Beijing of all places, a lovely young couple passing through when I still ran that restaurant way back when, and whom we visited in Hong Kong over the summer. Lots of other things happened though while we were in NYC, but I’m not sure I’m allowed to tell you yet. But Maria and I had a lovely time there, and we had even said that we should go to NYC together, spend some time wandering around a city that in the end, I love.

After that, we actually succeeded in me getting my work visa, but now had to apply for a residency permit. We made a last minute decision to stay on through Thanksgiving since it was just around that time anyway, and hitched a ride with my Emily out to Maria’s parents place in OH. I’ll get around to why we decided to extend our trip later, when I’m allowed to, but suffice it to say we wanted to, and it was lots of fun, and involved good food, good times with her parents and family, midnight shopping with her best friend on Black Friday, and more. I’m glamorizing right now, what happened that is, because it’s the best way to do it while being much too warm and cramped on this bunk bed in the train.

We did go back to China though, it was inevitable, and I had my Beijing IFC concert, which was a success, immediately after which I had this past concert in Shanghai. So you see, I’ve really been rather busy!

November 15 – 27th Birthday
November 16 – Fly to NYC to get China work visa
November 21 – Decide to extend our trip in the States through Thanksgiving
November 27 – Fly back to Beijing
December 5 – IFC Beijing concert
December 7 – Take train to Shanghai for IFC Shanghai concert
December 10 – IFC Shanghai concert
December 12 – IFC Shanghai concert
December 12 (now) – Take train back to Beijing from Shanghai

You see, busy! Plus we had flaky internet the entire time, really put our tether through the ropes. And now I think I’m feeling motion sick, so I’m going to stop. There will be more though, and photos, and Core WordPress updates, and tagging this post since the tether’s being flaky. All in good time.

I’m sitting in the equivalent of a dining car right now, the privilege of which I had to pay 30RMB for a pot of coffee for, surrounded for the most part by train workings with large calculators going over piles upon piles of receipts. I had thought that buying a bottle of iced tea would be enough to assure me a seat in this car, but then I was very politely informed that the seats are reserved for people partaking in “afternoon tea.” Hence the coffee. At least I also got a small plate of salted peanuts for my troubles. I’m also using my iPad to type as I’m not certain the individual cars have power ports so I don’t want to use my laptop unless I absolutely have to. People are also more and more speaking Cantonese, the southern dialect of Chinese that is entirely incomprehensible to me. I feel my ability to communicate quickly slipping away so for the most part, and also to get some semblance of preferential treatment; I’ve switched to using English most of the time.

The last time I was on a train in China was trying to get home to Beijing from Shanghai. We had purchased our tickets late, or it was some kind of hurry to the station, but whatever the reason we didn’t have the right tickets and were stuck for all intents and purposes standing, many people deep, trying to breathe through a small opening in the window. Compared to what I’m sitting in now, it’s like a completely different world, though I guess that statement’s reasonable considering how China works. Skipping over some details and leaving a whole bunch for later, on that trip so long ago we managed to upgrade our tickets on board to the “soft sleeper,” the type of ticket I’m in right now. What I’ve described before were the “hard sleeper” or “hard seats,” I don’t remember which. The major difference is that instead of six bunks per open compartment with infinitely more people just hanging out in all the hallways and walkways, the “soft sleeper” only has four bunks, air conditioning, and a door. In fact, it was such a difference in temperature, so much colder, that I actually got sick by the end of the trip. But that was then, and only serves as historical context of a sort. This record is about now.

The coffee is quite good by the way; very rich. I only got two packets of sugar, and I have a feeling they’ll charge me if I ask for more, so I’m going to try a cup unsweetened it’s just that good.

My train tickets cost just over 200$ round trip, much cheaper than any airplane option. The train takes 24 hours each way, and is only reasonable time wise because I am unemployed at the moment. As unreasonable as it must seem, there’s a part of me that really enjoys traveling by train. I like the sounds, the views, the way the train shakes as it goes over the tracks. I like the people. Being much older than I was that first time taking the train, having, I hope, matured a bit, I actually regret getting the fancy seat that I have. I feel very isolated from the rest of the train and the people on it. The people traveling in the “soft sleepers” are usually families, and they buy up the entire compartment and close the door for privacy. It’s like their own private little train compartment, and they don’t come out, and they don’t interact with other people. In fact, I feel a little bad for intruding on the other people in my compartment, a Chinese couple and their son, but what can you do. I met some foreigners from Yorkshire in the car I’m in, but they’ve retreated into the safety of their compartment as well. I must have wandered the length of the train as far as they’d let me 3 or 4 times already, seeking out people, not necessarily to talk to because I am still deathly shy, but just to watch, and see how they pass their time.

First is that they really like to share beds. There’d be three young Chinese girls all sitting on the same tiny little bottom bunk, sharing one thin blanket, across the way from an equally crowded other little bottom bunk, this one full of adults, and they’d all be playing cards on a makeshift table made using their luggage. I’m talking about the people in the “hard sleepers,” where there are three levels of small bunks in compartments of six. Quite an impressive site actually also watching these people climb up and down these layers of beds. I had though it difficult to climb onto my bunk which is just one level up, but to imagine climbing six is something else altogether. There are these tiny little fold out metal steps built into the walls, one for each level. They still have the price tag on some of them: they cost 6RMB each apparently.

They also like traveling food. Even the family in my compartment, they have an entire suitcase full of just food to eat. Last I saw them they were slicing their way through one of those cream roll cakes. It looked very good actually, but I personally find it difficult to travel with that much food. My mother is like that though, and in the past whenever I’d leave from home to go back to college she’d back even perishables into my luggage despite my best protests. I think it’s because I like to travel light so it’s difficult to justify an entire extra piece of luggage devoted solely to food. I mean, what do you do with the luggage after the journey when it’s empty? I don’t plan to eat on this journey, mostly also because I don’t think I can bring myself to use the toilet facilities. There’s also this really famous Chinese kind of snack food that’s a whole chicken or duck that’s been stuffed into a vacuum-sealed bag. Walking up and down the aisles it’s easy to spy multiple families going at this piece of cold meat with impressive gusto.

Hard to believe I’ve not yet typed two pages after all this time. It’s actually quite difficult and perhaps not entirely worth it at all. I might transfer this file over to my laptop and continue the typing from there. I’ve switched to my laptop now. I have about an hour and a half of battery life left and I’ve switched the font size formatting. I’ve now typed even less than I had thought for all the effort it cost me; definitely typing on the iPad may not be the world’s greatest idea. I’m also feeling a bit motion sick right now which is surprising.

Some kind of companion on this trip to take in the sights and observations with me would be appreciated. It’s only been a couple of hours and already I feel like I’m running out of things to do. It’s just that, and I think the Chinese people want it this way, like I said I feel very segregated from everyone else. The private compartment, the locked doors between trains, the “fee” to sit down at the dining car, it’s like everyone else wants to be left alone, except me. I want some company. In a way that’s a very Chinese inclination; people who for most of their lives were never alone and so are not used to being alone, find solitude a luxury, something to pay extra money for, and I technically have, so I guess I’m reaping what I’ve sown. It’s still kind of weird though, like, there’s no observation car like in the States, a place to lounge, hang out, and chat with the other passengers.

The entire process of getting on the train was a little harrowing. Apparently I was late without evening knowing I was, but this particular train stops boarding 20 minutes before departure, and I got here at 20 minutes before, and was at the wrong entrance on the wrong floor and had to go all the way back down to go through immigration. I’ve technically “left” the country already, as far as my passport is concerned. I guess that makes the interior of this train like an airport and airplane, a pseudo no man’s land where I can temporarily be in and out at the same time. But I hadn’t expected that, which caused the mad rush at the onset. My entire day actually was surprisingly hurried, so much so that I never got to take that shower I was planning on.

This morning I went to get my cell phone registered so that it could be used outside of Beijing. Unless your phone is registered either with a China resident or under your own passport, apparently your usage is limited to the city in which you purchased it. I noticed this for the first time on my way to Tianjin with the IFC when half way there, my service just stopped. I figured if I’m going to be on this train for 24 hours, and in China proper for the vast majority of it, I may as well be able to make and receive phone calls. So I ran over to my cousin Michael’s place and we headed to the China Mobile store to get things taken care of, when to our dismay, apparently we needed some PIN number that was on the back of the SIM card holder when we first bought it and no one bothered to keep that little piece of plastic, so lo and behold, we can’t make any changes to my service without changing the PIN first, and that process takes 2 weeks or more. So, solutionless, I buy another phone number, activate it properly, register it, pre-buy a whole bunch of time because I have to as a kind of deposit, forward my old number to it, and voila, here I am, in the middle of no where, but still in cell service. Not the most elegant of solutions, but one nevertheless.

But this process took longer than I thought, and there’s construction going on at my mother’s place again as they try to fix some of the small things while they’re in town, and for some reason my grandfather showed up again, and everything was out of place and I was already running late and I just ran out of time. I had also never been to the Beijing West Railway Station before, so I had no idea how to make my way around it, which didn’t make things easier. It’s a pretty station though, massive in size and scale, overpowering even in its façade, kind of monumental, and like all things Chinese and new, it sported those traditional temple style roofs of red and gold, just enough of a tacky hint to make it look like a Las Vegas hotel. This is actually the older train that I’m on, and I think it takes longer, but when I purchased these tickets I didn’t have options for the other one, or I couldn’t understand the options for the other one, but here I am. The good thing about this train is that they have 2 person compartments with private bathrooms, but since I wasn’t planning on getting one of those compartments anyways it may have been more reasonable to try to get on the newer train. Ah well.

What did impress me a lot though was that as the train was leaving the platform, there were these uniformed staff members, standing at attention, at set intervals along the platform, watching after the train as we left. It felt like they were sending us off, with style even, and I felt sort of like royalty.

Getting on the car, they traded my paper ticket for a plastic one, I’m not sure why. The staff also came around and wrote down everyone’s name and a form of ID, probably to make sure they don’t lose anyone, though I’m not actually sure if there are stops along the way, we haven’t made any yet, so there may not be an opportunity to lose anyone. The first hour or so I took lots of pictures out the windows, but they’re really dirty and there’s a pretty strong glare. I took some interior photos, and almost got a very good one of the uniformed staff before one of them shyly turned away and asked me not to take his picture. I want to have photos of the rooms, compartments, other people, but I worry that it’ll impose on someone else’s privacy. It’s an odd feeling, being out of place, and I definitely feel it right now. I’m operating under the assumption that I paid for my pot of coffee, I paid for my seat in the dining car, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to leave any time before I’m good and ready. I already fought off an attempt to be dismissed when I went to get my laptop. I asked one of the staff to watch my things and not take away my coffee because I’ll be right back, and she suggested, rather strongly, that I just leave. And now, I’m the only one left in here, surrounded by staff going about their business, cleaning the floors, getting boxed lunches ready, taking their meals, smoking, and everyone now and then one of them gives me an odd look as if to ask why I’m still here. Nevertheless, I don’t intend to leave unless I want to.

They do allow smoking on these trains, incidentally. That and the cold coffee and the reading as I type is probably what’s contributing to my minor bout of motion sickness right now.

As I said, I probably walked up and down the length of the train 3 or 4 times. There’s just nothing else to do. I was glad to be able to walk even because before the train started to move, all the interior doors between compartments were locked. Even the bathroom was locked, and none of these doors were meant to be opened until the train was underway. You still can’t go very far though, even with the opened doors, and there are still doors that aren’t open or places that you get waved rather pointedly but politely not to enter. Again, I’m cultivating that American aura in myself right now for the preferential treatment. As I walked, I’d look into all the cars as discretely as possible, and saw what I’ve described already, and the following:

A foreign couple wearing matching black and white horizontal striped shirts, the guy sporting a massive beard, wearing paper Chinese complimentary sandals. Everyone’s wearing those sandals incidentally, though I haven’t switched to them yet.

Rows upon rows of sleeping Chinese, in the middle of the afternoon, the provided blankets wrapped tightly around them as they sleep with just the tops of their heads poking out of the piles of bedding.

Chinese children, jumping around with more energy than is appropriate, even so far as jumping between the two bunks, climbing all over the place, even on the three level bunks. They’d straddle the open air between the two stacks of bunks, one foot on either side’s foothold.

Families setting up their own personal “space,” including massive water thermoses they’d fill from the provided boiled water spouts at the ends of the trains.

Teenage looking Chinese kids watching foreign TV shows with Chinese subtitles, shared on one monitor on a makeshift table.

Lots of staff, in their own private though tiny little compartments, reading newspapers with one foot up against the wall, oblivious to my presence as I walk by.

In the “soft sleeper” rooms there are also fold out chairs against the windows on the hallway. In the “hard sleeper” compartments they also have these seats but in addition they have a small table between them, a much better layout I think than in the “soft sleepers,” again one of those instances where I don’t think we’re expected to use those fold out seats in favor of the provided table inside the private compartment. And again, I want one, a better place to camp out is all I have in mind.

That’s about all I remember from looking in to the train compartments, I’ll probably take another walk around later though to stretch my legs.

The scenery’s been off and on at times serene, peaceful and impressive. There’d be fields of agriculture as far as the eye can see, tiny Chinese row houses built of grey brick with blue metal roofs, massive apartment complexes in various stages of completion surrounded on all sides by construction materials, piles of steal and brick, construction cranes, huge swathes of just dirt, like its been strip mined for something, little rivers and ponds and insect breeding grounds, intricate networks of pipes connecting various bits of farming equipment, power plants and highways. There’d even be a town or city that we’d speed through, abandoned looking other train stations with people sitting against carts of fruit, strip mall type places that must have just sprung up due to their proximity to the train tracks, and other trains that rattle our car as they’d pass in a blur. We’re going surprisingly fast actually where I can’t get a still photo of the scenery right next to us. It all passes in a blur.

I’d taken a good number of trains in the past in the States. I’ve gone cross country by train a few times, a 60 hour trip, on the cheap even where all I had was a seat. Those trips go through Chicago, and get stopped along the way by cows crossing the tracks. And as uncomfortable as it is sitting here amongst the staff all taking their breaks, it’s still a bit of a slice. Some of them speak Cantonese, which I can’t understand, but what I can understand is that they’re making fun of one of the staff for having already eaten a bowl of noodles and rice, and still eating more. There’s a closeness to these people, a kind of camaraderie, and they’re so into their own little things that I really don’t think they pay any attention to me at all. In the States such a thing would never happen, the staff would never all surround a customer on their breaks and take their meals. But I forget what I was going to talk about now. They’re really loud though! I go back and forth between listening to them and my iPod, though I can’t really write when listening to music, nor can I write though listening to really loud Chinese people. It’s nice listening to my music though, I realize I rarely do that nowadays, and it’s very appropriate when travelling by train because it feels sort of like a soundtrack to the scenery going by, and I feel it affecting my step as I walk even. And it’s neat when the track changes because the difference is great when watching farmland going by and listening to Depeche Mode versus Eminem; really great.

I wonder what happens at night on these trains. Does everyone go to sleep? Is there staff around still? Most importantly, is there a place for me to hang out when everyone else is asleep and the train is quiet, some place away from the cigarette smoke and chatting Chinese people, where I can look outside and watch the darkened landscape go by. It’s a paradox really, my desire to be with people during the day, or at least in some kind of company so that I don’t feel too much like a tool in my private little room surrounded on all sides by white walls, and my desire at night to just be alone to watch things go by.

I’m going to stop writing now, to continue later, but the cigarette smoke is actually really getting to me plus I’m out of coffee and peanuts and iced tea so I feel like I’ve gotten what I’ve paid for from this dining car. To be continued at another time then, these thoughts on train travel. I will re-sync though with the iPad so that I can continue writing there if I’d like later.

I am once again sitting in the dining car, 30RMB for a pot of coffee and the privilege of sitting here. I guess they don’t understand the idea of public use on trains. Having listened more carefully this time, apparently my choices were either a pot of tea, a pot of coffee, or absolutely nothing but the privilege of sitting here. Again, I went with coffee. I guess if I’m not going to eat I may as well drink lots and lots of caffeine. I’m not entirely sure how I want to handle the sleeping situation. You see, I don’t want to disturb my fellow travelers in the compartment and have excused myself outside. This also gives me a chance to charge my computer; I have thankfully found a charger in the dining car. Not that I’ll really need it the more I think about it. I do get in decently early tomorrow and apart from this evening there’s not much time left.

But rich coffee and salty peanuts are good accompaniment to reading, which I am doing on the iPad. Again, I paid for it so I intend to stay until I am content. In the intermission between writing I spent a good time doing nothing, just listening to music and watching the scenery go by. I also spent some time taking photos like a hawk, camped out in front of the cleanest window I could find, snapping away happily. I unpacked my bag a little so that I could carry it with me around the different compartments. I suppose I’ll go back to my proper room in a little while. For now, I’ll charge my stuff and read my book, and write off and on when the fancy strikes me, and drink my coffee and eat my peanuts. Although it’s cost me close to nine dollars already, I find the environment of the dining car peaceful, though smoky earlier in the day, but much more mellow now that even the staff are tired and half falling asleep in the chairs.

I’m going to post this now to the blog as I’m not sure what else I’d like to write about it. I’m sure more will come later, and that will make the second part of this series, if I get to it. I’m sure I will as I will undoubtedly need things to do on the return journey as well.

One last observation though was just how drastically different the scenery was the second day on the train. All of yesterday was farmland and flat with some farming and agriculture infrastructure visible every now and then, along with an odd town of sorts. But as I half asleep and blearily peaked out the compartment windows into the morning light the first thing I noticed was stone! There were huge mountains on either side of the train with shear, exposed stone like one would expect from those cliched Chinese paintings. And there were small creaks and streams, and while still lots of farmland, more power generating infrastructure, and definitely more things in ruins. It was noticeably more tropical also, with banana leaf looking plants, actual palms instead of plastic ones like in Beijing, and the housing architecture had changed. Not the massive apartment complexes of which there were still plenty, but the small row houses reminded me of ones you’d find in the Caribbean: low, made of stone, with dirt floors and exposed windows and roofs to let in the sunlight and elements, painted bright colors of blue and red and yellow. And though the entire trip didn’t have many stops, maybe four and none of which lasted more than a few minutes or were we allowed off the train, but this second leg did see a proper hour or longer stop in GuangZhou, a decently big city apparently, where they separated the car because some people were getting off and only some of us, those who’ve gone through immigration, were continuing on the rest of the train. Oh, and as creepy as it is, as soon as the train crossed literally into the border of Hong Kong, my cell phone service automatically switched, I received a text message welcoming me, a text message informing me on how to continue using my phone, and another text message informing of the new rates for calls. Yeah, the Chinese government’s not stalking me or anything…

So it’s quite late, and I’ve been tossing and turning in bed for a good while now. The issue is that I’ve been all of a sudden sick again, and it’s not been that great of an experience. I really do believe it’s due to the sudden changes in the weather and ambient temperature as opposed to any drastically low temperatures in and of itself; I don’t think my bodies knows what to do when things keep changing! It prepares and is ready for it to be warm or cold, but it can’t handle the shift, and so dies, metaphorically.

The point though, is that while I’ve been sick, I’ve been either not very productive at all, or decently productive on some of my web projects. So assuming I spend half my time productive, half of it not, and a good potion of the rest asleep or in a daze, accounting for time to spend with my Maria of course, I should have time left everyday to blog. Right? So why is it that I don’t, and why is it that it’s been nigh on three weeks since anyone’s updated this blog?

I think it has to do with the actual concept of blogging. Before now, as in, literally a couple of minutes ago, I was suffering quite contentedly in bed, unable to sleep, dreading the possibility that I might be disturbing Maria’s rest as well. And my mind was racing. I was thinking about my restaurant’s website (which isn’t up yet), my art website, which is up here, and some new stuff I’m planning to do for my choir, which, obviously, isn’t up either, neither is the West Campus site. Incidentally, this would be the first time I’m plugging my art website…everyone go and look at it! It represents the “best” of Beijing’s urban youth, or so the propaganda page tells me.

West Campus, incidentally, is a school I’m starting in Beijing! It will at first only offer year long intensive Chinese language and culture courses, hopefully starting Fall 2010, but will move on to offer full study abroad options for a liberal arts education, hopefully with a Fall 2011 availability so we can start searching for partner US institutions. Grandiose, no? They also get a website, one to provide information, brochures, contact information, and a way to register online…hmmm…I wonder if I’ll get paid for any of this web work; they’re all decently complicated…

Um…but yes my mind was racing, and I was even mentally ranting to myself, “hmmmm…this would make a good blog post.” So here I am, finally. Partly also due to he fact that I got tired of lying in bed unable to sleep and I wanted to spec. out the requirements for the IFC website.

So what this post will be about then is just a mish-mash of everything’s that’s been going on, with the hopes that it will make some greater sense, and that it will in some small way make up for the lack of anything interesting floating around here. Ah I’ve also modified the layout a bit to have static headers and footers; I’m not sure I like it…

So I think the restaurant’s a good place to start. We’re switching owners. My aunt and uncle, God bless them, are no longer going to be working with us, thank God. This means that we have to find somebody to buy out their 50% stake in the restaurant for $$$K, plus work out some way to repay the $$$K RMB that they “loaned” to the business to cover operational costs. Without going into too much of the details because I’m not entirely sure I’m at liberty to say at the moment, it’s being worked out, and it should be good.

What I am most excited about is the possibility of greater interactions with a local farm that my father is associated with. This should allow us to get good dairy and meat supplies, plus develop new foods like homemade cheese! I’ve been missing cheese in this country, and I have grandiose dreams of being Beijing’s one and only source for freshly made mozzarella. There is also the possibility that we may partner with another good friend of ours and jointly open yet another restaurant in the same complex as Connections. This will be a all vegetarian restaurant, specializing in fresh juices, fruit and vegetable cocktails, and entree size salads, something wholly lacking in this country. This will also entail greater cooperation with the farm as we will need to grow the entree salad vegetables, things like endive, mescalin, arugula, also things either lacking or inconsistent in this country, and which I will even admit to missing. Again, I have grandiose dreams of being Beijing’s one and only source for fresh, home grown, specialty vegetables.

I am also leaving my role as full time manager of the restaurant, mostly because it’s too time consuming. I have faith and confidence in my staff and the training I’ve provided them, and will still be on hand in a very part time manner, perhaps a couple of hours every other day. I’m going to promote on waitstaff and one cook to be my eyes, hands, and ears while I’m away, and they will be responsible in my absence. We’ve been kind of operating this way for the past week, mostly due to circumstance since I was sick, but also due to premeditation because I was just sick of being there 91 hours a week, and things seem quite smooth. Again, I have faith.

The only other thing interesting about the restaurant is that I think I’ve finalized with my choir, the IFC, the option of using Connections as their “home away from home,” or “home base,” the most pertinent bit of which would be the using of it as their ticket distribution hub. I needn’t tell you all the great benefits this entails. I had always wanted a stronger tie between the restaurant and my choir, and this provides it. Part of the reason why I got a piano for the restaurant was so that there can be impromptu rehearsals, sections, or other music related events, open mics, sing alongs, etc. that can happen at the restaurant and involve the choir. If I can be the one and only place to get tickets for our upcoming concerts, then that’s a step in the right direction. The website I’m spec’ing out for them is to give them the ability to handle online ticket sales on their own without using a third party service that charges an obscene service charge per transaction. Plus, it looks like my Epiphany music center idea may come to fruition at some point relatively soon as well, and all these things will work so well together I just know it.

Which is a great segue for that topic! I got Cary, my father’s business partner, interested in Epiphany. I think he’s always been half way interested, though no one’s taken the initiative to develop it really. My father had done some work, and I’ve built off of that to come to where we are now. Again, without going into too much details because I may not be at liberty to say, but it’ll be good, and it’ll be THE place to go for all your classical music needs in the “heart of Beijing” so to speak, or so the propaganda page states ;)

Also since I am no longer going to be the full time manager at the restaurant, I’m relegated myself to the status of “owner,” which means I get paid when the restaurant is profitable, or if and when that is. This means I’ve been on the prowl for a normal job, hopefully something in a programming vein. I had interviewed with and received a very decent job offer from Pixomondo, a visual effects company opening their Beijing office. Unfortunately, the timing had sucked because I was just getting deep into the running of the restaurant so I turned their offer down. Or more, I didn’t respond when they asked me if they could negotiate my offer with me…my defense on this issue is that I was really busy, as I’ve always been, and it was during New Years so things were extra hectic. But yes, I should have gotten back to them no matter what and it’s my bad for not. The point also being then that I feel awkward approaching them again since I sort of brushed them off earlier. I’ve also interviewed with Wokai.org, a micro-financing company. They’re in first round interviews, and they’re supposed to get back to me. And if any of you reading this know of any good PHP Programmer jobs, let me know! I’ve already been thinking about posting to this blog post photos of my new Connections menu, I think I’ll also post my resume. I NEED A JOB!!! PLEASE HELP!!!

Our visas are also expiring, again. This will be our, what, third entry? Haven’t figured out where to leave to yet, but need to soon, we have just under a week left to clear immigration. Part of the other reason a “normal” job sounds appealing is that they should be able to help me sort out my work visa issue. At the moment, the stand still is that VSM hasn’t gotten back to me yet on my employment verification letter, which is the last thing I need before one round of work visa applications with my father can be filed. They’ve sort of fallen off the face of the earth at the moment, I wonder if they’re alright…But since I’ve stepped back from the restaurant, this next trip promises to be much better, and longer, and more fun, I promise, my dearest Maria. I know I’ve been sucking lately, being sick, being busy, but I promise better times ahead.

Whoo I’m on a roll aren’t I! And real tag happy :)

Regarding Maria, since a lot I’m not at liberty to myself say, I will say that she did very well on the GMAT, finished her MBA applications to Tsinghua and BiMBA, is plowing her way through her Chinese government scholarships, was NOT late for any scholarships at Tsinghua or BiMBA, and has many promising projects coming up involving Chinese lawyer and my father. And that’s all I’ll say.

Let’s upload that menu now shall we? And don’t laugh at the over the top English; it hasn’t been edited yet.

Let’s also get the resume uploaded shall we? Download now

And now I’m feeling a little dehydrated and shaky. I should probably stop now as I think I’ve got most things covered, and those that I haven’t, I’ll try to list out real quick. I also need to upgrade this WordPress install before I’m finished.

1) We’re still looking for an apartment. We’ve had a reprieve because my mother’s not coming until June, but that’s feeling like it’ll be here real soon. We’re playing around with the option of living in the complex that Connections is in because we have so many things going on there (Connections, Epiphany, the new vegetarian restaurant), plus we also want to start our own business so it seems also appropriate, but there’s a lot of logistics involved with that mostly due to the fact that it’s commercial real estate and so is more expensive and lacking a kitchen and plumbing.
2) My best friend from high school’s wedding is coming up in mid-May, so we’ll be both going back to the US around then. Maria’s going to go earlier, see some family, and run her first marathon in Cincinnati! I will, unfortunately, be unable to attend. But this should mean we’ll have exciting things to look forward to come October and the Beijing marathon :)
3) I only need 40 some odd words to get to 2000 at this point, so I’m just stalling and rambling until then. It seems like a nice, round, number, and may very well be the longest blog post we’ve had. I had been toying with the idea of separating this one entry into multiple entries, and just post them all at the same time. But that also felt stupid. Not that this monster of a post isn’t stupid in and of itself, there’s just no lesser evil with those two choices…

Edit:

Already had to correct a couple of typos, and I just realize I never tested the new sites I’m developing in IE, because I don’t have access to IE anymore! I should get around to that huh…?

1) Everything’s expensive there, basically the same price as in the US, but in won, which makes everything looks horribly expensive because it’s just about 1,000 times more worthless than the dollar. So a can of pop will set you back 1,000 won…

2) Hotels, transportation, entrance fares, etc., i guess this means durable goods and services, cost the same as the US. Our hotel was 135,000 won a night and it wasn’t that good. Food’s thankfully cheaper, especially the good Korean food, with lots of yummy sides!

3) It is quite a short flight from China, so if you really need to sort out your tourist visa and get in on your next entry, it’s not a bad choice, though, as mentioned, expensive. It only takes like two hours, and there’s good public transportation from the Seoul airport. But it’s far! ICN, the new one, the only international one, is 75 km away from Seoul. It takes an hour and a half by public transportation bus, probably longer by subway (we didn’t want to try it), and supposedly an hour by taxi, but that’ll set you back 100,000 won, or 100 dollars.

4) Do take the subway to try to get around. The maps are convoluted, they actually try to draw the lines to scale and have every little turn show up, but they go everywhere, are quick, inexpensive, and relatively frequent, though not as frequent as Beijing’s. Seriously, the maps suck; they’re dense, they’re angular, and one map doesn’t look the same as the next so there’s no consistency and where a station was on one isn’t where it is on another. It’s just all wrong. And the colors all look the same to me…

Seoul Subway map v1 of infinity

Seoul Subway map v2 of infinity

Otherwise the subways are more than sufficient as a means of getting around; certainly better than LA’s ;)

5) They do all sort of speak English, sorta, kinda, not really. I’ve never been comfortable with the idea of going to an Asian country that I don’t speak the language in, this is why. It’s like, there’s lots of good looking street food, but I can’t ask if it’s vegetarian for Maria to eat. The good news is that the language is not tonal like Chinese, so you can read and pronounce it as it looks when written in English. The written language also looks pretty good; I think Maria and I had figured out some of the underlying patterns by the time we left.

6) We were able to get street food though, and very good ones: baked goods shaped like a fish with sweet red bean paste in it. The lady was making them on this huge, rotating waffle iron type machine with fish molds on it. We had been walking around for a while that night actually, looking for street food, unwilling and not ready to call it a night without more dessert.

7) In China, anyone staying the night has to register within 24 hours with the local police department; tell them you’re here, where you’re staying, give them a photo, etc. These usually last for as long as your visa allows you to stay in the country. So like good little foreigners, we had registered immediately when we first got there, and like good little foreigners, we had left the country before both our visa and police registration had expired. We assumed that this meant we had some leeway on the whole “24 hours, must be registered” thing, because technically our previous registration hadn’t expired. NOT TRUE! Apparently, it’s whenever you enter the country, you have 24 hours to present yourself to the local police department. Not that anyone gave us trouble with it since we were a full day late, but, well, I can see problems arising.

8) As far as personal updates go:

a) My IFC concert has been postponed due to difficulties in getting the required government approval to sing Handle’s Messiah
b) Renovations at my apartment may finally finish, next week; there’s light at the end of that tunnel
c) I’m not sure I want to work for my father anymore…but that’s a much more complicated matter that I’m not sure I want to touch upon here
d) My great uncle passed away Monday morning. He’s the first of my relatives to pass away for me, and the first funeral that I will be attending this coming Sunday morning
e) As great as this apartment is that I’m staying in, I’m not sure I want to any more either, considering that at some point my mother and her entire family will show up, and most likely for a lengthy period of time.
f) I am still sick. Blah.

At the gate, some kind of middle management looking official for the airline with too much time on his hand gave me a similar amount of hassle for the one bag that I was able to bring on. He said it’s too heavy, I said if it’s too heavy, how come I was approved by the lady at the terminal to bring it? (I neglected to inform him that I had wheeled and dealed my way into that one…) I think my logic was overwhelming enough that even though he threatened to get his supervisor to come look at the bag, as I passed him on my way up the plane we simply exchanged polite nods and smiles. So we were on our way, properly!

The flight was uneventful. Taipei was hot and humid, like mid 80s at 6 in the morning. It took us forever to find our terminal because their flight information TV screens scrolls really slowly, and Maria wandered around and got us some drinks while we waited. The flight to Beijing was uneventful as well. And I think they must have made some kind of policy changes at the Beijing airport but immigration was VERY easy to get through. It’s like they’re trying to make sure they do everything quickly. We got through the health inspection with no problems, although I found the infrared fever sensors neat, got through immigration with no problems and faster than I’ve ever done so before, got our bags (the bright green ribbon really helped, I’m glad we chose that color to adorn them with), and waltzed through customs with nothing to declare without any issue.

We met my cousin at the airport, got two taxis, filled them both with our suitcases, and left the airport. Having surpassed all necessary gate keepers, we had made it to China.

The taxi ride was, again, uneventful. I couldn’t help noticing all the young trees that they had planted, all the construction projects going on, and just how different the skyline really looked. Apparently, and it may be wrong, but there are 40 million people all trying to live here, so I can understand the need for more and more apartment complexes. But it’s perpetually building, and not like in the States where there’s some foreman wearing an orange vest talking on a phone not really doing anything; work is actually being done. It’s also the 60 anniversary of some National Holiday for the Communist Party? So everything’s being adorned with very pretty flowers and there’s been lots of military exercises apparently. There’ll be 8 days off work for these people come early October.

That first night we dropped our stuff off at my father’s apartment, then walked over to the local grocery store to purchase some supplies, notably shampoo and conditioner. My cousin went with us and he gave us the general feel for the neighborhood. Obviously, we had no good idea which one was the conditioner, but there were lots of very nice Chinese women working for the grocery store who tried to help. We also got soap, toothpaste, and Diet Coke, or more precisely Coke Light. My grandparents had been napping when we arrived, but were awake now and were able to instruct us on how to get our temporary residency cards.

We went down to the local police station, a monument to bureaucracy with shelves and shelves of exactly the same colored and shaped binders. The lady who helped us was very nice, though we had to wait a little bit because she was dealing with some other people before us who had a whole slew of issues to complain about. Again, and I think this is new, but like at the airport and immigration, there were these little buttons with cartoon faces on it, from very happy looking to very sad, meant for us to use to rate their performance. Since this was our first time registering, we needed photos so we walked half a block to a photo store where a very decently Photoshop savvy Chinese woman took our photos, cropped them down to the appropriate size, adjusted all the levels manually, straightened, and duplicated into a grid of fours to print for us. By this point, our temporary residency cards were ready, and we headed back to my father’s apartment to chat with my grandparents.

In short, they’re old. 93 my grandmother and 95 my grandfather. We wanted showers, and to spread things out a bit. We all agreed to get dinner along with my cousin and his wife.

I think I’ll end it there for now. I just got called by my grandmother to go and get lunch. I still need to write all about our adventures yesterday, but I’ll leave that for another time, NOT another day, and hopefully this blog will be all up to date.

Completely irrelevant to anything regarding the actual “meat and potatoes” of this post, I have a suspicion that the Blogger suite of sites, particular its Javascript and maybe some of the $_SESSION options, don’t work with the latest version of Firefox on a Mac. Granted it’s just a suspicion, but it’s very buggy how it does or more importantly does not work very smoothly. I’m using my desktop right now and the entire user experience is just so much better.

Also sort of irrelevant, I feel as if I’m almost just cruising through my days, and that each one of them kind of swings on by with a surreal tinge, like I’m watching myself live my life, day to day. It’s definitely related to how close I, we, are to leaving, my own envy related to Maria’s not having to work anymore, and a general sort of distractedness due to all the logistics involved in making the upcoming move a reality. Not that it won’t be a reality, that much is guaranteed, but more that it’s all almost overwhelming in some ways that as far as my actual work is concerned, I just can’t seem to be that concerned. Not that I’m slacking off at work, or doing any less than the best that I can; it’s just lost some of its glamor.

More irrelevant, but at least short: Google runs my life, and though a little narcissistic and probably creepy, I’m listening to my own music as I write this.

Relevantly, my trip back East and to OH was a HUGE success. Mmmmm and I just can’t help it with my silly references…Nonetheless, it was so. The flights out to NYC went by without a hitch. My aunt dropped me off at the airport on the day of, which would be last Thursday, everything was on time, and my Emily picked me up from LGA. New York was hot. And humid. Much more so than I remembered. Apparently it was also thunder storming, but thanks no doubt to my arrival, all that stopped. The days were beautiful, but hot and humid. Sweating up a storm. Reminds me of the stories I’ve heard of India in the summers; three showers a day.

Friday was spent first at SLC where I said “hi” to as many of the people that were there that I knew, saw the new food service provider, whose offerings look very appetizing, did a minor bit of networking care of my Emily, then lunch at Wild Ginger, where I’ve had lunch so many times yet its allure never diminishes. They’ve made a couple of changes, not altogether bad ones at that. Then it was a hop on to the subway to go to the Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History to watch the star show, as narrated by Whoopi Goldberg. Yup. So much fun :)

Dinner was at Citrus, the Spanish/Japanese fusion place, where due to my not enjoying sushi in most forms I had a nice angel hair pasta. We also discovered that though my friends claim to be sushi eaters, they do not appreciate the as I’m told finer sides of sushi that entails such “delicacies” as Uni or sea urchin roe.

I also realized on that trip that I have no idea what “Combos” are, and still don’t (Sorry Emily! I promise to eat them soon!). I do have a bag of such though and they’re sitting on my desk.

Some hanging out on my Emily’s floor, watching Seinfeld, watching Warlock play Street Fighter 4 ended the evening, and Saturday was off to the airport. Now the original plan had been to hop on an Amtrak and make my way up to first Boston then RI where I had wanted to visit with Maria’s Emily and her husband and their newborn nephews. Not that I don’t still want to, but the logistics involved in making that particular leg of my journey East and to OH a reality proved beyond my abilities, for the time being. I would still like to meet them, and obviously Maria enjoyed her time there a lot, and I plan to, but that will have to wait until another day.

I made it to OH without a hitch, even flying through ORD. And I’m only realizing now that these posts may make more sense if I provided things like external links. I’m not about to go through this currently exceptionally lengthy post and make the links, but at least going forward, if I remember, where appropriate, they may surface. Um, but OH. Ohio is quite beautiful. I half joked that I enjoyed it for its fields, its grass, the low laying hills, small streams and rivers, very Shire like. The other half of it well, I really do enjoy it. My Sarah made an interesting point that part of the appeal of living in places like the Mid-West may be to get away from all that is hectic about living in the big cities, and that the simplicity it offers may be a true comfort, and that though this sounds very appealing, it may be in a way be viewed as giving up on the complications. Still.

I was picked up from Toledo, OH by Maria and her Sarah, who was a lovely person and who had a lovely daughter. Findlay itself I found very appealing on a couple of levels. The homes were gorgeous, the “downtown” historic and very walkable, the cicadas or as they call them “locusts” very soothing. And you know I have the same feelings about NYC, minus the simplicity. Sitting with my Emily outside the Museum of Natural History and people watching, then walking the Upper West Side falls under the category of things I’ve enjoyed most in my life. OH! And we got tea, at Alice’s Tea House (Thanks to Kimmie), where I managed to enjoy that elusive specter of fresh made scones and clotted cream. Delicious.

I finally got to meet Maria’s parents, which was tremendous. They have a lovely house by the way, very Mid-West in my romanticized mind. They took me to Dietz’s (I hope I spelled that right) where we got ice cream. Maria’s bringing me caramels too :). We then walked to the tail end of a hot air balloon festival, and though there were none in the air by that time, that would have been the first time I’ve ever seen them, and I was excited. Maria and I then walked up Main St., literal “Main St.,” not “proverbial” or “metaphorical” in any way. We passed a couple of bars where they were playing a game that involved tossing sandbags into a hole a little bit away…I don’t understand. We walked to a coffee house where Maria had OH Boba. It was attached to a bookstore that had an entire section devoted to “old” books, the sorts of books with character. We sat on big comfy couches, drinking our respective drinks, watching the street outside. It was freezing in there. One thing I will say is that though purported to be worse, OH was actually much less warm and humid than NYC, surprisingly, but with all places that do get warm and humid in the summers, they love their AC, and blow up a storm. And though my feet were killing me by then, we walked around the University of Findlay, which has a lovely campus and one of those picturesque calendar worthy main slash original buildings. Apparently they specialize in mineralogy and toxic waste removal.

On Sunday Maria’s mother was kind enough to make Zuppe Toscana, that wonderful soup of potatoes and cream and Italian sausage they make at the Olive Garden. She was kind enough to send us the recipe and so I shall be making it, vegetarian of course for Maria, but maybe with those properly spiced tofu Italian sausages they have in the fancy vegetarian sections of the grocery stores, the idea being that the veggie version was lacking some spice.

I was supposed to leave on Sunday. Maria’s cousin dropped by and offered to take us to the airport, not that Maria was leaving with me yet, but they wanted to catch up, and we all chatted in the car and once again, a lovely person.

We get to Toledo airport, I say my goodbyes, I try to check in to my flight, and it’s canceled. All flights in and out of ORD are canceled. Bah! And the reason behind such inconsideration, “weather.” I had two choices: they would pay for a taxi to take me to Detroit where there was a “chance” that I “may” be able to get on a flight that will get me in Monday afternoon, late for work anyways. My other choice was to rebook for the same set of flights, 24 hours later. I opted for the second since it looked like I was going to be missing work no matter what.

Hmmmmmm, and it appears I’m getting things confused. Zuppe Toscana was Monday’s lunch, my last meal in OH. Sunday was Panera, my first and only experience there, and they had lovely iced tea and an equally lovely clientele. After that we went driving around Findlay and its outskirts. Lots of country side, things that amazed this particular city boy. Things like fields of corn and soy beans :) We also made our way over to the reservoir which was large enough to have boats sail on, then over to a local park with a boardwalk around a man made lake. I don’t know why, but I have an affinity for man made bodies of water. It actually really reminds me of China, and were I not so sure that I was in OH, I would have been able to convince myself that we were in one of the palaces in Beijing.

So after my flight was canceled, back to the original chronology of the story, we went to a Chinese fast food place and all sat around chatting. Maria’s mother was there as she had gone to Toledo to visit the mall to do a little shopping before she has lunch with the governor of OH. Neat. So though annoying, I managed to get an extra night with my Maria, in OH. I suppose worth it ;)

The next day we slept in; we needed it. Maria had had very little sleep while in RI with her Emily and the twins, and I, well, don’t know how to take care of myself heh. I was also determined to get back to LA no matter what. And to that end, I was relatively successful, as successful as is possible I suppose given the circumstances. My flight that was supposed to depart at 6pm didn’t leave until 9pm. I got in quite late, and had an interesting experience catching a cab in LA. I think that would be only my second time ever in one in LA. I walked up and down the terminal a good while before I figured out what I was supposed to do, which was join the relatively long line all waiting for a cab.

So, in short, I would like to call that a success. I’m a little distracted right now with something that’s come up with work, so I hope it’s not too apparent that I’m rushing a little to get this post finished. But as always, I hope to write more tomorrow.

I also got to see my Emily. I’m making the distinction here because Maria’s Emily is her sister, the one with the twins, not to be confused with mine, the one in NYC. I also got to see Charlie, Kimmie, and a whole slew of people I hadn’t seen in a while, all of whom I really wanted to see, so, again, in short, the trip was a relatively huge success. The only minor hiccup would be that my flight back to LA was canceled due to “weather” in Chicago. This accounts for why I’m a day later than I originally thought and much more exhausted than I originally thought, which is why I’m going to end it for now, to continue tomorrow.

Also, I think my countdown’s getting a little out of hand. I think the new date of departure is going to be September 21st, 2009. Not to say that September 11th, 2009 is not of equal importance. That WILL be my last day at work. Ah I also got to see my Sarah, again the distinction being that Maria’s Sarah is her best friend who lives in OH, and some other people, and it’s just been so busy I can’t seem to end this shortly though I ever so badly want to.