tbaroundtheworld

I finally got to the dark secret behind the universal dislike of Moon Cake. All of we foreigners have had the occasion to sample the stuff in our hotels, in Starbucks and all around town during the weeks leading up to the Mid-Autumn Festival. And while it was not all that pleasant, I never felt it deserved the unbridled derision that it received. That opinion changed in an instant. We picked up a 4-cake sample pack back in September and carefully carried it back to the States. Our intention was to have a somewhat belated Mid-Autumn Festival celebration of our own, on an upcoming visit to the family manse in Tucson. So a mere 12 hours after returning from Ireland, we hopped in the car for the 6 hour drive over to our neighboring state. It's a different thing traveling by car, something I had sort of lost touch with, having not done it for almost a year. It's far more fun in the sense that you can control your starts and stops and what you do along the way. The price you pay is t...

I had this very strange dream the other night. I was heading to the airport with one of my co-workers and we caught a taxi. The driver took us a few blocks, stopped under an overpass, got out of the cab, opened the hood, messed around with the engine and then proceeded to lie down on the shoulder and go to sleep. I stood there in my dream for a bit, complaining about his service for a few minutes and went back out to the street to hail another cab. One came along within a few minutes and as we prepared to hop in, a Chinese gentleman stepped out of the shadows and said something unintelligible in his native tongue. Perplexed, I thanked him and climbed in. This driver took us on an unfamiliar route and pulled up in front of a house, apparently his as he invited us in. We followed, figuring he forgot something, like his taxi license, and we doubly surprised when he settled on the couch and went to sleep. We sat for a few minutes figuring this must be the custom of whatever city we were in...

I’ve fallen asleep to the gentle sound of rain rattling down the gutter for the past two nights. Well, the first night anyway because last night I fell asleep to a bunch of people having a loud conversation in the courtyard outside my window. This hotel, while out in the country and dead as nails at night still manages to attract people who make a lot of noise. Last time around a very loud wedding kept everyone awake until 2AM. This time it was little clutch of people sitting under a pyramid in the rain, their voices bouncing off the limestone walls. Eventually they went off to bed and the gurgling rain was reduced to a steady drip, drip, drip. The various voices of the rain can be quite pleasant, but there is something about a drip with a perfect cadence that offers a distinctly different effect. I just rolled over and made believe that the traffic noise was really the sound of the waves breaking on the rocks in Galway Bay. Jet Lag insomnia is a bitter mistress, sometimes she lets you...