tbaroundtheworld

Today marks the 26th time I have left my home at 4:30AM embarking on the Route to the Orient. Over the course of all these trips I have seen many odd and wonderful things and experienced the absolute highs and lows of international travel. I’m not speaking of my experiences with cultures and sights and food, no, I’m only talking about what happens in that 7000 mile hermetically sealed tunnel that extends from my gravelly driveway in the Rio Grande Valley to the marble clad lobby of my apartment building in Dalian, China. The quilt of my memories is sewn with tales of delays, security, immigration, lounges, weather, and lost luggage. It extends from the depths of spending countless hours trapped with uncommunicative co-workers to the apex of seeing a snow clad Mt. Fuji on an obscenely clear day from a business class window. But mostly, it’s about my fellow travelers. And today has been especially rich. I started my trip as I always do – a fast shower followed by an even faster breakfast...

Probably the best thing about living overseas is knowing that you’re allowed to go home on a fairly regular basis. On this assignment through a long list of contrived and random circumstances, I’ve managed to keep the space between home visits down to a manageable 5-8 weeks. Unlike most of the people I work with over there, I live alone – my family remained stateside and 5-8 weeks is about as long as I’d want to go without seeing them. Of course there is a price associated with frequent international travel and its name is “Jet Lag.” Now for something that afflicts tens of millions of travelers on a daily basis, you’d think that there would be tons of information available on how to treat it. But there isn’t. Instead you get about the same volume and quality you get with any internet search, anecdotes, lies and damned lies. You might ask how the Secretary of State does it, jetting all over the place all the time. Well, I did have a seat next to the advance man for the Secretary of Comm...

My days here often start out with a plan. And while my plans are usually pretty well thought out, they rarely go the way I expect them to. Today was no exception and although this list seemed pretty straightforward - Set aside a weekday to visit the Forbidden City and thus avoid the crowds: Get up Eat Grab the subway to Tiananmen Scour the remaining niches of the Forbidden City Visit Behai Park and see the Bai Ta (White Dagoba) Find the fancy shopping district at Wangfanjian Back to the hotel Evening walk Write a blog Things came apart almost from the start. The first three were no problem and were completed according to schedule. Number 4, well I thought about this and decided that I’d prefer to take a cab. The subway is wonderful but at rush hour tends to be a bit less so. So I thought a cab might be an easier way to start a day of walking. There is a funny thing about Chinese cab drivers – if they don’t want to go where you want to go, they yell at you until you get the message and ...

So here I am once again on the 24th floor of the Renaissance Capital Hotel drinking a bowl of white wine and cleaning out the hotel’s shortbread cookie supply. (My Lovely Wife will appreciate the “bowl” reference.) I’m on my way back to visit said Lovely Wife and I’m taking an extra day in Beijing to see the Forbidden City one more time. My prior visits have followed the typical tourist trot – enter via the south gate on Jianguomenlu and walk straight through to the far end. It’s the path through all that’s grand and inspiring and if you’re only going there once, it’s the way to go. But there is an entire second universe on the left and right sides, formerly home to officials and eunuchs and workers that I’ve never seen. And that’s my goal. But first things first. My plane left Dalian about an hour late due to “air traffic congestion.” Every time I hear them say “congestion” I think of that bee in the Nasonex commercial. Except I think that he’s supposed to sound like Fernando Lamas wh...

I’m really beginning to hate my neighbor’s dog and judging from its behavior the feeling is mutual. It’s a little peach colored poodle and whenever it sees me it goes crazy – bark, bark, bark – as though that display is going to make me pack up my belongings and return to America. Unfortunately, it sees me about every day because my neighbor’s kids leave for school at the same time I leave for work. And their ritual is unyielding – mom goes out with the dog and secures the elevator while the boys grab their school stuff and run out the door. Prior to my arrival, the dog runs around the lobby yapping like crazy at nothing, at least until I show up and then it turns its attention to me. The dog’s name seems to be “Guodian” which in my limited grasp of non-contextual Chinese means “Electric Dog.” I’m sure that’s not the correct translation, but in the absence of characters it’s all I have. They call him “Guodee” some sort of affectionate nickname and it’s not uncommon for me to be sitting...

Just when my done-ness reaches what I consider an apex, something else always comes along to drive the point even closer to home, like a 20 penny nail in the forehead. Take tonight for example. I’m trying hard to work my way through the last of the food in my refrigerator and I decided that the dozen or so dumplings that I have frozen would be the easy and delicious choice. Now I’ve been scraping by with an IKEA pot that I’ve had from Day One and it’s always been too small, 12 dumplings and the requisite water barely fit and always result in a boiling overflow. So last week I went back to IKEA with two things in mind – a bigger pot and some replacement light bulbs for my desk lamp, the latter being critical from a fiscal standpoint as I’ve heard the stories of tenants being charged $10 for every dead bulb they leave behind. I had Jiang to take me there after work and I wound my way to the lighting department. After some searching I found the appropriate replacement and checking price t...