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thank goodness I am not flying with kids

Waiting to get on a plane that will take me to Tokyo Narita, and then onto Taipei. I am making my annual solo trip back home so I can pack 359 days of homesickness, guilt and filial piety into a 3-day visit. (I will spend 3 days traveling due to time zone change and the sheer expansiveness of the Pacific Ocean).

As my parents get older, the necessity of going home as often as I could becomes unbearable. The anxiety and sadness I feel every time I see them though becomes unbearable as well. I long to see the joy in my dad’s face as much as I dread seeing his tears. March on, little soldier. That’s what I have been telling myself since I gave the TSA agent my passport and boarding passes.

I will try not to talk about feeling like a Godzilla as soon as I land in Tokyo. But I will feel that way while stuffing my face with food that I have been missing all year.

And I will try and send in pictures to be posted here (and below if the Flickr plug-in works). Just in case you wonder what I have been up to. *Megalomaniac laugh* *Megalomaniac laugh*

Love and peace.

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Dear Internet,

I miss you.

Yes, in these past two weeks, you still see me coming around once in a while, reading articles online, sharing random pictures on Facebook and Twitter, and flirting with my lady friends with my witty one-liner tweets. It has been still only Drive-by Interneting, which in my book does not count as taking care of my second life, my Social Media life.

I have been a bad blogger friend. I am very sorry.

I had to get on the plane for a business trip the day after I got my root canal, which I later realized was only Part 1. The 3-day trip turned into a 4 day trip when I was assigned to a new project. I got home on Friday night, unpacked and then immediately packed for our trip to the Wisconsin Dells. In case you don’t know, Wisconsin Dells is where Kitsch is defined.

“Kitsch is the inability to admit that shit exists.”   Milan Kundera

 

A visit to one of the giant indoor waterpark complexes, actually Ginormous would be the right word used to describe these monsters, is a definite renouncement of hipsterdom, of coolness. Something that declares, “Resistance is futile. The middle America will get you.” A surrender to suburban, bourgeois, parenthood.

There ain’t no shame in that. I guess…

“No matter how much we scorn it, kitsch is an integral part of the human condition.”   Again, Milan Kundera

 

Onward, suburban soldiers!

I enjoyed an hour under Novocaine and laughing gas this Monday to finish my root canal, and as a consequence, for the next couple of days I was keenly aware of the existence of my tooth that’s supposed to be now nerveless (Is that NOT the point of root canal?) while I did the road warrior thing again. On Wednesday night, my flight home was delayed and I have not slept in my own bed for a full night for almost two weeks by now. But of course. I found mouse poo in our pantry. All over. Even on the top shelf. WTF? Flying mice? I spent two hours cleaning and throwing half of the stuff in the pantry away. I set up a trap and yes, I have blood on my hand. Figuratively. The Horror. The Horror. Still, I took a picture, but of course. Maybe soon I will write a post about how I felt like the Mafia this morning and a serial killer by night fall. For now though, before I go upstairs to be with my bed for (oh shit now only) 5 hours, could I just share a pet peeve of mine with you?

 

Pet Peeve No.385 450x600 Apology, Pet Peeve and Two Horses Asses

This has been bugging me forever... Is it just me?

 

As for the two horses’ asses in the title… I should not have fact checked. Because I did, I now cannot in good conscience post this interesting FACT about railroad gauges, wagons, wheel ruts, Roman Chariots, horses’ asses, and then back to train tracks and space shuttles. SNOPES.com ruins all the spamming fun… FACTS are sometimes quite inconvenient indeed.  Sheesh. I am going to bed.

 

Affectionately yours,
Signed The Third Horse’s Ass

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I grew up in an area in Taipei right next to the then only airport. I have always been fascinated by and loved airports because to me back then, airports meant adventures and exotic places that I could only dream of, and more importantly, I only got to go there when my father came home from his stints abroad and we were there to welcome him.

Now that I travel for work on a regular basis, airports are now simply a transition place. They are simply some place I have to pass by, to tolerate, before I get to where I have to go.

Airports in general do not go through drastic changes. They stay the same for a long time. And that is why whenever I step into an airport that I have been to, even from a long time ago, I immediately get this sense of familiarity.

Yeah, I have been here. I am oriented. It is not scary at all…

Of all the airports I have been to, Narita outside of Tokyo occupies a special place in my heart.  Unlike the other airports, even O’hare my “home” airport, Narita is not simply a point of transition for me.  I must have come through here more than a couple of dozen times, half of the times on my way home. It is the same each time. As I step onto the wide walkway from the jetway, my heart starts pounding. It’s like before that I have been holding my breath, not sure that I would make it home. But now I am in Tokyo, I am only one 3-hour flight away from home. It’s real. I am going home. I get excited and emotional. And then quickly, my happiness takes a detour when I remember how soon I will have to go through this airport again.

It is a long walk of complex emotions as I move from the plane, through the security check point, and then to the gate for my flight to Taipei. Sometimes I dread saying goodbye so much that I have this irrational urge to turn back.

I want to show you the best thing at the Narita Airport: the automatic beer pouring machine. Look at the perfect foam on top! In order to make this video I had to have a second beer. Oh the sacrifice I made for you guys!

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I have made it a habit to take pictures of the view outside the window as I fly. Today as the plane was approaching the airport, the view outside so mesmerized me that I forgot to put my iPhone away. I ended up with 82 photos. I strung together these and the other photos I took on my previous trips to New York and Boston and made a 30-second video:

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As I was going through my photos on Picasa, I noticed the Geo tagging actually showed the landing path of the plane into Narita Airport. For a dork like me, it is beyond cool.

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Landing path at Tokyo airport Fly Me Home

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Here is one of the pictures I took to show you the reason why I was mesmerized as the plane descended into Tokyo today.

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Flying into Tokyo Sunset reflection Fly Me Home

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“Do you realize the people back here are getting cookies?!”

January 7, 2010 through the looking glass

Jerry: “I can’t go back to coach!” This is from the 52nd episode of Seinfeld “The Airport”. The Hyperlink takes you to an 8-minute long collection of the best scenes from this episode. Watch from 7:20 for one of my favorite lines from my beloved TV series: “Do you realize the people back here are [...]

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In which I complain about my seat on the plane… *yawn*

December 27, 2009 through the looking glass

I finished reading the book that I brought with me 3 hours into the flight. What now? Should have saved the book for the trip rather than greedily starting it before Christmas. With the detour to Sarah Palin’s homeland I now have an even longer flight with no reading material. And sitting in the middle seat [...]

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Ok, Sarah Palin, you got me! Now what?

December 26, 2009 through the looking glass

I am in Alaska. More specifically, I am sitting on the plane on the runway. In Anchorage. We have to make the emergency stop here because a passenger passed out en route to Narita. Although he looks rather young, he apparently has suffered a heart attack recently. He is also traveling by himself, with TWO [...]

18 comments