Return from the dead

There was a well-publicized story lately about a writer who decided to spend a week in Heathrow Airport and then chronicle the experience, resulting in a pretty, astronomically-priced volume detailing the quirks of flying. Today, I’m carrying out an abbreviated redux of the same experiment. It’s 7:30 AM, and I’m camped out in Starbucks/星巴克, due to a law of physics involving foreigners and inevitability. Fortunately, their muffins are much tastier than they are in the States, I am well-practiced at ordering a 卡布其诺(cappucino) and the music is good jazz. Flighttime? Unclear. I get to standby onto the 3:30 flight to Singapore, and if that doesn’t pan out take the 11:30 redeye, identical to the flight I was originally booked onto, except a day later.

What happened, might you ask? I’ve done plenty of stupid things while traveling before. I’ve even attempted to put a list together every so often, just so that I can classify a situation with regards to my already sordid past. Previous idiocies include showing up for my plane home from Hong Kong at the complete wrong time because I somehow didn’t even bother looking up when I was supposed to leave, leaving for the airport about an hour and ten minutes before flight time when we went to Sichuan this summer, almost not making it to Vietnam because I realized my passport had expired shortly after buying my ticket, and then showing up to check-in all of 50 minutes before boarding…the list goes on and on. All of those incidents are from the last two and a half years. However, I have far and away topped any of those with my latest exploit: When I showed up to check in, I didn’t have my passport. I rifled through my bag for about a half-hour, but it was clear that it just wasn’t there. As a result, I had to go back to my dorm, startling a few people in the process, go through all of the stuff I’m leaving in Beijing while I go traveling, all without tracking it down. It came down to doing an exhaustive search - moving all of the beds, the desks, looking through the trash…and there it was, in the trashcan.

For further bonus points, I slept over at 嘉雯/Toni’s apartment, since her and 会智/Isabelle were leaving for Kunming extremely early, 4 or 5 am. Unfortunately, we all overslept, waking up in a panic at 6:10 or so with a 7:30 flight to catch. In spite of being aggressive, Beijing taxi drivers often have an orientation to risk befitting a teacher’s union and will not budge an inch over the speed limit. Fortunately, we found an exception who seemed to take great pleasure in the opportunity of becoming a speed demon, thereby getting us to the airport in 25 minutes.

I haven’t done a very good job of keeping up with my blog for the last few months. In fact, I haven’t even posted anything in about three months, in spite of actually having a working computer, albeit no convenient way around the great firewall. So I should explain what’s going on in my life right now, though I’m not going to go into depth about the ACC experience yet as I’m required to by the Light Fellowship standards. That will go in a separate entry.

I’ve wrapped up my first semester at ACC. Right now, I should already be in Singapore, maybe even at my hotel in Malaysia. When I do eventually make it there, it will be as the beginning to the following preposterous itinerary. From the 8th to the 10th of December, I’m playing a Scrabble tournament in Johor, Malaysia, the last of three continuous week of different tournaments, being held as a side-feature to the World Youth Scrabble Championship. My dad is meeting up with me somewhere in the middle. From then, I’ll spend about 3 days in Singapore, then spend the next 10-12 days finding my way to Saigon by way of Northern Malaysia and Thailand. Then, on the 26th and 27th, I’ll be playing an ultimate tournament in Saigon. I even brought my cleats in my newly purchased $20 travel backpack. After that, fly to Hong Kong to meet up with a friend, then spend the next two weeks traveling in Guilin, and then back in Guangdong. And then, after all that, move into my new ACC-provided apartment, a definite step up from dorm life.