The other day I was writing to a friend explaining why I
love airports. As I wrote it reminded me
of the crazy man I met when I landed at the airport in Malaga, Spain. He taught me about lateral thinking and used
the airport as an example of well thought out design. I was curious to see how he was doing when I
clicked into his Facebook page from my friend list only to discover he had
passed away 7 months after our conversation.
“They are after me, “ I listened to his paranoid rantings, “if I die
suddenly it is because of them, they will make it look natural, but it won’t
be.” I never asked who “they” were, but
after a quick search, I found his obituary:
Showing posts with label Writing. Show all posts
I’ve been involved
with three stunning male models in the past, two in San Francisco and one in Shanghai. Within my small sample size
I’ve discovered truth to the cliché that models are not very interesting.
It’s not like being pretty automatically makes a person boring, but when a
person spends all their time cultivating one aspect of themselves, other traits
are forgotten. Quickly I grew bored and did everything I could to avoid answering
each of their calls. Of course it was fun at first, I couldn’t figure out
why these Adonises were interested in me, but it was a nice ego boost.
I've
made a lot of mistakes in my life, mostly due to my flightiness and fear of
commitment. I've also squandered my fair share of opportunities, the same
opportunities many people would gladly trade their lives for just one of.
I've been very lucky in my life, but not always smart enough to recognize
what I had in front of me. I know this is starting to sound like a
deathbed confessional, but that is not my intention. This is a
realization, a retrospect on my life as I deal with the struggles created by my
latest misstep in life.
When I lived in Shanghai every day was a new lesson, mostly
learned from the men who came in and out of my life. I think about this
now because recently I had someone reach out to me with a note saying we met in
Shanghai in 2007. I couldn’t for the life of me even slightly recall
meeting this man. Though I couldn’t remember this man, there are a number
of men who have educated me about life, and their lessons influence me to this
day.
I’ll start with one of the last.
I arrived late at
night into a tangle of narrow streets filled with zooming motorbikes and slow
moving tourists. My overzealous taxi driver tried one last time to
convince me to hire him as my driver for the next day, however, two things kept
me from giving into him, the fact that Udaipur is a very walkable city, and the
fact that his English was so terrible that I was lucky to figure out a third of
what he was saying to me.
I decided to pay a little more to stay in a hotel right across from Jagdish Temple, which meant it took me a second to locate once I arrived in the old city. This gave me the opportunity to relax and situate myself in my new location. The arrival to a new city is a traveler’s most important moment. To be able to locate a temporary home, put down bags, grab a map and orient oneself is crucial.
I decided to pay a little more to stay in a hotel right across from Jagdish Temple, which meant it took me a second to locate once I arrived in the old city. This gave me the opportunity to relax and situate myself in my new location. The arrival to a new city is a traveler’s most important moment. To be able to locate a temporary home, put down bags, grab a map and orient oneself is crucial.
"Thank you,"
I told my driver as I handed him a few rupees as a tip, and in exchange he gave
me his card, which I took, telling him that I would call if I changed my mind
about wanting a guide. We both knew I
wasn’t going to call.
I had read my hotel
was not a real Haveli, but the details put into the interior could have fooled
me. The moment I stepped into the lobby I felt like a princess, alright,
maybe it was more like a homecoming for a banished princess to a home that’s
glamour was past its prime, but that's the kind I like. After all, my own
family history is one of banished power mixed with Chinese royalty.
Five star hotels can wow and impress easily
with their opulence, but for me there's something about faded glory that makes
me spend more than a few seconds to ponder and wonder at the details and
history. 
I wrote this up for a friend's travel magazine and thought I'd
post it here in the spirit of St. Valentine's Day.
A
fun trip ends with photos of dreamed about monuments, silly moments with
strangers on the streets of exotic places, short term flings and other lovely
things, but there is one thing that happens all too often that can elevate a
trip from fun to life changing. Timelessly inspiring generations of romantics,
this one transformative event is the incomparable feeling of falling in love.
The
lucky ones know right away that they are compatible and will work on ways of
being together from the start. This may include plans for one part of the
couple to move or for both to move to a brand new location together. The
unlucky ones know they are in love, but aren’t quite sure, well, of many different
things. They need time to figure out whether or not there is a future, if there
is compatibility outside of the euphoria of falling in love, how to transition
careers and lifestyles to fit in another person, etc…
As
a girl who admits to ending a date after hearing the phrase, “I wish I could
travel,” it is no surprise that my relationships tend to go the route of
international romance. As much as I hate to be in long distance relationships
and vow “never again”, I find myself again and again in that exact situation.
Words of love and longing echo over Skype, emails instead of phone calls, and
imagining the other person’s day to day lifestyle without you becomes the norm.
Unlike
same city relationships where two people have the luxury to grow together and
one day realize their lives are too intertwined to want to be without each
other, international long distance relationships go through their own timeline
and inevitabilities. Plans are made on trips to visit each other’s home turfs
and weeks are spent showing the other person every detail of one’s life in a
hyper rushed time frame rather than letting each aspect of life
slowly unfold and be discovered in their typical pace. Discussions are had
about what would happen if one or the other left behind their life to start
over again together, only to have the reality of visa regulations impede upon
having a career and the longevity of the stay. Eventually there comes a day
when the time between trips to visit each other become longer and longer and the
realization that your two lives are growing apart rather than together becomes
too hard to ignore. This leads to the “make or break” moment when a decision
needs to be made, someone has to move or the relationship ends. Talks of
marriage may enter the picture, but even in these situations, marriage is not a
decision to be made lightly and so action stalls.
Like
a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book, the decision you make takes you down
different routes. One or both of you move to start a life together, like those
lucky ones who knew from the start. Your relationship takes on the joys and
challenges of normal relationships and time is spent getting to know each other
in a different way. Or you break up and vow “never again”, only to realize it
will happen again and again, because once you have had a taste for an
international relationship, you can’t go back to dating someone who doesn’t
travel.
I like to write.
I
carry a notebook with me at all times as a place where my thoughts go
uncensored. When I travel I tend to utilize my notebooks more often than when I
am home, but my home is a collection of notebooks in every corner of my
apartment, some half written in, others maybe a page with a scribbled thought,
others still, a mixer where my thoughts and notes mingle on a paper dance
floor.
I start out with the intent to dedicate an individual notebook for my
sketches, another for notes from reading, and yet another for lines for writing
that come to me while I go about my day, but in the end I grab the one closest
to me to let my thoughts escape and become concrete on a page. I’ve even tried
to organize my various outlets into a divider filled binder, but the mind knows
what the mind likes and more often than not my hand passes over that binder and
grabs my notebook a la mode.
The notebook of the moment is one I
guard with as much safety as I do my other sacred possession, my passport. No
two things explain me, or where I’ve been, better than these two items and
because of that they sit together in a space guarded closely in my handbag. I
know others believe in using travel pouches strapped closely to their bodies,
but travel isn’t about standing out and nothing says tourist quicker than the over
reliance on precautions that the traveler perceives as safety. Life is all
about perception, the traveler’s perception of their environment and the
local’s perception of the traveler.
Early morning I brace myself for another cold run in San Francisco.
I
start with the uphill today, steady my breath, keep it even as I concentrate on
the deep breathing that will get me over the hill. I need to remind myself to
ignore my natural inclination to view the hill as an obstacle to tackle, and
instead see it as just another part of my run that requires me to change my
tactic so that I’m putting in the same amount of effort as the rest of my run.
I slow my pace as I start the climb.
I crest the top of the hill and on the
downhill, I change my tactic once again to match my new terrain.
At the first
intersection straight means stopping and waiting, so I take a right and run
cross the street.
My breath becomes labored for a minute, I always speeds up
when running across the street, even one void of traffic, perhaps a legacy from
crossing streets in foreign places where cars do not stop for the slow.
I
continue on following the same pattern, avoiding stopping, and instead follow
the most readily available path, all with the vague idea of where I want to
eventually end, home.
The flight was over before I had a chance for rest, but then again I've
never been able to fall asleep on a flight.
My last moments in Weymouth were colored
in an early morning shades of dark blue sky with gentle lines of blues and
pinks making their path through the horizon. Aric, standing tall like a grizzly
in his checkered bathrobe, house slippers and an endless tangle of curly hair
that amplified his head to mythical proportions, hugged me good bye before I
shooed him back into the ocean cottage he opened up to me for the past few days
as I gathered my bearings and figured out my next destination after leaving the
dichromic country that is Egypt, at once both chaotic and peaceful. I spun the
digital globe and considered Ireland or Malta, but the prospect of being
in Dublin alone during St. Patrick's Day didn't excite me and discovering heavy
rains in Malta exiled the idea of spending the rest of my trip diving the
Mediterranean. My friend in London invited me to go home with him to Paris for
the weekend, but coming from two weeks in near solitude among tourists and desert
dwellers alike to a brief interlude in the hustle of London to four days of
lazing around a quiet port town in Southern England, the prospect of heading
back into the maddening urban sprawl that is Paris didn't excite me. The
original plan B was to meet up with a stranger I met in Dahab who lured me to
England with the prospect of getting my PADI Advanced Open Water, but the
frigid waters native to an English winter squashed those plans and a car tour
of the U.K. with said stranger didn't seem to make much sense anymore either.
To be completely honest with myself, after a brief interlude in Jordan, my
heart was in the Middle East, and the moment my flight touched down in London,
I knew I should have headed further into the Near East.
"Are you
heading to Amalfi?" I looked up from writing in my notebook to see a man
in a Toyota leaning across the passenger seat to shout out of the half rolled
down window.
"I'm waiting for my bus." I
replied back to him. He paused for a second to think of the English words to
make himself understood.
"I'm driving to Amalfi, do you want
a ride?" He gestured to the empty seat he was leaning across. I took a
moment to assess my situation. The night before, feed up with a rocky start in
Rome, I decided to take a train to Naples and figure out what to do when I got
there. I had the vague idea of going to Pompeii or to take a bus along the
Amalfi Coast, but where I ended up with up in the air. After a few more rocky
starts, I was on a bus soaring along the Amalfi Coast and enjoying my first
stop, Positano. From the moment I stepped out of the bus and took on the sights
of those famous coastal buildings growing out of the jagged coast line, I felt
like my heart was breaking from beauty. There are some places that I've
traveled to that have disappointed, but then there are others, like my first
glimpse of the Potala Palace, walking up to Angkor Wat while watching my
reflection melt together with the sacred buildings in the reflecting pool, and
the first, second, third, and fourth viewing of Emperor Qin's Terra Cotta
Warriors, that makes suffering through intense heat, uncomfortable plane rides
and nights of feeling alone turn into nothing more than a slight annoyance.
Every time my eyes fell on Positano I literally felt like I was living a dream,
suddenly every misery that I endured washed away to be less than a faded
memory.
At the mention of my law school applications in my post about applying for the Foreign Services, I immediately thought about the personal essay I wrote for the application. This was written in 2008 and I can see how I've strayed from my ideals, but we'll see if I can find my way in the next chapter.
You're like a rock that isn't satisfied with sitting on top of a cliff in contentment,” my father started, “you know there is a whole unexplored world out there and rather than staying comfortable you tumble down the hill and welcome the experiences in life that will leave you a little bruised and challenged until you come out of it with your edges smoothed over,” a pause, and he continues, “most people don't dare leave a life of comfort for the unknown, but you are and I'm proud of you.” There it was, the moment my father finally understood me. Earlier in the year, during a moment of hesitation, I approached my father to let him know that I was quitting my comfortable job, not taking the new position I was being offered in Los Angeles, and temporarily moving to Shanghai. Prior to that moment I spent weeks wondering why I was not excited about anything in life. I had wonderful friends, a job with a great company, and an offer from another company for what would have been an exciting lateral move and a new start in a different city, but I was bored.
You're like a rock that isn't satisfied with sitting on top of a cliff in contentment,” my father started, “you know there is a whole unexplored world out there and rather than staying comfortable you tumble down the hill and welcome the experiences in life that will leave you a little bruised and challenged until you come out of it with your edges smoothed over,” a pause, and he continues, “most people don't dare leave a life of comfort for the unknown, but you are and I'm proud of you.” There it was, the moment my father finally understood me. Earlier in the year, during a moment of hesitation, I approached my father to let him know that I was quitting my comfortable job, not taking the new position I was being offered in Los Angeles, and temporarily moving to Shanghai. Prior to that moment I spent weeks wondering why I was not excited about anything in life. I had wonderful friends, a job with a great company, and an offer from another company for what would have been an exciting lateral move and a new start in a different city, but I was bored.
My ticket found its way into my hands fifteen minutes earlier.
Five minutes before that a new friend, a stranger only an hour before, paid for
our beers and offered to help me negotiate the rate for a taxi after I
collected my train ticket from the hotel I was staying at.
 |
| Tarifa, Spain |
The beauty of Matt Foley came in his personification of everyone’s fear of growing up to be a failure living in a proverbial van down by the river, while everyone we know has gone on to become a big success with a fancy job title. With my ten year high school reunion looming, and with social networking sites like Facebook making the anticipation of said reunion into a tangible constant reminder with daily updates and posts from people flaunting their success, I admit, I started wondering if I’ve done anything with my life.
I was done with Gibraltar.
At this point I felt done with my trip.
Nothing in my day made me think the detour to this tiny British
territory wedged between Spain and the Mediterranean Sea was worth the time I
spent navigating my way around Spanish public transportation and sitting
through an indecent proposition that somehow spanned awkward, disgusting, and funny
all within two minutes. I was originally dissuaded away from going to Gibraltar
by a well meaning friend with the words, "It's just a big rock," but
I was in the area and knew I would never take a trip specifically to go to
Gibraltar. After all, its value lay in its oddity, like stopping by the Mystery
Point in Santa Cruz on your way to visit the California coast, you do it
because it's there. Though the territory's claim to fame is a rock often used
in metaphors for enduring stability, the true beauty finds itself in how ugly
all 2.642 square miles are.
Welcome to my personal blog!
I post about things I want to remember, if it helps someone
else along the way, all the better.
Translate
Labels
- Travel ( 77 )
- My Life ( 45 )
- Photos ( 39 )
- Photography ( 18 )
- China ( 14 )
- Education ( 13 )
- Writing ( 13 )
- Italy ( 12 )
- India ( 10 )
- destination wedding ( 10 )
- Food ( 9 )
- nieces ( 9 )
- Spain ( 7 )
- Asiana Airlines ( 4 )
- Language ( 4 )
- Travel Gear ( 4 )
- United States ( 4 )
- Ireland ( 3 )
- Korea ( 3 )
- Nepal ( 3 )
- Egypt ( 2 )
- France ( 2 )
- Greece ( 2 )
- Mexico ( 1 )
- Netherlands ( 1 )
Blog Archive
Popular Posts
-
My home reconstructing feels like it is forever ongoing, but I know it's really only been almost a month. This past week we were given...
-
My first time in Rome I was not very impressed with food there, especially after hearing about how amazing Italian food is. It wasn't ...
