The Intervention of Life

In spite of plans and dreams and goals, somehow, life has a funny way of intervening.  It creeps up without notice, inexorable as the tide, as insistent as a hungry child, and without the tiniest realization, before warning, before panic, it’s pulled me under.  I’m just trying to pull myself out and it may take a bit, but eventually, it will happen.  There’s been no planning on our Around-The-World trip aside from realizing that it’s such a misnomer since we aren’t travelling around the world, just select pieces here and there.  Yet, for lack of a better name, Around-The-World (or ATW) it shall stay. 

Besides that, all we’ve done is dream and dream.  Perhaps there will be more progress as the date approaches and the dream becomes closer to reality.  Stay tuned. 

9 Things: 10/6/2012

I apologize for the lateness.  Life can sometimes grab ahold and not let go for longer than anticipated. 

1. Check out the new Stanley Kubrick exhibit opening at the LACMA on 11/1/2012 via State of Unique

2. Reuse your old suitcases via Been Seen

3. Purchase beautiful jewelry based on the craziest road intersections in the world

4. Take your favorite spices with you by using Tic Tac boxes via Lifehacker

5. Drink through your favorite neighborhood with these glasses by the Uncommon Green

6.  Marvel over the gorgeous Icelandic landscapes captured by Andre Ermolaev via This Is Colossal

7. Enter into the hidden world of flight attendants through the photos of Brian Finke via wejetset

8. Decipher the population shifts of the US via Data Pointed

9. Find interesting things to do via Google Field Trip (currently only available on Android)  

I Put the Stares in their Eyes: Louisville, KY, USA

I’ve been Chinese-American all my life but it was always just a fact, like my hair was black, like my eyes were brown, like I was short, something that was but always forgotten until it mattered.  The kids I grew up with were a mix, Korean and French and Japanese and Irish and Indian and Spanish and Thai all tangled up until you couldn’t tell where one started and one ended and it didn’t matter anyways.  Their ethnicity had no bearing on me.  It was a non-issue, something that floated in the air around us but not explicitly acknowledged.

Yet as I walked down the streets of Kentucky, I felt their eyes upon me, the people passing us by.  Their stares brushed over my skin like the worst kind of paranoia, that indescribable tenseness that only comes from being constantly watched. When I finally gathered the courage to meet their eyes, I was met with a particular expression: a confused bemusement as if something inexplicable had entered their midst, some strange creature that had ventured into the daylight.  I had never felt my ethnicity so vividly, a mirror held up to my face, surrounding me until all I could see and feel was my differentness. 

No one mentioned it out loud though, no crudeness or rudeness, just the stares.  Instead, they said "Good day" and "Welcome" and "This is the bus stop you wanted to get off on".  I responded with "Thank you" and a smile tacked on for good measure.  They always smiled back.  In the end, their hospitality, their slow-drawled kindness was what finally penetrated through to my heart, melting down my reserve.  Even though the mantle of my Asian-ness still obscured my features, I lifted my head high, pushed my shoulders back, and joined in the revelry.

If Not Now, When?

It’s crazy to think that if everything goes according to plan, this time next year, I’ll be in some other country halfway around the world at the start of something my husband, Rick, and I have dreamed about for a very long time. 

The first inklings sprouted over two and a half years ago as I watched the beautiful country of Scotland shrink from my plane’s window and I barely suppressed the insane urge to run into the cockpit so I could tell the pilot to turn the plane around (not the most intelligent idea in these times of tense air travel).  I had just gotten used to being part of the country, to fit myself into the ebb and flow of Scotland’s people and culture.  I thought, "Two weeks was barely enough.  If only I could have spent just a little more time.  A month, maybe?"

One night, on one of our daily evening walks together, I tentatively broached the subject to Rick.   Instead of giving me his patented I-think-you’re-insane-but-I-won’t-say-it-out-loud look, he nodded and said, "I know exactly what you mean."

Soon the idea that had started life as just a passing longing, had grown and grown until we realized, flabbergasted, that we were really going to take a complete year off, to wander the world.  I kept asking Rick, "Are you sure about this?  Are you absolutely positively 100% sure that we should do this?"  He shrugged and said, "If not now, when?"  And I took a deep breath, "Ok."

I’m a planner by nature and there’s a lot of planning ahead of us to prepare for a year-long trip anywhere. Not only that, being the keeper of all things financial, I have the additional burden of making sure we won’t end up beggars on the sidewalks of some country thousands of miles away.  Some of the time, ok, most of the time, I think of everything we have to do, to prepare, the sheer amount of detail we must attend to in less than a year’s time, and I reel back overwhelmed. 

Then I think of Rick and his smile and his "If not now, when?" and I forge ahead. 

9 Things: 9/29/2012

1. You’re young so get travelling via Converge Magazine

2. Check out 75 years of milestones of Air Canada via Live Fast Mag

3. Take your tea like a native via the Wall Street Journal

4. Super-charge your ride at Tesla’s free solar charging stations via Gadgetose

5. Dine clandestinely at Gingerline in London

6. It’s time to see the Northern Lights via Huffington Post

7. Books light up the street for the Literature vs. Traffic installation via We Heart It

8. Explore the masterpieces displayed at the Paper Biennale happening 9/4/12 through 11/25/12

9. Discover the beautiful silks of Lyon, France via This Is Glamorous