"Big Asia"
Every winter/spring, I make a trip to Asia to gather data. I have come to call the trip "Big Asia" in my head. This time, it's the longest trip yet-- about 18 days. It’s not that I’m accomplishing a lot more in terms of meetings. Things just got spread out because the meeting times happened to work that way. I’m hoping that means I’ll have time to do a bit of sightseeing.
Just getting out of SFO meant abandoning a few things. I had forgotten that undeveloped film can’t go in checked bags anymore because of the scan they do on them. So I dug through my bag while in the check-in line and managed to recover my camera, but not the spare roll of film. I just could not find that little black cylinder amid all the clothes and other stuff. Oh well. It’s not like I can’t buy more film along the way if I need it.
And then there was the ring. One time in New York City I bought a simple gold band that resembles a wedding ring, although it cost me all of $7. I enjoy wearing it sometimes just because it feels slightly naughty, like having on sexy black lace underwear. In fact, I have often chosen to wear it on plane trips to Asia (the ring, not the underwear). This time around, I suddenly realized while in the security line that it was no longer on my finger! I must have lost it in the bathroom when I washed my hands. Now perhaps someone will find it and wonder if it’s a wedding ring. (When I bought that ring, I had no idea I would end up leaving it in the San Francisco Airport. And if I'd been told that, it would have been like those weird prophesies, where you spend your whole life wondering how they will come to be true).
So I traipsed down to the gate, and was greeted by a commotion. About 45 young Japanese students (perhaps college-age—that’s “young” to me now), rambunctiously capturing their last moments in America. They were snapping pictures enthusiastically—groups of 5 or 8 or 10 would spontaneously form, and the camera of every member would be used to take a picture of that permutation. Then another permutation would form. It was particularly popular to want the teacher in the picture, something you probably wouldn’t see among American students. Anyway, it was fun to partake in their excitement vicariously.
The plane wasn’t too crowded; most of the middle seats were empty. I ended up sitting with a member of this student group, although he was up in “Economy Plus,” while the others filled the rear of the plane. It turned out he was an older student chaperone, just about to graduate from college, while the other kids were younger college students. They were all geology students and had gone to the US to visit the Grand Canyon and Mt Zion National Park. What a neat thing to do for a young geologist! This Japanese fellow explained that it was important to do these foreign trips so you could actually see what you were studying. I hadn’t thought about it, but Japan is really a young island—only about 1 million years old. It’s just not as interesting geologically as some formations in North America, which can stretch back 3 billion years (according to this guy).
He wants to be a petroleum geologist, looking for oil and finding more innovative ways of extracting it. I wonder if that’s a viable long-term career? Anyway, he was interested in that. Nice guy, too.
The flight was pretty uneventful otherwise. I watched three wildly different movies: “Terminal,” about a guy who ends up living in JFK terminal because he fell through a crack in the immigration system and could neither enter the US nor go back to his country (kind of a silly story); “Finding Neverland,” about the playwright who created Peter Pan and his relationship to a real family that inspired the work (a pretty good tale, although blatantly designed to be feel-good); and “Insomnia,” a thriller with Al Pacino and Robin Williams about a murder in Alaska (pretty predictable).
Now I sit in the United First lounge in Narita airport, a place I have spent many hours over the past few years. It’s not bad—free beer, wine, juice, snacks, etc., as well as phones and plugs for computers. Mostly it houses bedraggled Americans, suspended between worlds and held together briefly like an unstable molecule.
Then it will be off to Taipei, my actual destination today. That adds up to about 15 hours on the plane. I really wish they would reinstate direct flights from SFO to Taipei at decent hours.
Just getting out of SFO meant abandoning a few things. I had forgotten that undeveloped film can’t go in checked bags anymore because of the scan they do on them. So I dug through my bag while in the check-in line and managed to recover my camera, but not the spare roll of film. I just could not find that little black cylinder amid all the clothes and other stuff. Oh well. It’s not like I can’t buy more film along the way if I need it.
And then there was the ring. One time in New York City I bought a simple gold band that resembles a wedding ring, although it cost me all of $7. I enjoy wearing it sometimes just because it feels slightly naughty, like having on sexy black lace underwear. In fact, I have often chosen to wear it on plane trips to Asia (the ring, not the underwear). This time around, I suddenly realized while in the security line that it was no longer on my finger! I must have lost it in the bathroom when I washed my hands. Now perhaps someone will find it and wonder if it’s a wedding ring. (When I bought that ring, I had no idea I would end up leaving it in the San Francisco Airport. And if I'd been told that, it would have been like those weird prophesies, where you spend your whole life wondering how they will come to be true).
So I traipsed down to the gate, and was greeted by a commotion. About 45 young Japanese students (perhaps college-age—that’s “young” to me now), rambunctiously capturing their last moments in America. They were snapping pictures enthusiastically—groups of 5 or 8 or 10 would spontaneously form, and the camera of every member would be used to take a picture of that permutation. Then another permutation would form. It was particularly popular to want the teacher in the picture, something you probably wouldn’t see among American students. Anyway, it was fun to partake in their excitement vicariously.
The plane wasn’t too crowded; most of the middle seats were empty. I ended up sitting with a member of this student group, although he was up in “Economy Plus,” while the others filled the rear of the plane. It turned out he was an older student chaperone, just about to graduate from college, while the other kids were younger college students. They were all geology students and had gone to the US to visit the Grand Canyon and Mt Zion National Park. What a neat thing to do for a young geologist! This Japanese fellow explained that it was important to do these foreign trips so you could actually see what you were studying. I hadn’t thought about it, but Japan is really a young island—only about 1 million years old. It’s just not as interesting geologically as some formations in North America, which can stretch back 3 billion years (according to this guy).
He wants to be a petroleum geologist, looking for oil and finding more innovative ways of extracting it. I wonder if that’s a viable long-term career? Anyway, he was interested in that. Nice guy, too.
The flight was pretty uneventful otherwise. I watched three wildly different movies: “Terminal,” about a guy who ends up living in JFK terminal because he fell through a crack in the immigration system and could neither enter the US nor go back to his country (kind of a silly story); “Finding Neverland,” about the playwright who created Peter Pan and his relationship to a real family that inspired the work (a pretty good tale, although blatantly designed to be feel-good); and “Insomnia,” a thriller with Al Pacino and Robin Williams about a murder in Alaska (pretty predictable).
Now I sit in the United First lounge in Narita airport, a place I have spent many hours over the past few years. It’s not bad—free beer, wine, juice, snacks, etc., as well as phones and plugs for computers. Mostly it houses bedraggled Americans, suspended between worlds and held together briefly like an unstable molecule.
Then it will be off to Taipei, my actual destination today. That adds up to about 15 hours on the plane. I really wish they would reinstate direct flights from SFO to Taipei at decent hours.
1 Comments:
He wants to be a petroleum geologist, looking for oil and finding more innovative ways of extracting it. I wonder if that’s a viable long-term career?I suspect it'll be viable for a while yet; certainly in the U.S. it looks like we'll be depending on petroleum for both fuel and manufacturing products for the foreseeable future!
By Castiron, at 7:10 AM
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