Traveling Fleets

January 21, 2010

I woke up dreaming about Beijing. The novel I have been reading keeps on talking about how amazing it is. Shit… so I’m on the opposite side of the world… Does this mean I have to find a way to get there?
A little later that evening…
So, I wrote an email to my friend that I met in Kowloon the first week I was here (the Chinese elevator guy, named Wei) We had been writing brief hellos to each other through email since the day he left. My letter basically explained how the book keeps on bringing up Beijing and how awesome the street pancakes are and how wonderful the life can be. Aside from a mere proclamation, I also said I hope we continue to keep in touch. Wei replied…. That he wanted to buy me a ticket to come up and stay, granting me the chance to agree/disagree with the teachings of my beloved novel. I had many questions to be answered. Did I want to entertain the possibilities with this guy? Should I let someone volunteer to be responsible for me in another city 900 miles from me? Was I sure of what kind of situation I was really getting myself into? I remembered the attraction between us, but I also recall spending only a couple hours with this man. I definitely don’t want a romance… that’s not what this trip is about. But, how can I pass up a free trip to Beijing! I called him the next day and told him that I wanted to come just as friends which I believed it not to be such a remarkable request considering we’ve only met once anyway. He agreed, and the ticket was booked.

January 22, 2010

The events of this day pretty much sucked all the way up into I got into Beijing at midnight. I was out of Mui Wo by 10am and tried to make sure everything was right and ready to go. Wei booked the flight for 545pm in the afternoon, so I was thinking I had plenty of time. The course of the day after this point of poor planning resulted into me missing the ferry boat at 10am, making me late to the visa office before they closed for lunch. Two hours later, I got the bus that had to drive through 5pm rush hour resulting in me missing my flight by 10 minutes. Luckily, somehow without getting discouraged, I worked through each hurtle and got myself out of the country somehow, and on the next plane at 7:30pm with a small fee of 100HKD.

(it’s times like these though that I deeply doubt my abilities to be successful. How the hell does anybody miss all three important parts of a journey, in one day nonetheless!!) And, it’s always just when I think that I’ve got it all handled. Man, if anyone, or source, or energy, or God can tell me what the fuck I can do to remedy that… please spare me the stress and embarrassment!! Sheesh!

Moving on… Wei picked me up at the airport and took me straight to a coworker’s going away party at the Party Place. Ever heard of a 3 story karaoke hotel? Yeah, me neither. Chinese love their American sing-a-longs, haha, Welcome to Beijing.