5/10/09

@HK

ok, one down. after a 14-hr stretch from sfo to hk, i now have another 7 hours to go until i reach the homeland. after the intense activity this past week, it was actually quite pleasant to be tied down to my seat, forced not to move. i finished and started the pilgrimage at about the same time, and have a strong desire to rename 'sievings' to 'the road to santiago'. and if i'm not making much sense it's because you may not know that a gave me the lovely going-away present of paulo coelho's novel. she also gave me tiny post-its so that i don't dogear the pages as i read. a mighty thoughtful present, that. thank you, a!

hk is beautiful. well, at least the airport is. i love that i can see through glass walls and ceilings far into the distance. i am in china... that feels a little hard to believe. easier when i try to log in to blog and have to guess what the boxes are meant for (since everything is in chinese).

but back to flying. flying is great. it helped exercise patience almost constantly, for i initially found myself switching between the extremes of wanting to hit land asap vs. the inertia that wished me never to move at all. eventually, it was all ok. there were excellent movies on the plane, and when i decided to watch one (for the first time in many flights), i found my headphone jack didn't work. too bad, 'cos they had dostana among the movies and jaane kyon in the audio collection. sleep beckoned, however, and all was well.

halfway across the world - neither here nor there - is a great place to be, i find. it is almost as though in this stretch of time i don't exist. moreover, the airport is one place where one finds every kind of person, from every kind of place. and we all share one thing in common. is not that intriguing?

i suppose the travelog has begun. next post - next country.

3 comments:

Adu said...

i woke up this morning, expecting a mail from you...but i guess this is good too :) safe travels!

Bright Butterfly said...

Oooo, Paolo Coelho's new book! very cool. please let me know if you like it. I've read (and loved) several of his others.

I had that same problem with the headphone jack once last year on a Hawaiian Airlines flight. They gave me a free deck of cards. ;)

8&20 said...

The book, guys, is excellent. Really. I will post some marked excerpts when I get a chance to, as well. Coelho is an insightful writer!