Thursday, March 13, 2014

Long Flight, Short Visit

Five days and five plate lunches later I'm back in the city again. It was good to leave before I started to look like a Hawaiian. The flight back was just short of ten hours. When we finally landed at JFK I realized that I had missed here. After all the traveling, going to and from places, this is the only place I can picture myself in at this time in my life. It's a good feeling.

The trip back home took a bit longer than anticipated. Just as I was walking out of the airport a Chinese girl caught up with me and asked me for directions to Wall Street in Chinese. She said it was her first time visiting and that her English wasn't very good. I was more than happy to help her out since we were going toward the same direction. The good thing about speaking Chinese is not that everyone knows the language but rather the fact there are tons of Chinese people scattered in just about every corner of the world. I've never visited a Chinese-speaking country outside of China but I have asked for directions in Chinese in quite a few places, the last one being Vienna. It's always good to see your people in foreign land. Now it's my turn to pay it forward.

20 degrees felt refreshing at first but my noise started to hurt on the two-block walk home from the subway station. When I got in the door I was greeted by a hot inferno. The room temperature had been set at a perfect 72 degrees all winter but now it's all out of wrack. It's as if someone wanted to make sure I come home to a warm cocoon. I was too tired before I pulled the blanket over me and slept for the rest of the day.

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