Ni Hao and Sayonara

Today, I did it. I purchased my ticket to Asia and I'm quite pleased with the arrangements. On May 23rd, I fly to Shanghai. Anne (click on "Anne in China" to your right for her great stories/pictures) will meet me at the airport. Anne and her boyfriend Brett have been teaching English there since September and I'll arrive just in time before she finishes her commitment. Anne's even allowing me to teach one of her classes for the day! Teaching thirty plus 3rd graders English conversation? I better start on my lesson plan now. I can teach whatever I want, and I was thinking of teaching them about New York City landmarks. I'll give them New York postcards afterwards as a souvenir. Anne says they'll really love that.

After about a week in Shanghai, we'll travel as a group to Hong Kong for a couple of days. I'd write about what I want to do in these cities, but I haven't picked up a Lonely Planet guidebook so I'm not sure what there is to do exactly. I do know I'd like to make the trip somewhat educational. One of my professors has a best friend living in Shanghai and she wants to acquaint him with me. I'm also going to try to provide English tutoring services to help cut down costs too.

After Hong Kong, I'll be on my own. Anne and Brett will return to Shanghai to entertain other visitors, and I'll travel to Beijing afterwards. Folks tell me that traveling alone is better than traveling with friends because one meets so many people on the road. There is this traveler culture that exists of travelers joining and departing different groups. A classmate of mine did this for two years starting in China and ending up in Eastern Europe. And this was after he served three years in the Isreali army. I don't think I'll be staying abroad that long, but my ticket home is open-ended up to six months so who knows how long I will be overseas? Right now, I have my return trip as July 11th. That's seven weeks away from life in the States. It could be more, but maybe less.

But before I leave China, I will do an extended layover in Tokyo for four days. This was an unexpected addition to my trip. Because I am flying Air Nippon, a Japanese airline, my travel agent was able to arrange a stay in Tokyo. I'll probably be so wiped out, I'll just walk around the city a la Scarlett Johansson in Lost in Translation. That will be another amazing city. After Tokyo, it’s back to New York for ??? Well, that will be determined at a later date.

Springtime for Timo

This was the weather this morning in Queens. In my quiet residential Brooklyn neighborhood, it didn't look much different. A snowfall in April? Not so uncommon I suppose. So I wasn't that surprised to find myself tiptoeing around puddles of slush while snowflakes birdshotted my face. The poor daffodils were slumped over, not strong enough to handle the snow that had filled their little petals. I rode the F train to school as I do, but when I ascended from the 23rd Street station, I found it was spring again! The sun was out, the streets were wet, but there was no snow anywhere to be seen. I was perplexed so I asked a classmate, "Did it snow in the city a little while ago?" "Yes," he said. What was a snowy mess in Brooklyn was now a sunny (though still chilly) spring day! The season had changed in just a 45 minute commute. Funny how the outside world can change so quickly while I'm riding the train underground, oblivious to what's happening above.

I recently saw my first Smart Car in the city. The car was parked on the street in Soho. Not sure how the miniature vehicle arrived in its place as I just read that the cars are not approved in the States yet. They’re approved in Canada though. Be careful if you’re considering buying one because there have been reports of unruly teenagers tipping the little cars over! Smart-tipping, the next urban past time for bored youth?

I am so glad that March Madness is over. Talk about sucking donkey ass! It’s kind of hard to get into the tournament when all your teams poop out prematurely. So many of the Big Ten schools performed terribly (screw alumni loyalty), but even worse, none of my Final Four picks advanced! I participated in Yahoo.com’s national pool and ended up in the 18th percentile. Simply ridiculous. In a pool of one million plus people, I rooted for Tim McKenna. Yahoo lists the overall leaderboard at the end of each day and the picks of those with the most points are visible to all. Mr. McKenna developed something of a fan club online because he was the only person in that entire pool that correctly chose ALL four teams in the final four. Normally, this isn’t so rare, but in a year where George Mason advanced as far as they did, it’s pretty incredible. Unfortunately, he had UCLA winning over Florida so his impressive picks didn’t help him in the end.

A Man and His Dog

I was in Chelsea Friday night for a going away party. One of the comics I've met through Dave, Erin, is moving to Los Angeles after living in New York for the past ten years. You may have seen her in the AOL commercial as the girl who at the end says, "Who wants cake?" She’s also in the Philadelphia Cream Cheese commercial as the angel sitting on the couch. When I asked her why she was moving, she told me she had to "get out." She had reached that point where the energy and the chaos of the city had overwhelmed her. She says she knows she’ll end up back in New York eventually. This happened to my friend Jeremy too a couple years back. He had to get out and in a span of three weeks, he quit his job, got rid of his apartment, and moved to San Francisco. He lived there about a year and now he's back. I wonder if that will happen to me. If I stay here, will the city become hectic enough that will need to get out?

While we were on the stoop saying our goodbyes, a guy with his dog walked past us. The dog was cute so we started petting it without asking the owner for permission. This petting went on for about 30 seconds. Finally, we realized we should not detain the dog’s owner any longer. About two minutes later, Erin said, "Wait...Do you know who that guy was?" Turns out it was Ethan Hawke. I suppose the picture above ruined the surprise. We were so enamored by the cute dog, we neglected to pay any attention to the dog owner’s identity! Had I known it was him, I would have told him I loved his ass crack in the play I saw last year, "Hurly Burly."

After the party, we went to Barracuda, which is not my favorite gay bar, but we were in the neighborhood. Just hanging out when this guy named Keith that I dated briefly from 1998 approached me! He was there with Skye, another Minneapolis transplant. It was so weird to see each other, and furthermore, to learn that he knows a bunch of the lesbians with Minneapolis and Madison origins that I know.