Back in the U.S.A.

In a departure from the normal topic of China, this time I’ll share a few pictures from my recent trip back to the US. I took the direct flight from Beijing to Seattle on Hainan Airlines, which saves a lot of time compared to even the Air Canada route via Vancouver.

The first few days I was home, the weather was reasonable. Here’s a clear day view from our front deck.
I promise if you look really closely you can see a bit of water between the trees. That’s something you can’t get in Beijing (and I’ll leave it to the reader to decide whether I mean the water or the blue sky).

This is a cat named Baby.
She is not a skinny cat.
No, the cat in the picture above her is not her, but another cat with a strong resemblance.

When she gets a chance, she likes to hang out in the yard.
Speaking of the yard, there were a few dahlia stragglers still in bloom.
And speaking of cats, here’s the other one, generally called Pele.
Here’s one of the parts of the house in Seattle that I miss:

Another highlight of the trip was seeing Sam Phillips at the Triple Door. This is a really nice club in Seattle where they unfortunately keep the lighting really low.
She is one of my favorite singer/songwriters, with a wonderful expressive voice.
She’s a pretty good guitarist too, and plays both acoustic and electric. And in case you’re wondering, that other instrument is a Stroh violin.

Her drummer also used uncommon instruments.
Here he’s holding a drum in one hand and hitting it against his leg while he plays a cymbal with his other hand. He also had a tambourine strapped to his ankle and a table full of various objects to hit and shake.

One of the fun things she did was for the song “Animals on Wheels.”
She was accompanied by a piano recorded on a microcassette which she held up to the microphone.

And all too soon, the stay in Seattle was over (though I’ll admit to being tired of the rain), and it was time to return to Beijing.

Here’s a rugged part of Siberia we flew over.
Here in Beijing, winter has definitely started its inquiries, and will soon be moving in. After a couple of cold nights, I got my heat turned on, so all is fine now at home.

While I was away, those of my coworkers who are still with the company moved into a temporary office space at The Place, which I’ve written about before:
At the moment, we’re all on folding tables crammed into one room.
That picture was taken with my BlueBerry, so excuse the quality.

Sometime next month our permanent office should be ready. It’s also at The Place, in one of the other towers.

Frozen transit

Location: Over the Pacific Ocean somewhere
Time zone: Pacific Standard Time

Turbulence, bad enough that they suspended beverage service. I shouldn't be surprised, since the flight from Seattle to San Francisco was rough and the route from SF to Beijing covers the same general area at the start. On the news this morning I saw a big weather system over the northeast Pacific, and that's where we are. Good thing I got my Bacardi and Pepsi before the crew had to strap in, though it's a challenge to pour from the can into the little cup with the ice without spilling. So far so good.

The movie showing right now is The DaVinci Code, which I saw two weeks ago on the eastbound flight, so I've got The Rough Guide to Bollywood on the Zen. I finished A Deepness in the Sky as we waited on the tarmac at SFO. Very good book - not surprising given the quality of the other Vernor Vinge books I've read. He manages to straddle big concepts and human-level things very nicely.

This is one of the roughest flights I've been on. I try to relax and smile and treat it like a rollercoaster ride where you can't see what's coming next. Whee! Rum on an empty stomach might in this case might actually be a benefit...

I hope it doesn't last too long, though, since I didn't get anything to eat in SF.

Later...

Location: Over the Bering Strait
Time zone: Approximately on the International Date Line
Sometime during Little Miss Sunshine, around the time when the family arrives at the pageant, even Kafka on the Shore couldn't keep me awake and I turned off my reading light for a nap. Not long after that, more turbulence woke me up. The credits for the movie were running, so I knew it hadn't been long. I saw that the guy next to me was out of his seat, and started to get up, taking advantage of his absence to escape my window seat. Just then they turned the seatbelt light back on. I opened my window shade to see a bizarre scene below. It didn't even look like something from this planet, but I know things often look strange from high above. It was like giant sheets of ice suspended over nothingness. And above it all, in a strange blue fading sky, was a full moon. I quickly pulled out the camera, though I have little hope it could capture the scene. When the trip display came back on the screen, I saw that we were passing over the Bering Strait.

Location: Over the Sea of Okhotsk
Time zone: Unknown

And now I'm looking down on the barren white mountains of eastern Siberia with late afternoon sun turning the snow a little pink. I'm very glad I'm six and a half miles above it. Still six hours to go. The land below is incredibly desolate, just thousands of bare mountains dusted with white. I wonder if they have a brief season of green there. The land seems so empty, and I can easily imagine that even in the long history of humankind, there are many of those valleys and ridges that no person has ever walked upon. Why would anyone? There's nothing there, and surely not much to eat for any kind of animal, and it's not on the way from anywhere to anywhere unless you get to the age of air travel.
The ice looks different here in the Sea of Okhotsk, more fragile, kind of like crumpled wax paper pressed between two sheets of glass.

Location: Over some part of Siberia
Time zone: Probably the same as China Standard Time

I’ve started seeing roads and the geometric patterns of agriculture, and I am comforted by the knowledge that I am once again traversing the world of human beings.

I would like to publicly thank the artists whose presence on my Zen made the trip more bearable: Shylock, Dizzy Gillespie, Danielle Dax, the Strawbs, Michael Brook, Miroslav Vitous, Tasavallan Presidentti, Richard Thompson and the rest. Thanks also to Vernor Vinge and Haruki Murakami for writing such enjoyable books.

Location: Beijing, China
Time zone (internal): Undetermined

I'm sure I could say more, but it's past 9:30 and I'm more asleep than awake. My coworker TG brought me some leftover pizza from the place across the street to fill the void in my refrigerator (and stomach), and CL sent an email excusing me from going to the office tomorrow.

Apparently, the internet connection from here to the US has been unreliable lately due to the earthquake off Taiwan. Oh, joy.