shutitdown: taking one for the anecdote

Results tagged “travel”

Pardon me, Señor Jesus

Last month I posted a story on Splice Today about attending the feast of the Black Nazarene in Manila. Check it out.

I really enjoyed my time in the Philippines. It's a country where they take their Catholicism so seriously that they're willing to crucify themselves and where they take their karaoke so seriously that singing 'My Way' off-key can get you killed.

I've applied to be a Kiva Fellow and have selected the Philippines, Cambodia, Indonesia and Samoa as the countries I would most like to work in. I'm not going to write about it more in case I don't get it, but I should find out soon. Fingers crossed.

By Lina on April 22, 2010 1:58 PM

The friendly skies

Luckily my chatter about my diminutive bag seemed to tickle the gate agent when I checked in at Heathrow. My first leg of the journey was London to Helsinki and then the second was Helsinki to Tokyo. I calculatingly threw on a pair of pearl earrings and deliberately didn't wear sneakers. Despite it being eight in the morning (early for the unemployed), I amped up the level of banter with the airline personnel, replete with quips and giggles. And the Finnish gods were smiling on me, because as I approached the gate, the agent said, "there's been a change to your ticket." My heart dropped because I had already managed--through sheer, unadulterated charm--to weasel my way into a really good seat.

You can't take that away from me, I thought, while knowing, of course, how easily they could. Because really, for today at least, that exit row seat was all I had. A ten hour flight begs for a bulkhead. But as I sadly relinquished my boarding pass, I saw the new seat number. 4D. Oh yes, I had gotten the coveted upgrade and have begun my backpacking trip in the front cabin drinking champagne and swaddling myself in cushiony duvets to try to sleep. Try, of course, because I was attempting to go to sleep at 6pm my time.

Two weeks ago I had a brilliant idea that I was going to avert jet lag by waking up 20 minutes earlier every day before I left, with the end goal of being up by 3am for the few days before I left. This would be another example of my attempts at self-improvement through unrelenting self-abuse. Obviously, the plan did not go as hoped, despite me programming my ipod to play Bobby Brown "My Perogative" at full volume in the early hours of the morn. The best I did was waking up at 4am. That night I fell asleep at 7:30pm, and is if to mock my attempt to violently wrest control of my own circadian rhythms, slept for 12 hours.

So despite the plush reclined seat, a couple of valium and some bubbly (only after the sushi, miso soup and soba noodles, of course), your valiant hero tossed and turned for hours before drifting off and dreaming of frequent flyer miles.

By Lina on October 15, 2009 4:53 PM

Travel light

The past 72 hours have been, perhaps not surprisingly, hysterical ones for me. The movers came on Monday to take my stuff back to the States. It went shockingly well, all things considered. When I moved from California to Ireland I had 24 boxes. When I moved from Ireland to London I had 19 boxes. And now, moving from London I had a dainty 14 boxes. If you ever needed solid proof that my life trajectory is moving in a positive direction, look to the details of my customs forms. A hoarder I am not.

And of course, desperate to prove this fact, I decided that I could manage my round-the-world trip with a carry-on size bag. When I go visit New York for a weekend, I can't keep it to a carry-on size bag. So why I thought I could do it now is anyone's guess. The two people I showed my bag to before I left both started laughing hysterically when they saw it. "You're fucking joking," one of them said, flabbergasted.

The other said, "Well, it will be a great conversation starter...like, so, you here for the weekend, mate?"

I had made a well thought out and very conservative list of items to bring. At T-24 hours I started panicking and adding things willy nilly. I need to bring a thermometer, right? I'm not playing Russian roulette with my health, here. I've brought at least 8 or 9 over the counter remedies for various ailments that I like to diagnose myself with frequently, and another 3 or 4 under the counter medications to help me "chill out." In the last few hours I added a self-help book, a polka dotted tank top, a collection of gummy candy that looked like pizza, a grimy white t-shirt, compression bags, hair serum, nighttime moisturizer (to compliment the daytime moisturizer, body lotion and hand lotion I already have) and a guide to reading menus in Japanese. I had to sit on my bag to get it to close.

The plan had been to "travel light" but by the time I made it to Paddington Station I knew that I had royally fucked up. Once I boarded the Heathrow Express I sat down on the floor and unpacked my entire bag. "Be ruthless," I kept muttering to myself under my breath, trying to avoid the stares of the businessmen wondering why I was counting and recounting my underwear and talking to myself. "Be ruthless." By the time the train pulled up to Heathrow I had filled one of the compression bags up with items that I had ruthlessly abandoned and made a solid commitment to myself to divest myself of even more of my possessions on arriving in Tokyo.

One of my friends was trying to understand why me, of all people--me, who considers a trip to the mall a sacred journey, me, who thinks of bric-a-brac as a fundamental human right, was even bothering to try to travel light. The only reason I can give is that I like challenging myself. I like putting myself in situations that I find very difficult, like Thanksgiving dinner with my family. I have a believe that the more excruciating I deliberately make my life, the better a person I will become. And this is why I have packed this child-size bag.

By Lina on October 15, 2009 9:12 AM

Early-onset midlife crisis

I've got two more weeks of work left. In the UK, you have to give four weeks notice, and I had to give five due to my length of incarceration at my company. After my last day, I am taking four days off to regroup, and then I fly to Japan.

From there I go to Korea and then China. After that I will try to go to Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam in no particular order. I'm thinking of making it a full-on RTW and going to Africa and checking out some of the parts of Europe that I haven't been to yet. I'm not sure how long I will travel for. I mean, I've emotionally budgeted around 12-18 months. I think if I start working before then I will probably kill myself, and quite possibly take out the entire typing pool in the process. But I don't actually want to say "Oh, I'm going traveling for a year." Because honestly, I might decide to go crawling back to my parents after four months.

The thing is, I am fairly certain that I hate traveling. I really like having my own space and my own things and my own sheets and my own pillow. I also know that this trip is going to be very difficult for me. I plan to spend 3-6 weeks in China. I don't like spending more than 45 minutes in Chinatown. It seems that me and the Chinese have very different ideas about personal space, for one. So I'm not sure exactly how I will handle this extended trip. Probably the same way I deal with my trips to Chinatown--with a snotty look on my face and trying to fit as much food in my maw as I possibly can.

But don't get me wrong, I am really, really looking forward to this. Just the fact that I have the opportunity to do this makes me so happy, and dare I admit, proud of myself. When I was 19 I never would have dreamt that I would have been able to do something like this on my own. I thought this was the sort of thing that only people with rich parents and chaperones were able to do. Six or seven years ago one of my biggest resentments was how little I had traveled, how I hadn't been able to do an exchange program in college or live abroad. And now I've been living abroad for three years, had to get extra pages added my passport and have enough frequent flyer miles to go around the world. And that's pretty amazing.

By Lina on September 25, 2009 11:50 PM
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