Trick or Treat

Halloween has come and gone yet another year. Fortunately for many, the holiday landed on a Friday this year, which lends itself to all sorts of social possibilities: costume parties, fright fest movie marathons, pub crawls, etc.

I haven't decided if I like Halloween yet. The jury has been in deliberation about that now going on 35+ years. After all, sometimes it can be more of a nuisance than anything. Take trick-or-treating for example. I remember growing up on Park View Drive, and in the neighborhood, we had boatloads of kids. I remember we always had a large group of kids and adults that would go house to house, begging for candy. Occasionally I remember getting to the houses that gave the apples, the oranges, the stale old-lady candies (the kind that looked like they were dumped from an old candy dish, out of the wrapper, from some Victorian-esque parlor), the raisins (from the health food family protesting candy-giving), and the peanut chews. NONE of these ever made it to consumption.

And who the hell likes those orange and black wax-paper wrapped candies, or RAISINS for that matter, anyhow....

For me, the nuisance starts with the question, "well what am I going to give out THIS year?" When I first moved into my house, I took to buying full-sized candy bars for the kids. That only happened once. That was the year I had over 130 kids show up at my door. Anyone who's ever bought decent candy knows that this translated to spending a small fortune on kids I don't even know or like.

I then took to buying candy that I thought I would want if I was trick or treating. I like Reese's Peanut Butter Cups and Snickers candy bars. Of course, I didn't want to run out of candy, so I had to buy 7 or 8 large bags just to have enough. The result: it rained, it was cold, and I had 39 kids and about 5 bags of my favorite candy lying around the house as leftovers.

I'm sure my pancreas thanked me for that, as its life-span is probably 30 years shorter as a result.

The next step was just to forget the whole thing, and be occupied somewhere else that evening. Well, this is fine, but when one has nothing with which to occupy himself, it makes one go stir-crazy.

The final, and in my opinion more attractive option: I decided to give cans of flavored soda. Yes, the Faygo 12 packs of orange, grape, fruit punch, strawberry, black cherry, and root beer. I avoided the lemon-lime flavored soda, since I remember that when you were a kid, you only drank lemon-lime soda when you were a) sick, or b) jonesing for a sugared soda at a family reunion where all the good flavored kinds were already taken, and you were relegated to the bottom of the cooler green cans of lemon lime.

At $2.59 a twelver, canned soda certainly looked like it had more bang for the buck. It cost about the same as the bagged candy, and I thought to myself "what the hell....go for it."

The kids loved it...

In fact on about 3 occasions, I overheard the kids excitingly say, "this is a COOL house, he gives cans of soda! We have to remember this place NEXT year!"

Gee, I feel so lucky....

After all, it's so convenient to have to answer the doorbell about 45 times in a two hour time span. My doorbell was starting to make very weird warped bell chime sounds after a while. It was a little amusing.

Well, I think I've found my niche. It's practical. It's economical. And it's viewed as "cool".

And, I'm sure ALL of the parents will love me when their kids are wanting to drink it right away, get jacked up on the sugar, and then not want to go to bed until Easter.

And I smile.

Epilogue and Jetlogue (or lag)

I'm back. And everything is in English again.

Well, my mom and I made it to the airport in Hong Kong, for our United Airlines flight back home. The only thing that was eventful on the flight was the fact that the service was atrocious. What's ironic to me, is how no one was able to carry bottled water, or a soda onto the plane, even AFTER security. It was utterly amazing to me too, that physicians, the FAA, the airline touts the fact that one should keep hydrated, especially on a long flight. I would consider 14 hours in a plane a long flight.

Yet, at the same time, I think United only came around twice with water, they came around once with the drink cart about an hour into the flight, and twice with the Dixie cup of coffee or soda.

I knew it was a bad sign when the flight attendant started handing out a "Please Accept Our Apology" card for the bad service about 3 hours into the flight. I don't know if it's a good thing to be forewarned about the oncoming crappy service that we were about to expect, or if it would be worse not being forewarned. Either way, it was very strange.

There was some British male flight attendant who was a royal ass, once telling me that because I'm in Economy that the cream in my coffee would be milk, and then refusing to serve me an additional glass of water because I didn't want to reuse a cup with trash in it (with a used napkin and pretzel bag stuffed inside). I went dry.

Well, I was happy to get off the plane Thursday late afternoon, and made it to the baggage claim area. Of course it took an hour and a half to get through customs and to get our baggage. We made it to the bus depot to make it back to Janesville, where we were greeted by my brother and my three nieces! What a great sight to see, all of their smiling faces, and glad that we were home again safely.

The only thing now is the jet lag. I would have thought that after a week that my body would be back on track. But, I still get tired at strange times during the day (like noon) or at strange times at night (like 7pm). Or...on the other hand, I still am wide awake at 4 a.m. Again, I don't know which is better. I'm an early riser, but 4 a.m. is a little out of hand.

But what an awesome trip. My mom and I managed to bring home cool stuff for ourselves, friends and family, and for others. We got our silk comforters this past Sunday. I didn't get my guzheng like I wanted to while I was in China. BUT...I did order one online here in the States for about the same price, which should be arriving on Election Day. Here's what it looks like:

So anyhow, it's exciting.

It was great to hear feedback from some of you while we were abroad, and after we got home. I hope you enjoyed this travelogue. Keep checking back as pictures will be forthcoming. You'll get to see some of the things we experienced, as well as characters that were in this production.

Now, I think it's time for some coffee....I need caffeine to jar me out of the malaise of jet lag!

Chapter 21

This is the last morning in Asia. And I'm very ready to come home.

Yesterday afternoon, my mom and I had one more "cultural enrichment" experience in Hong Kong. We decided we were going to go to the Jade Market. Looking at where it was located relative to our hotel, we could very well have walked there, but after walking all over Hong Kong Island yesterday morning, we felt that taking a taxi there was a far more attractive option.

We were dropped off, and it was like landing in a whole different planet. There were very VERY few non asian people walking around the streets, and the Jade Market consisted of two covered pavillions where there were individual booths set up selling jade. While the souvenir hawkers in China were persistent, these Hong Kongers were relentless. In fact at one point, a woman had a jade (whether we know if it was true jade or not we don't know) bracelet on my mom faster than you could shake a stick at.

We then decided that we'd had enough, and started walking to find a cab to take us back to the hotel. Well, we had to walk several blocks through a less than desirable area of Hong Kong, where we saw all kinds of unusual food things like pressed duck, mystery meat, we walked briefly (like 15 seconds) through the Temple Night Market (before the smells caught up with us), and found the first cab. We showed the driver the card where we needed to be taken, which was printed in Chinese (Cantonese) and English. Even WITH the address and directions in multiple language, he still didn't have a clue, so we shooed him off.

We then got another cab, and the man knew where to go. We made it back to the hotel, and got ready for dinner. We ate dinner, came back to the room, and then started getting everything packed for our journey home. I guess we did have a lot of extra stuff with us, and we certainly needed the extra suitcase.

We had an early night, and this morning, we're up bright and early. We're getting things all ready to go, and are waiting for our driver to take us to the Hong Kong International Airport, and look forward to making it to Chicago at about 2:30 p.m.

It's been a great time here in Asia, but I am ready to be able to sleep in my own bed, not have to worry about packing, repacking, and living out of a suitcase, and looking forward to having my "noodle girl" Dixie curled up next to me on the sofa, or getting lots of wet kisses by my "big lur" Dillon when I get home.

And....I don't think I'll be eating any Asian food for a while. I think a nice big greasy hamburger and french fries sounds FANTASTIC right about now......

Anyhow....see y'all back in the States!