Funny People at the Airport

On the way to Cleveland earlier this week, I saw two very funny situations.

#1 - The New Age of Parenting - A woman was with her son and daughter, waiting for their flight to take off. The son (who is about 3) kept acting up, as kids do, running around and bothering people. While most mother's would merely yell at their child and put them in time out, this parenting prodigy used phrases like "You need to be responsible for your reprehensible actions". Maybe treating your kid like an adult is a great way to develop a mature individual, but when the kid needs to ask for a definition of half the words you use, its probably not that effective. She seemed like the kind of mother who liked to use big words in public to sound like she knew what was going on, but it seemed just to go over his head.

#2 - Overzealous Honeymooners - A couple was coming back from a trip to Hawaii and were going through all of their pictures on a computer. The wife was then writing down captions in a little notebook as the husband scanned through pictures, adding such interesting captions as "Mike in front of waterfall ... Mike in front of waterfall 2 ... ". Its kind of absurd to see one person doing this on their own, but even weirder to see two people actively doing it together. Match made in heaven, perhaps

Wagons East!

I am currently sitting in the Delta sky lounge, awaiting my flights that will take me to my big Asia vacation. Here is the schedule:

• Tokyo, Japan (5/1-5/5)
• Seoul, South Korea (5/5 - 5/8)
• Shanghai, China (5/8 - 5/11)

If anyone will be around that I havn't already talked to, please send me an e-mail and we will hopefully meet up.

This trip is going to be loads of fun - A true disconnect from work (since I can't do any work without my work computer), time with the boys and some real exploration. I'll try to post from time to time as interesting things happen. Let's see what kinds of craziness I can get myself into (fingers crossed for not getting stuck in customs)

Am I Chinese?

Today was the day for the long awaited meal with Britton. Both of us being us being so busy with work and the such, we havn't have a chance to hang out and catch up for about 4 months. Its sad how many things keep you busy in NY . It was a nice sushi meal at my favorite Japanese restaurant (Tsushima; 47th and btw Lex and 3rd).

The restaurant was pretty quiet. There were two other tables, one of which being a chinese couple. At some point towards the end of our meal, the guy is this couple saunters over to my table and says to me "I overheard part of your conversation ... are you chinese?"

I wasn't really sure why he was coming over to ask, but I calmly responded "Yes, why?" He then grunts back to me, as Britton recalls, "I thought so ...", gives me a very angry look for a few seconds, then returns to his table, where his girl is giving me the same angry eyes, taking over his shift as he sits down.

Britton and I are pretty much in shock. I went back through our past conversation and found three things I said that might have ticked off this guy enough if he misheard me:

1. In chicago, I saw an event hosted by the UChicago CSA which was pro-China, saying the olympics was about the games, not the politics. I asked a random asian girl taking pictures why they were marching (being unsure if there had been some protests they were trying to counter or something), and she went to tell me about something called the "olympics" (which she used air quotes to show me) and all the related debate. I thought it was kinda stupid how she didn't understand my question and thought it was ridiculous how stupid she treated me.
   
2. I mentioned how I didn't think i'd be attracted to any girl who didn't speak good english, saying how I had met some very physically attractive chinese girls who I immediately thought were unattractive once I realized they didn't speak great english.
3. I talked about my upcoming trip to Tokyo/Seoul/Shanghai and how useless i'd be because i didn't speak any asian languages.

Now none of these stories are really that offensive to anyone else but myself. But for some reason I greatly offended this man, as well as his (My!) people. Possibly, I was clearly not asian enough or talked negatively about my people in some accidental way. Regardless, it was pretty scary to get confronted by an angry chinese man. We didn't really feel it appropriate to get any dessert, as they kept looking over at me and it was pretty much just awkward.

Any thoughts on what I did wrong?

A Week in Chicago

Alright, I haven't written in this for a year. I'm going to take another shot at this and see if I can make this happen or perhaps this will just be one of those perpetual hobbies that coincides with the time of the year where I try to understand myself a but more.

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I'm in Chicago this week to work at our office here. The last few times I've been here, I was mainly at the office or the hotel, but this time around I'm making the effort to do a bit more exploring. I always tell people I think Chicago is boring, but that's probably only true for the financial district (the area I've been in the most). So today, I did a bit of exploring.

I have to admit ... this city is growing on me. I walk down the streets and they are clean. I walk along the river and admire the view of large buildings along the north loop. The people here seem less crazy than the random people I see in NY, which is always a calming notion. Food is overall pretty good, though I'm still having asian food as often as I have it in NY (50% of the time), which really isn't anything too new. I find it really interesting how part of the city is one "floor" higher than the rest, with a magical underground highway underneath. It reminds me of that square maze game where you need to navigate a metal ball through a maze, keeping the ball from falling though gaps in the maze and falling to its doom. Its like the city is raised and there is some secret underbelly which has yet to be uncovered... or maybe its just an efficiently underground highway.

Traveling and exploring is something I've been meaning to do for a long time (Chicago and everywhere else), but I'm always so preoccupied with work that there is little time to appreciate other things. I had a bit of a headache today because I think I was trying to do too many things at once: Walk, listen to music, think about work, read book on travel in Tokyo. Let's just hope my upcoming trip to Asia [more on this later] will help to give me a bit of clarity in my self-inflicted busy life ...