Getting Back to Where You Once Belonged

So for those who keep up with this blog with decent regularity, you'll recall that my current plan is to head to Denver with my dad for a trade show in mid-October, then on to Vegas and from there on to LA, with the intention to fly to Asia from there. For those who don't keep up with this blog, that's my plan, you're now caught up.

Notice the plan was to fly back to "Asia", that is, there wasn't really a specific place I was certainly flying in to. Odds are I'd end up in Shenzhen at some point soon after my leaving the US, but I was dabbling with flying into Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, etc. And who was I kidding? Last night I booked the airfare, and as was going to be the case all along, I'll be going back to the place where my whole Asia odyssey really took off, the greatest city in the world.

So now that we've all watched that really awkward Chinese girl play piano whilst singing... schedule is as follows:

Chicago--->Denver October 12

Denver---->Las Vegas October 18

Las Vegas-->Los Angeles October 23

Los Angeles->Hong Kong October 27

Hong Kong-->Shenzhen shortly thereafter

Other assorted things:

Huge thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes yesterday! It was overwhelming to see the outpouring of birthday wishes from everyone, I really appreciate it. Also big thanks to the Baseball Gods for making my 23rd birthday the best day of regular-season baseball ever. Thanks to the mailman for delivering a new National Geographic on my birthday. Overall it was a fantastic day, so again thanks to everyone who made it so!

Had a solid 6 days in Philadelphia working a trade show this past week, it involved a number of very large meals, a lot of building/tearing apart of booths, and basically networking/practicing sales skills. Definitely a cool experience, and apparently I did such a respectable job that I've been asked to come down to Indianapolis to work another one next weekend, so a good way to make some extra cash before heading off to the Orient.

Interesting China fact of the day: I read online (i.e. questionable source) that the collective population of China consumes 50,000 cigarettes PER SECOND. Is THAT all?! I did the math and that equates to 4.3 billion cigarettes per day, or about 3 for every man, woman, and child in China. That number does seem a bit unrealistically high, but at the same time, anyone that's been to China knows that everyone there smokes, so it is possible. Either way, something to think about!

Ended up biting the bullet and taking the cheapest option to get back to Asia, my old nemesis Air China. I could have paid ~$75 extra to fly Air Canada, but that would have also involved a 7:00am flight out of LAX as well as staying like 1 day less in LA, so not worth doing. Consequently I'll begrudgingly be sitting on an Air China flight being the only white person (which will be awesome) and having the Asian guy in front of me immediately throw his seat back into my lap and leave it like that for the next 12 hours as we fly from LAX to Beijing. If nothing else, I get to spend a few hours in Beijing airport, which is a really cool place.

Well that's about it for now, main bit of news being the confirmed return flight to Asia. Big thanks again for all the birthday wishes yesterday, was really cool to hear from everyone. More news to come as it develops.