So as the earth rotates, we look eastward for the future. From Los Angeles to New York, from New York to London, etc. The sun rises and we look toward the eastern horizon with news about the coming day. Its pretty disorienting then to find myself in China: on the other side of the dateline your morning rise is connected to the end of yesterday in the West. I'm sitting here at 6am writing about the last 24 hours. Waking with reflections of yesterday. Maybe this will make me a better person or something. I guess its kind of like those contortionists who can twist all the way around and look at their own b-holes.
I flew half way around the world yesterday! To all you disbelievers out there, its definitely round and I'm currently on the other side -- having flown over the North Pole to get here. It looked very white.
I feel pretty white. And really am often the tallest one around. Which I guess is fairly good for my ego. Speaking of looking out over the Chinese, this hotel was advertised as having views of Forbidden City, but all I see out my window is a wide and low rooftop. Pretending that this is somehow "forbidden" is a fun game, making me imagine secret communist party goings on inside. Funny thing is, because of Chinese internet censorship, I can write this post (blogger.com ok) but am just realizing I can't read it (blogspot.com blocked).
Yesterday upon arriving in my room I had to call housekeeping to show me how to turn the lights on. Jet lag or cultural disconnect, I'm not sure. And then in the shower my curiously non-lathering body wash turned out to actually be body lotion. The label wasn't even written in Chinese. Maybe I've just pre-conditioned myself to be confused here. In any case, the result was incredibly smooth and silky skin.
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