After ten brutal weeks that climaxed in what were possibly the three most gruelling weeks of my professional life, I am off on a well deserved vacation. Tomorrow afternoon Mrs. Imagethief and I will cram ourselves into the United nonstop for San Francisco for two weeks of immersion in American culture. I've got a laptop full of movies, an iPod full of tunes and some noise reducing headphones. The only thing missing is a couple of Ambien tablets. And a business class boarding pass. But you can't have everything.

After eleven years in Asia going back to the US is always a little weird for me. It still feels like home...kinda. At the same time it feels sort of hallucinatory, like stumbling into Brobignag, where everything is much bigger than it should be. Especially cars and meals. Of course, with the past couple of years worth of Porsche Cayennes and Land Rovers, Beijing is catching up on the car front. But the meals still have a ways to go.

Nevertheless, I always enjoy the trips. To paraphrase, you can take the boy out of America, but you can't take America out of the boy. Unless, I suppose, you're a North Korean torturer with an assortment of rubber hoses and steel hooks, in which case I suppose you probably can take it out.

But that hasn't happened to me --at least not that I consciously remember, I was on the North Korean border a few months ago-- and it never takes long for me to feel reasonably comfortable back in the States. And that is usually about when I start thinking I ought to get back on the plane and come back out to Asia.

I'm looking forward to seeing my old college buds again. They're all well settled in suburbia and bringing up amazingly well adjusted kids. This is no small achievement. I went to college with these people and saw the things they did to their bodies. Frankly, I'm amazed they could reproduce. But it all seems to have worked out well. Some of them have teenagers. I have cats. That should give you an idea of my relative level of life-maturity.

I've got a comprehensive list of the food I'll want to get while I'm in the US. Here it is:

1. Mexican

Pretty much everything else I can get in Beijing. But good Mexican...they just haven't got that worked out here. And Tex-Mex isn't the same thing. Tex-Mex is the Mexican equivalent of Mu Shu Pork: a noble idea bastardized for American tastebuds. I'll be heading town to the grimy Taquerias of the Mission District, where I can have a serious burrito (or, as Hose-B and I used to call them in our starving student days, Mexican Food Logs) rolled for me by an honest-to-god illegal alien. Imagethief supports amnesty for all illegal Mexican restaurant workers. I'll do what I must to get my hands on good food.

Anyway, I might post here or there while I am on vacation. We'll see how it goes. I have a few things that I'd like to write but haven't had time to do. And I have a months old video of that trip to the North Korean border still waiting to be edited into YouTubeable (how's that for a clunky word?) form. Who knows? A couple of quiet nights and I might get pen to paper.

Meanwhile, Imagethief wishes all readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. And because we are politically correct here, a happy Hanukkah, a pious Eid al Ftri, a bitchin Kwanzaa and, if all else fails, an aspiritual but secularly joyous holiday season. May all your presents be as good in the opening as they were in anticipation.


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