I Ate Mine

I’ve this collection of Jards Macale from 1970 that is working well at 11:14PM, having just arrived in Hong Qiao airport and boarded my Di Di.  There’s a track where he introduces himself and his given name, which I’ve never heard before, rhymes with shards.  He slaps his slightly out of tune acoustic around, crowing away unintelligibly in Portuguese and it sounds a bit like three or four of his peers who led me to him.  It would be nice if you could preorder an acoustic guitar in your hotel room.  Thick black night outside.  I don’t see any stars in the sky.  But it’s not raining the way it was in Beijing when I left. 

Why do I eat the beef flavored shaobing that Air China provides on the late-night flights down?  It isn’t sustenance I need.  It isn’t tasty, certainly.  It only vaguely reminds one of a proper shaobing.    It is thrust in front of you and everyone else and certainly that is the reason why it is immediately consumed.   I ate mine and feel it sitting there inside my tummy after the fact.  Waiting for my luggage I was glad to be able to find a life saver in my pocket which helped to clear the musky taste. I couldn’t however remove the aftertaste in my mind’s eye from the Giorgi Armani ad up on the big screen in the arrival hall.  A lady in red, perhaps nearly a peer, which is to say older, was skydiving, and pushing a cart around in evening ware and generally looking ever so glad to be wearing Armani.

Wow, getting out of here and into the city is really quick when there is no traffic.  I feel like I just stepped into this car and now I’m on the exit ramp on Xizang Lu.  Nodding off helps. Now we’ve here and it’s like I never left.  But all week, this week, I’ll be up early and out early, with a new cohort of kids and start this course’ journey all over again. 

At the hotel, which I’ve stayed at for years now, the entrance we’ve been forced to use for the last year or so while the main entrance is under renovation is closed.  The entire area is walled of and I must walk around to grand new entrance.  Now, for the first time, ta-da there is check-in available on the ground floor.  I automatically go past it assuming the line will be quicker upstairs. The old lobby is now empty so I must go back down, grumbling to staff person I share the elevator with.  There are four young staff people standing around who apparently are unable to check anyone in.  “We are not the check-in people”, they say with a smile.  I grumble about this too and take my place in line behind a half a dozen other people.  Up on the screen are vaguely Italian looking woman, pouting, laughing and racing about the “Bonvoy” lifestyle.  No one in her world, is standing in line. 

Monday, 06/03/19