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Dec. 4th, 2002 02:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynOut of pure curiosity yesterday I wandered over to orbitz.com and asked it to find me airfares from Newark to Beijing sometime next September. (My sister is getting married during the summer and as I am in the wedding party it would be a bit cheesy to take a major trip the hell out of the country beforehand. Everyone in this family is involved with the prep.) The numbers I got back were around a thousand bucks American. I mentioned this to my mom...
She reminded me that I'd never taken the trip she and Dad had offered me as a college graduation gift, the one I'd considered to Scotland/Wales/etc., and then said that if I saved my own money from now until then, she and Dad might be willing to pay for part of the trip.
*boggle*
Most of me is pleased at this. Some of me is a little scared at this, because I'm a ... oooh, there's a cardinal outside my window!... member of Amnesty International and harbour a private fear that I'll get a visa application back with spit all over it - or worse, that someone will dig up some letter I wrote on some Tibet-related thing years ago while I'm there and next thing I know I'll have to remember the Mandarin for 'my identity papers have been confiscated'. I admit, I'd like to go but I'm kind of worried about the prospect... it might be stupid or ill-informed of me, but there it is, one more thing for me to overcome.
There is also a tiny part of my brain that is silently snarking at my family. Something to the effect of 'how come when I was this interested in science fiction back in eighth grade, you got worried about me losing my grasp on reality and forbade me to read the stuff*, but now that I've got an obsession with something more socially acceptable it's considered a good thing and worth encouraging financially?'. Seriously. If you replaced all my China books, pictures, posters, lessons, etc. with equal-sized, similar-in-variety** volumes of or about science fiction, my parents would most likely be arguing about an intervention. Not because it'd be an obsession with something not real, just because it'd be SF. I doubt anyone would freak out if it was all, I dunno, Dostoyevsky or something. Mind, I did like Crime and Punishment quite a bit...
But that's not the relevant part. Now I have to see about saving up the money. Now I have to see about finishing my damn master's. Now I have to see if I keep working here, or if I move to Denver or Virginia or California or Seattle, or what. Now I have to decide if I'm ready to go from the Big Wheel (Epcot) to the training wheels (Canada***) to the Harley-Davidson (China).
We'll see. I think I might ask for some Frommer's travel guides this year for Hogswatch.
*Not that this worked. Library paperbacks generally fit very well in the inside pockets of my jacket, or under a shirt, or behind my room's trash can, or between the bed and the wall, or...
**This would be a bit difficult to accomplish. I suppose 'The Science of Star Trek' and 'The Dune Encyclopedia' would be as close as one could get to an SF answer to Sima Qian.
***Let's face it, Anglophone Canada is almost a perfect place for Americans to get used to the feeling of being Foreign. There are enough similarities to keep a body comfortable, and enough differences to keep you well aware of the fact that This Ain't The States, Dammit.
She reminded me that I'd never taken the trip she and Dad had offered me as a college graduation gift, the one I'd considered to Scotland/Wales/etc., and then said that if I saved my own money from now until then, she and Dad might be willing to pay for part of the trip.
*boggle*
Most of me is pleased at this. Some of me is a little scared at this, because I'm a ... oooh, there's a cardinal outside my window!... member of Amnesty International and harbour a private fear that I'll get a visa application back with spit all over it - or worse, that someone will dig up some letter I wrote on some Tibet-related thing years ago while I'm there and next thing I know I'll have to remember the Mandarin for 'my identity papers have been confiscated'. I admit, I'd like to go but I'm kind of worried about the prospect... it might be stupid or ill-informed of me, but there it is, one more thing for me to overcome.
There is also a tiny part of my brain that is silently snarking at my family. Something to the effect of 'how come when I was this interested in science fiction back in eighth grade, you got worried about me losing my grasp on reality and forbade me to read the stuff*, but now that I've got an obsession with something more socially acceptable it's considered a good thing and worth encouraging financially?'. Seriously. If you replaced all my China books, pictures, posters, lessons, etc. with equal-sized, similar-in-variety** volumes of or about science fiction, my parents would most likely be arguing about an intervention. Not because it'd be an obsession with something not real, just because it'd be SF. I doubt anyone would freak out if it was all, I dunno, Dostoyevsky or something. Mind, I did like Crime and Punishment quite a bit...
But that's not the relevant part. Now I have to see about saving up the money. Now I have to see about finishing my damn master's. Now I have to see if I keep working here, or if I move to Denver or Virginia or California or Seattle, or what. Now I have to decide if I'm ready to go from the Big Wheel (Epcot) to the training wheels (Canada***) to the Harley-Davidson (China).
We'll see. I think I might ask for some Frommer's travel guides this year for Hogswatch.
*Not that this worked. Library paperbacks generally fit very well in the inside pockets of my jacket, or under a shirt, or behind my room's trash can, or between the bed and the wall, or...
**This would be a bit difficult to accomplish. I suppose 'The Science of Star Trek' and 'The Dune Encyclopedia' would be as close as one could get to an SF answer to Sima Qian.
***Let's face it, Anglophone Canada is almost a perfect place for Americans to get used to the feeling of being Foreign. There are enough similarities to keep a body comfortable, and enough differences to keep you well aware of the fact that This Ain't The States, Dammit.
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no subject
Date: 2002-12-04 01:05 pm (UTC)It's one of those things that you never know til you try. I'm a little nervous about going to Ireland. We're going to try to go in either May or September of 2003. Of course, out of BWI, it's only about $400, rt. If you get the chance, go for it!
no subject
Date: 2002-12-05 12:34 am (UTC)I do know of someone who was kicked out of Malaysia at the airport once they read the name on his passport, but then he wasn't your average Amnesty member, he had been doing a lecture tour that was basically "Why the people running this regime are horrible people who ought not to run a whelk stand" and had made it onto some sort of blacklist (funny that).
I doubt they take much notice of 'mere' membership of Amnesty anymore in most countries.