Category: travel

night and day

I’ve now been in Hong Kong a whole week, and I have so much to write about that I don’t see how I can share it all while I’m still here. Instead, I will just offer a little teaser: This has been a trip of contrasts.

Central and Admiralty districts, Hong Kong Island, as seen from a godawful touristy harbour cruise by night.

Sai Kung district, New Territories, Hong Kong, as seen from the tail end of a breathtaking hiking trail by day.

I have two days left, one of which (today) will almost entirely be taken up by the conference. The “almost” part is only because I have decided that I’ll probably need to ditch the conference for a couple of hours to fit in a last coffee date with one of my local friends. Tomorrow I have reserved for going to Macau.

delayed onset jet lag

I should be running off to the first talk of the day, but I find myself dragging. On Monday and Tuesday, I ran around like crazy, trying to fit in as my things as I could, meeting up with my two local friends, and being so excited to be here in Hong Kong that I only felt tired when I sat down in my hotel room. Yesterday (Wednesday), the conference started. As you may know, conferences involve a lot of sitting in one place, and listening to people talk. Suddenly, the tiredness kicked in. After about 8 talks (which, admittedly, sounds like a lot) I realized that I was falling asleep on my feet (because many of the rooms don’t have enough chairs). I headed back to my hotel room for a nap. Today is not off to a promising start, as I woke up at 5 am, for no good reason, and could not get back to sleep.

In spite of the tiredness, I am still having a fantastic time. I have been doing quite well with achieving my pre-trip goals, with several items already completed or in progress, and a couple more scheduled. I hope to have a chance to write more about my packed first 2 days, and share more photos. But I think it will have to wait.

I’ve landed

I’m in Hong Kong now. Woohoo! But I need to try to get some sleep so I can start exploring for real tomorrow. Meanwhile, here are a couple of photos.

A view from the plane. The pilot was considerate enough to approach not only from an angle that gave my seat a good view, but also one that I can easily match up with the maps I’ve been looking at. We’ve got the Wan Chai district running along the top of the lower landmass, and Kowloon across the water. I am staying in Wan Chai, just a bit left of center, apparently quite near that fairly tall building with a spire.


A view from my 20th floor window. (See the spiky building?)

packing my bags

In just 6 days, I’m going to be on a flight to Hong Kong.

Yup. I said Hong Kong.

I can’t even express how excited I am about this trip.

John, wonderful partner that he is, will be single parenting while I am away. I’ll be attending a conference in Hong Kong, and will be staying for 8 days. However, seeing as travel to and from takes such a long time, I will be gone largely for 11 days. In case you are unable to do the math in your head, 11 days with 2 small children and only 1 parent equals a really freakin’ long time. But John was willing and remarkably supportive, if not necessarily eager to be rid of me, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. (It also would have been unreasonably expensive for all of us to go.) I wanted to try to minimize my away time, but seeing as I will be travelling to the other side of the planet, I decided not to skimp too much on my end. Hence the 11-day absence.

The conference is 5 days long, which leaves only 3 days of being a tourist, at least some chunk of which is likely to be eaten up by jetlag. (It looks like I’ll be cheating a bit, though, and ducking out of the conference one of the 5 days.)

I have yet to work out the specifics of my plans for my non-conference time. Among my goals for my stay are:

  • A trip to Macau, the nearby former Portuguese colony that is a UNESCO World Heritage Site
  • Seeing a Hong Kong action movie in Hong Kong
  • Eating obscene amounts of delicious food that I can’t easily find at home
  • Taking obscene amounts of photos that I definitely can’t take at home
  • Going on some sort of hike or excursion to a green space (YTSL of Webs of Significance has been taunting me for years with gorgeous photos of her hikes around Hong Kong. You might be amazed at the lush nature that can be found there!)

I am very excited that I’ll be getting to meet up with YTSL herself. (She’s one of my earliest blogging friends. We coincidentally started our blogs on the same day almost 5 years ago, and “met” only a month later through our mutual love of movies with kick-ass women characters.) I’m also happy that I will get to see a friend from highschool who now lives in Hong Kong.

I am very much looking forward to the conference itself, too. It is the International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, known informally as ICPhS (or “ick-fiss”). It takes place only every 4 years. I went to the last one, in 2007, which was how I ended up in Saarbrücken, Germany. It was a fantastic conference, and I’ve been wanting/hoping/dreaming about going to the one in Hong Kong ever since.

As you might expect, I have a huge number of things to go before my trip. For a start, I have a lot of work to do on the presentation my research group will be giving at the conference. (I won’t be the one speaking, but I tend to be the one who does graphics for our presentations.) I also have a variety of home and trip-prep things to do. Unfortunately, the timing of my big trip coincides inconveniently with our daycare provider’s own vacation schedule. She’ll be closed this Wednesday through next Tuesday. This means that I will have Theo on my hands for the 3 days before my trip, and also Phoebe on one of those days. This leaves 2 full working days, one of which I have committed to meeting with my advisor to discuss my own research “progress.” (Though likely we will also talk about the Hong Kong presentation, as my advisor will be the one presenting.)

I’ve been wanting to write about how much I love travel, and was thinking that it would be one my “40 things I like” posts, but I don’t see myself having the time to invest in that right now. I have too many things to pack in during my next few days.

Did I mention that I’m going to Hong Kong?

paddling on the river

I haven’t participated in PhotoHunt for ages, but this week’s prompt of “silhouette” was too good for me to resist. Because one of my all-time favorite photos is a silhouette, taken on the riverfront in Sevilla, Spain:

Sometimes it feels like the universe is conspiring to keep me from getting my work done.

After an hour and a half of shovelling with the snow still accumulating as I shoveled, coupled with not seeing any signs of a snowplow on our road till almost 10:30, I realized that it was not feasible for me to get the kids to daycare and preschool this morning.

Yesterday the kids had a late start due a dentist appointment, and for related reasons which I may get into here later, I ended up keeping Phoebe home with me while I tried to do work. (I managed some, but not a full day’s worth.)

Last week, as I mentioned, I did not get home, as scheduled, on Tuesday night. (Due to the snow in Boston.) And while I did get home reasonably early on Friday, it was following a pretty hellacious red-eye-with-a-connection during which I probably got about an hour of sleep (cumulative). All night. (The “overnight” flight from San Francisco to Chicago was about 3 and a half hours long, starting at midnight. I had trouble falling asleep, but finally managed to about half way through the flight. Only to be awakened shortly thereafter by a man in the row behind me, who was apparently watching the in-flight movie, and forgot that he was wearing headphones when he very loudly asked the flight attendant for a beverage. (Tomato juice.) (Two cans of tomato juice.) (Which he then proceeded to slurp.) (LOUDLY.) I was so annoyed that I didn’t fall back asleep till the descent, and woke up on landing. Then I had a 2-hour layover, which isn’t long enough for a nap, and then a 2-hour flight to Boston. I dozed off a couple of times during that flight, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve been in lecture classes during which I got more sleep. Seeing as I had an hour of driving to do to get home, I caffeinated myself up at the airport before going to my car.

By the time I got home a bit after 1:00 p.m. on Friday, I was tired and wired, and while I theoretically had about 3 hours to work or sleep before John brought the kids home, in practice I successfully managed neither.

While I have managed to get some work done here and there over the last 2 weeks, mostly at night, I have not had a full workday.

I was completely caught off guard by today’s snowstorm. Having only checked my weather widget, I saw a forecast high of 38, along with the icon for a mix of rain and snow. I hadn’t realized that these events would be after a night and day of cold temps and heavy snow. Right up to the point when I came in for a break from shovelling once I’d seen the snowplow, and saw how late it was, I really and truly thought that I would be able to have a productive day. In the end, I realized that the universe had other plans for me.

The universe wanted me to bake gingerbread.

snowed out

As you might have heard, Massachusetts was hit by a major blizzard Tuesday night and all day Wednesday, leading the governor to declare a state of emergency. Pretty much everyone was snowed in, with schools and most businesses closed. People all over the state spent all day Wednesday shoveling out.

Not me.

This is the view that greeted me Wednesday morning:

My flight back on Tuesday was scheduled to arrive at around 10:30 p.m. in Boston. It was cancelled. Along with, as far as I can tell, all Boston flights on Wednesday. On Tuesday it looked like the earliest I could get back home was Friday night around 10 o’clock.

So much for trying to minimize my time away from home!

I did eventually manage (my third rescheduling with the airline) to get a reservation for a flight that is scheduled to arrive in Boston just before noon tomorrow. Assuming the weather cooperates (which is a pretty big assumption, seeing as I’m going through Chicago), I’ll be getting home a few hours before the kids get home from preschool and daycare. I’m just hoping I can at least get home well before their bedtime. And time a nap would be nice, seeing as my flight to Chicago is a redeye. (Didn’t I say I didn’t want a redeye? Sigh.)

I’ve been enjoying this bonus time with my mother, sister, brother-in-law and nephews–3 extra days. Actually, I had trouble really enjoying myself on Tuesday until I got my flight plans worked out. I was distracted by trying to figure out my travel schedule and my work schedule, worrying about the impact of this on John’s work schedule, and missing John and the kids in a much more intense way than in the previous days. I had really been looking forward to getting back to them. But once I had some reservations on flights that were not likely to be cancelled (unlike the airline’s initial move of bumping me to Wednesday flights, which I knew would also be cancelled), and once I’d talked with John and the kids, I settled in to enjoy the bonus days here. (I’ve also managed to do some work–my research group is submitting a big paper in a few days, and I’d committed to doing a lot of work for that this week. After I got home. Ahem.)

In all, this has been about the best possible major travel delay. I’ve been safe and comfortable, and not stuck in an airport with crowds of cranky people, sleeping in chairs or on floors, and not having access to a shower. (Yes, I have experienced that sort of delay.) The expense to me is moderately small, limited mainly to the cost of airport parking for 3 more days. I don’t have to worry about paying for a hotel. And even better, I’ve been with people that I love. (It’s been a really great visit, by the way.)

Now I’d best get back to work!

packed

I’m out in California now. I got in yesterday around noon. I wrote the stuff below over the course of yesterday, but didn’t have a chance to post any of it. (Warning: this post is rambly and largely unedited.)

—-

I’m on my way to see my family in California. My flight’s about to board. It’s a full flight, and they announced that there usually isn’t room for carryon bags of passengers boarding in groups 3 & 4. I find this really irritating. (My boarding group is 3.) More people are avoiding bringing checked bags, since most airlines charge for checked bags. So more people carry on bigger bags. (I also find it annoying that I could have paid an upgrade fee to get “priority boarding,” which I guess effectively guarantees room for a carryon.) Anyhow, I just checked my bag at the gate. Here I was feeling so pleased with myself for having packed light enough to not need to check a bag. It’s a pretty small bag, too. At least I didn’t need to pay to get it checked.

—

I was up really late packing, which is a pre-trip tradition for me. I always overthink things when I pack. (I pretty much always overthink things in general.) Being determined to pack light, I wanted to maximize the coordinatability of my clothing. (I realize that is not a word, but I am taking advantage of the productive morphology of English, and packing on those derivational affixes.) I spent a fair amount of time tracking down and laundering items, some of which I ended up not selecting anyhow. (It was good to get caught up on the laundry, in any case. John doesn’t need to add hunting for tiny socks to his daily wrangling activities.) In the end, I probably both over- and under-packed. I will probably end up doing the same thing I do at home, which is mostly wearing the same stuff over and over again.

—

I’m on board now, and glad I checked the bag, seeing as the overheads were completely packed. For that matter, I’m not sorry to have passed on the boarding upgrade. It looked like at least 60% of the flight was boarded before group 3 anyhow. (I guess really the upgrade just bought space in the overheads…and I just saw someone’s bag bumped out to be checked, anyhow.)

—

I’m traveling alone again. John, Phoebe and Theo are staying home. I hope we can all get out to see my family together soon, as I can’t wait to get the 4 cousins together. The last time we were all out was when Theo was only 7 months old, and my little nephew Mateo was only 7 weeks old. Now Mateo is almost 2. But it makes more sense to wait till things get more stable.

It’s never easy for John when I’m away. (Not that it would be easy for me if I were the one home, but we’ve been lucky–I’ve been lucky–in that John hasn’t needed to go away in ages.) Even though the kids are in childcare full-time, the actual windows of working hours are pretty small. Even when we work from home, the drop-offs and pick-ups take close to an hour, and when you add in a commute for work the day shrinks even more. With two of us, we split the kid-wrangling routines such that I get the kids up and out in the morning, and John gets the kids bathed and to bed at night. We vary who picks up the kids depending on our work and commute schedules. Phoebe has karate classes 3 evenings a week, and we try to coordinate things such that one of us can get dinner going while the other is either at karate or picking up the kids. Otherwise, dinner is invariably late, which sets back bedtime, which takes away from kid-free evening time, and then leads to tired and harder-to-wrangle kids in the morning.

John usually also works (from home) after the kids go to bed, often staying up till the wee hours of the morning. This is trickier when I’m away, as he’ll need to get up with the kids.

In all, John’s schedule will be packed.

—

It was hard to pick the dates for my trip. On the one hand, I’m going 3000 miles and really want to maximize my time with my family. On the other hand, I want to minimize the impact on John’s schedule. These two hands are not compatible. I decided to go for a week, which with the two travel days will feel too short on the far end–only 5 full days. (I considered taking a red-eye, but I can’t recover from those as quickly as I used to…)

I have no doubt that my own trip will feel packed.

back in our element

We’re back home from our visit to my in-laws’ for Christmas. We went down last Thursday night, we ended up arriving around midnight again. Much like last time we went down there, Theo was happy and wired upon arrival. This time I managed to get him to sleep shortly after 3, and then we did at least get to sleep past 9. But it did make me wonder if we’re going to have to rethink our night traveling in the future.

It was a very pleasant visit over all, if tiring. It was great to be able to share with John’s parents the excitement of Christmas morning with small kids. They are no longer able to travel themselves, so they really look forward to our visits and seeing the kids. John’s dad is no longer able to walk, and doesn’t generally leave the house (or the bedroom, for that matter) except for trips to the dialysis center. (These started a few months ago. Since he isn’t very mobile, he gets transported by ambulance.)

Christmas day, after we’d worked our way through the gifts, I was getting ready to start making our part of the dinner (John’s mom had arranged for some non-vegetarian things for the two of them). I was all set to bake a butternut squash and our Tofurky, and preheated the oven. When I opened the door to stick in my squash, I was greeted by a bright flash and dramatic sparks. At first I thought that something had fallen on the element, but it turns out it was the element itself that was sparking. It was burning white hot, and burning itself right up. This changed my cooking plans somewhat, and after sitting around staring at my thumbs and discussing whether we’d be having a Christmas dinner of scrambled eggs, I decided to push forward. Chef Google provided instructions for microwaving a Tofurky, so that turned out okay. Thank goodness my mother-in-law had already baked the pumpkin pie the day before, because I’m pretty sure you can’t nuke that. (And what is Christmas without pie? I don’t think I even want to know the answer to that question.)


The oven element, the day after Christmas. It snapped while John was looking at it trying to determine whether he could order a replacement one. (It is pretty doubtful, as it seems the oven is about 50 years old.)

We had planned to come home on Monday, as we’d heard the forecast of a storm Sunday night. There ended up being quite a bit of snow down there by Monday morning, maybe around 18 inches, and we decided stay another day (for a variety of reasons).

We hoped to get on the road early on Tuesday. However, it is never a small task to collect all of our stuff when we visit, and this time was compounded by all the detritus of Christmas. While we’d aimed to be on the road by noon, and therefore stand a chance of arriving home before dark, it was almost 2 by the time we pulled out of the driveway. We ran into all sorts of crazy traffic in Connecticut, and didn’t get back home till almost 7, even though we’d made only brief stops. Seeing as we can usually make the trip in well under 4 hours, we were reminded of why we usually opt to get on the road later in the evening.

While the snow appeared to be less deep around home, more like 6 to 8 inches, the driveway was not passable due to snowplow mounding from the road. The kids and I sat in the car up on the road with the hazards flashing, eating our dinner of takeout pasta while John attacked the entrance to the driveway. Once he’d cleared the mound, we drove in, and half slid down the driveway. This was one of those times we were super glad to have all-wheel drive. We then took turns shoveling and staying inside the house with the kids. (Admittedly John did more of the shoveling.)

The kids ended up getting to bed quite late, in spite of our grand plans to get home at a reasonable hour. It seems that, no matter what, we end up feeling like we are adjusting to a different time zone whenever we get back from visiting the in-laws, even though they are on the same coast.


Yay, all-wheel drive!


Our driveway.

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I have a backlog of things to post once again, but don’t know when I’ll have much time. I don’t usually end up with more than a few minutes to myself when we’re down at the in-laws’. I had a few sort of holiday-themed things in progress that I didn’t find time to finish. Now Christmas seems so last week. There is no daycare this week for the kids, and even though Phoebe had preschool today, I’m once again not left with much time to be online. I finally managed to upload some project 365 photos to flickr–I hadn’t put any up in over 2 weeks. I’ve now passed the 5 month mark!