Monday

We've safely returned from Hong Kong. It was a terrible flight of loud, rude, and bewildering characters all crushed into economy with us; it had an uncommunicative pilot, robotic attendants, and a pork dinner; it ran late and was turbulent. It was a relief to get home, even though Hong Kong was so wonderful. Really, it's possibly the most aggressively globalized place I've ever been: obsessively bilingual, racially diverse, and cutely trendy as all get-out. Hong Kong is very tall and colorfully lit. Like if Manhattan were plopped on top of Vegas and filled with Japanese candy. It's without a doubt one of the very coolest places in the world. I'll gush more later; and if I can stand to attempt it, I'll try to fly back there again someday and spend more than just these woefully inadequate four days. Back to the first sentence again: I got home last night, late; and then just after noon today every single thing we packed to ship from México to Vietnam arrived in our living room. This is the big shipment, our personal effects, and the cardboard-encased objects* filled the whole place. I'm astounded. I was given to understand that, what with a stringent customs policy and estimated freight-speeds standards around the globe, that we might have to wait up to four months before our stuff got here. The day we were told we could schedule delivery to our building was right at the end of our fourth week. The earliest we might have had it delivered was last Monday, one day before we celebrated our first month in town. Of course, that was two days before our anniversary trip to Hong Kong, so we postponed shipment until today: the sleepy, cranky, dehydrated post-vacation hangover moving day of our dreams. [Cavin]