1.) For me, traveling is a great opportunity to lose some weight. The two birds with one stone (一石二鳥) of not dining out at restaurants is you don't eat too much, just get the bare necessities of nutrition and food and then move quickly to the next stop, thus your wallet doesn't suffer too much neither. And having quick, simple meals also decreases the time you would normally need to prepare food or sit down at a restaurant, thus getting the most bang for your buck. (So really, like 3 or 4 birds with one stone, sorry birds!)
2.) learning about other places, cultures- doesn't mean you have to read every single exhibit in a museum or art gallery, but like the Shakespeare Globe was a great refresher course on Shakespeare- suddenly quotes from Hamlet, King Lear, A Midsummer Night's dream come rushing back as well as the project I did about who Shakespeare really was or if he was another author (Sir Francis Bacon, or Charles Wren, someone else?) or a combination of various authors of the time. Shakespeare does sound kind of madeup, doesn't it? (But then again, Robespierre or Rembrant sound just as humbug but no one questions their existence.
3.) getting great video for future memorial purposes- when I traveled alone, I would often forget to take pictures because I'm alone, or just do a hasty selfie. With MJ, I have someone built in to take pictures of me, as well as someone to take pictures of, as well as joint selfies and great scenery shots. I still have like old grainy footage in the 90's when my parents took a roadtrip down to Florida for a trip to Disneyworld, with me as the 5-year-old star of the show. There was a long gap, though, between then and adulthood that I don't have many photos or videos, mainly because I wasn't very photogenic as a teen, I didn't like to be on camera, and there wasn't a mirror I liked. Nowadays, though, I've reached acceptance of my physical appearance, I do look a bit better and more stylish, and most importantly I understand the importance of preserving memories and moments in time, just as watching those 5-year-old videos of me makes me reminisce about times long gone. GoPro is nice and compact now and has about 4 hours of memory, plenty of time plus I have my phone I can use for shorter videos before I run out of upload space.
4.) Experience different weather- can't complain about the LA weather, but it does get monotnous- London was as expected wet, damp, and gloomy, but we did get one blue clear skies day! I'd forgotten what it's like to carry around an umbrella all day and have to wear gloves walking out. I'm extremely susceptible to losing all those extra pieces of winter gear, though.
5.) The airplane movies! A big part of the appeal of going on international trips. You got 10 hours on a plane, it's a great excuse to just let my mind enter different worlds 90-120 minutes at a time. It's like Netflix, though, there's almost too many options nowadays (I remember back in the day airplanes gave you one movie to watch, and that's it, no fussing over it!) with different genres. Maybe because I haven't had much time to sit down for consecutive hours and just watch a movie for a while, I thought this crop of vacation movies were really stellar. I did pretty well this time to pinpoint what I needed, including watching TWO movies that came out in 2018 featuring Asian co-stars and being 1-2 in the box offices for a week in the summer. That was Searching and Crazy Rich Asians. Searching can become a cult hit in time, I think because of the number of Easter eggs within the movie that suggested the outcome of the mystery and the fact it was done through social media and warns about the perils of using social media, while Crazy Rich Asians wasn't as great a movie as the significance it had on the Asian American community to have such a movie exist. Its plot and messages weren't bad though, about Asian mother-in-law trying to accept her son's girlfriend/soon-to-be fiance? And class differences.
Isle of Dog was typical Wes Anderson good (Moonrise Kingdom and Grand Budapest Hotel) with animal characters taking up sophisticated human personalities, apparently the Chinese are doing a series of movies about the Journey to the West, I watched the newest release where they venture into the Kingdom of Women (only women are allowed in the kingdom), can you imagine the problems an all-woman society would have in our world today, watched 20 minutes of 28 Days Later cuz, you know, it was set in London, and even the newest Predator movie "The Predator" didn't disappoint. And I learned that there is a world puzzle competition that experienced jigsaw puzzle contestants strive to win every year! (The Puzzle- movie with a great idea that we enjoy completing puzzles because in a messy disorganized world where things don't make sense, at least you can count on a puzzle to create a clear picture in the world and have the pieces all fit together, even if life doesn't). Yes, I do think subconsciously I engage in that endeavor to achieve some order.
6.) Hotels- I used to love going to hotels as a kid because they had cable TV and my house didn't. And I liked watching TV in foreign countries to see what kind of channels they had. Turns out, I still like to do so.
7.) Handling other countries' currencies, in this case, the pound sterling. I didn't enjoy it as much this time, and with the exchange rates and converting money over and all that, I've realized it's a bit of a scam which took some of the luster off it.
8.) Have some podcasts loaded up to while you still have WiFi, then play them while walking on long hikes around the cities. MJ and I walked 10+ miles almost every day of the trip.
9.) Get comfortable shoes for walking. And get ready for your feet, back, knees, entire body to hurt since you're walking all day, unlike normally sitting in the office.
10.) Bring snacks and fruit onto the plane! They could be a lifesaver in the new country.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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