It's been sometime since I posted- mucho transpiring-iendo.

This post was written while on a Chinese flight from Australia to Shanghai to Los Angeles. I don' think it's finished but I wanted to make sure it finally arrived at it's home.

DJC


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HOME, BY WAY OF CHINA


I am writing this at 38,000 feet over the Pacific Ocean in a Chinese jet airplane!

A few weeks ago, I made a big decision. I chose to end my residency in Australia and return to the United States.

Many factors played a part in this decision, and I can assure you this was an agonizing decision. I am not ashamed to admit I cried a river of tears, and had to force myself to do what I felt was ultimately best, despite my undying love for the country of Australia. Read that again- I had to FORCE myself to take this action. I had to make myself do something I didn’t want to do, because logic, not my feelings, dictated it was the better action. I had to ignore the frantic messages the emotional center of my brain was sending to me and take action on logical deductions, not matter how powerful the emotional input was to the contrary. While I am an intelligent person, I am find that one of my gifts is to respond to emotional “hints” my mind gives me, and this strategy has been winner in the past. Recently I decided that I had become unbalanced in this process, and was obeying the emotional, impulsive part of my brain over logic, and needed to dig deeper in the decision making process of my life lest I meet a tragic end.

The process of moving the assets of Mydnyte Productions back to the United States was a learning experience unto itself. Not only did the fragile recording studio gear need to be packed expertly to protect from damage, I faced the challenge of packing my materials in one-meter cubes. Budget constrictions mandated me to approximately 2 cubic meters of space. The problem is that some of the gear, in their respective flight cases, exceed one meter. My keyboard case alone is 1.3 meters. There is no way to fit this into a one meter cube.

The end result? They never told me that I could continue to build vertically! I had a 2 cubic meter mass that was 2 meters tall, by one meter, by one meter.



FLYING AWAY

After the gear was sent off in the ship, I made my move to fly back to the states. I had the opportunity to fly JAL and spend one night in Tokyo, and I regret that I did not take it because in the end, I eventually had to accept a 22 layover in Shanghai, China.

Arriving in China and being faced with the fact that I was to be there almost a full day, I had to make a decision whether to try and stay in the airport for that time, or get a hotel room. I eventually decided to press my luck and get a hotel room.

Now, this may sound like an easy task- but try going off in a country where NO-ONE speaks English, where the ATM won’t take your card, where ALL of the signs are in Chinese, and the currency and value of the money is radically different to what you are used to. Try discussing the price of a room, not to mention how to get to the hotel room itself. It wasn’t easy I assure you.

You have to understand I never dreamed I would be in China. I knew I needed to make a connecting flight, but rubbing elbows with the locals in rural Shanghai wasn’t something I planned on. I went to Hong Kong and had an 11 hour layover once, but I never left the airport. I wonder, if you never leave the airport, have you really been to that place? Well now I don’t need to worry: I have left the airport and went to China.