I was wandering through a big house I had never seen before. I thought the house was nice, as far as houses go, but my thoughts were pre-occupied, with trying to lay low and stay out of the way and all. I say this because there was some strange activity afoot and I wanted nothing to do with it. In this house, a very old house with lots of character, there were many stairways and many nooks, and for every stairway and every nook, there seemed to be a creepy looking guy with a gun. Each of these guys would be half hiding around a corner, thinking himself subtle, and I would see him and think to myself that the guy hiding with the gun is usually supposed to see the innocent passerby first, rather than the other way around. I’d intentionally make some noise to alert him to my presence so he’d know it was me and not whoever they were out to get.
As I wandered around the house, looking for a safe haven, I was unusually pretty calm about it all. I walked into one room, a living room maybe, and a guy with long hair was shooting up through the ceiling, and you could see the light coming through from above. A pile of plaster dust amassed on the ground below. But the part that struck me as odd was that there was no sound, and whatever the ammunition was didn’t seem to fit into the bullet classification. In fact, it was not until I found myself caught in the middle of a cross-fire and got hit in the eyes that I realized it was only water.
As I rubbed the water out of my eyes, I noticed that the shooting had stopped and that everyone seemed to be congregating in the room. When my vision cleared, I discovered that I knew everybody there and that they all happened to be good friends and that they were just having fun with squirt guns.
We talked for a while and then I turned to one friend and said to him, “You know what the best part of this is?”
“No, what’s that?” he asked.
“The fact that I am actually 39,000 over the Pacific Ocean, flying from Seattle to Taipei, and you are helping me pass the time on this twelve hour flight. And for that you are a great friend.”
With that I awoke, because you can’t consciously acknowledge dreams when talking with characters in your dreams while you sleep. Such has been the case in my experience anyway.
The flight from Newark to Taipei was delayed a couple of hours due to weather, but I dozed off at the gate and then slept almost the entire flight. What was particularly nice about it was that EVA Airways appears to be a best kept secret and the plane was mostly empty. I stacked up the blankets and pillows on the two seats beside me, loosened the seat belt, and sprawling out across the three seats, I was asleep in no time.
I don’t mean to insult airlines from our country, especially if any of you happen to work for one of them, but Asian airlines are better. Hands down. Even the obscure airlines you haven’t heard of are better. The flight attendants here don’t hate their jobs (or if they do, they are remarkable actors) and unlike other airlines, you don’t get the impression that you are just one of many cattle identified only by a number, being herded from here to there, awaiting the butcher’s knife. Asian airlines treat people like people, and I happen to appreciate that in an airline. And, as we speak, they are bringing around noodles and chop sticks, which just further proves their superiority.
I am writing from 37G here on the plane and I am far from my destination. According to the clock on my computer, it is 1:26pm, Eastern Daylight Time, and I haven’t figured out the time zone difference just yet, but I am guessing it is the middle of the night 39,000 feet below wherever it is we are. My layover in Taipei was going to be tight anyway, and now with the delay in Newark, I will almost certainly miss my connecting flight, so I don’t know how it will all turn out.
But then again, none of us really know how much of anything will turn out, do we? That is one thing I have been learning in a big way, with new reminders just about every day as of late. I really don’t have control over very much of what goes on around me, and I’m becoming increasingly comfortable with that idea, knowing that if it was all up to me, the results would probably be catastrophic most of the time anyway. So I close up the laptop and I eat my noodles and I take a deep breath and I learn to suck the marrow out of life.
Plus, the way I figure, if nothing else, it will give me something to write about someday.
* * * * *
I now write from the guest room at the home of Tim and Kathy Amstutz. Mister Tim (as the Cambodian staff call him) is the director of World Relief Cambodia and I understand he oversees the other Asian projects as well. His wife, Kathy, showed me around the market last time I was here and she picked up right where she left off with her hospitality upon my arrival today, showing me how to lock the quirky door and to attain my desired water pressure and temperature.
Where I’ll be staying during these three months is a matter for discussion from what I hear, since they have some housing options to throw my way, but I am here for tonight anyway. I took a nice shower and am now enjoying the oscillation of the fan on the wall. I have only seen one gecko so far. He/she/it was visible on the wall through the bathroom window as I showered. I tried not to make eye contact, so as to avoid an awkward scene, me being in the shower and all. Geckos, for what it’s worth, make strange noises and eat mosquitoes.
Well, I alluded earlier to the high likelihood that I would miss my flight, but what I wrote about Asian airlines being stupendous is even truer than I imagined. Getting off the plane in Taipei, there were EVA staff waiting for all of us bound for various connecting flights and the woman with the Phnom Penh sign whisked three of us down a hallway, through a checkpoint, up an escalator, around a corner, down another hallway and onto the plane, all within a matter of moments. They held the plane for us for nearly an hour. On the brisk walk, I talked with one of the others sharing my destination. He grew up in Cambodia but has lived most recently in Boston. He found a job on the Internet teaching at the Western University in Phnom Penh and he starts there tomorrow.
A guy whose name I now forget (and would struggle to spell anyway) picked me up from the airport. Like myself, he is 23 years old, and he works for World Relief as a driver. He apologized a few times that the A/C wasn’t working properly. I said it was OK, and I told him that Pennsylvania in America is hot this time of year as well. I dropped some names of people and places I remembered from my first trip here as a way of engaging in small talk. I asked him if the patriotic banners on all the telephone poles are new, but he didn’t understand the question. I made him feel better by telling him that his English was very good, and then I told him the two Khmer words I remembered.
It is good to be back, and kind of surreal. I am accustomed to one- to two-week trips, so the longevity of this thing hasn’t set in yet. But so far, so good. I am looking forward to getting started. Thanks for your prayers and I’ll write again soon (and next time I promise I won’t write as much).
This is the Amstutz home. My room is the one to the right.
This is where I’ll be staying.