To Pass Over

OK, I had not gotten my California travelogue entries in yet, but the pictures are here.

To summarize:
Saturday, March 27: JFK to SAN; arrive 10 AM, get a rental car from Hertz with Neverlost GPS (recommended), drove to the Carlsbad Flower Fields in bloom, visited El Camino Mortuary Park to do an early Ching Ming for my grand aunt and uncle; was running late to Newport Beach, so detour to Pasedena to catch my friend’s niece’s 11th bowling birthday party. Visited the Bona Vista revolving bar at the Westin Bonaventure. Went to Hollywood, saw Mann’s Chinese Theatre, and the Kodak Theater. Ordered massive amounts of Tommy’s chilli-topped dive through menu items. Slept in Newport Beach.

Sunday, March 28: Went to Balboa Island for church. Someone fainted in the middle of the service; the woman standing to my right turned out to be a doctor. Passed out myself for a few hours as my friend’s husband helped all of us run for the border in his car. Crossed into Tiajuana, bought Mexican car insurance from a clean, if a bit shady tourist info station. Did a straight run to Ensenada on Mexico’s route 1-D, an excellent 2 lane toll road with spectacular vistas. Randomly drove up and down Ave. Reunion trying to find the church my boss said his son was at to drop off his birthday present. Found one of the other missionaries that worked for him, who accepted the package. We then drove to Puerto Nuevo, capital of fried Pacific lobster. $14 for 3 halves of 1 1/2 lb. lobsters. Delicious! Had drinks while watching the sunset at Villa Ortega’s, 2 doors down. In pitch darkness, bought ceramics. Drove back to Newport Beach; customs didn’t even bother checking documents — just asked “Everyone American?”.

Monday, March 29: Had a wonderful brunch across the street. After taking it easy, we drove towards San Diego. Parked at the Embarcadero across the ship Star of India. Ate super-fresh sushi at The Fish Market. Rode the carousel at the Seaport Village (originally made in Coney Island!). GPS guided us to P–‘s friend Steve’s house. Examined his new mobile home.

Tuesday, March 30: Checked out downtown, bought our mandatory See’s Chocolates. Visited the Chinatown Museum. Spent the afternoon at the San Diego Zoo. Hua Mei the panda was sprawled backwards on the ground, while her son was high up in the trees avoiding view. Finished up at the Hotel del Coronado, where I had a wonderful half-hour massage in the spa to take care of a nagging right elbow sprain. Went back to Steve’s house to pack and eat, made it to the airport with time to spare. Took the redeye back to JFK and work.

Total travel: over 6,000 miles by air, 900 miles by car. Won our American Airlines Gold Challenge, and Fly NYC Challenges, coming out with an extra 5634 FF miles, a free ticket anywhere AA flies, and AA Gold status. Travel proven and with nary a disagreement, my relationship with P– is ever closer and stronger. It was well worth it.

Daylight Savings Time…

Sunday NY Times’ reading – “For Japanese Girls, Black is Beautiful” – Japanese obsession of African-American hip-hop culture leads artist Iona Rozeal Brown to explore Japanese art – or, as the article caption puts it, “Iona Rozeal Brown’s works are a cross-cultural hybrid: a black artist using a Japanese style to paint Japanese women who are obsessed with black culture.” There’s irony atop of irony. Even Brown feels that the Japanese enthusiasm has some offensive elements to it, but she in turn doesn’t want to co-opt Japanese art. The article closes with Brown curious to look into China and Korea’s interest in hip-hop. Synergy is good, even if co-option may be negative.

Buddhist sculpture really does reflect Buddhist evolution, as Buddhism navigated from West to East, incorporating elements of India, China, Korea, and Japan. The Washington Post has a most enlightening article on a current Wasington, D.C., exhibit of Buddhist sculpture.

35th anniversary of “Sesame Street” – and somehow the Washington Post has this strange interview with Grover (who confesses that Julianne Moore broke his heart onetime – huh? The little blue guy gets around).

Have a good week.

And another blog entry for the road

One more entry for the day – I was away for awhile, so might as well make up for lost time, right? (and, FC, where are more California stories? Post them, if not a picture or something!)

– Men’s final four on Saturday – Georgia Tech v. Oklahoma State. As of this hour, Georgia Tech has won – not a team I picked at all. Duke v. U Conn is about to begin….

Need some on-line or news reading? Some suggestions…
(a) Political reading?
– Slate.com’s William Saletan has an interesting analysis on the George W. Bush camp’s criticism of the George W. Bush’s opponents and critics. If everybody who started out as supporting GWB initiatives/policies then didn’t like the execution of the initiatives/policies (or lack thereof), are such “flip-floppers” really so wrong, as the GWB camp would say they are? Well, I don’t think they’re traitors – maybe they legitimately changed their minds. Maybe they’re not just being “political” averse to GWB. Hmm.

– NY Times notes the Conservative Republicans’ attempt to oust moderate/old-time Republicans who aren’t as conservative, as seen in the example of a bunch of the conservatives out to take down Senator Arlen Spector (R-Pennsylvania). There is something not smart about what the hard-core conservatives are doing – they’re not being any better than George W. Bush camp’s “either you’re with us or you’re against us” line of thought. Why attack an incumbent senator, when your real target should be the opposition party, i.e., the possible Demoractic candidate? Have they not learned anything from the Democrats – intraparty problems won’t help in the long run? On the other hand, the Bush camp will likely make everyone in the GOP unite in time for the convention in NYC (heavens knows that some of these hard-core conservatives are scared out of their minds to be coming to my hometown because, you know, the hometown is Sin City to them, especially when there are a bunch of liberals around here) – but, seriously, I miss the true moderate Republican, and the conservatives’ blatant opposition to the moderates of their own party is unappetizing stuff.

(b) NY Times’ early posting of the travel articles – nice article on Macao. I’ve never been there, so I wonder if this article does it any justice. On the other hand, I thought it was fascinating anyway – never realized that the Portugeuse influence was so strong in Macao.

The latest American Express commercial with the golf course and the gopher from the “Caddyshack” movie – it’s funny – the gopher’s cute, in a psycho way (as he was in the movie – disclaimer: I have yet to watch all “Caddyshack” from start to finish, but have watched the commercials and parts of it often enough when WPIX Channel 11 used to show it every year). Anyway, Tiger Woods as the Bill Murray role (the guy out to get the gopher and couldn’t) – funny and very expressive (has Tiger been improving on the acting thing?). I almost didn’t realize that it was Tiger – he had the whole slacker-Murray look down well.

Plot: Tiger almost destroys the golf course because of his Ahab chase of Gopher. His clever move to get Gopher – using his American Express card to hire a terminator who knows the best way to get Gopher – using that darn song from “Caddyshack” will apparently “always works” to get Gopher out of the hole and do his little dance and create an ample opportunity to dump Gopher into a bag. Tiger is happy. Golf course back to normal. Does it make me want to use my American Express more? Umm, no. But, it does make me want to watch “Caddyshack.” And, again, Gopher’s so cute and furry, even if, well, destructive. B+ commercial.

So it goes. Enjoy the rest of the weekend. Sleep to keep some shred of the lost hour…