I’m off with the rest of Big in Japan to the Del Close Marathon tomorrow morning. We’re performing at the hallowed Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre on Saturday at 3:30pm. I’m actually looking forward to the 10-hour drive in the minivan with the rest of the group. Road trip!
I experienced something entirely creepy this morning. I woke up and checked my email from my laptop, like I usually do. Mailwasher had my Expedia itinerary at the top of my list, which was odd since it is sorted by date, and it wasn’t the latest thing to arrive. The date of the Expedia itinerary caught my eye:
I checked the headers of the email, and could find no reference to September 11 at all. There’s no way Mailwasher could possibly come up with that date from the email itself.
Return-Path: <support@service.expedia.ca>
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.1 (2007-05-02) on gandalf.tma.ca
X-Spam-Level: **
X-Spam-Status: No, score=2.4 required=5.0 tests=AWL,BAYES_50,HTML_MESSAGE,
INVALID_DATE,MIME_HTML_ONLY autolearn=no version=3.2.1
X-Original-To: REMOVED
Delivered-To: REMOVED
Received: from DNMTP01.dn.expeso.com (smtp.expedia.com [216.251.115.225])
by mail.tma.ca (Postfix) with ESMTP id C7ED24F6F43
for <REMOVED>; Tue, 24 Jul 2007 17:24:56 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from [10.196.0.62] ([10.1.10.249]unverified) by smtp.expedia.com with InterScan Messaging Security Suite; Tue, 24 Jul 2007 14:24:55 -0700
Date: 24 Jul 07 14:25 -0800
From: support@service.expedia.ca
To: REMOVED
Subject: Expedia travel confirmation - China trip - 1 Oct 2007 - (Itin# 120624349094)
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
Message-Id: <20070724212456.C7ED24F6F43@mail.tma.ca>
On my desktop computer, with a newer version of Mailwasher, the date is displayed correctly. Very weird. And spooky.
I finally did it. After months of talking and thinking about it, I’ve committed to my trip to Asia. I had been planning to go to Vietnam to meet up with Diamond and Alex, but in the end it seemed too difficult to coordinate. I tried a number of different itineraries to take me through China, Vietnam and eventually to Thailand, but none of the flights made any sense, and it started looking very expensive and complicated. I’ll meet up with those guys another time or for another trip. Instead, I’m going to focus on China. My trip flows pretty smoothly, I think.
1. I’ll fly directly from Toronto to Beijing on October 1.
2. I’ll travel the region and end up in Shanghai. I’ll fly from Shanghai to Guangzhou on October 14.
3. I’ve arranged for a home stay in Guangzhou, which is near my family’s ancestral village. The home stay means I’ll get to live with a few young people in their home. It’ll be great to see the place from a local’s perspective. I may try to arrange home stays in other parts of China too. I’ll explore the southern part of China for a while too. I’m interested particularly in Macau and Kaiping. By October 24, I need to be in Hong Kong, so I can fly to Bangkok.
4. I’ll work in Bangkok on Openface projects, and also try to set up some studio photography opportunities in Bangkok as well. I have a project in mind, but I don’t want to talk about it yet until I have it solidified a little more. On October 31 I’ll fly back home with a stopover in Hong Kong.
So that’s it! There are lots of gaps in my trip, which is how I like it. I’ll do some reading and learning about China before I go, but I want to try to figure most of it out on my own after I hit the ground there. Now I begin the tortuous wait until it’s time to go!
Note: The flights cost $2277 including an extra fee for paper tickets. No e-tickets were available for this itinerary. Anyway, I always like to keep track of this kind of information for posterity.
I bought this awesome thing before my shoot on Friday night.
It’s a ladder that can be folded into all kinds of useful shapes.
I’ve had these ideas about shooting from directly above, and this ladder will help me with that. I already used it on Friday night. I had it folded into a sort of a scaffold, directly above Nicole as she lay on the couch. She was laughing nervously because I was standing on top of it, and she was staring directly at the red warning label depicting someone falling off of the ladder. Hey, art requires risk.
Laura showed me a stone angel in the country the other night. I had to return on Thursday night to photograph it against the starry sky. I forgot to bring my 24mm f1.8 lens, which would have been absolutely perfect. Oh well. I’m sure this angel will still be there if I get a chance to go back another night.
