Cruise part 3

Ryan is now on the cruise ship. He flew into Hong Kong today, but I was at work so I couldn't pick him up at the airport and take him to the ship. While he's cruising to Xiamen and Shanghai, I will be booking our flights back home and trying to find a hotel in Bangkok at the last minute. It's June, so that might not be the easiest thing.

The Ho Chi Minh part of the cruise is turning out to be an issue. We already have visas for China, and Americans don't need any for Thailand, but there isn't enough time to get visas for Vietnam. Even if there might be enough time, I would not be comfortable giving the embassy my passport so close to the cruise since I will need it to get on the boat. Ryan is already on the ship, so it's too late for him no matter what. Even if I could get a visa, his passport is currently sailing around the coast of China. We will just have to stay on board while the ship docks in Ho Chi Minh.

Getting to everywhere isn't easy, either. You would think going on a cruise would take care of transportation since you're on a ship that goes everywhere, but we need plane tickets to get there and back. Ryan already flew from Fuzhou to Hong Kong. I'm flying from Hong Kong to Shanghai to board the ship. We're both flying from Bangkok to Hong Kong after the cruise and then he is flying from Hong Kong to Fuzhou. It's more complicated than it needs to be because airlines want everyone to fly from A to B and then return to A. We are flying A and B to B and C, then D to B and B to A.

Cruise part 2

Ryan & I have been talking about nothing but this cruise. Most people take months to book a cruise. We're doing it in a week. We don't have any advance notice because we're not doing it the normal way. Ryan is filling in for a friend, so he will get paid to be on the ship. I won't. I will be a regular paying passenger.

Ryan was going to come to Hong Kong a few days before the cruise so we could spend some time together, but now he's not. He's already taking too many days off work – 10 days for the cruise and we're spending an extra few days in Bangkok at the end of the cruise. Now, he's just going to fly into Hong Kong right before he has to go to the ship. That means we won't see each other at all since I'm working a lot right now since I'm also taking time off work to go on the cruise. On top of that, I took time off after the train accident. It's kind of amazing they are not even complaining about the cruise.

Cruise part 1

It's been a full three months since our last vacation, so Ryan & I are going on a cruise. A friend of his works on one of those giant cruise ships and needs to take some time off for personal reasons. Ryan is going to fill in for him and I'm going along for the ride. It's a cruise, so why not.

The cruise goes from Shanghai, Xiamen, Hong Kong, Ho Chi Minh to Bangkok. None of those places would be my first choice, especially Hong Kong, but we almost went to Bangkok when we went to Bali. It looks like Bangkok is getting another chance.

I will be on a regular seven day cruise. Ryan will be on the ship for ten days since he's starting in the middle of the previous cruise. I will get on the ship in Shanghai when the second cruise begins and he will board in Hong Kong when it docks during the first cruise. That part is convenient since he can fly to Hong Kong early and we can spend some time together before the cruise. We haven't seen each other since Bali, so it will be nice to get naked on dry land before we head out to sea on a giant boat.

We have about a million things to do and about a week to do them all. But I don't mind. It's a cruise.

Back to Work

I went back to work for the first time since the accident. Everyone was happy to see me and they even gave me a welcome back cake. It was very sweet. The gesture, not the cake. Chinese cakes are not all that sweet.

Someone, not at work, asked me why I had to take any time off at all. You can dance with a broken hand, right? Well, no. Not really. Your feet support all your weight and do most of the work, but your hands are almost as important in dancing. Unless you're doing one of those Irish step dances.

They also have this funny rule that maybe Snow White shouldn't be wandering around the park with a cast on her hand. I can imagine how people might react when they see me signing her autographs.

“What happened to your hand?”

“Oh, it's nothing. You should see Queen Grimhilde.”

My First Train Crash

On Friday, May 17, just after 16:00, an MTR light rail train crashed. It was the worst derailment in MTR history – 77 people were injured, including a baby. Fortunately, no one was killed. Unfortunately, I was on that train.

I had a rare Friday off from work, so I wanted to go out to the New Territories and look around. I don't get out there as much as I would like. There is far more to Hong Kong than the giant skyscrapers. Most of the city is nature and scenery, but you have to get out of the city to find it.

While I was minding my own business on a small train on a small line between Hang Mei Tsuen and Tong Fong Tsuen, it felt like the train was moving too fast. It's above ground, so you can see everything go by. It's hard to judge speeds on the underground trains because you can't see anything except black tunnels. On this train, we could tell that it was going too fast. I wasn't the only passenger who thought so. In some cities, no one would notice. New York, for example, is not a city known for its smooth subway rides. Hong Kong, on the other hand, has an impressive safety record. Until now.

The train made a turn and all hell broke loose. The front car slowed down for the turn, apparently not enough. The back car didn't slow down at all, knocking half of itself and all of the front car off the tracks. Anyone who was unaware that something was amiss quickly learned otherwise. Even the sleeping passengers could hear the noise. Metal crashed into metal. People screamed. Glass shattered. Before this, I would have thought the abrupt deceleration was the most striking aspect. It was the noise.

Most of the train bid farewell to the tracks and greeted a power line. It didn't flip over or explode or do anything as exaggerated as a movie. It was more like a car impact. Everybody fell to the ground or up against the windows. More than half of the passengers were injured. Most of the injuries were minor. I broke a few bones in my right hand when I tried not to fall down. You're supposed to go limp when you fall to avoid injuries. I bet the people who give that advice never spend much time in train crashes.

Fortunately, it was a smaller train in the New Territories, where there is little traffic. Being above ground was also an exceptionally good thing. Everyone simply walked or crawled or was carried out of the train, paying special attention to downed power lines. If it had derailed in a tunnel, getting everyone out would have been much more difficult.

Everyone just sat near the train and waited. I don't know if people were in shock, but it was more calm than I would have expected. Then the firefighters and paramedics arrived and it got loud and hectic again. It didn't take long for the news cameras and onlookers to show up. Pretty soon, there were at least ten times more responders and observers than there were passengers on the train. I saw more firefighter uniforms than passengers.

A few paramedics asked me if I was injured. They didn't speak much English and my Chinese does not include emergency medical terms. It was obvious the way I was holding my hand that something was wrong. When one of the paramedics grabbed at it, I let out a scream that pretty much told them all they needed to know. They put me in an ambulance after all of the unconscious and bleeding passengers were gone. The doctors at the hospital all spoke English, so it got easier once I was there.

When the doctor showed me the x-rays of my hand, I was just happy it wasn't my foot. I like having hands and I use them all the time, but I need my feet for my career. If it was a foot instead of my hand, my dancing days would probably be over.

My hand is currently better than it was, but I'm still mostly typing this with my left hand. Since it's gotten better than it was, the doctors assume it will get better than it is. I'm thankful to be in a place that has excellent healthcare at bargain basement prices. Hong Kong has well trained doctors and nurses, and my insurance pays for practically everything.

The government is going to fine the MTR HK$15 million. Now they're talking about a big lawsuit against the MTR. I don't know any details, but I'm sure if it happens, the passengers won't see any money.

I don't want their money anyway. I just want them to figure out what happened, fix it and make sure it never happens again.

New Neighbor part 4

In the daytime, you can pretty much see my neighbor's entire room, except where it turns a corner. I'm sure he can see all of mine as well.

At night, I can't see him when his lights are off unless he's standing right in front of the window. If the lights are on, he has to be standing under the light or between the light and the window. If he's standing behind the light, you can kind of tell someone's there, but you can't really see anything. I assume it's the same for me. The apartments are different, but light is light.

I walked out of the bathroom and into the bedroom with only a towel wrapped around me since I had just taken a shower. His lights were on, so I could see him, but mine were off. I didn't know if he could see me or not, so I waited in the back of the room and watched him. He wasn't looking at me. He was going about his business. So I went about mine. I could have easily put some clothes on, but not knowing whether he could see more was interesting. I'm sure he couldn't, but you never know.

Carrying On

I had an audition almost a month ago and they just told me I didn't get the part. I'm a little disappointed, but not really surprised. Of all the acting auditions I've been on, I only got the part twice. One fell through and the other part was cut. Still, I had a great experience shooting a real movie.

I know I'm supposed to be depressed when I don't get a part, but I think I'm pretty lucky. I have a great job where I get to sing and dance every day. I want to get into acting, but if it doesn't work out, I'm still performing. That's what it's all about anyway.

Most auditions don't lead to jobs anyway. I've been on a million dancing auditions that I didn't get. That never stopped me from trying. Now I'm dancing for a living. It doesn't matter how many of them say no, as long as the best say yes.

Expat Books part 3

I have to say, I liked reading this book. Since it was originally a blog, it reads like a blog and the very short chapters get a little distracting after a few dozen. But maybe this is a brilliant marketing strategy. Most people have very short attention spans these days. Today's readers get impatient with fifty-page chapters. Maybe chapters that last one page will be more popular.

From Taiwan to Texas is easy to read. I mean that as a compliment. I just read a similar English-teacher-in-a-strange-land book that was the most pretentious thing I've ever seen. The author of that book thought having a part time job as an English tutor in a foreign country for a remarkably short amount of time made him Mother Teresa. He did not seem to realize that temporary EFL teachers are a dime a dozen. We're all supposed to be impressed that he just came home from doing what thousands of others have already done. The author of Taiwan to Texas isn't trying to impress us. He's just telling us his story in a candid and relaxed style that should appeal to those of us who love to read all day as well as those who can only read one page at a time.

My main gripe with this book is that it's a sequel. The author tells us in the introduction that we don't have to read the previous one to understand this one. That's true. The stories are easy to follow without knowing what happened in the first book. But now that I've read this one, I have to go and read the first one.

Expat Books part 2

This is about a woman who moves to Cuba because of her husband's job. Most expat books are told from the point of view of the expat. They wanted to go, they went, and now they're talking about it. This book is from the point of view of a wife who didn't really want to go in the first place.

This one was interesting for different reasons. It's easy to assume that the author is a spoiled American who wants her new home to be like everything she had back in the United States, but the more you read it, the more you see she's just a mother trying to make the best of the situation for her children.

She talks a lot about buying groceries and sending her children to school. That would be pretty boring if she was an expat in Canada, but in Cuba, just doing routine things becomes an adventure.

My main complaint with this book is that the author goes too far in trying to avoid politics. I can understand why, but if you're an American living in Cuba, there will be a serious political adjustment. If I'm reading about your grocery shopping, I want to read about how you adjusted to life in a communist country.

Expat Books

I've been reading a lot about expats recently. It's funny, when I first became one, I wasn't really interested in joining expat groups and meeting up with other expats. I just wanted to jump into my new surroundings and not worry so much about how different it was from home. After a while, I started talking to other expats and now I'm reading books about and by them.

When my own book came out in e-book form, I downloaded an app so I could read it. Since then, I've been downloading other books. If you want to know which ones I recommend, here they are:




I really enjoyed reading this book. Maybe because I'm an expat myself. Or maybe it's because it's so well written that something as ordinary as personal correspondence can become a compelling story. I feel like I know her and her family as old friends. It's intelligently written without trying to remind you how intelligent it is all the time. I found that refreshing. We need more authors who are clever without hitting us over the head with how clever they are.

The author invites us into her personal life and shares her hopes and fears. She tells us funny and touching stories about her family that everyone can relate to and gives us her take on that age old story about looking for love. I felt like a voyeur while reading it, but I just couldn't stop. She talks about how hard it is to balance tradition and modern life and gives a lot of insight into her religion that I found fascinating. I'm surprised at how little I knew about a culture that's so well known.

There's a little bit about politics that I didn't care about, but I thought it was interesting how I assumed she must be a republican because of one issue, then she had to be a democrat because of another. I don't think her views fit in the American system. That's not an insult at all. We Americans have some messed up politics. The author is obviously not American.

That's another thing I really liked – the proper English. I've been reading Jane Austen and I love the way she doesn't sound American.

This isn't really an expat book. She casually mentions what so many other expats wrote their entire books about and then she moves on to more important parts of life. I really hope this author writes a book someday that tells us more about her travels, especially China. Her insights into Chinese culture are interesting. It looks like she's led a fascinating life and I'd like to hear more about it.