Temporary Stay At Relatives'

Not often do I get the chance to take some pictures of the sky. I think these three turned out pretty well (given the fact that I took these through a semi-clear window). From New York to Hong Kong, the plane ride lasted a good 15+ hours. Ask yourself this: If you were to remain seated in one little space for fifteen hours, what would you do?

Here's what I did:

• The way God blessed me with a power outlet on the plane simply told me (actually, blatantly triggered me) to take out my laptop and toy with that for most of the ride.
• As I showed before, with a camera, I can play around with that to when the time comes.
• The unnecessary amount of stewardess' running around the economy cabin with carts full of airplane food made me hungry. Yes, I actually pigged out on the plane.
• And because I pigged out, I had to visit the potty several times.

Here we have an aerial view of Hong Kong. It sort of looks like it's on fire. But, I'm lying... those are obviously clouds.

And from another perspective...

This brings up another interesting bit of info! Prior to this flight, I have never stepped on the Chinese mainland before. Actually, I have never touched mainland Asia's soil before. The closest I've gotten was obviously in years back when I visited Taiwan.

So this leads to something funny, too. The sole purpose of stopping in Hong Kong was to transfer flights to Taiwan. Since the plane I took from New York was delayed a good twenty minutes to half an hour, my ride to Taiwan was already making its final calls by the time I struggled past the security checks and the infernally slow Chinese crowds. This all adds up to my very first visit of China lasting approximately a grand total of 40 minutes. Such great memories made.

Getting up early in the morning after not sleeping the entire night before, plus getting no sleep on the 15-hour plane ride (I'll explain why), and finally passing through multiple time zones... my entire sleep schedule has been brutally raped. Right now, as I'm typing this, I figured I should still be asleep if I was back at home. A few hours ago, I ate dinner at a random Taiwanese restaurant. Had I been back home, that would equal dinner at approximately seven in the morning.

All right, let me explain why I chose not to sleep (or rather, forced to not sleep) during the 15-hour long plane ride.

I chose to play The Sims 2: Nightlife instead of grabbing some much needed sleep. I chose to waste my time designing imaginary characters to put within unrealistically large, utterly fake, and expensive mansions that probably took me four hours to completely finish (as seen above). Maybe I should have picked an architecture major instead.

If you check out the mansion from that angle, you might say: "Oh, wow, what a big house..." See, I'm much too lazy to take screenshots of the first, second, and third floors, as well as the humongous patio in the backyard.

At the moment, I think I'm running on about three scattered hours of sleep - or nap - within a 48-hour time frame. Showering is tough at my uncle's (one of three uncles here). It's like some traditional method of hygiene, apparently. The bathroom has an exposed showerhead that juts out of the wall about two feet away from a sink. A hole in the middle of the bathroom leads to the drainage system. Talk about saving space in a small island. I guess it's efficient in its own primitive way... for one thing, I can brush my teeth and shower at the same time.

Four more days until Love Boat. All things said... first, I need sleep... and some solution to avoid getting attacked by my uncle's ill-tempered dog.