THE Lowly Peon

Homeward Bound 
12 September 2010, 10:54am

It's been nearly three years since I first got on a plane to Hangzhou, which I've proudly called my home ever since. I've really come to love this place, and the thought of leaving it has made me sad for some time. (Especially since my egg pancake lady returned from a year-long hiatus because she had no license.)

In the last three years, I've been to Vietnam three times, Korea twice, Hong Kong more times than I can count, India, Japan, Scotland, America two or three times a year, and all over China. I've got 49 red stamps in my passport (and will have three more in the next two months), have had to get extra pages, and now have enough visas pasted in there to make it look sufficiently fat. Without mentioning the exact number of miles I've saved up, I will say that George Clooney and I would have a good laugh over some whiskey in an airport.

My life of traveling is far from over, but some big changes are coming my way in the next few months. After a bunch of scary meetings with the bosses last week in Houston, we have agreed upon a plan that will keep all of us quite happy.

Over the next six months, daisy & I will prepare for our departure from China. In late March, I will be heading to Houston to be part of a big project for which I'll be doing some software development, and traveling around a bit domestically. Daisy will come soon after, in time to get an early start at her accounting degree (likely a CPA), for our company, at summer school.

No one knows for sure what will happen afterwards, but it looks like we'll be there a year or two before reanalyzing our situation, as the company may want to send us somewhere in a more Asian-friendly timezone, which we certainly would not say no to.

But for now, I'm coming home!

(A few months ago, daisy and I went to the Park Hyatt en route to San Francisco. I saw this there, and thought it would be fitting for this: "A man travels the world over in search of what he needs, and returns home to find it.")