Prologue

Just to give an idea of where we are mentally, physically and emotional at this point -- we have booked only our first flight and our first hotel in Hong Kong. The rest of our schedule is on an excel document that Simon copied from Frommers. At our last "planning meeting" a week ago, we ended up walking around the east village returning Woody's latest episodes of "The Wire" and looking for a place to eat outside. When we found a place, we ordered a pitcher of Sangria, of which each of us only finished half a glass (it was 4:00 in the afternoon) and gave the rest away to a gay couple next to us. Meanwhile, both Simon and Woody have now gotten drunk off said 1/2 glass, and we talk about how we are unprepared and how we can't believe we are going and then end up taking a nap at my apartment. This is about the same amount of planning that we have accomplished at each of our other 3 or so meetings - going to Barnes and Noble to research only for Woody to wander off into the comics section and for us to lose our focus amongst all the international travel books. "Let's go to Australia! Oooo, what about Vietnam? Japan! Oh wait, aren't we supposed to be finding our roots?"

I am packing up my room right now in anticipation of a possible subletter to decide whether or not he does want my room, which he won't know until after I leave at 3pm today. So I could be wasting my time packing up my comforter into a giant B&H bag and boxing up my personal effects. It's 8:55 am, I am still packing and have been trying to stay awake all night. I took a nap for a couple hours with my cell phone waking me up every 30 minutes. Simon has been staying awake also. He is delirious. When we spoke at 5:25 am, he was rambling about socks and ice cream. We all had a 3-way call at 5:35am, wherein Woody yelled into the abyss from his bed for someone else to bring a laptop so that we wouldn't be ganking his all the time. I have the biggest and heaviest laptop. Boo! For the past couple days, Woody has been nursing a 100 degree fever. He then dj-ed last night until 4am, got drunk and smoked a cigarette -- which we will be hearing for the next week through his phlegmy coughs and his lamenting "I shouldn't have had that cigarette!" I have been working, and Simon and I have been periodically texting each other expletives about actually going to china ie "we are going to f ing china!" "f*@&! we are going to china!"

I can't actually believe that we are going. It won't hit me until we land and suddenly, we are engulfed amongst a bunch of Asian people saying Asian words and doing Asian things -- ie pushing us as they pass and cutting in front of us in line. We went to the Chinese Consulate to get our visas a couple weeks ago and I left being racist against my own people. And we had only been there for 1 hour! An old lady with a cane got in line next to me, note: not behind me, and when the person in front of us left, I heard a few quick taps of the cane on the ground and suddenly I'm staring at the back of her head.

I have to leave in an hour to be at Simon's and I have half-packed boxes, backpacks and a suitcase taunting me on my floor. Of course it would be the perfect time to blog. I also have tivo-ed Conan coming from the living room. I'm going to miss American TV! Season finale of The Office! Human Giant just started. Who is going to win America's Next Top Model?

I leave with a list of fears: getting mugged/raped/sucked into a human trafficking ring/diaheria/getting one or more from a cacophony of indigenous diseases: bird flu, Sars, Hepatitis A, B, C, yellow fever, typhoid -- options!/getting drugs planted on us and ending up in a Chinese prison/getting backed into an alley and having our organs cut out -- you know, same ol same ol.

Next time we blog, we'll be in the motherland, suckas!