Carolina and I awoke at 5 30 am, showered and said our good byes to upset cats who would not look us in the eye. The car service sent us a mini van from Palestine missing seats and with a banged up tape deck blaring what sounded like an accordion with a cat being shaved as vocals. Several near death experiences later, we arrived at JFK wide awake.
Da plane!! Japan Airlines, the best way to travel the services as always is exceptional and the food and more importantly the free sake are always tasty. The thirteen hour flight in a nutshell
Reading cover to cover
Harpers
GQ
Lonely Plant Tokyo and Beijing

Movies (time served in purgatory)
Night at the Museum
Charlotte's Web
Open Season

Consumed
4 bottles of sake
1 ambien CE

Sleep
3 hours (note with ambien CE usually a solid 8 hours)

We arrived in Naritta airport in Japan with a four hour layover. Layover is just another word for airport bar and who am I to deny the time honored tradition.Yes, that’s a Mohawk compliment of Carolina and Terry, my next-door neighbor, for my thirty-first birthday haircut. Even the Japanese airport food is great: a little pork and rice with udon noodles mmmm. Two pints and half two bowls of food $36.00 spanktackular! Boarded another plane for the three and half hour flight to Beijing. After two sakes, an hour nap and yesterday’s New York Times, we arrived in The People’s Republic of China. After a painless custom’s check we met Carolina’s sister Nieves and emerged from the sterile airport world at 10 pm. Nieves threw us in taxi speeding towards central Beijing glancing out the windows of the cab you can see globalization. The highway could have been in New Jersey green highway signs Toyota, Cadillac and Audi cars on the road.

We came into Beijing on a sleepy Sunday night hurraling past hundreds of high risers and neon signs with a thick mist of pollution permeating the air. We dropped our bags at Nieves’s flat in Dongcheng and found another cab and headed to D22 an ex-pat dive bar. http://www.d22beijing.com Johnny Cash is everywhere man!! Funny you fly half way around the world to find yourself in a dive bar listen to jazz drinking rot gut vodka. The jazz band Red Hand fused Mongolian throat singing with Coltrane, it was one of the best jazz bands I ever heard. Just a car ride and a couple drinks in a dive bar and the vibe here is undeniable the wave surging. Not a bad place to start celebrating your 31st birthday cake and a crown.

Good Night and Good Luck from Beijing