Gate 102 LAX. It’s Saturday, May 22. 2:20 p.m. Pacific time. There’s something about large international airports that still make me giddy. Make me feel like a little kid. You’d think I’d get used to it. That I should be the seasoned veteran traveler that picks up the newspaper at the kiosk and waits patiently for boarding time. Look over the stocks and try to calculate how much I could have made if I didn’t sell those Apple shares.

Not at all. I’m doing what I always do when waiting alone for my plane to board. My eyes are bouncing around, going from face to face, anxiously wanting to talk to everyone. Everyone. The Korean girl in front of me with the colorful Lois Vuitton bag reading Wallpaper - I want to know where she’s going and why. The fraternity behind me, sported out with their alphas and omegas on baseball caps and hoodies. This is what they say:

"This plane is gonna be packed"
"That’s gross."
"The air is always gross when the plane is full of people."
"Cameron, look on the bright side"
"What side is that"
"I’m still trying to figure that out"

Where are they going? Thailand like me? Do fraternities usually travel together? Do they record each other having sex with prostitutes?

---

The heat felt like it was coming from the ground. The black pavement reflecting San Diego’s tourist summer sun. We went to the Koala exhibit first. That what I remember anyway. Maybe there were some colorful birds first.

"They look like teddy bears."
"Yeah, they’re pretty cute looking huh."
"What is that tree called again?"
"Eucalyptus."

I felt distracted that day at the zoo. I think I spent more time observing the breathless, sunburned Midwesterners heaving their way up the hill to the Panda exhibit than the animals themselves. I enjoyed the polar bears a great deal. Otherwise, observing the people observing the animals was much more fascinating than anything the animals could have done for me. Animals are far too natural to be interesting. They eat, they fuck, they shit. The gorillas were scratching each other’s heads.

I like my head to be scratched.

"Are we going to the Wild Animal Park today or not?"
"I mean, let’s really think about it …"
"No, I want a yes or no answer. You said that we would go this afternoon and I want to know if we are going or not."
"Honey I know, but don’t you think there’s still a lot left here at the zoo that we haven’t seen and by the time we drive out to the Animal Park that we’ll only have a couple hours. Plus I think Bill and Judy would rather stay here."
"We’re fine either way," Bill and Judy chimed in at the same time. They had this look on their face, this why the fuck did we do this look."
"Jake, you promised me that we would go to the Wild Animal Park. And we’re leaving tomorrow you know? This is so like you. I knew you would end up ruining our vacation like this."

This was the group in front of us as we waited to snap a picture of Gao Gao, the Panda bear who was carelessly chewing on some bamboo. I was thinking to myself that it looked like a lot of work for a snack, but then I remember how good bamboo is with green chicken curry and I felt a little bond with Gao Gao. We both like bamboo.

Jake, Bill, Judy, and the angry girlfriend stayed silent as we made our way around the final turn of the line. A shaft of light came through Gao Gao’s little bamboo forest just in time to ruin my photo. I looked down at the foursome in front of us. They were all wearing flip flops and had red rings of sun burn wrapping around their ankles. A family speaking spanish in front of us was arguing about who would video tape Gao Gao. The other children made pouty faces after it was given to the oldest son. They didn’t care about Gao Gao anymore and neither did I. Laura said we coulda jumped the wall. She was probably right.

Something perverse inside of me though wanted to see all the unhappy families waiting for the panda bear chewing on bamboo. This can’t be what lays ahead, I kept thinking to myself.

---

They just called preliminary boarding. Old people and families are running up to the gate ecstatically because they get to board the stuffy plane first. They get to put their books and magazines in the seat pocket in front of them. They get to flip through and see what will be played on the 9 radio stations. And they get to wait for me … the last person to board the plane … always.

It’s something I’ve never understood. How as soon as the flight attendant even reaches for the loudspeaker to announce boarding, everyone jumps out of their seat racing each other to stand in line.

Not me, I won’t get out of my seat until I’m sure there are only two or three people left.

---

My most fine honed and utterly useless skill is telling where people are from. It’s a complex investigative process that requires linguistic, sociological, anatomical, and biological skill as well as an embarrassing requisite of staying up to date on each country’s fashion fad. The girl in front of me - she took the Korean girl’s seat after the former jumped up to race to the line even though official boarding still hasn’t been called - is from New Zealand. I would even go so far as to guess Dunedin because her skin is so pale and when she asked if the seat was occupied, something Scottish came out in her accent. I would even have guessed Scottish if it wasn’t for her Katmandu brand vest and Flight Centre address label on her backpack.

This has never come in handy as anything more than a conversation started, but I have managed to impress travel buddies by pointing people out by their nationality.

---

I look at everyone. I make eye contact. Sometimes I even smile a little. But so rarely do I start a conversation. And it’s something I continue to chide myself about because the few times I’ve gathered the huevos to say ‘hey, what’s up’ have usually turned into life-long friendships. But more on that another day.

I’m closer to LA than Taipei. Just finished reading the first couple chapters out of a book I picked up at the library this morning: An Improbable Venture: A History of the University of California, San Diego by Nancy S. Anderson. Reagan was a bastard.

Then the BBC came on and I fumbled around for my headphones. How do they do that? How do they get the news to be so god damn up to date before we take off. I mean, they’re talking about things that happened just a couple of hours ago. It must be coming from satellite right? There’s no way there’s some dude videotaping the newscast and heroically handing it off to a stewardess before we take off. Will someone google that for me?

Anyways, BBC in the air is only a little bit better than Headline News on the ground. But I like looking around and seeing how the Taiwanese aboard respond. More gruesome images coming out of Abu Ghraid (sp?) prison. A few passerby in D.C. were asked if they didn’t think it would be better to have all the photos released at once instead of in a daily batch. None of them answered the question. A man in lime green Oakleys said he supported the president and wishes that people could get past this. "But that just doesn’t seem to be happening," he ended emphatically.

A middle-aged woman with short hair who looks like she listens to NPR every morning before work said that she, "like many Americans, feel[s] very ashamed and distraught right now. But I believe in the system and I think the system will get us out of this."

The system will help us. Ah, the misguided personification of ideology. I would counter that the system got us into this. Our retardation of democracy which leaves the supreme court - which is not an elected body - responsible for determining the presidency rather than popular vote.

It is time to get rid of the electoral college. Local representation is good, but already ensured by the congress.

Then off to the Gaza Strip where the BBC offers a much more Palestinian-centered (or one could say balanced) perspective of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It absolutely sickens me how the rhetoric of terrorism has become the new pretext of neocolonialism. The left has lost so much during this administration. We used to cry out against what Joseph Nye dubs "soft power" - flexing our economic muscle and sway over international trade bodies - to shape foreign policy. We said this was unfair because it leads to what AG Frank called dependency theory: that developing nations will forever remain dependent and subjugated by the policy and whim of wealthier nations. Economic imperialism.

Now that the Neo-cons have given up on soft power and resorted to even costlier pre-emptive military campaigns, I constantly see those same commentators who used to be so against soft power begging for us to return to that Clintonite era. I can only hope that future historians will view this era as an unfortunate (maybe even necessary) step back in order to continue with the forward progressive march of social-liberalism.

---

5:20 am pacific time, Taipei airport. 7:20 p.m. local time. My connecting flight to Bangkok leaves in about three hours. I talked to Moreno one last time on my way to LAX. He and his girl were on their way to Ensenada for a three day mini-vacation and we were hoping we’d be able to pull over somewhere along the I-5 for a coffee as I was heading north and he south.

Time was of the essence though. I barely made it to LAX in time to check in. So we had our 10 minute cell phone good bye. I told him to drive into Baja rather than dealing with leaving the car at the border. I’m sure he ignored my advice.

We agreed that Taipei is a shitty airport and I happily report that it still is. The last time I was here was in 1999 on a convoluted path from Denpasar to Katmandu via Taipei and Bangkok. I remember sitting in the same hallway with a high school kid who was originally from Singapore but had since moved to Jakarta where he was going to the American school and was on his way to check out UC Santa Barbara where he wanted to go to college. He had light skin and already had the Isla Vista alcoholic surfer look going on.

He was playing his guitar - "it’s a classical, kinda beat up. My parents brought it back from a trip to South America and I’ve had it ever since I was like 11 or 12" - and taught me the opening riff and chord changes to Under the Bridge by the Red Hot chili Peppers. I still remember how to play that song today.

It was a painful 7 hour layover and my friend soon had to take off with his beat up, bumperstickered classical guitar. Who knows, maybe he’s at a kegger right now in IV. I ordered some fish noodle soup out of curiosity and only ended up eating half of it.

I don’t know when Moreno was here, but I imagine on a trip to Kerala. Or maybe it was during his brief CIA stint. Whatever the case, I’m sure it’ll be too top secret to let out.

---

It’s noon back home. Restaurants and food courts back home are starting to fill with the 9-5 lunch breakers. Here in Bangkok it’s two in the morning. The airport lobby is just about empty. There’s an overweight woman in a blue uniform and white shoes mopping the floor. In front of me are five scattered young Thai people watching pop videos on a tv advertising itself as flatron.

The A2 bus that takes you from Bangkok international to Khao San Road stopped running an hour ago and won’t start up until 5 or 6 in the morning. Usually I’d try approaching other travelers and seeing if they wanted to share the cost of a taxi, but I only saw one other person who stood out as a tourist; a young Jewish kid (he couldn’t have been older than 18 or 19) with a NY Yankees hat on. I went over to the ATM to take some money out and overheard him talking with a woman trying to sell him a taxi ride.

"How much?"
"How much you want?"
"Well, what kind of car is it? I want to go in a nice car. Like a mercedes or limousine or something."
"How much you want?"
"I’m gonna go bargain with other people. Maybe I’ll be back." And he walked off.

I probably shoulda asked him if I could tag along - it wouldn’t have hurt. But I didn’t really wanna be part of his Mercedes bargaining nor did I want to float around for just the right moment when he actually got a car and I pop my head in and ask if he wasn’t just happening to be going to Khao San Road. Which, come to think of it, I’m sure he wasn’t.

Might be an all nighter doing web design at Bangkok International’s Burger King. Exotic no?