Back in New York City

Here we are once again in New York. The flight seemed a little long this time returning from China. The movies on the flight were good. A number of them were new releases that I hadn't yet seen. I really have to space out my flying so that they have time to change the movies. No, I don't sleep well on airplanes. My head stands above the headrest and if I stick my legs out too far then people trip over them and wake me up.

There was a lot of turbulence during the crossing of a certain section of the Pacific. A flight attendant asked the cabin crew about it and was told it was a patch of very high cloud that caused the shaking. I don't mind flying but violent shaking will scare the hell out of anybody. Aside from that it was a smooth flight.

Back from Chengdu - Hong Kong Airport

Well the trip is over. I could have stayed much longer. I had a place to sleep, roof, hot water, food and good company. The China Travel Blog has now been illustrated with some snap shots from here and there. I did very little in the way of photography on this trip - some art. Many collectors didn't want their pieces photographed. There was a lot more conversation on this trip than there was quick action camera play.

I am currently sitting in the Hong Kong airport - Cathay Business Lounge "the Cabin" - watching the planes come and go while I catch up with e-mail and uploading the decorative images to the Travel site. They have three Cathay Business Class Lounges at the Hong Kong airport.

It seems I am flying coach back to NY. I tried to upgrade with air miles but they don't have any openings. Oh well, it will be fine. The exit row aisle seat is actually very comfortable and allows me to stretch my legs out and trip all who walk by - especially after they turn all the lights out.

The image above is one of the buildings within the large Taoist Temple complex in Chengdu. The Panda photo is not mine but rather borrowed from the web. Chengdu is the main city closest to the Panda sanctuaries and also the gateway to Tibet.

Back to New York!

My work here in Vancouver is done, Thanksgiving, closing up the cabin for the winter and attending my brother's 20 year clean and sober celebration - in the company of a hundred others. There are no upgrades tonight. I am in coach on Cathay Pacific which is equal to Business Class on any USA carrier in the continental US. It's not a criticism, just an observation.

Monday will be a busy day in New York. There are visitors from China that I need to meet and entertain. It is the last day of the Tibetan contemporary exhibition at the RMA, and, I also have a craving for Basta Pasta. The flight gets in early and I generally try and get a little sleep before going into the office. It will definitely be a long day.

On the Road Again......

Here I am once again sitting in the Business Class lounge at Terminal 7 - JFK. No, I don't fly Business Class. I just fly so much that they always let me use the lounge - free food, free drinks, etc.

London is my next port of call. I arrive at 6:20 in the morning and then immediately catch the bus from Heathrow to Oxford. Most of the conference participants are already there enjoying the Oxford pub life. The conference starts at 2:30 tomorrow which will allow me a few hours sleep before lunch and the opening speeches and lectures. My paper is scheduled for Friday afternoon. The title "Traditional Tibetan Art: Moving Beyond Iconography & Religion." It is actually an updated version of a paper I gave in Beijing this past October. The Powerpoint presentation is full of great art with most of it unpublished. I have also added recently discovered paintings from my last trip to Chengdu and Beijing in March/April.

I don't think I have been back to Oxford since 1970. It has been a long time. The Ashmolean Museum has re-opened and hopefully I will get a chance to see some of their Tibetan paintings. Amy Heller just recently published a book highlighting the Ashmolean's Tibetan sculpture collection. Still, it is the paintings that are of primary interest for me.

A Temporary Escape - Vancouver

I have made a quick exit and vacated my apartment while the workmen begin to replace the roof over head. On Friday they installed a temporary plastic ceiling in the apartment to try and catch all the falling debris, dirt and dust. It is not very attractive but hopefully will do the job it is intended for. In the process of closing up the apartment for the week or so that I will be away as they busily work, I noticed new brown water stains on the southern wall above one of the two windows on that side. I now have four known leaks. I have not been visited by any of the small pests since returning from Paris. I did have a red mark on my right arm the first night back, Wednesday, but can't say for sure that it was one of the nasty pests - known in Tibetan as 'demon lice.' I need a break, that's for sure.

The Christie's Auction in Paris on Tuesday was a mad house of activity and I have not yet landed - mentally - enough to begin to talk about it. After my Wednesday night sleep listening to the water drip from the ceiling into a bucket - not much sleep at all - I enjoyed the opening of the Tibetan Contemporary exhibition at the RMA. By the way, in my life, I have never before slept on a wet mattress because of leaks from the roof or ceiling. There was an after party at Merchant's restaurant with over 30 people in attendance. I hesitate to mention any names for fear of getting anyone into trouble. It was a good, no, great time, good friends and good conversations. Any opportunity to spend time with good friends is time well spent.

Flying into 2010

Well here we are again at YVR heading to JFK. At least I wasn't shoveling snow everyday like last year at this time. I must say the new flying restrictions for US bound flights had me a little rattled. No carry-on! Are they crazy? Short haul flights are only bearable because of carry-on. Carry-on carry-off, simple concept. At least carry-on is x-rayed, screened, observed and there are some established and understandable rules that are applied almost uniformly across many of the US States, parts of Canada and sporadically across the rest of the world.

I'm not generally a conspiracy theorist, but, I do believe it is a conspiracy of the transport authorities of various governments to save money by not putting in sniffer scanners, body scanners, and of course x-ray machines for ALL checked luggage. They want to save money. The technology has been out there for years. They quite simply just want to save money. It is like they are wanting to pace the escalation in air flight safety incidents with monetary cost. I think ideally they would like the passenger rules to be for all bags, coats and clothing to be checked. The idea is to have everybody fly naked thus removing the opportunity of a shoe bomber or the new threat - the underwear bomber. Appealing or appalling as this might sound it does leave open the possibility of the suppository bomber. Yes, you read me correctly - the suppository bomber.

Now doesn't it make more sense to have proper sniffer and scanning equipment? Government officials are paid a lot of money, and those politicians, with lobby money and graft, paid even more. Consider all of the time on TV and the news over the last ten years that they have been talking about security, airport security, security in the air. If they would just stop yapping about it and do something about it then all of those people that travel regularly to the US wouldn't be the ones inconvenienced by this lack of Government spending and the victims of excessive government yapping.