Reverse Culture Shock

Just when the occasional reader thinks I've been kidnapped and thrown to the bottom of the ocean... a post!

Yes, I'm back - from the trip, that is. It was the best 2 weeks of the year (apologies to other fortnights, no hard feelings). There truly is no place like home! Now I feel odd being back, a little displaced, even though I've lived in this country for almost the last one-third of my life. Wow. It seems like just yesterday; packing up the car, teary goodbyes at the airport, emergency credit card, holding out for that food craving until I got home during the school hols... I never thought I'd leave home for good. *sniff* (Okay, I'm well-adjusted, really. I'm just PMSing.)

More about the trip later. First, a few thoughts about coming back:

* Americans suddenly look really... unhealthy.
* There are not enough coffeehouses, bakeries, and hangout places here.
* Thank goodness for our car, or we'd be pretty screwed (and bored).

My co-workers threw a little "welcome back" party with bagels, juice, a nice card, and a lot of questions. They loved their batik art, and everyone raved about the Balinese coffee I got for the common pot. (Last year I got tea from China, this year it's coffee from Java... you can say I'm sort of a modern day trader. Haha!) Nothing catastrophic happened while I was gone, my desk was just the way I left it, and a few hundred e-mails waited patiently. Just as a score of random colleagues wished me happy trails, a different set of random people welcomed me back. I thought I would be moody from the jetlag and withdrawal, but everyone was awesome and it made coming back a lot easier than I expected.

The apartment was a giant fur patch when we came back. The kitties have obviously been having a good time, and due to ambiguous feeding instructions, the cat-sitters have been giving them twice as much food. Pepper has replaced her trot with a lazy amble and her belly jiggles more noticeably; Salty just got bigger. Other than the aloe plant that got tipped over and a few disheveled rugs (from the kitties skidding across them), everything was fine.

There were so many things we didn't get to do, people we didn't get to see, but overall I'd say it was a pretty good trip. Hopefully it won't be long before we go back again - Chinese New Year would be fun, then we can introduce E, a REAL-chinese-new-year virgin, to the visual assault of red and gold on the streets, the new year music on loop at the malls packed with shoppers, endless feasting, and all that good stuff.

Pictures in the next post(s)!