Honeymoon Diaries #1 – Washington D.C.

Update: Pictures on Facebook now, and embedded (FB permission applies). Only words here, and they are incoherent intentionally 🙂

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At ANA Lounge

April 8 (Monday)

It was a dark and stormy night. Now I know where that came from.

I’m quite risk averse when it comes to personal safety. Bungee jumps and skydiving are a obvious no-no while even roller coasters that turns me upside down are not exactly “fun”.

This makes riding out turbulence in pitch dark across the north Pacific Ocean 5000 miles away from both continents, when temperatures are -50C, tailwind hovering at 100km/h and at an altitude of, well, 10 kilometers above the sea a particularly horrifying and soul search moment.

Imagine yourself here: Water flying from the seat behind, the periodic rattling of racks and silverware from the pantries, the sweaty palm of your loved ones, the shivering announcement telling you that there’s nothing they can do except sit down, the floor sitting and vomiting older folks, the intensifying soundtrack of the movie you’re watching, and the ever present free fall moments where your chair slips under you, reminding you of the honeymoon you have yet even started.

None of the statistics and believes you ever learned about aerodynamics, airline fatality rate vis-a-vis car accidents, and palm readings about your long life matters when what you sit on gives way to 30,000 feet of void that comes with 9.81 newton of gravitational force. You try to look calm while grabbing the arm rest harder than you ever pinch your pimple.

It wasn’t always like that. Once upon a time I used to “ride” the plane like a horse, surviving turbulence is obviously the highlights of human achievement in lifting such super structures to the sky and keeping it safe enough for us to enjoy the ride. No in-flight service provided has ever matched the delight of a plane taking off, that single thrust that brings together all the feelings of wonder as a child, all the years of toiling through physics, the entire global aviation economy that invented the economy class, and the liberty, the freedom, to take that flight that brings me to a new land, a new hope.

Perhaps I’ve been grounded for too long. Grounded to a self-imagined safe harbor where meaningful work is rewarded with a sustainable assurance of survival. It has gone so far as to rob me of my penchant for adventure.

Well no more, I don’t want to ride through another turbulence with fear.

My swollen eyes continue to tear throughout Wall-E, don’t know whether its about the show, or about my life.

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Cherry blossom outside Jay Sern's house

April 9 (Tuesday)

Cherry Blossoms.

How they seem to have passed me by in the many years I was in US. Or perhaps, it has sort of blended in with the diverse flora in Pittsburgh. Or maybe Pittsburgh’s cold spring every year has made me stick my head indoors with mid-terms rather spending time with nature.

Nature, now that’s where we get the news.

My wife, Yee Cheng, whom I will refer to as dear in the ensuing diaries, has have the luck and fortune to watch wintry trees branch burst into flowers and grow into green trees in her first trip to North America, witnessing winter -> spring -> summer. And that’s because she looked instead of letting seasons come and go by. We told each other that our next trip must be in the opposite season (summer -> fall -> winter).

So I shall write a haiku as a tribute!

Chilly winds biting,
A glance of cherry blossoms,
Squirrel at my feet.

— Jiin Joo

I also felt fortunate to be able to “revisit” a place. There’s a sense of familiarity when things don’t change, such as standing by Lincoln, peeking at the White House (nope Obama wasn’t in), or just staring at the never ending National Mall. On the contrary, there’s a sense of time horizon when things change, such as the blossoming tidal basin, new exhibits in the museums, and even new tour routes that brings us to try new food and step on fresh grass. These two feelings intertwined, and switched between one another almost every minute as we approached past each squirrel, sipped each coffee, and decipher every train map.

Everything was new to dear though, and that made me happy 🙂

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Dear at the first sight of Washington D.C.

April 10 (Wednesday)

Perhaps there could be a better time to drive past Shenandoah singing country roads, you know, like when the trees actually had leaves… (pines not counted).

But then again, the offer from our hosts Jay Sern and Claudia to take their van (DIADIA) out for a drive is too hard to resist, and it end up being a day of “end season” Skyline Drive, complete with hiking, picnic and a detour to Luray’s Cavern. Dear saw a similar one in China but this was new to me, after studying so many years about rock formation. And yes the organ at the bottom of the cave does play hymns by striking the exact stalagmite/stalactite (yes I had to look these up to spell them..)

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April 11 (Thursday)

Baby Laven isn’t as young as I thought while baby Clarisse charmed me so easily just by her stare. Here’s the most fortunate 3+ year old and almost 1 year old in all of Fairfax VA, and some say all of Virginia! I’m still getting used to be called “Uncle Jiin Joo” while dear looked very comfortable with tongue twister “Aunty Yee Cheng”. All together, having kids around us was surprisingly intoxicating.

So we traded more visiting with babysitting, in a good way. Dear gets to spend more time with Claudia while I get more training responding to an attention deprived 3 year old. It’s not surprising to see both of them competing for more attention from all 3 adults, then later 4 when daddy’s back from work. Dear had Mexican food and liked it (yay!)

However, by this day it was clear to me that jet-lag aside, my body is rejecting too much food. It’s one thing slowly getting used to the American portion as an elastic 20 year old, it’s another having to suddenly adapt to this incessant stuffing of food after marriage. I made a vow to myself to stop the madness, looking for opportunities to skip meals and reduce intake.

Back to Laven. Communicating with a 3 year old is fun, but very tiring as a lot of thinking is required to adjust vocabulary, accent, demeanor and just simply the length of time it takes to get the right message across from both sides. Growing up in US means surprisingly sharp auditory skills for English, such as Laven’s ability to catch me saying banned vocabulary to other adults. And it’s heart warming to see extra efforts to pronounce words he can’t get 100% yet (like the dreaded L in words like yellow).

The next time we’re back, we’re probably going to get the same talking Clarisse, maybe even more vocal.

Should I be parenting already? *wink*

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