Home Sweet Home

13.5 hours flight from Auckland to Beijing did not seem to be that long after four hours’ sleep and couple of movies. All the latest blockbuster movies can be found in AirNZ entertainment system including Slumdog Millionaire, Trwlight, Australia, KungFu Panda, Doubt etc. It is a good thing for travelers who are paying too much for the services but the lesson I leaned is that before traveling, try not to watch too many movies else you will limit your choices of enjoyment on the flight. After all, the Simpsons and the Family Guy are always the best mates no matter how often you hang out with. No to mention, NZ87 is a joint flight between AirNZ and Air China, for sure AirNZ leaned some good stuff from Air China that to make picky and grumpy travelers feel their money worth, you need to fill some young and pretty ones rather than those highly experienced ones in to their cabin crew, sometimes it is all about the looks. Yes, just like to make myself happy, I have to go for McDonalds rather than a huge piece of steak when I am jailed for almost 14 hours.

Flight is an amazing invention like Doraemon’s anywhere door, when you open the gate, it is another world. The first real meal I had in the past 48 hours made me feel home….home sweet home. No matter how BeiJing changes, some things remain the same. They are all what you need and what you care about, and they make the special place HOME. I have to admit that I was wrong by saying my cooking is better than mum’s, her cooking has improved a lot since she started living by herself. I don’t know if it is a good thing or not, surely I feel guilty.

Things become wired when you open your own door, besides home, I am sometimes not sure if the place I am at is the place I spent all my childhood and adolescence years. I feel Palmy more the place I like to be even it might not be the best place in New Zealand. I feel I am a stranger to here, like you have been traveling for years and when returning to home, you found that you just got a step father…….and a step mother. I was jogging on the playground of my mum’s school. while she was teaching a class. Poor students in their final high school year have classes even on Saturday for the sack of their Uni entrance exam preparation. Luckly I have done with Chinese schools and will never go back unless as a teacher. Amazingly I was the only one jogging there and even more amazing I was the only one wearing short sleeves (it is even warmer than Palmy). The most amazing thing is that my appearance triggered my mum’s students’ curiosity and they came to the playground to check me out. Am I a KungFu panada or somethings? Thanks God I was told by my mum after worth so I did fell like I was being displayed in the zoo.

You will be amazed by how expensive things have become since I left the first time. For sure cheap things can still be found and someone earn as little as $500 NZD per month can still survive here. But to have a quality life here, you really need to get a decent job. It’s a shopping heaven if you have money. Come on, a pair of Nike basketball shoes cost $1250 (more than NZD $300) and only the Nike section of the department store got more shoes than the entire Rebel Sports in Palmy. Surely Nike makes more money of selling the same shoes in China than in US or even NZ. Maybe I should just give up buying a new pair here and go down to Rebel Sport and pick one out of the only five or six styles (that’s the range of basketball shoes, if you are looking for Nike, max 3 styles).

It a place with four times the population of the entire New Zealand. It a place filled with concrete forests. It a place very materialized and with very busy walking people. It a place keep changing and developing every single second. It a place has huge potential to become a very influential spot on the earth both economically and politically. It is a place further and further from me. All in all, it is the place I call HOME, at least for now.