Imagethief

In the cold and revealing light of hindsight it seems that aspiring to a life of international travel and adventure was, perhaps, not the wisest possible choice.

This revelation dawned upon Imagethief this afternoon as he patrolled Beijing’s Capital International Airport for an available electrical outlet with the relentless, methodical determination of a hunting shark. A full circuit of the international terminal revealed that the only conveniently placed socket was occupied by a spotty kid who was using it to play computer games, obviously a far less worthy use than anything I might do with it’s precious juice.

The only other alternative seemed to be the premium lounges. Yet it was here that Imagethief confronted the brutal reality of the modern class system: After a year of nearly relentless flying he still doesn’t qualify for even the meanest of airport lounges. Air China Companion? Sorry. Star Alliance? Deam on. The Ghanaian Telecom Courtesy Lounge? We’ll get back to you.

And today’s flight to Macau won’t nudge me toward any benefit. It’s an Air China code share but, I was dolefully informed by the woman who checked me in, my ticket was booked “NX” (Air Macau) rather than CA, so frequent flier card wouldn’t be accepted. Having specifically requested CA from my team coordinator specifically because I live the dream that frequent-flier membership will someday yield dazzling rewards, I was briefly consumed with rage. But it soon gave way to the cold ebb of fatalistic despair that seems the hallmark of modern economy class travel.

I may live the dream, but the reality of dazzling rewards remains elusive. The blunt reality is that the mathematics of even the Air China frequent flier program are such that you would essentially have to live your entire life on short-haul flights in order to qualify for so much as a Kit Kat bar. It’s an asymptotic curve, where the reward of lounge access sits at the zero point of the X axis, which point you are destined to grow ever closer to, yet never quite reach. You are compensated by spiraling off into the Y of ennui.

But enough algebra humor (I’ve always wanted to write that). I have a Citbank Gold Visa card issued in Singapore many years ago, when credit cards were hard to get in Singapore and “Gold Card” actually meant something. Among it’s dubious privileges, it was good for entry into one airport lounge that I could discover. This was at the old Don Muang International Airport at Bangkok, which was scheduled to be closed but has been given a reprieve since the new airport, Suvarnabhumi, was discovered to suck. In nearly eleven years of Citibank membership I used that lounge twice. That was living large.

These days I’m lucky if my Citibank gold card gets me into a movie theater. Credit card premium inflation means that the “gold card” of 2007 is the plumbum card. The starter card for high school students and former bankrupts. In this world of “platinum cards”, “diamond cards” and the fabled but seldom seen “black card” gold is passé. You want to get into an airport lounge? No problem, as long as you have your Private Bank of Luxembourg Pixie Dust and Ambergris card.

Imagethief does not qualify for private banking. He barely qualifies for public banking. Clearly this is not the route for me.

Thus I am left sweating it out on battery power, in an airport that --like so much else in a Beijing late autumn-- is heated just beyond the point of discomfort. The good news is that if my battery collapses at least I’ll have an excuse not to work on the plan. I hate doing that both on principle and because my size and lifetime sentence to economy class mean that when I open a computer on a plane the front edge of the keyboard is often jammed into my navel. This is not the recommended ergonomic position.

My heavy-breathing HP laptop has a small sticker that reads, “For comfortable and safe use, read the Safety and Comfort Guide.” That sounds obvious but I’ve never bothered because I’m pretty sure that it will tell me that curling fetus-like around my laptop with my neck bent in a 90-degree downward kink while the blood curdles in my legs like lumpy custard is not optimum positioning.

But that’s been life for the last three weeks. For readers who have been wondering why posts here have been so rare lately, it’s because I’ve been on the road. It all started three weeks ago on Thursday, October 25th, when I flew from Shanghai to Beijing to finish the paperwork on my new apartment. The next day it was back to Shanghai. That Saturday the movers showed up and emptied everything out of our apartment except the cats. That night Mrs. Imagethief and I stayed in a hotel. The next day we flew to Beijing with the cats, which is always an ordeal.

The cats went into our empty apartment in Beijing. With all our stuff on the road from Shanghai, Mrs. Imagethief and I checked into a hotel. But I didn’t stay long because the next day, Monday, I was off to Hong Kong for a meeting. I spent one night there (in a very nice hotel, it must be said), and then came back to Beijing. Mrs. Imagethief and I lived out of the hotel in Beijing until the following Sunday when the movers showed up with our stuff.

I helped Mrs. Imagethief unpack and then went racing off to the airport to fly back to Shanghai, where I had an event early in the week. I had also promised to stay through the week to accompany my Shanghai colleagues on their company hairy-crab-eating-outing (it has a ring, don’t you think?).

While Mrs. Imagethief broke in our luxurious, new digs in Beijing I spent a week in our freezing, empty apartment in Shanghai. I guess I could have stayed in a hotel, but there was at least one bed, a working fridge and a satellite television in the apartment. And I’d about had it with hotel rooms by then.

In fact, it was worth it not only because I got to say a proper goodbye to my colleagues in Shanghai, whom I left somewhat earlier than planned, but also because I learned the correct criteria for assessing the quality of a hairy crab: size, vigorousness, yellow tinge to the underside and hard shell on the upper segments of the legs (indicating its not a recent molt). This seems like information that may be useful for impressing people should I ever have future business meetings in Jiangsu.

On that note, Yangcheng Lake may be famous across China for the quality of its hairy crabs, but observing the industrial sprawl that surrounds the lake and the stagnant turbidity of the water I’d suggest that we eat anything that comes out of there at our considerable risk. On the drive in from the Kunshan train station I overheard one of my colleagues who had observed people fishing in the narrow canals that radiate through the area, “Wow, so many people fishing in the canals. Do they dare eat the fish that comes out of here? I wouldn’t dare.” Yet he had no qualms about carrying back to Shanghai a box of crabs stored in cages winched out of essentially the same water.

After the hairy crab outing I went straight from Shanghai train station to the airport where I caught the 9PM flight back to Beijing. I finally got to spend a night in the new apartment nearly two weeks after our occupancy had officially begun. It’s pretty comfortable. As well it should be for the rent I am being charged. My lease extends through the Olympics, which, I discovered when I was hunting, is good for about a 20% premium these days.

So now I am off to Macau. Because of how the flights work out I’ll spend two nights and two days there for a two hour meeting and dinner. I’m writing this to kill time in the stuffy airport, and because I have no Internet access and want to hoard my magazines for the flight. Tomorrow Mrs. Imagethief goes to Singapore for two weeks to see her family and friends before she is too pregnant to travel. When I come back it will be just me and the cats in the glamorous, new apartment. Such is life.

But were she to read this my wife would remind me of the years I lived in Singapore, slowly going stir crazy and dreaming of a job that would carry me through the more exotic cities of Asia. And she would remind me of my younger days in the US, spent watching Jackie Chan and Chow Yun Fat movies and dreaming of distant, glittering shores. In those days I would have killed to lead this life even if I had to be checked through in the baggage along with the cats.

Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Macau, she would say. That is what you wanted.

Isn’t it?