December 9, 2012

Sunday December 9, 2012 -  Tokyo Narita Airport en route to Taichung.  

I’ve been on international flights before, but for this one, ‘international’ has a whole different color to it. It’s not travel as such - it’s a relocation of home.  It’s hard to pin down exactly, but the combination of the one way ticket and the knowledge (and lack thereof) of what’s ahead, make this trip wholly different.  Same eyes, same planes, same airports - whole different trip.

Having nearly 2 weeks in a hotel in Portland before departure was a really interesting middle ground, a sort of dress rehearsal for moving far, far away.  For making the transition to a being a visitor in your town, for seeing that same town through different eyes before you even leave.  It’s wild seeing construction getting started on buildings around town and realizing that by the time we get back, not only will the building be done, but the landscaping will no longer even look new.   Same with imagining the changes in others along with the changes in Julia and I.  It’s like the way that the lawn’s growth really surprises you when you’ve been away for 2 weeks, and yet is easy to miss if you’d been home that whole time. 

I expect that our perception of the differences and contrast will be heightened for us, and probably the same for others looking at Julia and I as well.    At least I hope so, as  I *want* to come back different in good ways.  Not to stop being me, or that I feel like the old Tom is lacking - well, on second thought, sure I do, there’s loads of stuff I should improve and change about me (that’s a whole different blog) - but I’d hate to think moving to a wholly foreign country and culture/language wouldn’t change me, hopefully in good ways.  That’s part of the adventure.  Stagnation and stasis are the enemies of the kind of life I’d like to lead, and this next few years will allow plenty of opportunities to avoid them, I hope.  

I didn’t sleep much on the flight, maybe 45 minutes or so.  I just wasn’t feeling all that tired, so now I’m moving into the wonderful (at leas to me), state of jet lag/travel buzz/dislocation.  I might have been more inclined to try to sleep if there weren’t so many great TED Talks to watch on the inflight entertainment.  There were some great, geeky and cool ones, like one on ‘Quantum Locking’ which blew my mind,  as well as one about Multiverse theory, positing that there could be multiple universes.  

However, the talk that was most affecting related to the state of the Justice system in the US, specifically about the very unequal treatment under law based on the race of the accused.   I watched this after reading a few different international papers discussing the warfare in Syria, the continuing growth of Israeli settlements, strife in various countries in Africa etc, so when Bryan Stevenson  said that he felt that the opposite of poverty is not wealth, it’s justice, it was profoundly moving.  

 It was a powerful thought to consider, especially as I am likely to be traveling semi-regularly within countries and cultures with vastly different wealth and poverty than the US.  I think he’s on to something very real and profound - income inequality is a real and serious thing to address - but inequality of justice is even more pernicious.  I don't think it's an understatement to say that inequality of justice is at the root of many problems the US and the rest of the world face.  It is this most basic of all notions, so basic that even the youngest of children complain about it - ‘that’s not fair’.  That’s a simplification, perhaps, but then again maybe not - what is justice ultimately but fairness?  At the end of the day, save for the psycho/sociopaths amongst us, I think most humans  innately respond to justice or lack thereof.  When one gets the sense that they have not been treated justly, all nature of ills flow.

If you’ve got a rich (an increasingly important qualifier as well) white kid getting barely a slap on the wrist for cocaine possession, and a black kid doing years in prison for the same thing, the system is built to fail.  Or pulled from way to many headlines of late, a guy who robs a bank of $1000 getting 10 years in prison and a person/corporate ‘person’ who rigs the system to steal hundreds of millions or perhaps even low billions of dollars getting a bailout and bonus for his efforts, along with keeping the money that he stole in the first place, well, no good can come of that for anyone.  

The above is admittedly a bit far afield of the whole ‘Tales of Moving to Taiwan’ genesis of this blog, but getting a chance to see some of this stuff getting played out in different cultures, and seeing how it gets reported through foreign media, will be fascinating, and likely a pretty regular topic here, I can imagine.