Nov 24th was my last day in Vietnam in 2009. My stomach was a little upset, probably from some meds I was still taking for my lingering strep throat, which echoed from my last trip home to the USA. Tien's sisters had prepared some gifts for my family and it was a puzzle trying to fit everything into my backpack. We managed to get everything fit in, though in less of a modular fashion that I would've liked. I try to leave my laptop and camera easily accessible right at the top of my bag, but that wasn't possible this time because of some very odd shapes. We settled with that though and then took a nap, trying to get a head start on rest since my flight left Saigon at 6am which meant we had to travel all night. It's always interesting trying to find ways to kill that last unknown bit of time before the bus shows up, and this time around I loaded up Tien's netbook with snes9x and all the ROMs I had. Tien's nieces had never played SNES before, but they also didn't read english. i tried to show them how to work the emulator but hand gestures were again exhausted and I'm sure they didn't get everything I was trying to show them. I made a note to bring them back some USB controllers so they could play together without having to share the keyboard. The drive to saigon was the same as always except our driver was notable bad. We arrived in Saigon at 2am, practically asleep. In fact, we did sleep for a while on a bench in some garage at some transit stop where the bus had ended up. I wasn't sure what exactly the place was, but it didn't look like a travel agency. A man offered to give us a ride to the airport, which was nice, but he dropped us off right outside the airport instead of taking us inside so we had to catch another taxi the last 1km. It was 3:15am when we finally got to the airport. I left Tien with my bag outside and went inside to check into my flight, which took less than 5 minutes. Tien, Thu and I sat around outside visiting for the last bit of my trip, taking photos and trying to stay awake. When it came time for me to go, Tien and I embraced one last time and she melted into my arms. I tried to be strong and positive, but nothing prepares me for that sense of disconnection when I let go of her hand and walked away, realizing that I was then separated by a growing time and distance. It only lasted a minute though, because I had to be ready to navigate immigration and the security checkpoints. Security was easy this time around, but required a mandatory bag inspection at the gate. This was so inconvenient after the puzzle of packing that stuff into my bag, but I managed to the contents back in with little fuss. My flight left on time, and after sleeping most of the flight away I had a beautiful and clear view of Japan on our descent into Narita. Japan is an absolutely beautiful country and I really want to go explore it some day. I got online for a while in Narita and chatted with some folks back home. I would be arriving in San Francisco only a few hours date-wise after my departure from Saigon because of the time difference, meaning I flew out at 6am and would be landing at 8am. Kyung asked me to pick him up some Japanese kit-kat's, and I got some mochi for Lila. I also jumped on skype and re-activated my AT&T cell phone so I would have mobile internet as soon as I landed in the USA. On the plane to America I was seated next to a scholarly looking Japanese girl. She was studying law of some sort and asked me to keep the window shut because she was allergic to sunlight. I had ever intent of sleeping the majority of the flight away and had no qualms keeping the window closed. Usually, in fact, the flight attendants ask you to do so. I soon fell asleep listening to Kaskade, and the sleep was welcome to my confused body that probably was ready to sleep at any time of the day or night. When I woke up I started listening to an Audiobook I had picked up, The Forever War. It wasn't really gripping me though and I found myself struggling to follow the story rather than let my own imagination wander away. I wondered why they didn't have audiobooks as one of the features of on-plane entertainment, and for that matter why they didn't have podcasts. This was the terrible entertainment system from my previous flight overseas though, so it wouldn't surprise me if the whole thing broke down to colored bars. I put some music back on and began to wake up more, thinking about what I'd do in America. I became inspired to get my shit back on track, to do great things, to return to work and resume making money. I had taken so much time off in the last few months and was feeling an insatiable desire to get back to creative construction of art and technology. I decided to hit life hard. Blake came and picked me up at SFO and took me down to Cupertino where Lila had my car. We went to Sugar and found my key on Lila's desk, but she wasn't there, so the two of us headed down to Barefoot Coffee to pacify my craving for western coffee. Barefoot is the best place to do this, by the way, because it's probably the best coffee shop I've been to in the world. After western coffee the next order of business was to get a proper mexican lunch, which is another thing I can't seem to find outside of North America. Kyung and Chris met us at Tres Potrillos in Sunnyvale and we all caught up on travels, technological bs, life and whatnot. It was great to be back with my friends in Silicon Valley. We all went our separate ways and I headed up to Lila's house to pick up some things I'd left there. Every time I get to her house I don't want to leave because it's so peaceful and beautiful, but somehow it seems that almost every time I get to her house I'm in a hurry to go somewhere else. The drive to SF was nice, as always, and obviously very familiar since I'd done it hundreds of times before. It never gets old though, 280 between Cupertino and San Francisco is one of the most beautiful highways in America. When I got to SF my storage unit was closed, which sucked but wasn't really a big deal. I also checked my post office box and retrieved my month's worth of mail which did not include the receipt for Tien's visa petition, known in the immigration community as NOA1. Later I would call them on the phone and find out that they had in fact sent it and everything was rolling along fine. I headed a few blocks down to Crossroads Cafe where I had met the SF Flickr Social crew before my trip. It's a quiet spot with cheap drinks and good parking. There's no internet though, so I was happy that I'd hacked my iPhone and gotten tethering to work. Lily called me and then came down to meet me. I packed up and we went a few blocks over to Nova to get some drinks. On our walk from the car we saw a man whose motorcycle had fallen and knocked two other motorcycles over. It was good to see her and she caught me up to speed on a lot of the things going on in SF and in her life. She was actually on her way out of town so after a drink and a conversation I dropped her off at the BART station and headed over to the coast. I sat there at the beach for a while, thinking about my position. No job, no home, nowhere in particular to be. This was freedom, but sometimes freedom comes with emptiness. Freedom longs for aspiration because without it stagnation pools. I didn't want to be stagnant, but I was so exhausted I wasn't exactly inspired either. Honestly I just wanted to chill out and relax for a while. I called Rob and then rolled over to his house. He had just got a pizza and was ready to watch Inglorious Basterds in 1080p, and that was exactly the kind of night I was looking for. American cinema, beer and pizza with my amigo. The movie was beautiful, though a bit drawn out, but all in all it was a great time. I headed back to the BLT's house and nobody was home. That night I slept for 14 hours.