I leave in a couple hours to grab the shuttle from Suzhou to the Shanghai Pudong airport where I’ll collect what is sure to be a slightly achy and jet lagged version of my friend. I’m super excited. Of course because it’s been a year and a half since I’ve seen my friend, but I think the excitement has much more to do with the anticipation of sharing a part of my life that despite being friends for nearly 20 years, he’s virtually unaware of.

Much like when I brought Maggie home to Canada the Christmas after we got married, it was great for her to meet the parts of my family she hadn’t met, and it was good to visit home — but the most interesting part was sharing with her a whole side of my life that she had never experienced. She only knew “Ryan in China”, and had never met “Ryan in Canada” – his friends, his hometown, his memories, etc.

Cory and I up at his cottage in 2004, the summer before I left for China. The fish were small, but the beer helped.

Likewise, Cory and I grew up together. We weathered those awkward and painful high school years together. We witnessed each others first loves, first loves lost (still trying to remember where we left her), first jobs, first time driving, first time drinking, first time leaving home, etc. As a guy with two (wonderful) sisters, he is the closest thing to a brother I’ve ever known.

But since moving to China in 2005 our paths have run further and further apart. While four and a half years is a relatively short period of time, it’s caused me to miss out on a lot of things back home, and caused the people I care about back home to miss out on a lot of things in my life. As much as I do my best to stay in touch and keep up with what is going on, the pictures people paint for me become less and less vivid until they resemble little more than bullet points in an e-mail, and not the life-affecting changes that they actually are.

As much as I “know” life is moving on steadily without me back home, it isn’t “real” to me in a physical sense. And I imagine it is much the same for my friends and family back home with my life here. They all know I live in China, and presumably have some sort of life here; but I am guessing it doesn’t really exist for most of them because they’ve not seen it and been apart of that story themselves.

That’s really what it comes down to, and why this birthday is more exciting than any I’ve had recently — I’m extremely excited to have such an integral character in my story back in the plot — if even just for a couple weeks.

Of course it’s the perfect time to take a holiday and trek around the country — so that’s exactly what I’m going to be doing next week and the week after.

Heat or not, I couldn’t be more excited. The timing of the vacation is because my best friend Cory is (coufinallygh) coming to visit me in China. We’ve been friends for going on 20 years, which for me is no small feat. See, I’ve called 25 different places “home” over the course of my 32 years (birthday this Thursday), and as such have shuffled through friends nearly as much as I’ve shuffled through addresses. But whereas many friends come and go, Cory is as close as to being kin to me as you can get without sharing blood. It’s been a year and a half since I’ve seen him, and even then it was only short visits. It’s going to be great to be able to spend two weeks catching up.

As it’s his first time here, there’s no shortage of things that he would like to see — 3rd or 4th largest country in the world be damned. So in the two short weeks of his visit we are going to attempt the following jam-packed itinerary:

Our Chitinerary

Despite living here, I’m pretty excited about the travels as well. I’ve become entirely too sedentary in recent years, a sharp contrast to the itchy-footed globetrotter (I suck at basketball) that washed up here nearly half a decade ago. This will be my first trip to Xi’an and first *real* trip to Nanjing (I bussed up there for a cheap airfare once, but only saw the bus station, airport and a traffic-filled blur inbetween). It will also be the first time I’ve been back to Beijing since travelling there in 2005, only three months after arriving in China.

Cory and I will be leaving Maggie at home, and so will largely be depending on my craptastic language abilities to navigate us through — a fact that excites me nearly as much as it scares the hell out of me. I mean, I’ve travelled in 10+ countries, many of which couldn’t speak much English, and have done fine. I guess I’m just apprehensive about being the sole language-point for us. It will, however, give me the opportunity I need to dust off my Chinese skills, which have been steadly going stale since we moved from downtown Suzhou out to the SIP area — a district where you’re nearly as likely to pass a foreigner on the street as you are a local.

Recapturing the Shutter Bug

The trip will also provide me with an opportunity to revisit a former passion – photography. I got into photography in high school, and was knee-deep in SLR gear by my late teens. I then studied photography, if rather basically, in college as part of my journalism program, and adored it. After college I went to work for some magazines and got to play concert photographer for a few shows, which was awesome (I think I still have lumps on my skull from water bottles being thrown at Cake during a outdoor summer festival).

But when I decided to pack in the journalism career and live out of a backpack for five months, I made the difficult decision to trade in my SLR and lenses for a much more compact digital point-and-shoot. It served me well (see photos from UK/Ireland, Mainland Europe and Thailand), but I’ve always missed having a real camera.

After deciding to stay in China I flipped a coin on whether to buy a DSLR or a new laptop with some of the money I had saved to move to Australia. I ended up meeting in the middle and getting a new laptop and a prosumer p&s. Over the years I’ve had a few opporunities and wasted much of my friend Derrick‘s time asking endless questions of what his recommendations for DSLRs is.

Finally, after humming and hawing about this for a few years (ask Maggie, next to a sailboat, it’s the “awe I want one” thing she’s listened to me whinge about the most) and with this 2-weeks of travel looming, I bit the bullet last week and grabbed myself Canon’s new entry-level DSLR, the 500D. A few of my friends have the 450D, and I was decently impressed with it. The 500D is a mild improvement over the 450D, but among its new features is the ability to shoot HD video.

I wrestled over whether to buy just the body and grab the lenses seperately, but the minimal cost difference (and lack of time) prompted me to just grab the kit with a Canon EF 18-55mm IS lens attached (effectively about a 30mm-70mm lens). It’s alright, but a bit slow — basically just a 100% mediocre lens. However, it and the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 I’ll grab this week will do the job until I can afford to laydown some serious bucks on a good telephoto and a nice wide-angle. Suggestions enthusiastically welcomed.

I bought the camera at one of Canon’s authorized dealers in Suzhou. It involved some pretty heady negotiations on the part of my wife, as we wanted to get the price down to approximately the costs found on Taobao. We considered buying it from Taobao, but were a bit nervous getting such a large purchase from someone we couldn’t physically visit if something went wrong.

We couldn’t get the price as low as it is on Taobao, but did mange to wrangle a pretty decent deal in my opinon. I got the Canon 500D (18-55IS) kit, 4GB SD card, 58mm UV filter, a crappy little bag and LCD scratch protector for 5750 RMB. I’ve all but tossed the waffer-thin lunchbox style bag they gave me, and instead ordered a rather awesome Crumpler bag.

Both my friends Ric and Elvina swear by them, and they look great — not much like a camera bag, which is exactly what I wanted. I checked out Crumpler’s US site and the bags were a bit pricey, and so I decided to see if Taobao had knock-offs cheaper. Sure enough, it does. I ordered the 7 Million Dollar Home, as it is big enough to fit extra goodies in it and wont force me to buy a new bag when I finally get some new lenses later this year. It took 2 days to get here, and while I don’t have a *real* Crumpler to A-B it with, it looks just as advertised, and appears good and sturdy. In fact, comparing it to the pictures on Crumpler’s site, the only difference is the colour of the interior lining. Everything else seems pretty much exact — and at about 1/3 the price of the US Web site, I ain’t complaining.

Well – best I publish this and get back to the rather insane list of things I need to get done before I shut down shop for 2 weeks. I love holidays, and love that my situation allows me the flexibility of choosing my holidays whenever I want – but the unfortunate side-effect is there’s no one here to fill in for me while I’m gone.

Oh, as I do whenever summer hits, I’ve been listening to a lot more Sublime. Have had Doin’ Time stuck in my head for the last few days, but keep singing it with a slight China-tinge…. it’s stupid, but I just can’t help it. Such a great song though.

Doin’ Time – Sublime

Summertime and the living’s easy
And Bradley’s on the microphone w/ ras m.g.
All the people in the dance will agree
That we are well qualified to represent the PRC
Me and Louie run to the Party
Dance to the rhythm it gets harder
Me and China we got this relationship
I love her so bad but she treats me like shit
On lock down like a penitentiary
She spreads her lovin’ all over
And when she gets home there’s none left for me

[chorus]

Oh take this veil from off my eyes
My burning sun will someday rise
So what am I gonna be doin’ for a while
Said I’m gonna play with myself
Show them how we come off the shelf

[chorus]

Evil I’ve come to tell you that she’s evil most definitely
Evil ornery scandalous and evil most definitely
The tension is getting hotter I’d like to hold her head underwater

—

Incidentally, if you find a puddle of fleshy goo that smells faintly of maple syrup and bacon somewhere between Xi’an and Suzhou, please scoop it up and return it to my dear mother – you can keep the camera. Damn it’s hot.