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episteme_sundays
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Name: Austin S. Lin
Gender: Male
Interests: energy, contemporary art, acting, filmmaking, fencing, jazz saxophone, classical piano, poetry, travel, languages, oceans, carnivorous plants.
Occupation: Engineering
Industry: Consumer Goods
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
AIM:  LinAustinS
Member Since:
8/30/2004
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| Sunset in Manhattan, Sunrise in Seoul. 17 hours ago I was in a Manhattan-bound rental car with the rest of the weekend traffic heading into the City and now I'm watching the morning attempt to catch up with my jet lag from the glass-walled top floor of a Seoul hotel. Another sign of different place and different time is that along with my black coffee, I'm having kim-chee mandu for breakfast, in jeans and a sweatshirt smelling like the inside of an airplane.
Beside me on the plane was an electrical contractor turned missionary named Steve who was on his way to install an array of solar panels to power a newly constructed church in Tanzania. He has made it his life's work to bring solar power to developing countries (that and trying to convince his oldest son, a sophomore in college in Lansing, to reconsider a career in international business and pursue engineering instead.)
The day gets brighter as I type, at about the same rate as my coffee gets colder. How's that for a balanced breakfast?
As I have been afforded this traveling lifestyle, in the name of personal portable power (our marketing lingo for "batteries"), I know that such opportunities, like the take off and landing of a Boeing 767, don't last forever. So I'm packing as much into my suitcase of memories and experiences as much as I can(literally, as I hop onto a plane for Shenzhen in 4 hours). I collect observations (in addition to stealing hotel soap) on things that I have always rationalized to be true but had never gotten to witness firsthand.
Regardless of the currency exchange rates or the nationality of the bank that happens to be on the verge of failing today, people still get tired, people still get excited. People like hot meals (for the most part, unless we're talking Cold Stone or nyangmyun), people want a place to lay their head comfortably(whether they get Premier Deluxe Platinum Elite Hosh-Posh points for it or not), people want hot showers after 13 hour plane rides, people want to stay cool in the summer, warm and fuzzy in the winters. People still miss their family and loved ones. People still lose their tempers. People still laugh together running through the rain with broken umbrellas. People shriek together while sprinting through airport terminals after spilling entire bags of Skittles like a confectioner's version of Spy Hunter.
Yesterday's Financial Times had its own share of grey-clouded gloominess: unemployment is getting worse, companies are getting devalued, many of us are still at war (personally or nationally). Just scan the front page of any newspaper (for those newspapers that still exist, anyway). Not necessarily the picture of greatness or unchecked prosperity.
But for those of us who are holding on with white-knuckles to the opportunities that they still fortunately have in the face of crippled travel budgets, seeing the world from 30,000 feet (or 9 km), provides a bit of introspective cloud time. I accept the fact that things may get worse before they get better. I accept the fact that my 401(k) will continue to vaporize. I accept that fact that one day people will stop buying toothpaste and detergent and batteries and I'll be out of a job.
I expect that my luggage will get lost again at least three more times this year and that my computer will crash and I'll lose three month's worth of lab data. I know that if I don't get in more preparation for my state engineering licensure exam in the spring, that I will absolutely lose my Cheerios on test day.
But the economy is cyclical. Just like baggage claim belts are cyclical.
Hemingway was right that the sun also rises for all of us despite our unpredictable, adverse surroundings--eventually anyway. We just have to stay awake long enough.
Just keep your nose down and chin up.
Solar power is here for all of us, even if you have to fly to another time zone to get first dibs.
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| Let Me Out or Let Me In.
There's a thing about rental car's that's unsettling.
In an industry plagued by fuel efficiency, consumer preference, and J.D. Powers trophies and crash safety tests, one thing that has unnerved me is this: where the trunk release buttons are located in rental cars.
I am a rental car customer.
On several, several occasions.
As part of my life sends me romping on one-way trips to and from airports, long term rentals upon arriving at airports in cities old and new, the one consistent challenge I face on those long, tired evenings, further handicapped by general travel weariness, way-too-heavy shoulder bags, and suitcases with lopsided wheels, is how the hell to open the trunk so I can relieve my spine and/or shoulder blade(s) of my luggage.
Even when I had no luggage, this was unsettling (mostly because I was in the middle o' the mountain ranges in China and my luggage was in Las Vegas--I would have preferred the opposite, but duty called...). The non-obviousness of the trunk release just made it that much more unsettling.
It is unsettling especially when it's night and when the keys to the rental car are already in the ignition (because that's customer service).
You see, one is harrowed after hours on a plane eating pretzel packs (with just enough pretzels in it to make you hungry, and just not enough to mock your hunger) and those tiny plastic cups filled with soda (unless you're flying US Airways, in which case, you won't get any of that unless you fork over a couple of bucks and only then, after the air-stewards themselves pitch you credit card deals, mortgage refinancing, weight loss solutions, and pamphlets on how to start your own multi-million dollar online business).
By the time you've deplaned--which means you've actually left the plane even though it landed 45 minutes ago--you are rubbing elbows with other similarly tired and easily agitated colleagues of the sky. Airline crews have had to put up with the complaining, screaming versions of you as much as your elbows have had to put up with getting dislocated by the hurtling beverage carts (some nicer crew folks will warn you, but if your iPod is on, or, heaven forbid, if you're asleep... fuggedaboutit). The airlines are trying their hardest and the whole lot of us: crew, captains, passengers, ground crew..we all just want to go home. It's just that for some of us, "home" means a hotel and getting to that hotel means: a rental car.
And then, since every airport is laid out differently, the location of the rental car area is different. Some have people movers that whisk you away on EPCOT center-esque monorails to the rental concourse. Others have rental car shuttles lined up alphabetically. Others have shuttles located by the taxi stands, but no, not over there by the inter-concourse shuttle. Vice versa. There's the long term parking stops, the public bus stops, the one-way-to-suburbia super vans...
Nonetheless, staying conscious and in a focused state becomes quite taxing after you've been subjected to these mental olympics.
That's why the timing is so perfect, yet so simultaneously humiliating, when, just as you think you're about to head to your hotel, you get to your car in the rental lot and you can't open the ever-loving trunk.
At this point in your delirium, *everything* is blown out of proportion.
Typically, the button or trunk release may be located:
[] in the driver side door handle somewhere
[] just below the ignition switch
[] just to the left of the steering wheel (usually where the dimmer switch and/or headlight switch is)
[] on the panel by the gear shift
These seem the most obvious but I have been frustrated when neither of these most obvious locations become actual locations or, I have to run through my Cycle of Trunk Activation of candidate locations each time.
Is this an issue of design? Or simply an incompetent, bumbling user?
Sometimes you will be successful.
Sometimes you will fail. But hey, the backseat also works just fine as a storage location. Think of it as a cushioned trunk.
Just don't get me started on finding where the universal door lock buttons are.
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| epi(cure).
gangnam | korea
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| epi(cure).
fuzhou | china
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| Brooklynwaterfalls. 
Alice leans in to get a closer look, despite being overly unimpressed.
In addition to discovering the Brooklyn waterfront area as a nice summer spot for fish tacos and Sam Adams in plastic cups while supporting public art projects, more fantastically, it was nice to just sit on the grass, eat junk food, and watch large boats go by. |||| | | |
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