Dipping Sauces

So, I am almost there or here depending when you read this. I am sitting in the airport in Tai Pei, Taiwan attempting to make some astute sociological observations about the cultural differences between West and East. So far I have nothing. My first meal on the Asian contenent was a ham and cheese croisant. Oh, I know what you are thinking why fly half way around the world to have a ham and cheese croisant? I will tell you why…the dipping sauce. I opted for the dipping sauce that appeared to have a summary of the history of Taiwan written in charactors I could not understand, however, in English all it said was “Spicy”. I am proud to say that I seem to have passed my first test of Asian cuisine with flying colors. The spicy sauce was as it claimed but no match for my college fare that demanded every morsel of food be doused with some sort of pepper extract.
My traveling day was relatively uneventful. I arrived at the San Diego Airport two hours early which enabled me to catch a shuttle to LAX that replaced my schedualed flight which had been canceled. I find that when travelling a “roll with the punches” attitude is absolutely necessary. So, when I saw the check-in cue I took a deep breath and nothing more. I have not seen a line of this magnitude outside of Disneyland’s Space Mountain (Family nod here) or a Phish show when everyone loses track of time in the lot and ends up missing the first 12 minutes of Runaway Jim(Friends nod here).
I did make my flight of course and this was where my luck started to turn. I ended up in the back row of the plane with two empty seats between my closest fellow passsenger and myself. By wiggling sideways into a sort of mock fetal position I was able to lie down and sleep fairly comfortably. Short people do have some advantages. In your face Randy Newman! The rest of the flight was uneventful other than one wake up call where I found out that my medical training was the most advanced on the flight and had to treat a woman who spoke broken english and was having trouble breathing.
I am off to Thailand in an hour and really have no idea what I am getting myself into. I don’t speak Thai, I don’t know how to teach English, and those two skills seem relatively pertinent to teaching English in Thailand. Well I suppose I will be OK so long as there are more tasty croisant sandwichs and dipping sauce. “Spicy”
Oh yeah, the elderly woman was fine. We put her on an oxygen mask and helped her get comfortable. A medical team met her at the gate.

“The world is like a giant bowl of dipping sauce…sometimes it isn’t labled.”
-Confuscious

(written 10-14-06)