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I have to admit that I have been incredibly lazy about the blog and the project over the past two weeks. There is something about being so close to the finish line, about being on the road for almost six months, about 35 degree C temperatures and 90% humidity that causes a man to choose sitting on his ass and waiting for a plane over almost anything that involves movement or brain function. To be honest, the start of the World Cup this month has not helped things any - with games showing at 10pm and 2:30am in Manila and Hong Kong, I was a walking zombie more often than not while there.

All of this is of course shared in order to provide an excus.., uh, I mean an explanation for why the blog has been so infrequently updated in the past few weeks. I do actually have a number of entries that I want to put up, and now that I am back in LA, I plan on playing catch-up. So, while the entries may not be 100% relevant to my present situation, they do reflect things that I thought about when I was traveling, and are a good way for me to wrap things up in my head and prep for trying to write a book about all of this craziness. Thus the trip may be over but the blog is not. At least not yet!

Still, before I get to all this ambitious writing and photo processing, I have a few things that I need to take care of first:

1. Unpack
2. Do laundry
3. Get my car fixed (doesn't start + dead battery)
4. Sift through 6 months of bills and other mail
5. Watch the last season of Lost (don't say anything!! no spoilers!!)
6. Buy a new desktop computer (to process my photos with!)
7. Cut back the plants growing like weeds in the garden

Daunting, isn't it?

Finally, it is always nice to go back "home" wherever that may be and whatever it may mean... but for me, it's always nice to come back to a familiar house, a comfortable bed, a clean bathroom, and of course, my family. Additionally, it never fails to amaze me how nice the weather is here in Southern California. I got off the plane to a sunny 23 degree day (around 70 degrees F) - a far cry from the ridiculous 33 degree, 90% humidity, storms that I left Hong Kong with. The weather here.. simply cannot be beat.

By the way, it is around 28 hours after I got of the plane from a 13 hour flight that took me across 15 hours of time change - normally the most agonizing period for jetlag in my experience. I have though, been surprisingly okay so far, and I will now officially endorse my sponsor product JetZone. I felt very little jetlag going from Asia to Africa, and now I feel pretty decent still from Asia back to America. The next two days will be the real test, but I'm comfortable saying that JetZone is an integral part of my travel toolkit, now.