China–where to start?

With my feet back on the ground here in Europe, jet lag fading, I’m facing the daunting task of making sense of the past two weeks and gathering my experiences into proper stories to share with friends.

China was absolutely remarkable, but the trip comprised ten intense days abroad that defy easy description.  My group tried to put as much into every hour as they possibly could: that’s how I prefer things when I’ve got one chance to have the experience (I rationalize that there’s always time for sleep on the plane back).

I’d planned to do some reflective writing each night, but the full schedule and lack of social network access put a crimp into the good intentions.  So I took pictures and made small notes to remind myself of things to think about afterwards, when I had access to proper library books and search engines.

Which leaves me with a lot of random thoughts and interesting images and no clear narrative to write through them.  One example (right) shows the really clever multi-plug sockets that were found in every hotel.  They accept the full range of US,/UK/EU/CN plugs, so useful that they should just be the worldwide travel standard.  Imagine not having to pack along the usual half dozen adapters and socket-multipliers.

An easy-out would be to construct blog posts with lots of two-sentence illustrated entries, and that may be the only way to sort through some days.  But there do seem to be good topic clusters to organize around, so I’ll try to make progress with a few ‘themed’ days and thoughts.

‘not very Dutch, as the saying goes, but a necessary interlude.