Gone are the days I was a road warrior, logging more than a dozen international trips per year and earning the coveted status on airline’s frequent flyers’ club. In those days, I memorized many numbers from filling the same form too many times and zip in and out the airport skillfully. I also suffered insomnia, separation from family, weight gains from not eating right and not exercising, sick from all the travel bugs, and fatique from joggling too many jet-lags with Ambiens. Business travellers fly to a far-away and exotic city only to stay in a window-less conference room all day. When they wake up in the wee hours, they fire up their laptop and try to catch up work.

I dreaded the world-tour that I am undertaking now. The trip to Bangalore will take more than 21 hours in flight time and 30 hours door to door. The flight back will be equally exhausting. I cringed when the clerk handed me the boarding pass that showed the seat 51K: no upgrade on a fully boooked plane. This is going to suck.

Yes, I asked for this trip myself. There are things better done in person, instead of via technologies. I was also inspired by a recent communication training: there is nothing to substitute a high-touch engagement. I knew that, but have been stalling to do the right thing.

So here I am. Tired and lonely in a foreign city. Wishing you a happy Moon Cake Festival. Hope that you appreciated the full moon before you fell asleep in your comfy bed.

11:14 Directed and written by Greg Marcks

It is really hard to review this film without spoiling it. I won’t.

There is a genre in Chinese fictions that’s part mystery, part horror, and part fate. They usually end with the revelation of someone wronging someone else in the previous reincarnation cycle. It is very buddhistic to trace everything to their causes. Readers felt this sense of closure when causes are explained, “That why she suffered head-aches for 18 years. She scolded the beggar, really a ghost, for 18 minutes.” This movie is like that, only superbly done.

What seemed to be a freak accident was explained step by step. Everything gradually fell into a twisted logic. At the end, all became clear and logical. Then the plot chewed on you for days. Suddenly, a detail jumped into your mind, “That’s why the bowling ball was there.”

It is freakily entertaining.