Thanks for the encouragement Seo Ling. I can't wait to meet up with you in NY when I have the trip planned out! Excited!!! Yayyyy-uhhhh!!

Goat cheese & fresh bread, you're in for a real treat Wen. Actually, butter was fresh and eggs and like 10 types of cheese plus crepe and all the fluffy sweet breakfast treat. Its about 20-ish min from Mont Blanc. I have no idea where it is....kinda stumbled into it but I can dig out a few that I do know from Italy and south of France!

More when I get back in Dec., meanwhile, please rest as much as you can.

Yup, got back from HK 2 weeks ago. Still here!

Feel better soon Wendy. If I know you're that sick, wouldn't ask about Beijing. I won't get there till the second half of Nov. though., last destination of my trip. But thank you for all those wonderful tips. I totally forgot you know the city so well....of all the people!!!

I'm glad you're realizing you need a break Wendy. I probably won't be able to write till I get back from China in another month but a few things so you can start looking into it...or at least something to look forward to :-)

1. Europe, always try to cover a few countries at once but pick a base country. I picked Switzerland but also hit 2 cities in Germany and a few from France. I was originally choose my base country, Italy, so the more flexible you are, the cheaper the trip will be because you can work with budgets base on promotion & deals.

2.http://www.europeandestinations.com/ is awesome when you book multiple destinations (ie.i fly into one country, out another) and it gives you pretty good idea/suggestion of where to go or how to group couple destination together.

3. Eyewitnesses Travel book series are my favorite above Lonely Planet and the like because their colorful pictures and I tested most of their suggestion from foods to sightseeing and the information are very accurate and up-to-date. This including places from Eastern Europe to Greece to Russia. The series also include really good, colorful maps that I found myself use a lot more than maps that provide by the hotel/tourist info. Good for research on trip and history of each place as you know I'm big on history!

4. Don't book tour prior to getting there. Things changed. Rolex museum closed on me even though I check 2 days ahead as well as I couldn't get into United Nation Tour. I used to plan everything ahead and it's not always good when you can't move things around. Tour provide and suggest by the hotel you're staying always better pricing and schedule and you're not booking blindly. The more flexibility you have, the easier you can bargain.

5. Mid-end American hotel chain is highly recommended when in doubt :-) They will surprise you with value added extra like breakfast (we're taking that for granted here because foods, coffee, etc. is cheap and easy to find). Example, in Europe, you will have to walk a lot on foot, you need breakfast to survive the day. Example, Holiday Inn, Munich ($54 bucks a night but I have better view, foods, room than 5 stars Swiss hotel I booked after Muchen) save me so much money on little thing that give me more room to balance a more expensive city later on. Believe it or not, save on foods actually save a lot when you have to use Euros as main currency!

6. Same for transits, most hotels give me free passes for city and it helps, between countries, try to get ticket when you get there. The less tourist-habits, the better :-) I usually also buy a train ticket 2 ways and hop on/off each major city along the way instead of plan city trip; you cover so much grounds, save time and money on transportation :) If you don't do this, you end up paying for train back and forth and inter-country is not cheap.

7. I just noted couple (prefer) places and stalk internet site for deals but do consider leaving some rooms for...surprises. For example, spending a night at Mont Blanc hotel easily cost about 500+ and good thing I didn't plan that ahead. When you cross over to rural side, there are other options...for me, I got a real experience sleeping in a barn with fresh hays , real breakfast, French style with fresh everything that you can't even order at the restaurant and cost 10 Franc for everything :-) Sometime you just go with the flow....leave some room, don't stress about logistic....I find I don't actually need a budget. I covered the same set of ground that cost me 10K couple years ago under 3K this time around and that also factor in everything needed for 2 as I assume you might want to travel with someone :)

That's all I can think of at the moment but as you lock down where you want to go, I can be more helpful from there. This is exciting...

Yes I do agree on Wanda :)

Hi Wendy, Actually I graduated from NYU a while ago, '99. Just recently moved to Hong Kong so now I'm working on making things happen here. Congrats on getting into Sundance this past year. I missed the shorts programs when I was checking it out so haven't seen your flic.

Big ups to a fellow NYU grad and flat cap wearer. So much cooler than hipster fedoras.

Hi Wendy....just read your profile. Happy editing. Oh, the details. Somebody's gotta do it....

No worries Wendy, it was meant to just give you a background of my dizzy world. Please don't spend your valuable time to think about it; that make me feel guilty writing that note. I do appreciate your note...as always!!!

-Stay sweet (^_^)

I'll have to get hubby to watch the movie with me, so see I really do resemble the actress. I take such bad pictures (trust me, everyone who knows me and has ever seem pictures of me says this). Perhaps it is because what people notice most in me is my mind and, notoriously, photographs are very bad at capturing a person's mind. :-) I took a quiz over on Facebook this morning and it pegged me to a T, saying:
Marie took the quiz Are you mind, body, or spirit? and the result is Mind!
If you dream it, then you can do it. You are very mentally sharp and strong.
You enjoy challenging yourself both at work and with studies. You love mastering difficult tasks.

...You thrive in new environments, even stressful ones. You are able to study everything objectively.
You have a upbeat attitude, and won't be deterred easily. You are open minded and optimistic about the future.

Thanks for the ref to "The Puffy Chair". I haven't heard of it. I'll have to put it in my Netflix queue. But I have to say I'm worried: something about the lead character reminds you of me. I can't tell if that is good news or bad news. :-) Different people see such different things in me, even people who have known me for a very long time. The people I work with are continually surprised by things I do outside of work. I have known some of these people for 10 years. Sometimes they are pleasantly surprised, sometimes not.

Hey Wendy, for some reasons AnD keep error out and won't let me post my reply here...maybe because it's too long so I have to p.m you instead. Sorry!

Re: the novel and past writing: I have changed so much in the past 10 years that sometimes I don't identify with what I wrote then, or even as recently as 4 years ago. I went through a major seismic shift about 3-4 years ago (it took over a year) and there is most definitely a before and an after.

Hey, if 10% of what we write is good, that is actually quite a lot. That is why I write a lot of poetry: a) it keeps the pump primed and the technique honed, b) it just takes a lot of writing to have something that is going to endure. Also, sometimes we figure out only in hindsight what constituted that 10%. :-)

Please help me vote for my son Carter, he was chosen as one of the contestant..
can you please help me vote for him everyday if you have time? it ends 11/17
You will need to register

thanks a million

http://family.go.com/gapcastingcall/entries/ilan31/

I've always felt that Mainlanders don't understand how it feels to be a Chinese born overseas. They just go under the impression that we don't know jack shit about our heritage. And that we all can't read or speak chinese properly. That's why I have been using my unorthodoxed methods to learn Chinese. And now, I can read (Chinese) just as good as any other Chinese person and it may annoy some but I take pride in that.

I was once verbally attacked by an individual named navy for being not "truly" Chinese. That is a comment that I find extremely stupid. I start thinking to myself "wait...my dad's fully chinese, my mom? her too! so that makes me fully chinese too". Where the hell does he come up with this theory? Then he points out that I live in Canada which is still an invalid point. Somehow, I think Mainlanders have a problem differentiating from nationality to ethnicity.

(navy has since been banned from alivenotdead but he has returned under a different alias.)

The novel is written and I have edited it numerous times. But it still needs more editing, there are some early chapters that don't really fit, in terms of style, with the rest of the novel. When I started writing, I had no idea that I was writing a novel. It started out as just a collection of short stories. Then, when characters began to appear in more than 1 story, I began to get a sense of what I was doing. But editing takes a lot of concentration and energy, which requires time. I just don't have enough of either. I stopped working on it in favor of writing poetry about 3 years ago, and that was the right decision. I've written over 100 poems in that time, and I think a number of these poems represent some of my best work. I'm not really a novelist. They say that everyone as one novel in them. My flamenco novel, written at the beginning of my dark journey, was, perhaps, my one novel.

My interests have changed to the point that I don't really care to put a lot of work into something that was begun 10 years ago. Also, trying to get it published would be almost a full-time job in and of itself. I have so little time for writing right now that I just want to write. I know I'm never going to be a professional writer, not at my age. I had hopes when I started the novel...but not now. So I write for my own purposes. I share it with a few people, mostly by posting things here at AnD, where very few people read it, anyway. I can't blame people, I may write poetry, but I don't read it. ;-)

Someday, if I had more time, I'd probably work on getting something published (likely the poetry, that would be easiest), but I work full-time at a job that has nothing whatsoever to do with writing or the arts. Nights and weekends, I just don't have the energy and concentration to do anything that requires concentration and time.

I've given up on my novel to the point that just this week I decided that if I ever wanted to get it published, I'd probably do the self-publishing thing on Amazon. I never thought I would get to the point where I cared so little about it that I would seriously consider self-publishing. In my mind, self-publishing is making public some publisher's slush pile, where 98% of it is crap and there is just too much to slog through to find those 2 gems in a hundred.

When I get my "discovering Leslie" piece written, I will be sure and post it. I have also submitted something related to this experience to "The Story with Dick Gordon", a Public Radio program that just happens to be based in Chapel Hill. I don't know if they will consider it a story with a broad enough interest base, though. But Dick Gordan has traveled extensively, though not to Asia, so maybe there is a chance. I know my Leslie Friends all hope I'll get selected to tell my story on the program. :-)

Well, interesting enough when the impulse came to me to write my "piece", as I was finishing dinner, I thought it might be a poem. Then when I started to write, it was clearly a prose piece, but one with a rather poetic use of language. I don't want to turn it into a short story, it is not fictional. I've done fictional turns informed by my life, and that was a novel and some of the poetry I've written. This was written to get down on paper not only the facts (vaguely recounted and not all that interesting), but even more the feeling of the experience. As I said, I can't imagine who might want to publish such a thing. If I do ever get a collection of my poetry published, I'd probably include it in that. It seems to fit better with poetry than with fiction, anyway.

About the man whoreached out to me from beyond the grave, that is Leslie Cheung. Now that is a story I'm waiting to tell. I haven't found the time or the right frame of mind to crystalize in words what an amazing journey I have been on because of Leslie these past 26 months. Leslie is responsible for me being on AnD. I saw an amazing photobook of pictures of him taken in China, called Leslie in China. I was also familiar with the photographer from other work he had done in Hong Kong. We had even briefly exchanged email messages. I wanted to know more, and AnD kept coming up everytime I did a Google search on this photographer. So I joined AnD, and, lately Facebook. I have met a lot of people who were also touched by Leslie. There is a worldwide network of Leslie people and, to a one, they have been among the nicest people I have ever met. How often do you hear someone say that about Hong Kongers and Mainland Chinese (the vast majority of Leslie fans)???