I’m back! At least until Fri­day, when I leave for a week­end in Minneapolis.

I hope nobody makes me out to be some sort of career-minded jet-setting busi­ness­man. I really dis­like com­mer­cial air travel. This trip has left me weary of air­ports: On the way out, Amer­i­can Eagle’s delays left me to sprint through EWR (despite advice that I would never make it) to catch my long flight. I made it. On the way back, I was stopped at the jet­way in Sin­ga­pore by a pair of air­line employ­ees hold­ing a sign with my name. The com­puter showed that I had never flown from Sin­ga­pore to Penang, yet here I was return­ing from Penang to Sin­ga­pore. Well, I explained, that’s what hap­pens when you wave me onto the plane with­out tak­ing my ticket! (Les­son learned: never dis­card an unused paper ticket, even after tak­ing the flight. Some­body will want it even­tu­ally.) Finally, after din­ner in Newark today, one of those ion-mobility spec­trom­e­ters deter­mined that my film con­tained “traces of explo­sives.” The machine emits a pretty unmis­tak­able alarm klaxon when this hap­pens. That sound earned me all kinds of unwanted atten­tion. But it’s been a good day for home­land security!

I watched a few movies in-flight: Walk the Line (excel­lent), From Rus­sia with Love (good), and Capote (fell asleep). I also watched 4 TV shows and read two news­pa­pers, two mag­a­zines, and an entire novel. The in-seat video enter­tain­ment sys­tem rebooted once while I was watch­ing. It star­tled me with a half-second glance of Linux ker­nel boot messages.

Penang and Sin­ga­pore were excel­lent. I trav­eled light with my new Leica and shot 6 rolls. I expect to have these online within 12-18 months.

Penang was the same as it ever was. I feel like I know it much more inti­mately now. Sin­ga­pore was strange and new: pic­ture a fairly posh Euro­pean lifestyle thrust upon a diverse mix of Asian and Mid­dle East­ern races, mixed in with a trop­i­cal cli­mate and the heavy-handed enforce­ment of con­ser­v­a­tive val­ues. (For chew­ing gum, a $500 US fine; for theft, can­ing; for racist speech, jail time; for drug traf­fick­ing, auto­matic death by hang­ing.) Nonethe­less, my Sin­ga­porean cab dri­ver insisted, “We are all happy here. Very happy.”

I’m very happy to be home.