I get perspective. First, from the airplane flight and watching the people, the businesses, the cars and all the rest of our lives become less than a dot on the face of the earth, only a part of the collective mass of “human”. All the drama, the problems, the life-changing events melting into insignificance in the “big picture”.

And then back on the planet again, in a new place, separated from what I’ve known by customs, geography and history. It gives me a chance to see different “normal”s. Things you don’t realize about our everyday lives all of a sudden stand out in contrast. For example, you never think about it but in a way, in America stupidity is… accepted in a sense, and accounted for in decisions and stuff. Here, from what I’ve seen, they don’t need to tell cars parking on a ferry to make sure to put on brakes that’ll ensure the cars don’t slide, they don’t need to specify that all cars have to be separated by some arbitrary numerical value. The signs hanging all around are worded with the assurance that everyone reading it has sense. It’s… just different in a way that’s extremely hard to realize or even think about until removed from things. So there’s that.

There’s also just the change. By the nature of going on vacation, you do things, different things, from what you normally do, which is always a way to keep out of falling into a funk. You collect experiences, you collect bits of things to add to you world view. And just the fact you hold a different schedule and are in a different place keep you… alert and mindful of your surroundings.

And of course the fundamental reason for vacations, it just takes you away from your home. Here I’m safe for a while against my dad’s constant college probing, and any other related issues and that in itself is a large benefit of this trip. I find out what exactly I miss - and don’t miss. It’s very informative.

This whole thing took me about 4 hours to type and is probably incredibly disjointed and scattered because the TV was distracting me. And it’s midnight here, and about 2 AM back home, so I’m not even going to read through this once to see what kind of mistakes and rambling went on in all the aforementioned words. See? That’s definitely different.

Edit: Oh yeah, I’ll be posting vacation stories here later. I’ll get back to recounting my long gone China trip… later.