The most irritating thing present in nearly all lounges must be CNN.  I don’t mind news, but watching uber-emphatic perky ditzbombs attempt to leaven news with humor and cleavage and an irritating voice grates on me more than I’d expected.  Still, CNN beats nearly any other channel. 

It’s been a few days of travel and my plane out of Dulles is delayed five hours, so I’ll try to quickly recapitulate. 

– I spent a very pleasant weekend with Janet’s parents, talking, singing, eating, and playing games.  It was short and a little unreal, but much better than not meeting them at all.  We visited the Leu Gardens and the Morse Museum – I may post pictures later. 

– Jesus checked my passport and called me “bro.” 

– The Orlando airport has free internet in the lounge.  See, Dulles, it can be done! 

– I spent two days here in the D.C. area, mostly with Lenny, Stephanie, and their daughter Eliana, who for the first part of the evening couldn’t stop staring at me.  Apparently, she’s never done it that persistently with anyone else.  I don’t build my self-esteem on how other people’s 10-month-olds react to me, but I did feel a bit better when she started acting a little more relaxed and even played with me a bit. 

– I also got to visit Tanya’s third-grade class to gross out yet another cohort of impressionable kids with how the holes get into Swiss cheese (Emmentaler, for the initiates).  We hung out at Starbucks to chat after class, where upon request the baristoso gave me a plate for my peanut butter crispy rice with chocolate drizzle along with a spurious explanation of how the plate made it even healthier. 

– In the evening, Lenny, Stephanie, and I had a discussion about how to respond when you feel that others are taking advantage of your generosity.  Where are the limits between caring for and being there for others, and how and when can you tell someone to assume their own responsibility?  How does going the extra mile and not withholding our cloak play into that? 

– With my plane delayed and me being early, I checked in faster than ever before.  I was too early for the customs office that would stamp my Carnet A.T.A., but a female officer apparently just arriving on duty offered to take care of it anyway.  It doesn’t make for something I can crack a joke about, but if I complain about officials, I also need to commend. 

– The security line was so short there was nobody there except the security agents in mood for banter.  After passing through and getting everything packed up again, I walked to the B gates past a sign urging me to start my government career with a job as a travel security agent.  Sure, why not, that’s how most of our presidents started out, didn’t they? 

– I walked up the 90 steps at the B terminal again.  I need to practice more. 

– I pay for this internet, but it is spotty – I don’t think a skype call would work well. 

 

I didn’t have too hard a time getting up on Sunday; I don’t know if that was despite or because of my jet lag. I showered and packed in as much silence as I could, then hooked up my computer to the orphaned LAN cable dangling from the wireless router to check if there were e-mails I needed to read. At that moment, the doorbell rang. My friend Seema was a bit early picking me up, so I asked her in. It feels a little weird to ask someone into someone else’s house, but I wasn’t going to let her wait on the porch until I finished reading my e-mails.

Mom had written, fortunately. She’d left a message on Heather’s cell phone the night before that said: “Hi Heather, this is Margee Stücklin, Stephan’s Mom. Please tell Stephan that -” and there suddenly the signal went choppy and we couldn’t understand a word. But being Mom, she also wrote the same thing: she was coming to pick me up at the airport. Knowing that felt good.

I had to wake up Heather, not only to say goodbye, but also because my big suitcase with the microscope stood in her bedroom. With it out, we were almost ready to load; I had to put my computer away and stuff some other things into bags, which gave Seema and Heather some time to chat.

Seema and I drove (what else) to Beverly Hills, to the mosaic church that a friend of Seema’s had recommended. It turned out to be geared to young college students, primarily, with loud, repetitive music and an inspirational rather than an expository message. When it was over I still felt like something had been left out.

We drove on to Santa Monica, where we had Mexican food on Third Street promenade, and then made our way to the beach and the pier.  We ambled along the pier, past the showmen and tourist traps, and stood watching the waves crash against the pylons for a while until we realized that if I was to make my flight and we wanted an ice cream we had to hurry up.  We ended up settling for tea instead, and took it to the car.  The parking garage made me chuckle by having an Austrian-made Skidata access control system, but instead of installing machines where customers would insert their ticket and pay, reducing the labor intensity of running the garage, you still had to hand it to a lady who stuck it in a machine and charged you three dollars.

I got to the airport well on time, manhandled my luggage out of the trunk, and said goodbye.  At the check-in counter the guy told me that this time was okay, but to make sure in the future that my suitcases didn’t weigh more than 23 kilograms.  I don’t get it.  I got all the way to the US on the pretext that because I was heading there my luggage was okay, and now in the US they’re telling me it isn’t?  Of course I couldn’t just leave my baggage there at check-in, but had to lug it around to the TSA queue for security screening.  Now I’d understand this extra work if they detained me until the luggage was screened and deemed safe, but they just took my suitcase and sent me off.  If that’s their modus operandi, why can’t they just take my suitcase at check-in and send me off, and screen my stuff somewhere else?  Is the extra annoyance only to make passengers quite aware of the extra screening, so that perhaps they’d feel safe?

Well, that doesn’t work, because even though, in another example of Homeland Security zeal, they made me remove my camera from my camera bag, they still didn’t detect my suntan lotion.  Losers.  And while security checked my passport and boarding pass, I never passed customs on the way out.  I’d immigrated into the US with my US passport, but the guy at check-in had used my Swiss passport to check me in.  Depending on how connected the systems are, they’ll be wondering how they got a Swiss guy leaving who never entered in the first place.

I bought a vitamin water and a lemon-flavored Perrier (a poor substitute for the regular stuff) to go with the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Seema had given me, which after the long wait in the car had gone quite liquid.  With that much to drink, you won’t be surprised I used the bathrooms, but if you know the state of those bathrooms you may be surprised to know I didn’t just hold it until the plane left.  It may be an international airport, but the bathrooms are in worse shape than those of a provincial baseball stadium after the seventh inning.

Rarely have I slept so poorly on a flight.  After all, it took off at 12:40 p.m. Australian time.  I may have caught an hour or two of sleep, no more, watching Shrek 3 and Next and other movies and shows I didn’t really want to watch instead.  The plane got in early, and unlike all other airports I fly to I didn’t have this feeling of “What is this place and why am I here?”  This was where I belong.  It’s strange that even four weeks elsewhere cannot dispel that gut feeling.

But I wasn’t unaffected.  Driving from my parents’ house to my apartment in their car, I hit the windshield wipers a few times to indicate turns.

Saturday morning Heather and I went for a breakfast at Mimi’s café, where she had a low-carb breakfast and a muffin and I had a muffin, and egg, and tea. The hot tea came with a selection of tea bags and a number of plastic pouches with honey, which after the experience on Friday immediately made me snicker uncontrollably as I contemplated a honey squishy. After our langorous meal we drove out west again. We were to meet up with my friend Mizuho, whom I know from the Japanese church I attend when in the Tokyo area, and who had just moved to L.A. to start an exchange year at UCLA.

What neither Heather nor I had bothered to think about was how to get to UCLA, so we took 10 to Santa Monica, where it turned into US 1 going north along the shore. Obviously we were a bit too far west at that point, so we turned up a random road (Temescal Canyon road) and turned right on Sunset boulevard. At the next gas station we asked for directions for UCLA. The attendant moseyed on over to his supervisor, conferred, and returned to tell us to drive on Sunset for a while and then to turn left into Westwood boulevard, before retiring to sit in the shade again. We drove off, intent on following his directions and calling Mizuho again when we got there.

Alas, directions need to be correct in order to be followed. His weren’t. We passed a Westwood Plaza on our right and continued on in blind faith, when it later turned out that would have been an entrance to UCLA. Westwood boulevard doesn’t even intersect Sunset. Our drive continued on through all the ostentatiousness of Beverly Hills and on into West Hollywood, where Mizuho’s friend Yoshiko called and we decided we’d gone well beyond where we’d wanted to. We stopped at another gas station and this time I went ahead and bought a map (and more fizzy water).

Oh, how the world becomes a better place once you have a map. Not only do you know where to go and how to get there, but you can figure out a shortcut and amuse yourself by trying to figure out where you’ve come from. The only little difficulty we had getting to the Japanese center on Sawtelle was that we passed it at first and had to circle around the block, avoid the valet parking, and find a space in the subterranean lot across the street. Yoshiko and Mizuho soon arrived and Yoshiko, whom I’d last met during my internship at Nippon Steel Corporation six years ago, obviously knew the place and guided us to a Vietnamese restaurant with a Japanese waitress. Although among each other we mostly spoke English, I consistently spoke Japanese to the waitress just for the sheer oddness of it.

After lunch we crossed over to the market because Mizuho craved Japanese reading and had spied the Japanese bookstore. Heather bought cute stationery items, Mizuho bought two books, and the rest of us meandered through the shop commenting and chatting. I talked Mizuho into buying Endo’s “The Samurai” and I hope she ends up liking it as much as I did. After rifling through the CD and DVD section of the store we ambled on to the coffee shop where they were out of Assam and the only other unscented choice was English Breakfast; Yoshiko and Mizuho both had tapioca bobbles in their drink and couldn’t understand why Heather and I saw no redeeming attributes in sucking chewy spheres up with one’s tea.

We bade each other farewell and Heather and I drove back. On the way I tried to use my credit card to pump gas, but the pump station wanted me to enter a five-digit ZIP code. I tried 04053, which resulted in an error and a message that I had to go see the clerk. He took my card, authorized the pump, and kept the card while we pumped. Am I the only one who thinks it’s odd to require a ZIP code when the card has a PIN code, the only one who thinks it’s provincial to insist that every country have a five-digit ZIP code?

We stopped at a grocery store for something Heather needed to get for her friend Jessica, and I bought orange juice and a can of Easy Cheese (made with real cheese). At the checkout counter the girl voiced her surprise that the half-gallon of OJ cost less than the little can o’ cheese. I told her I wanted the can to take home, because we don’t have anything like that in Switzerland. “You’re from Switzerland?” she asked. “That’s so … interesting!” At a loss for words to craft an intelligent response that wouldn’t hurt the feelings of the sweet-tempered cashier, I paid up and took off.

Heather and I drove to Jessica’s house, where we not only got to hang out with Jessica in a room that contained two sofas, a 40-inch TV, and two loudspeakers nearly as tall as Jessica herself, but got to meet five of her cousins ranging from age two to age twelve. The kids seemed most excited that the two-year-old could already use words I’d rather not repeat on my blog. He also kept wanting to swing a RCA jack cable that the kids used as a jumprope, and managed to give Heather a good smack in the face early on. I hope I won’t be around when he gets bigger.

We dropped off our stuff at Heather’s and headed into town, where we met a number of Heather’s and Kurt’s friends at the Royal Falconer. I got to talk to a girl named Laura who is also a dental hygienist from Loma Linda University, like Heather. They seem to be spawning somewhere. Aside from the folks that we were supposed to meet up with, half the bar was apparently populated by people they used to go to school with and hadn’t seen in ages, even though the bar was quiet due to the car show in San Bernardino. We had a cheese lavosh and far too many drinks, enough that I had to get up in the middle of a jetlagged night for a glass of OJ and one of water. By that time I was wide awake and ended up snapping a few shots of the dawn before crawling back under the covers.

Heather actually lives in Redlands, not L.A., which for her is a short drive.  For me, it’s halfway across my native country.  We drove east and finally stopped at the Loma Linda Baker’s for hamburgers and a bathroom stop.  I sat down on the toilet seat with a loud crack, which I put down to not sitting down very gently and perhaps a missing rubber damping element, until I felt the wetness on my thighs.  Fortunately, Julie had lent me Captain Underpants two or three years ago, so I immediately knew what had happened: I had become a victim of a squishy!  A squishy is something I find exquisitely funny to think about but would never actually perpetrate on anyone.  It’s done by folding one of those plastic condiment bags from fast food joints double and placing it between the toilet seat and the bowl rim.  Sit on it and CRACK the squishy squishes out your condiment of choice at high speeds in apparently a random direction, because although the squishy in Captain Underpants was a ketchup squishy aimed to soil the victim’s underpants, the hot sauce squishy in my case shot its load inward and left my clothing unsullied.  Maybe whoever planted it had mercy on my clothes, or maybe they were clueless about how to set it up (and I don’t imagine they did a lot of trial runs on themselves), or maybe they wanted it to squirt inward onto naked skin, because hot sauce might sting.  (It does, slightly.)  I was glad that with enough toilet paper the mess was quickly history.  I also thought it was sort of cool to have experienced a squishy.

We dumped my stuff (this is no longer referring to the toilet) at Heather’s apartment and took off to pick up her boyfriend Kurt and drive to the Dodgers game.  We got there a bit late due to an initial mix-up between the Dodgers and the Angels, but what does that matter in baseball anyway.  Tommy Lasorda was turning 80 and everyone got a Tommy Lasorda Bobblehead – I passed mine straight on to the guy who’d organised the tickets.  The Dodgers won and I got to see my first live home run.  Thank you, Nomar.  I also got to miss one while standing in line at the concession stand, where I spotted a sign inviting people to ask for the customer relations feedback form.  I did, and confused the cashier, who had to ask for backup just to understand my request, which backup then had to go root around in boxes in the back somewhere and finally came out with a feedback form and two extras (for the next nutcases) just as we were about to take off with our food and drinks.  I also walked over to the lady who was offering free Dodgers shirts for people who applied for a credit card, but unlike the Discovery Card guy in Durham this lady had no sympathy with my plight of not being eligible for the credit card and I scored no shirt.

The Dodgers ended up winning by 7:4, and we stayed the whole game, even though the fifth inning had decided it all.  After walking back across the humongous parking lot we drove home – again at least 90 minutes, but I think I can’t complain because just as on the ride back from the airport I kept nodding off.  I fell asleep instantly on Heather’s couch.

“Welcome back,” is what the young customs official with the gel-styled front spoiler hairdo finally did say.  But before that, he took my 1998 US passport and asked a few probing questions. 

Critically: “What were you – what are you doing in Switzerland?” 

“I live there.  I work there.” 

Suspiciously, waving my passport: “How did you get this one?” 

“My mother is American.” 

Looking at the passport: “What happened to the hair?” 

I think I took that one with good humor, but mostly a great deal of bewilderment.  What does he ask the women fresh off a long-haul flight?  Does he quiz them on their wrinkles?  Is my thinning hair really a US security issue?  Shouldn’t he have questioned me about the food I said I was carrying instead? 

Welcome back indeed.