It’s never been a smaller world than now. Perhaps even this little grasshopper I saw in the corridor the other day could hop and fly and reach the other end of the sky.

In fact, to this day, I am not altogether certain whether the events in my mind actually took place because I’ve deliberately distorted my memories, reshaping them into friendlier feelings whenever they surface during the waking moments of my dreams.

The year was 2006 and Beijing was being consumed by the scorching summer sun. I was with my “peng you” who spoke nothing but Chinese, and I, nothing but English. I had hired her to show me around the city, but there was absolutely nothing to see. A sandstorm had hit the city and decided it wanted to hang out a bit. Everywhere we went, grits of sand swirled around in the thick air, making it difficult to breathe and bringing down the visibility to a mere 10 feet. My “friend” wore a silk stocking around her face which made her look like a silly bank robber but one that was breathing comfortably. I had no such fabric to protect my eyes nor aid my breathing but that was the least of my worries.

I am claustrophobic. The last time I had a massive attack was when we went spelunking in New Zealand. I thought I was afraid only of small spaces, but in fact what I was afraid of was the inability to see space. As we went deeper into the cave and the darkness grew, I felt the walls close in around me even though the sound of the rushing water and the cold breeze passing my body told me we were entering a cavernous area. Mind winning over matter, I scrambled out, forcing one of my friends to end her journey before it had even begun.

And now here I was on yet another journey that I wanted to end swiftly. Worse, I was bereft of good companionship to both endure its beginning and celebrate its end. As the panic in my belly rose to my throat, I used every ounce of strength to suppress the surfacing scream. Decades of societal politeness bullied into me proved stronger than my irrational instincts. So the only sounds that came out were, “can we please go back to the jiu dian.” Apparently, in my paradoxical mind, to end my miserable fear of small spaces required getting inside a small room so that I could see and touch and make sense of the world again.

“Hao, Hao, wo gen ni qi jiu dian,” my friend intoned in congenial agreement. The words that I understood, “hao, good, and jiu dian, hotel,” were all I needed to hear to know we were on our way. After about an hour of walking briskly in what felt like a garden maze of circles, I knew we were hopelessly lost in the ancient Mongolian alleyways called the hutongs. I couldn’t blame my companion for not knowing her way around. The white shroud all around us made it nigh impossible to figure out where we were.

Desperate, I started saying “coffee” over and over again to get her to bring me to a restaurant, a cafe, anything but outside bathing in the blinding white clouds of dust. She averred in successive nods, “jiu dian you coffee.” It sounded, right. She said two things I wanted, hotel and coffee. But frankly I had stopped trusting her already. I stopped trusting her when the blister on my pinky toe had reached its bubble threshold with all the walking we had done. My only consolation was that the pain was something familiar in this strange land. Further concentrating on cradling my little bubble with every step, the distraction was enough to dissipate some of my senseless fear. So we kept walking.

This is usually the point where my dream starts to go into repeat mode. We will walk, I’ll look at my foot, we’ll have the same stunted conversation, and we never find the hotel which is probably why I keep having the same dream now and again. Strangely, my blister also never bursts although I’ve tried to pierce it in my dream, just to change the story. I’ve also tried to make us actually find the hotel during the in between states of wakefulness and sleep, but I am never successful. I can’t quite figure out why since we did eventually find the hotel in real life. It seems that fearsome event has been thrust so deep down into my subconscious that I still travel into that great white menace whenever something current is making me feel out of control again.

Maybe writing this story has finally put an end to it. Or maybe my feet just need to keep on walking.

Everything is so visual that you might as well just watch it on tv or better yet, surf the internet for more in depth information. Nine (9) out of 10 of the pavilions are just gigantic video screens showing videos of the past and the present. Even if they are huge- really, Yawn!

I don’t know about this … a giant baby to culminate the experience inside Spain’s EXPO building.

The only ones I liked were Turkey (cool artifacts), Morocco (fantastic building and real artifacts), Iran (crazy bomb-like equipment on display) and the African Pavilion because there was no queue and you can kinda run around the different places without the heat, the crowd, and the incessant pushing and shoving.

Supposedly the numbers have petered out due to the heat of Shanghai which is in the blazing 30′s but methinks it has more to do with the fact that the May holidays are over and the hype has somewhat dissipated (and people in China finally figured out they have a few more months to actually go see this thing).

Here are the ticket prices:

After the 15-20 minute boatride, it was a 1.2 hour trek up to the smaller lake within the smaller volcano- in the blazing noon sun.

Aside from the dust from the many, many, many horses bringing Korean tourists to the crater, the trek was rather beautiful. Even the occasional splash of pee and the sidestepping of freshly lain poop from the horses did not detract us from the beautiful grassland, the blue skies, and the impending storm (well, that did scare us a bit).

We were also gifted with the refreshing scents of herbs that lined the pathway. For anyone going to Tagaytay for the first time (or for those who have always only admired the smaller volcano in the lake from afar), this trek is definitely worth doing.

So, to indulge in this world, I just use the “toy camera” in my iphone which cost US$1.99 and requires no extra film and developing costs or time. It always comes out with different effects so you don’t know what you’re going to get, but then you can always take another picture if you don’t like it. I kind of like the surprise of not knowing what I am going to get. Here’s a picture of my dog which I really liked. The way the light falls on her, the deep dark areas, put her in a melancholy mood, which she was actually in because she had hurt her paws running the other day on the rough patches of concrete under the hot sun.

Ahh … the simple pleasures of life.

Next to him was his wife (or we presume her to be) helping cut the vegetables and stock the cooked and ready to go bread in her own cart as he deftly prepared one big egg and veggie sandwich after another.

There was also a plethora of sauces nearby which we could help ourselves to and we did.

We were wondering about how cold the sandwiches would become in a matter of minutes so they wouldn’t be as nice, but this old timer obviously knew a lot more than we did. Within minutes of us gulping down our piping hot sandwiches, person after person walked past his mobile station and grabbed one to go.

Even though we’ve been back to Beijing countless times and even sat at famous restaurants with their opulent spreads, that day is still etched in my mind as the best breakfast ever.

Over the years, I also discovered the beauty in stones and the most expensive of the lot in this picture is the big one, not because of its size (although partly it does contribute to its value) but because of its pigeon blood red colour and exquisite carving.