Delayed! Guess I was jumping the gun in thinking that my trip would be hassle-free -- my flight out of Beijing is delayed for 4 hours, which means that I will very likely miss my scheduled flight out of Vancouver to come home.

Anyway, I've come to accept that I will return home half a day or one day later. Oh well... there is probably a reason for this, if even, just to spend some quiet time (which I did pray for ... haha..) and catch up on some reading. For the first hour, though, I was frantically running around looking for a ticket counter while speaking my very broken Putonghua. Finally found and spoke to the right person at the right place though (very mah fan... entailed going back out of the China immigration departure checkpoint) but at least I'm thankful that I was able to ask the Air China rep to at least try *something*, even if to no avail... although I realize this is for my own satisfaction to say that I did exhaust my own avenues to try and change my flight.

Just another example of wanting to remain in control and do stuff on my own, rely on my own strength. On the plus side though, at least I'm on stranded in Beijing for one night, and I did get in reading time. I also finished "Return of the Prodigal Son" by Henri Nouwen which directly speaks about human weaknesses and our inadequate self-sufficiencies.

And I suppose it's also a blessing that internet is so expensive (despite any bargaining I tried =p) that I did not feel right to pay 100RMB for one hour of internet (paid 20HKD for 15 minutes now...) in order to kill time. However, the guy let me sit on the couch in the business centre so it's been nice to read here instead of in the noisy waiting areas.

Now, an hour and a half left to kill... I'll see how much I can get through of "Out of the Saltshaker..." I always muse that I bring books with the unreasonable expectation of reading any of it -- but it is a blessing to be given the opportunity to do so now!

Until next time, this is Gladys Yam.