The First 36 Hours

Okay, it's been 36 hours since I've relocated to Guam. Let's look at things as they stand.

I started chantix too late. Had something to do with a trip to Chicago, but I brought enough cigarettes to bring me to the point where the chantix should be taking full effect (a week's time), so I should be able to not buy any smokes on the island and quit.

The trip getting here began inauspiciously. Cabbie was late getting me from the hotel, and therefore late getting me to Dulles. On top of that, since I'd assumed cabbie would be on time, I called down to the desk late, knowing that security at Dulles at 0600 was quick and easy. So, their fault, my fault, whatever: I had to reschedule my flight, which put me flying through Narita instead of San Fran and Honolulu.

Suffice to say, 14 hour flights ending in a completely foreign country where English is not the primary language can lead to a bit of shock to the system. I'd been through Narita once before, but had someone else with me. This time, I was solo. And it was intriguing but also a little disconcerting. I found myself looking at westerners and wanting to make friends. This has nothing to do with the Japanese; they've always seemed open and kind to me when we've interacted. It's more the sense of feeling like an out-of-touch minority amongst a majority who seem so with it.

My little lost-in-translation moments aside, the rescheduled flight went alright, aside from an engine needing to be restarted after we'd pulled away from the gate. A few leisurely hours later, I was on Guam. I'd left Dulles on Monday, I'd arrived in the wee hours of Wednesday. I think I left Tuesday somewhere in the vicinity of the International Dateline, never to be noted as having come and gone.

Got the rental car, schlepped the ginormous number of bags into it, and motored down to the Hilton. Apparently, they're overbooked as hell with Christmas rapidly approaching, so despite being a HHonors member, I'm not in the HHonors tower, but the room's still alright. Seeing as I'll be living in a hotel until the middle of next month at the earliest (more on that later), I reckon this is home for a bit, or one of em.

Jetlag plus the late arrival screwed me up yesterday. Slept all day, and consequently, it's 0516 here, and I've been up about six hours or so already. I'm going to power through the day, and hope my clock resets the hard way.

I skipped the palatial breakfast buffet yesterday and got sleep. I'm skipping it again today. Had some take-out sushi for dinner. Not the greatest, but it won't kill me.

Today, I have some goals to accomplish:

1) Try to get a cellphone for local. The regular cell most of you all know and love will be maintained for when I'm back in the continental US (or, as we like to call it in the military CONUS), but I need one here for local calls, the job, etc, and switching plans would be prohibitively foolish and time consuming. This will be a little more costly, but since I'm not going to be using it much, I can skimp on the plan. I plan, once the condo is secured, to get an upgraded skype account, so that I can talk to you all back home via telephone or video chat. I have the free version now, so those of you with skype can try to look me up and make the connection there now.

2) Contact support people for work and let them know I'm here. Fairly straight forward.

3) Get some essentials. While I like Guam, nobody here makes regular, plain-old iced tea. Every thing is flavored, whether it's oolong tea or shangrila (yes, even at McDonald's and Burger King), plus some healthy snack food for the hotel fridge.

4) Haircut. I need one in this weather. Ginger-fro is in effect. Yikes.

5) Gym. I said we're getting back in shape. No time like the present to start it.

6) Look into costs of getting a post office box. If it's fairly inexpensive in the short term, then I may just get one now and save the very kind friends who are catching my mail for the moment from having to do it for any longer than they have to.

7) Settle accounts back home. There are one or two things I left til too late before I flew out, so I'll have to address them. Some, sadly, occurred just before I left, and while I tried to address them, I couldn't. This latter case, they were inter-personal things, and I left them to the other(s) involved to address with me when they were good and ready. I'll confess that I'm a guy who doesn't like unfinished business; I prefer to hash things out to the point where everyone's sick of talking about it. This isn't because I want to make people miserable. On the contrary, it's because I want to understand, so I don't take shared history and go the wrong way with it.

8) A nice dinner. There are a couple places here on Guam that are supposedly really good that I've yet to try. That needs to change.

9) A walk on the beach. It really isn't an island getaway til you've done that, right?

10) Postcards and Christmas Shopping. There are some people I need to write. Best get to writing them and finding them Christmas gifts.

So, that's the plan for today, folks. Hafa adai as they say here!