On the road again...

On the road again…in the middle of an 8-day business trip in China, mixed with one day of pleasure in Beijing for the NBA exhibition game between the Sacramento Kings and Houston Rockets. Right now I’m sitting on a drain (that was a typo, and after thinking about it, it’s probably a more fitting name for what I’m riding) from Shanghai to Hangzhou. Then again, I shouldn’t complain, I’m already in the nicer cabin and compared to many of the trains in China’s inland or less developed countries, this is actually pretty luxurious. But still, the road gets to you and it’s nice not to have people all around who for some reason have mistaken shouting with talking go at their conversations full force.

Lucky for me though is that sitting across from me are two very cute elderly couple…the plump wife who is nodding off and the soft-spoken thin husband in a way oversized stone-colored jacket periodically glancing over to check on her while battling boredom and wandering off to some deep depth of his mind. Times like these I wonder what he might be thinking of staring out of the train window into the darkness.

I can’t help but think people are such pathetic creatures…we’re just animals with too many toys, and very slightly higher intelligence. I love watching Discovery channel not just because I love animals and enjoy nature, but because it’s refreshing to see animals go about their business with an honesty that people will never have.

I sometimes think, what would happen if the world could start from scratch again with some of the pieces changed? I mean what would happen if Caucasian Europeans originated from the Middle East, Chinese came from Western Europe, Africans from Russia, South Americans from Africa, Native Americans from Eastern Europe, Middle East to North America, Native Australians to the British Isles and British to Australia…how would the cultur develop differently due to their surroundings…how would politics, power, and society progress…how would the difference in resources available change the global balance? Would their still be a Great Wall? Taj Mahal? How would oil be valued by these cultures? How would the different cuisines taste?

Or else, what if all ethnicities were distributed across the world under the same current population densities, but within each population each ethnicity was distributed evenly in numbers and in relation to each other. Would we naturally navigate into groups based on ethnicity or is it possible that we could wipe away discrimination based on ethnicity?

Anyway, the train is jerking around every once in a while like a person getting the chills. Why this is I have no idea. The elderly couple across from me are awake and attacking a bowl of chestnuts. I’m playing 80’s music through my laptop. ETA in 45 minutes.