The Baffling Houston-to-Beijing Route

I was making a review for my World Literature test/final tomorrow and I decided I wanted to take a break. Of course, I had no idea what to do so I looked at the drop down menu from Google Search and I saw "Continental Airline" - which happens to be the same airline I'll be flying with to Beijing. (What a coincidence, right?) Well, I saw it as a sign and I went to their official website and found their International Route Map.

I knew how I was going to get there and my stop, but I didn't have the visual portion of it factored in. So, I quickly found that little dot labeled "Houston" and I knew the stop would be in Newark. What I didn't know was that Newark was in New York (at least it is, according to that map); I had originally thought Newark was in New Jersey. Seeing this, I decided I was really excited: I'd never gone further north than Sacramento and I've never been in New England and New York was THE state I wanted to go to if I would ever go to New England (never mind the fact that I'll only be there for an hour or so, tops). Then... I searched for a route line further East connecting Newark to Beijing. Lo and behold, I find NONE. In fact, the only route that connects from the U.S. to Beijing is from Newark but it's going west.

In short, I found out that I will be leaving Houston to go eastward to New York (a very cool fact), then I'll be wasting gas and flying back across the United States to get to Beijing. Who knows? Maybe the people who's job is to make up these routes figured out and/or decided that the route would be shorter from Newark to Beijing - but then I thought: what about people from California? Would they have to go all the way to New York to board another plane that would only go back to where they came from? It seems a bit pointless, right?

I decided to peruse the map a bit more. Another fact that was realised was that the only flight from Houston to Asia landed in Tokyo. I thought that pretty neat - too bad I am going to Beijing. Am I the only person who thinks this odd???

Of course this fact made me want to go to Japan even MORE. I suppose I will just have to suck it up (like how I have to suck up the fact I won't be going to Taiwan or South Korea quite yet) and content myself with how Japan IS much closer to Beijing, when compared to the distance between the U.S. and Japan. I could just walk outside when I'm in Beijing, turn to the east and breathe deeply, knowing that I have possibly sucked in some air molecules that had been in Japan (and Korea) the day before, though exponentially more polluted. In fact, I can also do this with Taiwan!!

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I take it back. I have a history of asthma, though it was only childhood asthma. It might not be a good idea for me to do that. I suppose I'll just take comfort in how I WILL eventually travel there before I die.

There. That's something doable.

Signing out to go finish my review and do my OTHER review for my OTHER final tomorrow...

再見 and 晚安!!

**It has come to my attention that the time zone this blog is in is not the same as the one I'm in. For instance, it is not 8 something at night right now. It's actually 11:22 PM. I shall fix this.