Back "home" and Internet-less

So here's the thing: my apartment no longer has Internet. As I write this, I'm sitting in Brunch across the street, one eye on my battery meter as it drops closer and closer to the point where it will automatically shut down.

The pros of this situation:

• Harder to distract myself while packing;
• Much more likely to spend fewer than 8 hours a day on the computer;
• New time requirements for my blog will mean less late-night typing

The cons of this situation:

• I have no Internet in my apartment. That pretty much sums it up, but if you want more, here:
• I have to buy a coffee/tea whenever I want to check my email;
• I have infinitely fewer opportunities to get in contact with people (internationally and nationally; my phone's almost out of funds, too);
• When I start forcing myself back onto a US time schedule (which I'm thinking of doing starting maybe Monday or Tuesday), I'll be up all night with nothing to do;
• Updates and photos will take longer getting posted.

And that's still the short list. Anyway, since I have yet to finish editing my Australia photos (and my computer's battery is running low), here is, at least, my just-updated "final days in Taiwan" (sniffsniff) album.

As for today, it consisted almost entirely in travel. I was up and out of my hostel by 6am; one local train, one express train, one flight, two buses, an MRT ride and a walk later, at 5:30pm, I arrived back home in Kaohsiung. Along the way, much ado was made about various forms of cash--I was carrying three (AUD, NTD, Japanese yen)--and trying to keep the coolest coins from each. I ended up making a small purchase specifically so I could get more Japanese change--some of their coins, the value of which I haven't been able to determine, have holes in them!

Another, erm, interesting moment came with the appointment of a sign at the entrance of my Osaka-Taipei flight telling me to "enjoy your "safe" and "comfortable" flight"--hardly encouraging.

AND--and if I had more time/wasn't feeling quite so lazy I would have led with this and made it a post of its own--I realized that hearing spoken Chinese and seeing Chinese signs is a comforting, homelike thing for me now. Being in Japan, even for a very short time, made me remember how awkward it is to not know a single word of the language being spoken around you (especially disorienting was the fact that Japan uses some Chinese characters, though mostly of the simplified variety, in its writing), and it let me see how far I've come in this year in Taiwan. The trilingual announcements at the airport (Japanese/Chinese/English) were great for showing me that I can now safely say I'd probably be alright if they had cut out the English--and that was a wonderful realization.

Well, it's about time I pack up and head back to my Internet-free home--and then get to work packing for my return to my other home.