Break Over

To my faithful readers:

You may have noticed that I haven't posted too much since I returned from China three weeks ago. Please accept my apologies for this lapse. As it turns out, travelling nearly constantly for three months is exhausting. You may have seen in the Final Statistics post that I averaged less than 34 hours in each city. In each city I had to research, locate, and eat the most representative local street food, plan my itinerary for the next few stops, buy train tickets, find Couch Surfing hosts, and find time to sleep. All within those 34 hours before jumping on the train for my next city. Imagine doing that on repeat for three straight months through 53 cities without the regular restorative benefits of free weekends and evenings you would get from a standard 9 - 5 job and you will have a sense of what this was like. These are not complaints, of course. I chose this path for myself and have no regrets about my hectic schedule. That being said, it was more tiring than I expected. I had planned to give myself a week of rest before beginning to work in earnest on my book. It seems, though, my body and brain wanted a little bit more than that. With no firm deadline for book completion breathing down my neck, I decided to ease into things at whatever rate felt natural to my brain and body. So here we are three weeks later. I am feeling rested and able once again to focus on Chinese street food. I expect there will be more regular posts these coming weeks. Thanks to all for bearing with me during this resting period. I'm looking forward to getting back into the swing of things.

Your friend,
Frank

The Obligatory Contrition Post

Hello, friends. In the course of every blog's life span, there comes a time when the blog author must apologize for a paucity of posting. Now is that time for me. Admittedly, it feels odd to apologize for something like this. To me, an apology implies that I owe you something and that I have let you down by not posting more regularly. As if there was a noticeable absence in your life because I went a week without posting anything on my blog. A Chinese-street-food-shaped hole that went unfilled for a whole week. Blogs and the bloggers who write them sometimes have a reputation for being self-centered or narcissistic. I can't help but feel that an apology for not sharing my boundless street food related wisdom with you, anonymous reader, is illustrative of why blogs have that reputation.

Nonetheless, the fact remains that blogs ought to be updated regularly (some say it doesn't even count as a blog if it's not updated at least twice a day). On occasions where it has not been udpated regularly, it makes sense to acknowledge the breach of the unspoken agreement with established or potential readers. The best blogs foster dialogues about interesting topics, and dialogues can't happen if the conversation facilitator is a no-show. What I am saying is that I humbly apologize for not posting more regularly, and I thank you for bearing with me.

That being said, I expect the dearth of regular posts will continue for the next few weeks. Between an upcoming move, two upcoming out-of-state weddings, and all of the myriad preparations for this China trip, times are busy here. Unfortunately, this blog has been shuffled off to fourth or fifth place on the list of priorities. Once I am in China I expect to update this much more regularly with reviews and travel updates and whatnot, but for now it's going to have to be more of a once in a while thing.

Anyway, thanks again for bearing with me. To keep yourself entertained during this time of infrequent updates, you might spend some time perusing the "Awesome People Hanging Out Together" blog. It is amazing.

Exhibit A

Exhibit B