The PA crackled to life on China Airlines Flight CA1333, service from Beijing to Wuhan, jarring me out of my half-sleep. The flight attendant cleared her throat softly, then said in her clipped, nasal voice:

"Ladies and gentlemen, we have just been informed that because of some technical difficulties, we'll be turning around and heading back to Beijing airport."

Click.

Trying to suppress the anxieties that tend to arise when the words "technical difficulties" are applied to an airplane in which I'm currently airborne, I looked around at my fellow passengers to gauge their reaction.

One woman, staring open-mouthed into the middle distance, almost seemed on the verge of panic; but then, she barked a scornful laugh and settled into her chair for a nap. The elderly man across from me glanced up briefly from his paper when the announcement started, but went back to reading as soon as he realized its import. Everyone else was snoozing.

Either these people had the most monumental self-discipline of any population on Earth, or this was not a wholly uncommon occurrence. In any event, I realized they had it right; whether or not it was serious, I had no control over the outcome anyway. Either I would arrive at Wuhan a few hours later than expected, or I would die in an enormous fireball.

I went back to sleep.

That afternoon, following a great deal of sitting in Beijing airport's terminal 3, I found myself in another plane, descending toward Wuhan's Tianhe airport through distressingly yellow cloud cover. Nor was the city an especially welcoming sight once we descended below the clouds. It was gloomily lit in the late afternoon, with a pall of smog and clouds clinging to clusters of gritty-looking buildings, in turn huddled around a dark river that wound its way through the city like an oil slick.

Even so, a sense of celebration filled me as the wheels touched the tarmac, and I stepped off the plane with the strangest feeling of homecoming.

It seemed fitting that the first person I recognized on my return trip to Wuhan was the first friend I made here; Molly, perched on a barstool at the hostel's front desk, did a double take as I walked up to the front step, and bolted out through the double doors to hug me. XiXi wasn't far behind, and from there on it was something of a blur of faces, both familiar and unfamiliar.

After a few hours of celebrating, and one or two too many beers, I gave up the fight against jetlag and turned in at around 9pm. The party continued without me; I heard the next day that Jing Jing walked in around midnight, looked around, and just said, "那个人呢？”, or "So? Where is he?"

In a conversation I had with my friend's husband yesterday, he grilled me about my education growing up. When we got to the part where I chose to attend UC San Diego instead of Berkeley or UCLA, he was intrigued. He wondered whether, at my high school reunions, wouldn't I feel a sense of inferiority compared to my classmates who went on to places like Harvard, Yale, Princeton, or Stanford? Wouldn't I be envious of their houses, cars, and so on?

I thought for a moment, and then repeated a sentiment someone related to me a while ago: You have to define your own measures for success. I haven't much interest in the trappings of luxury, and for now I am far more interested in pursuing other things; friendships, relationships, and -- for lack of a better word -- adventure.

So now, even though I am by nearly any measure a vagrant, I am happier than I have been in a long time. I feel like I've distilled the the things I need down to the bare minimum -- indeed, my worldly possessions now fit in one suitcase and one backpack, with room to spare -- and this allows me to see the things I want more clearly.

At any event, the last few days have been so full of activity -- things I need to arrange, work I need to do, people I need to spend time with -- that not only have I not had time to write, what I do write is scattered, sloppy, and essentially just me drooling words onto a screen.

So. Enjoy that mental image. Better posts will be coming once I get over my jetlag and the "welcome back" fervor starts dying down.

My return to China is pretty well in hand; I'm settled in and looking towards the future, along with getting my ass kicked trying to set things up here and finish up a project at the same time. So you can imagine how little I need corporate stupidity adding to my daily stresses. It's a shame that my first post after coming back is a whiny angry one (others are in the works), but I'm in need of some catharsis after dealing with the fact that Bank of America is fucking retarded.

This should probably come as no surprise to anyone who's used their services, but here's my experience so far.

I decided I should get a BofA account, because they have a partnership with China Construction Bank, allowing fee-free withdrawals from their ATMs. The other 'best' offer I had was a 1% charge on any overseas withdrawal from my credit union, which isn't bad, but since I pay enough taxes as it is to public entities, I wasn't relishing the prospect of paying an additional tax to my bank on all the money I wanted to spend in China.

I opened a Bank of America business checking account first, because they offered fee-free services with only one caveat -- you had to use their debit card once a month for a purchase to avoid penalty fees. That in itself is a useless, arbitrary requirement, but whatever. I can always send some Amazon tchotchkes as gifts to people back in the U.S. once a month.

Then I find out that Bank of America, in their infinite wisdom, does not allow you to electronically transfer funds from outside banks into a business account.

What?

This means I'm not allowed to move money from my other checking or savings accounts into my Bank of America business checking account... just because it's labelled as a 'business' account. This makes a lot of sense, right? Because everyone knows that no business would ever want the ease and convenience of electronically moving around in this day and age.

I mean come on, I know I always insist my clients pay me in gold nuggets, then I melt them into bricks and walk them down to the bank myself. Why deal with the hassle and risk of clicking a few buttons and having money move seamlessly from one place to another? Surely that wouldn't be business friendly at all.

My blood pressure is already rising. But whatever. In the end, the situation is that I need to open a consumer account. So I discover if you open their lowest-tier checking account via their website, they don't charge you any fees, and you get a fee-free, no-minimum account. Fine. I open the personal account, and close the business account.

After setting up the online banking and link my credit union checking account, I attempt to transfer $3,000 into my Bank of America account. Should be easy, right?

Wrong.

Now the website tells me that for any transfer over $1,000, I need something called "SafePass." This is some bullshit douchebag "service" they invented as an ill-conceived extra security layer.

Essentially, you have two options:

1) Pay $20 and get a card (wow, everyone knows the most secure thing possible is to have a physical object to carry around with you in your wallet) that you can click and get an ultra-secret-super-awesome pass code to access premium Bank of America services like, I dunno, moving your own money around.

2) Add a cell phone number to which they can send a text message that contains these same super awesome passcodes, which allow you the same access.

Setting aside for the moment just how mind-blowingly inept and arbitrary this restriction is -- why make me jump through hoops to move money into your bank -- why, in the name of God, don't you allow these magical numbers to be sent directly to the email addresses linked to my account? I don't have a US cell phone anymore, and thanks to your technological wizardry, your SMS system doesn't work with my Google Voice number. And why is getting a fucking text message on my phone any more secure than the deposit/withdrawal confirmation I already went through to link my bank account?

So I'm stuck moving my money $1,000 at a time into my own account. Good job, morons.

Fuck you, Bank of America. I moved $1,000 into my account to use for the time being, but as soon as I find a viable alternative to your monumental stupidity, I'm closing my account and taking my business elsewhere.