Not in Tokyo

I had planned to be in Narita Airport in Tokyo at this moment, alas I am not.  It was my intention to travel via Bangkok and Tokyo to Seattle for the biannual Renfroe family reunion, this year at Whidby Island near Bellevue, WA, where my nephew Jim Renfroe's family lives.  As you know I travel a lot and I am able to do so by flying standby as airline staff.   The catch is that I have  to travel off peak when seats are available.  Well, this is August and the heaviest travel month of the year, and I can not find available flights to get me to my destination.  There is still a possibility I can work something out for Tuesday, 7 August , which would get me there in time, however I am cautiously watching the bookings.
The past week I have spent getting ready for a final departure from Ho Chi Minh City, since I did not plan to come back here after Washington.  My guitar and bicycle have gone to good homes and I don't have to move my laptop because I broke it last week.  Yes, I lifted my laptop by the screen instead of the keyboard and the LCD shattered.  I was still pretty satisfied with the 3 year old HP although it was beginning to show its age.  To repair it would have cost more than I wanted to spend, so now I am down to iPhone and iPad for communication.  I will buy a MacBook when I have a chance,  but surprisingly computers, which are generally made in Asia, are far more expensive here than in the USA.  Go figure.
  I made a very accurate analogy yesterday that I will share with you.  I was riding a city bus in Saigon and my friend David from New York called using Viber, a fantastic app for your phones which lets you speak to any other Viber subscriber anywhere FREE.  At some point in our conversation he said, "It is so noisy there."  I told him, "The noise in Ho Chi Minh is to New York as New York is to Valdosta."  I think I am not far off so you can imagine the cacophony of horns blowing, motorbikes revving, cocks crowing, vendors hawking and twelve million people living in this mega city.