Now that my trip to five countries (Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Hong Kong.) is completed, I’ve had a plenty of time to mull and I read ‘Outliers’ book by Malcolm Gladwell since it got out in the paperback version. Outliers was fascinating because basically, in order for people to be as successful as those mentioned in the book, they needed to be born at the right place at the right time. That was his major premise of the book. I thought about that deeply, and well, I thought I’d share a story of mine…on how I got adopted.

When it comes to adopting a child, you can be sure that there are lots of procedure/factors involved to have a successful adoption. One tiny misstep in the procedure could make adoptions go awry. I’ll give an example. My parents needed to get their fingers pressed for the application. The agency was able to get my dad’s fingerprints but not so for my mom. They were having a hard time getting a clean copy from my mom’s. Why? because my mom had worked 15 years at the Capitol Records (EMI Manufacturing) factory in Jacksonville, IL on checking the quality of cassette tapes. She had to make sure that tapes were properly packaged before they get inserted into plastic boxes. All of those checking had pretty much smeared my mom’s fingers. She also had to quit because the job was giving her carpal tunnel syndrome, in which she got a surgery on her both wrists. After unsuccessful prints, my parents had to drive up to Chicago and stop by a FBI office to meet with a FBI-trained officer and get fingerprints. They did manage to get them but barely. So if that didn’t happen, I won’t be here typing this post.

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Written sometime in 2002., “Back to the Future” was my fave childhood movie about a young guy who goes back in time with a flying car. The best chilldhood movie ever made.

When the 747 Boeing finally put its wheels on the ground, I made a sigh of relief and stretched out my legs, which hadn’t moved for more than four hours. The plane crawled as it looked for a gate to hug. Gazing through the window silently, I wondered if this was actually where my ticket stub said. It said “Incheon, Korea. Arrival time: 3:37 pm.” If so, I had traveled roughly 7,000 miles from the other half of the world, a 14 hour non-stop flight straight from the United States. The plane paused and I waited to see if it stopped for good. Indeed, it stopped and passengers began getting off the plane. I got up and reached for my North Face backpack in the overhead and stood impatiently as the line slowly made its way out of the plane. My hands began to sweat as I held my backpack and with almost every step, my heart started to beat faster, then into a pounding rhythm. I took a big breath and focused on where I was supposed to be going.

Any doubts of actually being in Korea were put aside when I saw the airport signs in Korean and couldn’t understand any of them. I followed a crowd of passengers as my guide to the baggage claims area and waited for my luggage to emerge. As I looked around the huge void and noticed that the airport wasn’t as crowded as many of the major U.S. airports were. I had expected a full traffic of people but here, only passengers were waiting to pick up their luggage.
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