I arrived in Taiwan (you can stop worrying, Moms). The flight was delayed, a bit long, and wholly uneventful. We arrived to a warm and misty Taipei evening. After a thirty-minute taxi ride, we find Doolies unpacking, and me relaxing and writing my first in what will hopefully be a series of vacation-related travel entries.

Laziness is a funny trait. Through it, you save yourself much work in the short term, but create much anxiety and work in the longer term, work that you don’t take into account during the laziness calculus.

Case in point: For the past year, I neglected to renew my passport. Every time I had the opportunity, I put it off, thinking that the effort involved would be much more than the result of not renewing. Of course, I understood that I would eventually have to renew it (it expires in August 2006), but the time value of time, as I see it, made it not worth it, i.e., now-time is more valuable than later-time, just like now-money is more valuable than later-money (this is a financial truth—regardless of whether it works when I stretch it to time).

My passport is days within that magical six-month territory. I had heard rumors that bad things happen when within that periods. For example, someone told me that the US border guards would not let you back into the country—or it might have been leave the country—when within this period. During my last trip overseas, I asked the US border guards if this was true, and they assured me it was not.

Regrettably, while the US border guards do not have a problem with the six-month expiration, almost all other countries do. In countries that share reciprocal visa-free entry (i.e., if you let our citizens in with their passports without a visa for six-months, we’ll return the favor), something changes within that magical six-month period before passport expiration. During that period, what would be a visa-free entry turns into a visa-required entry. I learned that when I checked into my flight at LAX. After arriving in Taiwan, I had to buy an entrance visa (4,400 Taiwanese Dollars, or around US $100).

I imagine these countries have good reasons for this rule. The reasoning must go something like this: the length of a visa-free entry is six months. If your passport expires in less than six months, then there’s a possibility that you will stay the length of visa-free period, and be unable to return to your home country because you no longer have a valid passport. To obtain the visiting visa, you have to present evidence that you plan to leave the country before your passport expires.

Suffice to say, had I not been so lazy with renewing my passport, I would not have needed a visiting visa to enter the country. I will also need a visiting visa to reenter the country when I travel to Korea. Speaking of Korea, Chuck, please check that I will be able to obtain a visiting visa when I enter Korea. I know you checked already, but this new wrinkle may change things. This is just more in a long line of laziness-induced problems, something that I had hoped NEQID would improve (which it has, just not fully yet).

My brain is still muddled from the trip. We slept a bit, but not really, and we’re now trying to decide whether to sleep (it’s after 11pm in Taiwan), or obey our internal West Coast clocks and go out. It seems Doolies has decided for the both of us, and we’re heading to the 24-hour Hong Kong place down the street.