Dateline: United flights from New Orleans to Providence, 7 May

Really tired of the traveling of past two weeks, and ready to stay at home for a while. Spring is in the air, which is my house means my two oldest start asking about when weíll take our first trip to Six Flags New England.

Whenever I describe to people that my wife and I are in the process of adopting a baby girl from China, I say weíre shrinking the Gap one child at a time. What I mean by that is this girl will be coming to us from one of Chinaís poorer, interior regions, and those interior regions are more Gap-like than Core-like, representing the great challenge for Chinaís economic development in coming decades.

Vonne and I are part of the December 2003 dossier-to-China group, and referrals just came out for the September and October (through the 20th), so we expect news about our baby girl sometime within the next 60 days. A referral means weíll know the identity of our child and have a travel date set (usually six weeks in advance) for going to China and picking her up.

The referrals typically arrive near the end of the month, and can encompass as few as two weeks worth of dossier-to-China dates (our actual one is 10 Dec 2003) or as much as two months. Conceivably, then, the next referral could scoop up the dates between 20 October and 20 December 2003, meaning we could learn in late May that we were traveling to China in July.

But more likely is that the next referral will scoop the remainder from October and all of November, meaning weíd get our referral in late June (the referral following) and then travel in late August or early September. Late August would be best, because then our kids wouldnít miss school, as they will be staying with relatives in the Midwest during our two-week sojourn.

With the initial aspects of the book launching behind me and my effort there switching from sprint to marathon (gotta sell all those 100k books!), the focus of our family now gets overwhelmingly directed at getting ready for the baby and this massive trip. Traveling to China is something Iíve always wanted to do, and I know the journey will be amazing in more ways than one, since weíll come back with a new member of our family.

So China is clearly on my mind, but it would be anyway given my career focus on globalization in general. China looms large nowadays, no matter who you are or where you live.

Who knows? Maybe they're buying my book. After dropping progressively from 42 to somewhere around 2,000 over the past several days, my Amazon ranking somehow jumped back up to 288 today (B&N=466).

Now if only I could see one copy to each person on the mainland . . .

Here are the articles picked up today:

ìChina Anxiously Seeks a Soft Economic Landing,î by Keith Bradsher, New York Times, 7 May, p. C1.

ìEmerging Markets Lose Their Darling Status: Global Investors Are Reassessing As China Tries to Slow Its Growth And U.S. Looks to Raise Rates,î by Craig Karmin, Wall Street Journal.

ìSixteen Nations to Get Initial Millenium Aid,î by Michael Schroeder, WSJ, 7 May, p. A14.

ìAbu Ghraib as Symbol,î by Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post, 7 May, p. A33.