I am back on the other side of the Pacific. In Hong Kong, former British crown colony and current Special Administrative Region of China.

Didn’t see that one coming, barely a month ago.

After doing the Beijing Olympics on a freelance basis, my first and (presumably) last journey to China, and returning to Long Beach … a query came from the offices of the International Herald Tribune, in Paris:

Would I be interested in a temporary, four-month assignment helping edit the IHT’s Asia edition, in Hong Kong?

At most junctures of my life, the answer would have been a regretful “no”. Even though I have had a great fondness for the IHT since my first trip overseas, in 1982, and I bought it nearly every day to keep up with news from back in the U.S.

Even though I did 11 weeks at the Paris headquarters of the IHT in the summer of 2001.

I had children in school I wouldn’t leave behind for four months, during the school year. A lot of those years, I was somebody’s soccer coach or taxi service, too. I had a job I liked in Southern California, and I couldn’t take off 90 percent of football season and the first half of the NBA season.

But things have changed. Two of my kids are out of school and self-sufficient. The youngest is entering her junior year at UC San Diego. They aren’t little ones anymore.

Then there is the employment situation: I was one of the early (March) casualties of the Great Print Fallout of 2008, and I have been watching the carnage in the industry ever since, wondering where and how I could get back into my chosen field of endeavor.

And then this offer came through, at a very reasonable rate of pay … and I thought about it for about five minutes and decided …

“Yes, absolutely, I’m interested.”

I exchanged e-mails with an editor in Paris, and we conversed via telephone … and I was on my way. Round trip to Hong Kong from LAX on Cathay Pacific, 13-plus hours in the air …

And now I’m here.

I’m sitting in the hotel the IHT is putting me up in for a week, on the Hong Kong side of the harbor. I’m looking out the 21st-story window at a batch of towers — and the green hills behind them. (Hong Kong island is almost entirely hilly/mountainous.)

My wife and I spent a chunk of Thursday looking for a place to live, on a temporary basis, and that is proving to be a challenge on an island where space is dear — and expensive. And where property owners are less than thrilled about the idea of a four-month renter. Still have to sort out all that, and soon. Looking for two rooms, internet access, cable TV, furnished, not exorbitantly priced … and only four months, OK?

Today, I will go over to the offices nearby, say hello to some people, get a sense of where I am going to be working for 17 weeks … and then get ready to report on Monday for Day 1, a day of training. Later on, we will do more apartment (or serviced apartment)-hunting.

I’m very pleased about this. I always have been a fan of the IHT. Even after working there one summer seven years ago, I still had an almost reverent attitude toward it as The Paper of American expats. And I respect it as a quality bit of journalism. I look forward to doing what I can to keep up the standards set over the past century-plus.

And I’m glad to be here, back in journalism. It isn’t writing, but it is daily journalism, What I Do, and given the continued stream of bad news in my industry, I’m quite pleased and relieved — and looking forward to something that might be a bit of an adventure, as well. Hong Kong isn’t exactly SoCal.

It’s good to be back in the business, and with a quality organization, whether it’s four months or something longer than that.

I remember several people telling me, when I was laid off, back in March, “You’ll look back on this and be grateful it happened.” Hard to imagine, back then. But it seems to be the case, nine months later.

So, yes, I’ll still inflict sports opinions on those who comes to this blog address … but look for lots of observations about Hong Kong and China, too, for at least four months. And look for “my” paper at iht.com …

I may have written the headline on any given story you see.