laugh1.jpgIn less than 48hrs from now I will be on my way back home, my first trip back since I arrived here in Amsterdam in August 2005.

Naturally, I am totally unorganized with all aspects of the trip, with the exception of arranging all necessary party tickets and mentally planned the requisite outfits. Needless to say, my Madonna Confessions sleeveless-T is going to feature prominently.

I can already feel the envy. Mmmmmm…

Being away from work and my friends here for five weeks is going to be quite surreal, although I am probably going to take quite a lot of work away with me and at least one of said comrades is meeting me in NYC for the last leg of the journey. I have tried to prepare as much as possible at work to be away for such a long period of time. For some projects its actually a good time to go away, samples are still bring processed in the lab and my contribution is not required for another month anyway, but for others its not such a good time. However, increasingly lately, there is no perfect time to go away for 5 weeks, but as someone told me, sometimes its good for people to miss you for a while.

I have checked in for the flight to Sydney already, yet again another example of ‘how did people function before the internet!?’ I seriously don’t know. With Singapore Airlines (my preferred carrier, for the record) you can actually check in 48hrs prior to boarding. So on the weekend I set myself a reminder and logged on into the site this morning, during the first of those 48 hours and expecting to be greeted with a gloriously available seating map. Well, either everyone else on this flight is as anal about seating as I am (and don’t even get me started about lighting), or else something strange is up with online check-in, as there was only about 10% of the plane available for selection. Selfishly, the exit rows are reserved for “families traveling with small children” – discrimination if I have ever encountered it. So in the face of this set-back, I had to go for a seat way down the back end of the plane, near the galley area where things at least looked a little more spacious.

Airline seating is such a double edged sword I find, confounded by all these new and constantly changing rules about loitering, reminders about DVT and ridiculous suggestions of in-seat and/or galley-area Jazzercise workouts causing people to act out in increasingly bizare and annoying ways. I am still unsure whether the pain of being cramped in a window seat mid way up the plane is any less than having to watch middle aged couples in matching parachute-material tracksuits do calf raises and incessantly sip from paper cups of water like professional athletes just about to embark on a marathon through the Saraha.

Ok, so I’m a grumpy traveler.

But I know until I manage to beg, borrow or steal my way up to the pointy end of the plane, I just have to deal with it as well as I can. In truth, I have loaded my laptop with about 20hrs of television and movies I have yet to get through, at least two papers I am supposed to be writing, reading matieral for my Biostats course that starts this week and thanks to a power outlet in every seat (I checked) I will have enough juice to keep me up and tapping away the whole time.

And also, at least when I get there I know I have weeks of beach, friends, food, weddings, parties, harbour-bridge-climbing, family, more beach and maybe a spot of shopping here or there to make it all worthwhile.

Fun!