This is the third Saturday in May, I am sitting in the Air New Zealand lounge and so I must be off to America. This is what I do in the third week of May. San Diego this year. Never been there before but it is a standout must go to destination as it has the USS Midway set up as tourist attraction. Forget the zoo (which I hear is very good) and all the other attractions, I want to see the aircraft carrier. I chose my hotel not for its convenieice for the conference centre but its proximity to the Midway. Its not nuclear powered but you can'y have everything.
Standard sort of a day really. Play golf in the morning fly to the other side of the world in the afternoon. I trust the flight is more enjoyable than the golf. What is the bleeding point in plying golf when the visibility is down to fifty metres. Even a powder puff hitter like me can (and did) lose balls off the tee in fog like that. So we have a Sean Fitzpatrick round - a game of two halves and the course was the winner. Second nine accomplished in about a shot a hole less than the front nine. What did I expect losing a ball on every other hole for and hour and a half?
No we are now in the lounge and a while to wait before the tin budgie whisks me into yesterday. Odd places airport lounges. A mixture of people as I glance around. There is a group of very loud women who are talking very ostentatiously about how much money they have spent. They are drunk and are getting drunker by the minute. The more they get through the more money they save I suppose. Being a Saturday the busy business executive is absent. These always amuse me. Beavering away on their laptops and /or Blackberries buying and selling and making all sorts of terribly important fiscal decisions that will alter the course of world history. I once saw a bloke in Chicago who looked terribly important shouting at his business contacts down his cellphone and buying everything in bulk quantities. I was certain he was dealing weapons grade plutonium or diamonds or something and was much let down to discover he was dealing in hairspray. So no business types. There is another group of loud people who are talking about shaving eyebrows and whether Aaron would look good in budgie smugglers. He wouldn't but if the whole group get up to the alcohol ingestion rate of the loud ladies (and they are trying) they will all reckon Aaron would look amaaaaazing. Already lots of other things are looking amaaaaazing to this rather sad group.
Travelling bag full of all the essentials for a long flight. Laptop, iPod, a couple of books and fourteen power cords. The delights of travelling with gels, aerosols or liquids have been removed so no having a rollicking good time with the gels over the Pacific for me.
Last year I found it very therapeutic to summarize where I sat in the world in general and the People's Republic of Aoteoroa in particular and I may find the urge to do so again - and then I may not. The news that the bloody Labour Government is now nearly thirty points behind in the latest opinion poll at least ensures that I leave the country for a short time with a spring in my step.
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