Travelling by… Plane!
Blogging from…. YVR, aka, Vancouver International Airport! Actually, by the time this entry gets posted, I will be actually in Hamilton, Ontario for work reasons; right now, I am staring at the screen and there is still half an hour before boarding time.
I must admit I don’t like to fly. There are a lot of reasons I can think of: motion sickness (I have to take Gravol/Dramamine), I get really impatient inside (I know the flight would be X hours, yet there is absolutely nothing you can do), no looking around (well, you could open the window but what can you see? Clouds?), being cramped in a noisy place (I am regular size but there are no guarantees about your neighbor), lost bags (within Canada has been good so far; but I have 100% lost bag percentage for international), jet lag (I usually travel across 3 time zones, sometimes 4), etc. etc. I could keep going and going but I am sure anybody who has travel will have his/her own story.
So, why take a job that requires travelling? I wish I could avoid it but, alas, the nature of my job requires travelling, as it requires me to be physically there. Fortunately, I only have to fly at most twice a year (this might soon change, though).
What about for pleasure? Well, if I could, I would plan holidays within driving distance but, unfortunately, that’s not workable all the time. For example, I travelled to Kelowna (which, by the way, I still have one post pending) and that was a 5+ hours drive. It was fun but, as expected, next time you would like to go a different place. When I travelled to Panama last year to visit my parents, it was a hell of a flight: two connecting flights, overall 13 hours (10 hours in the air + a couple of hours overlay), problems with customs (in Panama, I was the only person checked and double-checked – I have the odd feeling that was because I am Chinese) and, as expected, lost luggage (fortunately, this was in the return flight, I arrived to YVR in time but my luggage was in San Francisco).
Regardless of all my complains, I have to face this reality: despite the soaring cost, flying will be more and more common. We are no longer satisfied with short travels and look for more distant and (not necessarily) exotic places. And, those of us who travel for work, as part of the job requirements. In other words, just deal with it…
