overlap

It's a funny feeling, sitting here with one big bag almost fully packed, and my hand luggage around my feet waiting for its final bagging and weighing. Last time I travelled to somewhere more exotic than continental mainland europe, it was all hugely new and exciting. Having never been on an aeroplane before, Heathrow to Boston as the first leg of a series of three out and three back was a good kill or cure approach to finding out whether I had any problems with flying! I have no plans to visit the States again, and it would take a lot to get me out there. It's a big but increasingly small planet, and there are other more interesting places I'd love to see first. This time I'm heading towards the East, and making rather more out of it than just the business trip it is based around. Earlier I was thinking about how the mind-broadening properties of travel sits in my family background. I have no problems with never having flown till my thirties, and I'm fairly sure my parents must have been closer to their fifties. One pair of grandparents visited a number of mediterranean sun resorts, and the other pair may or may not have visited the one of their children that lived abroad, if that. It's not a well travelled or especially broad outlook. My perspective is affected by the way I don't like surprises, in general, and I do like to know where I stand on all sorts of things, so the whole unknown of the business trip aspect is on my mind. It's not just the wine talking when I say that my next few nights in the sort of luxury hotel I would consider extravagant far beyond anything I would ever choose to use myself is not going to sit well with me. Nevertheless, I've always been a pragmatist, and if my soon-to-be-ex employer wants to fly me thousands of miles round the planet for the limited benefit to the business my visit will offer, then of course I'll take it. And when I'm not in the office because I've already headed off to somewhere a hell of a lot more exciting, interesting and rewarding, what are they going to do, sack me? I'm likely to amuse myself by listening to the Icicle Works song 'I never saw my hometown till I went around the world' at some point on my travels, and here's hoping it'll bring me back in one piece and with some slightly more focused thoughts on what I'm going to do with the next phase of my life. But in any case, I am expecting to bring back a few pictures, and some stories.