Life, The Universe & Everything

So it’s been almost half a week, a lot of it has been travel. A brief rundown of the days:

Sunday
After my previous post I landed in Sydney. Transfer was relatively painless head to the transfer area and Qantas bus takes you through to international terminal. Security & immigration were both pretty quick. I was pleasantly surprised by premium economy on the A380. Great service & food, decent leg room. The main downside from business was that the seats don’t lie flat (and being in the back row I think I had less recline than most). I wanted to sleep for the first little while and I did dose, but didn’t get great sleep. Coming through customs in LA was a long wait but pretty simple. I found the hotel shuttle bus without any issues. Hotel room was simple but fine, I ordered room service. Then I thought I would try and have a shower before bed. I tried for a good 10 minutes but I could not figure out how to turn the shower on. In the end I was so tired I gave up and went to bed. I slept well and woke up reasonably early to give myself plenty of time at the airport.

Monday
I took the airport shuttle back to the airport and I as I hadn’t been able to checkin online I had to go to the JetBlue counter, but there were no problems there. Security was fine and then I waited in a line for a good 30 minutes to get a coffee. As far as US coffee goes it was pretty decent – this order was just a straight hot latte (which not all cafes seem to have). Bordered the flight to Newark and I was blown away by the quality of JetBlue. I was expecting something like a JetStar equivalent but it was better. Primarily in terms of leg room – I reckon I had very similar to the amount I had in premium economy – I have never been so comfortable in economy class! No meal but free drinks, coffee, snacks and you could help yourself to more, so that was a good experience. Landed in Newark, had a decent wait for luggage then paid $8 for a <5min monorail ride to the hotel shuttle pick up point. This hotel was slightly nicer than LA, it was a slightly bigger room with a couch. The first thing I did was made sure I could use the shower and I figured this one out. It also confirmed something I noticed – one of the main differences so far – US toilets have more water in them! I don’t know why, but the literally the water in the bowl is half way to the top, which compared to Australia is just weird. There was no room service at this hotel so I spent some time looking for places, but there wasn’t a lot around. I went down to the restaurant and eventually decided to eat there. I had salmon and the house white and it was really good. I then went back to the room had a nice bath while watching Master Chef before heading to bed.

The other think I noticed about the US is that food seems to be quite expensive. I remembered it being cheap from 2005 but not so much so far. Although it did occur to me that I probably haven’t been eating in the cheapest places (airports, hotels) so far, so it might change.

This post has got really long and I’m typing this on Saturday, even though I started it Tuesday so I might end here and start a new post for the next few days.

Well, it’s been a while. It seems like the last time I actually published a post was just under 11 years ago! It probably doesn’t mean much because I don’t think anybody reads this blog anyway!

At any rate I’ve unearthed it now as I’m heading off to the US for 3 weeks. And as much as I’m usually bad at keeping a record of my trips the snippets that I do have always make for enjoyable reading and reminiscing. So the plan is for me to record my travels here, how frequently and how often remains to be seen.

At the moment, we’re at 34.985ft, flying 835km/h and heading for Sydney. From there, I’ll be boarding a flight to Los Angeles, but I won’t have internet then so I’m making the most of Qantas WiFi now. (For those interested in tech you’ll get alight to know that the ping of my connection is 962ms!)

COVID has obviously kept me out of the air for a while and as much as I’ve been keen to travel internationally I haven’t really had a way to make it happen til now. I am looking forward to flying on an A380 – my first super jumbo since I was on a 747-400 about 25 years ago when my family went to Germany & Switzerland. I was hoping to use my point to upgrade to business which unfortunately didn’t come through, but I did manage to upgrade to premium economy so that should be reasonable on the longer flight.

Once I land in LA, I stay the night, then fly across to New York stay the night again and from there hire a car and drive up to UMass Amherst. That’s where my first event and primary reason for going will happen – Future Problem Solving International Conference 2022. This post has been surprisingly long so I think I’ll leave it there. Maybe shorter, more frequent posts may be the way to go…

Looks can be deceiving. I doubt this phrase will spark much argument (and if it does, then it’s a different discussion!)

Coping does not mean it’s easy is an example of a situation where looks can be deceiving,

The initial response to ‘coping does not mean it’s easy’ may well be ‘well duh’. But if I pointed to somebody on the street who wasn’t bawling in tears, and wasn’t jumping for joy and asked is that person coping or is their life easy at the moment could you tell me?

Obviously this is a slightly broad and unrealistic scenario, but I think it helps to illustrate my point.

My point is, (and for those who currently know my personal circumstances I am not having a go at anybody) if people seem outwardly like they are going OK, yet you know things are going on in their life, don’t assume they are finding it easy.

This is my personal experience, and maybe it’s just me, but I suspect others would tell you the same.

I think there are three broad categories, people aren’t coping (this is usually obvious), people are coping (but you can clearly tell that they are just coping), people are coping (but if you met them in the street and hadn’t seen them for a while you would assume everything is normal).

It is the last category I’m discussing, but it’s not the person in the street who I’m highlighting. Rather it’s the person who knows they are going though a difficult time but assumes, because of there general behaviour it is all good.

I’m not saying it’s easy to tell, but I am saying if you know somebody is going through a rough time, it doesn’t hurt to ask how they’re going.

Thank you to those who have. Those who haven’t, please don’t feel attacked, I imagine I would have (and probably sometimes still do) acted the same had I not had personal experiences that has brought this to my attention.