The present only toucheth thee:

November 16, 2012

I landed in Auckland this morning from Singapore in the first and shortest (9 hours) of five long red eye flights in 12 days.  Tomorrow its Auckland to Calgary arriving before I leave via LAX, I hate the date line.  Tuesday night its back to London for three days before returning to Singapore for one night only.  Four days after that I head back across the Atlantic to Seattle.  Now this is really silly, but The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men; Gang aft agley.   I won't go into the various client related reasons why I've end up with this, but I do know I just have to survive it.

When you're travelling like that packing and unpacking becomes a matter of ritual, you really want hotels that take away any worry.  The first is not good.  The Scenic Hotel in Auckland is OK, but there is not a proper seat to work and they speed restrict internet access when you go over a gigabyte in 24 hours.  Ten years ago that might have been reasonable, in this day and age email, some web surfing and twitter along with normal podcast downloads meant I hit that an hour ago with most of the rest of the 24 hours period I paid for still to go.  That means writing the blog (I am determined to get back to full daily blogging this month) and researching anything becomes hard.  Minutes watching a screen refresh is not fun and generally adds to the stress.  

Keeping email under control, writing reports or articles all come under pressure with that sort of schedule.  Time awareness blurs, meals are irregular and digestive systems are disrupted.  Conference calls end up being organised when you want to sleep.  I know I had two before I wrote this, but I don't remember much about them and I doubt I said anything of value on either.  For the first I just wanted to go to bed.  As it happened I had a meeting with a potential client which re-energised me and luckily it was held outside, by the Ferry Terminal in Aukland which meant a large influx of fresh air which helped a lot.

Tomorrow I plan a Ranigitoto Island walk before heading out for the airport for a near midnight flight.  Exercise may help cope with the flights, but it will be the last chance for any in this sequence.  One ends up with the mouse in Burn's poem rather than the man; living in the present giving no thought to the past or the future!  Dreams are curious, and the picture which heads this post was resonant with some half remembered ones.

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