Travel broadens the mind, so they say. Not the way I do it. I’m on the road doing research in Australia, I’m forgetting as much as I learn. My client gave me an expense account.
With the notable exception of a roar around Adelaide on a V-Rod (accompanied by a fine ex pat kiwi) I’ve been happily cooped up in bars, drinking dens and hotel rooms. I had a bath the other morning and nearly drowned. It was a Tuesday.
Now all of this is for a good cause, and the research is incredibly important but before I report on my findings, here are what the Education Minister would call my interim "learnings":
These findings are locked in but as I’m only half way through the trip, most of the way through the float, have tinges of homesickness, a pounding liver and a tiredness that grips my bones and clouds my eyes, I have really only learned one thing.
I am no longer a young man.
With the notable exception of a roar around Adelaide on a V-Rod (accompanied by a fine ex pat kiwi) I’ve been happily cooped up in bars, drinking dens and hotel rooms. I had a bath the other morning and nearly drowned. It was a Tuesday.
Now all of this is for a good cause, and the research is incredibly important but before I report on my findings, here are what the Education Minister would call my interim "learnings":
- I’ve learned that wherever you go, the Simpsons is always the best thing on TV.
- I’ve learned that hotel soap is almost always sticky and un-latherable and that you should probably bring away more than one pair of pants.
- I’ve learned that I don’t miss the election campaign and that Andrew Williams being dropped from the New Zealand First list is information as cogent and important to me as a kid drawing on a wall in faeces.
- I can confirm that aeroplane seats are perfectly designed to ensure a living human being can’t sleep on them sober and without one's jaw slumping open and noises coming out.
- I've learned that under a very specific condition minibar prices are not taken into consideration. That condition is laziness.
- I’ve scientifically discovered that my desire for Seafood Noodle Soup (no bean sprouts, no spring onions) from the Khmer Noodle House increases over distance and time: No Soup + d x t = hell
- I’ve learned that the less I know where I am and where I’m going the more I’m convinced that the taxi driver is taking me the long way.
- I’ve learned that I don’t miss emails, in fact I’ve learned they are the bane of my very existence
- I’ve learned that there are few finer things in life than having an enormous bed all to yourself, and one of those finer things is being in bed with my girlfriend and my cat, even when they have colonised 95 percent of the horizontal space.
These findings are locked in but as I’m only half way through the trip, most of the way through the float, have tinges of homesickness, a pounding liver and a tiredness that grips my bones and clouds my eyes, I have really only learned one thing.
I am no longer a young man.
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