Shane's Gone Wandering

I am sitting in Sydney airport as I write this, wondering how exactly I got here. I seem to remember about a month ago, getting on a plane to Japan – it couldn’t have been any longer than that, could it? Well apparently it was. Apparently the next time I go to bed it will be in my own bed, back home in Ireland. I still have some trouble actually believing this.

In fact, by the time I finish and post this blog I will be in Dublin. I will be at home. And I will probably be finishing this off on my PC rather than on this netbook.

You’ve probably already read my list of things I’m going to do, and I’ll probably already have done some of them by the time I get round to putting this up.

But let us not worry yet about the future. Let us start in the past while I remind you how I got here, quite literally with a list of where I’ve been. () denotes places I stopped or flew into but didn’t actually travel around.

Dublin ->
Tokyo -> [Japan]
Nagoya ->
Odai ->
Kyoto ->
Osaka ->
Nagasaki ->
Fukuoka ->
Nagoya ->
Tokyo ->
(Beijing) ->
Hong Kong ->
Bangkok -> [Thailand]
Chiang Mai ->
Pai ->
Chiang Mai ->
Chiang Khong->
Pak Beng -> [Laos]
Luang Prabang ->
Vang Vienn ->
Vientienne ->
(Pakse) ->
Siem Reap -> [Cambodia]
Phnom Penh ->
Bangkok -> [Thailand]
(Surat Thani) ->
Koh Samui ->
Koh Phangan ->
(Hat Yi) ->
(Malaysia) ->
(Singapore) ->
Sanur [Bali]
Kuta ->
Ubud ->
Kuta ->
Sanur ->
Darwin -> [Australia]
Cairns ->
Mission Beach ->
Cairns ->
Airlie Beach ->
Mackay ->
Brisbane ->
Byron Bay ->
Hat Head(?) ->
Stockton ->
Hornsby ->
Sydney ->
(Singapore) ->
(Frankfurt) ->
Dublin.

Not a bad list, as lists go. Better for the memories too, rather than being just words on a page. Each place is graved with faces and sights and sounds, the swirl of remembrances and tinged with a sadness at the letting go. Some of these places are special, wonderful places, others, merely made so by the company. Angkor Wat for instance would be a fabulous place without the people, but Vang Vienn was made what it is by the people I went with and met there.

So, here I am, sitting in Sydney airport, and I’ve nothing much left to say. Goodbyes are said, or they are left unsaid, and hellos await some thousand so miles away, but like al airports, this place inhabits that no-man’s land between places, a liminal space filled with the expectations of somewhere else. For me it is home, not just the green-green grass, but the concrete and the earth, the feel and the taste of it. God knows, it’ll probably feel weird at first, but I’m looking forward to it. All this waiting is gonna be annoying. Thankfully I’m a patient person (won’t it be ironic if I flip out and get arrested or something on the way home, hehe!).

One thing I will say – I’ve been horribly disappointed to learn that Sydney airport is nothing like the Sydney airport in Lost! Apparently all those scenes were filmed in the LA convention centre! Goddamn it!

The flight from Sydney to Singapore was pretty easy. In terms of what I’ve done on this trip, seven hours isn’t asking a whole lot. I was still starting to feel a little tired by the end, but not so much. The food wasn’t great, because it was airplane food, and if you expect good food on a flight you’ve obviously hit your head one too many times. Sometimes you do get good food, but you should never expect it. Also, there were films. I watched Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkhban on my laptop and Salt, and then I wanted Despicable Me and that owl film I forget the name of The Guardians of something. It was a book, or something. Despicable Me was definitely the best.

I also got to watch sunset, from the plane, and there was enough cloud cover to make it spectacular, all orange and red fire falling into the twilight, white and grey clouds lit up by light, shadows falling in the crevices to make patterns of dark amidst the flare of fire. I’d nearly get on a plane to see something like that.
We were only in Singapore for an hour so I had time to use the jacks and then head to my gate where I plugged in my phone and my laptop in an unattended power socket. I’m not actually sure if I was allowed to, or if I was ignored simply because no one wanted to challenge the sheer audacity of it. Shrug. I don’t care. Me needs power, power is there – ergo, I will use.

After that we bundled back onto the plane, and I was actually asleep in about ten minutes. I’ve no idea how that actually happened, but apparently I was tired. Which makes sense, since it was two in the morning Australia time. Unfortunately, when I woke up about an hour later, the plane hadn’t moved . . .
At first I had no idea what was going on, but I figured I hadn’t been asleep that long. It took me about twenty minutes to realise that I had even been asleep. Apparently, continuing Quantus’ winning streak the last few months, something in the engine wasn’t working, so it had to be swapped out. At least this time the plane hadn’t taken off. Eventually we did get into the air, a little under two hours late.
It’s a twelve hour flight but they expected to make up some time, not that it mattered to me. I would still be in plenty of time to catch my flight back home, leaving at eleven German time. I spent the vast majority of this flight asleep so it went pretty well. I’d wake up every hour or maybe two if I was lucky and move around a bit in the seat, finding a spot that seemed marginally more comfortable that the last. Then, about four hours before the end I found I wasn’t tired enough to sleep anymore so I gave up the ghost and stuck on the TV again. I tried watching Life As We Know it, where Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhmal play some people saddled with their dead friends’ kid, but sadly, it was shite, so I turned it off. I assume it ends happily with them married and having their own kid, who they raise as the brother of the little girl they already have. And even if that isn’t how it ends, I don’t care.

I put on Megamind instead. I’ve already seen it, but who cares, it’s really awesome. After that there wasn’t much time left so I put on the Madonna episode of Glee, which I am ashamed to admit I found quite funny, but shush, only the internet knows now, so don’t tell anyone else I said that. I just think Quinn should have been in it more. But then I always thing Quinn should be in it more. I also didn’t quite get to see the end because they cut it off for landing so I may have to borrow that from someone at some point.

I also had the pleasure of seeing the full moon over a cloud bank for about a half hour before landing. The clouds were huge, fluffy and unbroken so it looked like a field of the whitest, freshest snow stretching out for miles, with a full and golden disk hovering just about it, bright as anything and casting shadows everywhere over the snow, picking out every fold and rise of it. You might have thought you could just dive into it and be caught up by it.

You’d have been wrong, but still, it’s a nice image. Just don’t actually try it. Unless you have a parachute.
Landing in Frankfurt was initially quite joyous. Only a few hours and I’d be home, standing on Irish soil again. But then things took a little turn for the worst. When I went to see if I could find my gate I found out that my flight had been cancelled. I went to turn on my phone then, to see if I could find anything out while I made my way to Aer Lingus desk and managed to put the pin code in wrong three times and block it. It’s been two months, maybe three, since I’ve actually even used that SIM so it isn’t actually all that surprising.

As it turns out, I was pretty close. I just mixed up two digits. I then had to buy internet credit from the airport, ring Meteor on Skype and get my PUK code (while on Facebook) to get it working.

I also had to queue up at one Aer Lingus desk for ages to get a piece of paper to say I was on a new flight and then queue up at a different desk (with the same people from the other queue) to get my boarding pass and some meal vouchers. That all took about an hour, and was very fucking annoying. You know, because I’m tired and crotchety and not at all in the mood for this. By then it was only twelve hours til my next flight, woohoo . . .

So now I’m sitting in the Visitor Plaza in Frankfurt Airport with my laptop plugged into a plug that possibly belongs to McDonalds, or possibly Fly Away Bar, but who cares really, and I’m trying not to put my head down because I know I’ll be asleep in a heartbeat but I’ve got Lacey from Flyleaf blaring Treasure in my ear and it’s okay. After all, considering how long I’ve been away from home, what’s another twelve hours, right? And we’re already down to nine as I write this. Basically all this means is that I won’t be catching up on any TV today. That’ll have to wait til tomorrow. I’ll still be home in time to have some dinner and go to sleep, possibly after reading the Boys. And maybe Buffy. And maybe starting Against All Things Ending.

All that said, I wrote that about 5 hours ago and right now I’m SOOOOOO FUCKING BORED!!! Just thought I’d let you know how it was going since I’ve played some Kingdom Hearts, some Crisis Core, seventy-odd games of Free Cell, a dozen of Mahjong, read some of my book, dossed on Facebook, read the Irish Times, txted people back home, changed my clothes, listened to loud music, gone for a walk outside the airport, had breakfast and something vaguely close to dinner and yet it will still be an hour and a half before I can board the damn plane. We’re getting awfully close to me stabbing someone just for something to do – I mean, there are probably more productive things I could do, so I might do them first, but if I don’t find something to do soon, this shit could get out of hand . . .
Shit did not get out of hand. I got home safely and without killing anyone. I landed on time and was quickly through the passport check in Dublin airport; by half nine I was meeting my mam and my sister in Arrivals and we were heading home in the freezing cold.

What’s it like to be back home? Well it’s Sunday now so I’ve had a few days to think about this, but I think the weirdest part is home it’s not weird at all. I wonder if that’s what it’s like for other people too? Probably. It’s just that after so much time you worry things will change or expect them and they don’t really. Some things change in little ways, like the new crossroads where there used to be a roundabout – like the couple who aren’t together or the couple that got together, but the substance doesn’t change all that much, not really.

But it is nice to be home, to have my TV back, and free uncapped internet and a double bed! Mostly, it’s the bed, and the privacy of my room, the having of a place that belongs to me, a place for my stuff, for me. That’s nice. That’s probably the thing I missed most while travelling, my own personal space.
That and the 37 inch TV.

So that’s really it guys, I’m home and I’m happy, and in about a week I’m going to want to be travelling again, most likely.

One last goodbye then, to everyone I’ve met, and I leave you now, in hopes this is not really an ending,
Shane.