Hey you, jet-lagger!

….nod-off-er. lay-over-er. serial island hopper. meddling miscreants of air carriers. ….

(This is a depiction of lazy /lags/, or in tech-lingo, late “pings” - which brings late data, and the world of fast-superspeed-information to a crash, halt, and noisy ka-ching of a bitcoin drop.)

What are they all called again - all those travelling salesmen in the 80s to the early 90s who in their full salesmen attire still go and drag their lives in small cabin-sized luggage trolleys. Ah, the pre-internet days of corporate sales. They are long gone, but are soon romanticised as road warriors, volume two: air warriors.

Now, in the internet and mobile-devices enhanced lives, we sometimes are able to (dare) say, we have evolved and arisen to a level up in our state of travelling affairs - to people who are digital netizens, and with all their devices in tow, are now only optionally well-travelled. Or what are now, borne the genre of proper leisure-entertainment air-travelers.

Have tickets, will travel. The greatest gift for all season? Open air tickets. It’s the next best thing to blank cheques. And a digital camera, of course.

Seeing all those social posts from travelers gets me to not only envy and salivate at all the postcard possibilities, but also think there are a few threads of linen-cotton-non-rayon blend pantsuits out there that need constant pressing - or checking their landing state of - in the midst of the constant flurry of the packing-unpacking mechanism.

The adventure begins in the preparation of the pre-travel, as well as the constant awareness of destination which answers jeeves’ “where to?”, the mapping of those tricky mid-roads, and the constant-keep-to-eye to the best path taken, all of which seriously balances to: 1/ take the road less travelled (better instagram content), 2/ the budget constraint, filtered to a more mobile-currency, minimal cost-conscious 3/ security, making sure all your things are all in one place or taking guard to them (tougher) 4/ constant device charging - because if you expend energy in taking these, you expend more energy to actually keeping them safe (rolls eyes forever), 5/ not taking anything for granted (as is the POINT to traveling).

Seeking various ways to get our very grounded normal states to see the world, throwing everything but our farm-style kitchen sinks, we can exchange loads of capital trading as well as probably a lifetime of carbon credits in exchange with all the ideas at how to remain airborne, for the rest of our lives.

There are seldom people discouraged with the advent of travelling-anxiety (like me, at runway taxi-ing, missing tickets, losing of baggage, taking of purses that contain all our travel documents that don’t have representation in the island we are bound for, or not a seven-eleven in sight!) - or, what is our landing and takeoff, that take longer than usual to get into the airports, or finding directions and service to the dot - to make our time more worth the hassle - when it is truly about the destination, than it is about the journey.

Single travelers ultimately, have more anxiety when it is about work than it is about the company - but honeymooners, or people who have a purpose, as a team with a definite objective to achieve (*like keeping Jiggy getting buried in the HK winter sale)* - would find fun in the menial juggle of the consortium of travel, the time difference heel-kickball-change, the dryness of skin in an airtight cabin no one escapes, incessant lines, chatty strangers, the conviction of never boarding another flight ever with the claustrophobia that follows the extreme (cerebral) jet lag, and however romantic it may seem to be off the ground as often as possible - is all actually more taxing to the senses. The travel spend is real: travel exhaustion is a thing.

The latency in thought of what the real ecology of travel would soon end up as a double-edged sword - that people seem to understand what cornering the expense of seeing the rest of the world is like. In today’s dollars, it may not have been much, but collectively, costs the earth. (More on this, very soon.)

But hey, I hear giving birth on board a private plane, gives you and your child a lifetime of tickets on-board, as an expanse of runway - not to mention a lifetime of awkward pretence of a nationality (but it may just be another croc of an urban myth).

Oh well. C'est la vie.

<To my friend Christofer, who loves to travel, ride bikes in serious 80s tour de france bike shorts, & continually argue with me about anything under the sun - mostly about work, traffic, & why architecture makes people act like donkeys. :) And to his young daughter Ellen.>

At the time of posting, he had turned another decade older. And my hair, striped whiter *at having to master markdown.