A Different Drummer

Last night at 8pm I got on a plane at Amsterdam Schipol airport, heading for Tokyo. On Sunday afternoon at 6pm I will be home in Adelaide. Right now I am sitting in the departure lounge in Tokyo Narita airport, getting ready to jump onto the secont 13 hour leg of my flight.

This kind of travel time is part of the whole implicit deal of being an Australian living abroad. It's one of the biggest reasons that I havent made it home in the last couple of years, but I cant wait to go through the ordeal and bust out onto the other side in Paradise, or Australia as these foreigners seem to call it.

Its ironic that the longest stopver I will be doing is in Sydney, only a couple of hours away from my final destination. A couple of hours by plane of course - over land you are looking at a solid 24 hour, 2000 kilometre drive from Sydney to Adelaide, including many long, dry hours crossing the Hay Plains, one of the emptiest places on Earth.

Anyhow, the Sydney stopever, all 8 hours of it on Sunday, will be a good opportunity to spend a bit of time in Sydney, grab a few quality hours with some good friends and generally take the edge of the previous 30 hours of travel. Hopefully my first hours in Australia after quite a long time away won't be spent avoiding vicious race riots - I'll probably spend the whole time in Chinatown anyhway, well insulated from the chaos.

I've loved the experiences I have been through in the last few years, and I am really loving living in Europe right now - but I'll sure as hell be happy to be back in Australia. Even the magical transformation from a cold, dark European winter to a glorious Australian summer will be wonderful. And with all the people I love and miss, the brilliant Australian quality of life and some fine, fine beaches, I'll be on a pretty dreamy holiday. Holiday it is, only two weeks, and I think the time is going to fly by much like a holiday in any other country.

So, farewell Rotterdam. Its been a good host, reliable and consistent, and welcoming, in that special Dutch way. Rotterdam is trying, actively building a new city in front of your eyes, and in the mean time, it feels like you are in a construction zone for a vast new planned city that hasnt really taken off yet. I think it has been in this state for quite a while, but for a city rebuilt and repopulated from utter devastation, it is a testament in many ways to transition and change. It is all over the place, and nowhere in particular. It desperately lacks a centre, physically and culturally, but its people lead good lives and it sits in the middle of very rich, densely populated country, so its prospects are obviously better than most places.

Living in such a central place, just hours on the train from plenty of great European capitals, and hours by plane to almost anywhere, is a blessing. It really shows up how close and interconnected this part of the world is. So, so different to Australia, where a couple of hours by train gets you from Noarlunga to Salisbury.

Its a great standard of live in Europe all up, they really have their thing going on here. Getting to live in Cairo really put me in a great position to see exactly how well things are working here - as well as how much you lose when you move from an "old fashioned" society to a new one. Everywhere has something to learn from everywhere else, and the last two years of my life have really illustrated this to me. I'm certainly going home to Australia with a hell of a lot more perspective than I left with, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that impacts on my experience there.

Tokyo Airport is pretty cool. I think it is possibly one step down from a fully fledged Tokyo - you can tell the place was built a long time ago and has had mainly superficial improvements. But it is still a Tokyo experience, complete with vending machines that sell everything, strange robotic doors that open when you wave your hand towards them, and a bizarre "shuttle" system that moves you between terminals - you are walking down a normal looking carpeted hallway, press a button for what looks like an elevator door, but then the door opens and you are actually catching a little mini underground metro style tram, for an absurdly short distance. Truly techy for the sake of techy.

Well, the boarding call is happening now. One thing that I have never understood, maybe a reader can illuminate me in comments, is why do people que for 20 minutes before boarding time? You have a seat allocated, so its not like you are going to get a better one by being first on board....And for sure you are more comfortable in the departure lounge. So why stand in line for 20 minutes? I make it a point to stay reading my book or typing away until the line is gone - and then I pretend that I am some kind of high roller with express entry service - no lines, no-one in your way - Mr Gara, enjoy your special premium NoQue service.....