It’s not the first time I’ve spent a whole night at an airport, but it’s definitely a runner-up for the most pleasant. For two reasons, mainly.
1. I found an outlet to plug my lap top in. Outlets when traveling are like oases when traveling… in deserts. They mean unlimited usage, with no battery life risks. My MacBook Pro actually has like 7 hours of battery life but I *will* be on a 15 hour trip and that’s counting “first plane take off” until “second plane landing” only. So, I am electropowered.
2. Google (I think it’s Google?) hosts a free wifi service here. It’s fast, too, especially at 1 am in the morning. Free wifi means the internet, which means I’m pretty much able to do everything I do normally. Except I’m sitting on a hard, cold floor and my feet are about to perish (stretch left leg out over crossed right leg, then do variations of that, ugh, running out of comfortable ones though), but I might go for a walk and maybe find a café or something in a bit. I always have my discreet, quiet, electropowered spot to retreat to if all else fails.
Earlier, a guy I met at both 360iDev in San Jose and the Voices that Matter conference here in Seattle agreed to take me to the airport in the evening, so we hung out at his place for a while. He showed me a couple of games I had managed to miss, like Plants vs Zombies. My god, that game is ridiculously addictive. I downloaded a trial of it here as soon as I found my lovely charge-spot and played it until it threw me out and said ”You, mister, have been playing for an HOUR. You better pay up!” I tried arguing that it’s $20 and that’s kind of a lot of cash, but I don’t think it heard me.
So the last couple of weeks have been weird. I don’t think I’ve actually relaxed a second since I landed the 10th. It’s not that I’m not in a stress-free environment or anything, it’s just that being away from home wears on me.
I’ve been thinking a lot about “home” the last couple of years, since I’ve been away from what you’d expect to be “home” for nearly 2 years. I hated my apartment in Japan, and I wasn’t totally happy with my lifestyle either, but “Japan” felt just as much like “home” as Sweden ever did. It was when I bought that ticket to get me to Sweden that “home” suddenly changed meaning. I went through several phases of redefining my world, or something — immediately after buying the ticket, I wanted to be back home. Then that wore off after a month or so, and the last 3 or so months of my stay, I felt more and more like I actually didn’t want to go home at all.
I think I blogged about (lazy blogger, it’s 2 am, forgive) my shocking experience in finally returning back to Sweden, and I still clearly remember that feeling, and I don’t think I will see Sweden quite the same way as I did before, ever, but it’s home, now.
Ultimately, home is where you say it is, and until you do say, it won’t be home, and it won’t feel like home.
That’s all I have to say about that right now.
Hehe… replied to your comment on LJ asking if you had left the States yet and then I see you have a new blog post basically answering my question
And I understand a little about home changing and not feeling the same. When I lived in Sweden, I was so immersed and I loved it there that it started to feel like home. After 6 months, I wasn’t just speaking Swedish, but dreaming in Swedish and thinking in Swedish and then translating to English when I called family back “home”. When I came back to the States, it felt awkward and I didn’t “fit” in the same way. I think what helped is that I then went off to college and had a totally new experience that let me redefine home yet again.
Hope you had a safe trip back to Sweden!
Cool about the redefinition of home! Maybe I’ll end up redefining things too in the end. Though if I know my fiancée right, she’ll nudge me and poke me until we end up living in Japan.
I hope I have a safe trip back too! I did hear a very reassuring speech at one of the conferences though which was by a programmer who’s been doing a lot of work with airplane programming, and he talked about how code for airplanes and other “must not fail” systems have these very robust systems for detecting “that an error is occurring” (even if they may not necessarily know WHAT error or WHY), and as a result, noone, not one person in the world, has died because the software in an airplane went awry. Yet.
Anyway, I’m a bit woozy cause I’ve been up since 6 am yesterday, so going to stop here. Want to write something up about the conferences soon but need to be a little more awake for that.
It’s definitely an interesting subject talking about what constitutes a ‘home’. I’ve been back in the UK for 4 months now, and I’m most definitely home-sick for Japan and my life there. Now, things are a little backward, as my wife wants to stay here a bit longer (another year or so), and I want us to head back to Japan as soon as we can. Ha!
So anyway, I think we’ll be heading back in about October. Maybe I’ll catch you there, when the time comes for your fiancé to drag you back!
Mark: yeah, ‘home’ isn’t as easy as you’d think. I didn’t really feel like I had one for the longest time, and now it’s moving all over the place. Funny about you and your wife. I think in my case it’ll be the reverse, but you never know. I DO like Japan, but I’m not too fond of some of the problems permeating it.
You guys are going back permanently in October, then? IIRC you run your own business. Are you going to run it in Japan? I’m half-curious as if I do go there and continue my current occupation (freelance i.e. self-employed) I’ll have the same issues.
Yup the plan is to head back permanently, but we will visit again next year (and, all being well, hopefully every year, just to see the family etc).
I don’t run my own business, but I work remotely for a small UK company, so my location doesn’t really matter. That said, it won’t last forever, so I do need to think about what I can do in Japan once that finishes.
First step though, is to recover my Japanese, get up to 1-kyuu level, and get some business Japanese. Easier said than done!
Sounds very similar to how we’re planning things — we’re going to do our best to hopefully let A go home (with me or without me, depending) at least once a year, to Japan.
Would love to hear about what you end up doing over there, man. I suppose you still don’t have a blog anywhere, eh?