It's amazing how the landscape of the airport has changed in the last 10 years. I remember when I first started travelling, I would arrive at the airport and use the public phone to call my parents or friends to let them know what was going on. Then, there were small internet terminals where you could pay a small sum of money to use a computer with a weird red ball as a mouse and hit or miss internet connections and definitely not high speed. Today, as I sit in the airport for two hours waiting for my flight, I look around me and everyone is connected. I mean everyone. People on their blackberries, laptops, iphones connecting and working while they wait. I see Kobo e-readers and nintendo DSs. I even uploaded a new version of Nortel while I sat here to make sure that my computer doesn't crash while I'm away. What a wonderful world we live in where we can be connected where ever we go. From what I understand, there will even by WIFI on the flight.
What did we use to do before we had such conveniences? How did we manage when we couldn't work or write status updates or play angry birds as we wasted away the hours? I know what I used to do. I would relax. I would watch people or strike up a conversation with the person beside me. I'd go and look in the airport book store which inevitably had a wonderful selection of paperbacks just ready for reading. I would connect, but in a different way. I would connect with what was immediately around me. I'd live in the moment no matter how dull or boring and find a way to enjoy it. Now I see people panicking as their battery starts to die and they can't find an available plug. I see people doing their jobs and tension in their necks visible as the pound the keyboard. I see people with phone tumours attached to their faces and they have no idea whose sitting around them. I see children trying to get their parent's attention to tell show them something they've seen but their parents are too busy talking to notice either the child or what's happening around them.
Yes, I'm sitting here on my newly purchased netbook blogging away but that's mostly because I'm using this platform as my journal for the trip. I could just as easily be sitting here writing in a notebook. I'm not plugged in. I know that the woman beside me is playing solitaire on her iphone and that the two people across from me are travelling on business and I just made eye contact with a really cute guy who just walked past. Travel has definitely changed. You will know what happens on this trip pretty much as it is happening. I will be emailing and posting on facebook. I wonder if I will miss the sense of getting away from it all. I think that I used to like being unreachable and being in a place where no one can find me.
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