Ten Little Chances to be Free (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
tenlittlebullets) wrote2012-01-05 06:45 pm
tenlittlebullets) wrote2012-01-05 06:45 pm
In Abidjan
- It is super nice that my employer lets us fly business class on long trips; however, not all business class is created equal. DC to Paris was the absolute height of luxury, marred only by--I shit you not--unexpected nuts in the foie gras au champagne. I mean, allergic reaction five miles in the air is pretty distressing, and one of the flight attendants apparently thought it would be reassuring to come by every fifteen minutes and swear to me that there couldn't possibly have been allergens in my meal and give me food advice for the rest of my trip (thanks, dude, I am totally going to take allergy advice from someone too boneheaded to figure out that there must've been something in my meal, since it's pretty fucking hard to worry yourself into psychosomatic anaphylaxis). But still, totally worth it for the storytelling value: I choked on the foie gras, my life is so hard. On the other hand, the Paris-Abidjan leg was comparatively wretched; jetlag struck with a vengeance no matter how much free espresso they provided in the lounge at De Gaulle, I wanted nothing more than to sleep, but the headrests had evidently been designed by someone who never had to sit in them even once. Couldn't even watch movies on my computer, since the outlets were ancient and rattly and didn't work. So... basically coach with added legroom.
- I need to just fucking relax about travel. If I've never been somewhere, I am plagued by this vague, creeping worry that my destination does not actually exist, which manifests in more specific fears that hotels and airlines will have mislaid my reservation, I will not be able to get from one place to another, I will be stuck forever in some Kafkaesque customs-and-immigration limbo, or generally that I will be SOL halfway around the world with no resources or way to contact anyone. I need to just fucking relax about travel, because all of these fears have a miraculous way of not coming true, ever. Even if reservations disappear, nine times out of ten I have no problems just winging it, and in fact last year's spring break involved no more planning than the purchase of a EuroRail pass and writing down the phone numbers of a few dozen youth hostels.
- The Sahara goes on forever. Kind of like the American Midwest, only more so and also there is literally nothing there, not even endless cornfields. And I was only crossing it north-to-south.
- Seriously, it's like nothing I've ever seen before, and yet from five miles up, you can see the same patterns as sand dunes or the furrows the wind blows in a dusty field. It's like noticing the resemblance between a nebula and an ordinary terrestrial cloud formation, then realizing that the familiarity in something vast and alien isn't random, it's because they're both giant clouds of gas subject to the same laws of physics. And then the sky was bright fucking orange at sunset and lighting up the sand bright fucking red, and I was thinking "holy fuck, this is my planet," and my mp3 player chose that moment to spit out "This is Gallifrey" at me. I might have stopped breathing for a second.
- Abidjan is sometimes called the Paris of West Africa, and actually, the best way I can describe it so far is "a lot like Paris except dirtier, friendlier, poorer, more crowded, less snooty, and more tropical, so not really like Paris at all except everything is in French and all the road signs and some of the buildings look similar and everyone drives like an asshole." See above re: unexpected familiarity, I guess, except this one is squarely down to colonialism and not the wonders of nature.
- I think a few winter trips to Florida are about the extent of my prior travels in tropical climates. And Abidjan is not like Florida. The humidity is softer, somehow; it and its effects are still most definitely present, but I have yet to experience the "stifling wet blanket of heat" effect that is humidity in North America.
- Before I left I saw a post on my Tumblr dash to the effect of "actually, it is inaccurate and mildly insulting to slap a #firstworldproblems tag on your post griping about your iPhone's connectivity glitches; just because a lot of people in Africa have to worry about dictators and crappy infrastructure and tropical diseases doesn't mean they aren't also annoyed by the very same phone glitch." Largely true: I don't think smartphones in particular have achieved quite the market share in Côte d'Ivoire as in the US, but going by the types of mobiles used by everyone around me today, this is more a function of the technology lagging three to five years behind the cutting edge and less of connectivity problems or phones being too expensive, at least in urban areas. Anyone who thinks cussing at your mobile is a first world problem is invited to the market near my office, where the lady who sells fruit and will peel your oranges for you is set up right next to the guy selling top-ups for prepaid phones: hand him some cash and your number and he will text you a credit. This is a glorious idea that should totally be more widespread in the US and Europe, but alas, we are all hooked into monthly contracts.
- Relatedly, re: the technology being there but not exactly on the cutting edge, my hotel's internet is perfectly adequate for most browsing, and it certainly isn't dialup-slow, but it is pretty grouchy about loading piles of large images. This could be the kick in the pants I need to cut down on my Tumblr habit. Or I could just unfollow a bunch of the most frequently-updated blogs. Which amounts to cutting down anyway.
- So I made it all of... uh, thirty-six hours before the first bout of Traveler's Digestive Urk struck. It has since been medicated into submission, but man, I spent all morning dealing with tech setup and debugging shit and wanted to curl up in bed the entire time. Fortunately there was some sort of demonstration this afternoon and nobody felt like working much, so I got to go back to the hotel early and curl up with the computer and tempt fate by drinking a lot of (thoroughly boiled, tea-shaped) tap water. Shut up, I make the best life choices.
- And by "curl up with the computer" I mean "continue my leisurely NuWho rewatch with the first three episodes of s2." There are a bunch of meta-y things I was going to try and watch for, but really, the only things on my mind are "everything has its time and everything ends, gee our season-arc themes are not anvilicious at all" and "wow, Ten and Rose are dicks. Complete dicks." Nine was a grumpy bastard to everyone, and he and Mickey had some awkward dudebro bonding underneath all the snark--Ten is just nasty to him, and him specifically. Oh yeah, and School Reunion is way more fun with a thorough grounding in classic Who--I think it was a solid thirty-five minutes into the episode when I noticed the "Welcome to Perryvale" banner in the gym and howled with laughter.
Things that have not changed since the first time I watched s2: I want to lick Ten, and it's distracting and feels vaguely wrong because he and Rose are one big giggly ball of UST and sexual repression. Also, most of s2 is absolute rubbish as standalone episodes, redeemed by a strong season arc.
- I need to just fucking relax about travel. If I've never been somewhere, I am plagued by this vague, creeping worry that my destination does not actually exist, which manifests in more specific fears that hotels and airlines will have mislaid my reservation, I will not be able to get from one place to another, I will be stuck forever in some Kafkaesque customs-and-immigration limbo, or generally that I will be SOL halfway around the world with no resources or way to contact anyone. I need to just fucking relax about travel, because all of these fears have a miraculous way of not coming true, ever. Even if reservations disappear, nine times out of ten I have no problems just winging it, and in fact last year's spring break involved no more planning than the purchase of a EuroRail pass and writing down the phone numbers of a few dozen youth hostels.
- The Sahara goes on forever. Kind of like the American Midwest, only more so and also there is literally nothing there, not even endless cornfields. And I was only crossing it north-to-south.
- Seriously, it's like nothing I've ever seen before, and yet from five miles up, you can see the same patterns as sand dunes or the furrows the wind blows in a dusty field. It's like noticing the resemblance between a nebula and an ordinary terrestrial cloud formation, then realizing that the familiarity in something vast and alien isn't random, it's because they're both giant clouds of gas subject to the same laws of physics. And then the sky was bright fucking orange at sunset and lighting up the sand bright fucking red, and I was thinking "holy fuck, this is my planet," and my mp3 player chose that moment to spit out "This is Gallifrey" at me. I might have stopped breathing for a second.
- Abidjan is sometimes called the Paris of West Africa, and actually, the best way I can describe it so far is "a lot like Paris except dirtier, friendlier, poorer, more crowded, less snooty, and more tropical, so not really like Paris at all except everything is in French and all the road signs and some of the buildings look similar and everyone drives like an asshole." See above re: unexpected familiarity, I guess, except this one is squarely down to colonialism and not the wonders of nature.
- I think a few winter trips to Florida are about the extent of my prior travels in tropical climates. And Abidjan is not like Florida. The humidity is softer, somehow; it and its effects are still most definitely present, but I have yet to experience the "stifling wet blanket of heat" effect that is humidity in North America.
- Before I left I saw a post on my Tumblr dash to the effect of "actually, it is inaccurate and mildly insulting to slap a #firstworldproblems tag on your post griping about your iPhone's connectivity glitches; just because a lot of people in Africa have to worry about dictators and crappy infrastructure and tropical diseases doesn't mean they aren't also annoyed by the very same phone glitch." Largely true: I don't think smartphones in particular have achieved quite the market share in Côte d'Ivoire as in the US, but going by the types of mobiles used by everyone around me today, this is more a function of the technology lagging three to five years behind the cutting edge and less of connectivity problems or phones being too expensive, at least in urban areas. Anyone who thinks cussing at your mobile is a first world problem is invited to the market near my office, where the lady who sells fruit and will peel your oranges for you is set up right next to the guy selling top-ups for prepaid phones: hand him some cash and your number and he will text you a credit. This is a glorious idea that should totally be more widespread in the US and Europe, but alas, we are all hooked into monthly contracts.
- Relatedly, re: the technology being there but not exactly on the cutting edge, my hotel's internet is perfectly adequate for most browsing, and it certainly isn't dialup-slow, but it is pretty grouchy about loading piles of large images. This could be the kick in the pants I need to cut down on my Tumblr habit. Or I could just unfollow a bunch of the most frequently-updated blogs. Which amounts to cutting down anyway.
- So I made it all of... uh, thirty-six hours before the first bout of Traveler's Digestive Urk struck. It has since been medicated into submission, but man, I spent all morning dealing with tech setup and debugging shit and wanted to curl up in bed the entire time. Fortunately there was some sort of demonstration this afternoon and nobody felt like working much, so I got to go back to the hotel early and curl up with the computer and tempt fate by drinking a lot of (thoroughly boiled, tea-shaped) tap water. Shut up, I make the best life choices.
- And by "curl up with the computer" I mean "continue my leisurely NuWho rewatch with the first three episodes of s2." There are a bunch of meta-y things I was going to try and watch for, but really, the only things on my mind are "everything has its time and everything ends, gee our season-arc themes are not anvilicious at all" and "wow, Ten and Rose are dicks. Complete dicks." Nine was a grumpy bastard to everyone, and he and Mickey had some awkward dudebro bonding underneath all the snark--Ten is just nasty to him, and him specifically. Oh yeah, and School Reunion is way more fun with a thorough grounding in classic Who--I think it was a solid thirty-five minutes into the episode when I noticed the "Welcome to Perryvale" banner in the gym and howled with laughter.
Things that have not changed since the first time I watched s2: I want to lick Ten, and it's distracting and feels vaguely wrong because he and Rose are one big giggly ball of UST and sexual repression. Also, most of s2 is absolute rubbish as standalone episodes, redeemed by a strong season arc.