Progress

I’m traveling again. By now, the process is fairly routine, at least in terms of the actual travel part. Buy tickets on the internet, get a reference number, take it and my passport to the airport, enter them both into a computer and away I go. It’s remarkably seamless.

It’s weird to reflect how much rigmarole has evaporated thanks to the internet. No more travellers’ cheques – my credit card just works worldwide. No more having to find a phone booth or beg the use of someone’s telephone to call ahead for hotels, or calls back to home – my mobile phone has an eSIM that makes it work just the same as when I’m at home. No more setting up hotel bookings by just turning up in a town and hoping for the best – now it’s easy to research, book and pay online for an entire holiday in just an hour or so. It’s a wonder that anyone went anywhere in the 20^th century.

In Perth, there was a huge traffic jam on the road to the airport, as if the entire city was evacuating. Fortunately I was being driven to the airport by a friend who works in the industrial park within the airport’s footprint, so we diverted there, parked in his carpark, then just walked for ten minutes to the terminal.

The flight was uneventful. I’d paid extra for an exit row seat, and managed to catch about an hour or so of sleep propped against the bulkhead. It was also a window seat, so I managed to catch the dawn as we soared over the Arabian Peninsula.