We are currently sitting in the Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, which is otherwise known as the Qantas Club in Singapore, having supped and showered and congratulated ourselves as we always do at the foresight we displayed almost twenty years ago, when we paid for a life membership, and waiting now to return in an hour or two to the silver tube that will be our home for the next twelve or fourteen hours.
Distance travel today, even though we travel so far back in the plane that we are in a different time zone from the cockpit, is more akin to time travel than journeying. One walks into the tube, watches a movie or four, eats, drinks and fidgets uncomfortably, to exit via the same door in a few hours or many into a completely different climate filled with beings who would be described as aliens by our own immigration services.
The technology that makes travel so seamless also provides a challenge though. Communication is instant, distance is of no consequence, hand luggage is now burdened with cables and chargers and electronic devices to ensure that we are in constant communication with the very people from whom we are attempting to place great distance.
On a slightly related note, our iPhone is our "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy", or so spookily close the to Guide as Adams invented it all those years ago, that we must start to look for other clues within it as to what form our life may take in the coming years!
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