Month: June 2016

If you were reading this blog earlier in May, you know that I developed a bit of an infection in my right eye about a week before my trip to London. Concerned, I immediately went to a clinic to get my eye checked out by a doctor. He prescribed antibiotics in the form of eye drops.

Once I got the eye drops home, I realized I’m terrible at putting drops in my eye. I wound up missing a lot. I’d either get the drop on my lashes, on the lid, or below my eye. You’re probably thinking that’s no big deal since the drops could just run into my eye. These drops were viscous though and only turned more liquid once they made contact with the fluid on your eyeball. So if I didn’t get it right into my eye, I’d just have a goopy mess near my eye.

Anyways, I sorta got the hang of it. I was instructed to keep applying the drops for a total of seven days. This was perfect because it was exactly seven days until my flight to London. My eye was quite tender when I started the course of antibiotics but by about the third day or so the pain subsided considerably. I kept applying the drops dutifully for seven days because I don’t mess around with antibiotics.

I made the decision to leave the drops at home and didn’t pack them on my flight. My reasoning was that the pain had gone away and I had followed the doctor’s orders. I get on the flight, fly to London, take the train to my hotel, walk around London for five hours because my room isn’t ready, and then finally I am able to get up to my room and unpack. Because I felt like just a gross and tired mess, I almost immediately went to take a shower.

I tell you, the first shower after a trans-Atlantic flight is one of the best things you can experience. As I step out of the steamy shower, I noticed the bathroom mirror is all fogged up except for a neat and large rectangle right in the middle. Cool, this hotel features heated bathroom mirrors!

I saunter up to the mirror and for the first time since I’ve left home, I take a real good look at my ugly mug. I didn’t really use the mirror in the airplane bathroom. As I take in the sight that is my face, I notice my right eye, the eye that was infected earlier in the week. A large part of my sclera, the white part of my eye, is just a bright splotch of red, especially near the bottom half of my eye. It was basically the iris surrounded by just red. A whole bunch of blood vessels had obviously burst. Everyone gets some redness in their eye once in a while but this was more than I had ever experienced.

It was totally gross looking but I calmed down quite quickly. First, I had experienced no pain whatsoever which is why I was so surprised to see it. Second, my vision wasn’t impaired so also put me back at ease. It did look somewhat horrifying though, so my only worry was freaking out people who I had to talk to while on vacation. I could explain it to my two friends in London but it’s just awkward when the dude at McDonald’s taking my order is sketched out by my exploded eyeball.

I was expecting the redness to go away fairly quickly but it did not. It took several days before there was even any noticeable difference. Even by the end of my trip, the eighth day, there was still a bit of red in the sclera. I guess the most scary thing about this happened on the flight home as we descended down towards YVR. My right eye began to hurt, like there was pressure on it. I started to think that my eyeball was about to burst. Luckily, the pain only lasted for about five minutes. I half expected to see another bloody mess when I finally got in front of an airport bathroom mirror but my eye looked alright.

I wonder if I should get it checked out again.

There was about three hours to go on my flight home from London. I was half paying attention to the movie I had selected when the audio was interrupted by a cabin-wide announcement.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if there is a physician or doctor on board, please identify yourself to any of the cabin crew.”

My first reaction was genuine surprise. After decades of watching TV shows and movies where a similar and clichéd announcement is made, I was experiencing it for the first time. How exciting! Then I realized that someone must be pretty ill for the cabin crew to have asked for a doctor.

I was seated almost at the back of the Airbus A330 and there was no commotion going here, so I looked forward. About fifteen rows ahead and in the other aisle, I saw a small group of people gathered around one particular seat. It appeared the people were concerned but not panicked. They were talking but everyone seemed relatively calm. Then one cabin attendant went to the back of the plane and then came forward again with a tank of what I assumed was oxygen. Again, there was no panic and calm conversation was conducted around this small group of people.

I really couldn’t tell or even see what was going on or who they were concerned about. After a few minutes of nothing going on, I returned my attention to whatever movie I had selected. Minutes later, I looked up again. The crowd had dispersed with the exception of one cabin attendant who was still talking to someone in their seat.

At this point, I knew whatever medical ailment had befallen this person it was serious. The plane continued trucking towards Vancouver. If this was indeed a dire medical emergency, the closest large city at this point of time was Edmonton. We would have probably diverted there but our course had not changed.

Our flight continued as normal. I guessed that maybe when we landed this person would be allowed to get off the plane first, where they might be met with paramedics at the gate. When we landed, however, there appeared to be no special deplaning procedures. Everyone left in the order of front to back, just like normal. When I left the plane and walked through the jet way, there were no medical personnel to be seen. There were none at the gate either.

I guess it was quite fortunate that person wasn’t that ill after all. Well, that’s more thing I can say I’ve seen now on a plane.

When I was in London, my hotel had free wi-fi so obviously I was using that to connect to the Internet. While I understood I was in a different country, I wasn’t expecting my online experience to be too much different than compared to at home. I was in for a bit of a surprise.

One evening I was in my hotel room when I used Google to search for something. I forget exactly what term or word I was searching for but I do remember the results that came up seemed weird to me. There were far fewer results that should have been returned and it seemed really out-of-place. It was as if Google search was broken or even censored.

To test this to the extreme, I tried Google search again but using the name of a porn star. I know for a fact that searching that name should return pages and pages of sweet, delicious results. In London though, that name returned exactly zero results. It was as if that nice, young lady didn’t even exist. I’d never experienced this type of Internet censorship before.

At this point, I was really puzzled and wasn’t sure what possible rule, law, or restriction was causing this. I noticed that by default searches were being handled by Google UK. A long time ago, there was only one Google that everyone used to search but now Google is commonly localized to a particular region or country. Of course, back at home, I’m used to my searches being processed to Google Canada. So I explicitly entered in “google.ca” into my browser and then searched again with the name of exotic entertainer. Even though I supposedly used Google Canada, which should have returned results, I again got none. Odd.

I then starting searching to see what kind of Internet censorship was active in the UK. I remembered that they wanted to block all porn in the UK but I wasn’t certain how far that had gotten. After a bit of digging I discovered that Google prevents you from turning off the “SafeSearch” feature in the UK. This is the thing that prevents search results that have explicit content from showing up. So that might have explained what I was seeing.

To test this theory, I then tried going to Bing and searching the same thing. This was probably the second time in my entire life I purposely used Bing but I needed to know. Bing returned hundreds of results, way more in line with what I had expected. Indeed, Bing is actually well-known for being a great search engine for porn related materials. This did tell me though that the lack of search results was a Google thing.

I’ve been using the Internet now since 1995 or so and this is the first time that such censorship was so overtly in my face. I’m sure I’ve been shielded from results before but in a less noticeable way. I get that porn is an adult subject matter but I was signed into my Google account when I searched and Google knows I’m an adult. It’s a bit disappointing to know that someone out there decided on my behalf what I shouldn’t have seen on the Internet. For millions of people out there, this is a daily reality. For example, the Chinese government controls what sites their citizens can and cannot see. Now that I’ve experienced this, I can say that totally sucks balls.

This also reminds me that there is an element of danger when we rely on a single source or piece of technology for something critical. Imagine that night there was only one search engine and that was Google. Without Bing, there would have been no alternative and as far as I would know, that young lady I searched for didn’t even exist. When you control the flow of information, in a way, you control reality. That’s a lot of power in someone’s hands. I’m glad I live in a country that doesn’t call for such restrictions.

This was during rehearsal.

It may come to as a surprise to some of you that tomorrow I will return to EA as a regular full-time employee (with benefits and bonuses). This was something I had arranged a long time ago. I don’t want to say exactly how long ago but I will say that well before I started any of my travels I already knew when I had to go back to work.

I last worked on February 19, 2016. If Wolfram|Alpha is correct, that’s three months and eighteen days since I had to wake up early and clock in for the man. It’s been a lot of fun and I absolutely have appreciated every single day that I didn’t have to work and had the freedom to do whatever I wanted.

Since 2010, I’ve had several of these wonderful extended periods of freedom. I’ve learned that these are extremely valuable parcels of time. At first, I used to use the time to just stay up late, play video games, and eat terrible food. I realized though, it’s better to use some of the time for more productive things.

For this particular sabbatical, my focus was travel. I feel very lucky to have journeyed to Hawaii, San Diego, and most recently London. Each trip was fun in its unique way and it was very rewarding to just go out on adventures. I remember getting back from Hawaii, spending one short week back at home, and then having to jet down to San Diego. I normally don’t travel like that and it felt awesome going from one vacation spot to another so quickly.

I also was thankful to have the time to take that improv class in March. I guess it seems so long ago now but spending those Monday evenings in March re-learning and practicing improv concepts was so fun. As I mentioned before, I would have taken the second class but my travel plans in April and May prevented that from happening. It looks like July will be a good time to take the next class as my travel plans are at a rest for now.

As much fun and rewarding the travel and improv classes were, in general, I cherished every single day where I didn’t have to get up early and go to work. The fact that I could stay up as late I wanted to, doing whatever pleased me, and then waking up whenever my body felt like it was a true gift. Sometimes when I describe to people a typical day like that, I feel they kinda gloss over it and perceive it as a boring day. It’s actually not. We’re constantly forced to shoehorn our time into daily schedules that are frequently set external factors. We’re forced to wake up at a certain time to get to work at a certain time. We’re forced to get to home at a certain time to pick up the kids and get dinner made. We’re forced to get to bed at a certain time because if we don’t we’ll be a zombie tomorrow morning. For the most part, none of that really applied to me for over three months. I controlled my own life and it was very good for my soul.

Alas, I’ll have to tuck away my freedom again for the foreseeable future, hopefully for not too long. Weekends will mean something to me again. I will again not enjoy Mondays.

To think I was just in London. Oh well, I need to get to bed and set my alarm clock.

Though I would have preferred to have traveled to and out of Heathrow, my journey to London had me landing at and departing from Gatwick airport instead.

London is lucky in that at least six airports service the greater London area but nearly all of them are painfully far away from the city centre. London City airport is actually quite close but several restrictions prevent it from being a truly usable international airport. First, it has a short runway, which prevents large aircraft from landing there. This rules out just about any trans-Atlantic flights from using London City. Don’t even think about seeing a Boeing 777 or the Airbus 380 on that tarmac. Second, the airport does not operate during the evenings, ruling out night arrivals and departures.

As such, most international flights arriving from overseas use mostly Heathrow and Gatwick airports. Heathrow is 22km from London and Gatwick is almost 50km from the city centre. You can see why I would have preferred Heathrow. Alas, I had no choice.

By car, it can take upwards to an hour to get from Gatwick to London. Luckily, there are much faster options. There is a train service called Gatwick Express which goes back and forth from the airport to Victoria station in the city centre. Those are the only two stops, so it’s convenient and easy to use. The trip takes about 30 minutes each way. Trains leave every fifteen minutes and run about 20 hours a day. The station is also right in the airport itself.

Gatwick Express isn’t the cheapest way to get to and from the airport but it’s certainly the most convenient and hassle free. I chose this option because I wanted the most stress-free way to enter and leave London. I bought and printed out my return trip tickets before my flight. Doing so saved me a few dollars as it’s more expensive if you buy tickets at the station.

Even in my jet-lagged and tired state after getting off my trans-Atlantic flight, I was easily able to follow the signs and get on the first available Gatwick Express train. My 30 minute ride into London was uneventful and comfortable, allowing me to see some of the English countryside.

My train back to Gatwick on my last day in London had an interesting moment. I was one of the very first people to board this particular train car. So while I was all settled in my seat, more passengers came inside the car and put their luggage away. I lost track of how many people were coming in. I looked at my watch and saw there was about two minutes before the train was going to leave the station for the airport. Seconds later, I saw a middle-aged man jump up from his seat across the aisle from me. He had a piece of paper in his hand and he looked really worried. He was saying something in a language I didn’t understand but he made his way to a guy sitting in front of him. He spoke to the guy in somewhat broken English so I didn’t catch everything he was saying. I did hear him ask something like if this train was actually going to Gatwick. The other dude said yes, this was the train to Gatwick. This set off the middle-aged man in a massive panic. He began speaking in the foreign language again (it sounded eastern European) and ran back to grab his luggage and a bag from the luggage racks. He was in a hell of a hurry because he knew the train was going to leave and there was no stopping it until it got to the airport. All this time it seemed like he was cursing under his breath.

It was clear to me that this man was trying to catch a flight and his flight was definitely not leaving from Gatwick. Yet here he was scrambling to gather up his luggage and trying to get off the train car before it departed. He managed to open the train car door and heaved his stuff out, with him following shortly after. Not 20 seconds later, the train left the station.

His situation falls under one of the worst nightmare travel scenarios, mixing up which airport your flight leaves from. Actually, maybe he didn’t mix that up. Let’s assume for the moment he always knew his flight was leaving from say Heathrow. His mistake might have been buying tickets for the Gatwick Express when he meant to buy tickets for the Heathrow Express, which is a similar train service but leaves from Paddington Station instead. How do you mix that up though?

In any case, it sure looked like that whatever flight he was trying to make, it was not leaving from Gatwick. I felt really sorry for him because it’s not an easy mistake to recover from. If he needed to get to Heathrow, he’d have to get his ass to Paddington Station and then take the train from there. For the other airports like Stansted and Luton, he’d also have to get other stations and then take trains as well, except those ones take longer. Depending on how much time he gave himself, it’s possible he could have made his flight but making a huge boner of a mistake like this doesn’t make it seem likely.

Since that day, I’ve been curious to know what happened to him. Did he make his flight? What exactly did he get confused on? Seeing his situation just reinforces my triple-checking of all parts of my itineraries. I make no assumptions and I leave nothing to chance. One little lapse in judgement or forgotten detail might mean a missed flight. I hope I never have to experience that man’s travel panic myself.

It’s been four days since I arrived back from London and it’s been an interesting four days. Like I mentioned in my last post, I’m suffering from jet lag. I suppose it’s not unexpected but the effects are sure manifesting themselves in ways I hadn’t expected. To me, jet lag meant wanting to sleep during the wrong time, like the daytime, and being wide awake when I should be sleeping. For sure, those symptoms definitely plagued me the first two days or so but then I got back into a more regular sleeping schedule.

So while I’m sleeping at the right time now and also getting more sleep (closer to eight hours), I’m experiencing this odd dazed mental state in the late afternoon. Sometime after 3pm, I slip into this mental fog where I feel like I’m not really all there. I don’t feel physically tired and there’s no desire to take a nap. I just kinda feel mentally dull and far from being lucid. It’s not a great experience.

I’m guessing that while my body is rested, part of my brain thinks it’s time to be asleep still. If you examine when the mental fog sets in, it’s exactly when I’d be normally going to sleep when I was in London. It’s hard to believe it’s just coincidence. There might be another internal clock that is still adjusting to the time change. Well, whatever it is, I start to feel like an idiot
(or an even bigger idiot) around 3pm and it doesn’t go away until I wake up the next morning.