Author: Billy Tucker

The pace has been nuts these past few weeks and it has taken its toll on Diana and I. I’ve spent the past two weeks more away than home and I’m ready for that to change; Bombay and Seattle topped out a helluva two months, two months that topped a crazy couple of years, two years that followed three just “very busy” years, how fitting. Since come to Australia in January ’05 we have renovated and sold two homes, had two kids and been around the world a couple of times, since January ’07, we renovated and sold one of those houses and had just one of those kids (I should say, Ivy), oh, and in that time I’ve spent one in three of those precious days out of the country – I think we’re a wee bit over it. 

A change will do us good, a change that involves me travelling a wee bit less and seeing the kids a wee bit more and us renovating a bit less and having a bit more free time may even sound like a couple of silver bullets.

More toes,  this time they’re on their way to Singapore for a couple of days, where they will tap and shuffle their way to a new role in Microsoft, I hope. I do actually travel with the toes, just in case there was any doubt!

Currently flying on Singapore Airlines’ newly kited out 777, it’s fantastic. I figured out having been here for only 15 minutes or so after take off that I was treating the seat area like a very compact hotel room, with drinks, clothes, laptop, camera etc all lying in various spots, there’s just a crazy amount of room, they say you can have two people on the seat sitting side by side, probably true, although I think you’d have to be very good friends.  Back home first thing Thursday.

On a flight from Seattle to Los Angeles right now. The views are spectacular as always,  high above the east cost of the US, past Mount Ranier, over the remaining 2/3rds of Mount Saint Helens before descending into LA as the light gives way to dark and the sharp lines of each burb come into view, peppered by a million incandescent street lamps; it’s an amazing sight.

There’s something cathartic about flying, leaving the ground in Seattle the weather was gloomy and miserable, we threw ourselves through thick thunderous clouds to appear on the top-side in sunbathing weather, all in under a minute…

And in the time it’s taken me to pull that paragraph out of my philistine brain, the view on my left as gone from bright tall clouds along side, to darkening, feathered clouds well below, and the telltale strip of haze has appeared as a lead in to night, in less than 10 minutes the sun will be gone, and we’ll be passing through some southbound-accelerated twilight into darkness, flying south is best of all of course, because I’m almost certainly going home.