| Gattigap |
06-01-2009 04:57 PM |
Re: Travel Tip?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mmmm, Burger (C.J.)
(Post 391551)
I think the only thing that could make a 6-day trip across Siberia tolerable is if the train came with its own orchestra.
Then, again, maybe not even that.
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A writer friend of mine did something similar, taking a 3-week trip on a container ship from Seattle to Shanghai. The idea was that enforced solitude would convince him to write those scripts that he had been meaning to do. He did that, but had to deal with the other effects as well:
Quote:
And I wrote. A couple of projects I've been meaning to finish, polish, get started. I was a flurry of productive, beard-growing, coffee drinking work. It's amazing how much you can get done in one day, when the iPhone doesn't work and you can't get email and no one's sending you tickles or pokes on Facebook.
And then, one night, late, asleep in my cabin -– propped up on one side by pillows to keep from tumbling out of bed during the pitch and yaw of the high seas –- I heard a familiar sound. Like a bell. What was it? I know that sound! A chime, a bell, a...text message. A text message?
We were sliding through the narrow pass between Hokkaido and mainland Japan. The iPhone had connected. It began to chime and ring and buzz and hop around the desk getting the two weeks' worth of voice-mails and e-mails and texts, downloading Facebook updates and Twitter messages, and I sprang out of bed like the sick addict I am, scrolling and emailing and texting and calling and checking Nikki Finke's blog, and in general taking the two weeks of Zen-like detachment and total focus and tossing them away so I could read Variety.com.
Through my cabin window, I could see the lights of the Hokkaido coast slipping by. They were thick when the phone started chirping, but now I could see them thinning out, getting fewer and farther between. We were passing through, into the Sea of Japan.
The phone went from four bars to three, then to two, then one. Mainland drifted away, but I kept tapping, kept sending useless signals: thanks for the funny joke, will call when I get back, on boat to Shanghai, FYI got this today, can't make it sorry am on a boat, weather cold, dinner when I get back?
And then, nothing. No service. But I didn't give up: I kept bouncing around the cabin –- maybe over here? No. Over here? If I hold it this way? If I press it against the glass? Junkies will ransack their hovels, searching for a few grains, a forgotten packet of whatever they're jonesing for. That's what I did, in the Sea of Japan, at three in the morning. For cell coverage.
And I sat in that cabin in my underwear, holding my iPhone, thinking, "This is what it's come to? Look at yourself. Look at yourself."
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