Samstag Dezember 10, 2005

Top 20 Real Life Indicators That you Travel to Much

Most people think that travelling is exciting. Foreign countries, cities and people, nice hotels, restaurants, beautiful women in the airports, a cosmopolitan life ...I agree if you do this occasionally but if you spent more time in airplanes than at home than the reality is quite different. Doing this since six years I have made a compilation about my personal top 20 indicators that I am travelling to much;-)

1. You saw the same movie on three long distance flights with three different airlines.
2. To be a good husband you watch the same movie a fourth time with your wife in your hometown cinema without falling asleep.
3. The airlines loose and replace your baggage frequently enough to reduce your cost for buying clothes down to zero.




September 2005 - London - Image Copyright by the blog author


4. The airlines and the hotel laundries rotate in loosing your clothes. Your explanation "I don't wash my clothes, I buy always new ones" convince the attractive sales lady in the Macy's store that you must be an important and wealthy (or slightly neurotic) guy.
5. You do not ask yourself anymore who is crazy enough to buy clothes and other stuff in these overpriced airport shops as you are already a gold card member of some of them.
6. After the fifth timezone change in four weeks you can rather identify your current location by the aroma of the soap in your hotel bathroom than the guy who is looking to you in the bathroom mirror.




September 2005 - Singapore Boat Quay - Image Copyright by the blog author


7. People getting slighty confused when they ask you in a phone call where you are and your answer is: "Wait a second. - The cabs on the streets have strange letters. I guess it is Hong Kong".
8. You have celebrated your last five birthday parties in airplanes. Some flight attendants welcome you with a big smile in their eyes, some not.
9. As usual your local flower shop calls you proactively every year to ask what kind of flowers you would like to send to your wife on Valentines Day while you are on travel again.




September 2005 - Hong Kong during a Cyclon - Image Copyright by the blog author


10. Some long term friends of you wife are surprised when they meet you first time at a party and realise that your wife is married.
11. Your wife does not ask any questions if you get home and smell by a strange perfume. She automatically assumes that your flight was late and you felt bored enough to spend some time in the duty free shop. But it was a hard time until you got there.




October 2005 - Tokyo Roppongi - Image Copyright by the blog author


12. Your little son impressed his class mates by knowing the current daytime in Asia or the West cost but disappoint his teacher as he still has not learned to read his watch.
13. You have an outstanding number of executive meetings with your customer. While your colleagues and managers are impressed by your extraordinary relationship management skills, you hope that they will never get behind the fact that this is just because your customer executives randomly using the same flights with the same frequency like you do.
14. You have given up on the approach to convince your finance manager that business travel is not a pleasure.




October 2005 - London again - Image Copyright by the blog author


15. You have always the equivalent of $2.000 in cash in your hand bag. Unfortunately it is split in the local currencies of 27 countries. Some of the doesn't exist anymore.
16. You perceive your airline gold card more as a pain than as a pleasure.




October 2005 - Lissabon - Image Copyright by the blog author


17. When you complain about the amount of travel to your manager he show you two Airline Gold Cards and ask what do you complain about.
18. You have spent more than 180 days per annum out of your homecountry and theoreticaly you do not need to pay any more income taxe in your home country but you wish you could do it.




November 2005 - Switzerland near Geneve - Image Copyright by the blog author


19. You were the only one in the cinema who was not excited about Tom Hanks movie "Cast Away" (where he has to survive on a lonely island after his plane crashed).
20. You start writing blogs while you are on a flight as you can not watch the same movie a fifth time.




November 2005 - San Francisco - Image Copyright by the blog author