I regularly write an email to a few close friends on the internet, and thought it might be nice to post it both out to those who matter, and to my blog for a change. Enjoy!
It’s 7:28am and I just changed trains for the leg of my journey that takes me into London. So far the morning has been a never ending series of events tripping over one another - right from rolling out of bed at 6:25 to leaving the house for the station. Somehow in the middle of the havoc I had time to make a cup of coffee (I bought some espresso last weekend). It’s only instant coffee, but a small cup of strong coffee - with sugar - seems to do wonders.
So… what am I doing while sat on the train? I’ll try and paint a mental picture for you… sat in a group of 4 seats - 2 facing 2. I am the only person sat in this group so far, but as the train hits various stations (Maidenhead, Slough), it will fill up and I will no longer be able to stretch my legs out. I’m sat here with my MacBook, wearing a white shirt, blue silk tie, khaki pants, black leather shoes, and still have my black fleece on because it’s not quite as warm as it might be. The MacBook is running Mail, iTunes (listening to MacBreak Weekly), QuickSilver and is connected to the net via the mobile phone in my pocket.
There is a guy sat adjacent to me - on the other side of the train - using a PC laptop. I win the pretty laptop competition once more… I probably own him on battery life too - I’ve had this on for an hour already, and it’s estimating 3 hours of battery left. I have to admit that I like Vista though - I spent a while using it at my parents recently and while I kept thinking “the Mac already does this”, it is a huge improvement over Windows XP.
This journey is starting to get me down. 4 hours of my life every day is consumed by this trudge into London and back. The slightly horrifying thing is that I have gotten used to it - it is now just a part of the day. I only realise how much I am missing when I am not in London. I get up at a sensible hour, and get home with some evening left. Yesterday evening is a good example - got in at 7pm, and by the time I had tidied the house up, eaten dinner, and prepared clothes for the morning it was about 9:30pm. An hour of television while answering emails, and the day was over. I have to focus on only having a month to go in London. No doubt following that I will be seconded to another far flung client.
(“far flung” is definitely my phrase for the day - most of my online friends - or “pretend friends” as W calls them - are on the sides of the planet, so they are definitely “far flung”)