Travel: July 2006 Archives

The hotel booking info that promised broadband internet access actually meant "we'll rent you a PCMCIA card with Windows XP drivers that lets you talk to a cellphone network, at vast expense" — which is a fat lot of use to a Mac user. Potential guests at the otherwise-excellent Southern Cross Suites on Darling Harbour take note. Meanwhile, Sydney seems to be very deficient in free wifi hotspots by British standards (where loads of pubs and cafes have found that offering free wifi makes folks sit around eating and drinking more), and even the commercial hotspots are a bit shy.

Just sayin'.

(Goes back to doing touristy things, minus the internet.)

I'm catching a taxi to the airport at 5am tomorrow, and will subsequently take approximately 28 hours of travel to reach my destination. (Blogging will, therefore, be sparse until I recover from the jet lag).

Just a thought: the cost of an air fare to the antipodes today, in 2006, is on the order of one month's salary for a full-time skilled worker in the developed world. The journey takes 24-48 hours depending on stop-overs, and is somewhat uncomfortable.

This compares quite accurately to the price of a stage coach journey across the home counties of England in 1806.

We're not living in a global village, exactly, but the world has nevertheless shrunk unimaginably in scale in just two centuries, so that we become blasé about it — so that we get annoyed because Boeing 747s and Airbus 340s seem slow. What does this tell us about our expectations, beside the obvious?

Next Tuesday I'm flying off to Australia.

I'll be in Sydney from the 19th through the 31st of this month. High points:

July 27th - Signing, Galaxy Books, York Street, Sydney.

July 29th - Signing, Infinitas Bookshop in Parramatta. (This latter event is still to be confirmed.)

I'll be in Melbourne from the 1st through the 8th of August. High points:

August 4th-6th: Official guest, Continuum 4.

(If you know of any SF/F specialist bookstores in Melbourne where you think I should be signing, please let me know!)

Specials

Merchandise

About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries in the Travel category from July 2006.

Travel: June 2006 is the previous archive.

Travel: August 2006 is the next archive.

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