It gets frustrating to say the least, or annoying, when the only thing anyone cares about all the time is where I am travelling to next. I know it’s human nature and yes I also have friends who travel for work and I’d ask them too where they are heading and so on, but we talk about other things too.
I know it’s really none of my business if they are going to feel envious but it really is not a bed of roses. The truth is that sometimes it sucks to travel for work. Most times, actually.
Perhaps the impression that most people get about business trips is an image of premium travel and accommodation, a glitzy high life enjoying the best of the most popular cities. That can’t be further from the truth, if you have heard the barrage of complains each time I talk about my job. You’d ask, why then would I want to do it if I really don’t like it that much? Frankly, I don’t have the answer. Or maybe in reality, it’s a job; it’s work that I need to do in order to make a livelihood, and because this was where I’d started out and the (mis)calculated steps that I’d taken after that, I am a little bit stuck if I don’t want to have to make too big changes that won’t throw my other plans out of the window. Don’t we all have issues with our jobs but we still do it anyway?
For the record, I don’t travel on business class, so just go figure how lousy I felt when I had to be on the road for 30 consecutive hours to get to a place so far away that there were no direct flights, and I had to do a stopover followed by a transit before finally arriving when everyone else in the city was fast asleep at 1am. I suffered jetlag and couldn’t work or sleep properly, and when I worked I had to do up to 16-hour days. Travel time usually means burning of whole weekends especially if the cities are further away, meaning that I have to either take a late Saturday night flight or early Sunday flight, and when I return, typically half or the whole of Saturday would be gone. And I don’t stay in fancy hotels. Have you already heard of my experience with a gecko in one of the run-down hotels I stayed at for 2 weeks?
When I got to Makati two Sundays ago, some things screwed up and I was in such a bad mood that I was very rude to the people who were arranging transport. It wasn’t what I did but what I didn’t; I couldn’t even manage a smile at them when they spoke to me but just glared at them all the time for the screw-up that probably wasn’t their fault at all. I felt very bad for that because I’d worked in the service line before and I know how it can make a person’s day to have a nice, polite and friendly customer. But I just couldn’t because when everything seems to go wrong, there are those days I cannot just suck in a deep breath and tell myself that everything is going to be ok.
I have a friend who travels more than I do and I always envy her because she gets to fly business class and stay at good hotels, going to the nice cities that I’d always wanted to go. But we’re always frank with each other so I also know of all the shit that she has to endure in her work, for which I will never wish to be part of. So it is always with a filter that we are seeing someone else’s life and thinking that it is much better than our own. That saying that the grass is always greener on the other side is something that describes a lot of us to the T. We always think that life is better for someone else, but actually we don’t know enough to make a sound judgment.
Maybe this entry comes across as angst-ridden. But it was just something I’d always want to get off my chest somewhat. Fortunately for me, I do have some friends who are interested to know more than “So where are you off to next?”
Thanks guys, love you lots.
