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The glamorous life of the business traveler

Nury Vittachi
BUSINESS travelers are whiners. They live a glamorous, jetsetting life, yet all they do is moan about it. They should try being stuck at a desk, see how they like it.
The above argument was used to attack the present writer recently. My verbal assailant was a man who has spent six years at the same desk. "You
always moan about everything, yet you spend your life jetting around," he said. Not fair! We poor business travelers are to be pitied, not envied. Honest.
Desk jockeys, just compare my life to yours.
In your cubicle you have 1.6 metres by 1.6 metres of space to yourself.
In my economy class seat, I have a space just 50 centimeters square.
In your cubicle, you have a proper desk with drawers and a filingcabinet.
At my seat, I have a rickety tray the size of my forearm.
At your desk, you have a full size keyboard and a computer screen.
At my seat, I work with my fastexpiring laptop awkwardly balanced on
the tiny tray.
If the people sitting near you move around, it doesn't affect you.
If the people sitting in front of me or behind me or next to me make the slightest movement, my coffee goes flying over my lap and my laptop.
In your office you have a whole row of toilets for men and a separate one for women.
In my cabin, I share a coffin-sized toilet with 160 people.
When you get hungry, you stroll to street level and take your choice of restaurants.
When I get hungry, I have to wait until someone brings me a rectangular dog dish.
In your office you can take a break and walk around the park.
In my cabin, the only door leads to instant death.
When you've finished work, you can watch television all evening.
When I finish work, I get to look at a screen that's the size of my hand and suffers from constant interruptions in three languages.
At your home, you have newspapers, internet connections and a working phone.
At my seat, I have yesterday's news, if I'm lucky.
If you need peace, you can turn the television off and enjoy music or birdsong.
If I want peace, I insert earplugs which completely fail to reduce the roar of engines a few meters away from me.
If you want to breathe fresh air, you open your windows.
The only thing I get to breathe is a blend of the recycled gaseous emissions of 160 strangers.
At night, you get two pillows, a duvet and a full-size bed.
At night, I get a Barbie-sized cushion, a blanket so thin you can see through it and a seat that barely tilts.
At night, you get to cuddle up with your spouse.
At night, I get to cuddle up with the
160 producers of the gaseous emissions mentioned above.
In the morning, you are woken at daybreak by sunrise and bird song.
I am woken at an absurdly early hour by flight attendants switching all the cabin lights on.
And after suffering all that, what rewards do we get?
We stumble out into Colombo airport at two o'clock in the morning to wait six hours in the transit lounge before getting on another plane and doing it all again.
Ah, the glamorous life of a business traveler.
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