Heathrow 10.26AM December 4th 2005

There is one thing about airports that I just can't understand. People most likely to use restaurant services at an airport terminal, are people who are on transit. In other words, they are coming from somewhere else and going somewhere else. Why the hell, do the restaurants serve breakfast until 11AM and then switch to lunch and so on. A passenger is most likely coming from different time zone and will be going to a different time zone. One would assume that restaurants would serve breakfast and/or lunch at whatever time the customers want them to. Why should for example I, whose inner clock is currently 12.30PM and going to California, where it is 2.30AM only be able to purchase breakfast at heathrow airport. I want my goddamned lunch, if I'm hungry and I've been up since 5.30AM.

On another note, last few days have been hectic and I haven't had time to write much. Here's a snippet of my schedule for past few days.

Friday: Get to work around 8.30AM and clean out the room. Go to Kamppi at 11.30AM for lunch with a friend whom I hadn't met for months. Get back to university to do some more cleaning, do some paper work and have a laboratory get together with sparkling wine 1PM (which I brought, bought and offered in celebration to my trip). Hear that the visa just arrived just before 1PM and after the wine, run to a bus and get back to Munkkiniemi and get the visa from post. Continue to Ruoholahti for a meeting 2.30PM. Leave meeting around 4PM, go back home, get dressed for choir little Christmas party which starts at Kruunuhaka around 5PM. Continue partying until 4AM.

Saturday: 12.30PM get up hungover. Throw people who stayed overnight out and start cleaning the room. Take a walk with a friend and start thinking about packing and doing last minute laundry. Around 5PM I go downtown to do some last minute shopping and have lunch. Meet some friends and chat with them too long. Go back to university to finish some things I hadn't time for after 7PM. Take a cab at 7.30PM to Munkkiniemi, throw some stuff home and get a towel and continue with the cab to Alter Ego sauna party at Ida. Arrive around 7.50PM. Chat with friends, go to sauna and say good byes to friends. Get back home around 10PM. Start packing and finish around 1AM.

Sunday: 5.30AM get up. Do some last minute packing with clothes that have dried just in time. 6.10AM call a cab to the airport. Arrive at the airport 6.40AM, go through check-in and security fast and find myself with lots of extra time, even though plane leaves 7.45AM. Try to sleep some in the plane, and find myself chatting with the person next to me – a graphical designer who lives in Munkkiniemi. 10.26AM GMT started writing for my blog, because the restaurant wouldn't serve me food and instead only offers breakfast. 10.45AM Here and now. Luckily they will start serving food in about fifteen minutes, so pretty soon I will be disappearing into oblivion.

I'm considering and probably will be buying a 1 hour, or 3 hour pass to the airport wireless network to pass the time. I just wish I knew some place to recharge my laptop; they just aren't designed for these kinds of trips. :(

I'm feeling tired, real tired. I've been doing so many things and still so little in the past few weeks. At least I've managed to say goodbyes to my friends. I never expected this moving thing to take so much time. I haven't really managed to do any real work for the past two weeks. Oh well, we did have the board meeting of the project, which required some doing from my part and then this. But it shouldn't really take this much time and I'm wondering who stole all the time I should have had.

I also, just as I was entering Heathrow, for the first time somehow realized that I'm going away. A part of me is sad, very sad, to leave all those wonderful people behind. As my sister can tell, a year ago I would have claimed such a thing to be impossible for me, or at the least very much improbable. I was the person who never really formed emotional attachments to other people. Or I thought I was. I have been such a person in the past and last spring I still thought I was. I thought that was part of my 'real' personality. That I would bond slowly and rarely. But last summer, when my father had an accident, I had a forewarning that things are not as they used to be. I was surprised by the emotional reaction I had then to a person I thought I had no emotional attachment at all. And I dare say, that had it happened a few years before, I probably wouldn't.

It is wonderful to be human and wonderful to have emotions. It is wonderful to feel sad because of leaving all my friends and wonderful to feel excited about the new life that awaits me. It is wonderful to feel anxious about how I am going to fare. Will I be able to accomplish things at the university as I would want to. Will I be able to find new friends and will I want to come back after all is said and done.