Time Travel

There's something about travelling overseas that's really exciting.

I'm booked to fly to Copenhagen next May for my God son's confirmation and already I'm revved to go. Sure, I'll be flying via Seoul and Amsterdam but, oh, the thrill of seeing new places. I have an overnight stay in Seoul and I'm looking at websites to see what I can see. All up, the trip will take 36 hours, but I don't look at how long it will take, I look at what there to be seen during the journey.

Then there's the week in between the confirmation and zipping off to London; what to do, what to see... I do plan on visiting the Tyne Cot memorial in Belgium to check out my great-uncle's name and maybe go to Sweden and/or Germany, but there's a problem: Distance.

See, Australia is a really, really big country; you can travel for hours and still stay in one state. I read somewhere that you can fit 8 Englands into New South Wales. So I'll have to think carefully on where I go.

Then there are the flights that screw with my head. For example: I take off from Seoul just after midday and arrive in Amsterdam just before five pm on the same day, yet the flight takes eleven hours. When I flew to America, I landed in Los Angeles an hour before I left Sydney. "Wow," I thought, "I'm in two places at the same time!" But it took two days when flying back, though not really. While living in England, I rang my twin to wish her happy birthday. It was the only time she was older than I. Time, I tell you, is a screwy thing.

It's all too easy to see why people believe time travel is possible: it happens every time you zip over a time zone, whether forward or back.

The trip is seven months away and I'll calm down... in a week or so, but I also know that the closer to departure I get, the more I'll have to do - but that's all fun to me.

I can see some time travel stories in my future; and if I'm writing them, I have no doubt they'll turn up on the story blog...