As I sit here, about to depart Singapore for Jakarta, I feel strangely at home in this place I have never been, and have only stayed three hours.
You see, I am a traveler at heart. Airports, airplanes for that matter, bring me a comfort I cannot explain.
So Stupid Cool, a concept born of my adjustments as an American student living in Scotland, sent as an email distribution before the days of blogs, is hereby reborn after a three year sabbatical.
The last three years, I returned to land (as sailors call it after working at sea). It was a strange three years, a combination of university studies for a masters, months spent in Los Angeles traffic and an aggressive year long, quite frankly disfiguring, cancer treatment.
The plane just banked and I am treated to a marvelous sunrise over Singapore.
Stupid Cool was started to allow me one complaint about living abroad and then one mention of something I appreciated. It was a mental exercise to assist my adjustment and tell my friends and family about my travels. It morphed, in steps, from something "Stupid" about Scotland and something "Cool" about Scotland (sent via an ever expanding email distribution list, when blog was a typo not a word) to a travel blog around 2004.
Now Stupid Cool returns.
So with that…
Stupid: Nope, I got nothing.
Cool: I love Singapore airport, decked out with abundant displays of vibrant, robust, full-bloom orchids. They also have a butterfly gallery, which I did not walk through in the dark at 4am. But I did cross paths with an airport working transporting an escapee, a big brilliant blue exotic butterfly.
Also Cool: a shower after 26 hours of travel with eight more to go.
Next stop: Jakarta, where I board my once home, Crystal Symphony, a 950 guest luxury cruise ship where I will work and travel nearly 20,000 miles over the next three months.
P.S. Thought of a "Stupid."
Stupid: The health insurance company which nearly prevented me from attaining and traveling with my cancer medication for this trip.
But I am here now!
