Ups and Downs Katie Goes Away

Regular readers of my irregular blog post might have picked up that I like blog post titles that have layered meanings. This one I’m particularly proud of as it could refer to the fact that my blog has essentially ceased to be due to neglect. Or it could be that I don’t feel so much like Ups and Downs Katie these days. The past eight (?) nine (?) months have seen me on a fairly even keel. I’m still prone to maudlin outbursts and the occasional full scale tantrum. I cried while listening to a Taylor Swift song very recently too but I’m beginning to suspect that these things might actually be the guts of my personality and no amount of lithium or mild, medically supervised head trauma is going to get rid of them. Mores the pity.

And the third, and my most favourite, meaning is that I have literally gone away. I am typing this from Shanghai Pudong airport where I’m waiting for my flight to Paris.

I was in hospital last week for some maintenance TMS and a good once over to make sure I was right to travel and one of the nurses suggested I chronicle my journey, both as a means of recording my tales for posterity but also so that perhaps if my mood does start to veer off we might have some clues to what preceded it and how things could perhaps be remedied e.g. “April 27^th Paris, stayed out until 5am drinking and smoking heroin with some skinheads who also happened to be experts at negging and believed mental illness was just people showing off to get attention. Just realized I haven’t eaten in 3 days. Not feeling crash hot today.” Remedy for that would be bed rest and confiscation of funds once leafy green vegetables and restorative broths have been purchased.

I was going to just write in my actual travel journal but to be honest these days I’m really slack at finishing writing anything I start writing by hand. I’ll be in the middle of artful prose and then lose interest and the rest of the page is given over to doodles of cats (they’re the only thing I can draw), shopping lists and attempts to rewrite the lyrics to catchy pop songs so that they’re not so laden with internalized misogyny and I can sing my own version to myself (once I crack Bang Bang by Jessie J I will post the new lyrics for you to see.)

OK, so if I’m going to be candid about how I’m traveling I should start now. I’m feeling pretty crap.

I left Melbourne with what felt like the fixings of a cold brewing and while it hasn’t come to fruition my overall wellness has not been improved by 10 hours in a tin box. I am well past the stage of believing there is anything luxurious about air travel but this flight from Melbourne to Shanghai was bad. There was the usual crap food, crap seats ordeal but I was also unfortunately surrounded by people who in no way felt the need to be shy about their body functions. I had a woman actually coughing on me from one side so I scrunched myself to the other edge of my seat. I had a centre aisle seat but on the aisle across from me there was a man who snorted and hocked up god knows what, he must have gotten to vital organs by the end of the flight, at regular intervals and then spat it into either the airsick bag or after the meal had been served, a clear plastic cup. Mmm…

So I spent much of the flight reviling and shuddering and trying to block out the noise of coughing and spluttering on one side and hocking and spitting on the other. It made for a pretty tense flight and I had already been pretty tense when I boarded. On top of the usual pre-travel anxieties I got stuck literally but fortunately not figuratively in the middle of an argument in Customs. The lines were immense and a number of people were muttering about whether they’d miss their flight. Then a group of young people from the back of the line pushed their way forward, unclipping the retractable barriers as they snaked their way to the front. They went past me but I assumed that one of the customs officials must have told them to do this but when they cut in front of a couple who had been craning their necks and anxiously checking the time the guy stopped them and asked what they were doing. They said they thought they were going to miss their flight and he replied, quite rightly, that many people in line were in the same situation. They kept moving forward and the guy called out to the people in front, ‘Oy, stop them, they’re queue jumpers!’ Now what I haven’t mentioned is that this group of young people were almost certainly all Muslim, four of the young women were wearing headscarves. As soon as people heard ‘queue jumping’ and saw Muslims it was an open invitation it seemed for the more racist amongst the horde to start calling out such helpful things as ‘Go back to where you came from’ and ‘You should all be deported’ and the ever so helpful in a secure airport area, ‘Terrorists!’

The staff responded pretty quickly to restore order but there was a moment in there of absolute dread that my holiday was going to be over before it started due to a race riot or suspected terror plot based on the inappropriate outburst of a yobbo.

So, I’m in Paris now. By the time I was due to board my flight in Shanghai I was so exhausted that things weren’t making sense. I asked a flight attendant a question and then I thought she was laughing at me. She wasn’t. She was a cardboard cut-out. I left my passport, medications and laptop in the box at the security clearance and when I finally made it on to the flight I forgot that you’re not supposed to clap when the flight attendants finish their safety demonstration. Even if they are really good. Just don’t do it, they treat you really weird all flight.

But all that is done. I scored a new PB of 8.5 hours of sleep on an airplane and arrived in Paris, well still fairly rooted but perhaps not the danger to myself that I was at Pudong Airport.

I read that the best things to do to kick your body into a new time zone are to move your body heaps during the day and get as much morning sun as possible. So I walked the streets of Paris from 8am – 6pm. I walked from Gare du Nord to Marche Saint-Quentin for some pastries and coffee and to ogle the cheese, past Gare de l’Est, past the Metiers Art Museum and le Centre Pompidou to the Viaduc des Arts and the Promenade Plantée and Marche Place d’Aligre and back along the Promenade Plantée past Monument a la Republique (I forgot to put this on the map, but I also then got very lost looking for the Picasso Museum which was only going to be open for 1 hour by the time I found it so I didn’t go in) and then along Canal Saint Martin to this hipster haven bar/second hand trader/ DJ venue/ museum of African culture called Le Comptoir General. Then I was going to walk all the way back to the hostel but I couldn’t work out which way to go so I caught the Metro and it turned out I was only two stops away.

Usually I think I have a fairly good sense of direction. Today, I was useless. I would look at a map and get a simple route clear in my head like turn left then take the third right but after fifteen minutes I would look at the map and I’d realize I’d walked in entirely the wrong direction. Even with the map in front of me and a sign posted intersection in front of me I’d take the wrong turns. So I hadn’t really intended to walk to any of those places but that’s where today’s wandering led. And no wonder my feet are sore if I walked, I’d say at least 13 kilometers!

I had un délicieux croissant au beurre et une centaine de grammes de fromage. And then I kept seeing windows with more pastries and chocolates and meringues and other things that I don’t even know the name of but they looked sweet and potentially creamy. And I walked past pizza places and pommes frites and I didn’t feel like them either. So in the end for lunch I had some fresh baby radishes, cheese, baguette and ham and some strawberries. I had a snack of yoghurt in the afternoon. And for dinner I ate the rest of my radishes with a green salad and tuna.

Doctors tell me occasionally (only occasionally – it would probably be more often if they thought I’d listen) that I should eat less fried chicken and more vegetables and get more exercise. I think I’ve found the answer Doc! Just write me up a prescription for living in Paris.

Having said that tomorrow is a new day. And while I fully intend for there to be lots of walking and maybe even a bike ride there will probably also be some new pastry I will immediately need to eat four more of. And cheese. There will always be cheese in my life.

Now I’m nestled into my dorm room bunk bed. My roommates seem nice. I’m adding the words ‘like’ and ‘totally’ into more sentences in the hopes that they won’t realize I’m a million years older than them. I may still earn their disdain with a remarkable effort of snoring throughout the night.

I’ll try to post again soon and often after that, although knowing me that could mean it will go either way. And I will add some photos once I can find the cord that connects my camera to my laptop (I have taken some Mum!)

And new candid statement on how I'm feeling: tired but good.

Jetlagged but happy