Be angry at the the sun for setting...

"Be angry at the sun for setting if these things anger you." 

Hunter S. Thompson's quoting Robinson Jeffers in "Kingdom of Fear".  People are what people are, people do what people do, things are what things are.  Getting angry doesn't accomplish much.  The quote made me smile, and helped me deal with the arduous flight from Canada to Tanzania.  Hunter S. Thompson is a well known character, often frolicking well outside the confines of the law, and getting inside his head for a brief moment has made this read quite enlightening.  Yet another perspective to draw from, and his skewed perspective certainly comes from a completely different direction than I'm used to.  Damn good book.

I read "Kingdom of Fear" on the long, long flight from Canada to Tanzania. I was trying a new routing presented by the company travel department, the connection times looking more relaxed, but I didn't notice that my upgrade to business class credits were worthless until it was too late.  My seats were shit.  Middle of the four seat row in the middle, I was unpleasantly surprised to find I was sharing my very limited space with one of the aircraft's electrical components, a metal box taking at least half of my leg room.  When a fellow traveller in front of me jammed his seat full aft as soon as he sat down and jammed the minuscule TV screen three inches from my nose, I did my best to imagine the six inch screen filling my entire field of view was actually an IMAX screen and I was sitting in a spacious theatre. It didn't help. I was not channelling Hunter when I repeatedly kicked and shook the offending seat back, assuring the occupant got about as much sleep as I did, because I didn't have enough room to move without annoying him as much as he was pissing me off, but I may have been when he pushed his shoes back into my cramped foot space and I continued to pass them further aft.  I hope he eventually found them.  Most people are cognizant of those around them and show what courtesy one can considering the limitations, but this guy was rude to everyone around, so remorse was not on my emotional plate for misplacing his shoes.  I also watched numerous inane movies, disappointed that Hollywood expects computer graphics and intense unrelenting action to compensate for poor writing, and got very little sleep.  My bed in Tanzania was most welcome.

I'm back basking in the African heat, the kitchen has a new menu, my co-workers are full of stories of adventures I'd missed over my six weeks at home.  There's quite a lot of SAR training to do, and the rig has moved way out so we are flying more hours in two days than we had been doing in a full six week tour.  It'll be good to be busy.