Crossing Borders

I left Bangkok yesterday for Cardiff, UK to present in another conference – this time on creativity in higher education. After thinking mostly about spaces and the fights among different stakeholders for spaces in the past few weeks, the shift in mind set will have to come in faster than the jetlag between continents. Meanwhile, other shifts that I must adapt to present itself along the way.

Un-halted stroll straight into the boarding area in Bangkok’s Suvarnabhumi Airport (even after the New Year’s Eve’s bomb), in contrast with going through two highly secured posts in Singapore’s Changi Airport: one right off from the plane (What were they thinking? That someone would bring a bomb all the way across continents without being noticed by security guards in other continents to bomb Singapore?) And another before going into the boarding area.

Or maybe I’m already spoilt by the laissez-faire attitude towards security in Bangkok – where I can just stroll in and out of places without once going through metal detectors or security checks that can be found in most of Jakarta’s places. But the security in Changi makes the ones in Jakarta look like a joke (which is true most of the time: they are just put up for shows only). At Changi, you would have to take off your jackets and put all electronic devices out in view (including getting your laptops out of their compartments).

As walked out of the 12-hour long plane ride between Singapore and Amsterdam, the twenty degrees centigrade difference in temperature hit me. Fortunately for me though (as I can’t stand being cold), the weather is not as cold as I thought it would be. Unfortunately, as I read on Financial Times on board, global warming has caused an unseasonably warm winter throughout the world.

Now I’m sitting here in Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport for an eight hour transit, working on lesson plans for my students this coming term that I should email to another lecturer so she can take care of my missing the first week of class at the university. The ‘communication centre’ is just across the void from where I’m sitting, but I have decided not to send the files to my colleague because it costs 3 Euro (US$4.25) to get 15-minute worth of internet time. Mind you, it costs nothing at Singapore’s Changi Airport for the same amount of time, and if you run out of time, you can still log in again for additional time, which is practically unlimited as long as no one is waiting for you. Meanwhile, a 15-minute worth of internet time costs only 20 Baht (US$0.70) in the more expensive internet cafes.

Suddenly I feel so poor, cold, and jet-lagged.