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From KL back to Singapore, then off to Melbourne. One of the crappier airport experiences I’ve had was at the Tiger Airways “terminal” in Melbourne. Tiger Airways, in case you aren’t aware, is a Singapore-based budget airline that covers much of Australia and various points in SE Asia. “Budget” is the operative word here. Everything feels small and cramped, the stewardess outfits are cheap-looking, and if you were choking on a peanut they wouldn’t give you a drop of water unless you paid for it first. But that won’t happen, because they don’t give you peanuts either.

The Melbourne airport was recently voted one of the world’s top five airports, but the Tiger terminal is not in the Melbourne Airport. It’s in the middle of a parking lot or something, several minutes away from the airport, and is literally composed of unpainted concrete cinder blocks and cyclone fencing. It’s exactly what I imagine the place where the planes land in Guantanamo Bay to look like.

Melbourne was my first taste of the western world in over a year and it was a bit overwhelming initially. I suddenly had a reference point for how long I’ve been away. Posters for bands and movies I haven’t heard of, bookstores with unfamiliar new releases, the way people looked, the clothes they wore. Something about it made me miss everyone and everything so much more acutely. And at the same time, I had the pointed realization that I don’t feel the same way about the world anymore, that I don’t belong to the world in quite the same way anymore.

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Despite the lines and checkpoints and shoe removals and food-court atmosphere of many a terminal, I still find the airport a place that alters my sense of reality. I am suddenly thinking about fate and destiny, looking for signs and portents, imagining dying in a very tangible way. Surrendering completely, putting my life in someone else’s hands, about to do something that I still do not completely understand. Feeling, physically, a passage from one point in life to another, funneling through an hourglass; all possibilities, all the maybes fall away as I am carried along on a moving sidewalk towards the singular point, the only remaining fact, the only place I need to be–the departure gate, the jetway, the airplane. The appointment I must keep.

Quick update: I will be leaving for New Zealand next month to write for a travel guidebook! More on this shortly.