Amsterdam - WiFi is everywhere

God bless whoever invented 802.11 wireless networking. I'm in Amsterdam, currently, and there's this excellent little WiFi service here with which I'm going to occupy my time until my flight to Delhi. The flight here was fine. Cramped. Dad's appellation of coach as "steerage" was dead on. Northwest is almost as bad as budget lines like EasyJet and RyanAir and Southwest. Just keep packing them in... For contrast, and for taunting, they make you walk through business class. Huge seats, plenty of stretch room, personal video setups, a wine list. Nice. It's the way to go if you can get it. I sat next to a guy named Harry from Ohio (yes, an OSU fan) who was on his way to Lithuania to build the main buildings for a Christian Summer Camp. Another guy named Valoo was also on his way to Delhi. Grad student at BU in Physics, yet his thesis is in something akin to statistical analysis. "Not practicable at all yet. Physicists are just bored these days because there's nothing else to solve. Everything's either solved or too hard for normal humans." Makes me think of the guy that ran the patent office back in the day. You know what I'm talking about. This airport is brilliant. Truly a beautiful place. Typical Dutch: it's extremely clean and all the people speak perfect English and are really nice. The Dutch are different. I mean, this airport is beautiful and clean and glimmering, but it's not like Germany where they sort of make a show of how hard they try to keep things clean and running well. It's like the Dutch do it without all that much thought or effort. Such a funny language as well. Lots of "oo"s and "yer"s and "bok"s. Sort of charming, I guess, in a way. For the record I have no idea what the hell Hindi is all about. I can't even say "Hello" in Hindi. Clean slate and all that. It's still technically part of the Indo-European language group, though, so apparently the structure is overall sort of similar to other languages I know. It'll be fun to start to learn it. Hopefully by the end I'll at least be able to have a conversation. I'm starting to feel the distance. Leaving was hard. Reading going-away letters was harder. I'll admit it, I got a little emotional on the plane reading some of these letters. I really am going far, far away for a long, long time. Who knows what will happen while I'm gone. You all better stay healthy, goddamit. I don't have the cash to fly back for any old thing, so just don't let it happen. Be good and be good to yourselves. God I miss you all. Some quite acutely. Well there's no point getting emotional at an internet kiosk in the amsterdam airport. I'm just going to write some emails, read the news, and go doze for a bit in the waiting area. Now, truly, the next update will be from Asia. Unless something strikes me in the next hour and a half, of course. :)