Back in the 404, feels like I haven't slept in years.

Before I forget mentioning this, because I knew you’d like this, Christine, as I was talking about my life, how I had gotten where I got and that, to this guy named Jay at the conference, he looked at me, and said, You’re a miracle. I thought you’d enjoy that.

Alright so I’m flying back to Atlanta, Georgia now. It’s really weird for me to say this, and honestly I am not sure how it all makes sense, but I think I can finally say that I consider Georgia Tech one of my homes around the world. I’ve only frankly said this about well, Panama, and Barcelona. Notice very carefully that I do not say that Atlanta is my home, because there are a few guidelines or requirements that I would like to say make up what in my mind I’d call home. I’ll proceed to elaborate in detail about each of these:

First of all, there are experiences and memories. A home needs memories. Without memories a city/country/place is nothing. If you haven’t changed when you lived in a place, and it hasn’t changed you, then there is no way it will ever have an impact in you. A home has to have an impact. As a subcategory of memories, there has to be shared memories. I have travelled to many places, like Egypt and Croatia, and in some of them, I don’t have enough memories that I share with other people that will truly impact me. This is something I believe is required for you to feel at home.

Secondly, you as a person should not only feel confident but be completely able to show any of your visiting friends your home if need be. This builds on memories because once you have enough memories of everywhere in your home, the stories that you can tell are endless. You can walk / drive / etc around your home and show other people. This is something I can say about Barcelona, Panama, and Georgia Tech.

Now third and last, you must truly understand, be at peace, and embrace the culture of your home. This is a clause that I put with great difficulty, because as a requirement, it is to say the least a grey area. It’s really difficult to know if you understand a culture, or if you can be at peace with it, and/or if you can embrace it. However, sometimes, you just know. Sometimes it is like becoming a citizen, or like finally perfectly speaking a language (not that many people ever get this feeling), or simply getting that feeling like I got when I arrived at Plitvice, Croatia, and truly understood the family I was staying with. A family which has taught me things that I can seldom say about most of the people I know. Now, this sounds a bit extreme, but I am being completely sincere. I have written a lot about them in my travel logs that I keep here and there but rarely in my blogs online. To keep a long story short and keep going with this blog entry, the family had been through suffering and war, and as prisoners of a war which they did not cause, they were removed from their homes, and spent years of their life being tortured. The father told me very calmly that he doesn’t even remember most of it, because his mind has learned to forget such moments. He was simply happy that after the war was over, he got the opportunity to return to the place where he lived, and to rebuild his home. He built it back, and sustained his family from then on. He became the Director of the National Park of Plitvice, in Croatia. This guy, he’s the man. My hopes and dreams are that one day I will get the time to fly over there and visit him for a day, or maybe two. If I could spend a week, all the better, but the fact of the matter was, I spend months of my life studying, and other months working, all for an illusioned success in society which is absolutely, and entirely worthless. Dare I say pointless too. Why, you might ask? To me, studying isn’t about being successful in the eyes of society, to me studying is about improving your skills in an area that you enjoy. If not, what’s the point? Yeah, you will make more money, and get a good job. Big deal. As I’ve heard time and time again, money doesn’t bring happiness, but happiness and creativity turns out to give you money. So if you’re not happy, I find it difficult that you’ll get loads of money anyways.

Now, to continue to elaborate on my story, the reason why Atlanta is not my home is because I do not feel comfortable showing somebody around Atlanta. All I’d show them is Georgia Tech, and a few restaurants here and there close by. I don’t know Atlanta. I simply don’t feel like it is my home, because Georgia Tech is my bubble, and my home, but outside that, its untraveled territory.

So, that was a long talk about being at home, now to continue my story. After the FOWD – Part 2 article, I remembered that I completely forgot to mention the after party I went to after FOWD – Day 1. I went out to the after party which was held in between Day 1 and Day 2 of the conference, and met a bunch of people (special shout out to Chris & Christopher from Chirpag.com!). They were all great, and I got a lot of advice on web design and on how to truly approach making a website. It is not a black and white process, but I certainly gained confidence that I will have to re-enforce with knowledge once I arrive in Australia.
So, now let me continue the timeline appropriately, so May 19, 2011, lets record what has happened so far.

I woke up very excited to finally be boarding my flight so I got my bags and checked out of The Generator Hostel, in London. I took the metro all the way to Heathrow, the airport, and realized the Metro only stopped in Terminals 1, 2, 3, and 5. The odds were, I’d be on the right terminal. But of course, I wasn’t, turns out Delta serves in Terminal… wait for it, … 4. First mistake of the day, things didn’t look good. After getting asked the following questions,

Did you pack your bag? Did anyone give you anything to put in your bag? Are these your bags? Did you purchase anything or get anything in the airport? Have you been with your bags at all times since you packed them?

I was getting quite irritated. Let me point out that the last question, you have to answer YES to even though it is obviously not true. Some truly honest people always mess up on that one when their brain goes, but, but… but I went to the bathroom and wasn’t really with them for about 30 seconds. Or like, I left them in the hotel. Getting back to the United States was becoming quite the hassle. Anyways, I went through the questions, and then once I was security checked by Delta to enter the US, I went to the machine to print my ticket, which kindly said, “I don’t accept that kind of passport”. What the fuck does that mean? You racist bastard. That’s what I wanted to say when it told me it didn’t accept my passport as if it was somehow different from any other passport. But I kept my cool, and kept going. I went through the line again, finally got my ticket, and headed through security. I’m proud to say security went perfectly, but I felt really bad for the girl in front of me. Let me draw how London security to the U.S. seemed to work.

In the diagram, keep in mind the dots are people. Now, I’m one of the dots near the GOOD BAGS area, which is filled in in blue. The girl in front of me got asked by an inspection officer who was filtering the “good” and “bad” bags, he goes, could you take out your iPod? She goes I don’t have one. Then he goes, take our your laptop? She is very confused and says there isn’t one in the bag. And he goes, bad bag, go sit down and wait [ in this line of about 8 other people who probably went through the same thing ]. Keep in mind the security officer asked these two questions almost immediately after each other and in a total of about 5 seconds. After like 2 more seconds she realizes what he ment and goes, oh, my Kindle is in there. And the guy goes, no too late, I asked you twice.

She kept her calm because if she didn’t she probably wouldn’t have boarded the flight. However, his rudeness, although it kept me on my toes just in case I got asked anything, hugely offended me. It was basically just verbal abuse, its like, I have more power than you and I don’t give a shit who you are, so although you answered both the questions I asked correctly, I’m going to be a complete douchebag to you because there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. It wasn’t a good day for my travels.

I got to my gate and eventually got assigned a seat, sadly, I was seat #45F, which is the last seat on the plane. I was hoping I’d get business, so I wasn’t very happy with this seat but things looked a tiny little bit brighter when the person next to me didn’t come so I had the two seats that are next to the window, all to myself! Woohoo! Anyways after we took off, I looked through the movies and was excited to find Black Swan which was heavily recommended to me, and a few other films that looked awesome. I clicked on one, the screen froze, and then returned to the main menu. Both of my seats had faulty or malfunctioning on screen entertainment systems, which really really angered me. Delta had never failed me before, and after they seemed to have gotten rid of their AMAZING cookies and now only served peanuts and pretzels, I wasn’t too happy. I asked the lady if she could reset it and she was very apologetic, which is the good
thing about Delta [service is good], and tried fixing it. No problem, I took out my laptop and launched Portal. I figured my computer would not last long and then, as it usually does, shut off while I was playing Portal. Then it didn’t turn on. Well lovely. With my laptop fried, and my phone with little battery, it just wasn’t my day. After about 1.5 hours I had given up and figured they just couldn’t figure it out so whatever. And then, a man came by, and informed me that he had been working on my screen for a while now and simply didn’t get it to work. He apologized and then granted me 5,000 miles. Let me just run you through that again.

5,000 MILES!?!?! I looked at him very calmly and said thank you and that it was no problem. Deep inside, my inner child was jumping for happiness and having a party.

YEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So happy. Haha, Delta, just as I thought you were going to fail me, you realized your mistake, and were extra awesome about it. Oh and, I took out my laptop in the middle of all of this, and it turned on again. Charlie Sheen didn’t have anything on me. I had won. Period.

Well, that is that for this blog post. Got back to Atlanta, watched a movie with my good friends in ATL, now I’m back in the hotel ready to go to LAX, and then rest for a few hours before the flight to Sydney, Australia.

Until I’m down under, peace out.
Daniel.