#oneaday Day 731: Airport 2012

I’m sitting on a surprisingly comfortable chair at the Firewood Grill in San Francsico International Airport. I’ve just finished a bag of barbecue-flavoured Kettle Chips and am about to start on the last cup of Peet’s latte of the trip.

Across the table from me is Andie, who is furtively glancing at her phone and flicking the screen in such a manner as to indicate she’s either refreshing her Twitter app, or playing Bejeweled Blitz.

“You know that option that says ‘watch a video’?” she asks, referring to the hoops you have to jump through in order to access the “free” Wi-Fi here at SFO. So that’s what she was doing. “You can’t watch it on the iPhone, so all you have to do is wait fifteen seconds.”

I laugh. It’s a bit of a marketing failure to make the sponsored video for such a service to be incompatible with a device as common as an iPhone. HTML5 is growing at such a pace now, and iPhones are becoming so ubiquitous as the de facto smartphone that it’s surprising more people haven’t cottoned on to this fact yet.

To my left sits a pair of gentlemen. One of them is fondling a Blackberry — poor bastard — while the other is discussing something to do with the rival smartphone platforms out there. I can’t really make out the gist of his argument as he’s facing the other direction to me, but he certainly has a pretty deep, booming voice which would be good for public speaking.

Andie pulls our new iPad 2 out of the bag and rests it gingerly on the table. She doesn’t get on well with the Smart Cover we picked up with it, but has managed to make it rest comfortably on the table without collapsing for once. She’s fired up Plants vs Zombies, a game which she has already played to death on both iPhone and PC, but had little hesitation in grabbing the HD version for iPad.

“Don’t we look social?” she says with a grin before turning back to the screen. She’s playing by tapping gingerly with her middle finger, the same way my mother does. In my experience, using an iPad this way indicates a user who doesn’t want to smear greasy fingerprints all over the screen. It’s a losing battle, however, for as you’ll know if you’ve ever seen a well-worn iPad, it is impossible to keep those delightful greasy smears off that lovely big screen. The nature of the beast with a touch-based device, of course.

I take a sip of my latte. It’s still slightly too hot to drink, but it tastes good. The milk is nice and creamy and the milk isn’t too bitter.

“If you want any of this, just help yourself,” says Andie, indicating the bottle of Sprite we ordered before sitting down. “I know you’ve got your coffee, but if you want something cold…”

She turns back to Plants vs Zombies. It is serious business, as anyone who has ever found themselves in the clutches of that game will attest. Personally, I never got into it but I know plenty of people who lost a good few hours of their life to it.

“Oh noez!” Andie cries, holding up the iPad for me to see. For a moment it looks like it’s frozen, but after a moment the fateful message “THE ZOMBIES ATE YOUR BRAINS!” comes up on the screen. It doesn’t take long for her to restart the level and try again.

Suddenly my phone goes bananas. A push notification from Twitter referring to a mention I’ve already read; another from Hero Academy telling me it’s my turn with a bunch of people; three text messages from my good friend Chris whom I had the pleasure of seeing this week for the first time in about a year.

“If you want to move, just give me a shout,” says Andie. I’m not sure she’s aware that I’m blogging our every move right now.

“Okay,” I reply. I glance at the clock in the top bar of my iPhone’s display — 15:15. The gate for our flight will be opening soon. I have 15 minutes in which to gulp down this coffee which is — yes — still slightly too hot too drink. But that’s okay.

I smile, thinking back over the past week. It’s been a good one. I got to be a part of my brother’s surprise 40th birthday celebrations, which he claims really we’re a surprise. I got to hang out with my buddy Chris. I got to visit the city of San Francisco, ride the cable cars and be a bit of a tourist. I got to spend a day working with actual people rather than isolated in my home office. I got to show Andie a part of the world I really love for a wide variety of reasons.

Now, though, it’s time to go home. I hit “Publish” on this blog post, gulp down my coffee, and we head for our gate just across the way.

See you back in the UK!

#oneaday Day 574: Flugplatz

Well, here I am at Gatwick airport ready to bed down for the night in anticipation of getting up at some ungodly hour in the morning to get on a plane for Germany.

Yes, it’s Gamescom time and I’m approaching the impending event with a mixture of excitement and trepidation. I haven’t been to many of this kind of big event, and the few I have I’ve mostly been in attendance as a consumer rather than a member of the press.

This time, though, I have a jam-packed schedule of fun and it’s going to be hard work, but hopefully a good time — and satisfying too. I covered E3 on the home front for the second time this year and that was fun, so I can only imagine what it’s like actually being there. Gamescom, while arguably not treated with quite the same level of “importance” as E3 is, is still a pretty big event and hopefully there’ll be plenty of cool stuff to see.

Quite when I’ll have time to 1) eat 2) sleep 3) write and 4) go to the toilet is anyone’s guess, however. I may have to do several at the same time.

As for tonight, my home for a matter of hours is the Gatwick Central Travelodge, which is currently undergoing refurbishment but manages to look surprisingly impressive for a Travelodge. The room is massive, for one thing — in fact it looks a little too big, as there’s a huge space in one corner filled with only a crap wooden chair — and it has air conditioning, which is nice. In terms of floor space and facilities it’s surprisingly on a par with several genuinely nice hotels I’ve stayed at that cost a hell of a lot more than £25 a night. It has scratchy toilet paper and crap bedsheets though — but given I will be beneath them (or more likely atop them — it’s boiling) for approximately four hours, if that, I’m not going to complain. I needed a bed for the night, and I have one.

And on that note, it’s good night from me. See you in Deutschland.

#oneaday, Day 71: Token Entry

Will shortly be boarding my flight back to the UK so am posting something now to… well, have something posted, to be perfectly honest. Missing a day because I’m asleep over the Atlantic? Laaame.

I said pretty much everything I needed to say post-PAX yesterday but I’ll just reiterate that this was a supremely awesome time for everyone – yes, Sam, better than Kaos and a kebab – and I hope we can all do it again sometime very soon indeed. Maybe next time those people who weren’t able to cone this time will be able to join us too.

For now though, boarding will shortly call and my battery is low. So I will bid you all adieu and see you back on the wrong side of the Atlantic.

TRANSMISSION ENDS.