What should I do now?

It's 254 PM EST on 24 Dec 2009. Hancock International Airport, Syracuse, NY, USA. What rest of the world would oversimplify as Christmas Eve.

I just spent the last 10 minutes thinking about what I should do. I was very efficient today. Got to work at 8 AM and worked with ruthless precision to wrap up most of my work at 1 Pm sharp and left the office for the airport. Syracuse is a small city, so exactly 1 hour from that point, I had got to the airport, returned the rental car, checked in, cleared security and finished lunch.

I knew exactly what to do at 2 PM. There was that one last document I needed to email to my client (there is always that one last document...). So I opened my laptop and got busy. One document is never one document and a couple of emails is never a couple so I ended up spending roughly 45 minutes working, but the ruthless precision continued and I had completed what I wanted to do in that time.

That is when I started wondering what to do next. Because exactly at that point, the attendant at the US air desk at Gate 5 announced that the aircraft meant for Philadelphia at 320 PM had just left Philadelphia for Syracuse and was expected to get here at roughly 305 and that they would start boarding just after that. So at worst, there could be a 15 or 20 minute delay. Not bad considering that my travel from Philadelphia to Syracuse earlier in the week was quite a story.

So I had some time on my hand. Since I am sitting on a seat that faces out into the open (the runways et al...) I can actually see when the flight from Philadeplhia has come to a complete stop at Gate 5. So I don't have the need to shut my laptop any sooner than that.

That is when I started thinking what I must do now. I kept looking at my email box. No email had really come in since 233 and that is surprising for me. It's Christmas Eve for sure... I hit the refresh button just to be sure and I hit it again, to be more sure. Nothing. I logged into gmail. Nothing. I logged in to all my other email addresses. Nothing, nothing, nothing...

At that point, I knew I really had nothing to do for the rest of this time while I am waiting for flight 4305 to show up from Phialdelphia. I started to wonder. Should I get up and go get a drink? May be I should get some dessert... And then voila! I knew what I should do. BLOG!

There is certainly some relationship between the "Nothing Time" I spend at airports and my blogging habit for most of my blogs (and certainly my best ones) have happened at the airport while waiting for my flight. Free Internet at airports like the Hancock International only make it better.

I see a flight that has just pulled up and come to a complete stop at Gate 5. I do not know if it is from Philadelphia and I cannot hear any announcement (certainly not above Theenda Theenda Parvai Theenda from Chinna that is playing in my ears on high volume). But I turn around and and no one seated at the gate seems to be in any hurry to board this plane. So I will go on...

I try to think this through. I am a glutton. I have just had a tomato basil soup for lunch and nothing more. On another day, I would definitely got up from my seat with a view and got a dessert or a drink. Or at least run to the rest room and...

So why did I decide to just sit here in the comfort of this seat and BLOG? Was it my passion to write? Was it my resolve not to overeat today? Or was it this gorgeous girl who walked up to the window, took off her jacket (to reveal the rich red sweater) and strethced out her legs on the floor just five feet from me... We will never know, will we?