I should’ve called Bill Murray about playing shotgun golf, but went for a Remote Year instead
IT TOOK ME a while to get to the Boeing 737 parked close to the runway at Helsinki airport. The TAP plane had small blotches grime and dirt covering it. “…but otherwise it looks like a nice plane. Safe. Reliable”, I thought, as I waited patiently on the stairs boarding it. The sun was beginning to rise and it started to be an uncomfortably warm late-summer morning. I was glad to board an air-conditioned airplane.
I was the last in line to get in, “No, rush”, I said to myself, imaging what the other passengers would be doing in Lisbon. I had already overheard a conversation in the men’s toilet of four men just in front of me in the queue, talking loudly about coaching athletes. “Of course, the Olympics,” I said to myself. “It’s probably the best way to get to Rio. Through Lisbon. Imperialism and conquistadors.” I drew a line in my mind’s eye from Helsinki to Rio like in some Indiana Jones movie. It confirmed my initial thought, the jagged red line sliced right through Portugal like a throat cut with a blunt knife.
There was no adrenaline in my blood from excitement, even though I was boarding the plane to go on a year-long experience with 75 total strangers in 12 different locations, because of the ridiculous boarding time of 4.45 in the morning of July 31st. As soon as I sat down on the cramped seat of the Boeing next to a mother and her son, both filling out crossword puzzles, I fell asleep, waking up every now and then like a dog before the plane touched down on the runway in Lisbon.
As the slowly-rotating luggage belt finally spat out my backpack, I started to prepare the greeting line in my head to say to the organisers of this Remote Year, who were waiting for me after the red and green line of the customs tunnel. The flight was an hour-and-a-half late, so the welcome committee had grown tired of holding the flag up, but even wrinkled and on the ground, I recognised the logo. I swung my arm up and waved it like I was the Pope. They waved back and shouted my name with an interrobang; “Mikou?!”
Sex Wax and chit-chat
The beige VW T4 van taking me and two of the other newly appointed digital nomads to our lodgings, had a tacky ornament dangling from the rear view mirror. “Mr. Zog’s Sex Wax, the best for your stick”, it stated. Should I break the ice with my fellow travelers/nomads/remotes by pointing it out to them, I pondered in my head as I was measuring out the social dynamics between me and these two American girls. I decided against it and opted to ask about their work instead. The other one had strayed in to the oil business from interior design, being from Texas and all, designing pipelines and the other one was a New Jerseyan nutritionist. My nutrition was not doing well as I only had a Twix bar and a half a bottle of sugary, not the Aspartame kind, Coke for breakfast. “Better not tell her about my dietary habits”, I said to myself before opening my mouth and yapping about designing user experiences to both of them.
The rooms were a mash-up industrial chic and early 2000’s kitsch hypermarket decor, functional, but not to my taste. “No complaints here”, - as I was expecting the accommodations to be much worse. I was actually delighted by the queen-sized bed with a rigid mattress — good for my back — and the small French balcony overlooking a quiet street in front of the building.
I set down my backpack, which I packed hastily the night before the departure, and walked around the building to the back garden where the litre-sized beer bottles and wines were already circling among the people, a good portion of them Americans, to alleviate the awkwardness of this unfamiliar social situation.
Alternating between a glass of wine and a glass of beer, I intoxicated myself comfortable and started mingling. My mingle is of the quiet kind. Listen first, throw in a comment, listen again and then open the mouth. Most of the time it doesn't work, but it’s the only way I know. The beers and wines were from an unholy hybrid of a shopping centre and an old bullring just around the corner, called Campo Pequeño. Mind you, that any sort of an hybrid with a shopping centre is an unholy union to me.
There were Laurens and Bens, someone else, someone who looked like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a bunch of others, the names blended in to each other as the night progressed. As the decadence slowly moved outside the garden, towards the old town, where a night of debauchery had already been set up for us by the organisers of this year-long spectacle of introspection, I started to realise the magnitude of the quake this year would have on me and my work. It was eight and a half.
The bar had an interesting decor. Pornos from the seventies, hairy walls, fake cheetah skin, all mashed together with red and blue lighting making the place look like what people imagine what brothels look like. There were a lot of other people to meet there, but let’s talk about them some other time. The night ended abruptly when the majority informed that they have start working right away in the morning of the first day.
The office not in Slough
Oriented strand boards, chairs and desks found from the lost and found, and an exposed concrete ceiling were the main ingredients of my office-to-be for the next month or so. As I didn't have too much time the previous day to tune my digital communication tools to Remote Year’s frequencies, I missed the morning tour and arrived to a wall of sound made up of clacking keyboards and clicking mice. “America doesn’t sleep or relax”, I thought as my laptop’s hinges creaked open. The lights of LCDs illuminated the faces of these remote drones in near silence as if it was the perfect way to escape the reality that was realising in front everyone: there was going to be 364 of these days more.
