When was the last time you left home without your name?

In life, there are only two certainties: rain when I visit the hairdresser and my laptops lasting three years. Plus death or taxes, I guess.

What will I do on the other side of the world, with no friends, no books, and a bruised ego? - In twenty-plus years of existence, I have accumulated a lot of stuff attributed to my various phases. Pardon, not phases but ‘who I really am’.

Of course, a week before leaving Italy, my laptop decided to stop charging. Add that to the mix of emotional picking, packing, and panicking that’s been marinating overnight, add a dash of all my decent clothes that are either in a suitcase or in the washing pile, put a cherry on top, and you got yourself a time machine. Precisely, a 90s time machine. The only way back to the future is to embrace the challenge and make the most out of this situation: hanging out with friends relying on word of mouth to coordinate time and place, listening to CDs on my boom box, and retrieving my butterfly hair clips because my favourite hair-tie is already deep inside a suitcase.

I honestly couldn’t tell what was wrong with my laptop, what I knew was that this was the one I had been the most careful with, ever. I have gotten a blue screen of death only a couple of times and I have turned it off regularly, like once every fortnight. So, why was I holding a swollen and ripe battery ready to explode?

After all, I said I was only going online for ten minutes… It’s been twenty years.

To be completely fair, I still had my smartphone with an internet connection so I was not fully stranded on an analog desert island.

This was more like glamping.

Do you remember when we used to write ‘surfing the internet’ as our hobby? Nowadays, a hobby is ‘going off-the-grid’. Nay, a hobby needs to be monetised through several layers of artificial intelligence and social media to allow us to indulge in Millennial things, such as avocado on toast for breakfast instead of buying houses. But I digress.

Needless to say, I was not planning to replace my computer before my flight. And why would I throw money at something that would last me for such a short time? Sure, one may argue that the reason all my laptops stopped working after three years is that I was spending a very small amount of money on them and a large amount of time reading useless articles. Wasn’t this an eye-opening turn of events? What a ground-breaking theory. And a theory that will have to wait a little while longer as I look for a job in Australia and raise my tech expenses budget.

Such a cliffhanger.

I extracted my hard drive before the battery exploded in my face, so I had all my files in one little box, and the internet in another little box. They were just not connected. There was modern technology at my fingertips at any time, but I was making a point of not wasting my last days here in front of a screen. But I did have time to look up flights and travel tips while sipping Spritz at a bar waiting for my friends to join me for a final goodbye. Undoubtedly not the best use of the power of global connection but stumbling across debatable content online would be one of my ‘but’s.

I tapped on a ‘you might also like’ article advertising insightful tips on what’s needed when arriving in a new city.

I felt betrayed by mankind, but most importantly, by the algorithm.

To give you an idea, the first three things that everyone should do after a flight, in my humble opinion, would be: sanitise your hands, have easy access to your destination address and/or useful phone numbers, and maybe have some emergency cash to get a bottle of water. Well, apparently I am very materialistic as, according to this blog, the first thing everyone should do is to unfurl their mat and do some yoga. I wonder what kind of Californian lifestyle gurus they were trying to target with this distinctive list, but in my whole life, I have never seen anyone stretch while waiting for their luggage. Although it would make my day to see someone on top of the baggage carousel, with their yoga mat and matching pants, striking a pose while sliding around. Weeeeeeeee~

Not even my rehydration recommendation would match the second advice in the article: taking a deep breath of non-recirculated air. Breathing seems to me like a pretty basic thing that doesn’t need to be listed, for example, I almost included taking a shower as soon as you reach your destination as one of my top tips, but isn’t that just normal? But then this lifestyle coach doubles down with mandatory post-flight earthing. Also known as ‘getting your bare feet in the ocean or fresh grass as soon as possible to clear the energy and reset your nervous system’.

The only way I grounded myself while travelling was by returning with my mind to a simpler time, that’s why one of my consolidated in-flight habits included a particular vampire movie saga.

Team Jacob!

Now, before you roll your eyes, can we just appreciate how we Millennials, as a generation, went out of our way to get our hands on the few library book copies to avoid leaving any visible traces, then we went to the movies to fully savour the wild ride of the cinematic adaptation as a solitary but somehow communal emotional journey? The tragic makeup and computer graphics were lost on us because all we cared about was being part of ‘Team Edward’ or ‘Team Jacob’ and finding similarities with our newly found post-adolescent romantic revolution. When the woke Gen Z started coming across the Saga they did so while broadcasting nine-second-long reaction videos and treating the experience as a shared fun activity. I still curl under a blanket and binge the series for emotional support, with no judgment for computer-generated graphics or acting skills, but that new take on it is the opposite of comforting.

Sure I will smile at videos of ‘hoa hoa hoa hoa’ season, but every day is ‘there’s a possibility’ in my soul.

The only safe place for us to still enjoy Twilight is on a dark plane during a dark transoceanic flight.

I still don’t know why we can’t use phones while flying yet I will not even turn mine on to take the mandatory window picture. Luckily there’s plenty out there. Courtesy of Canva PRO.

Airports had always been a fascinating non-place to me, philosophically speaking.

I found them calming and reassuring and I loved the idea that someone had planned the whole thing for us travellers with efficiency in mind. Sure, the concept was similar to malls, with people coming and going, but malls were meant to dazzle us with all sorts of distractions, keeping us inside for the longest time possible, and making us get lost and spend all of our money. Airports were different. Despite losing our identity in both locations and becoming statistics, the aim of airports was efficiency and to get us out of there as fast as possible. There was little to no entertainment outside of designated areas and it was very hard to go back in your footsteps or to get lost, even the chairs were uncannily uncomfortable. I found myself most in tune with the experience of being soothed every step of the way, especially after the week I just had. Everything, from long hallways to signage ensured that each step I took was in the right direction and that I was exactly where I was supposed to be. The hardest part was getting my baggage weighed and checked in with a piece of dangly adhesive paper that said ‘heavy’. A brief walk to the security line, and from there on I was good. A bit teary-eyed but on track.

Who was I kidding? I cried like I was cutting onions, and I could not tell my mum why. But I will tell you. The last time I left for a short trip to Japan, my mother and I said our goodbyes at the security line, and that was the last time she saw her teenage daughter. I came back a different person, with wider horizons and the confirmation that I was not living the life I wanted and it was nobody’s fault.

I was not leaving my family, I was aware my family would be standing there, with loving roots as deep as mountains, to remind me of how far I’ve gone.

My whole life I’ve been zooming out from the familiar details of my home.

At first, it was just the bigger school in the nearest town, then Milan for a birthday trip, over to Japan to chase my weeaboo’s dreams, then all the way up to England to study, and in the next twenty-five hours I would be on the other side of the World. I am not Barbara anymore, I am flight 706, gate 6, seat 23b. For now.

When was the last time you left home without your name?

If it’s where you lived that defines you, I should have a multiple personality disorder. Only then did I realize I counted my years in countries, not Earth revolutions. That’s why I stubbornly identified as much younger than I actually was. Plus, birthdays abroad don’t count. Everyone knows that.

As I was waiting for my Gate to open, I used the last bit of Italian internet data on my phone, and I came across this article, which I proceeded to ignore past the title: ‘Share your age and the title of your chapter’. There was a slim chance that it was merely referring to my current age and the title of an actual book chapter I was reading, but I had an ocean of time ahead of me, and tears to keep inside, so I imagined each year as a chapter of my own life, and sure, I could have titled them ‘2012’, ‘24-year-old’, ‘first year of University’, or I could be a bit edgier. Throughout High School, I always disregarded the conventional numeric annus domini, and instead called each year ‘two thousand - something’ where ‘something’ was, of course, a swear word. From the classic ‘Two-thousand-f*ck off’ to my personal favourite: ‘Two-thousand-douchebagel’. I was still not a hundred per cent sold on the calendar year holding such deep meaning and importance.

I titled this year ‘Two-thousand - running away from all my problems’ although for almost half a year I did not, in fact, run anywhere at all.

New Year’s Resolutions and ‘year titles’ seem more wishful thinking than accurate. Imagine if we all called 2020 ‘the roaring 20s’ and then something ridiculous like a global pandemic that crippled the World as we know it happened. Wouldn’t that be hilarious?

---

Directly from the archives, please enjoy this authentic photographic evidence:

---

Playing the part of the Romantic Wanderer is easy with a return ticket in your pocket.

Culture shock is one of those things only cool people experience, like jet lag or knowing how and what to order at Starbucks.

Bonus: The Postcard Club on Substack