out of office - business class, buenos aires and hotel-bound restlessness
my brother in christ i am jetlagged beyond repair
As I write this, it is 3:30am in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Jetlag has a foot up my ass.
Sleeping on the plane was a dire miscalculation.
I left Australia on Monday, 12:45pm, for a 12-hour flight to Chile, followed by a 3-hour layover and quick 2-hour connection to Argentina. My group made it to the Hilton Hotel at 7:00pm, Argentina time, still Monday.
By that time, it was 9:00am, Tuesday in Sydney.
This 14-hour time difference is going to swamp me.
Needless to say, I was restless. To the background sound of a Spanish gladiator movie, I ironed my dress shirts, answered some work emails, ordered my second tenderloin of the day (the first was on the plane), rearranged my belongings into small backs, reviewed my conference schedule and made sure all my devices were connected to charge/internet.
I took a quick nap that meant nothing because I snapped awake two hours after that (i.e. right now), with an odd dream of bumping into someone’s Maserati. Glad that’s not real.
Here’s what’s on my mind right now:
A not-so-comprehensive review of Business Class from someone certainly not in the demographic
Perhaps I’m not too imaginative, but I never thought I’d ever fly Business Class in my lifetime.
This 14+3+2 hour leg was my first time:
Entering the exclusive Qantas Business Lounge
Experiencing priority boarding and departure
Having full-legged sleep and semi fine-dining dishes, 10km up in the air
Telling the immigration officer I was here for business (ooo so professional!)\
Were these benefits actually impactful? Yes, I’d think so.
The land-convenience is marvellous. The lounge is money saved from having to buy breakfast and offers an exclusive waiting room with comfy chairs and showers (this is the big one - even though I didn’t use it) so that you don’t need to compete with the muggles. It wasn’t any higher quality than everywhere else, but the fact that all the essentials were in one spot made it so that you could spend your waiting time doing more value-added business things like answering super important emails (aha yes, totally me).
As for air benefits, I’ll give it up: being served a smoked salmon salad, beef tenderloin, mango-coconut panna cotta and a glass of Baileys, ten kilometres up in the air, was pretty damn dapper. The sleep wasn’t completely flat, about 25 degrees I think, but was still exceptional compared to the practically upright position of economy class. Super nifty for a 12 hour flight but part of me finds that an awkward benefit: If I’m asleep for most of the flight, doesn’t that mean I’m not experiencing business class to the fullest? Then again, isn’t one of the primary purposes of business class is the well-restedness that comes with it?
So, is business class worth your money?
In my specific instance, yes!
The whole thing was on company money.
The only thing I paid was the $35 Uber from my house to the airport which I can claim back anyway.
Would I do it for personal reasons thought?
Absolutely fucking not.
Sure, if I took economy, I wouldn’t be in tiptop shape on day one of my holiday due to jetlag and discomfort - but I really don’t need to be. I just need to be conscious, with my mind, body and luggage from Point A to Point B.
I suppose it’s different for business where it’s 1) on company tab 2) tax-deductible 3) needs you to be locked, loaded and ready to fire on day one. If I had to go to the conference immediately after I landed (imagine needing to give a speech too…), business class would be unnegotiable.
Fuck me, the bar is higher now: I now think I’ll never fly First Class in my lifetime.
Let’s hope that changes.
I wonder what age I’ll be.
Argentina, at a glance, looks and feels a lot like Indonesia
Something about Arturo Merino Benitez (Chile’s airport) reminded me of Terminal 3 Soekarno-Hatta (Jakarta’s airport), with its long corridors of travelators, floor to ceiling windows with protective metal bars and a ceiling reminiscent of a football stadium.
Interesting note: The duty free store had prices in USD.
Another interesting note: Out of everything there, Starbucks somehow had the most reasonable prices.
Ezeiza International Airport (Argentina’s airport) seemed more like Kingsford-Smith (Sydney’s airport). Older and messier but still in good condition with an unnecessary amount of vehicle ads - but upon entering our cab and bouncing to the toll roads, I was instantly struck by a wave of familiarity (and no - it’s not because I have suddenly fallen in love with travel).
Wide roads. Vague markings. Toll gates lined up like a battalion, looking like they’ve only recently become automated. Sparely separated buildings. Dusty and rundown and would be wonderful with a fresh coat of paint but now sit in dull green, washed pink and stale blue.
It became a lot tighter as we entered the main city, our mini-bus going up and down bridges that looped into one another, advertisements showing Lionel Messi 1) enjoying an alforjes 2) chugging a beer 3) grilling a steak.
As we turned to what I eventually know as Puerto Madero, the dull-coloured apartments transformed into modern skyscrapers with surprisingly walkable roads, gorgeous bridges and decidedly British/French architecture housing old (fruit grocer, taxation office, leather craftsman) and new (car dealership, tech startup, McDonalds) businesses in their gargoyle walls.
It does better on the nature front with lines of trees, dedicated parks and plazas, a milder climate and a distinct lack of traffic despite being 6pm (maybe I got lucky, maybe I’m comparing it to one of the worst traffic capitals in the world); but there is something conspicuously Jakartan to these lands and I can’t place my finger on it.
What I’ve been journaling about on the plane here
Latam Airlines had no internet connectivity whatsoever, even for business class, and I found that much preferable.
It was excellent time to journal with practically undisputed privacy.
(My seatmate was a ~50 y.o. Colombian woman who couldn’t speak much English - though we did have a nice conversation on how she was visiting her daughter in Tasmania)
It’s a known phenomenon that I often develop a desire to revamp my life when I go on vacation.
It’s not the vacation itself which makes me do so, but the days leading up to it, only being reinforced by being overseas.
I’m extremely prone to the ‘fresh start effect’ and this time is no exception.
One of my central beliefs has been ‘systems over goals’.
More recently, however, I’m really seeing the value of goals; their power to orient ourselves to a north star and the innate confidence. at comes with having a backlog of already-achieved goals.
Credibility is the word that comes to mind. Like having a section of a gallery or bookstore dedicated to your work, or a bullet-pointed blurb beneath your job title on LinkedIn that goes improved accounts received by company’s broking division by 25%.
It was a phenomenon I realised when I wrote short stories on Reedsy, despite my love at the time being long-form fiction.
Since childhood, I’ve made many failed attempts at writing a full-length novel - and who can blame me? It takes a nebulous amount of work to write 80k words, even shit ones, and because I never had a finished project to show for myself - I had a lot of trouble calling myself a writer.
After I published a few short stories though (and got shortlisted on a few!), my words no longer seemed to get stuck on my throat. I could more confidently call myself a writer, or someone who had writing as a hobby, because I had a tangible library of work to show for it.
I’ve given some thought about what kind of goals December 2025 me would be celebrating and what kind of systems would let that happen.
Additionally, I’ve put together some pre-goals for the end of this year. Yes! This year.
It’s unrealistically to expect an instantaneous mindset shift on 1 January 2025 and so I’m setting some expectations for myself now. Tiny pre-goals that are so small and minuscule that it would be imbecilic for me not to do it. Why wait for a temporal landmark like a new year when you could for a new day, or new hour?
Without going into detail, the four goals I have fall under the categories of fitness, relationships and creativity.
Alas, it’s about 5:30am now and I’m waiting anxiously for breakfast to open. I’m not proud of sleeping through breakfast on my business class flight. I was certainly looking forward to it - so I’m really doubling down on this hotel breakfast.
These next couple of posts will be about my conference experience and everything around it so if you’d like to hear the perspective of a lowly twenty-something year old analyst who somehow smuggled his way into an international conference for mutual organisations; that orange subscribe button could be for you.
