I find myself in yet another Silicon Valley Starbucks (chocolate banana smoothie), using their wi-fi connection while waiting for a meeting to start. I am simultaneously appalled by how often this is happening to me, and thrilled by my ability to access my work desktop remotely. Given this state of affairs, it's probably not good for my mental health to be listening to a new travel audiobook in the car. Travel memoirs tend to spark my dissatisfaction with the banal work life, and often leave me feeling that I'm living a "life of quiet desperation."
Fortunately, The Sex Lives of Cannibals by J. Maarten Troost is about a place so bleak, so inhospitable, so ridden with giant cockroaches, that I'm actually happy to be in an air-conditioned mega coffee house, instead. The book reminds me (with dry British wit) how boring, uncomfortable, and lonely some exotic places can be. And I just have to evoke memories of miserable guest houses across two continents on my extended honeymoon with La Roleurette to show me how nice it is to be home.
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