Roll on the communications revolution!

I've spent a fair bit of time over the past 2 and a 1/2 weeks, flying. Not virtually or metaphysically, but really. In the air in aeroplanes. Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Rockhampton. This weeks trip was to Rockhampton. I woke in the middle of the night on Sunday with a sore throat. Realising that I'd been sleeping with my mouth open, I moistened my mouth and shut it and went back to sleep, with a nagging bloked nasal passage and vague headache. 
Up in the air on Monday morning all was going well until we began the descent to Brisbane.  My left ear began to block up. I pressed against it, I swallowed, I held my nose and blew gently into the cavern of my skull, all to no avail. As the descent continued, the pain increased. We landed, I had nearly three hours to wait for my connecting flight to Rockhampton. Long enough I thought, to regain control of my eardrums. As the plane lifted from the tarmac of Brisbane airport I realised that this would not be fun. Now my right inner ear began to sympathise with my left. Unfortunately they were not in total sympatico. Somewhere in between the two of them, my sense of balance was being distorted. The interior of the plane began to move disconcertingly as my stomach moved with it. The rising tide of nausea had me in hot flushes as I struggled to find a place of stillness for my vision to rest on. I could only gain relief by telling myself that it was OK, this was a result of my brain playing tricks because the delicate balance sensing mechanisms in my inner ears were sending distorted messages. The interior of the plane really wasn't melting in front of my eyes and I really wasn't falling through the seat to the floor.  I made the landing in extremes of eardrum agony and stomach rebellion. Unfortunately the next day, I had to make the return trip home. Imagine my dismay as I buckled into my seat in the Dash 8, and the airhostess kindly informed me that this flight was making an extra stop in Gladstone. That meant up and down to Gladstone, up and down to Brisbane, up and down to Melbourne, before I was finally home. It only took until the `up' from Gladstone for the nausea to set in.  Add to this mixture the fact that storms were driving across the SE of Qld. We bumped and bucketed our way into Brisbane.  
Fianlly home, I managed a reasonable sleep, and I have got through today at work, still with a head that feels like an over ripe watermelon and a stomach on the point of rebellion.  All of this to do a presentation that could have been done by video conferencing.  Roll on the communications revolution!

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