Listophobia

My biology teacher at secondary school had the following quote at the start of one of the chapters in his course notes: "Man is a classifying animal." I do agree with these words, which is probably the reason why I still remember them, although I would have put it slightly different: "Man is an animal, albeit a classifying one."

One of the things I miss when traveling is reading newspapers. Not that these are hard to find once you cross the border, nor are (wifi) internet connections allowing you to scroll through the latest updates, but I tend to be preoccupied with discovering real places and stories when I am abroad. Also, apart from fueling up with coffee, visiting news websites is basically the first thing I do when I enter my office on any given working day. Which means that, strangely enough, this has become a metaphor for work. So when I came back from my satisfying trip this summer, I had enough news to go through. It probably took me 3 headliners (Norway shooter traumatizes nation - Tottenham in flames as riot follows protest - Somalian hunger crisis leaves Belgians unaffected) to confirm the first part of the quote: man is an animal.

Albeit a classifying one.

I realized this, once again, when I was flying back to Brussels: on the last page of my travel notebook, the official end credits started to materialize. The entries of my things-to-do list. I promptly decided to start another list:

You had a perfect summer holiday when...

• the straps of your flip-flops are tanned into your feet
• you disembark from the airplane, and the first thought that comes to your mind is: "Hello rainy weather, long time no see!"
• you open your inbox, containing 763 unread messages, and you just shrug your shoulders and decide to do something useful - like washing your hair
• you wake up after a jet-lagged afternoon nap, and it literally takes you more than a minute before you realize you are actually at home, in your very own couch, and not in some fully-booked backpacker's where the compassionate owner suggested you to surf the couch for a night
• you come to the realization that you still know how to spell it, as W-O-R-K, but you forgot how to do it
• you start marking the days between now and the next trip
• you want to buy a train ticket in Brussels, and you address people in English instead of Dutch
• you are unpacking, and you suddenly realize you didn't use your raincoat
• you have more than 10 new facebook contacts, from various parts of the world
• you look at your travel pictures, and your thought after the first picture is "that seems ages ago"
• you did at least one thing you never did before.

Back to the first list now. Bugger.