The joys of travel

Having waffled on earlier about some of the slightly less good aspects of work travel, I though I'd better redress the balance a little.

Today, I (mostly) had a day off. So, with time on my hands, I did what I like to do most in a city I don't know: I walked around it. This is my default anywhere new. Walk. So far as I can tell, there's no better way to get a feel for a city than to walk its pavements (in KL, that also seems to mean roadsides, roads, crumbled tarmac falling into the road, etc.).

Hot and humid it may be, but I still covered around 15 miles on foot. The botanical gardens were lovely; large, green and mostly deserted. Even so, it's hard to lose the impression of being in a large, sky-scraper dominated city.

Next up was a wander around, which saw me take in the Eco Forrest, rope bridges and all. From there, I swung down into a seemingly ethnically Indian section of the city. This was possibly my favourite section of the wander. Having not (yet) visited India, this to me was the part of the city that felt most 'other'. I loved it for that. The street food was great and the people all very friendly.

Re-fuelled, I walked on to the Petronas towers and all that comes with it. It's a corporate and shopping driven section of the city, with big name brands in the shops and very expensive cars on the roads. It's nice enough, but not my favourite part of town to wander through. The towers are quite striking, though.

A decent walk. I don't think KL is my favourite city in the world. This is my second visit and, though I quite like it, for me places like London, Sydney and Singapore are still a little way ahead in my personal ranking.

However, I did see this place on my travels--that nearly swung it....

Travel woes: a first world problem

I'm currently visiting the University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus. I'm staying in Kuala Lumpur. I'm here all week. The week after I'm in Lund for a couple of days on a research trip. A couple of weeks later I'm visiting L'Aquila in Italy, and in June I'm off to Seoul. Busy and very exciting times.

Let's get one thing out of the way: I'm enormously fortunate to have a wonderful job that allows me to travel the world. No argument. But here's something that I don't see discussed often enough for my liking. When I travel, there are two knock-on effects. The first of these is that all domestic responsibility falls to my wife (the long-suffering @katetallant--for those of you twitter-minded). We have a daughter and a fair few commitments at home. So, that's not easy. If not for Katherine being prepared to look after our home and daughter, I wouldn't be able to do this. Second, I don't get to see my wife and daughter for extended periods of each year. That's not so nice--at nearly 8, I find myself especially missing the kid. At a rough count-up, I'm away from them for around 3 weeks each year, and that seems to be rising. It also seems to cluster: nothing for months, then a whole run of commitments.

Now, of course, I travel as much (and only as much) as I'm prepared to. I could say 'no' to more travel than I do. And this is hectic period having not travelled since the early Autumn. But it's a balancing act. To do my job well, there's some non-zero pressure to travel. To network. To do the things that travel permits. And sometimes I can take the family with me! So, I'm not blind to the upsides and alternatives.

But it strikes me as odd that we don't talk about the emotional cost more than we do. We academics face many of the same pressures. But almost never do I hear anyone talk about the 'yes, it's lovely, but it's hard on me and the family'. That's.... well, I think that the cost should be acknowledged more than it is. I certainly hear friends and family who work outside academia have that conversation. (Maybe I just have massively atypical friends in academia/outside academia.)

If nothing else, I would prefer balance. Yes, by all means, we should celebrate how fortunate many of us are to be able to do what we do. And whilst I don't thinking complaining about the down-sides is the right way to think about it or to go about it, acknowledging those downsides is important. It's tough being away from the ones you love, and this job, if it doesn't actually require it, certainly puts a degree of pressure on us to travel.

(For what it's worth, I think that the only place I've seen anything like this discussed is in fora where single-parent academics discuss or seek support for better provision as well as the professional costs of not being able to travel so much. Their situation is clearly much tougher than mine. I have it relatively easy. But a cost is a cost and we should be prepared to talk about them.)

While I'm here, I should also note that things are much easier for me (now) than they are for early career colleagues who may face all of the above, but who will need the opportunities travel affords more than I do, but who may also face financial barriers, or network barriers (it's who you know, after all....) to being able to do so. I do not mean to make light of their situation by not discussing it in particular. My focus here is simply on the emotional/domestic challenge that we can face in trying to do this job.