Playlists, dehydration and ghosts

The traditional airplane blogging continues in 2024 as well.

Three more hours to kill, eyes hurting from reading too many chess pages on the phone. It feels nice to reignite a passion. Curious what I was reading? I’ll give you a clue- a book which has a whole lot of pages and shares secrets of a recent world chess champion. 

An unpleasant form of dehydration probably caused by caffeine over consumption- now that’s an actual complain. However, there’s not much I can do about it, as when in this country I can’t resist ordering too many cups of my favourite energizer. Another sip of water and another clue. Which country am I returning from?

New music in my old headphones and thoughts which jump from one subject to another faster than my finger hits the ‘next song’ button. Why finding new songs to like is such a complicated task? I was rather excited when, not so long ago, I discovered a cool bar with great atmosphere, wine, food, people, playlist (I’m thinking that I should have rather not used ‘rather’ earlier, but why not confuse you a bit more?). So the bar, right- the bartender, who was also the waiter and the owner of the place turned out to be an enthusiastic playlist creator which he happily shares with random desperate souls. Since then, my newest occupation has been listening to that 996 songs playlist, trying to perfect my own 664 one. I don’t think 664 is a coincidence and I’m very reluctant right now to hitting the ‘add to the playlist’ button even though I kind of like this ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ thing… Decisions, decisions.

What would be a chess player’s paradise? A place with countless chess books. Strong computers. World champions as training partners. A place where invitations to great tournaments would come every other day. Where there’s a button to push whenever you want to switch the dreamy mountain view working desk to the ocean view one. Oh, or maybe it’s the place where men always complain there are too many chess tournaments with high prizes for women. Hm… Is it reality or paradise, or part reality, part paradise- I got confused. Blame the next song in the barman’s playlist for this line of thoughts- ‘Girl, you’ll be a woman soon’. Now if that made you feel somewhat uncomfortable, unhappy or any other ‘un-’, sorry, that wasn’t my intention, was it? Anyways, let me make it up to you. The next song in the barman’s playlist is ‘Great balls of fire’. 

Now back to the clues on books and places. I’ve changed my mind, even though there’s been no ‘Winds of change’ so far in the playlist.

Let’s start a different subject.

2024- a new year, one which will bring new, exciting things. Hm… In which way? New tournaments, new experiences, new places perhaps. Would it be so bad if they would be just the same old ones? Or maybe the old ones before the old ones?

On a more serious note, my sketch for this year’s calendar is more or less ready. There are some new tournaments, some new places, but no new countries so far. A bit disappointing.

‘Running from the ghost’ starts playing in my headphones. Is it a metaphor, a sign? To what? Have I been running? Who’s the ghost? Where to run from it? Maybe to a country I’ve never been to before.

Looks like I have enough food for thought for my remaining flight time and typing with my eyes semi-closed while trying to coordinate it with constantly hitting the ‘next song’ button is not as easy as I thought.

Cheers to a new year with good playlists, fewer dehydration issues, new paradises and no more running from ghosts.