I went out for sushi tonight--- the Small Pika's suggestion. Went over to one of my favourite sushi bars. Suntory beer and excellent sushi. Ate at the bar--- lots of tako, again at the Small Pika's text message suggestion. And then...sweet red bean ice cream. A first for me, and quite excellent. Very much something I want to recommend to Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo. And, yes--- I have sushi bars both here and in NYC tagged as places where I want to take Miss Ginny. I hope she has the same planned out in Montreal. And I do want her to try sweet red bean ice cream as well.

For some unknown reason I walked across to a cigar store and bought a pack of Dunhill Blue and more cigarillos. I miss Gitanes! But...let's call the Dunhills a kind of homage to Miss Ginny. They are what I imagine her smoking in London. And, yes: I do like girls who smoke. It's the whole film noir/femme fatale pose.

I do wonder about Kelsey at clush. What prompted her to shift from Army ROTC to USMC OCS? Was there a clash with Army regulations? A Moleskine scan at her Flickr talks about Article 89--- insubordination to a superior officer under the UCMJ. What might that be about? What happened to her at Fort Knox this summer? There are Stories here I wish I knew... And if she did have a problem with the Army, wouldn't that affect getting into the Marines? Again, I wish I knew her Stories. Just as I wish I knew what was happening with both Lissy at emigree and the Other Melissa at kraftig_bewegt.

Now...let's consider last night's question:

There on an ordinary autumn night the phone rings. The voice on the other end tells you to grab your passport and pack. One carry-on. And do it...now. Twenty minutes. That's all you have. There'll be a taxi there in twenty minutes. One carry-on. And you won't be back for...a while. Don't worry about the reason. Perfect job opportunity in the Far Away, perfect lover waiting in a distant aerodrome, even the hard men in black trenchcoats and guttural accents coming for you. Whatever--- don't worry about the why. You only have twenty minutes. What do you take? What can you walk away from? Listen to Al Stewart's "The Running Man" while you pack. Make a List, darlings. And as always--- Details Matter...

So--- how would I answer this? Let's listen to Al Stewart sing "The Running Man" and see. Twenty minutes, and the clock is ticking...

Throw the carry-on on my bed and start looking at closets and shelves...

Dorian in his little travel case. I don't travel without Dorian. My little Mongolian Pony stuffling and I have been together for a lifetime. I would never leave Dorian.

The laptop--- the Tare Panda Laptop in its padded case. (In a perfect world, a 15-inch MacBook Pro in black) There's a voltage converter already in the bag, and a couple of flash drives.

Grab the Small Psyduck iPod and its charger. There's an extra voltage converter in the laptop bag.

If I'm going Far Foreign, the keitai and its charger become expendable. I can buy a pre-paid mobile at a phone kiosk in my destination city--- something I can use in Europe or East Asia.

In the carry-on: throw in maybe four buttondowns, a couple of extra pairs of trousers. A pair of jeans. A few t-shirts, boxers, socks. A necktie. A crew-neck sweater. The zippered hoodie. Grab a black blazer to wear. If I can, toss the grey one in the carry-on. A Moleskine and a couple of pens. Address book. I'm wearing good walking shoes from Cabela's anyway.

The taxi will take me to the aerodrome, so no pocket knife, no multi-tool.

Autumn outside anyway. If my destination is in the Northern hemisphere, grab a coat--- the black M-65 jacket is serviceable. It already has gloves in one pocket. A keffiyeh and a scarf.

Toiletries--- travel toothbrush, deodorant, razor, travel vial of aftershave gel, moisturiser. Sinus pills. A face cloth. Travel shampoo. A little Origins Peace of Mind Sensory Therapy bottle--- thanks to Alessandra at bel_ebat.

Grab a book or two. Something complex and absorbing for a long flight, but easily disposable when I disembark.

And...I'm ready to dash down to the taxi to the aerodrome to go Far Foreign.

Stop on the way and get what I can out of the ATM. I'd have the passport. There are a couple of credit cards in my wallet, and a debit card. Low-limit credit cards, though. I'd have to trust the debit card.

Miss Ginny at ginny_mccoo wrote me once to say that as a fearless, ready-for-anything world-traveler girl, she liked the idea of keeping a cache of traveler's cheques with her passport, as well as cache of euros. I think Lissy at emigree and I discussed this once long ago. She wanted to keep $US 500 in euros--- or even just € 500 ---with her passport in its case. My thought was to do both, if you could. The $US 100 bill is as close to a universal currency as there is. My only thought about cash--- and the question as asked assumed that the call is a surprise and that you haven't had time to get to a bank --is that there is a risk in trying to travel with large sums of cash. Regulations say that if you're leaving the US with more than $US 10,000 there are forms to be filled out and inquisitive Homeland Security functionaries. The days of briefcases full of cash are over. Traveler's cheques packed away are still reasonably safe, but it would be harder to leave the country with cash than it was ten years ago.

Credit cards... High-limit credit cards are key if you're going to Europe or even Japan. Now of course anyone tracking you can find out where you're using the cards, but... If they have the authority to monitor your card use, you have a serious problem anyway. Of course there are prepaid credit cards. You can get prepaid MasterCard or Visa cards at Western Union for five or six dollars and then load them with up to $US 5000. If you had the time and the cash, that might be a useful thing--- prepaid credit cards are hard to trace.

But if it is a "Running Man" scenario--- "Before the phone hits the receiver/ You're halfway out the door" ---there's no time. If you have € 500 folded into your passport (but why?) you're ahead of the game. If not--- get what cash you can on the way to the aerodrome. The thing is to make the plane. The perfect job, the perfect lover, the perfect escape, the life-saving sanctuary there Far Foreign. Someone called for you--- you may have supporters. Keep those credit cards in your wallet. Grab the carry-on and the laptop case. Make the taxi, make the flight: JFK to the Far Foreign.

Somewhere out there on another continent there'll be a room in a transit hotel or a pension where you can toss the carry-on aside and try to focus on a future: flucht nach vorn. But: twenty minutes and the clock is ticking. The key thing is and remains: make the taxi, make the plane.

Pick a city: Tallinn, Krakow, Marrakech, Istanbul, Osaka. Even Buenos Aires. Even Stockholm or London. Lie back on a narrow hotel bed and think about a new future in the Far Foreign...

Always continental cities. Never flee to an island. You do know that, right? And of course you know why one never escapes to an island, however much a paradise it seems.