As I sit here, having finished lunch at the Seattle International Airport in the terminal for the flight that will take me back to Portland, I find myself in a comfortable sort of place. I enjoyed a tasty meal of fried chicken and salad, and I am sitting with my laptop out and plugged the wall while connecting to the airport wi-fi. This is not an experience that is at all unusual to me, or to a great many travelers. Yet it would have been unusual for travelers in some areas, and for travelers who lived not very long ago. I was a high school student when I conceived of my first play relating to flight, where I imagined a couple of young people getting to know each other over the course of a transatlantic flight, and also portrayed people as being able to wait for them at the gate. I started writing this play on pen and paper while traveling, as was my tradition during that time, as like many writers of the age I brought with me notebooks and a healthy supply of pen to do writing. Now I bring one (or more) laptops with headphones and plugs and a spare keyboard that types better than the one on my personal laptop. And since 2001, people have not been able to meet their loved ones at the gate but had to wait for them beyond security, approaching baggage claim.

Yet while it might seem natural for the contemporary traveler–especially a writer like myself–to search for power plugs in order to keep devices charged up while using them to write and reflect upon the experiences of travel and our observations and musings on life, not all airports are well-equipped for this search. Even some airports that we might consider being fairly modern do a poor job at providing enough places for people to keep their laptops plugged in. When I flew into Lome, Togo, plugs in that airport were elusive. In Johannesburg, the only plug I could find was in the information booth where the people who helped travelers, including pushing wheelchairs, could be found. In Cape Town, I was able to find a plug at a restaurant, but not once going through security at the place where we were deposited by the wheelchair helpers there. Such an experience could easily be repeated. Frequently I judge airports on a variety of criteria, and one of those criteria is the speed and ease of computer use, including being able to enjoy a layover that does not deplete my battery.

It should be noted, though, that this judgment is not for airports alone. I judge the hotels I stay at, at least in part by their having free wi-fi and enough plugs for me to use my devices without any problems. In international countries, I find that sometimes not all plugs work well, but some plugs can be found that will work with my converter even in less than ideal conditions, at least most of the time. When I go to restaurants, I often look for wi-fi and plugs there as well. This is especially true when I travel but not only then, and is often the case when I am looking for a refuge from the heat of a day in a home without air conditioning. Even in the planes I flew in, I looked for working plugs for my computer, and was irritated when the plugs were there only for decoration and were not functioning, as was the case on my flight to Newark at the beginning of my trip.

These are, admittedly, first world problems. To be able to fly at all, to travel as a tourist, and to observe the conditions of the world first hand as a traveler indicates a certain standard of living that is well above the way that most people on this earth live. To be technologically proficient enough that an abiding and consistent concern is being able to use such technology to engage in writing as well as communication no matter one’s location is similarly not something that everyone cares about or that even strikes the mind of many as being something that someone could be intensely concerned about. It is no doubt a heavy burden on a restaurant or an airline to have to think not only about their primary task in providing food or a safe and pleasant trip to also have to deal with the infrastructure of power and communications at the same time. And yet, so it is. A savvy business recognizes the interests and priorities of its customers, and enough people are like me–whether that is good or bad–that many businesses have responded to these preferences. And so it is that someone like me can sit in a pub in an airport terminal and write about and think about the strange phenomenon of being able to do so as a matter of course.