After living in South Korea for a year and a half, taking a couple of trips to Hawaii, flying to Argentina and Chile, and flying to Bangladesh from New York, I’m no stranger to the long flight, so i was prepared for the effects of the roughly 36-hour journey to Australia this week. Even still, I don’t think it is something I would want to do often.

Long term life on an airplane takes on a sort of dream state quality. There is a cyclicality to the experience: take off, doze off, wake up to a stewardess asking if you want a chicken salad or a meatloaf dinner, eat, start watching a movie, doze off…again and again, with a couple of those collaborative bathroom trips that you can only hope your whole row is ready for when you are.

If you have a connection, there is the rush to deplane and get to the next gate, and then the long slow lull of waiting for the next boarding call. If you are fortunate enough to have access to an airport lounge like we are, you hide away from the crowd, stuff yourself with cute little snacks and coffee, and waste time scrolling through social media while enjoying the free WiFi and charging ports. You look around the room, studying the mix of serious travelers focuses hard on some serious task with their eyes locked into their laptop screens, the frazzled parents with their whimsical children full of inane questions that you can’t help but smirk at, and the too cool for school ultra modern travelers who have all the latest and greatest in travel wear and electronic accessories who assertively stretch out on their plush leather chairs, arms crossed and eyes closed, a non-plussed look on their faces.

Often these lounges will have one-way windows aimed out at the rest of the concourse, with all of the chaos and competition for space and rights of way becoming a sort of moving art exhibit for the refined few who have learned how to escape the milling masses.

But the escape is only temporary and soon enough it’s time to gather up your belongings and head to the gate, where if you’ve timed it just right, you can smoothly join the line and walk straight into your seat without any waiting in the holding tank that is the general boarding area. And then the cycle begins again, and you become a hamster on the wheel of your biological functions until finally you reach your destination. As you exit, the cabin crew and pilot wish you well as the smile you off the plane so they can clock out and head off to enjoy their few hours of leisure time in a foreign city.