by flagamuffin

There are perhaps no more tragic creatures than middle-aged, middle-class tourists, unused to traveling in unfamiliar places, on a lifetime dream vacation. You can tell they are used to feeling highly competent in their home worlds. Their thin fenders are being worn through rapidly, making every interaction a bruise and everyday functioning a rapid drain on social energy reserves. It’s not just cellphone batteries that drain more quickly in roaming mode.

In a dominantly exploratory daily routine by contrast, fenders grow thicker over time and maneuvers more heavy-handed. The result is a sort of globally adapted abrasive coarseness. Watch a seasoned road warrior blow through an airport cafe, often leaving a bruised barista in his wake. Or watch a traveling salesman imperiously commandeer a cafe table in a strange city rather than merely occupy it. That’s thick fenders and heavy-handed social maneuvering for you. You can often tell such people by what they physically carry around with them. Their laptop cases have a battered, survivalist quality to them. Their phones (they often have more than one) are much more intimately married to their bodies, via headphones. They handle local fauna like baristas and Uber drivers, instead of being handled by them.

"It’s not just cellphone batteries that drain more quickly in roaming mode." ... what a sentence. Incidentally, if you get far enough to read about 'hate-favoriting', it may remind you of something.