My husband’s a busy guy. On top of that, he actually loves to work. So when it came time to plan yet another business trip to China to attend the Canton Fair, he went full throttle and built his agenda to include back-to-back meetings with suppliers, as well as back-to-back viewings of showrooms, booths and, in some cases, even factories. Meaning that even though he’ll be in China (including fabulously sophisticated Hong Kong) for two weekends, he’s left himself absolutely no time to sightsee, let alone rest.

Such a 180 from my days of international business travel. There were many times when I found myself working over the weekend and I’ve most certainly had my share of working on major holidays. Running from one meeting to another, schmoozing and negotiating from one client to the next, waking up at 6 am and going to bed at 1 am, and in between sitting in absurd Latin American traffic for hours on end. But despite this, I always found time to dabble in the sights, sounds, food and culture of the different countries where I had the privilege to do business. In fact, even my superiors were ok with mixing business with cultural expansion. Maybe it had to do with the fact that in knowing the culture, we were learning how to sell and market to said culture. Whatever the real reason (maybe we were all just slackers?) I’m thankful that I had the opportunity to travel for work for a good part of my career. Moreover, I’m in eternal debt to those who sidelined slave work for a moment and who shared the experience of being tourists with me, if only for a few hours.

Traveling for work might seem 100% fabulous to those whose job doesn’t require them to travel. I agree. To a certain extent it IS fabulous. But it’s more like 20% fabulous, 50% stressful, 30% exhausting. The kind of exhaustion you just don’t recognize in your day-to-day life because when you’re at home you usually aren’t trying to adapt to different cultures, languages, business etiquette and so on. When traveling for work, you have to be on your toes, 100% of the time. Even sleeping isn’t necessarily all that great since half the time the hotel bed is a lumpy ol’ mess, no matter how fancy the hotel.

I hope that G finds a balance during his million-hour stay in China and that he comes back telling me about something amazing he saw, ate or did while he was there. So far, I’ve heard some stories but unfortunately they’re all still related to work. I guess it’s a good thing I’m not there with him right now … I’m not sure he’d really get the work done that he’s expecting of himself.

Actually, I’m pretty sure that if I ever traveled with him for work, I’d be the rotten apple, bad influence, Chileans-Gone-Wild instigator of the trip. As depicted below: