This trip is showing me a taste of what it’s like to be a business traveler. Aside from the actual work (which is more or less interchangeable no matter what one’s business actually is), the important signposts seem to be where you eat and where you drink. The business traveler is forced to rely on the shallow crutches of surface comfort: a good hotel, a good bed, good furnishings, good food, good drink. And this is a world largely populated by service staff. Waiters, cabdrivers, attendants. The world of the business traveler has only a tangental relationship to the actual locale, wherever it may be; it exists inside it but is not necessarily a part of it. Thus, the Hyatt Regency, as nice as it is, as well-appointed and luxurious, could also just as easily exist in Houston or Atlanta or Philadelphia. And does. And should. Because other shallow crutches of comfort for the business traveler are predictability and homogeneity. The bubble-world of the business traveler must exist in a modern, technologically-saturated urban environment. If he’s forced to travel somewhere that isn’t, you’ll only hear complaints afterwards. Screw the local color, the lives of the native residents, the landscape. If he can’t get decent wi-fi and a good steak, what value is all that?