I face a difficult conundrum: I’m often invited to speak about translation studies in universities across the globe, but a 12 hour flight is not the most suitable for someone who is suffering from stiffness that gets worse if I remain sitting down for more than half an hour. Add in some anxiety amongst large groups of people (as a rail station or airport for example), plus a conscience plagued by climate change, and you will be able to appreciate that a long-haul flight has its downsides.

A couple of weeks ago I was kindly invited to speak at conferences in Hong Kong and Shanghai. It was a chance to catch up with old friends, meet new people, share my experience and learn from the work they are doing. People are sometimes surprised that I continue to make these trips. But for me they are enriching and, with a little planning, not too onerous. I normally ask for special assistance at the airport, which sometimes means I am pushed in a wheelchair, but, as long as I am not depriving someone else, I’m not too bothered because it means that I have a quick route through security and passport control. It’s there that I need a little help, taking things out of my bag and rearranging them after they’ve passed through the scanner. When I get to the gate I’m allowed to board first.

The employees in the airport are sometimes surprised to see me arrive carrying a rucksack and pulling a small suitcase and at the same time asking for special assistance. That’s the nature of the condition: semi-visible but always nagging. The assistance I receive is very important for me as it reduces the stress of the journey and makes the whole experience much more enjoyable.

I was met at the airport in Hong Kong and Shanghai by a student assigned to look after me. Many thanks to them! I find that on these trips everyone is always so keen to help me and I’m very grateful for it even if sometimes they are unsure exactly what I need. So I’d like to thank everyone who made my stay so enjoyable and rewarding. Just a couple of regrets: my delivery of talks has become more monotonous because of the condition and I need to work on making it more dynamic; to tell the truth, I didn’t help myself by forgetting my watch and being unaware that I had finished my first talk 10 minutes early. The other slight regret was food again. It was all so wonderful, yet I’d convinced myself that I could no longer use chopsticks because of my weakened right hand. Let me state clearly: ‘chopsticks beat knife and fork when it comes to eating Chinese food!’ It was only back home a few days later that I challenged my thinking and decided to take up the sticks again. The result can be seen in the video…