160 Days

August 23rd, 20:23

Well here goes.  As with most things in my life, I’m a late-starter at the blogging game.  Whether I have the commitment, whether I find that I have anything worthwhile to say and whether anyone ever considers any of my ramblings worth reading is yet to be seen.  But as I hurtle towards middle age a new chapter is starting in my life - a big, scary, thrilling one – with a host of new experiences ahead, some already carefully planned, most unforeseen… so what the hell.  If I don’t start scribbling about my life now, I never will.  Nothing like this is ever going to happen to me again.

As an aside I did keep a diary for a few years in my teens and early twenties.  Looking back over my entries in more recent years I have never failed to shudder and shrink from the page in disgust at my shamelessness, my scrawling handwriting, my crude illustrations and, above all, my glorious inability to string a coherent sentence together – or, at least, to give it any polish or poetry, to create something I'd be anything less that mortified to share with the world.  I suspect that reading back over this as soon as later tonight will have similar effect.  At least back then I had the excuse of being a kid.  But what the hell, this is a practice run.  My blog quest, should I choose to accept it, begins when I step off that plane in my new home.

160 days.  Less than half a year from now I’ll be on the second LHR-SG flight of my life.  Still seems so far off.  It isn’t, of course.

160 days ago today.  March 16 2011.  In Japan rescuers were still searching for survivors of the earthquake and tsunami five days earlier.  Four New York Times journalists were reported missing in Libya.  Four grams of cocaine was discovered at the Kennedy Space Centre.  None of these stories belong to the dim and distant past.

160 days ago he had his leaving party, a couple of days before departing London for home.

Time only stands still when you really need it to pick up the pace.

Flight #1 is somewhat sooner.  55 days from now I’ll be, I would guess, somewhere over western Europe, an hour or so into the flight, a ball of emotions willing the journey to be over quickly, shaking with excitement, eagerly anticipating airline food, repeatedly changing my mind about which movie to watch first and inevitably going with the snobbiest one, my mind fixed on the sweetest smile in the world waiting for me at the other side.

I’m in a long-distance relationship.  Very long-distance.  6740.23 miles.  With my average fitness, should I attempt to walk it, it would take me an estimated 2246 hours and 40 minutes, or a little over 93 days (thanks to http://www.wotzwot.co.uk/walking-time.php which - presumably to waive liability should I impulsively try something very silly – also included a note in red bold stating that “this walk should not be attempted!”). Long-distance relationships don’t work.  Well not for me.  The man of my dreams is committed to his job in Singapore; so in January 2012, off I go to join him there.  It’s the only possible option.  It’s gonna be hard.  At this point I have no idea what I will be doing to earn a living.  It’s gonna be scary.  It’s gonna be hot and humid.  I’m gonna eat a lot.  And its gonna be the best thing I have ever done in my life.  I can’t wait.  Stay with me, I’ll try to make the whole experience as riveting for whichever readers I manage to pick up as its gonna be for me.

160 days.  Maybe I should walk it after all.  I’d be there 67 days sooner…