We packed so much into every day, yet felt completely relaxed the whole time, it was more in retrospect that we realised in one day we’d baked (twice), played tennis, gone to the beach (twice) and spent a fair bit of time just hanging around. Other days were similarly busy and it passed all too quickly before we had to pile our luggage into my mum’s toy car and drive back to Melbourne for our flight home. Not before catching up with a few more friends at a pub, riverside. Melbourne is more gorgeous now than it was when I was a student there, though I am very happy living in London. I was sorry not to have spent more time with my Australian friends, it was all too short, sorrier still I didn’t see some at all, though this always happens, and glad that this time I got to see some I’d missed the last time. It’s amazing how quickly the years pass and how when you return after not seeing people for so long it all feels so easy still.
What will I miss? My dad’s breadmaker bread, made from flour he mills himself, the sunshine, trying more of the restaurants and discovering all the food changes that occur in my absence, being able to go to the farm and relax and eat my mother’s famous chips. I’ll miss walking along the beach. Mostly I’ll miss the people, especially my delightful niece and nephew who made Christmas so special.
Back to Old Blighty. Does anyone know why it’s called that? I could Google it I suppose… Except I’m writing this on the plane and there’s no search engine up here… In fact there’s not much of anything on this plane, no personal TVs, not even a personal air conditioning vent! Good on the way out with back to back night flights we slept, with no distractions to watch films, I’ve managed to fill almost the entire twelve hour flight to Shanghai with a thick and very addictive novel bought for me by my Holly for Christmas. Perhaps I’ll nap on tomorrow’s flight.
, from the window sill and managed to get through a few chapters already. Most of it so far is familiar, but a nice refresher on my university subjects. It made me glad I chose the university I did (or that my mother chose it, I might say). Most of the universities offering business studies has a long list of compulsory subjects but the one I went to had only four: Microeconomics, Macroeconomics, Statistics 1 and Statistics 2. Interestingly, I think perhaps only one of these was on the compulsory list at the other colleges. They have absolutely been the most useful to me in the outside world. Sometimes I wonder what value I got from university, save for a huge amount of experience running committees and things as part of my extra-curricular activities. Then I read a book like this and realise how most of us are so ignorant to market dynamics and why the world works as it does and I'm grateful I had an introduction to it before I joined the real world (
by Peter Singer and Jim Mason. The tag line is "What we eat and why it matters." It's actually all about industrialisation of farming and primarily the horrendousness that goes on behind closed doors to the animals, but it is certainly making me think a lot more about everything to do with what we eat. It's a great book if you want to know about why we should care, along as you can handle some gruesomeness.
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