Monday, June 02, 2003
My first solid month of blogging for almost two years yielded 15 posts, which is quite impressive, I reckon. There's surely more to come; I have the will , it's mainly a question of time. Why? Read on!
I gave in my 30 days' notice to the company that let out my flat, and so I'll be out of here for sure by June 30th. I should be leaving the UK within a few days of that at the very latest. From there, it's off to Hong Kong for only three or four days to rest, recharge and have all my clothes washed (look, even if I actually wash them, my parents don't believe me and wash them again -- so hey, free laundry, why should I complain?) before heading off to Australia, for reasons you all probably know about. How long I'll be there is a mystery... unlike the rest of my family, I don't have to fly back by September for school, so I could be there for as long as is necessary. Hopefully I'll have more time to spend in Hong Kong, but...
In the meantime, it's FREAKING HOT here in the UK. And I only have a couple of short-sleeved shirts and no shorts. And there's no point buying any when I have ample stock in Hong Kong and am in the process of shipping everything back there anyway. Sigh. I hate this weather.
This weekend, however, was all about Kavi leaving. My insane cousin has been here at Kingston for the last two years and visited me in my first summer, so he's has been a permanent fixture in my British life since then. Last year when he was staying in dorms he pretty much lived with me. My house is in the middle of town (and thus easy to stumble back to from clubs) and had a comfortable spare bedroom... as well as ample food... and plenty of entertainment in the form of TV, broadband Internet and a ton of games... so it wasn't too hard to entice him to come over as much as possible. It worked out well for me, though, because I effectively had the advantages of a roommate (minus the whole "he pays the rent" bit) with the advantages of not having one... being that everything was mine and if I wanted privacy I could tell him to take a hike.
Given that for the last two years I had pretty much lived in isolation it was always great to have company, and family at that, hanging around to just do stuff with -- go out, have dinner, play games etc. Although Haneal (another cousin of mine) has been in London over the same period of time, and though I do talk to him almost every day, he's out in Central London and had his own set of friends and people to hang out with, so it was different than with Kavi. Over the last week we've kinda been enacting our "last time" to do virtually anything and everything, from the traditional Thursday night curry at Wetherspoons' to the never-ending Winning Eleven battles (I won the last game on penalties after a 2-2 draw thanks to Buffon's save and Doni's kick; apt that we were so close).
In a sense though, it's not so much about him as me. He'll be here next year, but I won't. It's my last time to do and see all these things, really. I have exactly 28 days -- four weeks -- until I move out of this flat and presumably depart forever from Kingston-upon-Thames. Although I can't say that I've enjoyed my time in the UK, I have always loved my flat and come to feel vaguely comfortable in the environment around it. No matter what, it's four years of my life, so there are a lot of memories attached to this place.
And it's appropriate that the song currently playing is the Beatles' classic, "In My Life".
Posted at 7:46 PM
