Blissful Existence

For too many years now my life in the UK has been one of frenzied work related existence. My daily ritual would consist of:

04.30 - Get out of bed
05.10 - 05.28 - Putting the foot down on the drive from Swanscombe to Falconwood
05.32 - Catch the first train from Falconwood to London
On "lazy" days, getting up at 05:00 and catching the 06.07 train
07:00 - 09:00 - Pounding the keyboard like mad
09:00 - 17:00 - Dealing with phonecalls, attending meetings and dealing with mindless disruptions throughout the day
17:00 - 19:00 - Catching up the day's emails and workload
20:30 - Getting home to a meal of packet noodles
22:00 - Catching Eastenders on BBC3
22:30 - 23:45 - Mindless surfing on the internet
00:00 - Bedtime

And the routine carries on through the week. How did I ever survive with 4 1/2 hrs sleep???

For once in my life I am now able to slow down, breathe and smell the coffee. Today is an example of such blissful existence

Although I had work today (Saturday), it was relatively easy and did not need much flexing of my braincells. Getting in at 17:15, I had an aerobics kick-boxing class at 17:30 with my sister. On to the supermarket for dinner tonight, by 20:00 we were at the table ready to eat dinner. And it's no microwave fast food either. Albeit not a very complicated dish, we made everything from scratch - with Basement Jaxx playing in the background for a bit of groovin'.

Singapore was doing an 'earth hour' thing today where you turn the lights for an hour from 20:00 - 21:00. Much like London's 'Lights Out London' last summer. My sister being the earth-freak insisted that we had to eat our dinner in the dark. Lucikly we had some candles so we can at least make out the outline of what we're eating. On the background, the sound of Norah Jones is playing on CD.

It has been too long since I was able to enjoy sitting around, not doing a lot and just listening to albums in their entirety. Normally, my dose of music would be on my iPod on the train with my 'flavour of the month' playing on repeat.

I was able to listen to my all time favourite Hong Kong band, Grasshopper, and it brings back memories of when life was much simpler without the stress of work.

Yes, my current job bores me to tears sometimes. Occasionally I actually run out of work to do and need try hard not to doze off at work. I miss my job in London terribly. I loved my job and getting up at 4.30am was never a problem.

But maybe being in Singapore isn't all that bad. I sound like a broken record reminding myself to treat this as a long term paid holiday. A proper break from it all. God knows we need it sometimes. A sign of old age? Or has this something to do with me having turned 30?

Well, having a relaxing break aside, sometimes I still need a good dose of partying. Thankfully a party is on the agenda next weekend. Otherwise I would die of boredom having a 'relaxing' break.....