73 hours to go...

Well, I weighed in today at 84kg. No change then – but perhaps a belt notch looser – but perhaps not. And its about 73 hours to go before I fly off to the UK on Friday morning (not that I’m counting the hours, or anything, you know!) but I suspect that any & all good work is going to be significantly undone in that 3 day period. The Continuous Professional Development return is now almost done, after working on it until gone 11pm last night. The ACCA in its wisdom has decided that this year, returns can be done on-line (which is good) and have provided a list of questions for each section that all members have to complete. Given that I wanted to submit a well thought out CPD return, I’ve spent a few days writing mine – but when I came to submitting the document, I had written too much - at 7,000 words long it was significantly over the , limit of 12,000 characters, so I’m going to have to go back & significantly prune it back. All that work for nothing. Bah. Still, I should be able to get it off my desk before I fly off to the UK though, which will set my mind at rest (or even “at reset” which is what I originally wrote. Most odd.) Also, last night I solved the "mystery of the missing electricity contract" - it wasn't exactly a Hercule Poirot plot, but it took significant time & patience to explain to the woman on the phone that I only had 1 gas & 1 electricity meter and not 2 of each, though, of course, Lady Wyndham-Smythe was most relieved to have her diamond necklace returned. Right then. Back to it. S

Home

Home is where the heart is.

Had an interesting conversation about “where home is” just now with a few of my colleagues after I said “I am going home to the UK on Friday” which caused people to point out that I live here in Amsterdam now, which has caught me out on some level. It is something that I’ve noticed before too – mainly when watching the news on the French riots, I’ve caught myself thinking that “I hope that it doesn’t spread here” – with the “here” in question being the UK, which is somewhere I’m quite demonstrably ‘not’.

I still think that the UK is, on some level, ‘home’ but at the same time, I appreciate that it cannot be and I’ve got to let go & put roots down here in Amsterdam. It’s a very peculiar mental position to be in, but I want to make sure that I don’t fall into the trap that my mother (and many other migrants) make and refuse to integrate in the (delusional) belief that their country of birth is s sunny & wonderful land where people are courteous to each other all the time, everyone is happy & content there are no woes in the world and I’ll go back at some point and-it’ll-be-like-I-was-never-away.

I suppose that the settling-in will come in time given that we’re building up routines, but we still lack social lives at present. Hopefully, in time, these will come, but – even though the UK & my friends “over there” will remain precious to me, I know that I’ve got to build a life over here as well. Though living & working in an entirely English-speaking office is not helping me, really!

Either way, I’m still looking forward to my long weekend in Blighty.

S