Thursday, August 03, 2006

Back with a bang and a crash

So I'm back home in the land of Blighty, I slipped back into British culture like a comfortable pair of shoes, aided by decent cups of tea and HP sauce (a mixed metaphor that's probably now conjuring images of worn shoes filled with tea and brown sauce). The adventures of a month ago now seem like a distant hazy dream, one that you can remember as having been really good but with details that become more shrouded as time passes. I can still feel that a change has occurred however, a new sense of purpose and focus that was lacking when I left has definitely become apparent on my return, I've just got to keep that feeling now and not lose the ground I've covered.

I've dropped back into the routine of work quite smoothly, it does help working for a company I like with people I like, though finding somewhere to live didn't prove to be as easy. Looking around at the shoe boxes that people have the audacity to call flats and seeing the money people are willing to charge (and presumably pay) for them I realized how lucky I was to have lived at my previous address.

I had thought I'd found somewhere but after contracts had been signed and money exchanged it became apparent that I'd actually agreed to live in a war zone. A longstanding disagreement between my landlord and the resident of the flat downstairs, that I found out from the police stretched back over a year, cumulated (at the end of a week of smashed windows and police) in a brick being put through the window of the property I was renting. I left there pretty sharpish (though my girlfriend did point out that after Malaysia why should I be bothered about a few bricks and some broken glass?) and moved back to mum and dad's (thankfully I had that option otherwise I'd have been royally fucked). I've since got my money back from the landlord (though only after threatening legal action) and have now found another (quieter) flat that I can move into at the end of the month.

As others have pointed out, you travel the world and do crazy stuff with no problems only to come back and get into trouble on your own doorstep. But the bad shit exists to make the good shit seem good, Yin and Yang you can't get one without the other and there has been much more joy on my return than sorrow.

I think also I came back with the expectation that I would be just able to pick up where I had left off, which is the wrong attitude to have. This is a brave new world now and I'm going to have to work hard to build on the foundations laid in Malaysia, I think a bit of adversity is a welcome slap in the face to remind me that life is a struggle and if it wasn't it wouldn't be half so interesting.