Random thoughts

This is when I usually would start counting down. And maybe I am, but perhaps, just subconsciously.

I leave for Malaysia from this wretched, wretched wintery hell (-10.5C now as we speak)(though I'm exaggerating my sentiments) in 6 days. Due to arrive in 7, if a DVT and pulmonary embolism doesn't take me first.

In the past years I've had a calendar with a countdown, starting from a month before my departure. But somehow this year I don't. It's surreal; I know I leave soon. But yet it doesn't feel to be so.

Maybe it's related to a busy last few weeks. After all, I've had a steady flow of complex clinic consults all month. And clocked a few hours last week preparing for a presentation which I gave last Friday. Maybe too it's because I've been on hospital service the last 2 weeks. And am oncall this weekend, so will have to work a 14-day stretch before I get my day off. After all, why else would I be in St. M's hospital at 730am Sunday?

I also know, from having done this for 7 years, that once you get home, the countdown clock begins again; this time, you're counting down the time remaining before you leave. You look around, trying to commit people, things, places, smells, tastes, feelings, to memory, because God knows when you experience them again. If you do. That's how my grandpa left me.

And you pray you don't meet someone special. It's happened to me twice, coming back to home. Sometimes inevitable. You make a conscious effort to hold your feelings back; to not let anything develop beyond platonic friendship, because you know you'll be half a world away soon. Last thing you need is to have someone make it more difficult for you. Applies too to family; I shed tears for the first time in years last June, all because of a cheeky little toddler nephew.

Having said all that, I AM so looking forward to going home though. Tired. Time to recharge. I was at a party last night. I had fun in a way. Just not the kind of fun I enjoy. While dancing, booze in one hand, looking at the girls on the dance floor grinding their hips into random guys, I was thinking; this is so not me. Not my world.

I wanna go home.