March update

It's been a while.  It's my intention to post every calendar month, and I seem to be doing a moderately good job at that.  I'm not reading any particular blogs regularly, just looking at my blog roll and seeing if there is anything interesting.  I guess my interest in weight loss blogs has diminished, that's fine and to be expected.  I really enjoyed it, but I'd never intended to be an active reader and writer of weight loss blogs for the rest of my life.

My weight has been relatively consistent  about 5kg above goal weight.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  I'm not getting on that plane unless I'm at or under goal weight.  My plane leaves in 45 days (I freak out whenever I calculate how many days it is, due to anxiety about the year away, not the weight loss), which is fine to lose 5kg.  Worst case scenario, I'll change the date of my ticket.

I've known for some time that I'm happier and more content in a relationship, than being single.  I'm fine with that, but the last 20 months of being single have been hard on me, because of all of the obvious things that I'm missing out.  Given that I have had depression (while being in a relationship) my mood has taken a dive since becoming single.  As a result, I have had extreme difficulty getting motivated to do things.

Today I give 3 weeks notice that I'm moving out.  I'll really miss this place.  If I had the money to buy the place, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.  I guess I get attached to some places, and I have no doubt that I'll be driving down the little lane and looking at it while sitting in my car, for years to come.  I still do that with the family home #1 in Dunedin, and we moved out in 1974.

Living in one place for some time (in my case, 7 1/2 years) you start to learn what, and what not to do.  Life is a learning experience.  You learn to rake the leaves on stones because you can't get rid of the organic matter in between the stones (it's a trade off between 50 hours of cleaning stones, or just spending a couple of hundred dollars and getting clean ones to cover the old ones).  Apart from that, the house is in good condition, although the garden needs 15 hours to make it perfect, I guess.

20 days and 5 hours a day is fine for getting everything done.  100 hours to do every single task, plus allowing time for a few unexpected things to come along.

Oh, by the way, in January I went to Queenstown, a town of about 20,000 about 6 hours drive from Christchurch.  It's been labelled "adventure capital of the world".  Not being an adventurer  I'm not sure if that's correct, but heading into the central shopping area, two things were evident.

1. 80% of the people in the central shopping area of Queenstown are tourists (apart from identifying them due to race, have you ever seen a tourist wearing old clothing?  Me neither).

2. Very few tourists in Queenstown are obese.  I guess that makes sense, being a place for adventurers, and most of them are young, so they are less likely to be obese.  Sort of like going back to pre-1980.

Some photos:

At the top of the Queenstown gondola, I drank my last bottle of Coke.  Yes, I'm 10 weeks off that demon drink.  Coffee too.  I'm hoping that drinking it at a place that I haven't been to in 25 years made it special enough, that I won't indulge again.  I want to break 2 years without caffeine, I did that in 1999, I want to do it again.

Apart from that, there is not much to tell you.  Learning Cebuano (the local language) has taken a back seat (I just can't get into it when I have trouble doing other, more common things) but I'm certain that I want to be an okay speaker after one year.  The lady I'm in contact with is a native speaker, no doubt she'll help me.  One thing is certain though: learning a new language sucks.  There are thousands of spoken languages on our planet, and I really wish there were only a handful.