Our Thailand trip remained enjoyable to the last, bombs notwithstanding.

Since then, we've flagged slightly... The journey back through Langkawi and George Town was full of interest, but felt a bit rushed. The terrorist attack in New Zealand was subduing, to say the least. There was lots of routine stuff to get done on our way back through Kuching, so that made for a busy week. And we're still in the adjustment phase in Miri.

Nevertheless, I'm very grateful for everything we've been able to do and see.

And essentially, all is going well. Budget: panning out. Health: I'm never really doing enough, but so far, so reasonably good. Interest levels: high. We like the pattern our lives have taken on.






Short-term change is part of our existence at the moment, and we take it in our stride, embrace it even. We're really pretty adaptable and flexible, and those are good qualities.

What's not so easy, though, is the long-term uncertainty. In the opening post of this blog, I noted: "I have truly never started a year with so little idea of how it's going to finish..."

That condition has really not changed.

There's been no further movement on the MM2H front since my post early this month, so that makes planning for the rest of the year somewhat difficult. Many other imponderables also can't be sorted until that one is decided, one way or another.


I still have an important academic commitment waiting to ambush me, probably at the least convenient moment.

And the world around us seems, more than usual, to compound the feeling of fluidity.

The Brexit process remains unpredictable, with all the international legal uncertainty that this implies. (At this precise moment, our newly re-acquired British passports seem about as useful as chocolate teapots.)

Turkey (one of our projected destinations this summer) might need to be rethought if government travel warnings affect insurance cover.

You can't even rely on upcoming destinations keeping the same name.

Flux... Don't like... Not me at all.

I need to keep reminding myself of the words of the Crystal Monastery Lama, as recorded in The Snow Leopard:

"Of course I am happy here! Especially [in italics] when I have no choice!"

There's such profound wisdom in those two sentences.

Wherever and whatever "here" is -- and in my current "here", I am poised as though on tiptoe, waiting for a path to open up -- I can be happy in it, not DESPITE the lack of choice I am able to exercise with regard to this uncertainty, but precisely BECAUSE OF that lack of choice.

Grasping that would be such an immense step forward...