Category: Travel

We slept well on the flight, all 15 hours of it. A half hour delay on the stand was due to broken in-flight entertainment, which they managed to fix to an extent, but no interactive. On arrival, Changi airport is easy to navigate and the taxi was swift and not too expensive. Towering, oddly shaped blocks of flats and offices, overlooking palm trees and inland waterways. Now in the Strand Hotel. And the wifi works. I think.

We were warned about the subway station they're building right below our window, but they don't start digging until 0900 and we'll want to be having breakfast by then before exploring the city.

Now I suppose we rest and then go hunting for dinner. The food courts and hawker markets are open 24/7, so I'll precache some map data on to my phone and go to investigate 😉

The mad dash before a trip. Closing client queries, passing work to contractors, making promises of more contact later in the week, submitting invoice requests before I forget what I should be billing whom.

In a matter of hours I’ll be in the BA lounge in LHR Terminal 3 supping Pessac Leognan and waiting for my flight to Singapore.

And the only thing I’m certain of is that I’ve packed everything. Anything else? It’s all up in the air… 🙂

They are boarding, but slowly. This flight will probably depart an hour and a half late.

Sue and I have been chatting and watching people queue needlessly…

So a church in Marlow sends two friends to a black township in Kimberley, South Africa. Very broad brief, lots of adventure. I hadn't expected to be traveling long haul in 2012 after my big trips to South America last year but here I am at Terminal 5 departures leaving the first good weather we've had this UK summer to fly to Johannesburg's crisp 7 deg C winter. We've been assured a warm welcome at Kimberley airport which is an hour's onward flight from JNB.

So what are we doing? Our parish is linked with St James' Galeshewe and we are to invigorate the link after a couple of years of little activity between the parishes.

More later!

If you’re stupid enough to accidentally (or deliberately) engineer a long-distance relationship for yourself, here are some things that will by their nature thwart you at every turn. If you don’t believe you can address all these points, it is better not to go. Paradoxically, if you can address them all, you’re probably not on holiday. Again, it’s better not to go. Empirical testing at the risk of my own relationship (actually I think I may have killed it) has been used to produce these results.

• Time. I was prepared for the timezone change. It’s just three hours behind, right? Yes, but in addition to the change in time-zone, you need to factor in the lifestyle changes.
  • Destination-related changes: in Argentina, for example, things seem to happen later in the day, from breakfast to dinner. If you’re already a late riser, things are going to get tough and your contact window to people back at home diminishes rapidly.
  • Holiday-related changes: You’re on holiday, right? I’m not a routine person, but even I have some semblance of order in my day. It takes about a week to get that back. It wouldn’t matter so much if the main person you needed to stay in touch with was there with you. I’m on tango time. That means quite often I’m still up at 0400. The rest of the maths is an exercise for the reader.
• Communication. Koki and I agreed that I wouldn’t send text messages due to the cost. I often didn’t take my smartphone out with me anyway. The result? You lose all the little “thinking of you” message opportunities that you used to have. And if you only think it and can’t act on it, the moment passes. Both partners feel unhappy.
• Distraction. The emotion gap. Change a lot of things at once (last month: I moved home, then left the country) and you create a huge emotional workload to process. You’re likely to be either down or elated. As a positive person, I’m normally the latter. Just imagine what that sounds like at the other end of the phone where everything is more-or-less as you left it.
• Cost. Enjoying yourself can be expensive. But in some ways, I’m spending the money twice. and not in a good way. Every time I have a meal out, not only am I paying for it but it’s also money that I haven’t spent with Koki. The first few times, you can reason it away. I’ve been doing this for two weeks now. I’m eating and sharing with a lot of people, and they’re great, but they’re also really, conspicuously not Koki.
• You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone (or nearly 7000 miles away). Never has this been truer. And when the “got” “went” because it was the only logical result of your selfish decision-making, you really know what you lost, because you can look back and see how you did it.

No, it’s no good. I’m having a great time but overshadowing the superficiality is the awareness that something big is missing from my life. The result is that I feel on autopilot a bit. Predictable that where all those mixed emotions come out is in my tango which is more wooden and uncaring than ever before.

I’ve not written much lately. I haven’t felt like it. I’m not looking forward to Lee flying home, because symbolically that’s when Koki was meant to be flying out. That isn’t happening now so where there should be love and wholeness there will now be loneliness for me.

This trip was in someways an extension of the last; a decision I made practically the moment I touched down on the LHR tarmac back in March. Whilst I discussed it with Kokila it was never in the context of un-planning/re-planning it, only in how she could be involved. That’s not enough when you’re trying to be a couple. I should have gone back to basics, looked at the impetus for the trip (tango), decided whether it was a sufficient justification for going so far on my own again. Whilst I disliked the idea of a two-week trip (it makes the cost per week quite high) the value of a shorter trip with Kokila would have been massively higher than this four-week trip on my own. I thought I could have my cake and eat it – two weeks of tango, Rotary, work focus and then two weeks of Koki and me. The result? A compromised two weeks and a sort of supressed dread of the next two.

So the effect has been a trip that is not what I wanted for us, only a selfish demonstration of free-will for me. And, not being the kind of person who can put matters like that aside, it has coloured and distorted most of my experiences here to varying degrees. I’m now a man trying to have fun on his own which should be shared. No wonder Kokila didn’t want to invade – looking back this was always my trip and she was invited along. That’s not the way to do it if you’re in love and it seems I have a lot to learn.

Well, I’m not telling anyone anything they don’t know when I say ennuie kills the urge to blog. If I’d had enough presence of mind (that’s also a little bit on the rocks) I could have taken notes so that I could catch up on posts. It’s unlikely those same posts would convey my normal boundless enthusiasm so it’s probably better not to write them at all.

If you’re painting a mental picture of what’s going on in my head, let me help you along with some sound advice.

– If you have any empathy at all, don’t try to travel like a bachelor when you’ve got an amazing girlfriend back at home. You’ll probably both end up feeling awful. Your separation coping strategy may be distraction, but that can only get you so far.

– When your relationship is at the stage where your mind and body is connected with someone, no amount of rational internal dialogue will override the simple fact that you need one another.

– If you’re a give-your-all kind of person who enjoys living in the moment, you had better make sure that your lover is in that moment. If she’s thousands of miles away, you’re expecting her to be a saint.

– If you felt bad when your girlfriend went away on tour to Spain for nine days of concerts and partying, requiring you to use all your mental effort not to go utterly crazy with jealousy and doubt, don’t think two weeks for her when the distance is even greater will remotely work. You aren’t being fair.

The upshot? I am a long way away, desperately trying to fill my life so that I don’t get overburdened by the idea of two weeks without Koki. I don’t think I’m going to succeed. Do you people seriously want me to keep writing?

…

As I write this, her text has come in to say that she is about to take off for India. If you can avoid putting yourself in this position, do whatever it takes. I never will again.

Haven’t written properly for days, I know. It has been pretty busy and we haven’t been in a great deal, other than to regroup, redress and possibly nap (an alien concept to me usually, but there’s something about this lifestyle that makes it necessary) and go to bed at 0430.

After the trip to La Catedral I reported, I danced at La Viruta in Armenia (also Rock and Roll, which I can take or leave). The class was very good there, though I left at 0030 and later discovered I’d missed the best of the tango. Apparently the show tango dancers from around town turn up to unwind with some social dancing after their performances. I’d like to see that.

The next day (as Lee had arrived), Zhenja (from New York: Lee and I met her in London in the Summer) took us to El Niño Bien on Humberto Primo in Monserrat. Beautiful environment and proper seated milonga. Good dances had by all. We also were introduced by Zhenja to her teacher, Alberto Catala who offered us reasonably priced private lessons in a studio he uses in Belgrano, subsequently inviting us to his regular table at Salon Canning. The price of the private lesson was more than justified by this kindness alone. I’ll talk more about the actual afternoon lesson at another point.

Canning was excellent – it lived up to the blogs I’d read – exclusive, challenging and very busy floor. Mondays are apparently quieter.

Now I’ve been to church and Lee has done a particularly challenging milonga class in Florida, we’ll probably go out for dinner now and then to Confiteria Ideal on Suipacha, which I expect to be quite like El Niño Bien, but with more tourists and less dressing up (apart from Lee who is looking pretty in pink).

Hasta luego!