Friday, February 02, 2007

Home Again

Me outside my house

Seeing the family again.

Differences
Well there's a nice long list of things that I'd missed by being away for so long. The top 3 are easy:
- Playing my Piano (the keyboard at Halley was NOT a substitute)
- Wondering in the Garden (I adore wondering about the garden while I eat my breakfast deciding what I might tackle later that day)
- Freedom (Just being able to hop in a car, bus, train or plane and go where you like)

Things like being able to see family and friends again and actually have a social life beyond 15 other people are obvious but there were a few ones that caught me by suprise:
-Planes stay up in the air, are everywhere but don't have an obvious means of propulsion. (I know I'm close to heathrow airport, but this number of planes is just silly - give me clear skies anyday).
-Sky plus and digibox technology. I love it - I'm sure it's been around for a while, but it's new to my world. You can pause, rewind and best of all fast forward without having to bother with video tapes. Lovely invention.

So that's the plus points. Truth being it's great being back, I appriciate lots of things that little bit more (salad etc), but there's things we can do without...
- so many people!!!! where are they all from?
- so much choice. The food we had at Halley was great. The food out of Halley isn't always great. The food in the real world costs money, and there's so much decision making involved in choosing a simple meal. Why is there so much choice? Can we not just have say, 4 options. That would suit 95% of people.
-mobile phones - yes I've now got an old one of my mum's and a pay as you go, but I don't like phones so don't be offended if I don't phone or text you. I'm just not that into it.

The Falkland Islands

The ship docked into Stanley Harbour (FIPASS) early on the 15th of January. It was my first step into civilisation for around 27 months.

Stanley

Saunders Island