Just boring roundup blog for my own sake, better than putting it on Wordpress!

So two weeks flew by absurdly fast. It felt like I wasn't in any given place for more than 2 days at a time; Leicester hotel - Leicester apartment - Venice - Leicester - Gloucestershire - Leicester - Norfolk - China. Crazy!

Originally my plan was to spend several days very slowly ambling around in the countryside, perhaps up to the hills up north or the Yorkshire dales and so forth, and I'd be continuing a little bit at least to write on Steemit.

What actually happened was I barely got any time to see the green rolling hills, nor any time to spend on my computer other than perhaps one period of a few hours where I could kind of catch up with things. But Outside of that I was just too busy with friends, family and being outside.

After Gloucestershire

Gloucester was super beautiful, though my dad has this tendency to rush everything. He would take me here, there, everywhere almost like a tour guide late for his wedding. I didn't think much of it at the time but I really would have liked to spend a whole day just standing in the rain by the lake. I guess that'll have to wait until I get MORE than 2 weeks.

So after that, I returned to Leicester and met my mum with my sister. Long story short, this is pretty strange. They have never and will never get along so it was always a gamble expecting them to hang out in the same city for any given length of time. For the majority of time, it was ok between them, and the time spent together was good, but it also felt rushed because the next day I was to go to wherever my mum lives.

This was ALSO rushed, because after cramming 2 days of Venice into the holiday unannounced, plans had to be shifted along a few days, so out of two weeks I only actually got to see my parents for a solid 2 days each.

That being said, the best part of this final visit was that it was kind of a nice wind-down. There's not much to see or do compared to Gloucestershire, which meant I actually had TIME to go on the computer, catch up with emails and steemit and actually talk to friends back in China. I could walk the dog and muse over the 'end' of the trip.

If not for this I might have had vacation blues or whatever. I mean, it took long enough for me to adjust to the reverse culture shock I had to deal with and just as I had it sussed, I was off back to China! So the overall balance of the holiday was well designed.

I just want to drop a HUGE thank you to my mum, @suzanrs, who basically paid for everything for me to get to England. It's been something I've been delaying for years and years, and even missed the death of my granddad who I planned to visit a month after he ended up dying, and so cancelled that plan, which was about 3-4 years ago. Since then I just haven't felt like I could either get the time off or afford.

Because of @suzanrs, I managed to see everyone on one of the best holidays I've ever had. Love you mum!

Why was it the best?

Well, it wasn't the best because of the huge sculptures or artistic culture or white beaches or parties or gracious mountains or activities or adventure or whatever. That was never what this holiday was about. But for a long time now I've kind of dreaded England. To me, England basically sucks. The jobs are lame, the people are annoying and dumb and incredibly ugly, the conversations are boring and stale, everything is ridiculously expensive ($10 for a taxi ride that would cost me $2 here. $3 for a bus ride that would cost me $0.20 here), everybody is aging and every town is slowly dying. Every city looks the same with the same half a dozen stores and the weather is mild mild mild MILD.

But before, I had memories, strange ones about my last visit, about how I was just so different from my friends there. They had either not changed or changed in one direction, while I have changed dramatically in another direction entirely. Had we drifted apart and we're just being friends to be polite? To keep the peace? There were so many inside jokes I didn't get, so many songs and TV shows I had never heard of. Indeed, the very act of sitting in front of a TV at all felt uncomfortable to me. Sitting through weird, dumbass commercials with tacky songs and bad actors? No thanks.

But that's how I envisaged my life if I ever moved back to England. Just a mind numbing glide to old age and death. That's the only way I could see it. It's a place to retire, a place to have a little home in the country where you stare at people from your window, suspicious of which Eastern European country they immigrated from and why.

I don't want that of me, I'd rather die in a pit of fire. At least it's memorable even if there's nobody around to remember it.

I also distinctly remember the emotion of discomfort simply being able to understand people in the streets, in the stores, all around me. I felt I couldn't think loudly in case they could understand me. I couldn't get a haircut without the cutter person trying to strike up conversation about what I'm doing on the weekend. I couldn't play with a dog without its owner striking up commentary about dogs. I couldn't ask for coffee at a cafe without forcing a smile because the serving person would be outrageously polite in my face.

Living in Asia, none of that happens. I could talk about how fat and stupid the person right in front of me is if I wanted, with barely a 3% chance that they'd understand me. It just felt WEIRD buying something in a supermarket, while next to me a mother was telling her kid how many Jaffa cakes she could have because they're going to have curry tonight and if she doesn't finish it she'll be in trouble. I don't need that going around in my head. I don't need the scanning person at the till asking me 'Hiyaw-rite?'.

So needless to say there was a certain fear about going back to the country I was born and raised in. I'm not the kind of person who can just go out and meet people and chat all day and have a whale of a time, I'm a pretty major introvert.

Uh... so why was it the best?

Oh yeah... Well, going to England kind of broke down those barriers and preconceptions. Though a lot of it remained true - British people are ugly, everything is stupidly expensive and so on - I released all fear of friends being a whole world apart from me. After one picked me up at the airport, we chatted the whole journey from London to Leicester comfortably, and I felt just as at home with the other guys and that was a relief. True, I didn't meet many 'friends' who I didn't consider part of the 'circle', because as mentioned above, I had very limited time and they had barely spoken to me since I left the country - if at all, so my responsibility here was minimal, but for those who did matter, they were there and they were hilarious and fun as ever. Now I no longer need to fear the country. Except the prices. And jobs.

I guess it's just refreshing to feel unalienated from my home land, at least for a while until my memory distorts things again. It feels good that I could go back any time and have a base of operations, I wouldn't just be lost, stuck in a hotel until my funding runs out. If everything went to shit, there are still people who would have my back. Re-discovering that is worth more than any 7 days at the beach.

So yeah, there. Some brain droppings to round up the holiday memoirs. I suppose I should drop a photo so get a thumbnail.