Or ‘things you notice when you stop complaining’
1 There is a swimming pool right outside my window. A proper one, good for lengths and everything, blue and clean with loungers, a ladder and a life ring. I’m still not jumping in it every day but it’s there.
2 January birthdays can be sunny. SmallMonkey turns eight next week, and back in the UK around about this time of year I would be booking an indoor hall, flicking on the neon strip lights and cranky heater, hauling coats into a pile and mopping up the muddy boot tracks afterwards. This year the dress code is minimal: all the kids need is a swimsuit and sunscreen. Yay!
3 Aquafit could be fun. Odd concept I know but I’ve always secretly wanted to do this, just couldn’t bear the thought of heaving myself from a stuffy changing room into an overheated indoor pool like a hippo. Lessons begin next week at a friend’s condo: splashing about outside with just a small dress to change into afterwards (well it will be small when I’m done) after a nice little stretch in the sun. It’s an hour of sunbathing, frankly, isn’t it? How fun is that?
4 I feel safe. Of course I touch wood when I say this, but I think nothing here of beetling about on my own after dark. I already know that on our return to the UK I will keep a big stash of cash for cabs, sorry Mr PartlyCloudy, because I aint doing that tense late-night Tube thing any more, not if I can get away with it. Out here you can drift on and off trains and buses any time of day or night, feeling fine. I’ve seen a few crowds of shouty kids but that’s all, and even then they’ve just been skaters on a sugar high. Journeys at night in Singsong are bliss for the lone woman traveller and rightfully so. World, take note.
5 We live under big skies. You don’t always notice this here. Cloudy skies, often, scary skies when lightning strikes. But with the monsoon on its way out the curtains have been pulled back and I can see how tall our tropical sky is. Skies make all the difference to a person’s mood. I have been whining about ours since October (although that makes a change from whining about them 12 months of the year back in the UK). Just recently, though, the rainy patches have been just that, patches, and the sky’s turned blue and the sun is so strong that we are bent over beneath it. Bliss if you like that kind of thing, as I do.
6 You will never go hungry in this town. Not a chance. Every mall has a food court, in addition to all the restaurants. You can’t help but eat*, it is impossible to avoid. Hurray!
7 It’s all good. A bit of a platitude, this one, but worth a grudging mention. Even when things are bad, my family will have something valuable to stick in the virtual album. Catch me grizzling in a corner and offer me tickets back home for good and I will decline, preferring instead to take our allocated amount of time here to its conclusion, thanks, because who knows when we’ll get the chance again? And there are so many pork buns* still to consume…
* See point three for follow-up care
