Happy New Year and 169 passengers later

Whoosh, another year has just gone... just like that.  Right now I'm back in Norway for 2 weeks before flying back to Singapore and then to Thailand.  Why did I choose not to stay for an entire month?  Because I would be bored out of my brains, I was brought here afterall and even though there have been many changes here over the past several decades, most of it is still the same underneath.  All my friends work during the day, that means I would be hanging out alone, not that that's a bad thing but if I want to hang out it's not with 100000 other noisy sweaty persons surrounding me.  By the way did you know that a quarter of the population in Singapore now consists of foreigners?  Amazing.  When I was born the total population of Singapore was just over 2.4 million and right now it's 5.1 million.  And of course the locals always complain about "foreign talent".  In Singapore it's Singaporeans complaining about the Chinese, Vietnamese, Malaysians, Indians, etc.  In Norway it's the Norwegians complaining about the eastern Europeans and the rest of the world.  In Australia, there's really no complaints :)  But anyway you get the point.  While I believe there is reason for complaining, people have forgotten that at some point they were migrants too.

Last week I was a bit sick from what was previously my room now a half storage half dust bunny facility of a room.  I've brought it back to Norway.  There have been many people coughing and sneezing.  Now what I love about the weather in Norway is that I do not sneeze at all.  But in Singapore I'm always sneezing my brains out.

Me in Singapore

New Year was spent with a few married friends from Secondary school.  They then left home to count down with their wives :), how sweet.  Their lives are so much simpler and predictable compared to mine.  That's not a bad thing.  My life's not for everyone, and my route here has been complicated.  Like a tv drama series.  But it's interesting to live in a different environment and work with different people around the world.  I can appreciate that, it's invaluable and can't be quantified.  And going around the world, that's immeasurable (For example when I mentioned Latvia astonishingly many people have no idea where that is, someone thought that was a name of a girl and not a country).  Some of my friends work solely for currency (note that I do not call it money), and while I believe that's certainly useful, I don't believe in dying with big numbers in a computer, nor do I believe in gaining the most amount of material possessions (something a majority of Singaporeans are unfortunately guilty of, not that I'm singling them out but just saying.  It's actually a built in human trait to gather as much resources as you can, notice that in your behaviour on why you find it hard to throw things away.  How do I know this?  By reading a shitload!).  Not everything can be quantified, and everyone has to seek their own meaning of whatever their life is.  But enough philosophical talk for now. :)

169 passengers.  That's the number of people that flew from Singapore to Bangkok on my flight.  It departed close to an hour late and for a moment I thought I was going to miss my flight to Oslo but I arrived in Bangkok with just over an hour to spare.  I spent 45 minutes in the airline lounge then boarded the plane.  Feels surreal to be back.  It's now snowing, inches of it, and it's minus 6.  That's in contrast to the 30 degrees weather I was experiencing not too long ago.  That and the food.  I'll be eager to go back, just have to wait till next Friday!  Oh that reminds me, I brought a lot of food back with me to Norway.  I had a suitcase dedicated to food in fact.  25 kilos of it.

Epic Meal Times

Happy New Year to all :)