Foreign Perspectives

We’ve been trying to get a new roof on the kitchen extension since way back in April but finally we seem close to having it done.

What took so long was that for reasons which completely escape us, we’d a terrible job getting a builder to even come and look at it. In fact, before we left for the summer we couldn’t get any at all and when we got back in September Wendy had pretty much worked our way through the phone book before we managed to get a couple to come out.

Of course, by this time the weather wasn’t that great and we didn’t get the two days in a row of reasonable weather in November that he needed to get the first part of the job done. All being well though he’ll be turning up tomorrow morning as the weather forecast is looking good.

Once those couple of days work are done the rest is “inside work” so the weather isn’t an issue so there’s a good chance that we’ll get that completed well before Christmas.

Which “just” leaves the insurance repairs that couldn’t be done ’til this bit was.

Leaving aside the religious approach, supposing that someday it becomes possible for people to live forever, would you actually want to? In principle I would have always said that my answer would surely be “yes” but one of the odder Star Trek episodes has me thinking about that.

For a first premise, the assumption is that in living forever you’d want to live in a healthy state ie no sliding downhill into nursing home territory as we see these days when people get old. Obviously, living forever and gradually sliding downhill like that through illness and disease isn’t an overlly appealing prospect. However, even if you were perfectly healthly, would you want to do it? Let’s say the life was in the body of you as you were in your 20s ie no aging beyond that.

Forever is a very long time. It’s not 100 years or 1000 years or even a million years. Thus, if you were to try out different walks of life over time you’d eventually have done pretty much everything. Assuming that you were in a society that also lived forever then over time they’d collectively reach the point where everything was known. I imagine that there’d be new species turning up as time went by but aside from that all of science would be known, presumably also the society would stablise after a time so even the likes of movies would pretty much all have been done. Pretty much nothing would change.

How many of us would actually want to live in a society where everything that could be known already was known, where there was nothing new, where nothing changed?

When you’re trying to run a life in two different countries like we are at the moment there’s something of a nightmare in terms of administration load that can backup really fast.

This morning has been one of the days when I’ve tried to make major inroads with it all. Sadly the piles are still there but at least a number of important things have been sorted out this morning.

For a start there’s a heap of communication that needed done re selling our place in France. The combination of French administration plus time delays courtesy of the post mean that it’s sailing along at a snail’s pace and a month can easily go by with no visible signs of progress. Actually, a whole month did go by whilst we were waiting on a letter (nope, won’t fax, won’t email) from one place which I think was down to it being caught in the strikes in London.

Next up was sorting out some stuff re my OU courses. I’ve the flights booked for the residential now which leaves nothing more needing done with that until after the human biology exam in June. Also done was signing up for the Astronomy (S282) course which starts in February. That’s one that I’ve wanted to do for a very long time now but between one thing and another (well, mainly the modern languages degree), far too many years have gone by. That in turn should ease the path towards the astronomy residential in 2011 and indeed get my physics thinking back up to speed again in preparation for S207 in October.

Finally, there’s our Christmas letter which needed tidying up before we get all the cards away. As usual, the prompt for doing that has been the arrival of the Christmas card from Faye in Canada which has consistently been the first one that we’ve received ever since she started sending them.

It hardly seems any time at all since we were packing up last January and making a start to moving back to the UK and now Christmas is only a matter of weeks away.

As usual, we’ve not yet really gotten going on our Christmas letter that goes along with the cards that we send out to far flung relatives. Also, as per normal the first of theirs has just turned up and, of course, it’s from Faye in Canada.

In previous years we needed to be a whole lot more organised with the Christmas presents in that we needed to get them on one of our relatively infrequent trips back to the UK if we wanted them to be in English. This time around we’re back to our old habits and have barely a present bought or even thought about for anyone. Still, if nothing else, the prices and availability of stuff is much improved from what it was in France. Even more noticeable is the difference in the Christmas cards: instead of really naff and expensive ones, we’ve a sensible selection at half-decent prices in all the shops.

And, of course, there’s the Christmas markets which ironically have more French stalls than there were in France!

Most people are still in search of their ideal holiday spot I’m sure. But what is “ideal” anyway?

Obviously it should take into account your interests and those of the group which you’re travelling with. But is it enough to consider each of those individually? What if there was a single spot that took account of all possible interests?

Argueably, orlando vacations would be very close to allowing for all possible interests. Granted, not quite in a single spot but in a fairly compact region you can take in theme parks, beaches, wildlife, museums and just about everything else that you can imagine.

Does that make it “ideal” though? Not for everyone certainly but it is very close to ideal for an awful lot of people.