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things are different now:-

I have a university offer from the University of Bath, which is my second choice. But a good second. 

Also, I think I'm going to start bringing a card or a gift when I go travelling, and my polaroid, because frankly, you never know who you're going to meet. I'd like to get a moleskine to journal all this down, but I've got a gazillion notebooks lying around, just no discipline to record anything down as I travel, by word or photograph. I'm too immersed in the experience of it all, I'd say - but it's not necessarily a bad thing. To detach myself for a moment or two may honestly be asking for too much.

I had a mighty fine time in Japan, and think I left a little bit of my heart there. Whether with the people I met or in the snow I so mightily fell on so many times, Hokkaido was different this time round. 

In my house I'd like to have a nice big study with many bookshelves, some for fiction, some for non fiction. A desk in the middle with a nice iMac and MacBook, and a space to write with some good ol' pen and paper. I'd like to have a wall or two free for my own photos and posters of vintage maps and a map documenting everywhere I've been, and a window that lets the all natural sunlight in. I like white, so I think most of my furniture will be white.

But the most amazing thing I realised this trip - as much as I sometimes want something else, real life is so much better. - to experience it, live it, and love it.