Trip to Scotland, blackberry-less

On previous holidays there was always the big conundrum of whether my blackberry should tag along or stay at home. I ought to bring it because (1) I could use it to call home or chat on gmail, (2) it has an amazing function of telling you exactly what time it is anywhere you travel to, and (3) I was expected to. There were defiant (and wise!) colleagues who would simply refuse to do that, because you really, and I mean really, don't want your well-deserved holiday ruined by a silly machine. But I was never that strong; I almost always brought the silly machine and ended up debating with myself everyday whether I should check it (and of course I always did).

This time I didn't have a choice. Actually, if I was honest, I was still suffering from blackberry withdrawal symptoms when Rob and I set off for Scotland in mid December. I would suddenly reach for my bag thinking it was still there, my fingers would itch for those tiny and uncomfortable keys (each key represent 2 letters in the model I used), and time and again I would complain to Rob: "If only I had my blackberry still, we can [check the film times/look up the restaurant on the map/find my friend's number on gmail]..." Rob would, without fail, reply in triumph: "Hooray! You don't have a blackberry anymore!"

Oh well.

So, without my usual toy, we set off for beautiful Scotland. We didn't manage to drive around the countryside in the end but rather we spent a long relaxing week in Edinburgh and a couple of days in Stirling staying with some lovely old friends of Rob's. In Edinburgh we did something unprecedented in my travel experience - we stayed 3 nights with a really nice Scotsman whom we had never met before through http://www.couchsurfing.com/! CouchSurfing is in essence an international network of travellers and people with a spare bed / couch / floor space, the latter usually being frequent travellers themselves who have benefited from other people's generous hospitality. It operates on the premise of reviews by couchsurfers who have stayed with the couchsurfing provider. At first I was intrigued but slightly apprehensive, and when we first met Fraser in his living room it really felt rather odd! However we warmed up rather quickly and chatted about everything from Central Asia to music records. Fraser was so sweet he even cooked us a fabulous dinner. It was interesting to steal a glimpse into the life of a complete stranger whom you would probably never meet otherwise, and it saved us quite a bit of cash! I would highly recommend the adventurous to try this sometime.

Travelling without the usual (relatively) big budget also meant that I had to be more flexible with my choice of restaurants/food. Instead of strolling into any random restaurant which I might fancy, I would now have to actually look at the menu first before deciding whether I should go in (I am aware of how bad this may sound to some, sorry!). In the past month I came to realise how I seemed to have had been living to eat as opposed to eating to live - one could tell from how my mood seemed to get quite severely affected by the occasional lack of tasty food! I had wanted to use the convenient excuse of being Chinese (as we love our food) but I think that has nothing to do with it. There's a nagging feeling at the back of my mind - I may be a lot more shallow than I would like to think. Of course there's nothing wrong with loving food, but when one's love for food demands that one always has good food whilst half the world is dying of hunger, that love seems more like lust (and frankly, downright self-indulgent) than a good and healthy desire?

It's quite scary sometimes what one may find whilst attempting self-discovery.

Life without a blackberry - a prologue

I thought it may be slightly cool to record what happens in my new life in the next few months now that I've quit my lawyer job - a life without timesheets, workload capacity emails, security tokens, endless passwords, logging in and out of phones and, best (or worst, some may feel) of all, my blackberry!

Of course it's also a life without the handsome salary, the perks, the I-work-in-the-City prestige, the free gym (not that I ever used it), the dream holidays, and the corporate speak I find myself missing a little! I also miss those crazy lovely people who work so hard, with whom I shared many late nights and weekends working on the same or different projects.

Before I left A&O many of those well-meaning crazy lovely people expressed their mixed feelings of envy, admiration and horror at my decision to jump ship. I'm still not entirely sure what kind of ship this is but no doubt it is a very different kind of ship from the old one.

Perhaps reality has yet to really sink in, but I am feeling rather liberated and excited about the future. Somehow the prospects of the future unknown (and the lack of incoming cash flow) seem slightly less menacing now that (I think) I've overcome the money hurdle in my head i.e. that I will not be having the kind of life that I was going to have in material terms if I had chosen to stay on in the legal field.

It is way too early to assess whether I will have any regrets choosing the life without a blackberry. I'm sure things will get tough at some point. My plan is to try and always remember two of the things that have helped me get here in the first place:

first, what Richard Nelson Bolles said in his book How to Find Your Mission in Life, that there is really another dimension to life than the materialistic, and

second, what Rob wrote in an e-mail to me when we first met which he often quotes in his school presentations - "Don't ask what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive and go do that, because what the world needs is people who have come alive..." - John Eldredge, Wild at Heart,

and hopefully I will press on!

PS Happy Christmas to all!
PPS for my A&O friends: I know I'm not following the A&O house style... it's okay... :)