My Blog

I’ve decided to save up the neat sum the tax office has refunded me and spend it on a holiday. I’ve been thinking a lot about going away by myself, a sort of grand gift in honour of turning 30 this year and I’ve decided to head for the US. People who really know me would roll their eyes at my choice of destination because they know that the US has nothing on offer,historically or culturally, that would possibly interest me. However, the place does have a few temptations.

Contrary to what my friends would think, I am not going to spend my entire trip getting hammered in one fabulous American bar after another. Getting drunk and making a spectacle of yourself in public is not my style. That was soooo 10 years ago!  Nowadays I’d much prefer to have a my drinks at home with a friends where I can be stupidly wasted and have access to a clean toilet to throw up in. It’s cheaper and more convenient.

This trip is meant to be one of self-discovery and awareness. Ugh. I apologise for the California-ness of that line but there’s no other way to put it. Quite simply, there have been a few missed opportunities in my past that I need to re-explore and if I’m lucky, will get the chance to relive. If only for a short time. In doing so, I hope to have this question answered:

Would retracing my past make me see my present in a better light and give me hope for the future?

That just sounded so banal and cheesy butI dare not expound on that lest someone I know finds out what I’m up to. The truth is, I want a memory. A stupendous, unbelievable, unforgettable memory! I intend to creat one on this little trip of mine. A memory that will re-ignite my joie de vivre, fuel my tired spirit when the ordinariness of existence wears me down. Something that I can look back and proudly say, "I did that! I was crazy and I broke the rules and I’m better for it!"

It scares me sometimes, this plan of mine. Mainly because I know that deep down inside me I’m a gutless priss and I might not be able to pull it off. I’m sure this all sounding very cryptic now but before you start worrying about me doing something outrageous like running away to become a groupie of some rock band, I’d like to stop you right there. This is not that kind of adventure — although if I were unmarried and had bigger boobs I would probably consider that. My plan is something a lot less dark than that. I even console myself sometimes by thinking it’s essential to my emotional and spiritual growth.

Time for bed. Will talk about this again.

The end of the financial year…definitely the most interesting time of the year — massive store sales going hand-in-hand with the payout of tax refunds, massive overtime pay and salary reviews based on your performance during the exhausting and nerve-wracking investment period. It’s often hard to accept the fact that there are a hell of a lot of people out there who are in the enviable position of having earned too much money and would therefore need to come up with a tax dodge strategy through investing. It’s even harder to accept the fact that there are people much younger than you earning 3 times your salary. No 26 year-old can be so brilliant to warrant that pay packet unless they’re either trust fund babies, or juniors working in daddy’s company/firm, or over-ambitious sluts sleeping their way up the corporate ladder.

Salary review has been finalised and as it is with Life’s general nature, you never get what you think you should be paid. Even though you smile through your teeth when the boss proudly presents you with your pathetic new salary package, you want to run out to the parking lot and smash the windows of his new BMW that was part of his new salary package. Oh well, at least I can take comfort in the fact that I’ll never have to worry about investing to get a tax deduction. I’ll never earn enough to need one.