I’m back in my hotel in Paddington, London now. Just finished with a work meeting and my schedule is now free. I like being alone in a foreign country. Allows me to truly explore small places where I can’t go if I were to bring family along.
I’ve spent the whole day planning around this meeting. It was set at 2pm which makes going out for sight seeing to be tedious at best. Also, it is almost winter now in London so the bitter cold air, dampness and overall general weariness hung on to the day like stubborn cobwebs in a dirty barn. I’ve soiled my sneakers and jeans when I took a morning walk to Kensington High Street for shopping. I had packed super light for the trip and wanted to get a thick long-sleeve t-shirt to sleep in because I’ve brought an Airism wife-beater by mistake.
The walk in the morning after gym and breakfast took me through Hyde Park. And memories of my honeymoon with Cheryl bubbled up like soda gushing out from a shaken can. Every familiar statue or pond or structures brought me back to that time. I remember the strolls and walks that we took every morning. The smell of fresh coffee and pastries from the shops nearby. In fact, the place where we had our honeymoon was just a stone’s throw away from where I am staying today.
It was a far simpler time to travel and move about as it was just the two of us then. And more than decade later today, we have two beautiful daughters.
I guess that I’m just being emotional. I’ve been in constant communication with the girls throughout the whole day. And it has to do with being in the Apple ecosystem. Their request for more time on their iPads to do their school assignments became an immediate notification on my phone. I only allowed them to access certain apps for a set duration everyday and if they exceed their time, they would have to send a request over with a justification.
And the simple act of acquiescing to their requests for more time for their Matholia or Google Classroom is a physical action that I do to remind me that my life had changed mostly for the better and that I am no longer a rudderless vessel that set to sail at the mercy of the winds and the waves. To be fair, I haven’t been a rudder vessel for while now but it is so refreshing to get constant reminders like these to bring me down to the ground.
It’s either I am in a sanguine mood due to the fact that I am in different surrounding or or I’ve just been manipulated (again) by the latest Apple holiday ad on YouTube:-