The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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I dream about a nice secondhand sedan, a convertible is probably ill-advised in Scottish weather haha.
I wonder when I'll enjoy it, right now I have few misconceptions about my skills on the road and thus an appropriate amount of anxiety. I'm doing extra classes even after I've acquired my license, but I'm still far from confident. Maybe it'll be easier in a country that has more civilized drivers with a passing acquaintance with the rules of the road, or at least lower levels of congestion. I presume once I'm there, sooner or later, I'll be able to enjoy the much vaunted Scottish countryside to my heart's content.
Let's get you back to the old age home gramps ;)
Nah, I'd actually like to hear what it was like back in the day, I imagine relocation was a far bigger deal when the internet and smartphones weren't as ubiquitous. I presume you moved to Japan a good while back, and that's certainly a culture shock and a half a dozen. I speak the language, understand Scottish accents just find, and Google Maps, leaving aside questionable recommendations, does mean it's very unlikely I be utterly lost and stranded.
I will certainly keep in touch, though I know that voice and video calls aren't a good substitute for in-person comms for me, it certainly didn't quell the homesickness last time I was away.
He's being hugged so hard his ribs creak and his chest aches. Or maybe that's just me.
At age 22, I joined the US Peace Corps and moved to southern Africa and lived in a village of about 500 which was 145 km off any paved road. Dry, bright, intense heat, and surprisingly cold in winter (July, etc.) Everyone there knew my name, which isn't George. There was only power from around 8am-5pm except when they forgot to buy diesel for the generator (which was often.) There was sometimes no water because whoever forgot to buy diesel for the borehole pump. There was only one phone at the nearby school, which I wasn't allowed to use except emergencies for some reason. There was no radio except AM sometimes at night, and the only English radio was Voice of America when that came on. And this was in 1992 so there was no Internet to speak of. For entertainment I read Dostoevsky or whatever. They sent us Newsweek every month, but it was about two weeks out of date. I remember taking a chair out of my sitting room and putting it out in my yard and drinking vodka and watching satellites among the vastly increased number of stars in a place so remote. I did a bit of writing. I drew pictures. The 19-year old nanny of the woman who lived behind me liked to dance topless at night in my last six months there. My nemeses were camel spiders who would come out at night, and about which I have many horror stories. Once I killed with a shovel a couple of puff adders on the volleyball pitch (which was essentially just a bunch of sand). In Christmas vacations (December, so hot in the southern hemisphere) when my PCV acquaintances were out rambling around in Madagascar or Johannesburg, I would sit like the introvert I was in my house with with the windows open and listen to the villagers a kilometer off singing traditional songs that everyone knew except me. You could see the light from the bonfires and whatever. I took up smoking, and drank a good bit of beer, and read by candlelight. When I went anywhere far, I had to hitchhike. I have a lot of bizarre stories about that as well, in some of them I should have died. Anyway when I left my US home to go to Africa I was leaving friends but the girl I loved didn't love me back, we had all just finished university and people were going their own ways, and I figured it was time to GTFO. It was, too. Three years, I was gone. Japan came a lot later.
Great story.
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Really, don't sweat the driving. I recently returned from a road trip that went all over Scotland and found all the drivers to be very patient and courteous. It even rubbed off on the other obvious tourists.
That's reassuring, while it isn't quite Mad Max where I live, traffic laws that don't have stiff fines attached to them are taken more as polite suggestions.
Luckily for me, there's a motor training school close to where I'll be renting, and given that I have to acquire an UK license eventually, I'll show up there and plead with them to help get me further up to snuff haha.
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