Unknown void

As most of you readers know, two weeks of my upcoming summer will be spent pretty far from here... I am quite bad at keeping things for me which I am excited about, so this was definitely one of these things. ;) On my list of countries to visit, Mexico was certainly ranked fairly high and when my sister came with the idea of going there, I felt enthusiastic immediately. She suggested it on the phone while I was walking around in Stockholm, just after my trip to Turku. Definitely the best moment to start making new plans to forget about the monotony of having to go back to work the next days. ;)

A while ago Pablo introduced me to the fun that is Google maps. Not only for finding your own house on it, but also for finding places which you are going to see! I even wanted to use it to get an idea on which roads we would be following and how far apart the different places were that we would visit, but apparently Mexico is sill a remote, empty void in Google's world...


So for planning the trip we will have to rely on the Mexican bus drivers alone it seems... Looking at the size of the country it now appears that we will only see a small part of it, though it is the most touristic part. We decided not to plan everything ahead, just because we don't know which places we will like and which places we can't wait to get away from. :P Better informed friends have already told me that finding hostels is a piece of cake over there, so I think it should turn out ok. We've never been to such an unknown place to us and that also increases the excitement I have about flying over there this July. On below map our semi-planned route can be seen, starting in the Caribbean beach resort Cancun and ending in Mexico city, ranked third in the list of largest populated cities in the world (behind Tokyo and Seoul). I should start working on my caramba-shouts. :P

Time is money

A few days ago I read an article in a Norwegian newspaper that voices were being raised about scrapping the majority of the national bank holidays. Most countries separated state and church by now and in a way it makes no sense then to keep on celebrating certain religious holidays on a national level. This coming Monday we will have a day off (third one this month) and of course I would not want to give up these holidays but I do see the point behind wanting to get rid of them. However, new national holidays would then have to be installed, not based on any religion that is not shared by everyone. Having longer weekends or just some random days off in the week to look forward to is necessary I think for a good working spirit, but so far I wasn't able to come up with enough newly invented holidays. Therefore I guess I will not stick to any principles and just be happy for being able to sleep long during these three days. :P We could have a national day off just for sleeping long though...

Regarding free time I also found out that I have four hours of overtime at work which I need to take up before the end of the month. I took the first one yesterday and it's amazing how good it feels to leave the office way before anyone else and start the weekend earlier. ;) Shocked and envious looks everywhere. XD

Today and during the past days I have been preparing my big summer holiday. After having paid the airplane ticket, one would think the biggest part of the costs is covered...but no! Vaccinations had to be bought, a travel passport, a Visa card needs to be arranged... Costs with no end it seems. Maybe I better should have stayed in my own garden instead of wanting to explore some further regions on this planet. :P Those who have seen it know it's rather small though. ;)

Afterlife

I've been neglecting this blog... Not that I did not want to write anything, there just wasn't much to share. :P I like this month though, we have three bank holidays in it, which truly improve a working week, especially if the day off is in the middle of it like this last week. At work things go the way they should go, which means it's not that incredibly stressful busy but instead busy enough to never get bored. Even the car part suppliers do their best to keep my attention at a high level, both by being annoying so I need to solve problems day in day out and also by sending me the weirdest emails. Once a German lady sent me some chain mail which said that I would never find true love if I didn't send the email to my entire address book, I bet my boss would have loved to receive it from me. :) Yesterday though a Polish man was keeping a very nice email conversation with me about...nuns. Apparently he knew some Belgian nuns there and he was comparing them to Polish ones and he was very surprised to see that they looked like average women in normal clothing. He said they would look like me... Did I miss my calling?

On a more realistic level (becoming a nun will never be an option :P ) I did think about things to do in the near future, involving big plans and so on. My summer holidays are taking shape and there are other things that people need to work on to be happy. It's so easy to just sit back and see everything roll by without any change. Everybody can change things for themselves, you just need to take some steps and not be too scared or affected by other opinions. Starting with myself of course. :P