Today is international popcorn day!
Rubbish sleep, dozing from 4am splintered with dreams of various fantasies and adventurous exploits out in the real world, some very inception-esque. Do you get emotional hangovers from dreams? Like you’ve actually lived through them and then have to deal with the emotional fallout. I awake groggy and also reeling from the fucked-up worlds and events my mind has just created.
Discovered that work at the construction site across the road commences at 5am. WTAF.
My 8:20 exercise group is gas (Irish for hilarious). We’ve had the same group for several days in a row now, and we started with only 4 of us this morning, later joined by a couple more. We have assigned each other call signs.
One heretic in our group suggested that we go *the opposite direction*. Normally, I’m very much a variety is the spice of life kind of person, but there’s something about MIQ that means that routine is all one has, and so one needs to cling to it like a life raft in stormy seas after the boat of normalcy has capsized. I may be being slightly dramatic, given that actually after the first couple of laps it was entirely fine. The quarter lap where you get to look at your own reflection… less fine.
I manage to cut myself whilst washing a bread knife this morning. A bread knife. They’re not even usually up for sufficiently cutting butter. It’s pissing blood everywhere and trying to put pressure on it and search my bags for plasters. I don’t have any. I call reception and they get the nurses to bring some up within 5 minutes. They really are very good at taking care of us here. I resume doing dishes in the bathroom sink after plastering my forefinger, and while emptying out a glass with my non-dominant hand, accidentally whack it against the sink, creating a crack that s-bends from top to bottom. Fuuuuuuuck.
I’ve decided to embrace the flitting nature of my attention span at the moment. I flit between writing, crosswords, doing dishes, washing clothes for about 5 minutes each, getting in loads of laps of my room in the meantime. All of those thing eventually get done, and I don’t feel quite as daunted by any one task. Maybe I’m secretly a butterfly?
I have this insatiable hunger for life. And often this translates to an insatiable hunger for food. I want to experience everything and live every moment to the very fullest, but this maximise life philosophy comes with its downsides – sometimes it’s difficult to know when enough is enough.
I think anyone from a large family can relate to food FOMO – I will eat not so much because I am hungry, but to ensure my siblings don’t eat it before me – a natural consequence of growing up with three brothers.
How do you deal with hunger? One of the things that 2020 has really highlighted for me is my relationship to food. Do you eat out of desire, sustenance, comfort, hunger, out of boredom, because it tastes good, to tick the meal box, or simply for the joy of it? Is hunger to be trusted, or simply thirst, or fatigue?
The army guy on the bus told us not to worry about the pounds and just indulge for the next two weeks – you can sort it out afterwards. I don’t think he knew what he was encouraging… We have been spoiled with really good food in my opinion.
Here are some of my favourites:
I also had the privilege of another visitor this evening! I met this lovely lady in the Woolshed Bar in Dublin – an antipodean pub that has feeds of niche sporting events from around the world – when the All Blacks were playing Wales for third place during the rugby world cup last year. I’d met hardly any Kiwis in Dublin, and so we bonded over shared suffering from the defeat to England.
Her inner city Auckland apartment is just up the road from my hotel so I’m blessed with my second visitor in two days. Celia brings me a block of Whittaker’s and her beautiful, caring, warm, understanding self. We discover that the acoustics of the car port are such that you can just talk normally (in my teacher voice) and still be heard.
She came to New Zealand in March last year for a holiday, and got stranded here. There were no more flights going back to Dublin for months. She’s now taking a career break from her Dublin job, and working at Middlemore here in Auckland, and hoping to maybe go back to Dublin in a year. Home has become a nebulous subject for her – family in NZ, career in Ireland. We expats belong everywhere and nowhere. Where to settle? Buying a house in Ireland is more realistic, so perhaps there?
‘What are you up to this weekend?’
‘Oh, just heading up North to see the parents. I have a surprise party for my Dad’s retirement.’
Home. Parents. Travelling between cities. Gatherings of more than 2 people. Parties! I realise how very long it has been since I’ve been able to do any of those things. They all amount to basic freedom!
That’ll be me soon.