Getting off the couch

Hello!

Welcome to my travel blog. Watch this space for updates, as said couch potato goes gallivanting through Siberia and Central Asia in the next two months.

Perhaps the most simple and apt explanation as to why I am getting off the couch - and which is most probably what Dad and Mum thinks - is that I am suffering from a bad case of itchy backside*.

(*For the uninitiated, this is a colloquial, slightly derogatory description often used by older Chinese Singaporeans, to refer to those who-cannot-sit-quietly-at-home-and-behave-themselves-and-must-go-and-do-something-different)

So, with an itchy backside, this couch potato is off to see the world! And this is what I am bringing with me:

- a massive backpack

- whatever I can glean from 2 months with the Russian Language Centre

- an (outdated-but-hopefully-trusty) IPhone 3G which will be my link to the world

- many people's prayers and well-wishes

- and a good dose of optimism and patience

There are many angels who have helped me prepare for this trip - lending gear, dispensing free advice (and meds), introducing friends in foreign lands, or just by showing moral support.

A BIG THANK YOU! I hope to repay your kindness through sharing my experiences - and staying out of trouble.

Finally, reproducing some lovely prose to end off this post, and to start the journey -

"Nature's Grand Hotel has its Season, like the others. As the guests one by one pack, pay, and depart, and the seats at the table-d'hote shrink pitifully at each succeeding meal; as suites of rooms are closed, carpets taken up, and waiters sent away; those boarders who are staying on, en pension, until the next year's full re-opening, cannot help being somewhat affected by all these flittings and farewells, this eager discussion of plans, routes, and fresh quarters, this daily shrinkage in the stream of comradeship. One gets unsettled, depressed, and inclined to be querulous. Why this craving for change? Why not stay on quietly here, like us, and be jolly? You don't know this hotel out of the season, and what fun we have among ourselves, we fellows who remain and see the whole interesting year out. All very true, no doubt the others always reply; we quite envy you—and some other year perhaps—but just now we have engagements—and there's the bus at the door—our time is up! So they depart, with a smile and a nod, and we miss them, and feel resentful."

- Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows (Wayfarers All)