Is it time to leave Paradise?

Article written by Pod

The Internet is down, the power could go off at any minute as it has done many times in the last week. The air is full of some sort of flying insects which get into your hair, your clothes, everywhere. The frogs croak every time it rains (which is becoming more and more frequent), Burma - just ' up the road' geographically, has lost untold thousands to a vicious cyclone and the cicadas are so noisy that I have to turn up my music.

I have seen more snakes in the last week, than in my entire life, some of which I am sure are poisonous. The waves are too big to go floating on my lilo and much of Kantiang bay is shutting down for low season.

Is it time to leave paradise? No way! With all of this, I still want to live here because these are real problems brought about by real life. Not the manufactured fear that politicians and newspapers create in Britain which I cannot combat or deal with, because whether it is an increase in council tax, or God forbid, some passerby that sees me drop a piece of cake out of the car window and reports me to the council resulting in a hefty fine though the post, I have a choice in how I deal with these problems.

Yeah, sometimes it is boring when the electricity is off for five hours and it is raining. I have to do something, or experience boredom. Yes, I am seriously p-ss-d off when my washing (done by hand) is rained on, the mud has splattered all over it and I have to wash it all again (and those smalls are tedious). But these are challenges. England did not present me with challenges that allowed me to use my imagination and pit my strength. England presented me with situations where I was totally powerless to change the outcome.

I marched against the war in Iraq (for all the good it did) Tony Blair went to war, illegally anyway! I remonstrated with my local council about the amount of rubbish in my street, left there by McDonald's customers. I asked them to put in litter bins. Did they listen? No! Just increased my council tax by 12% Thanks Sheffield.

The sense of powerlessness, the feeling that I did not exist was the main reason I left the U.K.

Despite the rain, the mud, and the mozzies, I will stay. Tonight as I lay in my hammock, listening to life all around me, a firefly slowly sparkled its magical way past me. I am enchanted!!!!!!



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