so, still trying to keep my head above water. i got 3 things done out of the 100 in my (after-paid-employment) in tray. which is better than the zero things i got done in the last week, i suppose. also managed to catch up with an old family friend, who migrated from nz many years ago.
this is one thing i find frustrating about nz. it's a small country, and people move in and out of it so much. i guess it's especially true of hamilton, where there are not so many high-powered jobs to be had. so people who are wanting to move up in the world need to move away.
it's something i find really frustrating. making friends is like making an emotional investment in a person, and to have that person then leave your life is often a very painful loss. i guess that's part of the modern lifestyle, with close family members spread around the world, and your own kids not likely to be living in the same country as yourself.
i can think of so many people that i've been close to, and who i still miss. because i'm totally slack at keeping in touch, the contact remains just a memory in my mind. yes, i know this is what facebook & other social networking sites are for, but i really haven't got into that yet.
i'm really not one who looks back to the "good old days" with any particular fondness. many aspects of modern life seem to be so much better than what we had in the past. progress and technology are generally good things. but this is one area where i prefer the past, when international travel (and even national and local travel) were a difficult thing, and people uprooting and leaving didn't happen so much. there was a time when you'd be born in a village and your children would be born there, and so would your grandchildren. and all the people you cared about would be close to you for most of your life.
of course, there would be too high a price to pay for going back to that time and i know that people then had other things to worry about, like high infant mortality rates, high rates of death during childbirth, plagues and the like. so if you weren't losing your dear ones in one way, then you were losing them in another.
there is the possibility that climate change will force us to travel less, what with peak oil and carbon footprints. but human beings are an inventive species, and i'm sure someone will work out another method for getting from A to B in an environmentally way. then there is the possibility of space travel, which means that distances won't just be inter-continental, but inter-planetary. i hope that doesn't become a reality in my lifetime!
end of ramble, this is obviously a lazy post cos i'm not up to doing much else right now. but to all of my overseas friends and family, i do think of you often and miss you a lot. i wish you'd stayed here.
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