Conclusion: Sixty Seconds' Worth of Distance Run
The Leavers Tram Party |
The iconic junk in Victoria Harbour |
Eight different nationalities at HK’s largest waterfall |
A group from UST and HKU at the top of the Lion Rock |
Dinner in a Turkish restaurant in Hong Kong with a Russian,an American and an Iranian |
The title of this blog is taken from Rudyard Kipling’s “If”, a poem that in my opinion sums up all that a person should aim to be. It concludes as follows:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute,
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run.
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it
And - which is more - you’ll be a man my son.
For one golden year, I like to think I was able to live up to such sentiment - I don’t think I could have squeezed any more out of my year abroad and will always look back with pride. Looking back, perhaps the most remarkable part of my year abroad was how easy it was. Before I left I feared that moving to the other side of the world would be quite an overwhelming experience - practically and culturally amongst other things. It turned out to not be overwhelming in the slightest, which I like to think is proof of all of our (because I don’t for one second believe that I have some kind of exceptional versatility) ability to adapt to new normals, both for better and for worse. I do think that you get better at taking things in your stride, but at the same time I would argue that quite often when I have found myself to be comfortable doing things that I would have thought would be 'out of my comfort zone’. Life is a momentum game and with an array of challenges ahead I hope that this last year will be enough of a shot of adrenaline for me to push on into new adventures.
To all of you who have read as far as this, I thank you for sticking with me. This blog has become very important to me - as a way of keeping record of what I have done, of informing friends and families of where I am and (hopefully) of providing a little bit of inspiration for would-be travellers. I hope that you, the reader, are able to travel and I would urge you to seize every half-opportunity you get to see the world. There is, in my humble opinion, no better way to spend your own unforgiving minutes.
Until next time, my beloved Hong Kong |
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