Last day of work this year (unless I have to mop up any mess I might have created)

There.

Now I am finally done and dusted as well. Friday afternoon, 17:00, I handed in my temporary staff pass for work and exited the building. But I expect to be back once more, that is when I find my real pass which I 'misplaced' a few weeks back. I'm sure its around here somewhere...

It feels like Vaniahs been off work for ages, but its only been a week, I guess you quickly get used to having food waiting for you when you get home from work :).

So only a little packing, beer-drinking and cleaning up to do before we're on our way, 6 days and counting... I guess life is kind of good after all..

Last day of work this year

Not sure what I want to say here but it feels like it should be a momentous occasion that I should record. I'm not planning to go back to work this year; during the next two weeks I shall be packing up my life in London and moving all my stuff to Sweden. At the end of next month we get married and then our rtw adventure really starts. But, I guess, as Johan says, my adventure has now already begun.

I'll let you know how I feel when it starts to sink in...

One week to go...

No, not until we leave for our trip, but instead one more week of work before I finish for a while. I can't wait. I've met my replacement and she is lovely so I will be leaving my team in good hands. It's weird, a year ago I was crawling up the walls to get out of that place but now I have a brilliant project with a great, functioning team and I'm actually quite sad to leave. Sad but glad of course, I will be embarking on a great adventure which I can't wait to start.

I will miss our daily morning walks to work along the Thames (pictured) but I'm sure we will continue to walk great distances, and hopefully with scenery which is just as varied and interesting as the Thames. I will miss the buzz of London though I won't miss the complete craziness and expense of it. I will miss my monthly paycheques :) but I'm sure that in the right time, I will find another job! One thing I am sure of, I won't regret throwing it all in and going on this trip.

No if only time would hurry on by...

Preparation

With less than two months to go I have realised there is a lot of work involved with taking such a long time off. Imagine that.

We are going to need advance Visas in order to be let in to some countries so that is pretty high on the list. Fortunately we are able to fill out a majority of them online, which is a great thing, unless you have a weird passport like me that crashes the application form. That struck me as a kind of funny, since I thought internationalisation support would be high on the list for an e-visa application, but that may just be me. I hope the paper based one copes better.

Vaccinations is another thing that is a pain, quite literally. Since we'll be covering a lot of ground, we'll need a lot of vaccinations, and they are not the most pleasant ones either. In fact, I count 7 individual jabs, all done over a period of 4 weeks. Is there no UN resolution about that? We've both already caught the jab-flu once and with a couple left, chances are we'll get it again. But at least its not swine-flu.

One thing that has not been that much of a problem is getting all the gear we need together. Turns out we are quite good shoppers. I'm typing this on our netbook, which we bought just to bring on the trip so we could keep on updating this very blog. We've also hunted for other travel essentials as first aid kits, trekking shoes, walking sandals, proper clothing, swiss-army knives, stuff-sacks, sink-plugs . This list goes on and on - and then on for a little bit longer. And I haven't even mentioned all of the other electronics we're bringing either, that list is fairly long as well :)

Good job we got proper backpacking backpacks that can take a lot of stuff.

I'm here too

And I've never really kept a blog, mainly because most of my thoughts are honestly not that much to share. In fact I've always been afraid they might attract lots of men with funny white coats to my doorstep if voiced but I think I can try my luck a little here...

I've also never really been on a trip like this before, sure I spend a good part of 8 months in Singapore but that was different. A flat to live in, money coming in, a job to do during the days and some very exciting and interesting group of expats living In Singapore to show us the ropes.

This is going to be different.

But then, I'll be bringing my then-to-be-wife, a computer and my camera to keep my feet on the ground and mind occupied, so I am sure these 7-ish months will just fly by.

Wanderings of the mind

The last time that I consistently kept a blog was during my MBA. Since that time, I've spent time swanning around Sweden, looking for a job and then working for the last two years at a large investment bank in the City of London. Throughout that time, I have had much more spare time than I had during my MBA, and yet I couldn't find the motivation to keep up any kind of blog. I don't know why... I was happy, I found the love of my life and discovered that he loved me too... I had good friends, a good job, a nice apartment... perhaps my life had sunk into mediocracy and in some twisted way, I need step out of my comfort zone in order to inspire my creative juices?

Who knows... What I do know is that as soon as our RTW tickets arrived, all I could think of was jotting down my thoughts and feelings and looking forward to sharing the new experiences.

But we're not there yet. First we need to finish work in London, pack up and head to Sweden for the first leg of our journey which includes two weddings (one is ours) before starting on to the first adventure - Japan.

Yup

We've now both resigned, in the middle of the worst economic crisis in known history (almost) and decided to do our bit to kick start the economy.

We're blowing all our savings and going travelling...