Life without work

I have taken a six-month no pay leave to stay in Glasgow, which is where my niece lives, to finish my draft for the September submission. I have been living in London twice before. First when I did my Master degree and then three years ago, for my PhD. I returned to Hong Kong to finish my fieldwork and now I am here, in Glasgow, trying to save money while writing up my remaining chapters.

I must say that living with my family has its pros and cons. On one hand, I finally got to reunite with my niece, who had spent most of her life in my family. She was practically raised by my parents. Befoe she moved to Glagow to study, she returned to her parents' home for a few years. Then she got married and had lived here for more than 15 years. We spent long nights pow-wowing and gossiping about the people and events in Glasgow. Trust me, you can spend endless nights catching up with someone who grew up with you, and you can have endless topics to talk about.

But then, the problem is that you will just have nothing but only social activities, day after day, especially she has a six-year old son, who is such a joy to be with. I spend Saturdays looking after him. And this summer, we spend time swimming and going to the park. I cook for him and we talk so much. It's wonderful to be able to help raise a boy and to be part of his life, albeit it's going to be really short time. I haven't had such a domestic bliss since both my parents die a few years ago.

And I have to finally get to go to a wonderful church. I have finally got to experience how a wonderful church is like. Wonderful service and the people in that church is so filled with love. The church is such a children-friendly church where you see how the church-goers go and talk to every single child. This is the testimony of a Christ-like community.

Life without work is fun. I really enjoy some time by myself and I get to work on my own stuff. But then I do miss Hong Kong and my friends and especially my work. I miss my colleagues who are also my friends, I miss the collegiality. I miss my students. And most important of all, I miss my boyfriend who is now by himself. This is kind of romantic for a while and it's a wonderful litmus test to our relationship. I get to put things into perspective and I cherish him more.

Without work, life is still pleasant. But I guess it will be nice if I have work, but not too busy and I can still have a life. And I can just spend some time with my boyfriend, just doing nothing but be with him. This is something I am really looking forward to. In two weeks time, without work, just me and him, by ourselves.

Life without writing the blog ....

I must admit that life without feeling the urge and the need to write the blog is not as liberating as I thought. I grew lazy and tired after my last bit in the blog about my thesis because I am actually, and still, writing my thesis. I am not living in limbo. And I am not living my life without writing. I am just living a life writing exclusively on my thesis as I will need to hand in my draft very soon. I am frantically typing and reading every day. And keeping my fingers crossed for being able to finish before the deadline so that I won't need to pay the full fee, i.e. 12000 pounds. Instead, I could pay the continuation status fee, which is around 700 something pounds. So, my life now in Scotland, which is where I am living but not where I am studying, includes writing and reading and writing and of course hanging out with my families. Nothing exciting really.
I pick up the pen (well,... not in the literal sense as I am just hitting the keyboard of my computer...) and resume writing the blog mainly because my boyfriend teased me about linking my blog to my university website and the last bit was so obsolete that it was written eight months ago. I just thought: if any of my students read my blog. That may think I am a looney or a weirdo which I am neither of that, so I might as well write a bit about how I feel without writing the blog and trust me, my student, if any of you reads my blog, at least you know the outline of this. OK! Here it goes, at least for the coming few weeks, I will focus on talking about some of the extraordinary discovery about my stay in Scotland, which is totally novel to me. And then how the Chinese community works and how I adjust my anti-social sentiment to the kind-hearted, helpful and lovely group of people here. How bad is the British economy here that people have to be really aware. How I am planning for the conference next year which hopefully could be a wonderful holiday with my boyfriend.
I guess now I can leave my heart at rest and get back into bed.
See you