Looking Ahead
We celebrated Su’s birthday this week at the restaurant on the first floor of the Museum of Art in TST which we had used for lunch a fortnight before after surviving a heavy rainstorm. There was only one other couple that evening at the restaurant. The ambience was good, as was the service, but the food was somewhat pricy. Overall, it was a nice spot for a small private party. Above all, Su liked it. We probably would use it again.
Su took me to see the Meryl Streep movie early one morning last week when we found out that she was also qualified for admission as a senior, or $25 for the first show of the day, meaning that the two tickets we paid for cost the same as the bowl of pop corns which we couldn’t finish. Su enjoyed the film a lot more than I did, for she is much more fashion conscious than I and had more experience of the corporate culture. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the two hours.
We also did something unusual last week. My bank relationship manager suggested that we consider taking out medical insurance. Su looked at some proposals and decided to follow the advice, before her birthday, to save some recurrent costs. In any case, I won’t be able to take up such schemes after I turn 80, which will be two years from now. We both had private medical insurance separately before we were married until Su’s trader mind decided that they were too costly and offered to underwrite any medical expenses while at the same time keeping each other healthy and fit.
As the world focused on the Xi-Trump summit, we were fed with continuous reports, real time updates and analysis ad nauseum. I also received on the phone updates on the Iran front, including some rather terrifying reports on ballistic missiles striking the Israelite capital, even as Trump was saying that Xi had offered help to keep Hormuz open. Personally, I enjoyed watching the TV reports on Xi welcoming Trump on the red carpet and at Zhongnanhai, much more than reports or predictions that Israel was about to be blown up by Iran. Frankly, these days, one can’t tell what is happening in real time and which news reports to believe. In the meantime, even before Trump boarded his Air Force One back to Washington, we had reports that Russia’s Putin is heading to China next week to meet President Xi.
For most of us mortals, we can do no more than to go about minding the daily chores and keeping ourselves heathy and hopefully happy. Talking of which we are busy amid packing for our impending trip to Stockholm and Iceland. We have never been to these places, and I wouldn’t want to under or over-pack. Anyway, I am very much looking forward to visiting Iceland.
My mind went back to 2008 when I was packing for the South America and Antarctica cruise. I was then by myself and had opted to pay for expensive singles supplements. I am in a totally different state now, with Su looking over my shoulders so that I can be blissfully ignorant all the time. This time, she has invited her good friend Mei Mei to join the trip and has warned me to be more discreet with my everyday apparels. We will see. I had even unearthed a handy camera which I had acquired for more than ten years and which I scarcely used with the hand phone getting more popular and handy.
Still on my 2008 trip, some of the notes I had made on the trip had re-surfaced recently, and many of the pictures I had taken on my tried and tested Nikon were still kept in my Lenovo laptop which I had since brought back from Whistler, but which I am too lazy or busy to download to my new desktop. I reckon the stuff, together with whatever I am about to record, will make good material for a sequel to my memoir, if I ever begin to pen it. Again, we will see.
Looking ahead, it depends on how we are going to spend the next phase of our lives, or to put it in numbers, the next 20 years. I have already retired from my only paid job for 23 years, which doesn’t seem too long ago, looking back. I still recall my late friend Alex telling us that he was giving away or dumping the books – of which there were many – that he won’t have time to read in the next ten years. That was less than 20 years ago because Su remembers the episode. Now, we have plenty of books in our storage at Kwai Fong which we have not visited for nearly two years, for which we are paying good money on the rentals. Su and I have watched her brother clearing the storage of their father and Su has since kept a good deal of the artefacts they discovered. Someday, someone will need to go over the stuff at Kwai Fong. One thing for sure, we are not people with means or fame to have a library built or maintained in our names. Nobody would, in any case. I will think about the matter again sometime, and focus on my packing for the next trip.
