It's cold again this morning so we were late getting out of bed; however, the lounge room has warmed up, we've finished breakfast and are ready to face the day. Not that there is much organised. Life is very quiet at the moment.
We're expecting Jamie to pop in this afternoon. Nera's nephew, Brendan, has just arrived from the Philippines and is staying with them. He's 18 and enrolled to study here. His plan is to qualify in Nursing to start with but transfer to Medicine later. Working part-time as a nurse will help pay for his study to become a doctor. He's very bright and he's lucky to have family here who will support him.
Today's story is my response to the topic Against All Odds:
It was Geordie’s ambition to visit every continent on earth before he was too old to travel. Easy, you might say; there are only seven of them, there are excellent air services connecting them and only one of them could conceivably pose a problem. That, of course, is Antarctica. However, nowadays, there are cruise ships which will take you there in comfort and make sure you have a choice of a dozen wines to enjoy with your cordon bleu dining experience after you have spent a day on the ice. So, you were right, it will be easy.
Being an organised sort of person, Geordie knew that the best results from any project would always be achieved through careful planning, so he sat at his computer, pulled up a Word document and typed SEVEN CONTINENTS ADVENTURE in capital letters at the top of a new page. He thought for a moment and decided he would not underline it; rather, he would make it BOLD so that it would stand out and follow it with a double return.
A planning document has to achieve several purposes. First it needs an open, readable format so that you can see at a glance what is the daily objective. Second, it should ensure that all possibilities have been considered and the anticipated activities are the best possible under the circumstances. Thirdly, it should be structured to take advantage of any particular opportunities which might come up from time to time, and there must be enough flexibility to accommodate last-minute changes. Finally, it should never lose sight of the primary objective: that Geordie will achieve something that he will re-live for many years into the future.
Geordie started by typing a list of the seven continents, in no particular order but just as they occurred to him. Later, he thought, I will re-order them in alphabetical order, perhaps. Or perhaps not! Maybe, I should start with the easy one: Australia, or is it Australasia, or is it now designated Oceania? Clearly, some investigation is needed. Eventually, he had a list of the seven continents with Antarctica filling the last place.
The next few months were memorable for Geordie. Each evening, when he arrived home from work, he would turn to his computer, open his planning file and work on fleshing out his dream for what he would do on his great adventure. He found Youtube invaluable in checking out what tiny villages in Croatia might be worth visiting, whether he should stay in a Japanese ryokan or whether a nearby international hotel might suit him better., and whether visiting the pyramids in Egypt was enough to say that he had ‘done’ Africa. Gradually, the pages of his planning document began to take shape. It was difficult. Geordie found himself wanting to focus on planning the details of just one continent at a time when, he knew, that he needed to give equal attention to the other six or he would never achieve a suitable itinerary. He had already decided his plan would be to visit the seven continents, one after the other without returning to Australia between each one. A tentative plan seemed to be taking shape: Australia to Africa, to Europe, to Asia, to North America to South America and to Antarctica.
It would be expensive but, luckily, financing this trip would not be an issue. His family had been wealthy and had left him comfortably well-off when they passed away. He had a well-paid job, had never had a steady girl-friend and he lived very well, but without excessive expenditure.
Any young man might have thought himself very fortunate indeed that he had the opportunity and the resources to set out on such an extraordinary adventure. However, any other young man might have taken extra delight in sharing the adventure with another human being and Geordie did not even have the pleasure of talking about his plans, or discussing possibilities with anyone else. Occasionally, he leaned back in his desk chair, took his eyes from the computer screen and wondered. Is this all worth it?
As he became more involved in the planning, Geordie loaded his itinerary on to an iPad so that he could work on it during his breaks at work. Over time, he became aware that a particular young woman who worked in an adjacent office was showing an interest in the brochures he often had lying around. If Geordie had any awareness of human relationships and how they develop, he might have felt a sense of anticipation when she asked what he was doing. However, he didn’t and it was against all the odds that a few months later, Geordie and his new fiancée waited at the airport for their flight to Johannesburg. He was to find, to his delight, that a special adventure is even more special when it is shared.
No comments:
Post a Comment