The Dragon’s Deliverables

My yearly dynamic has been much altered by the lucky break that is having both local and western holidays.

So two and a half weeks after returning from the UK for Christmas, it was time to Tet with another week off.  We elongated that further with a couple of extra days in Laos, more of that later.

But the year of the dragon is upon us.  The pics above and below were taken on a short walk around the assorted flower markets of Nghi Tam that spring up as Tet nears.  It’s easy to see why flowers are so popular at Tet with everything else seeming so damp, wet and gloomy.  Even with our dehumidifier running full tilt for days on end, when we unpacked our bags in Laos we realised that the clothes we brought with us were all wet.  We dried them on the balcony before hanging them in the wardrobe.

This year seems like a pivotal one but then again they all seem to. Lots of resolutions – the top one being that I have to make a serious dent in learning Vietnamese.  Currently work commitments mean that we both get in around seven, and that’s before we start on Cart business, adding language learning to that schedule is unthinkable so something has to give. And yet chipping away at this isn’t going to be enough – it needs a serious time commitment so something has to give.

My current design for life needs a few tweaks.  Elsewhere, a little over two and a half years since I quit smoking, I need to use that same resolve to lose weight.  Or rather it wasn’t resolve so much as something clicking in my head that made me put the last one out and not even want to re-light another.  I need to see eating the same way. But no fad diet is going to do this – just a sensible and sustainable way of living.

So, both those are down here as a way of you and me holding myself accountable.  In the parlance of my workplace HR, these are my deliverables for the year.