Thought Picnic: Gentle on my mind

Adjustments

It has been a week since I returned from India in what for me has been a life-changing experience. In that week, much has happened some of which is interestingly significant because managing my health is critical to my survival.

I cannot tell if it was the weather, the change of diet, the ground to the issues and problems I left behind or other things that meant that I have had to fight off severe diarrhoea again with the popping of Imodium pills, then a cold accompanied with cough that had a German pharmacist prescribing a diurnal and nocturnal expectorant strictly advising me not to confuse the two.

However, I have never followed the prescriptions for expectorants as I have done for other kinds of medication, the nocturnal one even came with a precision measuring syringe but true to form after the first act of conformance, it was the bottle to the lips and a gulp for accuracy.

Hamburg

Yes, indeed, the return from India required a short break, one that I planned by the time I was 10 days into my sojourn and it was to Hamburg.

Before my loyalty points lapsed for my Carlson card, I posted the points towards a stay on the 23^rd floor of the Radisson Blu Hotel and found that my outward journey had to be done by train because the weather was just too bad to put a small plane in the air.

I was last in Hamburg some 9 years ago and though it was winter it still had all the excitement and not so decent sides of a sea-port city, it is the 3^rd largest port in Europe after Rotterdam and Antwerp.

Life ahead

There are other things to do too, tests to pass before the month runs out means a lot of study, my apartment is on the market as a result of fundamental changes that followed long-term sickness and well I need to repackage myself for the market being more confident of using the new knowledge I have gained and being able to leverage the wealth of my experience once again.

Usually, I do not leave it this long to write blogs and there is at least a blog or two to write to sum up my Incredible India experience. Besides, the old home of my blog at http://akin.blog-city.com has now closed after 8 years, it is sad to see that era end but the guys at Blog-City got bored with that venture and it probably is a good lesson about going for the established over the small startup.

In all, here’s to new beginnings, 2012, here we come. As haunting as this song has always been since I played it on my father’s stereo system in the 1970’s, it is still one that remains etched in memory and of all the covers, the one by Dean Martin is most remembered – Gentle on my mind – the things of life, the past, the present and the future, written by John Hartford it is all summed up in this line, “That keeps you in the back roads, by the rivers of my mem'ry, that keeps you ever gentle on my mind.”

Back roads, rivers, memory and mind – to reminisce, to meditate, to conquer all.