These shoes were made for walkin'

As I was walking on Sunday I realized something. I love my shoes. They are so comfortable to wear and it doesn't matter if it's winter, summer, spring or fall, these shoes will not let me down. I don't think about it, but these particular shoes have been walking through some exciting places.

They have been walking through the streets of Dublin, Ireland (which is where I bought them). Then they went on walking through the snowy streets of Liverpool, UK before they walked in the more snowy landscape of Tromso, Norway. Not long after that they were walking in the busy streets of Shanghai, China... The hills of Chaohu, China... The cold streets of Beijing, China... Now they are back in the UK, walking through the rainy streets of Manchester. They have even been walking through the airports of Copenhagen, Denmark and Paris, France. Soon they will be walking in the streets of Jakarta, Indonesia.

It's amazing isn't it? And they almost look as good as when I bought them, still as comfy as ever. Yes, I love my shoes. If there was one object I could take with me on a deserted island it would be those shoes. Keep on walking, you'll never walk alone...

I am the 487,400,414 richest person in the world!

Imagine that. I am one of the richest people on this planet. There are about 6.7 billion people on this earth and I am in the top 8.12%. According to this site anyway: Global Rich List. How rich are you? As a curiosity for UK people, you can check out this site: Channel 4's Rich List. I'm a bit worse off here. Apparently there are 14,336,289 people richer than me and 43,463,711 people poorer than me. That would put me in the top 24.8%. Still, it's not bad, I'm not even a UK citizen. Isn't internet fun?

Southport

Yesterday I went traveling to the west coast of England to a place called Southport. I just wanted to smell the sea again and I heard nice things about the beaches there. I went to the train station and took a train there. The travel time was about 1h30m. I think it's romantic, the whole traveling by train thing. I want to take Kei traveling with me all over the UK.

Southport the city was actually really nice. It was great to just walk on the promenade and just look into the windows of all those shops. Bought a couple of souvenirs as well. I thought the beach was far away from the city centre, so I took a taxi there. Turns out it was just a couple of minutes away, oh well. It was a beautiful sunny day and the beach there was huge. I could hardly see the sea from the beginning of the beach. Unfortunately the beach wasn't very nice. It wasn't really sand, more mud. Still I didn't come there to relax on the beach so I went walking out to the sea. I loved to smell the sea again. Most of my life I've lived near the sea.

More positive things are happening now. It's like whenever there might be a crisis happening, something good always happen to fix it. I was a bit worried a few days ago because my money was running really low. I calculated I could live about a week before I had to live on the streets. It has to be karma. First the money from my Irish bank account finally found it's way to my Norwegian bank account and then on Friday I got my first pay slip. Yeah… things are really sweet in all areas of my life right now.

Plans

Are you the kind of person that plan your days ahead, what you are going to do in the weekend? Does it work for you? I am usually not that structured, but isn’t dreams some sort of plans or is it just wishful thinking? As we grow older, we get new dreams all the time before we make our old dreams come true. I remember one dream I had when I was young. I wanted to be a professional footballer. I was playing football for my local team hoping that a talent scout would come and see what a great footballer I was. Of course that never happened, and I probably wasn’t such a great footballer anyway. Over the years I’ve probably had lots of dreams and I still do. I wonder if any of my dreams came true.

This weekend I actually had a plan and was so excited about it. On Sunday I was going to a beautiful place called Edale with my friend Katy. Unfortunately her back was a mess today and couldn’t go. So I spent today with the people I love instead, not a bad substitute I have to say. I have another plan, but it is more long term. I want to go to Indonesia for a 2 week vacation in August/September to see Kei. In order to make that happen I have to do some serious planning. The biggest issue will be money (isn’t it always). I have just started a new job, so money will have to be saved rigorously during the next months. I have the best reason in the world to do it, so motivation won’t be a problem.

Even more long term I have dreams about more regularity with me and Kei. The how and when isn’t yet planned, but things are going really well at the moment. I bought a web cam on Friday so Kei could see me “live”. She bought a webcam as well today but we had some troubles with the internet connection so I could only see her 20 seconds at a time. I’d rather have 20 seconds than nothing at all. It was fun! Her smile is just amazing.

Tomorrow is a bank holiday both in the UK and Norway so I don’t have to go to work. I have no plans, but that means there’s no chance of failure. I am looking forward to this week as my training is almost over. I have one training day on Wednesday, but then I get to do some real work. Hope everyone is having a great weekend!