When I look back on the year and its highlights, I think about the places I've been. I measure the success of a year in the foreign lands and the foreigners I leave my heart with. There was Hanoi - cold, dusty, charming. The Gold Coast - a flighty old acquaintance that romances you with all manner of material trappings but the blue sky and the vast ocean make you forgive its trespass. Hong Kong - manic, energetic, intense, so incredibly sexy that I need to go back a second time to drink my fill. Then there was Hokkaido, what I like to think of as Japan Lite. Somnambulant, almost regretful. I wish I had someone special to share the view from Mt Moiwa with. I wish I had more time to spend swarthed in the anonymity of a city where the language is different from mine. And in a final surge of desperation, a little getaway calle d Bintan that's so plain in its beauty, yet so marvellous because of the company I had. Only one element of regret, but that perhaps is less important in the grand scheme of things than the grace I've been shown, the love I've received and the new friendships I've made. 2008 has a lot to live up to, but I know that in its own way, it will be amazing, and as sad as I am to greet it, I will be just as nostalgic to let it go. Whatever will be, will be.

posted by beautiful at 8:32 am