Postcards From J

It's been about four days since I returned from Milan, Italy. While being back home and at work has already swamped me, I can't help thinking of this Italian adventure I got to embark on. 17 days across cities that breathe history, art, architecture, culture, religion and so much more! 17 days of fun (and exhaustion) accompanied by two women who kept me on my toes, literally and otherwise. In a nutshell, my itinerary read like this eventually: Rome-Vatican City-Naples-Florence-Pisa-Milan-Nice-Monaco-Cannes-Milan-Verona-Milan. It seems whirlwind but I think we managed a good pace and never really had to worry about missing something - even if we did.  Of course, the full credit goes to Fi, who planned the entire itinerary right down to the places we should eat at. And because she had already been living in Italy for a year and knew the language and her way around Italians, it was a massive help. Lo and I just followed instructions. I whined about the walking. Got mad a few time...

8 JUNE 2018 4.57 PM: It's Friday, and I am looking at my to-do list and hoping the day gets done soon. That I get to go home and enjoy the start of another weekend. One of the WhatsApp groups buzzed. "Anthony Bourdain is dead. Shite." I was the first to reply. "NO". "WHAT?" And then I started to Google with a strange mix of anxiety and sadness.  Say it wasn't true. Bourdain was gone. 61 years young. It was surreal.  I pinged D but knew he would be asleep as he was working the night shift. Gawd, D will be devastated to wake up to this news. My mind was racing. Bourdain would feature in our conversations often over the years and I didn't know anyone who was a bigger fan of the chef-turned-storyteller. Still can’t believe it. People were shocked but I was in another zone. My hands had turned cold and my brain was blank. What the hell had just happened? That it was by suicide was equally perplexing. And v...

Not sure how I never thought of this earlier, but hey... Blogger has an app and I'm writing this from there. Perhaps this is the push I need to write often. Testing this now, and also adding a photo from my phone to check how this will pan out. Have a nice day, wherever you are. ~j~