Planes make me think. I guess you’re always going some place new or some place old that can make you look forward to new things or think about old things you want to leave behind, in either case, you’re going somewhere.

I’ve been thinking a lot about working remotely, in a different geographical location and timezone from the main office, and after weeks of this filling space in my head I’m going to attempt to get some of it out – after all that’s what I started my blog for even though since we’ve been away it’s become a glorified travel diary. Time for it to return to its routes as an outlet and store of my random thoughts! However I have to be careful this doesn’t cross a line – in this age of social media and people being fired for airing their grievances online and acting in a way out of line in the eyes of the company I will likely have to watch what I say, which kind of defeats the point of a personal blog! I don’t hate my job and this isn’t a precursor to any major decisions, just supposed to be random stuff about working remotely!

So why is this topic filling my head? I don’t think it’s one thing, I think it’s a collection of little things. I think if I was to pick one thing, or have one thing to sum it all up, it’s that change thing. I thought that being out of the office would open up a new way of working for me, give me some new and different things to do, stimulate new thoughts or ideas and above all, give me some freedom to change bad work habits for ones I actually want. However, due to my own need for routine, the office not really being set up for remote workers and the new way of communication that’s required for remote working, I’ve been unable to bring about new work habits.

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I smelled the rolls of gladwrap in the supermarket yesterday to find one that didn’t have a smell. Didn’t realise you can get actual ‘Glad’ here, and it doesn’t smell. Yipeeee!

A few random thoughts recently about some food here as we try to find what we need from various grocery stores:

• I’m finding lots of things are much sweeter here – bread, bagels, potato chips, honey (in an unnatural way) and Lemsip is practically sugar granules. We’re now reading the back of bread packets in the supermarket looking at the sugar content.
• The butter substitutes are so slimy, especially after being in a sandwich all day. We found something now that seems to be spreadable butter (rather than ‘spreadable with buttery taste’ or ‘butter-like taste’ – obviously not butter) although it is still quite white.
• Gladwrap smells, or cling film or plastic wrap or whatever it’s called. At first I thought it was a sandwich ingredient or the bread that smelled when I opened my lunch each day until the other day I took a half eaten museli bar, wrapped for a morning snack, and smelled that smell. Not sure how we’ll solve that one – go around sniffing rolls of gladwrap in the supermarket I suppose!