#187 Old Age - Not For The Meek / Taiwan Trip

As a good friend of mine tells me frequently. “Old age is not for the meek.” 😊

How true that is. At the age of 62, I would say that I am in excellent health overall, especially by comparison with many others my age or even a decade younger.

However, I have a laundry list of issues which plague me and without doubt affect my quality of life. The worst, I am tired. As I write this, I am STILL getting over a bad cold that I had for about 2 weeks ago. It wasn't COVID. I actually tested for that just this morning. But more and more fatigue is a factor. It isn't any one thing. My back is recovering from the hernia. The exercises I have been doing as per my physical therapist I think have really helped. I have even been able to get back to lifting some weights. However, my state of paranoia is still acute. I worry every single day with every single motion whether or not that is going to be the motion that again causes me to have a back episode. And that in itself is exhausting.

I worry about my weight. Not to a huge extent but I watch what I eat constantly. And I don't like having to do that either.

The fatigue has definitely change my viewpoint about what I want to do in the near future. I'm not really looking forward to traveling anymore. I have to go to a wedding in France in a few weeks and honestly, I am wishing that I had NOT agreed to go. Having agreed to go, I will go. But honestly, I wish that I could just head back to Thailand to get an operation I need and relax for a couple of months.

Don't get me wrong, I think I will probably enjoy it once I am on the trip, but at the moment, yeah if something happened and I had to cancel, all I would feel would be a huge sense of relief.

** short STOP PRESS here. The person from Argentina with whom I was going to go to the wedding is having health problems and just this morning we decided it was probably better if they did not travel while they have those problems. So today I am somewhat in a lather as I am trying to decide whether to basically cancel the trip for the time being, or whether i should proceed and at least go to the wedding anyway. However as the day has worn on today, and my fatigue is still ever present, i have to admit i'm thinking very strongly about simply canceling the trip, and putting it off for a few months.**

This is not even a complaint, nor a rant. But the things that I have on my bucket list are almost nonexistent. Just a few days ago I sold, packed and gave my flight simulator hardware and setup to somebody else. I realized I was looking at it every day and every time I looked at it, it was like this little nagging demon in the back of my mind saying, “oh you should be doing something about that”. And I realized I really didn’t want to. I don't have the energy to screw around with trying to get hardware and software to work, nor the energy to study aviation ground school. If I'm going to study anything I'd rather study languages.

There is no doubt, that as one grows older, you really need to concentrate on a healthy lifestyle, and that you enjoy what you wish to concentrate on. The reason that I am writing about this is because there has just been such a marked change for me in the last six months and it really took me aback how much my point of view and outlook on life has changed. I suppose that a good part of this might have to do with the fact that I achieved some very major milestones that I've been working on for seven years, that is the passports, and the citizenship renunciation. But I don't feel any particularly strong impulse to set myself another goal. Every time I turn around my general fatigue stops me from wanting to do that.

On the positive side, I feel incredibly fortunate to be where I am today. I have no bills, I have no debts, I have a reasonable income, and I have the luxury to be able to sit at home without having to worry about work when I'm sick. So again, not a complaint. And when I'm well, I feel fortunate to be able to stay in a nice place and read my books, watch my TV, study my languages, and lead a very calm and boring life. I am ecstatic about that and very grateful.

I must admit, I am even at this point contemplating whether or not to continue writing my blog. Although I do enjoy writing it. I really do.

There is one note of, well I don't know what it is, but I find it funny that in the two or three months since I announced renouncing my US citizenship, that I lost over 40 subscribers. I have no idea whether the two are related, but it just seems odd that nothing changed for a long time and then after I announced that, I had that sudden drop in subscribers. A source of mild amusement is all I can say. 😊

Something completely different, I have been going down a bit of a security rabbit hole lately. Not to a huge extent, but I am going to try to do my best to get away from Google and Microsoft as much as I can. I'm not taking it to extremes but I'm probably going to get rid of my Google mail, other than the minimum i need to be able to maintain an account on my android phone and try to reduce my connections with Microsoft as well. I will probably move all of my cloud files to SYNC so that nothing resides on Google, OneDrive, or Dropbox or anything else. Even thinking of moving to Libre Office instead of Office 365.

I am going through all of the accounts that I have online (such as all of the accounts that I created in the United states while I was buying weapons), and deleting them. And any accounts that are using my Gmail account I am moving over to e-mail aliases via my ProtonMail account. I just have no interest in so much of this stuff anymore. This has proved to be a huge pain in the ass. Mainly because more than 90% of the companies with whom I have online accounts do not provide a simple one button click to be able to delete one’s account. I would just like to haul them out into the street and kneecap them! They are making this such hard work. A few have even told me that they cannot delete my account because I have transactions with them. @!!!@@@&&!!!@#!!!

I must admit that clearing out the flight simulator hardware from where it occupied the corner of my living room, gave me a HUGE sense of relief. And every time I look at that clean corner now I do a tiny dance of joy in my head that it is now clean and there is nothing in it.

I didn't mean this to be a depressing post, just a general commentary on life, the universe, and everything. I am not depressed, I am calmly content, and see no reason that this will change in the near future. I wish all of you (belatedly) a very successful and happy new year.

Beautiful stationary but I managed not to buy any :-)

There was a hiatus in writing this post. I did get the energy up to take a quick trip up to Taiwan, which is a country that I have never been to before. I realized that the other day, in conjunction with the fact that a very good airline flew from the airport by my house directly to Taipei. So, I thought, why not?

My fatigue has stopped me from exploring as much as I would like, but I have found Taipei to be quite pleasant. The people are friendly and polite, the streets are clean, wide, and not a lot of traffic. I have not found English to be an issue. Although, I have noticed it is necessary to show the taxi drivers the address in Chinese sometimes. But the same could be said of Hong Kong too. I am seriously considering changing my routing from going with Cathay from Manila to Hong Kong to Bangkok to using EVA Air to go from Clark to Taipei to Bangkok. And why? Because it saves me from having to drive down to Manila to catch a flight, which is 2 hours, and even more importantly, upon my return, I am only 15 minutes from my house. And that is worth quite a bit to me.

Below are some pictures from the Chiang Kai Shek memorial and the Grand Hotel which was built and run by the niece of his wife Madame Chiang. He is obviously quite venerated here. I am not saying he is a bad guy, but really people should read history. Not that his opponent was much better I have to say.

I am continuing to plow through the book on the Second World War called Inferno by Dr. Max Hastings. I can only do about half a chapter at a time, it is so depressing. The breadth and depth of man's inhumanity to man, combined with the egregious stupidity and arrogant pride of the military and political leaders involved is just mind blowing. I can only read it for a little bit at a time before I get so stressed that I have to put it down.

If I can, I will try to post this before I leave Taiwan tomorrow.