23rd of July. D - Day

So. Based on the fact that the winter holidays begin on the 13th of July and I'll probably need two weeks to tie up loose ends, settle debts, do some housework, chase up some cheques etc., I've chosen the 23rd of July as the magic day. My thinking is, it's a Thursday so if I need to do any last minute things then relevant offices will still be working before the normal go-slow-leave-early Friday.

This week I've spent most of my free time achieving nothing (regression to the mean?) but it´s not been for want of trying. The problem was (and always will be) that if your flight needs two airlines it's basically impossible to reserve space for animals on the plane. I had a lovely flight with IBERIA all ready but they couldn't reserve space for cat and dog on the Madrid to Helsinki bit. After all attempts to call Finnair from here failed, girlf. called them and was told that it's impossible to book space because the flight was booked with IBERIA. Ha! Blessed be Yossarian.

So I gave up and put my faith in the capitalist market to resolve my situation. Out into the metaphorical street I now wander with fists full of dollars shouting, "Travel agents, Romans, Countrymen (but mostly travel agents), my kingdom for a solution."

I've sent off a couple of emails. Let's see what happens. 

And that's about it. Oh. Also the north is flooded, the south is burning, some friends got married and Icarus fell into the sea (I am soo bloody cultured). 

17 weeks to go - James Brown and Interstellar

It's raining. When I woke up this morning (for the 4th time - last night I got caught up in Interstellar so the snooze option had to work overtime to get me vertical today) I heard a disturbing sound. However it was not the jingle-jangle of a thousand lost souls but the tiny tap tap of a thousand rain drops on the rubber bush leaves.

   Rain is usually overdue in these parts and much like snow in England, is received with excitement and writing things on twitter. It should help to clean the contaminated air for a few hours so now's the time to breathe heavily.

   Much has been tackled on the Finnish front. Flying with the dog seems to be prohibitively expensive so it looks like I'll send her over first to be received by Skinny Girl and then I'll take a thirty-hour budget flight via Panama and the Dominican Republic with the cat. That reminds me, I must take them both to the vet ASAP.

   I've also spent many rather frustrating hours trying to update my CV. I can only presume that all computers have a pre-programmed bug which deliberately stops at least one sentence from lining up correctly with the others on the CV 'wizard'. Bloody wizard wouldn't last five minutes in middle-earth grumble grumble.  In the end I got it to look mostly right and told myself that I wouldn't want to work in a company that gives any weight to such trivialities anyway.

Help me with my c.v. Gandalf. 

   So. lots to do. Buy a dog kennel, buy flights, buy a new keyboard because everytime I need a comma I have to push the button three times. Moreover, like a panicked father expecting a child, I've put myself down for a lot of work so time is rather scant which in turn means it's passing more quickly and then I have less time to do everything. Yoiks! Perhaps some books will fall off my bookshelf soon and I'll realise that my father has travelled through time in order to communicate with me and help me create a crazy upside-down world in which we all get to Finland OK.

Ooh! Good thunder!

Back to work.

Exactly 18 weeks to go - - Budgeting

Monday night in a noisy Santiago, which I've just discovered is Pleonasm (good job H). I've got some basil-bread baking next to me and my bike has a puncture which resisted my attempts to patch it up and I think I'll have to buy a new bloody inner tube.
   Now that I'm on a budget the world suddenly seems terribly expensive. I've never been much of a saver; Being a single man with simple tastes has usually kept my expenses low enough for me not to worry about getting to the end of the month. However, now that money is at a premium, each time I have to open my wallet is like a punch in the stomach. I am the salmon swimming upstream in a river of unforeseen expenses. Anyhoo, As Curtis Mayfield correctly realised, you gotta keep on keeping on. I hope a bear doesn't eat me.

.

18 weeks to go

So. One week has passed since I returned from my winter jolly around The UK and Finland. Determined to hit the ground running, and pursued by a healthy fear of failure, I've already tallied up the amount of money I'll be earning (at the moment I'm looking at it as a starting block).

I've also discovered that the Chilean state will probably be relieving me of most of my tax return this year. Their new policy means that now previously optional payments to a pension fund will be automatically stolen from your pocket. To be fair this is the first long-term planning I've seen from any government in Chile; I think they saw a future of shit and fans as most people were choosing to rely on dying young/stuffing cash in the mattress/winning the lottery rather than paying into unreliable private pension companies run by crooks.

Finally I asked for some quotes re. Sending dog to Finland. I felt like I had wandered into a designer clothes store as the snooty reply came back warning me that,“Please also note that transport to Finland is expensive, at least 2000 euro.” Wha! Emotional blackmail. Most airlines have quoted around $200. Well, the ball is rolling.

Off to work now. Saturday morning. Come on Finland!