Calvi harbour

We wanted to come back to Corsica for a holiday since we had such good memories of the island from our first trip. Only there’s always the risk of finding things less interesting when you see them for the second time, so we mixed it up a little.

Instead of coming in the Summer, we aimed for Spring. The downside here is that you risk inclement weather (and we got our fair share of that), but the advantage is that the island is more or less devoid of tourists. Since you’re in advance of the summer, everyone appreciated your custom in the same way that we look for the arrival of swallows to herald the coming summer.

A lone tree in abandoned Occi

Of course in spring you can’t really go swimming in the ocean unless you were brought up in Iceland and had your entire nervous system desensitised during your frozen childhood. On the other hand, generally warm weather during the day allows you to take advantage of one of the best places in France to go walking.

We were lucky enough to pick the right days to go for long walks when the sun was with us.  We went to the abandoned village of Occi, a modest 30 minute walk above the village of Lumio, but had to beat a hasty retreat when the sky threatened a downpour (which never occurred).  A few days later we walked from Calvi all the way to the tip of the “almost-island of Revellata”, which is a long spit of land at the northeastern tip of the island.  The walk is complicated by many luxury villas being built along the path, but the views are sometimes spectacular, even without the summer sun.

Images of Revellata

We also visited a vineyard, and I regret not having the time to visit several.  Perhaps this is something to do next time we go.  The reception at the Orsini Vineyard was very warm, and while I find Corsican red wines far too rich and thick with fruit for my palate (and their whites somewhat too mineral), their new rosé (Gris Fruité) was excellent and very affordable, and I ordered two cases for delivery to Paris in the coming weeks.

You can see selected images from the holiday over at the photoblog : Accidental Cliches.

I think most people agree with me, and when I say this I sometimes get choruses of encouragement about “the media telling us how we should look”. Unfortunately, that’s not what I mean.

I consider the media to be a demand-driven environment. We consume what we want, and if we spend all our time obsessing over stick-thin models, we only have ourselves to blame when our perception of attractiveness alters as a consequence. I don’t buy into the “media conspiracy to make us all insecure in our bodies”.

So when I say that I don’t like the idea of telling people how they ought to be, what I’m actually referring to is the new trend in countries that tend towards nanny-statism to regulate what size models are allowed to be if they’re going to model clothes. I’m astonished that elected or appointed officials think they have a role in deciding the shape and size of people on catwalks.

While the debate about what a “healthy” weight is and what we mean by “healthy” in the first place is probably valuable in its own right, I think that it crosses the line into an infringement of people’s free expression when authorities start mandating what weight or BMI a model is allowed to have it they’re going to be seen by the public.

Monitoring them for eating disorders is a great idea, I’m all for it – the models themselves are often young and under immense pressure to appear perfect, and sometimes that degree of body-consciousness can lead to skewed behaviours, just don’t cross the line into saying that because someone has a high metabolism and therefore appears very tall and thin, they’re no longer employable as a model. That’s not an appropriate area for the law to start regulating – to my mind.

We appear very concerned with the possibility of making people anorexic by displaying extremely thin people in the media. I understand the concern. I’m more concerned with obesity as it is statistically a much more significant problem. I would be personally very happy to see a change in our body-shape preferences towards a very “healthy” (by which I mean fit) look. If we could admire and aspire to looking like people who look good because they do lots of sport, rather than exercise huge discipline over their eating habits, that would be good, and we might get over this concept that thin is bad or good, because that’s a function of the person. But that’s probably just my personal tastes getting in the way of my reasoning.

I certainly wouldn’t advocate regulation to push the trend one way or the other – that usually backfires – you change tastes and preferences by influencing, educating and informing people, not telling them what it is permissible to look at or to believe.

But nowadays, we don’t take the time to prepare the news properly, we just scribble and transmit.  The bastion of English that was the BBC is now somewhat eroded.  Never mind the mindless chatter on the latest reality show, they make strange mistakes even in the news..!  Using adjectives as verbs… how the mighty have fallen.

What a pointless photo in any case. It’s a still from a very poor-quality video, and you can’t tell what’s going on.

Thalys Paris-Bruxelles

If you’ve ever needed to book a plane or a train at the last minute, you’ll know how expensive that can be.

In the complex and profit-enhancing universe of yield management, travel companies make pricing decisions in a way that allows them to extract the most value from each customer based on their personal characteristics.

This is known as discriminatory pricing, and despite the obnoxious-sounding name, it’s perfectly legal, and economically helps everyone.  It means that the people who are willing to pay the most are the people who pay the most, and those who want to pay less are able to pay less, and are used to fill up the empty space to ensure that the operators of the train run as close to full capacity as possible.

The way the train, plane and other companies do this is by setting up a payment structure based on certain rules that allow people to self-select into the category of price that they want, without ever being aware of it.  Once you know how this works, and with a little effort, forward planning and creative economic behaviour, you can easily access the best deals.

How does yield-management actually work?

The most obvious mechanism aside from having separate classes for passengers is by forcing the customer to pay for convenience.  For example, if you want to travel to Belgium tomorrow on the Thalys from Paris, you’ll have to pay €90 for a one-way economy class ticket.  The reason it costs this much is that by purchasing the ticket the day before you go, you’re basically sending a signal that says, “I can’t be bothered to plan ahead, or I have something so important to do in Brussels, that I’m willing to pay over the odds for it”.

I, on the other hand, paid €25 for exactly the same ticket two months ago.  That ticket is no longer available to you.  By purchasing the ticket almost 11 weeks before the trip, I was sending a different signal.  My signal says, “I don’t like to pay very much for my train tickets, so I’m willing to block my schedule three months ahead of time in order to get a better price.”

Yield-management logic says that the train company will never get a better price from me than the €25, so they’ll sell me the ticket at that price, provided they can hold back enough tickets to ensure they can still skim the high-margin cream from the economic pie when the less price sensitive customers come along at the last minute.

Can I beat the system?

Of course you can.  I wouldn’t be writing this otherwise.

Yield-management systems work because you can only consume the service you’ve purchased personally.  You can’t resell the airline ticket you’ve purchased, and while they’ll tell you that’s for security reasons, it’s really to ensure that you don’t go selling your ticket to someone else, thereby claiming the excess profits the airline wanted to gather for yourself.

Airline tickets are nominative.

Train tickets are not.

Provided your Thalys ticket is not an e-ticket that has already been printed out, you can give it to someone else, and even though it has your name in the top right hand corner, they will be able to use it to board the train in your place.  There are a number of websites that allow for this kind of exchange (http://trocdestrains.com, http://kelbillet.com, for example).

There are two ways to take advantage of this.  Either you go buy your tickets on these websites (which do not allow people to sell their tickets for more than the original cost of purchasing it), thus running the risk that your chosen itinerary will not be available at the time you want, or you buy your tickets ahead of time.

I recommend the second option.  I purchase far more Thalys tickets than I intend to use.  I frequently go to Belgium and can’t afford to spend €90 each way when I finally get the dates nailed down, so I buy tickets for weekends months ahead of time in anticipation of a potential need to travel.  I then resell the tickets if I have no need for them.

I have never had a problem reselling the tickets.  In reality, the only real inconvenience is handling the 10 to 15 emails I receive every time I post a ticket.  What’s more, since the person buying the ticket is going to save up to €65, they’re almost always willing to travel to me to pick up the ticket, and all I have to do is hand it to them for cash when the doorbell rings.

Doesn’t this upset the travel companies?

Not really.

The price discrimination is still working.  People who are willing to go to the trouble of buying tickets 11 weeks before the travel date on the off-chance that they’re going to need them, then spend 30 minutes of their time managing the resale of that ticket, are basically sending the same signal as someone who blocks his diary three months ahead.  The signal still says, “I would not have bought this ticket from you if I had had to pay €90 for it”.  By doing this, we are classifying ourselves as low-margin customers.

By contrast, an executive who needs to shoot off to Brussels to close a deal will buy his ticket that very morning, and when he settles the €210 euros for a last-minute business class seat on the Thalys, he will pay with his corporate American Express card, and his biggest concerns will be getting a seat in the first place and whether he gets air miles on his Amex.  He’s ripe for plucking by the travel company, and I’m very grateful to him because since he pays so much, I can get away with paying very little.  From my €25 point-of-view, price discrimination rocks, from his €210 point-of-view, last-minute ticket availability is a lifesaver.

The same goes for the person who used the cheaper ticket after buying it from me.  Someone willing to spend hours of her time hunting down a second-hand ticket, and then crosses Paris on the metro to come pick it up from some random stranger, is not someone who would have been willing to pay more in the first place.

Everyone’s happy – the Thalys gets to sell more seats and use up its capacity, I get tickets cheap, and some student (it’s usually a student) gets to go see her family in Brussels because I happened to have a spare ticket I didn’t want.

The system actually works…  You just have to choose to use it.

The Cape from Table Mountain

I feel unjustifiably ungrateful.

I’m so lucky to live in Paris with its rich cultural, artistic and architectural heritage, but returning from Cape Town, the most obvious features are the disagreeable interactions with the natives and a confrontational undertone to many situations. It’s strangely miserable here. What’s going on?

Perhaps it’s the climate, or maybe something to do with the city itself, but in Cape Town I felt as though people were genuinely happy to be there. When someone would serve me a drink in a restaurant, drive me somewhere in their taxi, give me directions in the street or say goodbye after I’d paid at the counter in a shop, they’d always leave me with a positive impression. The same cannot, regrettably, be said of most of my recent experiences in Paris.

The icing on the cake was at the various airline and security counters at the airport, as I was leaving Cape Town. The check-in agent was cracking jokes about the weather I was heading into, and suggesting I’d be better off staying in South Africa, the security guys at the X-ray machines were friendly and helpful, and the immigration agent who looked at my passport was in such a good mood I had to wonder if he’d just won the lottery.

Compare and contrast with Paris. I can’t make eye contact with wait staff in a restaurant for love or money, and when I finally call out to them (politely, mind you), they take on a very offended and disapproving attitude, as though I had infringed some unwritten rule that says I’m supposed to stay in my seat and watch my life pass into history until they feel like bringing the bill. My leaving a tip results in a deadpan “merci monsieur” with the emotional content of a 16th century executioner talking to the condemned.

So many interactions here result seem to have the potential for some form of confrontation that I have to wonder whether the people who work in the service industry in France are just profoundly offended at the very concept of having to provide a service to someone else. A nascent theory in the back of my mind says this is probably all backwash from the emotions originating in the French Revolution: They threw off their chains and rose up against the ruling classes, and they’re bloody well not going to serve anyone ever again, so if you’ve paid them to bring you a croissant and a coffee, then that’s what you’ll get, but the smile costs extra, and respect and a pleasant attitude are unfortunately not on the menu. Sir.

Of course it’s not always like this – there are plenty of pleasant people in Paris, in all walks of life, but they stand out all the more because you can’t take it for granted here. You never know if the staff in this particular establishment (shop, theatre, parking garage, restaurant, etc) is going to be pleasant until you’ve sat down and tried to order.

Another strange attribute is that, after treating any number of clients with a sort of sullen resentment, one of these unhappy service industry employees will meet up after work with a few friends, and metamorphose into an absolutely charming individual. I’ve seen this happen when drinking in a bar patronised by some of the people who work in the local businesses. You can barely recognise them when they’re laughing and smiling, but they are the person who gave you that sneer as you mentioned that you’d actually ordered a chicken salad, not a poached herring.

My purpose isn’t really to criticise the average French person working in Paris, since that’s far too much of a generalisation, but more to illustrate the massive contrast between a less mature economy in a warm climate, like Cape Town, where everyone is grateful for the jobs they have and proud of the level of service they provide, and … what?  Colder north-European countries? Developed nations where people believe they deserve better? I’m not even sure what the problem here is.

Let’s face it, South Africa’s got nothing on France. Not the buildings, nor the history, nor the art. South Africa has a bunch of problems at are very present in the form of shanty towns, electricity supply problems, chronically high unemployment, the legacy of many years of apartheid and the complexes it’s left the country and its people. France has small problems compared to this.

Perhaps it’s just the weather. Perhaps it’s that people here can’t abide having to “serve” someone, even if they’re paid to do it. Perhaps its because the French have grown so tolerant of shoddy service that they don’t even notice when the waiter drops the coffee on the table with a clatter and walks past your table seven times pointedly ignoring your attempts to get his attention. Perhaps I’m just in the wrong neighbourhood, and the huge number of tourists has poisoned attitude of staff in the more popular cafés and bars. Perhaps it’s the recession. It certainly happens less often than I think, but I’m so surprised every time I experience it that I feel like it happens all the time, and it does happen with a fair regularity.

I hope that spring brings a renewed sense of Parisian class and style to the city, because Paris doesn’t feel like the city of love at the moment!

An indirect route...

How big is Africa? Big enough that if you have to fly from Europe to the southern tip of the African continent, you’d rather do it in a straight line.

No such luck for me. I’m going in a few days via Dubai, and since I’m doing it on my own dime, and the seats are already overbooked due to the Indaba  mining congress happening in Cape Town, I’m going in economy. Hurray for me, 16 hours in the air and 22 hours total travel time in a space that would be considered inhumane for the transport of, say, a goat.

I was looking at the map generated on the left from Google Maps, and it struck me that Mali looked like it was about the size of France. I’ve lived in Mali, and it’s more than double the size of France, so I was a little curious.  I also remembered a fantastic graphic that illustrates the true size of the African Continent in all its glory, which I now share with you.

Africa's bigger than you think!

Africa, you see, is huge. Yes, yes, you already know that, but did you realise just how huge it is?

Did you know that you can fit China, North America and Europe into Africa and still have room left over?

To get it into your head in a more visual way, take a look at the illustration to the right. If you click on it you’ll get a bigger version, or you can find the original here. As an aside, I found this illustration a few months ago via one of my favourite websites (it caters to my geekier instincts), Information Is Beautiful.

So when you see France, or the USA, drawn the same size as Africa, remember the enormous biases that exist in map-drawing before you let your subconscious come to an automatic conclusion based on the assumed authority of the map you’re looking at.  It’s just wrong.

All this to say that crossing Africa is like crossing the height and breadth of America and China – not figuratively, but quite literally – and that therefore it would have been somewhat more enjoyable to do it in a straight line rather than via another continent, especially once you take into account the not-good-enough-for-a-goat travel arrangements.

I’ll enjoy Cape Town, the weather should be pleasant and summery with lows in the 18 celsius and highs in the 31 celsius range, which beats the hell out of the sub-zero Parisian winter we’re enjoying here. There will be good seafood, copious amounts of wine, interesting conversation, bright mornings and late evenings, and all with a beautiful view of the ocean.

In fact, travel conditions set aside, it’s a real privilege to be able to go to places like this in the middle of winter.

Trees in the mid-winter

Once a year, a group of old school friends get together for a weekend of skiing in Austria, at the invitation of one of us who takes it upon himself to organise this very entertaining trip every year.

Apart from the benefit of seeing old friends, enjoying good food and conversation, and having the opportunity to do some sport, I’ve always found that going either to the ocean or to the mountains satisfies some deeply-seated need in the human psyche.  After two days of skiing in the freezing cold, with 360-degree views of the mountains and a blue sky from horizon to horizon, you feel refreshed in some hard-to-define way that goes beyond the mere fact that it’s ten Celsius below and your equipment isn’t up to the challenge.

Before I left, I was suffering from a variety of minor ailments. The sort of chronic pains that come and go when you’re desk-bound for most of your conscious life. I’d been taking it easy in the gym, concentrating on the upper body to spare various forms of trapped nerves and muscle pains in my legs.

Of course, surrounded by a bunch of type-A competitive nutcases like my friends, that wasn’t going to be good enough, and so soon enough we’re careening down a ski slope on old-style wooden sledges at speeds that are far from safe, throwing our weight around in an attempt to get these useless contraptions to corner. That’s when we weren’t testing the theory that, when equipped with skis, the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, irrespective of gradient and/or obstacles.

By all accounts, given the precursor injuries I had when I arrived, I should have left broken. In fact, the opposite happened.

When I woke up the second day, lying in bed, I was anticipating the discovery of a whole-body bruise when I attempted to get onto my feet. In fact, I felt fine. A little sore in a couple of overtaxed muscles, a little bruised around the ankles, but all of the muscle pains that had plagued me for the last few weeks were gone.

I went skiing with a skip in my step (no mean feat in ski shoes) and renewed my risk-taking behaviour with aplomb.

Aside from the physical benefits, I think that there’s a simple “spiritual” benefit to being in the open air, amidst such vast scenery. The mountains encircle you with a view that cannot be taken for granted, no matter how jaded you might feel, and the cold makes the air crisp and clear so you can see for miles.

The cold also increases your energy requirements, which goes a long way to compensating for the less-than-ideal diet of raclette, fondue and fries that we enjoyed. In fact, apparently, doing extreme sport in the extreme cold can have a remarkable impact on calorie consumption, as referenced in this interesting website, among others. While personal observations over a two-day period are hardly statistically significant, I can certainly confirm that I felt like I was using up a lot more energy than I normally would, bombing down slopes in the cold for several hours a day.

Is this where you want to be?

The train stops in the tunnel on the way to work, chipping away another moment of your life that is lost forever. Five minutes later, an announcement telling you there’s a problem crackles over the speakers. Several people sigh as though that was disappointing. As though they hadn’t figured out that there was a problem all on their own. The smell of your fellow passengers is almost stronger than the stale smell of overused train carriage. It’s hot, even though it’s winter, and a single trickle of sweat can be felt, making its way down your spine. In a moment, your shirt will begin to stick to your chest. The girl on the other side of the carriage looks like she might be about to throw up. Sadly, all this brings to mind is the length of the subsequent delay as the system grinds to a halt because of a sick passenger. You turn up the volume on your MP3 player. Anything to pretend you’re somewhere else.

Is this where you want to be?You may be fortunate, perhaps you don’t work in an office, but you’ll have your own frustrations that illustrate the reality of being in the same place every day.

We’re told to avoid routine to stay young, but we’re subconsciously seeking it out all the time. Avoiding routine involves going against our own nature, and somehow overcoming a world that has conspired to make it almost impossible.

What are you going to do? Take the train to work one day, the bicycle the next? Sleep in a different place every three days? Maybe camp out in Hyde Park? Try a new restaurant, maybe with a new friend?

While some tactics may bring short term variety, they only provide the illusion that you’ve broken free of the routine, because tomorrow you’ll be getting up at approximately the same time to go to the same place and do the same job. On the way, the train will stop in a tunnel, and another moment of your life will disappear without so much as a complimentary flushing sound.

Travel is a cure. Maybe not the cure, but it certainly allows you to spend a few days or weeks doing something that is so completely alien that routine has absolutely no way of showing up. You may find yourself a little unhappy to return, but if you start planning your next trip immediately, you can make the routine enjoyable, because it serves a purpose. It allows you to save up to prepare for the next trip. And when you find yourself in a bar for the hundredth time with the same friends, you’ll be the one with something new to talk about.

So I travel. Because it sets me free.

A lion in the Forbidden City

It’s freezing cold in the Hall of Heavenly Purity. How the emperors managed to maintain their dignity in the middle of winter in these huge open spaces I have no idea.

After wandering around the Imperial Palace in Beijing for a couple of hours (and I’ve barely seen half of it), I’m finding that the spectacular visual feast is more than just a photo opportunity – it’s good food for introspection.

Standing in a place like this breaks the illusion that we are the lead character in our own little drama.  We’re small actors in a cast of billions, and those of us who manage to get enough distance from our own little existence will be the only ones to really understand the story of our times.  It’s hard to see the whole stage when you’re constantly under the illusion that you’re at the center of it.

At university, I used to get quite frustrated with certain nation-bashing jokes. As a Belgian, I suffered stoically alongside the Irish as our respective nations served as the punchline to more than our fair share of jokes, but there was one particular joke that always annoyed me for it’s idiotic premise.

“Can you name 10 famous Belgians?”

Well actually I can, you won’t have heard of most of them. This doesn’t tell you nearly as much about Belgium as it does about your education. As an example, and without resorting to the Internet, can you name 10 famous Greeks?

I’ll get you started: Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras. There. Only 7 to go. So can you do it? Of all the nations in the world, surely the Greeks, with their massive contribution to philosophy, mathematics and astronomy, rank highly enough in your esteem for you to remember 10 notable notables?

If not the Greeks, what chance has Romania? Turkey? Portugal?

The point is that we’re in a little bubble, the limits of which stop at our borders, and our perception of the cultural diversity and richness to be found within any single other country is not usually much more than a hazy impression, even when we think we know quite a bit.

If I had to name 10 famous Chinese people I would fail. But standing here in the bitter cold of the Chinese winter (-8 celsius, in case you were wondering), I am reminded of that joke, and what I used to think when I heard it.

I have never considered China lacking in history or achievements. In fact, I almost certainly know more about it than most of my peers, having had the good fortune to travel here and work with the Chinese from time to time. But I remain sadly ignorant of the history and richness of this culture, even if I am dimly aware that it must be there to be discovered, if only I would make the effort.

As my toes freeze, my electronic guide whispers the history of these remarkable buildings into my ear, listing the names of emperors who imbued this country with wonder and inspired worship and adulation from its citizens for centuries, and the unfamiliar syllables slip from my memory like water, as quickly as they are heard.

I suppose it comes down to this: No matter how small we know the world has become and how close we are to understanding it, we remain the product of our respective villages, with nothing more than an academic appreciation for the richness of things foreign to us. We see the wonders of the rest of the world through a pane of glass, without a proper understanding of the cultural heritage that comes with their past or, for that matter, their present.

I think of that picture every tourist takes in the Louvre in Paris, standing in front of the Mona Lisa. Ask them what it was like and they’ll tell you it was smaller than they thought. What a poor answer when you’ve been to see one of the most important works of art ever painted. They probably can’t tell you much about it, what it represents, why it’s important. They can probably tell you how often it’s been stolen, they’ll describe the big protective display case in loving detail. The painting itself? Well it’s a woman smiling, isn’t it?

Standing here surrounded by the ghosts of emperors, princes, concubines and supplicants, I can’t help but want to break through the tourist’s glass window and walk away with something more than some pictures and an academic knowledge of a few buildings. There’s so much more here than that.

It’s hard, though. Ask anyone to explain their culture and you get a collection of biased anecdotes wrapped up in a few facts and oversimplified into a barely comprehensible soundbite. In other words, exactly what you’re trying to avoid. The same problem exists everywhere. You can’t encapsulate culture and no one perspective is the right one. It takes immersion.

Is there no solution? Must we be either ignorant or make it our life’s work to understand the world so as to have a claim to an open mind and an understanding of the diversity that surrounds us?

Of course there’s are other, intermediate options, and we mustn’t confuse knowledge (as received at school) with understanding.

I’ve travelled more than most, and clichéd though it sounds, I’m learning how little I know, and it’s more enlightening than it sounds. Like discovering how big the garden is.

Every time I find myself in an interesting culture I may have had some notions about, I come to the realisation that I know less than I thought I did a little quicker than the time before. I’m also less prone to pretend to be the authority on such things, like that friend who always says, “Actually, this is why they’re like that…” and follow it up with a reasonable-sounding factoid or anecdote that’s either wrong or less than a tiny fraction of the knowledge necessary for a real understanding. That’s just camouflaging or denying your own ignorance.

I like to think I’m progressing in the right direction. To acknowledge that you don’t know something is to open yourself up to learning it. To claim to know already is to shut yourself off from a different understanding, so I listen, and in the contradictions between all of the stories and explanations and interpretations, I build my own understanding of the corners of the world where I spend enough time to claim a small amount of familiarity. Each understanding is frail, and I’m happy to reconsider it if I get a new point of view to add to the whole.

I’m not even close to an understanding of the culture when it comes to China, but I have seen the mountain, and the summit looks like it has a view worth the climb.

Note: This post took a long time to edit, was published on January 16, but was backdated to January 6th, when the first draft was typed with very cold fingers into an iPhone

Note : This comment is temporary : MP4GQMRPQBCM

No more alcohol

It’s quite likely that my twisted mind decides on this course of action in December so as to jettison guilt as I contemplate the third massive meal in as many days, and the several that are to come between the middle of the month and the beginning of January.

Having done this several times, I highly recommend it. A month is a perfectly achievable target for giving up alcohol, and although I am not fanatical about the health benefits of going teetotal, but there is a difference between not drinking between two weekends, and not drinking for 30 days.  You feel it when you fall asleep and when you get up in the morning, and it’s a good feeling to rediscover if you, like me, are a non-abusing but nevertheless frequent drinker.

As for the caffeine, well that’s a whole different story.  Kicking a heavy caffeine habit is much more painful than stopping the alcohol. Caffeine withdrawal is a painful and unpleasant experience that involves a nasty brand of headache that aspirin and paracetamol are impotent against, and as your body tries to remember how to function without the constant adrenal boost of induced dopamine malfunction, you can feel as though your ability to stay fully conscious is somewhat impaired.

This painful period lasts about a week, after which a very pleasant effect usually follows. The nervous jittery energy that comes with caffeine is replaced by a more wholesome form of energy, that feels more positive by nature, and that doesn’t give you that feeling that you’re walking a tightrope between an inability to keep functioning and a caffeine overdose.  That sense that this artificially-induced drive is going to cost something in the near future.

So I’m now almost two days into the abstinence period, and I’m happy to say that the headaches are most definitely there with a vengeance.  I’m not really missing the alcohol at all, although I keep noticing moments when I think that I would probably have taken a glass of wine with dinner, or gone for a drink with a friend, where I’ve had to consciously avoid the habit of just saying “yes”.

I also know the benefits of not overdoing the zeal, and since I know I’ll be seeing a group of good friends for our annual reunion on the weekend of the 22nd, I’ve given myself a 2-day pass in advance for that trip.

Over the month, by also taking care of what I eat and doing some exercise, I expect to lost about 4kg, fit better in all my shirts and generally feel like my body is back in shape by the beginning of February. Past experience tells me this is all very much possible. Not bad for a 31-day effort, and I can do it without using the word “detox”, or adopting a lifestyle based on crackpot nutritional theories with no scientific backing.

This morning I walked into work and bought a coffee as I always do, only to realise when I reached my desk that I couldn’t drink it.  Luckily there are plenty of people who have given up nothing at all, and at least one of them likes their coffee with milk and a sugar.