Another year comes to a close, and this is the 4th year running I’m in Kuala Lumpur — 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020\u2026 Wow. Maybe the biggest difference is that I’ve been in Malaysia for 306 days, thanks to the novel coronavirus. I have never spent this much time in Malaysia, in my entire life\u2026 I want to say KL, but I’ve managed to zip my way around to Kuantan (a lot), Penang, and Malacca. I can’t believe I flew back on February 29 2020 from Tokyo, and never got on a plane again! What a grounded globalist I’ve become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My travel stats are of course, pretty dismal. 39 days out of the country. Apparently I did a total of 13 trips, 92 days of travel (I don’t know if all my local trips are counted frankly), 60,766km, 17 cities, and still 7 countries :) I don’t even want to compare to what it was like in 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I ended that by saying, “I welcome 2020 with arms wide open.”. I’m not so sure how I feel about 2020. There is life beyond travel. COVID and our reaction to it, really worries me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n KL has some pretty good food. Kuantan has some pretty good people. While in KL, I visited a spin studio at least once per day. I did a total of 272 spin classes over 366 days! Not to forget there was 56 days of complete lockdown, and studios didn’t open till about maybe mid-June\u2026 Sure I did do some spin in London and Paris too, but the bulk of all this happened while I was here in KL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I became reasonably friendlier, I became vulnerable, and like every time you do that, you’re chances of happiness and getting hurt probably straddle 50:50. Madonna – The Power of Good-bye<\/a> can be apt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is not to say I didn’t enjoy 2020. Glass half full. I really did. Carpe diem. Simplicity is best. If you can follow KISS principles in engineering, why would you pour your entire thought process out and overwhelm the other party?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Anyway, I still look forward to 2021, with wide open arms, and while I really do think the COVID mess isn’t going away and things are going to be worse for many, I will still be focused on the most positive aspects of 2021. And I’ll work on being my old self again ;-)<\/p>\n\n\n\n I also ended the year with a haircut (number 1\/0.5 on the sides) on Monday 28 December 2020. Somewhat of an experiment (does CoQ10 help speed up hair growth?) but also somewhat of a reaction to saying goodbye to December 2020.<\/p>\nShare this:<\/h3>