We were on one of our usual road-trips for work and we stopped by this town called Woodville. Now I’ve lived in New Zealand for nearly a decade but my perception of life is still distinctly different; ‘just get on with it’ does not always cut it, like I will not go to a wedding in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. And so a town derided as being hicksville is for me, actually charming and serene; of week-day afternoons walking down the empty main town-centre and stopping by at the cafe for coffee. I wouldn’t mind living in hicksville, in a ‘bucolic’ hovel filled with books (or an iPad filled with books), with a comfy bed, and an over-grown garden. In reality however, I cannot account for how I’ll survive- what to do for a job (maybe rely on the benefit system?) to pay for Internet (not sure if Woodville has fibre connection), for proper heating in winter and for food because I honestly have no idea on how to create and sustain a garden.

But that is the clear picture in my head coupled with a sense of relief that I probably wouldn’t have to worry about ‘just getting it on’ with what to wear to a wedding; I would have no need for fancy clothes nor score invites to weddings. I would just be this old Asian person shuffling about town with the same regularity as everything else.

Does that sound sad? I actually think of it as a possibility, an outcome and I neither fear nor dread it.

It could be worse- like a future you never anticipated and in which you’re too old and too fragile to cope with even the simplest things.