Another year has gone by. And I have to admit, I kinda still cannot believe it. This has been the first whole year of my life where I have lived it entirely abroad. Before I came to England, I thought it was going to be different once I got here. A year and a half ago, during the summer of '14, I was sad. Well, maybe sad is not the word I am looking for, but I definitely was not happy with my life. I had just finished my undergraduate degree, had no job, and could not wait to move abroad. Move abroad, with the idea of having that new beginning, which everyone at some point during their lives end up craving for. Since I was way younger, I always thought that moving abroad would make my life so much simpler, happier, and overall for the better. And yet, here I am, eighteen months later, realising what a load of crap that was. I mean it is true, to a certain extent, I achieved big steps. I cannot deny that I moved forward in terms of career and academia, but when it comes to the rest of the stuff, my personal life ... things just got more complicated ... even just looking at the basics: laundry, cooking, shopping and cleaning ...
Still, I do not want to be a pessimist, and there is no denying that '15 has been one of the most diverse and crazy years of my life! I started the year in London, and then I travelled to three places to which I had never been at before, these being Ireland, Berlin and Milan. I fell so much in love with Ireland that I can't wait to go back, this time to Dublin, in a week's time! Berlin was undescribable. We had so much fun! To this day I am still unsure about what was best part of the holiday, cycling around the city during the day and seeing its beauty and history sculpted on the building façades, or the long hours of partying during the night inside the city's abandoned-factories-turned-into-clubs by the river. Urban Spree and Suicide Circus, without any doubt the two best clubs that I have ever been to! And the cherry on top of the travelling cake that was this year, was Milan. With everything ranging from Leonardo Da Vinci's manuscripts at the Biblioteca Ambrosiana to great food and wine, from chilling at Parco Sempione to a long adventure round of the streets of the city by night, it surely was a great time!
But that was not all ... two holiday trips back home to my beloved Malta; two space related conferences; these being the annual UKSEDS conference in Guildford and the UK Space Agency Conference in Liverpool; a random music festival in Oxfordshire; and in the meantime ... by some miracle, I managed to finish, and get a good result in, my Masters degree.
As if that was not enough, I once again uprooted my whole life and moved to a new city ... this time, back to the Midlands, to Birmingham. Its funny how whilst I am writing this post, I am wearing my old University of Nottingham hoodie ... and I can't believe how it's already been three years that I spent a semester over there. In three years I managed to move from Nottingham, back to Malta, then to Guildford and now its Birmingham's turn. And yet, I am on my way to the same place where I always go this time of year, London. London has always had that kind of grip on me. There's something captivating about it which I cannot describe. No matter where I go ... somehow I manage to find myself back to London. It is one of the most beautiful cities ever, and nothing ever seems to get boring over there!
I don't want to write a lot today, I just wanted to say a few words as an homage to 2015, since it has been such an eventful year of my life. To me, this was the year of space and also the year where I started really travelling. What a year ...
I guess now I'll just have to wait and see how 2016 is going to be ... bring it on universe, how bad can it be?!
Happy new year everyone !
Happy new year everyone !
