It's a fine line - at some point you have to pull back or plunge over

It's coming basically towards the end of my working year. I have classes this week and then a further series of halfdays for two weeks and then it's Thailand or bust! I'm actually fairly exhausted. I think I've done this to myself emotionally and ever so physically as I have readjusted to doing the whole nights and weekends work thing.

Having moved countries several times now, it has been wildly surprising to learn that moving to a country most like my own would be the biggest culture shock of all. It's been a trying time but I'm at the point of being so over myself that I just have to move on from all this crap. Someone said to me recently that I almost never say 'no' to anyone. I hate it when people are insightful about me. Makes you feel as though you didn't build your wall quite high enough and that people are able to make out the patterns in the randomness. There's some truth to all this and it does bear thinking about. Perhaps from a sunchair somewhere in Phuket...

A friend here had laser correction surgery on her eyes today. I picked her up from the Eye Clinic to take her back to her apartment. She had protested this vehemently but honestly, what kind of wacko has a laser in their eye and then goes home by themselves when there are perfectly good alternatives. When she came out she was fine, all smiles and remarkably chatty. She revealed to me amid bursts of insane giggles that they had loaded her up with Valium for the trip home. Oh boy, I had NO idea that Valium did that to people. She was high as a kite. Or at least she was until the pain started to kick in. Let's face it, and get your best quotation marks ready, she had a "laser" in her eye. Poor thing, but by all reports that pain has now passed and she claims to be seeing fairly competently now.