When Little Simz asks this question, she ends up with a very different song to when Antony Szmierek asks this question. On balance, how I got to be where I am right now leans more to Antony’s go to work, then I did something stupid than Simz’s trust me, this music ting is my prophecy.
Apparently Louis Tomlinson also has a song with a similar title but I guess no one has ever heard it.
Anyhoo. The sequence of steps to how I got here is lengthily and thusly:
- Need vacation, ideally around Eastertime to make best use of Jebus holidays.
- Decide to tour the Baltic states, all the way up to the armpit of Finland-Sweden. (They probably don’t call it that).
- Suffer through the worst Berlin winter since moving there a decade ago.
- Decide I’ve had enough of cold, want warm.
- Decide to bring forward the plan to visit Taiwan from 2027 to 2026.
- Book flights on Etihad to Taipei via Abu Dhabi because I’m not made of direct-flight-on-two-months’-notice money.
- Make all sorts of plans! Rent a motorbike! Meet Masto friends! Eat stinky tofu (maybe)!
- Watch as a war breaks out in the Middle East.
- Curse as the inevitable email arrives to tell me that flight segment Abu Dhabi to Taipei is cancelled.
- Fume.
- Research alternative ways to Taiwan.
- Fume some more.
- Go to work, then do something stupid.
- Switch plans, book to Thailand via, uh, Dubai 🙈
- Masto friends: this is what I meant by rolling the dice 🎲🎲
- Make all sorts of plans! Fly to Laos! Rent a motorbike! Ride Vientiane to Pakse via two or three excursion loops!
- Watch as a continuing war in the Middle East causes fuel price shocks and shortages across the world, increasing the price of fuel in Laos by 50% in two weeks.
- Cogitate.
- Ruminate.
- Have a complete crisis of confidence and consider bailing on the whole Laos thing.
- Have a word with myself.
- Rent the damn motorbike and figure stuff out on the way.
So. That’s how I got here, here being a little guesthouse in a village called Thongnamy (anglicised), somewhere due east of Vientiane.
