Two days to go...

It's the day before Christmas Eve and you're six years old... the two days leading up to Christmas Day seem to take forever. On the other hand, I can guarantee that the next 23rd December spent in England will see me wielding a half-done shopping list and wondering why the last two days before Christmas go by so quickly.
It's the same with exams. The 48 hours leading up to a horrendous test of useless knowledge seem to disappear in an instant, yet the same amount of time drags on to stupid proportions if you're waiting for the results to come out.

Now that there's less than two days until we're up in London, all packed and ready for take-off, the time seems to be doing both at once. Normally, when you want something to happen it usually takes ages, and when you're dreading something, it comes around far too soon. So maybe I've got it sussed - the time doesn't know whether to go quickly because I'm not ready to go yet, or to go slowly because I'm excited about seeing the monkeys, so it's trying to do both. I wonder what Doctor Who would make of it? Although I guess with the added complication of a tardis, he probably doesn't bother to think about it too much.

Infact, I probably shouldn't be pondering it either as I'm meant to be looking for a mosquito net...

Don't Panic!

"Don't panic, Captain Mainwaring!" as Corporal Jones would be shouting at this point. Thankfully I'm not trying to control the Home Guard in the 1940s, but preparing to go away for a year is still proving somewhat troublesome. Even with all the techno-gadgetry at hand to make things easier, or perhaps because of it, there still seems to be so much to do! Okay, so Darwin had to travel the hard way, but I'm betting the HMS Beagle didn't restrict him to a 15kg luggage allowance... and relying on sketches rather than photographs meant that recharging batteries in the jungle wasn't an issue! He probably wasn't all that bothered about whether or not his watch, if he had one, was waterproof, and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't be concerned about missing the next U2 tour (although I reckon he would have been a fan...). Of course, none of these things are all that important, and it's obviously preferable to hop onto a plane than spend five years at sea on a ship that I imagine would have been at best, reasonably comfortable and at worst, a nightmare. At the end of the day, I know where my passport is (something that couldn't be said earlier on in the week), I have the appropriate bits of paper to cross the borders and enough anti-malarial tablets to last the year.

I also have the added advantage that I know, roughly, how long my trip's going to be. A year's not that long at all really, and standing on Plymouth docks in 1832, I don't expect Mr Darwin had much of an idea about when he'd next see his friends. Actually, I don't suppose he knew that he'd end up publishing something to get him firmly etched in the history books either, but that's another matter!

Anyway, enough of this rubbish or else you won't be back to read the interesting bits (of which I hope there will be many!) I bought a lottery ticket yesterday, after being weakly drawn in by that 'It could be You' motto. In a way it is though, and I'm feeling really lucky to have the chance to visit a place I've dreamt of exploring since I was a toddler. If you were wondering, it wasn't me that won the lottery. Maybe next time!

Where am I going?

Borneo is the third largest island in the world and it's situated in the South China Sea. Borneo is divided into three regions; that of Brunei, the Indonesian provinces of Kalimantan and Malaysian Borneo. Malaysian Borneo is again divided into the states of Sarawak and Sabah. It is in Sabah's Danau Girang Valley that I'll be based for the coming twelve months.