Home Again

Coming home has been lovely. Normally my return home from overseas adventures is a petulant concession to financial constraints, but this time I have been happy to return to my life of Western middle-class comfort, my family, and my lovely and long-suffering boy.

It has been, on the whole, a pretty good homecoming. I remember a conversation with my supervisor where she said she freaked out the first time she went into a supermarket when she returned from her first field trip. I figured I wouldn't have to worry about that - in Thailand I was able to reacquaint myself with tall buildings, shopping malls, obnoxious Westerners and air-conditioning. Also, although I liked to talk up how tough living in Nepal was, I really didn't have it all too bad there.

I was doing ok, until an adventure to Brunswick street for ice-cream last night. It was, for my jetlagged brain, to great a density of loud, drunk and vulgar 20-and-30-somethings. When we got to the supermarket I almost lost it when I saw there were no fewer than six (six!!) varieties of small tomatoes in plastic wrapping. We really are a stupid society to think that life is good because we can chose from six (six!!) different small tomatoes conveniently wrapped in plastic.

Hopefully as I get over the jetlag I'll become more immune to being back at home. There was a rather ominous present awaiting me - my bright yellow confirmation talk forms...