30days30years

Last day

A friend of mine who I studied with in Canada many moons ago had a very high-flying father who was basically never home. She told me a story after Christmas the year I lived there about how her dad had flown in to see her for Christmas. I was like “Oh that’s nice of him”. She was like “Was it?” She went on to tell me that her father’s idea of visiting for Christmas was catching a cab in from the airport, meeting her out the front of her apartment, handing her an envelope with a couple of hundred bucks in it, kissing her on the cheek and saying, “Merry Chrismas. Gotta go” and headed straight back to the airport. She was devasted. She said she felt like she was doing a drug deal rather than spending qaulity time with a loved one. I would have been mad too. As the saying goes, the most precious gift you can give someone is your time. Someone should remind her father of that!

It popped into my head today when I met Daniel to get reimbursed for all the props I bought for Gutta på Skauen. We met in the food court of Oslo City, a big shopping mall in downtown Oslo, where Daniel proceeded to put out a wad of cash from his wallet. I was like, “lets just go sit down for a sec so they don’t think we’re doing a drug deal and I don’t get mugged as soon as you walk away!”

Unlike my friend, it was a wad of cash I was more than happy to receive and I didn’t have any time to spend chatting to Dan anyway. It’s off to Mongolia for me tomorrow and I have so many last minute things to do I’ll be lucky to get any sleep between now and tomorrow’s flight. After working for eight days straight (a big deal after not working solidly for five months) I could really just do with sitting back and relaxing with a beer. I guess that’s what airports are for right? Until tomorrow!