Complex Numbers

Revisited: "It's a Trappist!"

Well, this entry from July of 2020 is embarrassing: "It's a Trappist!" 

For starters, it wasn't the first time I'd used that title. In my defense, it's a truly awesome pun combined with a Star Wars reference joke, so I tend to use it a lot.

The entry itself was a response to a 30DBC prompt that went like: "If you won a free trip to any foreign country, all expenses paid in your own private jet and had the time to go (and there were no travel restrictions due to a global pandemic ), what is the first foreign country you would visit? Who would you bring with you? What would you spend your time doing?"

And I think we all know the answers to those questions as of 2024, but four years ago, things were a bit different.

Last year was my mostly-stay-at-home year. Not only did I want to conserve money for upcoming trips, but I wanted to lose weight so I wouldn't look like a typical American.

I was mostly successful at both.

I got even better at conserving money for upcoming trips because I could barely go anywhere for four years. The weight thing, I don't talk about.

The plan was to go to Scotland in May with a friend for the Islay festival.

That might still be my next venture. Obviously, it hasn't happened yet.

This shit will not be resolved by next year. So I doubt I'm going to Belgium or France. Or Scotland. Or the Netherlands. Or Belize. Or even travel in the US.

Oh, but I did end up doing a road trip in the US the following year. That did not end well (though it could have been a lot worse).

I'm prone to depression and this shit is not helping. Not the pandemic, not the travel restrictions caused by the pandemic, and certainly not prompts like this one. The only thing I have to look forward to these days is travel and death, and it looks like the latter is going to happen before the former.

See, this is why I'm a pessimist. Either I'm wrong, which makes me happy, or I'm right, which makes me happy. If I were an optimist, I could only be disappointed by the results.

Even if I somehow manage to stay alive and reasonably healthy (unlikely), my passport will probably expire before I get a chance to travel again. And I haven't even used it since I last renewed.

The major impetus behind planning a Europe trip this year is to use that damn passport before it expires.

But right now? In the utterly impossible scenario above? Belgium. With my friend, as I mentioned, and whoever else wants to go. Primarily, I'm interested in immersing myself, at least figuratively, in Belgian beer. Trappist ales, saisons, whatever. I can get some of them here -- I just had a nice couple of bottles of Delirium Nocturnum yesterday, and there's still one in my fridge along with a big bottle of Kwak -- but as with California and wine, they keep the really good stuff for themselves.

Coincidentally (or not), I have some Delirium Nocturnum in the fridge right now. It's very difficult to find Kwak here.

So the rest of that entry was just responding to the prompt. I'll be traveling alone, and also visiting France, so, not exactly what I had planned (which I don't mind), but dammit, at least it's (probably) going to happen and I can stop annoying everyone with "what I wanna do" posts.