Round The Bend

So I just finished re-reading "Round The Bend" by Nevil Shute.  It makes me realize a few things:

1. I have a very selective memory.  One of the main characters dies in the course of the book of Lukaemia.  How I managed to forget this from when I first read it as a late-teen, I'm not quite sure.  There was no way I could read this book and not place my father-in-law in the position of Shak Lin and think of him as a prohetic character loved by all.  It didn't make me sad, per-say, but it made me think a lot of Ben.  On many, many levels.  It's a book he would have enjoyed (and probably already had.)  It was a character that I could associate with him, not just due to a common illness, but to their shared manner and beliefs.  I guesing now that it will seem odd to my wife and sister-in-law that I was so insistant that this is a great book to read when it has this alarming similarity between the two men, all I can say was I was obviously drawn to read this book now for a reason.  I hope that if they read it, they will see the shared beauty in the book that I see.
2. I believe myself to be "round the bend" much the same as the Englishman, Tom Cutter, in this book.  I now feel like I've spent too much time abroad to be completely happy here.  I can be here for stints, but I'm feeling very, very uncomfortable around Europeans right now.  It feels extremely odd since I'm European, but there you go ... as I said,  "round the bend."  I am getting close to traveling again, either with my wife or on my own depending on her outlook in the near future.
3. "Sometimes you just have to finish things that you've started." This is a recurring theme in the book, and I guess I feel that way with my work.  Right now, I'm soooo swamped with work and I don't really want to be.  I was hoping by now to be working between 10 and 20 hours a week and instead I'm doing approximately 60 hours a week.  As an added benefit, I can't really concentrate well on my work so I'm only billing about half of the time I'm putting in ... that makes this long hours seem really worth it!  During the course of my mother-in-laws heart-attack and then losing a loved one, we dumped about half a years worth of savings and now we're trying to build the capital back up so we can travel more in the future so I guess putting in the long hours is what I should be doing.  Also, the project that my boss has me working on is such an interesting project that I'd like to see through to the end, I think I'm in it for the long haul.

Not much else to write.  Sorry it's been so long since the last post ... I've been ... let's say ... busy.