On the surface, no, life doesn't look that good. I'm unemployed, I'm not amazingly healthy and I'm, well, long-term single.

It's corny, I know, but I've found myself reading more self-help, positive-thinking type stuff recently, and while a lot of it is bunk, some isn't. I honestly can't remember when I found Kevin Eikenberry's blog from, but this post and the post he links to have been seeping through my mind recently. It's worth reading the whole post, and at least some of the replies, but it can be summed up as a simple thought: "I'm totally satisfied, I just want more."

I've found that trying to look at the world from that perspective is very useful and productive. A lot of the positive-thinking and goal-setting theories rely on verbalising - or usually, writing down - your thoughts and goals, in order to formalise them. I've done that sort of thing on and off, and it doesn't seem to help me all that much, but being able to keep a simple worldview in my head and make myself see my life through it has been pretty rewarding. Yes, there are certainly things in my life which need improvement - some are purely my responsibility, and some depend on circumstance - but overall, damn, it's good to be me, alive and here today.

I am, for now, living in Hong Kong, which is simply a great place to live. It's fun, it's lively, it's accessible, it's relatively cheap compared with London (whatever the cost-of-living surveys say), and there's just a lot of cool stuff going on. In the past week or two... I've been to a drum jam... I've spent an afternoon cycling in the New Territories... I've been to 3 parties... I've been to the cinema a couple of times... I've been to my regular pub quiz... I've had my photo in the events section of a local "what's on" magazine and had random people recognise me from it... I've eaten Chinese, American, Japanese and Chinese food again over a weekend... I've been out with small groups, large groups, by myself, and with just one other person... I've caught the ferry 'cross the harbour... I've sat on the waterfront, watching the boats, the building and the moonlight, eating chocolate chili and gingerbread ice-cream.

I am living at an exciting and - I think - positive time in human history. I'm personally on the cutting edge of modern technology, and the access we have nowadays to communications technology and travel is breathtaking. I don't think twice about calling the UK from my mobile phone (and in fact I have no idea, not the slightest clue, what my landline number is), yet I remember when I was young that making an international call was a major - and hugely expensive - event, and I remember being terrified by the charges on my first mobile phone contract. I live in Hong Kong... last month I went to Sydney... in the past year I've also been to the UK, to Spain, to Singapore, and to Sydney, yet it's really not that long since that would have been an impressive travel history for a lifetime, not a year. The mere idea of living in Hong Kong for a while, on a whim, would have felt outlandish to my parents at my age and would quite possibly have been unthinkable to my grandparents. There's bad stuff in the world, but it's far too easy to focus on it and miss the fact that technology has given us a more open and available world than there has even been before.

I'm unemployed, but I'm not starving - yet. There's nothing firm on the horizon, but there are always more leads, possibilities and contacts coming through, and it only needs one of them to pay off, really. People are still telling me that the market is a lot more open after Chinese New Year, which may or may not help me - I'm not sure - but it's still a positive thing to hear. I still don't want to have to leave Hong Kong because I couldn't make a living here, but if that happens, so be it - doors closing and opening, new adventures, and so on...

I'm not amazingly healthy, but I feel - and, I think, look - better now than I have for a while. I'm not going to go into the details here, but I'm eating better than I was, and gymming more, and it's starting to pay off - I've lost some weight, but obviously still have a long way to go, and particularly on certain parts of my body, I have noticeably better muscle definition.

As for the 'being single' issue, well, who knows what the future may hold? And that's all I'm saying on that.

So. Yes. Life could be better. It could also be worse, in so many ways that I can't even start thinking about it. Life is good, and it's getting better, and really, what more could you ask for?