After Everything, I Think I'm Ready to Slow Down

So the travel aspect of it all, since I last recorded a podcast, we have been, well, I've just checked a few statistics and it looks like we've pretty much been around 92% of the planet when it comes to miles or kilometers, for example.

So let me share a little bit.

The last time I think we will have spoke, Last time I sat and recorded this, we were probably in Kuala Lumpur or was I in Spain? I think I was in Spain.

All right, let's run through the timeline.

We left Malaysia.

We had spent close to 180 days out of the year in Malaysia for 2026.

And to make sure that I wasn't drifting into any kind of tax treaties, we left and flew to Istanbul.

And we had a stopover in Istanbul, a 24 hour period of travel and sitting in airports.

And then from Istanbul, we flew on to Spain where we would set up in Valencia.

We were offered the opportunity to do a house sit for somebody that we knew.

It was actually our old landlord from the UK, the house that Yvonne and I rented in Northampton.

We had reached out to her previously and mentioned that we were doing house sits and asked her actually for a reference.

That's where it started.

And she kindly provided that reference and then in return said, would you like to look after my house whilst I go on holiday? take care of my cats.

So Yvonne and I said, yeah, sure, why not? That sounds fun, gets us back to Europe.

Would give us an opportunity to catch up with some friends.

So we flew from Istanbul to Valencia, and then we stayed in an area called Oliva.

We were there for a month looking after her property and the cats and that was a really nice opportunity to just kind of settle in somebody's home, relax and enjoy the company of the cats around the property.

I'll tell you a little funny thing, that was my first experience of looking after cats that would go absolutely crazy over catnip.

The owner of the house grew catnip in the garden And I would peel a few little bits of it off and rub it around the carpet in the house and then watch the cats go absolutely nuts over it.

I've never really experienced that before.

I've never had a cat as a pet owner.

And it was kind of wild to sit down and watch them just go absolutely bananas.

Apparently, that's something they inherit.

So either they love it or they don't.