It was 21 months to the day, even to the hour actually, but on Saturday I touched down at Heathrow to end my VSO adventure. Sarah, Mike and I all took the same flight with Mike continuing on to Vancouver to clock up a rather unpleasant number of flying hours for one day's travel. That left Sarah and I to say our goodbyes, negotiate customs with all our dodgy DVDs and find our respective parents in the attending crowd before driving off in our different directions. We had a pretty good time on the flight, though things started badly when we didn't have any sound for the movies. Once they'd exhausted all the usual tricks to fix the problem the most senior cabin person switched off the system for 10 minutes, not just for our section but for the entire plane! And while a few people muttered about the interruption to their film we sipped our free champagne to compensate us for the inconvenience!

I'd like to say that my final week in Bangladesh was an emotional time full of difficult goodbyes but that's not really what happened. The people I wanted to say goodbye to mostly don't live in Dhaka so I'd done that the last time I'd seen them. That left a few expats but they were away on holiday etc. so I'd also done that the previous weekend. In the end, I spent the week finishing off a few documents for VSO, handing in any useful documents that other volunteers could benefit from, packing and repacking, and of course buying as many DVDs as I could find on my finely crafted list. Just for the record I ended up with over 100 films as well as the complete sets of Blackadder, Monty Python, Faulty Towers and a few seasons of Seinfeld and Frasier. Should help me fill the slower days this summer eh?

Now that I've been back a few days I can share a few thoughts about what it's like and what I've got planned for the immediate future. The weather aside (I was prepared though) it feels good to be back. A few things had occurred to me during the flight that I shared with my parents in the car home from Heathrow about how I'm likely to be for a week or 2 so I'll mention them here too. First of all, and following on from a recent entry, I'll probably be a tad more edgy or aggressive until I learn that I don't have to be so on my guard about my personal space or what people want from me. In actual fact I've already felt that slip away quite quickly but I don't expect to be a model of calm for a few weeks yet. Secondly, it's going to take a few weeks at least to define a clear future career path so I'll probably seem a little lost or unsure of things if you see what I mean. This is probably the biggest thing I've got to sort out as it unlocks so much else in terms of financial security and general independence, but I also want to get it right so am wary of rushing into a job before I'm sure it's what I want to do. Finally, not having lived in the UK for 11 years I don't really have a group of friends to slot into. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot more of the different friends I have in London and elsewhere, but not having any transport or living near them won't make it easy at first so I may have my moments of loneliness at least in the beginning.

As far as plans go I'll be spending my first week jumping through the different administrative hoops that come with moving back after many years abroad i.e. tax, national insurance and bank accounts as well as finalising a few financial matters with VSO. Once I feel that that's under control I'll sort out my CV and start contacting people about CSR as well as a few recruitments consultancies specialised in consultancy and internal change management roles. I'd prefer the former but am also realistic about needing a job and not having much CSR baggage to work with YET. I don't have any plans to take a summer holiday but 2 trips to Paris for long weekends are definitely on the cards. Apart from that I call upon you lot in the UK to add me to your list of potential social partners, and the sooner the better please! Oh and I also need to get better access to Sky Sports as there's an awful lot of good rugby coming up too...

This is really the last entry for this diary (though I may do something after 3-6 months to capture what happened next) so I want to end by saying a big thank you to all who supported me and kept in touch these past 2 years. I led a very easy life until Bangladesh, so much so that I couldn't really tell you of anything remotely tricky that happened to me before leaving. Now I can say that the 3 most difficult moments in my life all happened while with VSO and that I came out the other side a better person for it. During my VSO training someone told me "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger". I had no idea what that could possibly mean back then but I do now and that was good to learn. My challenge for the coming months and years is to keep what I've learnt about life in a developing country and development and appreciate the good life we have here without feeling negative about it all. I think I'd be well advised to let Bob Geldof talk about poverty and fair trade - it goes down better when you've got Bono and Pink Floyd chipping in.