Last weekend, whiling away a few hours in one of those yuppie coffee franchises while my daughter and her school friends did whatever it is that pre-teens do at the mall, I got to thanking goodness that at least I didn't have to attend on others for a living, like shop assistants, security guards, drivers and others do. And that, unlike professional waiters on others' pleasure, I could at least divert myself with some pastime other than people-watching, like reading.

Then it started to occur to me how much of my life I've spent waiting for someone or something or another. Often, like those hapless characters Vladimir and Estragon in Samuel Becket's classic play Waiting for Godot, entirely in vain.

Like the night during my childhood on which, as I still vividly and painfully recall, I was so eagerly awaiting Christmas that I dreamed, in every delicious detail, that it was due to arrive next morning. Only to be confronted on awakening with the horrifying reality that it was a cold, wet Melbourne school day sometime in wintry July.

Despite such dire disappointments, however, subsequent experience has since convinced me that time spent awaiting pleasurable experiences is by no means wasted. In fact the anticipation often proves much more enjoyable than the actual longed-for events.

On the other hand, the agony of waiting for occurrences we dread, like dates with the dentist, meetings with unsatisfied employers or meaningful discussions with seriously displeased spouses, can be far more painful than the eventual encounters.

But most of my waiting has been neither in the sure expectation of pain or the uncertain promise of pleasure, but just plain waiting for something, anything, to happen. In other words, life so often seems to be a matter of, as a friend in the Australian Army once informed me was the unofficial soldier's motto: "Hurry up and wait."

Wait, as in us civilians' case, for coffee break, lunch time, the end of the workday, the arrival of Friday evening, the advent of the weekend. We wait, impatiently clutching our numbers, in the bank or the post office. We wait in queues at ATM machines, cash desks and movie box offices. We wait for red lights to change, and then for the drivers in front of us to rouse themselves from their dozing, SMSing or other distractions to get the message and move.

We wait with hopeful hearts, those of us hoping to hear from loved-ones, or with steadily sinking spirits if we happen to be freelancers, for the phone to ring or emails to arrive in our in-boxes. And if we try and diminish our frustration by surfing the net, we wait endlessly for sites to load or attachments to download via our snail-paced "high-speed" broadband service.

Some of us also spend a great deal of time waiting for people with whom we've made appointments. But that's our own fault for tolerating those, be they clients, colleagues, friends or family members, who are so ill-mannered, inconsiderate or incompetent as to be habitually late.

Life-long waiter

As a life-long waiter, due to a distaste for both being in a rush and giving gratuitous offense, I almost always arrive early. If possible very early indeed, and equipped with something to read. So I have plenty of time to relax, have a coffee and a smoke and generally enjoy my self-imposed wait. So much so, at times, that when the person I've arranged to meet is late, I start to hope they're not coming at all so I can go on enjoying my solitude.

However, while it can be enjoyable to wait for people who turn up late or not at all, it's not so much fun waiting, as I do most nights of my life, for sleep to come. As all my fellow insomniacs out there will attest, there are few more desperate feelings than to be utterly dog-tired, having exhausted alternative pastimes like reading, watching movies or staring at whatever's on all-night TV.

And if my choice of wee-hours viewing happens to be BBC World, as it so often is, instead of soothing me into sleep it only serves to reawaken me to all the events that I'm impatiently awaiting around the globe.

In the US, for example, I'm counting the days until Bush along with Cheney and the rest of the gang of neo-con bullies, crooks and incompetents finally reach the end of their term in office. In the UK and Australia I can't wait for the Blair and Howard governments to face their fates at the next general elections.

In the Middle East, I'm still hoping for a sign any sign that the dozen or so nations involved in that mess of oil, blood and fanaticism can start managing their affairs in some constructive, civilised fashion.

And then, of course, there's Africa, where I'm not so much waiting for the first piece of major good news since Nelson Mandela's defeat of apartheid, as wondering if there will ever be any, given the dire situations in Sudan, the Congo, Eritrea, Chad, Nigeria, Zimbabwe and who knows where else.

Closer to home, I've been looking forward most of my life to the generals in Burma getting their come-uppance, for the Kim dynasty in North Korea to implode, and for the Philippines and Indonesia to finally overthrow their post-colonial oppressors. But despite the triumph of people power over Marcos and the ousting of Suharto, these two hapless nations still seem as hopeless as ever.

As do my long-held ambitions to see Singapore's PAP succumb to an excess of arrogance and hubris, and the sheer rottenness of Malaysia's Barisan Nasional to result in its collapse.

After so many years of yearning in vain for these happy events, I have to confess I'm not holding my breath. But I console myself that I can try and help hurry things along by getting active instead of passive, and plugging-on with a pastime just one letter removed from waiting: writing.