For Joe Watson, who relocated to Hong Kong from Atlanta for six years, not being able watch his home sports teams play on TV made him pine for life back home.
I stopped pining for normal life a while ago.
But none of it compares, he says, to the honky-tonk of Alan Jackson, whose tunes he strums on his acoustic guitar at night, pining for a life as far away as a passport will take him.
The Championship is competitive and compelling but you can forgive its managers for sometimes pining for a quieter life at this time of year.
Six days a week, migrants from Brazil's parched and impoverished northeast occupy the bottom rungs of Rio de Janeiro's social ladder, clinging to jobs as maids or doormen while pining for the simpler life they left behind.
Bored by the routines expected of the rich man's mistress she took to modelling for Schiaparelli and Hartnell, pining for the bohemian life while acknowledging that whatever society she fell into would always fall short of her expectations of it.
In its absence, goodness, intellect, beauty – and reason, too – are listless, useless phantoms pining for the blood of life.
The Sephardic Jews of North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean have spent centuries pining for the lost Jewish life not just of ancient Judea but of medieval Spain.
Of course, as you get a bit older you start pining for a more normal life where you can go out in the middle of the week, eat what you like and have a couple of glasses of wine, but you just can't do it.
The lyrics to many of the songs describe singer Gwen Stefani's pining for a more domestic life, contrasting that with her commitment to a music career.
I remember years ago, when I was still living in California, pining for the excitement and edgier life of New York.
