Time is on my side – 9th January 2018

January 10, 2018 ~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

I don’t exactly remember when Amy and I set our date to leave our place in Chatswood, Sydney. Probably around the beginning of 2017. We booked some tickets – one way for her and return for me, for the beginning of August.

We set about planning, packing and selling. It was a big decision, especially for Amy, as I was the main driver for the move to Thailand. She was initially reluctant when we had discussed it in previous years but by now she had come round to the idea, particularly with the increasing cost of living in Australia, especially Sydney.

Amy’s main complaint about returning to Thailand was having to deal with the culture there again. Whilst I could mostly avoid getting involved in situations that might prove to be annoying and petty, she would have to bear the brunt of it.

Amy was really born in the wrong country. She doesn’t know why she thinks the way she does, she wasn’t particularly exposed to Western thinking and culture but especially she since had moved to Australia she could immediately understand the benefits.

Thailand still suffers from a superstitious cultural history and there are many customs that must be observed by the locals, things that to outsiders seem quaint but significant. Because of reliance on superstition and luck there can be a lack of rules around things that we in the West might find important. This leads easily to a society of gossip, rumour, innuendo and, eventually, corruption. Amy is a practical person and has railed against this, mostly internally, all her life.

The plan was to ship our life over to Thailand and whilst Amy arranged the building of our house, I would return to Sydney, living in a cheap room, earning money until we decided we had enough to continue to the next stage. Over the years we have had many discussions and plans, changing periodically based on new information, savings and exchange rates. Amy buried herself in house design blogs and web resources as we planned a palace we couldn’t afford, but ending with what will hopefully turn into a long term home.

As our time to leave approached we had many parties and dinners as separate farewells to our friends. We managed to strike a deal with our real estate agent and some Thai friends, where they could move in in place of us and they would buy most of our furniture – this save us a great deal of effort and gave us a bit of extra cash into the bargain.

Just a couple of weeks before our flight I found out my job in Sydney would be relocated to Adelaide. This presented us with a choice we needed to decide on quickly. I could just go to Thailand and not return – and to allow for this possibility I quickly procured a one year spouse visa. Or, if I could wrangle it, relocate to Adelaide on my return to Australia and work a bit longer to give us a bit of fallback financially. Luckily my office agreed that this was a good deal for them too, although they don’t know about my plans to leave again just yet.

With that last minute decision, we packed the cats up, got a Thai courier to pick up the boxes of our lives and jumped on the plane.

Now it is five months later, our house is halfway built and it will be a couple more months before I get there – finally.

These five months have been both difficult and easy. From moment to moment our feelings can vary mightily and this is particularly heightened for me working shift work. Even at the best of times odd random thoughts pop into my head as I feel like I suffer from permanent jet lag. One day I can be full of energy and enthusiasm, the next depressed and sleepy, sometimes this can amplify to an hourly change. Dealing with the difficulties of maintaining a relationship during this period hasn’t been an issue as we know our situation is temporary and that every day we move closer towards a deadline, one which was made permanent last month when I booked my one way ticket out of here.

Amy and I talk two or three times and day and I usually have very little to report. She varies between boredom, particularly before the house was started and complete stress of having to make decisions about the house that she can’t be sure are exactly what we want. She calls me and asks for my opinion about everything but as I am not there in person it is very difficult for me to visualise precisely how one thing might effect another. I offer my opinion where I can and defer to her choices elsewhere. I’m very easy going with these things and just need a safe space to sleep and eat – everything else is a bonus. I know this puts a lot of pressure on Amy to be key decision maker but I’m happy for her to have everything exactly the way she wants it. She was also into this idea so much she contemplated building me a separate small shed where I could live and sleep by myself. A separate space would be fine but I would at least want it connected to the house so that I still felt that I belonged. This idea will have to wait anyway but we are already discussing potential renovations to extend the living room and add another bedroom if we ever fall into more money again.

The view — This is the view from our soon-to-be living room.

I realise that the idea of building a house is outside most people’s reach and in the UK or Australia it would be far outside of ours too. This was a key factor in our decision to move to Thailand. I had managed to save most of a big redundancy payout in 2013 that basically covered the cost to build a house in Thailand. Without having to work our asses off just to pay rent each week it would, hopefully, mean a more relaxing lifestyle and the possibility to travel through other close by South East Asian countries. Obviously our incomes would become comparative but with only facilities and minimal maintenance required we hope we’ll have enough spare cash to fill our liquor cabinet and provide open invitations to our friends from all over the world to come and visit and stay a while.

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I’m writing these updates at work. I’m on my second night shift tonight – usually my last shift but I’ll be working another two nights to cover someone else who is on leave. I’m already zonked tonight and could just ease back into reading the internet. I do do some work whilst I am here too but I’ll describe more about that another time.

I have more to add to the above too, and the myriad paths that lead to this point. I have a lot of things left to tell you.

Who are you and why am I here? Adelaide – 7th January 2018

January 7, 2018January 12, 2018 ~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

In the great British tradition of 2000AD, I’ll try and use song titles and lyrics for all post titles. The previous post was from the Subhumans and this one is from Void. I can hum them to you. I often think about this lyric when I’m in situations deserving of its use. One time I shouted it out whilst Huggy Bear were playing a show at the Joiners in Southampton, UK. It was a little unfair and the band were excellent. But they looked so angry and upset with everything that I began to question their screaming. Better to hand out lyric sheets and/or talk to the audience in between songs. Maybe they did this, I don’t recall. I was more than likely drunk too. It was quite common.

Through some twisting and plotting, I have found myself in Adelaide. I have been here for 4 months now, with about 10 weeks to go before I exit. It is unlikely that I will ever come back though I have grown accustomed to the quirks of this little city. Occasionally I even enjoy it here.

The precarious nature of IT work has led me here. I was re-employed by my old employer in Sydney, who will remain nameless, and I’m sure at some point soon will likely become nameless too. When I was re-hired I spent about a month doing nothing whilst accesses were being requested and approved. Soon after I quickly learned everything I needed to know, which was very little indeed. The pervading atmosphere in the office was overwhelmingly negative due to constant re-structuring of offices and jobs moving overseas to cheaper countries. I saw no reason to pursue any kind of career here again and, in fact when I had previously been retrenched from this company I had sworn off ever doing this type of work again. I became a barista soon after that – an immensely rewarding job and proof that after 18 years in one industry, there were still other options available to me. However, I got word of this new position and it made sense at the time to re-introduce myself to office life. I’m sure in many jobs that work is rewarding and innovative but those two adjectives had long left this company in everything except their promotional literature.

So it was, my wife Amy and I worked hard and saved money and made a plan to move to Chiang Rai in Thailand – her hometown. After having travelled extensively in Asia I have dreamed of living there and Chiang Rai is of a similar size to the small town I grew up in in England. It also felt like time to leave the fresh high-rises and high rising rents of Sydney, where we had considered starting our own business but thought that the risk was too much. It’s probable we would have been successful but the risk of failure would have meant losing everything. With the money we had saved, we could build a house and start some small simple business in Thailand. We even toyed with the idea of growing and selling our own fruit and vegetables and generally taking it easy. That was the dream! The simple life. Let’s aim for it anyway.

After a year or so the restructuring at the company meant the job I was employed to do was going to move to Adelaide. By this time we had worked out our plan of action and this sudden change threw a slight spanner in the works. In August 2017 we had planned to relocate Amy and everything we owned, including our 2 cats, back to Chiang Rai. I would continue working and saving as much as possible until it was deemed I had enough money to give us a comfortable cushion to survive on. Amy and the cats would live with her parents whilst she employed someone to build our house.

With the sudden announcement of the restructure I thought, fuck it, I might as well leave now too and head to Thailand too. Sometimes it’s better just to jump right in rather than think about things too much. The other possibility, and the one we ended up doing, was if there was a chance for me to relocate to Adelaide and continue earning some precious Aussie dollars. In the end, it was an easy sell. I got a two week holiday of sorts in Thailand before returning to Sydney and driving myself across the map to Adelaide.

The new plan was to work until the house was built and then pack up and go. Leaving Amy in Thailand wasn’t too much of an emotional problem until we had to say goodbye at the airport. Luckily, just as her lip was starting to tremble and a tear was forming in my eye, she forced herself to turn around and walk away. I felt honoured and relieved. To have such an impact on someone’s life is an honour. The relief is that we are usually pragmatic people and that we would continue to be, knowing that we could survive this temporary adjustment. So off I strode looking forward to reading books on the journey ‘home’. Unfortunately, or fortunately, as the case may be, as I have gotten older I have found it possible to sleep on aeroplanes and not much reading was done. Occasional pangs of grief struck me too. Although extremely used to being alone and having gained much self-confidence, I found myself unsure of myself for brief moments. The business of sorting things out soon distracted me further though. The ease of communication these days also helps significantly. Anyway, I was about to embark on an adventure.

After staying a couple of nights at a friend’s house I was taking my time driving across this part of Australia. Four days for what can be done in one if you push it. But what’s the hurry? I enjoyed the journey although there was little to see for much of the way. I guess that made it a little more special when there was something to see, such as a river or fields of flowering crops. I blasted the stereo as I blasted the car not always realising I was hitting 140 km/h on the long straight roads everywhere. I rarely needed a map as there were so few options for deviation. I stayed in a couple of provincial towns along the way and they would likely be the option we choose should we return to Australia later in life. Finally, I closed in on Adelaide.

I had never been to Adelaide before and hadn’t been given much idea of what to expect. I had been told that I would love it and that there was much less traffic than Sydney. That all sounded positive.

I had pre-booked a room at a caravan park near my new office. Although the company would have paid for it, I didn’t need any fancy hotel to stay in when I got here. The room was fine, though had no windows at all and just clean brick walls. The upside of this was that it encouraged me to find a shared place to live as quickly as possible. I headed to the office on the day after I arrived and got acquainted with my new work environment, which I quickly learned was the same as the old. In fact, I later discovered that this new place was even more dysfunctional than my old one. I was able to react positively to this though because I had nothing really invested. They (the company) needed me more than I needed them.

The work I do is shift based. Two days, then two nights, followed by four days off, which usually turns out to be 3 days off because the day after the last night shift is usually wandered through in a zombie-like daze. Sleep is erratic and can last for one hour to 18 hours and by the time you are recovered it’s back to work.

The difference between Sydney and Adelaide is significant. I was mystified to find shops closed in the evening and on Sundays or Mondays in Adelaide. The lack of decent coffee was also a struggle. Again, the situation actually benefits me well as I am trying to save as much money as possible and don’t want to be spending my time trying to make new acquaintances and using money that that can involve too. I’ll just sit here, go to work, read books and save money.

Unbelievably, I have stopped drinking for now too. Adding alcohol on top of shift work really messes you around so taking this opportunity to dry up for a while. This will definitely not last once I’m in Thailand, though I’m hoping to at least minimize the caffeine addiction as a balance.

I lay in bed slipping in and out of consciousness and thrill to marvellous ideas I have to write about here. Mostly forgotten by the time I am awake and sitting somewhere to write this.

Here we are in the New Age… – 7th January 2018

January 7, 2018March 24, 2024 ~ shaun tenzenmen ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a long time between drinks. Around 23 years or so. 1994 was a life-changing time and then life took over and now I’m looking at another transitional period.

Life changes daily though. It seems slow but every detail matters somewhat, and if you care to remember it.

Right now I’m sitting in an office, getting paid and doing very little work of reward. The kind that is emotionally unfulfilling. But right now, I’ll take the money, thank you very much.

Somehow, over time, you learn that working for ‘the man’, as opposed to working for yourself, is something that must be exploited to the full. I managed to get myself into a position at one point of not doing any work-related activities at my job and started doing my own hobbies in company time. Somehow I was also well paid for this. It was always slightly precarious and eventually, it came to an end. Then it happened again – and with the same company to boot. I do thank you, although I wish it could’ve been more rewarding for both of us, to our mutual benefits. Perhaps I feel guilty. I know I would sometimes get annoyed when I actually had work to do that was interrupting my personal time and that’s not a good place to be.

The more depressing it became, the more I strove to distraction. I ended up being very productive. I could never make that jump though, to make money from doing the things I enjoyed. I am envious of people who have been able to position themselves in this way. I’m lacking in artistic talent, not through want of trying. Often lacking in concentration, born on the cusp of distraction entertainment as I was. The advent of new technologies only makes this worse and now that even they have surpassed my knowledge and I am like the old man programming his first VCR with only a 3-button remote, I sometimes pine for those days again.

My nostalgia is aligned with depression. I was deeply unhappy for periods of time that I now reminisce. That depression was an artistic motivation, a driving force. The actions often more thrilling than the results.

Right now, I am biding time again. In this strange period of inertia, the feeling of anticipation is immense and I am highly conscious of the grass always being greener on the other side of the fence. Hence to take time enjoying the moment, the present, the now. I visualise vividly a relaxing future whilst aware of the constant need for ‘work’ whether in some paid variety or just the work of remaining alive and managing the mundanities of life. I hope to derive great pleasures from the digging of weeds or painting of walls but worry that I will start to ignore the dust that settled in the corners many years before.

Luckily I have an outside motivation, my wife, Amy. Could I do it without her? Probably, but without so much pleasure, enjoyment and fulfilment.

The bones of the tale are this. In 1994, I relocated from small-town England to small city Australia. Sydney and thereabouts. In 2018, I will relocate from small-city Australia to small-town Thailand. In 1994, I documented my time in transition. I have not looked over those diary entries since, but the intention is to add them here alongside current musings. Let’s see how they compare. Let’s see if I have really gained some wisdom in the intervening years.