My next trip

That's right, I've finally booked my next trip! Here are some Google-sourced images of my destination:

I'll be flying into Budapest and spending 2 weeks in Hungary this summer. I'll be flying solo (well, I'll be doing the rest of the trip on my own as well...), because most of the other people I know are either on a different budget, going somewhere else, or aren't interested for one reason or another. It would be nice to travel with someone else, but on the other hand travelling on my own will mean I can do what I want, when I want, how I want.

Fear of Death

No, this post isn't about how I'm afraid of getting old and dying and how I never want to die. It's about the fact that these days death is such a taboo subject. Sure, we all have relatives who die and we all know that accidents and natural disasters happen every day, killing hundreds or thousands of people. But our exposure to that death is very limited. When I look at my 'experience' of death, I realise that I have been extremely sheltered. I'm 21 years old and have never been to a funeral. Granted when I was living on the other side of the world to my grandparents, it wasn't exactly easy to ship the entire family back at a moments notice when someone died. But for your average kid who grows up say in a European country with his or her family around, the occasional family funeral is probably all they know about death.

I've been 'lucky' enough to have seen more than that while living overseas - from a body wrapped in cloth floating down the Ganges to a body burning in a funeral pyre to the dead man I once saw on a train station platform with flies all over him while on a school trip.

What I don't understand is why people have this fear of showing death. Obviously it's not pleasant, but there's no point in hiding from it. Looking at the two most recent natural disasters in the world - the cyclone in Burma and the earthquake in Sichuan - there are potentially anywhere between 100,000 and 150,000 people who have lost their lives within the space of merely a few hours. Sure, we hear about the numbers of dead and we see images of rescue operations, but does that actually give us a true picture of the reality of the situation? When it comes down to it, a number is just a number, and rescue operations, as important as they are, are only one aspect of it. I believe it was Stalin who said "a single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic". Not that I support his ideas, but he has a point. Consider this: what would affect you more, hearing that 50,000 people died in an earthquake, or seeing a picture of a single child killed by his school collapsing on him? Having lived in Asia for half my life and travelled through Sichuan and South-East Asia, I feel more connected to the disasters than your average European or American, who probably will just see the coverage on tv, say "that's terrible" and then go back to eating dinner.

I'm mentioning this because of some comments I saw here. People call the pictures offensive, but how can a picture portray anything but reality? They can be used to target certain emotions or to get a certain point across, but when it comes down to it, what you're seeing is real stuff folks. Personally I find the pictures compelling and well worth displaying.

It's definitely a cultural issue as well - in Western cultures I find people are far more sheltered from death. I have to say though that when it comes to that, I definitely side with the more Asian view, which although of course it varies from country to country, on the whole displays death but in a dignified and respectful manner.

The Changing of Seasons

The other day, during one of my (frequent) bored moments at work, I was looking at a calendar and I realised that I'm already more than halfway through my stay in Annecy. It's amazing how quickly the first few weeks and months can pass. Before you know it, you're already counting down the weeks to when you leave - whether it's in apprehension over the future or in anticipation of leaving, although it's usually the former rather than the latter.

In the first three months of my time here I've been pretty active - sensibly enough, since I'm living essentially in the middle of the Alps! In the first 12 weeks I've been skiing 12 times, most of the time with fantastic conditions - the season was great this year, with plenty of snow and sun. Now though with the air warming up a bit activities generally involve cycling, walking in the mountains and soaking up the sun on the edge of the lake bien sur! Yesterday I cycled around the Lac d'Annecy (40km) in 1 hour and 38 minutes, which is a new (personal) record. I'm hoping to get under 1 hour and 30 minutes by the time I leave. Last Saturday I also went for a walk on a mountain nearby called the Tournette, although we ended up turning around partway up after the second avalanche... we ended up climbing a lower altitude hill/mountain just next to it called the Col de la Forclaz. This was the view from the top:


Unfortunately work here hasn't improved - I have absolutely no interest in what I'm doing and don't understand half of it. Often my supervisor talks as if a) I've been with the company for years like him and know the organisation like the back of my hand and b) I've taken a course or studied the type of work I'm doing here, neither of which is true. I don't get along with my supervisor either, and my job is certainly one thing I won't miss when I leave. At least I now know not to accept a permanent job like this when I graduate!

Sadly that doesn't significantly narrow down the possibilities - I still have no idea what to do after university. I'm still struggling to see how I could ever settle down, but I often wonder if that wouldn't be the best thing for me. It's funny, when I was younger my parents always thought I would settle down and my sister would keep moving around, but now it looks like it's the opposite. My sister seems pretty happy where she is (and has been for 6 or 7 years now) and seems to have established a life and routine now from what I can tell. But I guess for me it will be a case of waiting for time to run out at the end of university next year, forcing me into taking a decision.

Yes I am alive, and commenting on the delusion of choice

So it's been ages since I posted on here. I've been busy with work, skiing, getting a social life here, etc. and just haven't been 'around' as much online as I used to be.

When I was younger I always thought and said that I'd settle down when I got older, and not live the expatriate life like I did as a child. I was fairly adamant about it and I didn't see why I would change my mind. And yet, somewhere in the last 5 years of my life, that opinion has changed. What I struggle to pinpoint is the reason for that change. I mean, lets face it, any TCK can see that there are advantages of living the 'normal' life and growing some roots. There's the stability, the chance to learn a culture in-depth and, given enough time, maybe even become a part of it. There's the fact that you can surround yourself with friends, who can eventually become very good and trusted friends. If you have a family after you settle down, you can raise your kids in a 'normal' setting. Even if it's not your 'home' country or city, it will be your childrens' home country or city, and that way you can avoid putting them through the same difficulties, struggles and issues that you had to go through.

On the other hand, if I were to do that, would I be throwing away the opportunity to build on the incredibly enriching experience I've experienced in the first 21 years of my life? Somehow I can't help but wonder, despite the price you pay as a TCK when you're growing up in terms of rootlessness, loneliness, lack of belonging etc., what the additional cost of leaving all of that behind would be? Because the thing is, what if all of that good stuff doesn't happen? Obviously if you're going to try to settle down, you have to really commit to it. If you throw the towel in after 4 or 5 years, you haven't really tried. But what if after 10 or 15 years it still just isn't working? If I haven't made the close friends I imagine everyone else who is settled in one place has, if I haven't adapted to the culture the way I thought I would, if I haven't found a girl who can understand me, if I don't like my job, if it turns out I've chosen the wrong place to settle... how do I choose a place to settle down in anyway? On what basis, what criteria? As I get closer to graduating, this question crops more and more often. Soon I'll have to find a job - but 'the world is my oyster' as they say. I have no reason to restrict my job search by any of the traditional boundaries, apart from language perhaps, and there isn't even always a clear line there either. There's no reason why I couldn't just get up one day and decide to go to the other side of the world and live there for a couple of years. It just seems like such a daunting task, that I don't even know where to start - I don't even have a continent to aim for - and as a result I'm getting nowhere on that front.

But I digress. These days, more and more, I feel like I want to continue living as an expatriate. I don't know if it's just become a habit now, or if it's a fear of the unknown (which a 'traditional' life is), or if it's the fear of not succeeding at settling down. If it doesn't work out, I'll have wasted a huge chunk of my life, and for what? And even if I do manage, who's to say it's the right decision? I could be happy, but what if I could've been happier? I guess maybe I'm just reluctant to let go of what has been such a large part of my life. Heck, what HAS been my life.

I think what I'm trying to say is that I don't see any reason why the answers I'm looking for are more likely to come up in 'normal' life than in the expatriate life. Maybe it's just the delusion of choice, but I seem to have lost the way of thinking where I figured that settling down was the way I wanted to live, and it's been replaced by a complete lack of direction and focus in my life, which has been translated by my brain into 'keep doing what you've been doing'. Whether or not that's the right attitude, I suppose only time will tell.

One week to go

In exactly one week and 8 hours I will be starting the first day of work at my new job. I'm getting a little nervous about it already, because I'm not really sure what to expect. I get the impression there will be quite a lot of translating from French to English, which suits me. I'm very comfortable switching from one to the other at a moments notice - probably because I'm used to my parents doing it at home, so I've grown up listening to it and doing it already myself. I also had a translation class a couple of semesters ago at university and always did very well in it, so I'm reasonably confident about that. It's just a new place, new people, new customs, new lots of things and who doesn't get butterflies about that? On top of that I'm a little vague on the exact details of the things I will have to do at work (I have a 'project' description, but my particular role isn't entirely clear...), which certainly doesn't help.

Since I'm not far from Annecy at the moment, I've already moved a lot of things into my studio there and I'm really happy with it. The rent's quite high (because of the location) - it's more than double what I was paying in Belgium - but on the other hand it's completely private (bathroom and kitchen as well), is well situated and is well laid out. I'm looking forward to living there, because I already know two people there and have a feeling I'm going to enjoy the work and the other people I will meet there, plus there are always company-subsidized skiing trips; certainly not something to be frowned upon!