If you are laboring in the context of unrequited ambition or some pent-up dream, Bali can be the perfect place to address the Project as you define it. Eating a nice meal in a warm climate for a couple of dollars is well-enjoyed as a mundane pleasure, but for some people, removing much of the pressing need for income and heavy clothing under which one has been been straining for a lifetime, has ontological ramifications. Glimpsing a less-constrained you in very different circumstances, even if only for a moment, hints at a larger, fuller life that you might otherwise have lived. It suggests a life that you might otherwise, being still alive, still live.
For me years ago, the word ‘expat’ meant being Arthur C. Clarke in Sri Lanka, Graham Greene or Hemingway in Cuba, or even Bogart in a Casablanca nightclub. I have my moments but I never feel as distinguished or well-dressed as any of those guys.
But when an old friend came to visit us in Bali recently and mentioned with just a hint of fraternal sarcasm, “Hey you’re an expat now”, it got me thinking. I bought my little base here in 2005 and have been in Bali nearly continuously since mid-2008. Had I passed some arbitrary time requirement? What does ‘expat’ mean in 2011?
A 21st century expat in Bali or elsewhere in Southeast Asia can enjoy the exoticism of his chosen location without many of the attendant inconveniences, deprivations or even dangers endured by those iconic figures from another time. OK, so call me soft. Still, talking to friends via free Google video chat or flying inexpensively to Singapore for a visa run and authentic masala dosa is something I wouldn’t swap for doing it the way they did 50+ years ago.
Being a Bali expat is an exercise in having it both ways, sometimes almost embarrassingly so. Having said that, the frustrations and negative aspects built into expatriate life in Bali keep me from getting too smug. Today I’ll just tell you about the good stuff, the 19 best things about being a Bali expat, according to me. In no particular order: [click to continue…]
You’ve decided there’s a stand to be made, some flag to be waved, a song to be sung on mountain tops at the top of your mortal lungs, boy.
All that stuff.
You huffed and you puffed and you made a calculated and arbitrary decision that a reasonable response to all you know was not satisfaction; that you would reject satisfaction even if your best friend thought you’d chucked your capacity for calm contentment with it; that you would drag your ass and dying wit and perspective around the whole world for some small surprise, an interesting death and a mirror that would show you a face you could look in the eye.
photo credit: h.koppdelaney
This post from ex-Google employee Jean Hsu on why she left Google caught my eye. She quit Google just two years out of college, without a firm plan but inspired by her husband, who’d also left the company two years previously to work on iPhone apps. Hsu is enthusiastic about her prospects even without a specific plan. I think she sees that new directions might never present themselves if she doesn’t leave the comfort of Google.
The food is undeniably delicious, and I really miss the heated toilet seats. In the end, what it came down to was that I felt too young to work at such a corporate job indefinitely. I felt that if I stayed, I would look back at this time years down the road, and wonder, what else could I have done?
I thought that for her it was less about rejecting Google than about embracing the unknown. What we think about life’s latent possibilities will play heavily into our assessment of her move. Is an endless horizon and its uncertainty dangerous, or full of promise? Don’t let anyone else answer that question for you…
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photo credit: Stoned59
“Keep on going. Burn! Go! Keep going or you’ll disappear. If you want to go, go! Go big. Try to do it. What I do next is important as anything I’ve ever done.” – Neil Young, explaining “It’s better to burn out than to fade away.”
…………. I never cared
Once I found out they never dared
To seize the world and shake it upside down
And every stinking bum should wear a crown
photo credit: Michael Markos
…with the ‘stinking bums’ in line for our crown-fittings.
photo credit: thejasp
Resting for a few days during an Indian trip a few years back, on the cliffs overlooking Varkala beach, I met Katrina, a 50-ish American expat. With Tom the Irishman I listened one day at sunset to her story while sipping fresh lime juice.
In LA, Orange County, she and her husband started from nothing and became quite successful in the custom auto parts business. They had a son and it was the American Dream. [click to continue…]
Routine eats away at the sort of perspective and resolve you need to step back and make a flying leap.
photo credit: kelsey_lovefusionphoto
