Change is the only constant
I know nothing stays the same, but if you're willing to play the game, it will be coming around again - Carly Simon
I like having a weekly posting schedule here on Oblivious Witness. It keeps me accountable. As soon as I finish one post I start thinking about what I might write for the next. But doesn’t life have such a rude way of messing with one’s schedule?!
Let me tell you where I’m at right now…
Having finally decided that we’re definitely moving to Bali, we’ve started spinning the organisational wheels fast. We’ve enrolled the boys in a school that follows the same curriculum as their school here in Beijing, and we’ve contracted a relocation agent who’s put us in touch with a visa agent and an estate agent. The estate agent has found us a lovely house not far from the boys’ new school, and we’re about to sign a lease on it so we can walk straight in upon our arrival at the end of June. The visa agent is waiting for the lease to be signed so she can put the address for our shipment on our visa. But now the school has just told us that the boys’ enrolment is not, as I had imagined, a done deal, and there’s a question as to whether the school can accommodate them… So about the lease on the lovely house that we’re about to sign.. Argh!
Welcome to the joys of international moves with a family of four! Things were so different when I was Travelling Light!
Taking deep breaths right now… Everything always works out in the end, right? The Universe apparently has my back? If you have any other useful cliches please do send them my way!
In order not to leave a gaping hole in my posting schedule I’ve found a post from my old blog that reminds me that we’ve been in this situation before (and we’ll no doubt be in it again). I wrote this post when we were still living on the Swiss-French border, when we were about to move to Pakistan, and at around about the time we found out that we’d be adding the slightly complicating factor of a twin pregnancy into the mix. So at this point I hadn’t had kids and I hadn’t yet lived in Pakistan or Fiji or China… It’s rather endearing to look back on this version of myself now, and to think of how little I knew of what was to come!
I hope that by next Wednesday, when I’m due to post again, all the cards will have fallen in all the right places, and the boys will have acceptance letters for their school and we’ll have signed the lease on the lovely house and sent the shipping address to the visa agent… And there I go again, telling God my plans! Please wish me luck!
With love and travelling light
Michelle xxx
Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
Lao Tzu
A week ago today, Mike was smiling as he walked through the front door after a day in the office. He had his headphones in his ears.
Kissing him hello, I asked, “Are you smiling at me or did you hear something funny on a podcast?”
“Oh no,” he said, “I’m smiling at you.”
I looked at him. He raised an eyebrow slightly. I said, “You’ve been offered a job.”
He said, “Yep.”
I said, “Where?”
He said, “Islamabad.”
And so, off to Pakistan we shall go.
Mike’s too modest to enjoy hearing me repeat the following story but it’s one that I enjoy telling, so sorry, Mike, look away now.
The first time I introduced Mike to my colleagues in the job that I was doing when we met was at a broadcast exhibition I was working at in Las Vegas. My colleagues were my Suffolk surrogate family, so their opinions on things like my new man and the lifestyle choices that came along with him counted.
After dinner and a few drinks with Mike, my boss said that what he liked most about him was that while he could very easily hold his own in a conversation about culture and politics, he also gave the impression that he could wrestle a crocodile before breakfast. That’s my man. And such a man, while doing a fantastic job in Geneva and enjoying a lovely life of wine, freedom, food and frolicking in the hills on the French-Swiss border, really belongs out in the field. And while I don’t suppose there are many crocodiles in Islamabad, one doesn’t get much further afield than that, and I can already see his synapses firing in an altogether different way now that he’s contemplating being back out there.
And as for me… This is where I come into my own. This is where all the many goodbyes that I’ve ever said to the people that I love, and all the desire for new horizons, and all the optimistic anticipation of extraordinary adventures snowball together into something large and fast-moving enough to swallow up our beautiful life here and propel it onto another continent far, far away. (And I’m pretty good at packing boxes, too.)
The disadvantages of this lifestyle are manifold. I’m always away from my family. I constantly have to say goodbye to the amazing people who have become my friends. I never speak the language of the place that I call home. And by the time I’ve started to get to grips with how a place works, it’s time to move on to pastures less familiar.
But there are also massive advantages. And one of those is that it makes life very, very long.
I assume that most people have read Joseph Heller’s brilliant satirical novel, Catch-22? One of my favourite characters is Yossarian’s friend Dunbar, who is “working hard at increasing his life span… by cultivating boredom.”
Heller writes, “Dunbar loved shooting skeet because he hated every minute of it and the time passed so slowly. He had figured out that a single hour on the skeet-shooting range with people like Havermeyer and Appleby could be worth as much as eleven-times-seventeen years.”
His friend Clevinger argues, “Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it’s to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?”
“I do,” Dunbar told him.
“Why?” Clevinger asked.
“What else is there?”
Yes, Dunbar, that’s it! What else is there other than our one wild and precious life! I want to experience everything! And I want to make it last as long as possible!
But experience has taught me that Dunbar’s going about it all wrong.
For me life seems longest when I’m filling it with new places, extraordinary experiences, previously unimagined people and challenging new situations. Each year since I met Mike and moved to Jerusalem and then to Geneva and then to Ruffieux and then to Divonne has seemed to last at least three years… And I mean that in the nicest possible way! I want to stuff as many years as I possibly can into my years, and so far I’ve found no better way to do that than by living a life of movement and adventure. I may not know where I’m going to be living in two years from now, but I can be fairly confident that it’s going to be memorable.
One day when my lovely friend Helen came to visit Mike and I in the chateau that we happily inhabited in the French countryside, she said that the place really felt like home. Then we moved out of the chateau and into a bog-standard two-bedroom flat on the second floor of an ugly (but much more conveniently located) apartment building. And when Helen came to visit us here she said that this also feels like home. Her conclusion was that Mike and I have a home in one another.
Thankfully, our home is portable. And from October 1st it will be located in a suburb of Islamabad, Pakistan.
I hope Helen can visit us there too. And all the other beautiful people that I’ve met in France and Switzerland and Israel and Palestine, and those that I miss so much from my adopted homeland of England, and my native land of Australia. And anyone who might still remember me from back in the day in Japan, and whatever family I might still have in my ancestral homeland of Holland. And all the people that I’ve met along the way who’ve chosen new destinations, from Spain to New Zealand to Hong Kong, to make their own lives long and memorable.
Please come and stay. All the curries and rotis and rice you can eat are on me.
I agree with what Catriona has shared - what a contrast between Switzerland and Islamabad, but it does sound like you have taken a number of things in your stride so far.
But good luck with everything, I really hope that the cards fall into place quickly!
How exciting the move to Bali is happening Michelle. But Switzerland to Islamabad - what a contrast that transition must have been. They are very different worlds to move between. Would love to know more about how you navigated that transition...