tsujasi: October 2008

Sunny Sydney

Quote of the year

"Greed can be infectious...makes you feel you are underachieving when you mix with wealthy money boys.

then you return to the real world, and find it has colour...." (R.Adam)

This was part of an email trail regarding the way I am feeling about being home in Sydney right now, after 4 yrs living away in the world of Finance.

My mate Rory just summed it up perfectly.

Sydney

Manly

Clara & Mosca in Sydney!

My first weeks back have been so busy with meeting friends and spending time with family. Every day and night has been spent reconnecting with people I haven't seen for years, its been brilliant.

I am really loving being back so far - visiting the familiar and learning of new places, like Balls Head National Park at twilight, the view of City is breathtaking, as is the bike ride to it!

Am really looking forward to getting back into my hobbies and enjoying springtime in sunny Sydney.

RTA Return to Australia

Blog 3 October 2008

The RTA Return to Australia.

I had spent the past year thinking seriously about returning to Sydney. The past 5yrs, although packed with change and the excitement of new, lacked the comfort and stability my home life had provided.

The frustration of a busy work life, averaging 60hrs a week, brought an end to a fragile social life and added to that an end to the frequent travelling accelerated to a tipping point to QUIT.

The good money I had earnt abroad made salaries in Australia seem ridiculously poor. I could have lots of toys, and travel widely, and enjoy the spoils that wealth brings. But beyond the initial spree, it became a druglike addiction to consumption. I was falling into a cycle of buying and consuming, but not really enjoying. Quantity not quality. I would buy DVDs I thought would be interesting to watch, but never watch them, and clothes I thought looked nice, but never had an opportunity to wear.

The search for happiness through credit card was pretty much hollow. What I missed was a home life. The TIME and place to enjoy my lapsed hobbies and interests. These had been pushed aside for new things, like a working life that I didn't care for, which brought money I didn't respect.

The life I chose abroad was nearly inverse to the one I had left behind. The break from the mold was welcome, but became tiring and ultimately meaningless. The search for that something else, was really a confirmation of what I always knew - the simple things in life are often the best. My closest friends and family, the clean earthy eucalyptus tinged air, the clean water from the tap, the bright birdsong in the trees, the sound of crashing waves at the beach, the big blue sky and brightness of the Sydney sun.

Most of my friends abroad are from Sydney or Australia, so the decision to return has been made with consultation with others, as well as friends who remained in Australia.
Most expats will cling onto the stubborn belief that life abroad is the best thing, the money, the living, the freedom, the adventure. And for most long timers this is definitely true. On amazing wages, they could reinvent themselves and live like royalty enjoying luxuries which could only be dreamt of back home. All these things a mundane ordinary life in narrow minded closed thinking suburbia Australia lacked. Why go back?

Though, there is the constant need by expats to try to re-invent home abroad. The chatter of home at dinner parties and the often wistfulness of shared homesickness, but a defiant understanding that the life abroad was more rewarding than the life left behind.

The restlessness of leaving Sydney in 2003 came about after a feeling that I was missing out on something out there in the big world. Things to see, places to visit, adventure to be had. This was coupled by the thought that nothing seemed to be changing much in the way lives around me were going. People were doing the same things we had always been doing. I had my close knit groups. Every weekend was a repeat of the one before it, and the conversations never really changed. People were getting married, having children, moving on, whilst I repeated the same old thing every week.

The first year I was in Scotland, and was terribly homesick. The plan was to take a year out, get any job which paid, and travel Europe. Go and see all those places I had read about in History books or watched on Television. I got hooked. One year wasn't enough. There were too many places to see!

The next few years were a mad rush to travel around Europe, trying to take it all in and enjoying it all. The wanderlust was insatiable, and whilst thoughts returned to home once in a while, life overseas was still preferable...