Postcard from CDG
It's a long ride home, via another gig in Utah. Though, from Dubai to Salt Lake City is not that big a stretch: multiple wives, funny underwear, difficult to buy alcohol. Basically, they're the same place with a 90-degree weather difference.
I'm waiting on the final steps for the overseas job--my boss has made the offer, I've provisionally accepted, we're waiting for his client's contract to finalize. Fingers crossed, but if it comes through, I'll be trading a 30% pay cut for guaranteed work for 6 months, apartment provided, and the income is tax-free in the country of work. My hope is that the pay cut will encourage me to sell more writing. And the schedule, while still not bankers' hours, would provide a lot more stability for a writing routine.
Bangkok was interesting. I'm not sure if I don't love Thailand, or if I don't love anywhere where I'm not traveling alone, or if I don't love anywhere where I'm traveling with my mother. I'm remembering, though, that everyone I know who is all "I LOOOOOOOVE Thailand!" is generally a hippy-dippy yoga-doing beach-loving rave-dancing pot-smoker, all of whom used the word "spiritual" to describe their Thailand experience. I love my yoga, but really, I just want to eat interesting food and ride motorcycle taxis. The last two days, the political protests exploded, and had I not been vacationing with my mother, that's where I would have been (and probably stayed longer). We walked through the demonstration, not quite knowing what it was, the day before it got violent. Most of traveling with my mother was awesome, and I'm at the age where being able to get her a ticket to a neat place and spend time with her feels like Badge of Adulthood. Next time I'll remember that my half-day writing in the coffeeshop while my mother explores on her own should be Day Five instead of Day Seven, and we'll all be happier.
You ever have a hat you really liked, even though it wasn't the most flattering hat ever, and it kind of lost its shape in the rain, and the color made you look washed-out in some lights, and some of your friends didn't really think it was a great hat but didn't want to be bitches in case you were really happy with it? And you didn't realize any of those things, until you lost it on a bus and were sad for awhile, but then you bought a new hat, and the new hat turned out to be so much more flattering and did things like express its hat-feelings in words and tell you how much it liked being your hat and how much it valued your head, and ask you what it could, as a hat, do for you, and even guess at things you liked, hat-wise, and give them to you with caring and thoughtfulness? So much so, in fact, that you started to feel like, shit, really? I spent two years wearing that awful hat? Well, at least it helped me recognize the much better quality range available in hats.
I have a new hat.
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I'm waiting on the final steps for the overseas job--my boss has made the offer, I've provisionally accepted, we're waiting for his client's contract to finalize. Fingers crossed, but if it comes through, I'll be trading a 30% pay cut for guaranteed work for 6 months, apartment provided, and the income is tax-free in the country of work. My hope is that the pay cut will encourage me to sell more writing. And the schedule, while still not bankers' hours, would provide a lot more stability for a writing routine.
Bangkok was interesting. I'm not sure if I don't love Thailand, or if I don't love anywhere where I'm not traveling alone, or if I don't love anywhere where I'm traveling with my mother. I'm remembering, though, that everyone I know who is all "I LOOOOOOOVE Thailand!" is generally a hippy-dippy yoga-doing beach-loving rave-dancing pot-smoker, all of whom used the word "spiritual" to describe their Thailand experience. I love my yoga, but really, I just want to eat interesting food and ride motorcycle taxis. The last two days, the political protests exploded, and had I not been vacationing with my mother, that's where I would have been (and probably stayed longer). We walked through the demonstration, not quite knowing what it was, the day before it got violent. Most of traveling with my mother was awesome, and I'm at the age where being able to get her a ticket to a neat place and spend time with her feels like Badge of Adulthood. Next time I'll remember that my half-day writing in the coffeeshop while my mother explores on her own should be Day Five instead of Day Seven, and we'll all be happier.
You ever have a hat you really liked, even though it wasn't the most flattering hat ever, and it kind of lost its shape in the rain, and the color made you look washed-out in some lights, and some of your friends didn't really think it was a great hat but didn't want to be bitches in case you were really happy with it? And you didn't realize any of those things, until you lost it on a bus and were sad for awhile, but then you bought a new hat, and the new hat turned out to be so much more flattering and did things like express its hat-feelings in words and tell you how much it liked being your hat and how much it valued your head, and ask you what it could, as a hat, do for you, and even guess at things you liked, hat-wise, and give them to you with caring and thoughtfulness? So much so, in fact, that you started to feel like, shit, really? I spent two years wearing that awful hat? Well, at least it helped me recognize the much better quality range available in hats.
I have a new hat.
___________________________________________________________