Drown my Sorrows

I can't believe that it is Thursday already!

Where has the week gone?
Okay I was aware of Tuesday, I went to the cluster of temples at Tampines, I looked at all of them, but only the Guan Gong temple kindled any attraction. The two old guys there, as there are usually lay people at temples and rarely any priests - religion is so 'self service' in Singapore! Anyhow, the two old guys couldn't speak any English, as usual!, but they were friendly and as helpful as they could be and for the first time I got to pray at a Chinese temple. When I came back, after looking at the other temples, there was a girl there that could speak English and showed me how to pray properly Chinese style, which was very educational and just what I wanted.

Never the less...
it is Thursday and I will be voiding my work pass on Friday next week (end of the month, being the last month I can stay without finding work) so Guan Gong has one week only(!) to deliver.

I am so fed up with being disappointed by deities that if this one lets me down then I will stop paying them any mind and become some sort of esoteric rationalist, believing in the existence of the non-physical but deeming it to be meaningless. In my experience so far Gods never deliver on what they promise. Nature spirits deliver on what you ask of them, but they totally don't understand the constraints that such requests come packaged in for humans and so I end up getting what I specifically asked for, but in a manner or with attendant consequences that far outweigh the benefits of the gift. So I won't ever be doing that again.


My washing machine is not working, it gives a 'door open' alarm when the door is closed and will not proceed. It does the 'get everything wet' bit, so now I have a stack of towels that smell and will need to be re-washed, and perhaps just thrown out. I also have a stack of washing that needs to be done and will have to visit a laundromat. Contacted LG (of course, LG, you could see that coming couldn't you? Well, my landlady bought cheap shit, what can I say) and they took two and a half days to tell me to ring this other number and have my receipt when they come (because it is new). I have passed all of this on to the landlady and am still waiting for a reply, so I am expecting total time out of action of at least two weeks. When it is such a small machine, and I have only the contents of one suitcase, so I do two or three loads every week, the laundromat will be a necessity.

Incidentally, I will have to tell her mid/late next week that I haven't found work and will be heading back to Australia. That gives her the one months notice, and I will use the first week or two of June to clean up and clean out, then fly back in the second week. My bond being forfeit as the break fee. (I was insistent on getting a diplomatic clause in the lease agreement, but it was fixed to only the six month point and incurs a one month break fee.)

I have only let a couple of people in my 'business network' know that I will be returning, and that only yesterday, but I already have one possible deal in the process of being lined up. See how different it is from Singers? And it will pay four times what I was offered in SG if I can get it via my private company and don't have to go through an agency (which sometimes have to do for government contracts).


I have learnt from this experience though.
Not just that SG doesn't take my line of work seriously and so only pays less than half what I can get anywhere else on Earth. And not just that coming here expecting to be able to transfer my career to another country and (business) culture was erroneous and that I should have gotten the job lined up before I came here, or came here to start a business (with all of its attendant components prepared to go in advance). No, I have also had to face a number of flaws imbedded within my character - but I am still unsure of what to do about them. For example being so lackadaisical about things, trusting too much that things would work out, expecting things to be similar to what I am used to back in Oz. I really wish that I had gotten out and done more 'stuff' instead of focussing on job hunting so much (now that I know the job hunting was a total waste of time).

In a way I will be going 'home' bitter and disappointed. When I get the wherewithal lined up for the next try it will probably be Hong Kong that beckons, although I am starting to thing about Japan. Maybe I should learn some Japanese and see if I like it (the way I loved learning some Russian), then try a week or two there as a quick holiday, then if all goes well an extended stay of a couple of months (definitely limited to two months this time!), meanwhile looking at what the job scene is like and then try for a job there whilst I am still in Australia!

Who knows? I might still go the route of retiring to the Australian outback and growing my own food and while away my twilight years playing Unreal Tournament.

What's Thailand like?