I know, nearly three weeks. I have been down at Mum's (no access), I have been at offline hotels (common here, not what I have usually found overseas), and now I have moved into an apartment that is not yet online but a friend has lent me a wireless dongle.
So, mostly I am just reassuring you that I am still here, just been a little out of touch.
Firstly, living space. I have a new apartment, two bedrooms, fair sized living room, large entrance hall (as it would be called in SG) that contains office desk and dining table, toilet and laundry, and bathroom with both shower and a bath, oh, and a balcony. Fully furnished (including cutlery and crockery etc). All for a bit less than my tight little 2 bedroom HDB, but what do you expect? Rent is expensive in Singers, on par with Sydney (well, same size cities), and little old Adelaide is cheap. I am in the CBD, ten minutes walk to the North Terrace / King William Street corner - which is to say 80% of my clients.
Secondly, the other main living requirement. This one is sort of funny, I am having real difficulty with it. I used to earn about twelve thousand a month, I went to Singapore as a major life-changing event, I was expecting to earn good money (everyone says "come to Asia; earn twice as much, pay half as much tax") - but the best I was offered was four and a half thousand a month. I come back here to find the agencies trying to talk me into settling for about half the rate I got a year ago (something about some 'global financial crisis'...). I hesitate, and a good thing too - my private network then starts turning up some very interesting offers that are all pitched at more than I ever earned before.
This is really puzzling me. One of these is set to start this week. I have yet to settle the rate, but the initial discussion was about 30% up from what I got a year ago. I am expecting this to come down though, how far I don't yet know, but I think that the project will get a set budget and I will have to fit that. But we shall see. I am actually in a perceived position of power. My weakness is that I really need to have cash inflow soon, but I can wait a month or two before I am totally desperate. On the other hand; I am good at what I do, probably the best in Australia (honestly, I am not kidding you on that), and there is a near zero chance of the client being able to get anyone else to do what I can do in the timeframes required.
To me this is just a bit of database work. My contact in the client agency wants it done in three months, I think it will only take six weeks, most people are estimating that it would take six months. But I am used to this sort of thing. Been here before, seen this before.
Emotionally my life is void. I am beginning to really question my reality on this. Perhaps I need a major overhaul; dump the concept of 'love' and just go for 'sex'? Perhaps my focus on romance up to this point in my life has been a mirage, one that I should stop chasing. I am dealing with this issue for now by avoiding it; I give myself a year to focus on work and money, then stand back and reassess. I know that I want to get out of Australia - the 'culture' is killing me slowly. But I kind of like the comfortable level of income that I earn here - as shown by the fact that I have just taken nearly a year off to live (incomeless) in SG, and two years before that I finished a break of over half a year (during which time I also went overseas). I can handle taking six month international breaks every other year. I don't want to lose that level of lifestyle.
I can stay in Australia and live with a very good income but spiritually die, or I can move permanently overseas and apparently live at half the material level but feel alive. Unfortunately, I want both.
I am giving myself a year to figure this out.
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