For a long, long time I have not been back to the Netherlands. I was too busy with work, or for other reasons could not go. And I kept pushing it out, again and again. But this is now changing. I’m coming, next month.
Second half of August, I will be in Europe. Details are still to be worked out.
When I first started writing this blog, I called it ‘sixtysix’ and selected Movable Type as the platform on which to host it. When I resurrected the blog after a long time of silence, I renamed it ‘relocasian’ as described in an earlier post. So far, so good.
However, what I also decided to do was to move to a new platform. For sheer ease of use and widespread support, I moved all content over to a WordPress installation. Getting categories and entries into the database was easy, thanks to an importer plugin. But since then, I’ve been looking at a mountain of work.
See, I’ve written 300 posts on this site in the years I was writing it. And while this content is now all in the new database – it requires an article by article review. Links to images have been broken, links to external site are direct and not through the WordPress platform, and worst of all – paragraphs don’t look right in all cases. I don’t think there is a simple way around this. I think I’ll have to bite the bullet and simply go through the whole thing one by one. I’m sure you can imagine this is not something I’m looking forward to doing.
After the content is all straightened out, I’ll have to ‘theme’ the site to look nice. I’m using the default design for WordPress at the moment and I’d like the old blog design back. I’ll probably end up hiring someone to build a WordPress theme to look like my old site as I really can’t be bothered to build one myself.
It has been a while since I was back in the Netherlands. As I started writing this post, I got up to actually have a look at my passport and it turns out I got this passport after the last time I had been there, but I finally was able to work out that it today is exactly 30 months ago since I last felt Dutch soil under my shoes.
I keep thinking I’ll go there, but then keep thinking of reasons to postpone a trip. It’s not a cheap trip and although in the scheme of things something I perhaps should be doing more often, it just isn’t happening. At the moment I’m looking at a trip to London for work in Q1 of 2011, and then of course I will add on some time in Holland. But nothing has been booked yet.
We shall see when EVA Airways will welcome me on board again.
A question I get asked frequently by friends and family, both back in the Netherlands as well as here, is when I intend to move back to the Netherlands. It’s a question that in the beginning would surprise me, but it has been asked so many times that I now automatically answer back – “I won’t go back. Why would I?”
No place on earth is perfect. Living in Amsterdam has good sides and bad sides. And so does living in Bangkok. And the same applies to any other place on earth – city, beach, country side or in the middle of a forest, every location has advantages and disadvantages. So why am I so decided?
My life back in Amsterdam in 2005 and before was great. I was near my family, I had great friends, I loved my job, had a great place to live. There really was no logical reason to even consider leaving … and yet there was that feeling that I needed to move to Asia. And I decided to follow that feeling. It was scary and exciting …. and it was the best decision I’ve ever made.
My life now in Bangkok in 2010 is equally great. I’m far away from my family and friends in the Netherlands, and this can be hard at times. But I’ve got great friends here, I love my life and I love my job(s). I’ve got a great place to live. But contrary to back in 2005, there is no feeling that I need to move.
I’m not saying I will never leave Bangkok. But going back to live in Amsterdam is not very likely. At the moment, Bangkok feels like my home.
A large part of my life is my work. Work is more important to me than it is for most people. However, I never really wrote much on this site about work. It can be quite difficult to find the balance between what one can and can not write about on a blog, especially when in a management position like me. I expect I will write more about working in Asia in the future, mostly because I think it will be a topic a lot of people are interested in.
The last few years I worked as the COO for a ‘dot com’ company here in the region. It was a great opportunity, it kept me traveling to our different offices around Asia but based in Bangkok. It allowed me to get familiar with a lot of aspects of intercultural management. And it taught me a lot of things about setting up, growing and developing a business – in general, and in Asia specifically. It was great in a lot of ways, but also a disaster in other ways.
So, what do I currently do?
Well, 2009 was really a year of transformation for me. In the past I’ve worked in companies large and small, but when I left the aforementioned job I started a consulting company with 2 partners. I started it in Singapore, not Bangkok, and it has been a very interesting experience. Based out of Bangkok, but being exposed to the business climate of Singapore is like standing in between two worlds and getting the best and worst of both worlds all at the same time. In being a partner at this company, I’ve also been exposed to a number of entrepreneurs and have gotten involved in some other startup companies. I never thought that was for me, I always considered myself the kind of person who works best in a large organization with thousands of employees. I was so very wrong. I learned so much about myself as a person, what drives me and what excites me and I’ve concluded that being an entrepreneur and building your own business (or businesses) is the most exciting thing I can think of.
How ironic then, is that 2010 and also the next few years I’ve taken a step back and a less active role in this consulting business. My partners are carrying on, albeit also at a slightly lower gas mark. I’ll continue to dabble in some ‘things on the side’, which I think most of us have these days. Or at least the crowd that I tend to hang with. But my main focus from the beginning of 2010 has been on an entirely different role.
Towards the end of last year I was asked to become the General Manager of software development company here in Bangkok. The goal of this role was and is to turn the operation around and this was such a challenging proposition that I decided to take it. And so it is with great pleasure that I now spend my days leading a team of 130 professionals. It is an incredible job that I thoroughly enjoy doing. And I think that in 2010 I’ve developed my professional skills and capabilities more so than in any other year since I started working 15 years ago.
My latest interest, which in all honesty has been side tracked with me trying to get this site back up and running, is the world of online marketing and creation of passive income. Yes, I read The 4-Hour Workweek and this was the inspiration for that. Once I’ve got this site re-launched and on track, I’ll start looking into that a little bit more.
As I said, work is a big part of my life. I love what I do.
When I first decided to move to Asia, I expected to have a rest in Bangkok and then move on to Singapore or perhaps Hong Kong. That’s where I would work for 2 years, and I’d then jump from country to country every few years. And, so was the plan, after 10 years would pick one of those countries and settle there permanently. Isn’t it great, how things never work out as planned?
I never made it to Singapore. Of course I’ve been and I actually have a business there, but I never left Bangkok. I’m still here and I’m still loving it.
Bangkok is a great city to live. I’ve considered moving to another country, but every time I did I would struggle considering where I’d have a better life. And the fact of the matter is, it’s hard to beat life in Bangkok. Sure, it’s not a place for everyone. And I guess it really depends on what you’re looking for. But for me, Bangkok provides a lot of the things that I look.
Bangkok is in a great location on this planet. It’s very close to the equator and so the climate is very comfortable. It’s never cold here and although the heat can be tiring from time to time, living in ‘summer’ year-round has yet to get boring to me. It’s in the heart of Asia and flying anywhere within the region is quick and relatively affordable. Getting around the city is so easy, with a taxi or any of the other transportation options getting around town is a breeze. Traffic can be horrible, but this becomes a part of life and so rarely aggravates me anymore. Having a home in Bangkok really depends on your means and your desires. I’ve lived in a tiny little 1 bedroom on the outskirts of the city, and now live in a massive 150sqm condominium in the heart of town. I’ve never really been big on building a ‘home’ anywhere, and I think that works well in Bangkok. It’s easy to move from place to place and there is a vibrant renters market out here. Really creating a ‘home’ that you live in for a great many years is also possible, I have a number of friends who have. Food, of course, is great in Bangkok. There is a wide variety of foods available, ranging from $1 meals to extravagant dining experiences. The $1 meals tend to taste better. Cooking at home is not something I do very often, short of perhaps a bowl of pasta or eggs on the weekend. The city provides every level of convenience imagineable to mankind. The one requirement is money. As long as you have money (and it does not have to be a ridiculous amount), you’re okay in Bangkok. If you do not, it is a harsh place.
Bangkok has downsides as well. Of course there have been times where the city has exhausted me, or the difficulties of living in a culture different from my own for that matter. But generally speaking, I’d say Bangkok is a great location to live.
The plan originally was to be here for a few months and leave. I’ve been here for 4 years and a few months now and do not see myself leaving anytime soon. I consider this place my home (hah!) and would not want to be anywhere else.
This blog started out with a series of 5 emails I wrote to friends and family when I first visited Asia in April of 2005. The combination of my obsession for naming things with numbers and me owning the domain name thirtyone.com, lead to me naming the blog ‘sixtysix’ – +66 being the country code of Thailand.
Then came the realization that if was going to move from country to country, the name of the blog would keep changing. So I started looking at securing sixtysix.com, eightfivetwo.com (Hong Kong), etc. but crashed on the first one. Hm. So I needed a more sustainable name.
The name needed to reflect Asia and the fact that this blog is about living abroad, relocating as it were. Relocation and Asia. And that became Relocasian. Welcome.
Wait, I have a blog?
New Year’s Resolution #1: Write on my blog more often
Wishing you all a very healthy, inspiring, outstanding, amazing, thrilling, sizzling, interesting, spicey, lovely, outrageous, attractive, passionate, ravishing, luxurious, brilliant, refreshing, delightful, splendid, tempting, warm, abudant, heartwarming, appealing, transforming, rewarding, fun, beaming, adriant, invigorating, serene, better, relaxing, brimming, colourful, cool, dazzling, active, beautiful, precious, divine, dynamic, ecstatic, exquisite, fantasic, luscious, flourishing, successful, generous, lucky, glamorous, incredible and above all Happy New Year!
When i was in Holland earlier this year, Kim told me she might go to Malaysia for a conference and we agreed we would try to somehow meet up if she did.
The conference had been booked a long time ago and the plan was she would fly up to bangkok for 1 or 2 days. It turned out the conference was not in Kuala Lumpur (KL) but in some tropical resort on Borneo. Great, but that made it somewhat expensive to fly them up. At about 800 euro total, I figured 1 or 2 days was not a great return on investment as full AMS-BKK tickets are not much more expensive. So we decided to go for budget airlines (that can’t be trusted to make connecting flights) and meet in the middle, in Kuala Lumpur. For the Europeans out there, this is like somebody from Amsterdam and somebody from Greece meeting in Barcelona for a coffee.
And thats how this came about. I flew down from bangkok to Kuala Lumpur and she flew up from Kota Kinabalu. And we spent the afternoon together.
