Back in the Saddle

It’s Wednesday afternoon and I am seated at a desk in front of an open window. Jack Johnson is playing and I spend more time looking out at the view than I do at the work I am supposed to be editing.

The last few weeks have been rather calm, perhaps even a little dull, certainly nothing particularly blog worthy. Perhaps that’s why I have this smile on my face. What, after all, could be much better than a day of luxurious laziness in a wooden house that gets the breeze in the middle of a warm, tropical country?

I returned to Thailand and landed on January 12th. Everyone keeps asking how it felt to be back and it’s been a rather mixed bag. For one thing, it’s always difficult to leave the warm embrace of family, with our lively meals, good conversation and abundance of hugs. Usually this feeling is offset by the feeling of setting off towards the unknown, towards adventure. This time, however, I wasn’t exactly setting off towards the unknown. I’ve been living in Mae Sot for roughly two years now.

What is unknown, however, is what exactly I was going to do here anyway, another question I get asked quite frequently. I’m generally a woman with few plans. If I had them, in the past, they tended to be in four month blocks. Last year I managed to plan ahead for a whole year. I was rather proud of myself, until I felt the end of that year approaching and still had yet to make another plan.

I left Calgary just as a blizzard had begun rolling through. Overnight, the temperature dropped to –27 degrees celsius. By nighttime however, I had landed in Bangkok and the heat of the night (+27) was intense. It’s cold season here and at night I sleep with a blanket on, but I’m still getting used to the afternoons again. The heat makes me sleepy.

My first week back in Mae Sot was more difficult than I had thought. My old house was still occupied by the person who was subletting from me, so I continued to live out of a backpack in someone else’s home. The old friends I had were busy with work and often out of town, so I didn’t see much of them. The town was full of new people. I went out for dinner one night and only knew one other person at the table. It’s not because I went away; it’s just life in Mae Sot. If you don’t make an effort to get out and meet new people almost constantly, eventually you will find yourself alone. Everyone’s stay in Mae Sot is temporary. There is a leave date floating over everyone’s head and it’s just a matter of time before you have to say goodbye.

My days were full of errands and chores, like looking for a new mattress and getting the internet set up in my house. Eventually I moved back in and unpacked, decorating my walls with Hindu pictures and batik from Sri Lanka. I met with people, talked about work, tried to get work, tried to get a long term visa.

It’s strange to be in Mae Sot without work. Work is what brings people here. Nobody comes for any other reason. And here I was in Mae Sot, a foreigner without a job, a fish without fins. One of the first questions people here ask, often before even, "Where are you from?" is: "What do you do?" or alternatively, "Who are you working for?" It was quite fun to reply (at a party where I only knew 20% of the guests): "I’m unaffiliated."

If I were to print a business card for myself right now, I would be tempted for it to read: "Independent Operator." Because at the moment, I am operating. I’m unaffiliated, but I’m not unemployed. I have some well-paid part-time work and a small part-time contract at the moment. It would be nice, in the future, to continue to get such contracts. It’s certainly a lifestyle I am enjoying.

My part time work is with a company called Virtual Travel Guides, based out of Chiang Mai. I write short, low-grade travel guides for websites. Often the guides are being used as filler, to bulk up sites and increase their ratings on search engines like Google. There are currently about 20 of us working for the company, and it seems as if business is good and they will be expanding. I completed my first assignment last week, writing five short guides to Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bhutan and Bahrain. In case you’re wondering, I have never been to any of those countries and at no time will the company pay for me to travel anywhere. It’s all internet research and rewriting.

I haven’t done very much work for them yet, but the work I have done has been highly enjoyable. It’s a significant change of pace from working with refugees in a protracted conflict zone. It gets me writing, even if it isn’t the most quality work and I get to learn things about all kinds of places in the world. There are never too many hours of work a week, so I have plenty of time to take up other work and volunteer in the community, something that is very important to me.

The short term contract I have at the moment is to edit an English-language text book for an educational project involving refugees. Unit Three is sitting open beside the computer at the moment. I was just working on it when the urge to blog came over me.

This week I’ll also start working with the English Immersion Program again, as a part-time volunteer. The goal is to set up some kind of graduate program with targeted workplace trainings. I’m looking forward to working with lots of my old students on that.

With the exception of a couple of meetings once in a while, most of the work I have set up is based out of my home, which is why I have this desk set up in front of this window in my little wooden house that gets all the breeze. I can get up whenever I want, take coffee breaks whenever I want, and take a break to go for a jog whenever I want. Hopefully I have the self discipline to get all the work done by the time my employers want.

Still, it’s a pleasure to be in my pajamas at noon, listening to Cat Stevens and staring out the window with the breeze in my hair.