Travelling Through Time, I Lost Myself...

A new year. Time for a fresh start. Thank God! I kinda wish that you could actually feel it though. Like taking a shower and feeling clean right after. Looking back over the past six years that I have been here in the States blows my mind. So much has happened, the world I knew most of my life has changed so much since I have been here. From the most general issues like the socio-political climate, to more specific things in my world like the people in it and my dreams.

I was such a different person when I first came to the US. I left Bangkok around the end of June/beginning of July ’00. I spent a month is Switzerland learning German, funny thing is I actually met Ms. Ocean and her sister during this trip for the first time but the world had other plans and we weren't to be friends yet. I am not sure exactly why I went or even agreed to go considering I hated Switzerland so much back then. I guess I was at a point in my life where I felt like I needed to move on and continue progressing. Sound familiar? Well, as similar as it sounds there is a solid and pressing reason why I was feeling so antsy at that time. I was pulled out of college due to a health concern, the results showed that there was nothing wrong with me, which in turn resulted in my traveling around Thailand for the better part of the year. Not such a bad sentence I know, but understand that as great a place is, it is not what you thought it was without the people you enjoyed it with. It can also work in the other direction, you think a place is shitty until you lose the people you hang with and realize how shitty it really is...I guess I should point out that places can get better by losing the people you were with as well…ANYWAY…

So I traveled. I went to island after island, beach after beach, temple after temple, and got messed up night after night…Naturally I did not feel like I was going to amount to much continuing on the way I was. The pressure of knowing that my friends were going to continue in life without me also played a factor. So I left it all behind in pursuit of my future, it was inevitable anyway…

I was in Switzerland for a month…it seemed like the longest month of my life. By the end of it I was speaking decent German, another month and I would have gotten it down. Unfortunately, I lost all of it in the US despite going back to classes for a little bit. My first year in the US was very hollow and uneventful characterized by me watching a lot of TV, eating Tostitos and playing soccer with the Swiss Embassy team. I had missed the deadline for University applications for that semester and as it turns out, I missed the deadline for the next semester as well because I was an international student and I needed to apply earlier. Bollocks!

By the fall I was ready to start Uni again. 9/11 happened and the whole world changed overnight. Every international person’s life in the US just got a lot harder and more stressful. International students graduating would find it harder to find work, students coming in from abroad would find it more difficult to get into the country, and those going home would risk not being able to complete their degrees.

During my first week into Uni I instantly I found friends and got right into the thick of undergrad life. I met my Indonesian friends within a few weeks of the fall semester. In late September I ran into a girl from my high school in Bangkok, I remember it as clearly as if though it happened yesterday. I was walking down the hall in one of the Uni buildings and I heard someone call me by a name that no one else called me by in the US at that time (only in Bangkok). By the end of October I was in a relationship which would last the remainder of my college career and into my first year of the “really real” world. That encounter and the resulting relationship was my saving grace and there would be no way I would be where I am today had that not happened.

In the summer of 2002 I went on my first road trip. Earlier in the year I got my first car. It was a 1995 Ford Taurus station wagon, it was also known as the boat, the tug, or Betsy. (One time I pulled up to a '62 Eldorado and found out that Betsy was longer that it counting the fins!)That road trip brought me to NY, to North Carolina and Florida for the first time. I also was fortunate enough to have gone skydiving on a beautiful day over the Florida coast. It was my first long haul and I did all of the driving. I remember having to smoke cigarettes almost every 20mins just to stay awake. I downed Red Bulls and anything there was to keep me up. We camped out of the back of my Taurus wagon in a camping lot by the beach in the Outer Banks, NC. That was fun. We stayed with a friend and his family in Vero Beach, FL. There we were completely spoiled. From the east coast of FL we went across to the west coast where there were beautiful clear blue waters and white sands. After that it was back to DC.

My college years were not the typical crazy college years. Well, at some points they kind of were actually. I went here and I partied there and it was cool for a bit. My first job in the US was at a McDonald’s. By the time I was in college I got another job in a CD store and I loved it. It was a very carefree time for me back then, school, work three times a week at a music store and partying. I needed more cash and I wanted to work more hours for it but the CD store could not afford it. So I quit and jumped industries. I got a job as a sales associate at Louis Vuitton. I spent about a year and a half there before I made my move to Tiffany & Co. I left T & Co. at the beginning of my second semester of my senior year. I saved up as much cash as possible and I joined UBS Private Banking as an intern. In any case I graduated eventually, after a considerable amount of jumping through hoops. It kills me to think about how I transitioned from a very carefree and broke nature to a stressful and materialistic existence.

After I graduated I went through six months of unemployment. I never knew how bad unemployment and the stress of the whole job search process could be. It is such a spirit breaker to have to go through so much and be beat down and then get your hopes up again only to be dashed again. I was practically broken by the time I finally landed a job where I am now. It is very hard to get a company to sponsor you for a freakin’ visa!

Before my current occupation,t my first job out of colege was with an IT consulting company. I really did not want to be there but they were passing out visas like it was Halloween and I was running out of time, plus I needed the cash. I worked there for about four weeks, one of which was in NY. My buddy Mr. Lovin’ came to visit me one night and we went out on a Wednesday or something. We got completely trashed and spent too much money. We went to Scores, which is a strip club that Howard Stern always talks about. Quite frankly it was expensive and not worth it. I guess it is awesome if you are Howard Stern. The next day my friend was supposed to leave at around 8-ish and I was supposed to be at work by 7:30am. We woke up at 8 and I did not get to work until 8:30. It was bad because I was supposed to let people into the building and instead I walk into a quiet room full of people giving me a nasty look...and I smelled like a bar…anyway, I quit by the end of the week, especially when they informed me that the US had run out of visas. A month and a half later I found a company which took me in. For a moment everything was alright…

I was informed by my company that I could not be paid for the time my work permit expired to the time my visa took effect. That total time was 3 months. On top of which 1 ½ of those months had to be back home in Switzerland. By this time I had moved in to a new apartment with my ex-girlfriend and dog. All of this stress was topped off with a car crash that I got into. Just peachy.

So, once I finally got everything in line, all I have to do is get the visa, come back and Ta-Dah! You crossed the finish line! Apt, car, g-friend, dog, visa & a job. I leave to get the visa, three months later it hits me…after all of that…it hits me…where am I going with my life? I have moved so far away from who I was…am I ready to be this kind of person? I guess not.

Now, here I am.

So much has happened, so many faces come and go, so many places lived in and seen, so many memories made and forgotten and so much to look forward to. Was it the right decision to end it all? Does it matter at this point?

Time for a fresh start…a second chance....into the unknown we go...Happy New Year!