The Swan Song

It's all the same, only the names will change

Everyday it seems we're wasting away

Another place where the faces are so cold

I'd drive all night just to get back home

Sometimes I sleep, sometimes it's not for days

And the people I meet always go their separate ways

Sometimes you tell the day by the bottle that you drink

And times when you're alone all you do is think

(Bon Jovi 1986 - Album: Slippery when Wet, Song: Wanted Dead or Alive)

And so it goes this will be my last post on the travel chronology; I'm going home - for good. Unfortunately my term has ended prematurely after about 9 months, not the 12 - 15 that I had original planned to spend on the other side of the world. After 260 days, 70% of a year I departed Dili, Timor Leste on September 18, 2009 and home after a few days in Bali on September 21. The departure is bittersweet as I am not going on my terms but as a sacrificial lamb based on etheral claims. Nothwithstanding the circumstances of my shortened term on the 'other side' there is a wealth of personal epiphanies that will remain with me for a long, long time. Some good some bad, but all lined with the experience and sentiment of 'expanding my room'; the room that is my life, my existence.

While the terms of my departure are not important, I have the knowledge of knowing that the people that were my superiors were supportive of my work and my effort while in TL. However as I have tried to express over the last nine months - that is/was a different world that works in ways that we, as westerners, are not acustomed to. While it could have been anything that precipitated my departure (bald head, earrings perhaps) what I hang my hat on is the knowledge that my posting, as Director of Finance and Admin was different from the other four directorships that comprised our contract in TL. Unlike the other directors (general, commercial, generation and distribution), the finance function does not produce anything 'tangible' like the other jobs: generation can keep the power on, commercial can increase revenues, etc while the finance function is trying to accomplish something in the face of a cumbersome beauracracy that is impossible at the best of times. Like the previous finance director before me, the client rep decided for reasons only known to himself, that I was no longer wanted.

Personally and professionally, despite encouraging words to the contrary, it is an affront to ones self esteem. In the end I felt I didn't accomplish what I wanted too and not for lack of trying but that you cannot navigate through the 'system' no matter how efficient you might be. Hence the constant mental questions of Why? Am I not any good? Am I cut out for this? What went wrong? When did things go south? While not good, another story in the chapter that is my life.

The pondering will continue but the reality remained the same - I am going home whether I wanted to our not. Knowing that your departure is immenent changes your outlook certainly, and not in a positive way. Professionally it is doing what needs to get done but not much more; why get into something new when you can't see it to the end? Is this what one goes through when you annouce your retirement? Personally I found myself more and more introspective and appreciating all the good that I had found there. The good friends I met, a different world I was priviledged enough to see and experience, the experience of long haul travel that fascinates me to this day. You find yourself looking at the world you are about to depart with rose colored glasses - your last time doing x or y, seeing so and so and other such reflections that often brought a tear to my eye in all that I am will be losing, yet cognizant of all the good things I will gain upon being home again.

My experience of being home will follow in a subsequent blog but I walk away from Southeast Asia, Timor Leste with bittersweet memories. In the form of a couplet I wrote I would express it as such:

I've seen equitorial rainfalls and seared in tropical sun
Experienced disappointment and had some fun

But now my peregrinations have come to an end
And realized that to fly in a straight line you have to bend.

What else can I say? I'm home and a blank page of the next chapter of my new old life begins - again.