#2486, Friday, January 15, '21: Moving abroad

Post 2586

- 10 years and 15 days since I started this blog -

January, 2020 in Chiang Mai, Thailand

Daily Comment

I think I have wanted to live overseas, outside the US, for most of my life. The first time I remember feeling like that was in the late Fifties, when I saw the movie, "The King and I".

I was very taken with the story of someone moving to a country with strange customs and language, and, of course, the movie makes it all look gorgeous and exotic.

A few years later, for a report for my 7th-grade social studies class, I visited every embassy from a Latin American country I could find in New York, and collected all their pamphlets extolling their country's virtues.

I got the idea for that from the early Sixties hit TV show, "I Spy". Like everybody, I was taken with Bill Cosby, first black lead in a primetime television show, but it was actually Robert Culp who intrigued me. And, of course, all the shows took place in foreign countries and were replete with travelog footage. I loved fantasizing that it was me in all those places. 

Fast-forward a year or so, to a family trip to Niagara Falls taken in the Summer of 1963. Canada! It meant a lot to me, just knowing I was in a foreign country. I swear, looking back I can see my delusion, but I thought everything looked different, a couple of miles to the other side of the US border. Better.

Side note: On the motel television in Niagara Falls, I got to stay up and watch the Jack Paar show (the immediate predecessor to the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson). This particular night, he showed a film he'd gotten from England, where 'the crazy teenagers' were going insane listening to a 'goofy-looking' rock'n'roll band. The first footage of the Beatles in the US. I started high school two months later.

I went, as an innocent tourist, to Jamaica in 1968. And then, almost every year after until 1983. I went to the same place every time. I got to know people. Mostly, I went with friends. A few times I went alone, and met friends, Jamaican or repeat Americans like myself.

At the end of the decade of the Sixties, December, 1969, I made a trip that set the pattern for all my traveling after. With no real plan, I went to Europe, specifically to Spain, and after a few days I ran down my friend Marco in Ibiza - which is a great story in itself, but not relevant here. Here, the point is, I started traveling alone.

I didn't stay alone, but that was the way I traveled, and I established that as my favorite mode. In fact, I never again had as good a time traveling with a companion or companions.

My Jamaican experience established another feature of my personal travel style: I always have only one destination. No multi-country, or even multi-city tours. This is less a hard rule, there is always the possibility of finding oneself with downtime in one place when something specific in another beckons. In the last fifty years, this has happened twice.

In the mid-nineties, I encountered a magazine, International Living, that actively promoted the idea (which had already occurred independently to me) that living outside the US, looked at by so many Americans as an undesirable compromise of a wonderful lifestyle, had many advantages.

At this time, I was very unhappy. I was in an unhappy marriage, and an unhappy job, and feeling a bit isolated from my roots, and the idea, in the back of my mind, took hold.

By the late-nineties, I had a list of places I was looking to 'retire' to. I didn't have a good idea of what that meant or exactly how I'd get there, but my financial prospects were pretty good, and I thought I might have an early retirement from my coming wealth.

That didn't actually work out, timing-wise. But I was hooked. Everything I read (and continue reading to this day) convinced me that getting out of the country was a good idea. Initially, it had been strictly a proactive move, now there was all that plus a very negative view of American politics and social structure.

These were the forces that kept the idea and my enthusiasm alive for these twenty-five or so years. I planned to leave right after I retired in 2016, then postponed it, primarily to stay in the music scene, and keep my band i am Fool going.

I visited the place at the top of my list, Chiang Mai, Thailand, for the first time in 2017. I stayed for a month. I loved it. It was better than I expected. I wanted to move there. Then, the next year, the government changed the immigration policies regarding residency visas, and it was hostile to my plans. It was still fantastic, but no longer a place I was going to live. 

In 2020 I discovered Cuenca, Ecuador, and, since in the previous year my two biggest musical projects had ended, in one case, and gone dormant in the other, I decided to move. 

Then came the pandemic. When I got back to Syracuse mid-May, I was set on my November departure (I'm going to vote, then leave). My best local friend (and leader of i am Fool) took it hard. He took the time to write me a long e-mail to convince me to stay. It worked, insofar as I decided, given the situation at the time (I couldn't get into any of the countries on my list at that time due to COVID-19), to postpone my departure until the pandemic was over.

Then came my heart problems. Now, I don't know. I still want to emigrate, I still dream, as I have for all these years, of waking up in a not-American place. The politics of the last decade in this country have been very troubling. My finances allow me to stay, but I would thrive (financially, at least) in a lower-cost environment. 

I still look at Cuenca's online 'newspaper' and classifieds every day. But... I don't know if I'll ever get there. And I never checked out Medellin or Montevideo, both real possibilities.

But now I have health concerns. And now, i am Fool is once again - for the second year - in a precarious place, and I love this band. I leave, it's over. 

So, maybe, if I live long enough, I can realize my dream of a life in a place where I can get everything I need and most of what I want, in a pleasant, winter-less  environment where my age is not a hindrance or severe limitation.

I'm grateful for my dreams.

Food and Diet 

Today's Weight:                    198.9 lbs.

Previous Weight (1/14/21):         199.0 lbs.

Net Loss/Gain:                     - 0.1 lbs.

Diet Comment

Pretty much the same, this ends the week on a good note.

Food Log

Breakfast
Skipped.

Lunch
6:05pm: PBVF protein smoothie with oat milk, kefir, large organic egg, chia gel, kale, spinach, frozen wild blueberries, whey powder (18g protein), hemp seeds, hemp protein (7g protein), raw organic cacao powder, moringa leaf powder, fo ti (mushroom powder), cinnamon, turmeric and stevia-inulin blend.

Dinner
12:20am: Macadamia nuts and parmesan cheese crisps.

Liquid Intake

   Espressos: 2;   Coffee: 24 oz.;  Water: 72+ oz.; 

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