I knew the moment I decided to take this job, to move to the Middle East, the nature of my job would change forever. I used to worked in a nicely designed office, for an Architectural Company. Now, even though I still work as an architect, the position is irrelevant, I work in a PM/CM company where office locations move around according to where the project is, this is what people used to call a ‘site-office’, and instead of working from a proper office building, I end up working from a porta-cabin, and it’s been going on for more than 7 years now. Moving from one porta-cabin to another. From an acceptable structure to a shed as an office.
Shed as an office
However, there are times that I question the decision I made almost 8 years ago:
- I left my network that I’ve built since I graduated.
- I left behind the job I loved not to mention high profile position.
- Even though I was single when I left the office, I still had my immediate family/relatives.
- I don’t like the nature of the job; changing project after project every 2 weeks to 3 months confused me and demoralized my spirit.
On the other hand, there are good things that I learned since taking this job:
- This job gives different exposure, and meeting different people and nationalities instead of working in Indonesia.
- Instead of working very hard almost 11 hrs a day, and lots of overtime, I work ‘only’ 8 hours a day, very routine with no unexpected overtime.
- I met my soul mate, and got married, instead of being a lonely spinster.
- I can help my family financially very easily, as well as together with my husband, we can easily save for retirement.
- As I caught the travel bug, this job also pays for my very nice holidays.
- The longer my husband and I stay with our jobs, the better lifestyle we can achieve once we both retire.
- While other people are losing their jobs due to the current recession, we are still fully employed and have a regular income; we should be great full with what we have.
I know that there are slightly more positives to this job than the negatives. I should be more realistic and persevere with this job regardless if I like it or not…. but what about my blogging hobby that requires full time work and attention? And how about my husband who’s already well into his retirement age, but still working full time?
Other things that cross my mind is my passion to travel that is put on hold till now. The plan was once we both retired / quit from a normal job then we are going to travel full time and off course carry on blogging about our travels. And I think we should start traveling now when physically my husband is still strong enough to endure the hot and humid temperature of South East Asia. The question now is when is the cut off time? Now? or the end of the year? or next year? or the year after that? One thing I know is that we are not getting any younger and we only live once….
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