It comes into my mind on how to overcome a situation where you are staying all alone at a place or foreign land that you are not used to; without friends and even the food tastes different . Human beings are simply habitual animals and if they ever have a choice they prefer not to have change of their routine. But life would not allow you to have such freedom of choice all the time, your livelihood might have got you a job transfer or you have to go and stay in a new town, because that is the place your children are working etc.
I had been staying overseas for 10 years and also working 4 hours drive from home and only get a chance to come home with my family once fortnightly for almost the past 2 years. The experience had taught me these, just to share them with you :
1. If you have the option, choose a place of stay where the surrounding environment you should feel comfortable with. Perhaps near to a park with a lot of open space, close to the sites or areas where you could pursue your hobbies or sport conveniently would be your priority. You do not want to stay too far away that the sheer distance of driving itself will put you off, and kill your interests or initiatives of attempting something new.
2. You have to learn to love the people there. In a foreign country, you will have to learn to love their language, culture, songs and tradition. Interact with them through joining certain activities, such as picking up a sport, going to churches, trekking, cycling or even jogging. I know a lot of friends through some of these outdoor activities and also through joining the local remote controlled RC club etc. In Mexico, I went out with the locals to the pubs and listened to their folk songs etc and at the same time practised my Spanish with them. I enjoyed my life in Mexico even though many people and media mentioned negatively about the violence and crimes there projecting it is an extremely unsafe place to stay and work. My friend from Taiwan even sent me a newspaper cutting on kidnapping of foreigners to fore-warn me not to take up the Mexican offer. I am telling you, I have no regret whatesoever and this was one of the most enjoyable overseas working trip and stay that I ever experienced.
3. One has to cultivate multiple interests and anticipate the time you could participate and also provide yourself with alternatives or contingency options. For example, if you are experiencing pain in your ankle after some long distance jogging, you could have a bicycle for cycling, the effort of which normally does not exert the kind of stress on your ankle, compared to when you have to land your feet on hard ground with your jogging shoes on.
If you have to stay in house because of the rainy season, aquariums are available at home for you to look at those fishes. And I kept a few tanks of wild fighting fishes for my in-house entertainment. By the way, TV is not my favorite!
I even make alternatives for flying my RC toys, for example if the wind is too strong for flying helicopter or other planes, I have a glider that rides on wind. Recently I am thinking of even owning a RC buggy or truggy, which provides me another option to play these RC vehicles on land instead of up in the unpredictable sky.
4. Photography might not be my main interest even though I had purchased DSLR, which is being used by my son most of the time. But I always keep an old digital 8 MP digital camera handy with me. Wherever I go and see something interesting, I will snap some shots. I will then upload those photos into my computer and also pick on some to upload them onto Facebook. This has occupied quite a fair bit of my time for being active on Facebook. When I feel bored after all these, I started to write a piece or two in my blog!
5. Always have something to look forward to. Looking forward to seeing your family during the weekends, waiting for public holidays, such as Hari Raya, Christmas and New Year days, school holidays etc and planning your activities. Even wait for your month-end salary so that you could spend a bit more on the favorite items on your wish list. All of these would always drive you on day by day and make your passing time more interesting.
5. Reading some books on popular themes and then exchange ideas and thoughts with friends. For example, "My side of the story" by Chin Peng and then find out physically where were those places he referred to, as of present day, where he built his jungle headquarter or had hidden himself and escaped from the police etc.
Folks, that is how I spend my time most of the days. As I spend my time each day eventfully, ironically I do sometimes feel time is passing too fast, I ask myself whether am I just wasting the remaining "youthful" time of my life pretending to be very busy?
