March 7th, 2008, 4 Comments »
I have ascetic aspirations. I certainly don’t live a monastic lifestyle, but I try to listen to the simplifying impulses in myself.
Years ago, I decided that an easy way to live more simply was by limiting my choices. These inclinations are, at least in part, why I don’t drink alcohol, coffee or tea, and why I don’t care much about food. When at a restaurant, I usually scan the menu until I spot something I want to eat, and stop there. I frequently don’t read the whole menu.
These impulses are also at least partially responsible for my ignorance of entire segments of our culture: celebrities, cars and so forth.
I suppose this approach could lead to an ‘ignorance is bliss’ argument, but that’s not what I’m getting at. Modern life in the developed world throws a lot of cruft at you–a lot of inconsequential decisions that have only a minuscule impact on your happiness. Those decisions differ from person to person, but everybody has too many of them.
In theory, the more of these decisions that I can avoid, the more time I can spend on stuff I care about. And, in theory, the happier I’ll be. So, I’m always on the lookout for ways to distill the important choices from the great froth of trivialities.
As it turns out, living in the developing world really helps my ascetic aspirations. Simply put, there are fewer trivial decisions to make:
- Menus are shorter, and most restaurants have more or less the same thing.
- There are more shops, but they roughly sell the same things at the same prices.
- There are fewer forms of entertainment, or least the kinds I’m used to.
- It’s more difficult to get from point A to point B, so you do less local travel.
- I don’t know anybody, so there are few invitations or social obligations to contemplate.
These sound like complaints, but actually it’s quite liberating in the short term. I’m speaking primarily of my three months in Morocco, but these also apply (with slightly less strictness) to rural Malta.
There are frustrations, but they’re definitely exceeded by a sense of simplifying your life, and of spending your time more meaningfully. This has been an unforeseen side benefit of a year away from Vancouver.
4 Comments »
December 28th, 2007, 1 Comment »
Another Fowleresque list. We’re leaving Gozo on Monday, and Malta for Morocco on Wednesday. I’ve got a few more posts about Malta in the hopper (meaning my head), but here’s one on things I’ll miss. It’s not comprehensive, but really more gestural:
- The awesome retro Coke bottles. The kind they drank from at the drive-in in American Graffiti. I actually just made it to the island on time for this one.
- The locals’ ambivalence toward their pets. Shortly after we arrived, I was talking to a neighbour about one of her cats:
ME: How many do you have?
HER: I’m not sure. Three or four.
ME: What’s this one’s name?
HER: I don’t know. Cat?
- The subsequent names we manufactured for the local cats: Dine ‘n’ Dash, Kitten (lovely, but afflicted with shocking flatulence and halitosis), Bread-Eating Cat (it would sneak into our house at night to raid our bread stash), Cairo (it looked particularly Egyptian), Bell Cat (it wore a bell) and Fat Albert.
- The bath tub temperature of the ocean in late summer.
- The fantastic (at least to me–I’m a noobie) snorkeling in that water.
- The fruit. I’ll never look at, well, nearly every fruit back in Canada, the same way.
- The temperature outside. On the day of Christmas Eve, I went for a walk in a long-sleeve t-shirt.
- Dwejra Bay, with its extraordinary settings and killer swimming holes.
- How everybody knows everybody.
- The resulting extraordinary trust. I had an item to ship back to Canada, and the courier came by to pick it up this morning. I opened the door, he said “are you Darren?” I said “yep, here it is”. He picked it up and left. No invoice, no waivers, no receipt, no nothing. And yet I have faith that it’ll make it back to the homeland.
- The peculiar array of cars. Due to some import taxes based on engine size, there are many, many tiny cars from all over the planet. I got a lift in a Skoda today, for example.
- The remarkable and intense Catholicism, which has been quite educational. More on this in an upcoming post.
- How everything is so close. You can walk across the whole island in under three hours.
- How Gozo busted some of my stereotypes about Mediterraneans. They drive very sedately, they’re not particularly fiery and they’re very prompt.
- The church bells, and their unusual patterns.
- Starting work at 13:00. Though maybe that habit will stick.
1 Comment »
August 30th, 2007, 10 Comments »
This is my desk in Malta:
It’s not what you might expect from your average geeky tech professional. I’m missing the parallel 30″ LCD monitors, the fancy split keyboard and the Herman Miller sitting-on-a-cloud desk chair.
I sit at a converted table, and it’s a tad too high. There’s an old, boxy 17″ monitor (rented for a song from the local computer guy), a cheap keyboard made in China for about 17 cents (with ‘Bck’ and ‘ForWard’ buttons) and a very non-ergonomic straight-backed chair.
I mention this not to look like a corporate martyr, but because lately I’ve been thinking about comfort.
When I tell people about our living abroad, they sometimes say:
“That sounds great, but I could never do that. I’d miss my television (or bed or cat or Frappuccino) too much.”
They’re mostly joking, but there is truth in what they’re saying. Moving to new places means a sacrifice in creature comforts.
I’ve said this before, but when I first thought about living abroad, back in 2000 or so, I thought I knew what the tricky bits would be. I thought we’d get tripped up by driving on the other side of the road or dealing with a foreign currency.
A Thousand Subtle Things
In fact, it’s a thousand subtle, little things that are trickiest. A bunch of these have to do with changes in comfort level. The bed is a little short for my 6′1″ frame. The water pressure in the shower upstairs is, as my friend Joe once remarked, like a 12-year-old peeing on you. There are plenty of new and exciting bugs and lizards to catch, kill and/or release.
Most days it’s easy to justify the sundry unfamiliarities and nuisances. After all, you get to experience the thousand thrills and subtle pleasures of discovering a new country in a new corner of the world.
Occasionally, though, I do think fondly of my ultra-modern Yaletown apartment, with its cleaning service, huge computer monitor and instant access to everything. I’ll be cured of the travel bug when those days of longing for familiar create comforts exceed the exciting days of discovery and new pleasures.
After all, I’m young enough to know that, in the future, I’ll live somewhere long enough to justify acquiring the wall-sized monitors and the Back Massage of a Thousand Virgins desk chair.
I’m also old enough to know that possessions are fleeting, and so is both comfort and discomfort.
10 Comments »
August 11th, 2007, 1 Comment »
The following are a few things I didn’t realize I missed about my hometown:
- The sound of seagulls.
- Big birds in general. The largest bird I’ve seen on Malta are largish pigeons.
- The rain. I haven’t seen rain in more than three months. I still haven’t, actually, but there’s a chance of showers this weekend.
- Tall buildings.
- The city-ness. Lots of cars, people and businesses in one place. It’s a bit odd, being the country bumpkin coming into town from a village of two stores and three restaurants.
- Diversity of people. Most days, it feels like our village is populated exclusively by old women in house dresses. It’s nice to see people of all different shapes, sizes, ethnicities and ages.
- Mountains and islands, and the palette they make as these overlap in the distance. These two photos show this in action.
1 Comment »
