Retirement Thoughts on a Friday Night

Retirement Thoughts on a Friday Night

It's Friday night, no heavy stuff today--time for a light session of ngobrol-ngobrol. It has been a long time since I last blogged five working days in a row. When I was in Jakarta, I hardly missed a day of blogging. Life was so much simpler and blogging fitted very nicely into my daily routine, even though I had to blog from the Internet cafe sometimes.

But it wasn't like I had no work to do back then. Far from it: I was working on my IT projects, teaching part-time at the university writing and researching for my magazine articles. My weekends were all completely occupied. I purposely kept myself very busy then because I knew the "good life" in Indonesia can make one feel very complacent. One could easily be seduced into the decadent lifestyle of an expatriate there.

I wanted to turn my time in Indonesia into a useful experience that I could draw upon for the rest of my life. And true enough, my "exile" there had allowed me to be much clearer about my priorities in life. It was there that I started this blog, and the sheer amount of words (or rubbish) that I have managed to churn out since then surprise myself too.

As usual, every now and then, I get all sentimental over Indonesia. I feel ecstatic whenever I get phonecalls from my contacts in Jakarta, inviting me for projects over there. There have been a couple over the last few days. And now I have to look at how I could juggle my schedule over the coming months to fit in all my activities.

Another weekend coming up, another week in KL. I'm enjoying a much needed break before I start ramping up my work again. And slowly, but surely, I'm working towards my retirement...