I am Sisyphus
Posted: Sun Jun 08, 2014 5:05 pm
These last few weeks back in Australia have reminded me of the tedium western living presents an expat who has spent lengthy periods abroad in SEA. I find the hardest aspect of returning to western living the sterile ordered predictability of, well, just about everything. Yes, there is some comfort in the preciseness of my bus and train timetable, but taking carriage into and out of my office with hundreds of other well dressed and sweetly scented office Johns and Janices is akin to an enforced one and a half hour vow of silence with the search for contact or conversation on my part being met with a wall of pious crowns bowed in great deference to their modern deities Iphone, Samsung and Tablet as they all engage in their dawn worship.
I greet the occasional passenger who dares challenge this devout morning service as I would my crazy uncle Alf who would attend family gatherings raucously drunk telling rude jokes and generally being offensive to one and all - I greet the morning train menaces very fondly.. Although crass,uncle Alf at least added color to an otherwise dull family palate of predictable questions, answers and general banality. However, compared to my morning commute our family gatherings are now remembered with the same fondness as if I had spent a weekend with twenty drunk Mexicans who had an all expenses account at the Bellagio in Vegas.
Arriving into the city technologie's flock will then disembark, any individuallity cloaked by black winter uniforms that snake their way in well formed lines throughout the city like an enormous well oiled human production line, each carbon based product depositing itself into a small concrete box to carry out its individual tasks for the day in anonymity other than to occasionally interact with a superior product in a game of social facade or psychological charade. Some respite is given at midday and I'll scamper to an Asian food hall or restaurant and savor in the relief of fond fragrances, noisy chatter and spicy food.
The dull sermon home at days end is as equally tedious and mind numbing as the day's beginning, with the drab prospect of domestic chores waiting as one last flagellation for me fucking it up in SEA the first time. For a couple of hours there is some relief as I search the expat forums and live vicariously through others, reliving and remembering my own experiences in the process, but. I've months to endure and I feel like a modern day Sisyphus rolling my western stone each day with seemingly no end in sight to the laboriousness of my task.
I greet the occasional passenger who dares challenge this devout morning service as I would my crazy uncle Alf who would attend family gatherings raucously drunk telling rude jokes and generally being offensive to one and all - I greet the morning train menaces very fondly.. Although crass,uncle Alf at least added color to an otherwise dull family palate of predictable questions, answers and general banality. However, compared to my morning commute our family gatherings are now remembered with the same fondness as if I had spent a weekend with twenty drunk Mexicans who had an all expenses account at the Bellagio in Vegas.
Arriving into the city technologie's flock will then disembark, any individuallity cloaked by black winter uniforms that snake their way in well formed lines throughout the city like an enormous well oiled human production line, each carbon based product depositing itself into a small concrete box to carry out its individual tasks for the day in anonymity other than to occasionally interact with a superior product in a game of social facade or psychological charade. Some respite is given at midday and I'll scamper to an Asian food hall or restaurant and savor in the relief of fond fragrances, noisy chatter and spicy food.
The dull sermon home at days end is as equally tedious and mind numbing as the day's beginning, with the drab prospect of domestic chores waiting as one last flagellation for me fucking it up in SEA the first time. For a couple of hours there is some relief as I search the expat forums and live vicariously through others, reliving and remembering my own experiences in the process, but. I've months to endure and I feel like a modern day Sisyphus rolling my western stone each day with seemingly no end in sight to the laboriousness of my task.
