On the road

As much as it pains me to start off with some pop culture philosophy (I once walked out of a philosophy lecture which began with a 30 second clip of The Matrix and never went back), these two quotes pretty much sum up the way I’m feeling right now.

“Goddamn it,an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables.
Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes. Working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need.
We’re the middle children of history. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression.
Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives.
We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won’t. We’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
-Fight Club

“Fuck. You don’t get a chance to know what the fuck you are in some factory in Ohio.”
-Willard, Apocalypse Now Redux

Basically, ever since I came back from France, I’ve been feeling increasingly despondent about life in Ireland, I thought I could hang out in Galway on the dole for a while, towards the end of my sojourn, I had increasingly romanticised memories of hanging out in the smoking area of the Roisin Dubh and the town being a wealth of endless possibilities, putting the world to rights over coffee and drinking cans at the Spanish Arch because the weather was always fine and the rain only served to wash away the previous night’s embarrassments. But when I came back, I was had found a totally different place, people were miserable and angry, they didn’t know what they were angry about, but the world had given them a raw deal and they needed someone to blame. Basically, everyone seems to be waiting for things to go back to the way they were in the boom times. My degrees and training qualify me for a job that doesn’t exist in a world that won’t exist in Ireland for a long, long time to come. I could go on about the general decrease in life quality and basic freedoms, as well as people just accepting whatever their told; The second Lisbon referendum, church abuse, 10 o’clock off licence closing hours, the smoking ban, headshop closures, blasphemous libel, the conservatives next door…I think it started with the plastic bag levy, anyway, I won’t go on about it, we all know what the problems are.

So, the obvious answer is to leave. Next tuesday, I’m getting on a one way flight to Thailand with 500 euro in my pocket and the scant possibility of a job teaching English, I don’t know what will greet me there, I know nothing of that part of the world except what I’ve read, and even though it’s cheap, my money won’t last long at all. I don’t know anyone there except the odd tourist who has passed through long enough for a tan and a cold beer.I’ll only be a couple of days in Bangkok and then flying south to one of the islands for a brief teacher training course.

I don’t have any teaching experience, or really have any great desire to stand in front of a classroom, but we’ll see how it goes. I’m trying not to build up any expectations, as far as I’m concerned, I’m being shot into space and there is little possibility of me coming back, I’m not bringing anything from my past life except for a small suitcase with some t-shirts and six or seven books (Updike (for the flight), Russell’s history of western philosophy, Joyce, Dylan Thomas, Thompson and the penguin book of American Verse) as well as the heavy boots and tattered jeans I’ll be wearing going. I’m severing all ties with Galway, except of course emailing a few close friends now and then and would really see it as a failure if I ended up back here in less than a year or two’s time.

I didn’t choose Thailand out of any great desire to see the place or learn about its people, although that will certainly be a bonus, in truth, I would rather see more of Europe or Morocco, but that would still be too close, its culture not alien enough so as to put me on guard and challenge my views of the world. I could still almost hear the Galway Bay FM death notices. I don’t intend delving into the Thailand’s famous sex industry, and certainly won’t be risking Thai prison for a puff of mediocre grass that wouldn’t even be good enough to make it into a discount bin of a Dutch coffeeshop. I feel like learning to surf and perhaps how to ride a motorcycle, but that’s just pie in the sky at the minute.

I’m leaving in search of adventure, I’m not ashamed of the fact, at my age in past times I would have gone to sea in search of a new path around Africa or taken up arms in the Spanish Civil war or become a missionary, but these are different, more clinical times, adventure is harder to come by. This time next year, I may be bootlegging black tar heroin in the Golden Triangle to pay for AK74s for Somali pirates, but at the very least, I won’t be bound by the Irish conversational convention of “Where were ya drinking last night? Where are ya going tonight?”

So that’s it, I don’t really know what else to say, I’ll keep you up to date here about how I’m getting on, but hopefully the WiFi will be so patchy over there so as to be non-existent.

Where do I apply for this job?