ปิดฉาก: อยู่กับเศษใจอย่างไร
It’s been raining everyday since I got back home on Monday.
I don’t know if the sky is crying because I came back or I couldn’t find a job yet. Somehow I have made peace with myself for not being able to get a job right away after graduation. I really tried, and still try. A few places already rejected me, but there were positions I didn’t hope for in the first place. Still hate to wait for replies from others. Yesterday I talked to a neighbor who has been working in academia for decades. “If you couldn’t find a decent job in a year, ask your dad’s money and get another master’s degree,” he suggested. I mean, money wouldn’t be a problem if that was gonna happen, but my energy would. Looking back, it wasn’t bad at all the past two years. But I could not redo it anymore.
Life with a double master’s degree isn’t easy at all. You think you can find a job easily? No. And in this third-world country, maybe it might be a disadvantage. Employers might think you’d be so stubborn and demanding. Especially with this economical situation, it is hard for people like us to get employed. This is very discouraging to me. Reading all these memories and publishing them in days to come, I have to be at least a bit narcissist. But this is what I wanted to do: to kill time, to hang in there.
My life has now resumed to normality. Got a new monthly 300-baht movie pass and my Thai phone number back. “Have you returned here, permanently?” an employee at the mobile network shop asked me. It hurt a bit, but okay, I already accepted the fact that I had to come back. People at home haven’t changed either: arguing, eating, joking and arguing all day. Most of my friends here work, some still study somewhere and a couple are going to continue their studies in months. Although I don’t like nor follow his 8-minute history podcast, I agree with Hea Wit that life abroad is organized and animated, but not charming. Bangkok has the last two characteristics. I already finished my master’s, but the metro line in my neighborhood hasn’t been operating yet. So, we still have to face traffic everyday as always. Economy is also fucked. “I just sold this pair of shoes today,” a seller in a department store told her colleague when I was about to pay for my shoes. So, things here are difficult. All we can do now is to continue picking on the government and find a silver lining or a rainbow in life.
One thing I’ve got by writing this experimental journal is to appreciate both good and bad moments in life, and to accept how shitty a person I have been. I have lied to you in the prologue that the more I wrote, the more sentences became phrases, phrases to words. (Okay Mme P., you were right. I should have written the introduction after having finished everything.) The last two parts could actually be integrated into a book: they were that long. Even though I haven’t felt nostalgia yet, I think that my life was unintentionally mystified because of my choices of studies and mobility plan. Sometimes I just don’t believe I went through those things. Sometimes I even feel that I was dreaming during that time. The only physical things that could remind me that that was real are magnets on my fridge. The objects of remembrance, we have so many. I just reorganized them this morning. Her Norwegian bow fell to the floor, so I double taped it back. Maybe all I’ve done till now is just to get these things back home, see them every time I want something from the fridge and remember those who have been and briefly were in my life. Anyway… there’s some space left to put more magnets on the fridge, and I know that someday I’ll go out there again.
This is not a goodbye.
Kao
Minburi, Bangkok
July 26, 2024
Geography of Pain
Thank you for your supports.