Simon and I interview each other

I had a chat with one of my best buddies, Simon, last week. It's kind of a discussion about our time in Christchurch, the earthquake, subsequent moves to other countries, and how we dealt with all that. The second half is at Simon's blog, link at the bottom.

Simon: Hi David, how are you?

David:  I'm good thanks Simon, sitting in bed in Melbourne. It's just after 8am. How are you?

S:  It's 2313 here the night before. I'm sitting in my living room in my new apartment thinking about timezones! And I'm good too thanks!

D:  The world is both a big and small place.

S:  It sure is! I'm in London now which is almost the antipodes from Christchurch, and not close to Melbourne either.

D:  I really like the concept of antipodes. How long have you been over there?

S:  Well I arrived here on August 6 -- so a little over a month -- but I left NZ on August 16 and was travelling for a bit through Asia and Egypt.

D:  What were you doing in Christchurch/NZ before you left?

S:  Well it's a long story! Let me try and parse it down.

I was working at a hotel in the Christchurch CBD until February the 22nd, when it was closed indefinitely. Thankfully the hotel had some pretty good insurance cover so I stayed on full pay and got sent up to Wellington for two months to work for one of our sister hotels.

When I came back to Christchurch, I was still being paid but really had nothing to do. I was doing a few days a week helping out with the hotels' emergency office but mostly I was dead bored.

I tried to volunteer and signed up for all the emergency relief operations I could find but never heard back from any of them. So I spent a lot of time reading, writing and contemplating what I was going to do.

D:  Right. I know you had a few different ideas about where you might end up. Were there any particular reasons for the move to London?

S:  Well it's funny really. I lived here for a year in 2006 just after I graduated from university and really enjoyed it despite not being able to get a decent job. I'd always intended to come back here but I've been putting it off for several years now.

I considered a few different things. One was staying in Christchurch and finding a different job, another was moving back to Palmerston North (our home town) for a little while to sort myself out. I also thought very, very seriously about moving back to Wellington -- more out of a sense of comfort than anything else. I also thought about coming over Australia for the high wages. It would have been a good opportunity to earn some money, wipe my debts off and set myself up

In the end I decided that, after a lot of consideration, that London ticked the most boxes. I wasn't especially thrilled about it at the time but I felt that I had to do something. I'd lived in limbo for too long and needed to make a firm decision to move my life forward. It was a tough thing, but I convinced myself to commit myself wholly to my decision and not look back.

Does that make sense?

D:  It certainly does

It feels like there is a lot there that I can relate to also, especially with regard to future direction, and 'ticking the most boxes'.

S:  Yeah, to be honest for a few months after February even though I was trying to be positive about things, I had just had this overwhelming sense of melancholy and even almost cynicism, especially when I was in Wellington and away from all my friends down there. At that point, I didn't want to leave Christchurch, but then I realised that a ton of my friends were leaving and it wasn't going to be the same city it was before. It seemed like the right time to do something I always wanted to

So tell me about your decision. You moved a little earlier than me. How long have you been in Melbourne now?

D:  Tomorrow will be 4 months, or 'a third of a year', which is quite a long time really.

I finished an ecology degree at the end of last year, and I was always thinking about what would come next. I really love Christchurch, but had always intended to move after study. I really fell for the city though, and I made some incredible friends, so it was easier said than done. The Feb quake closed the cinema I was working at though, and while I was paid for a little while, it was a long period of limbo. I was still really happy there, but knew that I'd have to make a move.

So I settled on Melbourne. I'd visited twice before, and knew a nice amount of people here.  As a city it has a lot of things that are really attractive to me. There was about two months between deciding and moving. It was hard to leave Christchurch, but I think it was the right move for me, and sometimes you have to be selfish about the decisions you make.

S:  It seems we went through the same amount of angst over our decision. So tell me about the day you left town. What was going through your mind? What was it like at the airport?

D:  It was reaaaally hard. I was dating an amazing girl, and we broke up as a result of my moving. That was horrible. And a real bind. I can't imagine having stayed in Christchurch now. So that would be the selfishness I mentioned. The airport was very sad, and I called my mum and was 'choking up'.

There's a Polka Dot Dot Dot song with the lyrics, 'It's not the leaving, it's the never coming back' - for me it was the opposite: I knew I'd be back, but it was very hard to leave

D:  Also though I knew that things would work out okay, and I was looking forward to taking a leap forward in my life

S:  That's tough man. I know you had more reason to stay in Christchurch than I did, and had been in the city longer, but I know exactly what you mean. I was at the airport at midnight all by myself. I just sat in the departure lounge completely numb with this huge empty feeling in my stomach. I was a giant mix of anger, confusion, panic and sadness. I think I texted you and my brother just venting. There was so much I wish I'd said to a lot of different people and I just closed my eyes and tried to breathe deeply and collect myself.

But when I landed in Kuala Lumpur, I just hit the ground running. Part of the reason I went to Asia beforehand was to just lose myself in a series of completely different cultures. It was amazing to just travel for three weeks and forget all about everything in the last six months. There was so much to see and do and take in that I no longer had time to be circumspect

D:  Sure. Limbo seems like a good description for life for some people in Christchurch. I know you blogged about your journey to the UK. Was that always something you'd wanted to do?

S: Yeah, I've always wanted to spend as much time travelling as possible and it was a perfect opportunity. I wasn't going to go all the way to the UK without stopping!

One thing I've been thinking about a lot is that when I was in Wellington, one of my friends who moved there permanently described us as "refugees". It seemed absurd, but it feels like there's a granule of truth there Do you consider yourself a refugee?

D:  Hmmm, a Kurt Vonnegut quote springs to mind: "I was the victim of a series of accidents. As are we all". I guess a little, but I'd also intended to move this year, so I wasn't forcefully displaced as much as other 'refugees' may be.

S:  Yeah I guess the term is loaded. We use it to picture people permanently displaced because of natural emergencies and I guess that describes us in the widest sense. I wouldn't use it amongst strangers, but I do use it among close friends a little.

Let's talk about the first few weeks in our new homes. Were you trying to get into motion straight away and find a flat and a job etc.?

D:  Yeah, I actually took the first flat I looked at, and moved in after staying with friends for four days. That was great to dive right in, and it's been a really fantastic place to live. I had a reasonable amount of money saved, so spent time enjoying Melbourne and exploring, with vague attempts to find work

Of course, as time went on, and money was spent, those efforts intensified.

S:  Ha ha.

D:  It was really great being in a new place - so much to see and discover. I still get 'wow, big city!' kind of feelings, which is great

S:  You worked at a soup kitchen, right? Or "Hell" to use a better term?

D:  Yeah, that was real desperation. Cash in hand, way below minimum wage. The job itself was okay, but the pay was terrible. Still, it paid the bills (and fed me soup) for a couple of weeks, then I heard back from a cinema where I'd been interviewed. I started there the next week and have been loving it since

S:  Ok great. Is that what you wanted to do when you moved over there?

D:  That's what I was doing in Christchurch, so I had relevant experience. I guess I wasn't sure how long I'll be here, so wasn't looking for a career kind of job. I have applied for some grad ecology jobs, which would be great

S:  That's great man. It's good you have a short- and medium- term plan. Still working on the long-term one though, right!?

D:  Ha, yeah, there are a few possibilities. Most of which involve travelling, which involves saving money. Which will happen, sometime

And how has your first month been?

S:  It's been good. I landed and just slipped back into "London mode". It's completely different here than it is in NZ and Australia. The buildings look older, the streets are narrower and the air just feels different. It was kind of comforting in a way. I reached back into the very ante-chambers of my memory and managed to find my way round easily. I stayed in an awful hostel for my first two nights and then got a month's tenancy in an awful flat (no living room, unclean, expensive, no hot shower) in a place called Bow in the East End. Now I've just moved into a cool apartment with three other people in a part of town called Southfields which is great. We're all on the same page and I'm going to enjoy it a lot.

On the job front, I just dumped a whole bunch of CVs at a ton of hotels around town in my first week, and got about a dozen call-backs. I went for four interviews and chose a job working at a hotel in Kensington. It's a good job and a step forward for me if I decide to stay in this line of work. Plus it's three days on, three days off so I have plenty of time to explore London.

Read the rest here