My 45 days of unemployment

In July, it suddenly became very clear that the embassy will never have the funding - or the necessary momentum - to execute any of those development projects and partnerships I was working on. At least certainly not in the foreseeable future. I resigned, but stayed until the end of August; and that's when my 45 days of unemployment commenced.


My Unemployment Days began with a fabulous vacation in Thailand. 5 days in Ko Phi Phi, with white sands, western food, fruit shakes and the best company one could ask for; it was the perfect beach vacation.

Ko Phi Phi - no post processing needed

Once I got back to real life in Yangon, I had:

- My most intense networking efforts ever, emailing and talking and meeting with anyone I could about getting a job.
-  2 or 3 depressing days in which I thought I might never again have a proper job. This was not least because of all those terrible articles about millennials, and how being jobless is my destiny just because I was born in '82. This is one of them; though definitely not the most depressing (and at least also entertaining).

Everyone loves Lucy (and her unicorn)

- A 10-day vacation with Arne's family, including Inle, Bagan, a lot of food, hiking, biking (including in sun, mud, and rain) - good company, fun times.

Inle Lake on a gorgeous sunny day

- Still some work: I started teaching young Myanmars a course in Business Ethics, which is part of a 2-year business diploma; it's interesting to see how these (mostly buddhist) rich kids think. They're good kids. I also enthusiastically accepted a writing project to analyse data and write a report about disaster preparedness - really interesting stuff.

Once we came back from our family vacation, I had a week full of meetings: on Monday and Tuesday I was offered 3 jobs, on Wednesday another promising opportunity was discussed, and I decided to cancel the least appealing, last, meeting to discuss employment opportunities because it was just too much already.

A few stressful days followed in which I was trying to decide what the best job would be for me, and I'm happy to say that on Tuesday my unemployment days are about to be over. My new job is a little complex to explain (especially before having started), but I'm going to start up the CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) office for the local chamber of commerce. My employer is actually a local NGO - a group of businessmen who have been working for 10 years implementing helpful projects using their business knowledge and contacts; they will manage the CSR office. My boss seems like a really cool guy (not to mention extremely successful and well-connected).

Finally, I'm happy to announce that this week I have completed level A1.1 of my German studies, which places me exactly half way to being able to "understand and use familiar, everyday expressions and very simple sentences, which relate to the satisfying of concrete needs". Impressive, I know.

Mom's visit

Mom's visit recently ended. She came for 2 weeks, which turned out to be really fun. We took advantage of this visit as an excuse to eat out good Burmese food more often than ever, spend a weekend at Inle Lake, and also watch TV much more than usual.

Mom& Me at Inle

After some delicious Burmese food at our favorite Khine Khine Kyaw

19th street (China Town)

Mom with a nameless pagoda (at least I don't know it)

Beautiful Inle lake

Thanks for coming Ima! It was great! <3

To our future visitors - we're looking forward to have good fun with you too!

Tipping point

The last few weeks seem to be n a tipping point in our life here. Several elements came together, all at once, to make our weird existence here suddenly seem beautiful and inspiring.

1. The rainy season came. We heard so much about how impossible the rainy season is - days and days of heavy rain with no stop, hip-high water in the streets downtown. Instead, what we got is a beautiful green Yangon, with refreshing bursts of rain once a day cooling the air, cleaning the streets, masking the noise and slowing everything down just a little bit.

A nursery in Yangon last weekend

2. Arne got a job. Who would've thought that changing from time-off to full-time-work would be such a huge happiness booster. Not only does he have a job, he has an amazing job, and it even came with a car.

2.a. We got a lucky break - Arne's office is just next door to mine. That means we get to drive to work together and also meet for lunch some days.

The lakey where we eat lunch every other day

Free side-dishes that come with lunch

 

3. My extra-curriculur activities started paying off, mentally. The business development work I've been lazily doing for a couple of months finally picked up and has become really interesting and somewhat intellectually stimulating. My initially-frustrating art classes are starting to bear some fruit.

My best work to-date. Ever.

4. I realized how generally stimulating and inspiring life here is. Our friends, though at first sight perhaps a normal group of western alcoholics, are actually an extremely intelligent, caring and socially-aware bunch. Really special people. You can always count on them to surprise you with new ideas. And then there are all the other surprises - at work, dealing with completely new challenges; at home - discovering a corner in the neighborhood you never noticed, or suddenly understanding something you didn't get before.

A parked train, just outside our home.
Things you don't see when you always take the bridge.

.. And Myanmar continues as before. Our house-dog is pregnant, my favorite market has been surprisingly torn down, but otherwise it's really all exactly the same.  

The external display of out downstairs shop, one lucky day

Things you see in Yangon

Yangon never ceases to surprise and entertain its residents. Here are some recent discoveries..

Afraid of exotic Asian diseases? fear not! Rum to the rescue!

And, didn't you always wish your low fat milk included also some fresh milk? Search no more!

This seemed pretty out of place in a country that hardly knows what visa is.

And on a more "normal" note.. I stumbled across this monastery one day when I had an hour to spend before an appointment.. very nice surprise.

  

Overall, life has been improving day by day since Arne started working (2-3 weeks ago). Apart from the obvious perks (a car, more money) we're generally feeling much more relaxed and happy being here.

And a-propos work - here's me with a recent article published about Israel's increasing involvement in Myanmar's develpoment (yep, that's my job! but the ambassador still got the cover photo):

Our weekend in fantasyland (Singapore)

We spent a nice long weekend in Singapore, with the excuse of renewing Arne's visa (no success there), and with the real reason being that we wanted to visit his friend who lives there, and also escape our real (hard) life for a few days.

It was like a (tacky) dream. Sipping a Singapore Sling on the balcony of the 57th floor at sunset, staying in a posh, airconditioned, swimming-pooled, cheese-packed-fridge apartment, walking among the glaring Louis Vuitton signs - we felt far, far from home (wherever home may be).

Singapore is a very plastic-y place in the sense that it's planned and clean and has tons of extreme laws, but not stupidly plastic-y, but smartly plastic-y. The know what people like, so they build it. Sometimes a little over the top. Example:

The Gardens by the Bay, a huge, beautiful park that featured several themed gardens and two domes, one of which had a fake 35-meter waterfall inside. And costs 20$ to enter. We skipped the domes, and even though I really love parks, this was a bit.. Too big. But beautiful - I give it a 10.

My buddy explorer.

Singapore had some other crazy things. Like an initiative to extinct mosquitos - the bizarre "mozzie wipeout". 

When I protested that that can't be right, Arne pointed out that since Singapore has no eco-system left anyway, the lack of mosquitos will probably not be a problem. Sadly, that makes perfect sense.

I thought of my dad when I saw this:

But Singapore also has some normal and very nice sides to it. We ate yummy Indian food (eating with my hands is really a lost skill!), walked around in the perfect summery weather, and saw quite a few beautiful things. 

  

Special thanks to Ollie - what a great host!

Going home was totally fine. Quite surprisingly. Rainy season should start any day now, hopefully taking with it the heat, the sweat, the noise, and the dust.

Images from our (Burmese) New year's holiday

Old and new Burmese bills - note the denominations (e.g. 25 Kyats):

Upon arrival at the Island just outside Mawlamyine:

Village life on the island; love the goats.

Sunset over Mawlamyine:

And outside of Hpa-An - this funny little monk was shooting at us with his laser gun.

In the same area, we saw more buddhas than anyone would care to see in one place.

and took a cool boat.

Standard monks in Hpa-An, collecting food:

Climbing up Mount Zwegabin - steep & hot and somewhat picturesque.

Once we reached the top, we were so tired, sweaty, and sticky.. but we couldn't go look for food or water before we took about 30 pictures with the stubborn locals (who then didn't even smile!!)

We then found the best place to have a drink once you climbed up and down a mountain in 40 degrees:

At a conference

Today was a water and sewage conference at a fancy hotel.  One week after starting my job, I was sent to represent the Israeli embassy. It was interesting..not only content-wise.

- I was the only non-Asian in a room of 100 people.
- I was the only under 45 in that same room.
- When it was time to take a group photo, they called to the stage only the "distinguished guests". I was pretty sure I wasn't one, so I stayed seated.
- It quickly turned out I was in fact a distinguished guest. For the coffee break, I was sent into the private VIP room where coffee was served to tables, with a side dish of a shrimp dimsum, a spring roll, and a mini sandwich. Awkward coffee break; awkward conversation, weird selection of food for 9am.
- I discovered really interesting things, like the average household in Yangon only gets 8 hours of running water a day (we get 24), and that only 5% have access to the sewage system (that's us).
- Lunch in the VIP table consisted of a 9-course chinese meal which we inhaled in about 40 minutes.
- I normally consider myself pretty comfortable with chopsticks, but not for these nine courses, and not when I'm sitting with ten older, suited, Japanese people. So I couldn't REALLY eat all the courses.
- They finally provided a fork on the ninth course.
- When I reviewed the menu retroactively to check out all the different animals I just ate, it turned out the thing that was my favorite by far was in fact a marinated jellyfish.

Tomorrow - back to the office!

Weekend at the beach

Much delayed.. pictures from our first weekend at a Myanmar beach - Ngwe Saung.

Bamboo bungalows - best served with a hammock.

Oh, the joy.

Locals & coconuts

Sunset walk on the beach..

Surprisingly beautiful shapes in the sand.. never seen anything like this before. 

And for the finalé on the way back - elephanties!!