Taking off

We are preparing to make the big move. There is a goodbye party happening in our garden even as I write this. Good friends and neighbours coming over to say their farewells. We are leaving London after 11 years. I don’t really know where Taiwan is located, and still we are going. I don’t even know why we are going, and still we are going.

Breaking up and starting again is what my life always has been about. I never felt like an immigrant to Britain, only as a temporary visitor. I never belonged here but then again I never belonged anywhere. I was here for a while that’s all — and now I’m leaving. The human condition.

Yet it is very much a case of leaping first and looking later. Strangely I’ve managed to convince my wife and children to follow me. They are easily fooled. Even if our lives in Taiwan turn out to be worse than here, they will be better. Different is always better if you have had enough of the same. As Samuel Johnson famously put it, “the man who is tired of London should move to Hsinchu, Taiwan.”

July 6th update: we are leaving this evening, got visas from the Taiwanese consulate this morning — this is really scary!