5 Months On

It’s been a little over 5 months since we packed up our lives in Singapore for Austria. We’ve spent most of our time in Carinthia (southern part of Austria), home to the most beautiful turquoise alpine lakes and mountains, with Slovenia and Italy just a short drive away. So how was it?

We really like it here.

We made the decision to move to Austria largely because we were curious to see how we’d like living (and not just holidaying) here as a young family, bearing in mind EB had been away from home for almost half his life. It was a bit of an experiment, and it wasn’t an easy decision to leave behind our relatively stable lives and jobs in Singapore to embark on a period of uncertainty, especially with young kids in tow. Then again, there’s never gonna be a good time to do this. 5 months on, we really do like it here. We love the slower pace of life, the access to such stunning nature and landscapes all around us, and an abundance of great local and regional produce and wine. I enjoy observing the Austrian/alpine way of life - you get a glimpse of these when you holiday here for a few weeks but living here gives it a whole new dimension as you witness how each season brings about an enthusiasm for a whole new range of sports and activities, and the delight in discovering artisanal local producers / farmers. Surrounded by people who are just so passionate about being outdoors, I am impressed by how physically active everyone is regardless of whether you’re 3 years old or 70 years old. The kids are soaking every bit of these up and didn’t seem to have any issues adapting to their new life, and as parents, having the freedom to raise them a little wild makes it all worthwhile.

Some things work out, some things don’t. 

We had plans to set-up base in Salzburg but that got shelved. Having taken a few months off work to settle in and to sort out my residence permit, I’ve now started to research and explore the job market here in Austria, as well as Switzerland and Germany. The transition to finding a new job can feel both exciting and unsettling at the same time, with Covid-19 in the backdrop, navigating a whole new market/region that is predominantly German-speaking, and building up a professional network from scratch. It’s never been easy to be in-between career gigs, and to be honest, job hunting is an awkward phase, and I do wish people would normalise this and share more about these transitions. It’s been great to speak to friends about this (you know who you are) and I am amazed by how everyone almost has someone whom they think might be a helpful contact and the generosity in connecting.

On Side Projects

I believe in the importance of side projects / passion projects as a creative outlet and am inspired by many, such as SWISSMISS and an old friend/ex-boss who blogs at Bazartropicando. It’s always interesting to hear/read about what people are working on outside of their day jobs. Right now for me that looks like working on a backlog of photography essays and a project called #nomoremondays - an on-going series to learn more about people's dreams and aspirations beyond their professions and their titles, so if you know of anyone interesting whom I should talk to, I’d be happy to be connected.

A Family Sabbatical

Almost a decade after first watching this TED talk by Stefan Sagmeister, it still resonate with me. His whole premise was this:

“That right now we spend about in the first 25 years of our lives learning, then there is another 40 years that's really reserved for working. And then tacked on at the end of it are about 15 years for retirement. And I thought it might be helpful to basically cut off five of those retirement years and intersperse them in between those working years.”

It was this video that compelled EB and I to do a short career break back in 2012, and we found ourselves at it again 8 years later without consciously planning for it. Both kids turn 5 today (Jun 16), and it’s such an incredible age to be with. So if Europe works out for us, we’ll be happy to stay, and if not, being able to live here for a short period of time is itself, a privilege and one that we’ll remember in years to come.