Choices, Choices, Choices...

Apparently buying a property in Austria can also get you a citizenship to that country... hmm.

I'm a rather indecisive sort of person. I can count 52 books that I have openly begun to read in my library (about 2/3 are on travel or travel-related themes). So much choice! I could probably put them into categories... postmodern philosophy, postmodern fiction/poetry, European travel, Asian travel, American travel, Middle Eastern travel (I have two of these, and I'm not even all that interested in Middle Eastern travel!), African travel (ditto on both counts). Amongst these are two books by Pico Iyer, Jan Morris, Paul Theroux, Tony Griffiths, Jose Saramago, Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, Umberto Eco, Jeanette Winterson and Friedrich Nietzche each.
Then, I have about 35 DVDs I haven't yet seen to watch... some of the titles include the first four seasons of The Wire, U-Carmen, Power Yoga, Happy Together, Schindler's List, Billy Elliot, P!nk (live in concert) and probably the odd one out, He's Just Not That Into You (hey, I need my Scarlett Johanssen eye-candy).

These texts have all been carefully selected to enrich my inner world... which is just as well, because I have to stay in Australia for a month or two longer before I can escape, hot and happy, to Thailand. I can honestly say that while the culture may let me down, all I have to do is pick up a book or slip a DVD into my computer to be immersed in another culture.

It's a real shame that Open University only allows you to study 3 languages (Mandarin, Italian and Indonesian)... if they had Spanish, I would take it immediately. It's not that I don't want to learn Italian (or Chinese, for that matter). It's just it's not my first priority, and if I'm going to put in a lot of effort to learn a new language, it might as well be Spanish, or, my second favourite choice right now, French. Chinese would be sooo useful, but it's astoundingly hard, and since I don't intend to move to China, Taiwan, Singapore or the like... It would be nice to improve my Japanese, or learn Swedish or Danish, so it's disappointing to realise I still have so few choices here.

What I do have a choice in is how to spend my next year, decade, and entire future...

Can I see myself basing myself in Thailand for life? I could keep moving around, staying in guesthouses/hotels all over the country, which would allow me the opportunity to leave, for short periods, anytime I like. I could spend the dry season abroad or something.

Stream of consciousness... (you know, this was meant to be a CHoice A, Choice B, Choice C post, where I list the endless directions I visualise myself as being torn by, but I believe that is a superficial response... I know that I choose to be at home, searching for my next lightning-bolt revelation, I choose to be static in some ways so I can jump around in others, and I know that even though it matters how quickly I learn Spanish, if I ever continue studies at any kind of university, whether I take a course on photography, or consider it a choice between two languages and two different lifestyles (Thai, which leads to more Thailand, or Argentine Spanish, which leads to South America and ultimately Spain), work overtime to produce an overflow of work, push myself to my limits or bludge along, only using a tiny portion of my potential... even though all these things matter, I can't abandon my everyday life of learning, my deeply ingrained commitment to deriving inspiration, my daily attachments to the raw produce of highly specialised information sources... or writing for the non-profit cause of myself my readers, for the sake of free information and a lack of censorship or editing. A lack of 'helpful suggestions' and 'unintentional butchering of my work'... if this blog had AdSense ads, you would now get some very colourful results due to the word 'butcher' and perhaps 'raw produce'. The beauty of being free from the all-pervading Ad generation system is that my words are the sole words that inform the page... external content doesn't bleed into them and disturb their melancholy elegance or defensive optimism.

Where was I again?

If I was to go to Argentina I would no doubt fall in love in ways I can't possibly expect. I would no doubt be turned off in ways which dismay me like nothing I could have ever imagined. If money weren't an issue it would be my next destination, but perhaps I'm lucky that all looks good for an Asia-bound imagination. After all, I find few countries more agreeable than Thailand, and from there I plan to do something like the following:

3 months in Thailand (Nov, Dec, Jan); 1 months in Laos/Bali (Feb); 1 month in Vietnam (March); 1 month in Japan or Taiwan (April); Malaysia (May) ... the options are limitless, what with AirAsia flying to Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo, Tianjin, Chengdu, Yangon, Bali, Laos, Clark (Philippines) and also London. (I doubt I can talk my parents into purchasing a ticket to Tehran for me, interesting as going to Iran would be.)

When I go to Thailand I hope to write about my experience on Eccentric Travels, my other Blogger domain. Speaking of my other blogs, if you want to read what I wrote to two members of parliament who partially hold the balance of power in Canberra, please check out my first, not forgotten, blog, Postmodern Critic, here.