Korean Job Discussion Forums

[Wishmaster]

Yeah, I never thought about it...but I guess that I am. Can't stay in one place for long...always have a desire for the road...love the idea of taking chances in new situations...love the freedom of the whole thing. I've been trying to reform myself here in Korea with some stability. But there are some days(especially like today) when I feel like just jetting off and moving somewhere else and dealing with a completely new situation. Maybe Japan. Maybe home. Other than Tiger Beer, anyone else out there just drifting?

[stevie rotten]

cept fer me guitar i don't own anything that won't fit in my pack. now that i think of it i've been that way fer years. so yeah, i guess i am kinda a drifter. i prefer the title 'riffraff' though.

[rapier]

I''m an unwilling drifter, you could say.
Having been born and raised in Africa, my home country is now an intolerable place to live.
Although i have a British passport, after 6 years there I have zero desire to ever return there.
So, yeah, I just keep on going. One day i'll find my real adopted home.
I have no family to speak of either.
those of you with a sound family, secure home country, and a hometown where everyone knows you- I don't understand why you are drifters of choice. its a pretty rootless existence. Maybe more interesting, but its possible to get bored of "interesting" after a while.

[Skywalker26]

I prefer to substitute the term poor drifter for windswept and interesting. Makes me feel better about being able to fit all my belongings in a suitcase.

[mithridates]

I've never worked in one place for more than eight months, and have lived in about 20 places in the past five years, though I don't feel like a drifter. I do know how easy it is to pack up and move somewhere else, but I'm not really into old-school drifting where one leaves all friends and family behind and goes off into the middle of nowhere without contact for a few years. I do feel that it's my responsibility to know about the world, all of its countries, how it works and how people think. I consider myself to be more on a surveying mission than just an aimless drifter.

[korian]

i think the term drifter can have connotations that are misleading. anyone that doesn't want to live the conventional life of work family home ad infinitum and has a curiosity about the world is labelled a 'drifter' i.e someone that doesn't fit in and struggles with the onus of real living.

i think that's unfair. my mum has called me a drifter ever since i left uni and it isn't a complimentary way. she says 'you can't go on travelling around the world flitting from place to place, meeting girls, having your fun, packing up again and doing it somewhere different year after year....'

i say why not?

it's not for everyone but nor is finding a girl, getting a job, buying a house, having some kids and planning the 1 week of vacation a year you can manage with your partner.

as rapier said, interesting can get boring and now i won't go somewhere just for the sake of going there and saying i've been there. i'm much more selective now and a potential place to go to needs to meet some criteria, but i still have no intention of staying in the one place for the rest of my days.

am i a drifter? i don't think so......

[VanIslander]

Like wishmaster, I've sought some stability here in South Korea, signing on for a second year and possibly will a third. I bought a large beautiful desk towards the end of my first year to help counter my impulse to leave, to make it easier to follow through on my intellectualized decision to stay with a good thing a bit longer.

Unlike rapier, I have a hometown, two to be exact: the one I lived in until age ten and the one my family has lived in ever since. The latter feels more like home but lost that hometown fuzzy feeling after a few summers spent back there during university. I noticed that most of my friends had moved away to the big city (Vancouver) or elsewhere. Those who stayed did not lead enviable lives I thought, having children too early or having little ambition other than becoming manager of a local restaurant someday. I had bigger dreams and ambitions than any hometown can contain, and every extra day I stuck around there was a kind of dying.

Like mithridates, I've done many different things in different places over the years. Two years of local college to stay close to my girlfriend, followed by three years of university in another province, followed by two years of grad school in another province followed by one year of thesis research in Toronto followed by nearly two years of part-time journalism work and more coursework in Winnipeg where my then girlfriend worked. (One of the reasons I knew I couldn't marry her was that she wanted to spend her entire life in that city, had never left the province and had no desire to travel.) Then I worked in my hometown for six months again before leaving for a year on Vancouver Island and then a few months work in Northern Alberta. I didn't plan it but I was developing a taste for a wayfaring lifestyle. I now feel the itch to go.

[igotthisguitar]

>. They call me a seeker ...

[mysteriousdeltarays]

I think that I am more of what the USSR used to call a "homeless cosmopolitan" but then again I might be a "a snake demon and green cow dragon" or even a "running dog." But I can easily see "drifter" as in "itinerant drifter" added to my name.

[Mosley]

Deltarays: The term was "rootless cosmopolitan" and was a codeword for (especially) Soviet Jews. Cheers.

[Cedar]

No.

I have so much stuff I have to get a professional mover to help me move. I have all the pots and pans you need, even when you get an oven (my last Korean job gave us 4 burner stoves with ovens!). I have furniture, I have blankets so that if my friends crash neither they nor I need to be cold during the night even in winter. I have a cat for Christ's sake. I am so rooted here it's not even funny. I read of people that everything can fit in their backpack and I am envious in a way... but on the other hand I LIKE having professional looking tailored suits to wear when I work and I LIKE having huge photos albums and three bookcases worth of books...

[mysteriousdeltarays]

Mosely indeed you are correct! I figure with nonsense jargon like that accuracy isn't really imperative. Plus I'd had a few bottles on nail polish remover with the Leneige girl.

You are right though on all counts.

Just jargon I picked up from reading Ossip Mahndlesteim's widow's autobiography years ago.

I stand corrected! Unbowed, uncooperative and in many ways unseemly but corrected indeed.

"Where there is suspicion there is guilt!"

[Zed]

There's a voice that keeps on callin' me, down the road, that's where I'll always be .......