Accepting Like A Naive Teenager
Day 24 of My 100-Day Midlife Pivot
If you missed it, I decided to give myself 100 days to do a midlife pivot after my failed start-up attempt in Thailand. I started on March 23, 2022. Check out my recaps from along the way — The Ugly Truth, Despair to Progress
I jumped out of bed like a teenager rushing to turn on MTV and watch the Thriller debut when my alarm sounded at 4 am. I was inspired, focused and full of energy. Today is a far cry from 24 days ago when I drug myself down the stairs to record the first vlog of my 100-day midlife pivot.
So much has happened, and I have many stories to share with you.
First, let me apologize for not updating you sooner — it’s been a crazy ride, and I’m having a hard time getting everything down on paper.
I’ll use this post as catch-up and to ease the growing pressure I’m feeling to try and write 22 days of posts this afternoon.
The good news is that I’m making progress with my pivot and will go into those details soon. Although I still don’t have cash flowing, I have laid much of the foundation, including:
1. Being accepted as a community tutor by Italki and completing my profile — now I’m just waiting to attract my first student.
2. Creating enough content on Medium.com and YouTube to make a mini portfolio to showcase my abilities.
3. With the portfolio in place, I’ve created a profile and have been bidding for projects on UpWork.com.
4. This morning, I woke up to find my first reply to a proposal. I don’t have the project secured yet — but it’s a huge step forward for a girl who didn’t know what she would do 24 days ago.
In addition to finding a viable income stream, the other pesky problem I’ve been dealing with is securing new visas, which has been surprising and eventful.
One of the great things about living in Thailand is the laid-back approach. But this gets old fast when you need real answers. It’s called the land of “face” for a reason.
The Thai culture is modest and conservative, making it difficult for people to express negative feelings due to a belief that it’s a sign of weakness, which could lead to social rejection. This concept is known as “face.” In the majority of conversations, someone is trying to “save face,” ensure they don’t “loss face,” or trying to help the other person “keep face.”
It’s a complicated and deep-running ritual. Although we have all told white lies like, “yes, his phone must be dead, which is why he hasn’t replied to your texts in 5 days,” to help someone avoid negative feelings, “face” is more like Jim Carrey’s character, Fletcher Reede everyday life in Liar Liar.
Sometimes, in Thailand, they will tell you “yes” when they really mean “no.” Other times they will make up information to avoid saying they don’t know. You can imagine this makes it challenging to get accurate information.
For the Thai, this is entirely acceptable behaviour to help people avoid negative feelings. However, it feels more like mass acceptance of lying as a foreigner, and the Eurythmics could have written the national anthem.
Now would I say something that wasn’t true?
I’m asking you sugar
Would I lie to you?
Back on Day 2 — Hubby and I went off to a visa agency to learn our options for new visas. I ran them through a complete list of questions, checking several ways to ensure consistent answers.
It was a great 30-minute conversation, and we left with a solid plan. It sounded super easy, Dave would apply for a retirement visa, and I would be attached to it as his spouse. There is no need to leave the country, nothing to do with our existing visas.
The only challenge was to get $30K in the hubby’s Thai bank account in the next six days as it needed to be in the account for two months of “vetting” or Immigration won’t issue the visas.
No problem, one of the advantages of living in Thailand is that we live 14 hours in the future from Canada — so although it was the end of my Friday here — Canada’s Friday still hadn’t started.
I spent an hour or so looking at our financial options — Yuck! Where can I squeeze out the required cash, and what is best to liquidate?
As I only have $25K left in my RRSP, we have to take it out of Dave’s. I sent the request to our financial advisor and headed off to pour myself a glass of wine.
Day 3
It was spring break in Canada, and our financial advisor was away. But early on, I learned to CC his assistant on emails, which paid off again.
While I was sleeping, the assistant confirmed she could get the cash I needed moving ASAP with a confirmation call — perfect.
On day 2, I also emailed our banker to confirm she would be able to do the transfer on Monday.
I didn’t hear back from her, and fearing she was away for spring break — I hatched a plan to get my 83-year-old mother to help out. Thank goodness we had the foresight to add her to our bank account before leaving Canada for situations like this.
I spent some time thinking through the best process to get mom all the details for the transfer so she didn’t feel overwhelmed by the task. And after a few moments, it was clear to me.
I took a photo of the written instructions and emailed it to mom. Then I called and helped her save the image to her iPad photos. This way, she could take the iPad to the bank with the instructions, and she didn’t have to fuss with WIFI or try to find the email again.
The call went well — it only took a few minutes for mom to work through the instructions to save the image from the email. My god, have my IT support skills ever improved since moving here! (Note to self, if the writing thing doesn’t work out for me, maybe I can get a call support gig.)
Day 4
I woke on Sunday to find the funds in our Canadian account. But we had to wait till Monday for mom to organize the international transfer.
Day 5
It didn’t quite go off without a hitch at the bank — mom was missing our Thai address and had to make a second trip to the bank, but she successfully transferred the funds. Cowabunga!
She is so cute — the funds convert to just over 800,000 Thai Baht. When I called to confirm the transfer had gone, mom told me she envisioned all those BATs flying to Thailand. It reminded me of Batman Begins when he used the swarming bats to distract the SWAT team just after Rachel is drugged with the fear-inducing hallucinogen … anyways.
Day 6
The BATS flew fast as they arrived in hubby’s account three days before the deadline. I felt amazing! I’ve pulled off a near financial miracle. I was about to cross “Visas” off my to-do list — when Dave popped his head in my office.
I could tell he was totally buggin from his small pupils and drawn face.
Oh, he’s been texting with the visa agency. Everything they told us three days ago had changed entirely, and thanks to “face,” it was now unclear what we would need to do to get our visas.
It was ten long minutes before he took the chill pill. We agreed there is no rush, and we would go back to the office next week as broken English communication is better in person than by text when you get messages like: You need to ASAP. But ask them if you can 21 days before.
Say what?
Day 14
A few days later, we headed back to their office.
The “smart” visas we hold have complicated everything. Even though they expire before the new visas, we would still have to cancel them. And the staff can’t seem to get beyond this point to tell us the steps for the new visas.
It quickly became clear they were trying to save face, and we were just talking to the hand.
As I’m not Thai, I have no problem expressing my negative feelings. Magically, as I said, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll just call Smart Visa myself, so I can understand what needs to happen,” one of the staff disappeared, and a “supervisor” joined the conversation.
Dave took over to allow me time to compose myself, and within moments, a “manager” joined the conversation. Her English was very limited — but through the staff translations, she called the Bangkok Immigration Office that deals with Smart Visas and seemed to find the perfect solution.
She tells us that on May 27, when the 2-month “vetting” of the funds is up, her office will send our passports and documents to this newfound contact at Immigration in Bangkok. This officer will cancel the expiring visas, issue the two new visas, and send back our passports before the June 4 deadline.
Oh, how I wanted to believe this to be true! I wished I were consumed with the same faith and trust Peter Pan had in Hook — “I do believe in fairies! I do! I do!”
But it was hard to tell if this was just another “face” story. I decided I would accept the story like a naive teenager hearing, “it’s not you, it’s me,” during a breakup, as I couldn’t bear the watch Dave buggin for the next two months.
To be safe, on the drive home, I planted the seed that we need to keep open to the possibility that we could unexpectedly have to book and board a plane at the end of May to secure our visas.
But for now, all we can do is wait. I’ll let you know how it all turns out on day 70 — so stay tuned.
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