I’ve always admired those backpackers, or wanderers, or world travelers, whatever you call them to be. They live a rootless life, globe-trot, plunge into a foreign culture and make everywhere they go a home. Meeting new people, trying the local delicates, learning new languages, seeing breathtaking attractions are just few. Deep down, it is making memories of a lifetime that hooks the travelers.
The burning desire to explore and experience in order to learn and live—the roaming syndrome, I call it. To acquire it, you will have to go through 4 stages. It will never resolve; it will only evolve into different form as time passes.
ROAMING SYNDROME STAGE I—The Prodromal Stage
My love for travelling began probably when I was 4, my mom used to bring my brother and me to Penang Island once every 3 month; or when I was 12, my auntie Moy decided to bring me to go on a cruise because my application of following school trip to Singapore was rejected, and it cried me a river for days; or maybe just when I saw how glorious the joy sparking from my aunt was everytime she traveled across the continents.
The grass is always greener on the other side.
I wanted to find myself by becoming a world traveler, I remember I told myself.
ROAMING SYNDROME STAGE II—The Chorus of Solo
The first time I left my family, friends and beloved dog Bean behind and embarked my solo explorations, I was 18. And I was nervous. I didn’t know how and what to plan; I just knew the destination I wanted to go to. So I bought a one-way ticket and there my journey began, against all advice. My friends were rooted. To them, doing anything that was out of order from the customary psychosocial clock—going to college after highschool, starting a career, getting married, buying a house called home—was like running away from the reality.
Well, it didn’t go quite exactly the way I wanted it to be. However, I had grown so much as a person, and I had experience so much—so much that let’s make a testament that living in my own country the whole life would not have made me who am I today as to how magnificent the impact of years of living in foreign lands has on me.
ROAMING SYNDROME STAGE III—The Break
After years of roaming on the other side of the globe, for the first time, I saw the different stream of contentment and happiness my rooted friends had. They had a grounded foundation that I lacked, attracting people to them, to their planned activities, to their homes and dining tables.
I’d forgotten to come home. But I realized that I had no home to go back to.
So I declared to the world that I would take a break. I went back to school, got a nursing license and started my practice. But nursing was contradictory to my first love. After all, it is a career that requires you to be there everyday and has less vacation leaves than any other jobs out there.
But my love for travelling didn’t stop there.
After all, once you fall in love with travelling, it is forever.
ROAMING SYNDROME STAGE IV—The Evolution
I wanted to have the serenity that my rooted friends had, but I also wanted the pleasure travelling gave me. So I began to think of ways to make it work. I decided to work and live abroad: I’d live and work in a country for 2 to 3 years, whilst making at least 3 vacation trips a year. I’m trying to develop a grounded foundation in my own right. I didn’t give up my love. In a sense, I am actually still travelling the world, but in a slower pace and different form.
“I know you Amanda, when you fall in love, you will give him your whole world and begin to settle down,” my close friend once said.
She knows me well.
Well, till then, I will continue to stick to the plan—to roam, work and live abroad.
AmandaTheNURSE 