The starting point
It’s 6:30pm on a Sunday, October 2015. In the empty apartment, only remain a mattress, a duvet and a small backpack containing our clothes for tomorrow. Yesterday night’s excesses left traces; a very last drink with our closest friends, celebrating a brand new start, a new life.
Excitement blends with nostalgia, and a dash of melancholy, all the memories gathered in this small haussmannian apartment are playing in loop in our heads. The first time we step foot to visit it, our enthusiasm when we signed the lease, the day we moved in, the afternoons spent arranging the furniture and decorating, the countless Sunday mornings made of “Croque-Monsieurs” watching TV, our cat Lili discovering her new home, all the parties we hosted. We can’t fight imagining one last time the apartment the way it used to be; the life that animated those 45 square meters that were our home for the last 5 years.
The emptiness is in sharp contrast with our recollection, and tiredness playing its part, melancholy briefly overwhelms us. With tears in our eyes, we hug, realizing all of a sudden: “this is it”. Our comfortable young Parisian executives’ life is over. With butterflies in our bellies, we wonder if we made the right choice, or a huge, spectacular mistake. Anyway, it is too late now to backpedal; tomorrow is the big day, we are taking off to Siem Reap, Cambodia, with two luggage, the cat, and loads of projects.
Everything started 2 years earlier.
Lorraine and I have comfortable positions; she’s working for a prestigious advertisement agency, and I lead a team of 6 Yield Managers for a fast-growing hotel group. We are both happy with our situations, although some clouds are starting to show up. Lorraine is working after 10pm almost every night, and despite the fact that she loves what she does, this crazy rhythm starts to tire her. On my end, the project management I cherished slowly moves to just management. I might well ask for and suggest new projects, my bosses don’t show a lot of interest nor willingness, and I can’t see any clear or serious evolution prospect for me in this company. It starts to look like the end of a cycle for me.
We are on a Friday night, early November 2015, on the way to visit my brother, his wife, and his 6 kids 2 hours away from Paris. We know that the weekend will hardly be restful, but it takes our minds off things and the pleasure of seeing them easily compensate the energy we will spend.
We both managed to leave the office earlier than we usually do in order to avoid arriving too late and upsetting that joyful tribe’s habits.
Our offices are quite close from one another, but we decide to meet at the train station, at the other end of the city. Leaving early is not a problem for me, I was not doing much anyway, but this is a much more complex task for Lorraine. She should manage to be just on time; I got assigned the mission of getting the diner for the train. We meet at the entrance of the quay, walk as fast as possible to our car, and get in at the exact same time a gruff railway employee whistles the departures of the train. That was tight.
While the train starts to move, we search for our seats and once comfortably seated, start to chill. The car is very silent; most of the other passengers have their headphones over the ears, some work, and some start a movie.
Our schedule is quite light, eat, and sleep. Between two sandwiches bites, we tell each other about our day. I explain how empty and boring mine was, how I finished my work around 11am and attended a few pointless meetings. On the other end, Lorraine explains me how she didn’t have time to have lunch, stuck between two conference calls and a keynote to finalize in a hurry for a client.
In the middle of her explanation, she says, sighing, that if it were just up to her, she’d “let everything go and open a beach bar somewhere sunny”. Light-years away from imagining what those few words were about to change in our lives, we escape from our everyday bothers, debating about our dream beach bar at the sun, away from the greyness of Paris at this season. The discussion doesn’t have a hint of seriousness, but is really pleasant and keeps us busy to our destination. As soon as we get off the train, the pleasure of getting back to my brother and his family wipes our futile “Parisian in search of adventures” daydreams.
The weekend goes extremely fast, and it feels a bit like we need to go back to reality before we even realize we arrived. On the Sunday evening, we get back in the train. As expected, we are more tired than when we left Paris two days ago, but with a very nice feeling, happy of that big breath of fresh air and joy we just took. The car is as silent as for the outward journey, and the trip seems way shorter. We actually fall asleep after 5 minutes and get waken up by the strident sound of the railway company saying we are arriving to destination. We get off the train pretty much still asleep and can hardly speak, walking with the flow of the passengers is painful; we are heading to the subway when Lorraine goes:
-I’m so lazy tonight, should we take a taxi?
The decision isn’t hard to take; my mind briefly compares the subway, with hundreds of people pushing each other, and the comfort of a sedan, with that particular smell of a brand new car.
-Yeah, sure, I don’t feel like getting packed in the subway right now.
We are lucky, the car’s GPS advises not to take the shortest way but to go a bit more south. Paris by night is spectacular; we are still barely awake and gaze at the city as the car moves forward. The Haussmaniann buildings go by our windows, all of them display stunning details that make them unique but share the same structure. All very similar and yet quite different, they make this incomparable unity of style and this amazing architectural wealth that makes Paris what it is; they are Paris.
The monuments are majestic, like they are so proud and can’t do anything but standing tall even when nobody is looking at them; the daytime crowd of busy people let the city to a few tourists and couples having a walk after a dinner at the restaurant. We go by some of Paris’ treasures such as Le grand Rex theatre, an art deco masterpiece, witness of the end of the French “Années Folles”, the Opéra or the Madeleine church. I may well have seen them a hundred times, it is always the same pleasure; this 24/7 spectacle always calms me and makes me remember how lucky I am to live in such a city. The taxi stops at our building, we’re home, that feels good, too.
We are lucky, the car’s GPS advises not to take the shortest way but to go a bit more south. Paris by night is spectacular; we are still barely awake and gaze at the city as the car moves forward. The Haussmaniann buildings go by our windows, all of them display stunning details that make them unique but share the same structure. All very similar and yet quite different, they make this incomparable unity of style and this amazing architectural wealth that makes Paris what it is; they are Paris.
The monuments are majestic, like they are so proud and can’t do anything but standing tall even when nobody is looking at them; the daytime crowd of busy people let the city to a few tourists and couples having a walk after a dinner at the restaurant. We go by some of Paris’ treasures such as Le grand Rex theatre, an art deco masterpiece, witness of the end of the French “Années Folles”, the Opéra or the Madeleine church. I may well have seen them a hundred times, it is always the same pleasure; this 24/7 spectacle always calms me and makes me remember how lucky I am to live in such a city. The taxi stops at our building, we’re home, that feels good, too.
Monday mornings are tough, they always have been, even after a good night sleep. I’m heading to work, walking by the paved streets of my neighborhood. The walk is about 20 minutes, and is one of my favorite moments of my day. I always feel a bit depressed when leaving the apartment to go to work, but that walk makes me feel better. I force myself to keep my eyes up and look at everything that surround me; Paris really has a great effect on me. The buildings, the shops, the people, I try to pay attention to everything, and at the same time not to run in anybody or anything, and trust me, that can be a complicated task on a Monday morning.
Between a bank and a bakery, a travel agency featuring some sunny destinations holds my attention. The biggest poster features a sandy beach with some beautiful palm trees and the cutest little wooden house that could be a bar or a bungalow. It reminds me of the pleasant discussion we had on three days earlier. My thoughts start slipping away; I find comfort in imagining us on a white sand beach we would call “home”. I’ve always liked to push things and thoughts as much as I can, so I start wondering where this imaginary home could be. I reach my phone (which I usually try not to use before being at my desk, but this is an emergency) and open “Google Maps”. Ok, there are beautiful beaches all around the world; a satellite search is not going to be really helpful here. I open my Internet browser and start looking at foreign investment friendly countries, a lot of website sort all the countries, and the results are very different from one another, sometimes completely contradictory.
Amongst tens of country names, after a few websites, Cambodia pops up, it wasn’t in the other sites, but I love the way it sounds. Angkor is at the very top of my “to-visit” list, so that must be it! The website explains that the US Dollar is widely used so it ensures a stability of the exchange rates, and a foreigner can have full ownership of a company without a local partner. That sounds like a very good point. Last confirmation, I type “Beach Cambodia”. Mighty Google shows me some nice pictures, that sounds like a plan.
-Remember your beach bar? It will be in Cambodia!
I imagine Lorraine surfacing slowly in the apartment or on the contrary running all over the place, after realizing at 9:20 it was Monday and she was supposed to attend the weekly commercial meeting at 9:30. -Wherever, as long as there is a nice beach. Cambodia has beaches? -They do, not plenty, but it should be enough for our bar! At that moment, my mind is thousands of kilometers away from Paris, and when I get my eyes off my phone as I’m almost walking on my CEO’s shoes. -Good morning Renaud -Good morning Laurent, how was your weekend?-Good, thanks, have a nice day. -Thanks, you too.Back to real life.