Welcome to Envy Park

The plan was this:

Fly back home and deal with condo turnover paperwork.

Buy furniture.

Live in the new place for six months to a year, however long it would take to get a new Real Job.

Take temporary Not-Real Jobs to finance Real Job search.

Find a renter for the one-bedroom.

Fly to Hong Kong, or Thailand, or Cambodia--ideal location of Real Job.

On my third week back, paperwork accomplished and furniture all delivered and arranged, I finally invited Roxie over. My best friend, my partner in crime since college, was to be my first guest at my one-bedroom apartment in somewhat-swanky NV Park, a new residential enclave within a business district in Metro Manila. It was an honor that she initially refused, insisting that my first guest should be a guy, one who would gladly test out the bed for me, or the couch, or the kitchen table, ideally all of the above.

"Stop it. You're coming over tonight and that's it," I told her, when she called to tell me this.

"I'm serious. You know what happens when you come home. A dry spell for you is a dry spell for me, Moira."

Oh my god. Roxie was referring the oddly parallel romantic lives we'd had in the five years that I had been living in Singapore, while she remained in Manila. On the first year, when I visited for Christmas, I had been dating someone at work. And soon after, she started dating someone from her place of work.

The following year was difficult for me, and on my second trip home, things were not doing well with the boyfriend. We broke up a few weeks after my return to Singapore. And Roxie's boyfriend broke up with her too. Year three was better, sort of, because I found a great job and got introduced to a new set of people. I dated often, but didn't really click with anyone. Roxie too went on a few dates but was for the most part single. The fourth year rolled around, and by my holiday Manila visit I didn't even bother to date then, because I'd decided that I was going to let my work contract run out and move back home. Why start something when my stay had an expiry date?

And on my fifth visit, just last year, Roxie ruefully informed me that her singlehood was my fault. Like when close friends got their periods in sync, but worse. 

"We are not cursed," I reprimanded her, speaking into my cellphone as I browsed through the NV Park supermarket's liquor section. "And I'm not going to let you blame me for your situation. Do you want light beer?"

"I get off work at seven. You have...three hours to find someone and do stuff before I get there. Please, do it for me."

"I think we're having tequila tonight," I said. "See you later, crazy."

"It's your fault! You can do something about this now! Change our lives for the better, Moira!" She was yelling this and more but I had tossed the phone back into my bag.

The reason why Roxie was still single was because she worked too hard, didn't go out, and expected interesting men to just show up at her door. She was stuck in a rut and I knew it. I was an expert at rut-avoidance, and told her that the only way to get out of it was to shake things up. Change jobs, start a new hobby, and there was also my favorite trick: move to a new city.

Five years in Singapore and I could feel it coming on, the rut. I was comfortable, I liked my job, and I was able to make the payments on my modest property investment. It could have gone on for another year, or three, or even longer, easily. All of my friends from Manila, who had come over to "try it out for a year" that eventually became three then five then ten, they were settling in just fine. Inertia took over, and the new city began to feel more like home than actual home.

But not for me. I sensed it coming, that poor-me ennui that made me pack up and leave Manila in the first place. I was twenty-two (a kid really), but at the time I really did feel stuck. My days were so alike that I couldn't tell them apart. I kept having the same conversation with different people. And after two years at my first job I could tell that I wouldn't be able to afford a laptop much less a home of my own. 

So I shook things up.

And that was over, I was back, and now I had an apartment, a small amount saved up, and an empty calendar.

What was next?