First Things First

“Oh my gosh, you will have a bestseller!” Music to my ears, although not music that I honestly believe. Coming from Alejandra though, a Spanish girl from Barcelona working in the UN that I just met five minutes ago, they were heartening. I had just finished my still halting, awkward, and sometimes unintentionally, slightly embarrassing explanation of “where my next stop was” – a common point of discussion for global nomads like us – by talking about weddings, balance, and finding a wife when this welcome assertion burst from her lips. Maria, like me, was single, enjoyed living abroad, and utterly flummoxed with not only the prospects of finding someone suitable while overseas but also figuring out how to make it work if she did find that special someone. Her thesis? If I could figure out what to do, young international professionals everywhere would buy my book. In droves.

Yay! Will that help me find a wife though?

In fact, I was introduced to Alejandra by another couple working at the UN – Maria and Bob, Italian and Australian respectively. In some sense, they are the archetype of what Alejandra(and perhaps me?) is striving for; a young couple who met while working in Central America and have somehow managed to both find interesting work in the same city. Like many couples in this situation, their move to Manila was driven by Maria getting a job offer her. Bob’s employment was a stroke of luck that happened after they got here, and is potentially just temporary. Although they are together, there is little guarantee of real stability because neither knows how long they can both be employed in the same place and they have no clue where the next stop might be.

It’s a story that is repeated over and over again with ex-pats around the world. Only Maria and Bob are the lucky ones – at least they are both gainfully employed in good jobs in the same city. More often, it seems that there are sacrifices and compromises throughout, as couples take turns placing their own dreams on hold so their partner can pursue theirs. Yet, perhaps blinded by our own problem du jour, Alejandra and I agree that the real difficult thing is finding someone to share your life with when you’ve already started down the path of nomadic global professional. Apparently, Alejandra knows plenty of eligible single men in Madrid, which I politely pointed out to her was rather useless when she was here in Manila. Laughing, she agreed. And, despite the best efforts of Maria and Bob to intervene on the plight of a global couple, Alejandra and I, undeterred, continued to commiserate about the difficulties of finding that special someone. The problems that might come afterwards… well, those come later, and in true “live in the moment” nomadic fashion, first things first: finding someone.