So that happened today.  Handed in my resignation letter to the EU director, had a quick chat with him about …all that.

Then sent the CEO a different email in Chinese saying, good to be working for him and all of that.
That’s essentially because I know him personally and he owns the company, so he deserves a bit of a different explanation.

Either way, I will be seeing him when I go to the UK to visit family at the beginning of November.

Also, the letter that I sent my director was fairly personal as well, and that’s because he’s actually a nice guy and most of the templates that I found online were the equivalent of  ‘yep, I hate my job, and I hate you.. so…go fuck yourself & this company’   but of course written in a glutinous polite coating so as to loosely disguise that fact.   So not really the thing I was looking for.

A few colleagues that I actually care enough to tell, have asked me: Why u leave? Was it due to the accident at all?
Well yes, that had something to do with it. but not all.  The accident definitely gave me time to think about what is truly important to me.. and this (working at THIS company in the Netherlands) was not it.

When making my decision to come here originally, I gave myself the condition that if I didn’t like it, even before the end of my contract I would just quit and come back to China, or go back to Australia.  So essentially that’s what’s happened, although I lasted longer, whilst also apparently not achieving the original goal of moving over here -which was to open the UK operations/ office-….  but I would put that more down to goals from the head office constantly changing etc.

Anyway, also the decision comes down to the quality of the weather here, or at least to a decent proportion.  I’ve talked about this before, but the weather here is not nice.  6 months of what Australians would call winter, dark, grey, rainy, windy.  Yep, not nice.
And the overall feeling you get from this is one of depression.  I don’t need more of that.

This coupled with the fact that the time of my life that I came, probably doesn’t help.  I mean this with regard to having a social sphere.  I mean, if you were a student, then you have a forced social circle, and of course it’s easier to make friends, and be sociable.  Coming over with your wife/ gf is also another story.  But coming over and not being in either of those situations and spending most of your time working…well that doesn’t really lead to an amazing social circle.  The redeeming thing here though, was that I chose to live in a share-house, so 4 other housemates, so it was always nice to do things with them.

Anyway, the couple of colleagues that I have talked about this with, have said “yes, I understand” & “I respect your decision”

A couple of other reasons is that there are certainly areas that I’m good at. ie. the setup phase of the company, research and all of that, and then initial implementation, but the sales… nope not so much. And because that’s the role I’ve been put in… I’m not enjoying it so much.

I also get reasonably frustrated at the Chinese way of doing business, the chaotic nature sometimes, …the plans that always change… the fact that … people won’t admit when they don’t understand, and maybe don’t appreciate the need for a ‘bridge’ the cultural bridge which is basically a lot of my job sometimes.
So that’s obviously quite frustrating.

I will write a separate article on my insights gained from working in a Chinese company, doing international business.  I imagine that will be quite useful to a few people.
Some people say that ‘living 1 year in China, is like living 5 years in any western country’ – in terms of the amount of experience you gain.  I think that may be more or less correct.
In my 6.5 years living in China total I have seen a lot.  A huge amount in fact, in terms of understanding their culture, and the different approach to things.  And then 3.5 years or so in a professional Chinese company operating internationally, I have seen and experienced a huge deal.
And to be honest, I’m ready for a break.

So, the next question is what will I be doing from here?

I have many friends that have said, well ‘if you quit this job, make sure you find another job to move into straight away’   But in reality, that’s not for me.  I’m not sure at all that I want to go into something similar.  So I would rather take the time to relax, try out a different pace of life and truly figure out what I want to do.

The main point is that I want to something meaningful with my life, as cliché as that may sound.

There are several ideas that are floating around my head at the moment.  I’ve written about this before…but I’ll quickly list them here.  Travel blog (full time adventure kind of style), policeman / government help kind of work, my own business focusing on e-commerce, teaching, my own business to do with teaching, cultural articles….or some combination of all of these.  There are several other ideas rolling around my head, but there are other articles on that.

I think though, what is important for now is to spend some time with friends and family, and having good in depth talks about potentials and go from there.