Working 40 hours per week isn’t pleasant.  Working 60+ hours, even less so.  So I quit my music teaching job.  I left the family business.  Mum wonders who she can blame for my rebellion.  I told her Tim Ferris and his first edition of The 4-Hour Work Week.  She’s reading it as I write this.

I’ve read a lot of ‘wealth creation’ books.  I was part owner in seven properties, on my way to the dream of early retirement. I played gigs on the weekends.  I was working so many hours I would wake up with such little sleep some mornings, my day would start in tears.  Something had to give.

Fiona, rang me from work one day, telling me she’d bought The 4-Hour Work Week with a discount Borders voucher that had landed in her inbox.  She said it sounded interesting.  Once at home, I read it from cover to cover – three times.  I engaged the expertise of a lifestyle coach.  Then I quit my job and sold my share in the properties.  Finally, I felt like I had the right information, I felt empowered.  My dream felt possible.

Playing at Secret Garden, Vietnam.

For the past twelve months I have dedicated myself to my true passion – performing and writing music.  I have played in Australia, India and now Vietnam.  Next will be the Philippines.  I have released five of my original songs online, with five more to come.

Playing for the children at the local orphanage.

At the same time as quitting my ‘real job’ as a singing teacher, I employed a Virtual Assistant through elance.com.  Vipul is based in India and is worth his weight in gold.  While I perform in Vietnam, he is looking for my next gig in the Philippines.  While I develop a new line of merchandise for my website, he is sourcing distributors.  Brilliant.  I really can be in two places at once.

Playing at Kyra, India.

So now, I wake up every morning, well rested and energized for the day ahead.  All day every day I am creating.  Making music, making JadeMonster plush toys, bags, tees.  I can go to the beach any time I want.

Beach view, Kovalam.

Living currently in Hoi An, Vietnam, my weekly cost of living is reduced to $80 per week .  Yes, I live in a hotel (no cleaning or bed making), eat at vegan restaurants (no cooking) and ride my rented bike (no maintenance costs) for $80 per week.  As long as I earn $80 per week, I can sleep, eat and get around.  Any more than that and I’m saving, traveling, shopping or re-investing back into my music and merchandise products.

Sunday. Vietnamese coffee. Beach.

My New Way to Work is now far less complicated, almost entirely stress-free and 100% enjoyable.

Come and join me!

jade@jadeleonard.com

www.jadeleonard.com

www.jademonster.net

When mum decided to voluntarily give me the answer to this question, I was about twelve years old and she walked me through the standard text “Where did I Come From?” by Peter Mayle.  There wasn’t much more to the story than biology.  I share the same chromosomes and culture as my mum and nan.  I knew the house my mum lived in as a kid and where my nan was married and where my extended family resided.  I already knew my immediate ancestry came from Essendon.

Throughout my life I have often contemplated adoption.  I can remember, as early as the time I read the aforementioned book, envisaging my future family including children who I innately knew were not genetically connected to me.

I now find myself a short distance away from the possibility of being able to adopt – an exciting prospect for someone who has researched sperm donors, haploidisation and other ways of creating an ‘alternative’ family – whatever that is in relation to your perception of a ‘normal’ family.

Independent of my underlying interest in adoption, last week I was asked by a volunteer to perform for the children at a local orphanage.  I was delighted to be asked and looked forward to meeting the children.

The orphanage is home for 80+ children, both disabled and able-bodied. The disabled children attend school on-site while the other children attend the local government school.  Though government run, an independent charity provides additional assistance to ensure all of the children have a quality of life, are given an opportunity to be educated and have regular health care.

I performed for around 20 children with varying disabilities including cerebral palsy, downs syndrome and hydrocephalus.  Their enthusiasm and joyousness were entirely contagious – not only did I perform some of Vietnam’s favourite English pop songs, but the children also performed for me, songs in English, Vietnamese and French!  What a treat!

Trying to sleep that night became difficult as two scenes from the day’s events played over in my mind.

As we left the orphanage, our host was kind enough to give us a quick tour of the grounds and we were able to say good-night to some of the children who were going to bed.  In one room however, the children were out numbered by Konica Minolta wielding tourists crouching awkwardly by the children’s beds, smiling for their Facebook friends.  I couldn’t believe it.  As we left the bedroom, in shock, we were faced with another two tourists in their early twenties – camera in hand – asking where all the children were.  Unable to assure my own diplomacy, I kept my mouth shut.

Through no fault of the independent charity, the government officials who run this orphanage have turned it into somewhat of a tourist destination in an effort to derive donations – which the administration undoubtedly receive.  How much of these donations actually reach the children directly is unknown, but in my opinion fairly self-evident.

What I just can’t get over is that there are people who, whilst on holiday, actually want to go and take a tour of an orphanage and have their photograph taken alongside an abandoned, disabled child.  Why?  I’d really like that question answered because I just don’t get why you would want to invade the privacy and dignity of these children for even five minutes – for the sake of what?  A happy snap to post on Facebook to create the illusion that they’re so caring they took time-out of their holiday to visit the disabled children’s zoo?  Maybe I’ve spent too long in a tourist town, but the ignorance displayed by so many tourists is simply embarrassing.

My rant aside (I feel much better for getting that off my chest – thanks for reading), I was more personally stuck by comments made by another volunteer, on our walk home.  I inevitably broached the orphanage-as-tourist-destination question with her and this lead to a discussion about adoption of the children.

She passionately put forth the argument against international adoption for several reasons.  Many of the children of middle primary school age and above have developed extremely strong connections to their friends and carers, who are now essentially their family.  At the orphanage they have a sense of community, of culture.  They belong.  Children have been adopted from the orphanage, leaving siblings behind, breaking apart families, displacing identities.

When these children ask where they came from, though their biological parents may not be present, they are surrounded by their culture, the heritage of their country and their people dating back more than 4000 years.  Yes, four THOUSAND years.  As a resident of a country with a cultural heritage I do not belong to, I could never possibly fathom the impact of being removed from a life that runs so old through the veins of every inhabitant.

Is my desire to adopt altogether altruistic or am I pandering to my ego?  If I were to adopt, could I ever truly answer the question “Mummy, where did I come from?”.  What is ‘a better life’, what are ‘better opportunities’?

My Konica Minolta “we-just-came-to-check-out-the-orphanage” contemporaries probably gawk at the simple life so many millions of people lead here in Vietnam.  But the question needs to be asked, are they unhappy or discontented with their own lives?  In the case of orphans, to whose perceived benefit is it to remove a child from their family, their culture, their country?

These are questions I need to answer.

As a Western woman I have always had a concern for my appearance for one reason or another.  Weight, skin, hair, nails, clothes, shoes.  Not in a Sex and the City I-am-all-consumed-by-consumerism sort of way, but in the way that external self-analysis is almost impossible to be entirely rid of.

I have always wanted to be thin, but very rarely been.  As a teenager I thought that I would be more popular the thinner I was.  In my early twenties I felt that my physical size was an outward expression of my level of self-control.

My genetics blessed me with good skin.  I stopped biting my nails when I fell in love with Barbra Streisand (make what facial expressions you will…).  I’m still searching for a sense of personal style and when ever possible I wear shoes with sparkles – currently Slim Crystal Havaianas imbedded with Swarovski crystals (in all seriousness, I have trudged around India and Vietnam for the past five months and these thongs have very rarely been off my feet for more than an hour at a time – highly recommended foot wear for travelling, and much funkier than Tevas).

Now when I look in the mirror, I am still struck by my body size, considering I eat only two fresh vegetarian meals a day and am constantly zipping around Hoi An on my rented bicycle.  I rarely get close enough to the mirror to examine my skin, but I do notice the distinct colour difference growing between my upper and lower arm.  Having spent so little time in the sun in Australia, I have now developed a serious case of tan line, and not the bikini clad back-packer kind!

Yesterday I bravely went for a hair cut, manicure and pedicure, servicing my vain concern that my re-growth and nail polish were both at a point of being offensive.  I was struck by several moments.

My manicurist commented on the shade of the skin on my forearms, ‘so lovely, so white’ she said holding her arms against mine.  I’ve been paranoid about skin cancer and have always slip-slop-slapped in the harsh Australian sun, but I have never thought of my fair skin as any sort of asset.  Half an hour in the sun and I burn to the colour of a lobster. Consequently, I cover up.  In Asia my fair skin is seen as a testament to an assumed high-class upbringing, of one who has not had to work outdoors in the sun as a labourer but has had the luxury of staying indoors.  With fair skin, I must be wealthy and my life must be luxurious.

She grabs hold of my upper arm, almost unable to stop herself from massaging my bicep.  ‘Strong’ she says, ‘very healthy’.  I look at her slender arm, the same diameter from wrist to shoulder.  I think of all the clothes I could wear with skinny arms like that.  My ample body mass is seen as a sign of prosperity, my family having enough food to create additional muscle and fat on our bodies.  Apparently, it brings good luck to her family if she touches me.

While she enthusiastically cuts my cuticles, I try not to concern myself with thoughts of un-sanitised equipment and hepatitis contraction while also pondering how much this woman and I fantasise about trading bodies.  I would finally be able to buy clothes off the rack and have zero body fat.  She would be wealthy and prosperous, living in luxury.  The Vietnamese are such lithe people, their bone structure so much smaller than most Westerners.  For many of my friends I know this is both a mix of genetics and the struggle for most Vietnamese families to have enough money to buy enough food to eat every day, to find enough of a variety to provide all the essential nutrients for a growing body.

Andrew X. Pham in his book ‘Catfish and Mandala’ (a really wonderful and inspiring read) talks of his trip to the Cu Chi tunnels.  Having crawled through the purposely widened tunnels, for large Western bodies last week, this scene made me chuckle:

After half an hour tunnelling on our hands and knees, we escaped to the surface, gasping.  Another group headed down.  A well-fed British woman in her fifties was desperately wiggling into the opening.  Her male companion and a Vietnamese tour guide struggled to help her into the passage.  One tried to keep her from getting stuck, the other tried to keep the woman from falling through.  Standing next to us, two Vietnamese soldiers watched with amazement plain on their faces.  They were both about five feet tall and a hundred pounds – roughly the size of the Vietnamese Rat People who built the Cu Chi tunnels.
“How do Westerners get so fat?” one soldier asked another.
After due reflection, the man replied, “Eggs and butter.”  His companion nodded in deep agreement, both of them mentally calculating – the wealth – how many dozen eggs and pounds of butter it took to amass a three-hundred-pound body.

We envy each other for very different reasons.