Suspended Animation

The new job hasn't quite worked out as planned - what was meant to be a move to stay ahead of the curve is potentially headed toward redundancy - a corporate business plan to be disclosed on January 9th, 2009 to the market (and employees!) will likely set all that out, but I am guessing that the balance of probabilities is not in my favour.

In the meantime, time passes slowly as the credit crunch unfolds globally; I am spectator in the same way that you are a spectator when you slow down and observe a multi-car pile up on the side of the road with morbid fascination, then speed up after you've passed, thankful that you weren't involved. As friends get laid off, you sympathise with their pain, but you are somewhat removed from it all.

I felt that I was speeding away from the site of the crash as I flew from NYC to Hong Kong; now it seems that in taking my eyes off the road I have now unfortunately gone out of the frying pan and into the fire (apologies for the mixed metaphors).

I'm struck by the following two thoughts:

(a) It really could be a lot worse - compared to having to fight a war, being enslaved, or even being born in the modern age into a country more backward than Hong Kong/Australia, I really have it quite good; and
(b) Although you can kid yourself that it'll be easy to get off the rat race treadmill, when the reality you face is that you have to get off the treadmill involuntarily into an extremely bad job market, you realise that you were, essentially, kidding yourself.