An Ordinary Life Part 8 — An Update After 10 Years
An Ordinary Life Part 1 — Setting the Scene
An Ordinary Life Part 2 — The Bad Years
An Ordinary Life Part 3 — Her Point of View
An Ordinary Life Part 4 — Aftermath: The Effect on Family
An Ordinary Life Part 5 — Aftermath: New GF, Good or Bad?
An Ordinary Life Part 6 — Some Other Thoughts
An Ordinary Life Part 7 — A Follow Up After 6 Months
This is Part 8 — An Update After 10 Years
I tried to recover the URLs for the first 7 parts of the story but could only find 4 of them. Maybe in cleanups / migrations they’ve been lost? It doesn’t sound Stickman-like but I couldn’t find all of them.
A reminder of the characters in the story.
Ian, Yours truly; now in my late 60s; an honorable man, but apparently a complete bore
Dawn, My ex-wife; a Thai national; 3 years younger than me; chose the wrong husband
Peter, First born son; now 31
Paul, Second born son; now 28
Mary, Dawn had a miscarriage; this is our unborn daughter so we have Peter, Paul & Mary
Udang, My current partner
John, Udang’s son; now 26
Back in 2015 I wrote a series about myself called An Ordinary Life. It was a 6 part story that became 7 after I provided some feedback 6 months after writing the original material. Now, at the end of 2025, Stick is metaphorically packing his bags and shutting down the site. While I can’t compete with the compelling life story he’s providing as a part of shutting down the site I thought it might be interesting to add a conclusion to my own story. Wow, that was 10 years ago; if anything it seems longer than that.
When writing I went to lengths to avoid revealing my identity including my nationality. One person wrote to me saying he was so sick of the term I used, “my home country”. I’m still cautious about identifying myself and continue to use a pseudonym. However, same as Stickman is revealing some information about himself I’ll do the same. I was born & raised in Australia. And that’s where I live now. I live in what’s called regional Australia, which means not in one of the capital cities. I’m 2 years retired; I worked for 46 years and spent 37 of those living and working outside of Australia — mainly in SE Asia but also in the US, Europe & NZ as well as a total of 9 years at various times in Australia. Most of my time was spent in US multinationals working with US colleagues.
Peter worked really hard to get a PhD and now works for the govt, based in Brisbane, Australia. He likes to travel when he can and has been to some unusual places. As a dual passport holder (Australia & Thailand) he gets entry to some interesting places that Australian passport holders would normally have to jump thru hoops to access.
Paul also worked really hard to get a Masters in Engineering from a US college & now lives and works in Boston, MA. He’s not a green card holder, he only has a working visa. He is a bit distressed about the antics of ICE in the US but it seems he’ll stay there, or at least that’s the plan. He has a stable GF / partner so you’d think marriage would be the way to go. But she’s the result of an unhappy marriage and is reluctant to make the commitment. So Paul just lives in this tenuous state of hoping that he’ll be OK and avoiding the ire of ICE.
Dawn lives in Sydney. Being 3 years younger than me she is coming up to her retirement age in Australia. Her jobs never provided much income so she has a relatively small retirement account balance (equivalent of the US 401K). I’m not in touch with her but my understanding is she intends to get what little she has and take it back home to Thailand to live out her years there. A long time ago she bought a studio in Hua Hin and she seems to think that small space will be enough for her. Maybe the plans have changed but that’s the last thing I was told. She also has the house I bought when we were in Thailand (I paid for 80% and her family paid off the mortgage balance when we divorced, so she could stay there but I’m told it needs a lot of repairs.) She’s had an Australian boyfriend / partner for 13 or so years; I don’t know what will happen to him, whether he’ll join her there or she’ll leave him behind. I guess there are some things you’re not supposed to know or ask about.
I’m still with my partner, Udang. I was surprised when so many people wrote to me a decade ago telling me that because of her background she had to be a terrible person and I should get rid of her. We’ve been together for 13 years and all I can say is if she’s a terrible person then she hides it really well. In fact, she is hands-down the nicest person I’ve ever met. Meeting her was one of the luckiest days in my life.
If Udang is the nicest person I’ve ever met, those genes skipped a generation with her son, John, who doesn’t understand the concept of gratitude. My funds are the sole reason he could move from a country town in Thailand to Bangkok as a young teenager to go to a good school. And then to a private university where he graduated as an engineer. He’s now working and apparently doing pretty well. Udang knows I’m responsible for that but John himself has never said thanks, he hasn’t even come close, which is disappointing.
For myself I’m ready to accept a quiet life and figure I have about 20 years left as, touch wood, I’m in good health. I’m not too happy living in Australia. 37 years away is close to 2 generations where Australia changed and I didn’t. So I’m thinking of going back to SE Asia for my retirement. Not Thailand, it’s a nice place to visit but I didn’t like living there. No decisions yet but I’m leaning towards leaving Australia.
One thing I wrote in my story is my only goal in life is to be a good person and that remains the same today. With that closing thought I’ll quote John Lennon in his song Happy Xmas (War Is Over) where he says “happy new year, let’s hope it’s a good one, without any fear”. That’s unlikely but we can always hope.
The writer of this article can be contacted at : stickreader@gmail.com
