11 months in Madrid. 1 more to go!

Summary: I don't enjoy it here in Madrid, and at the time of this post, I've tendered my resignation from my job.

I find that there are two big parts of my life. Work, and life after work.

In Vancouver, I had a terrible time with my personal life outside of work. I had zero luck making friends, dating or anything. I remember the first few years there were days I would go to bed in tears. Most of the friends I had were in Europe, and the few in Singapore. It was very difficult to keep in touch with the time difference. 

But what kept me going was work. I enjoyed it. SPI is probably the company that I have had the best times with; solid pay, solid pipeline, great HR, and very manageable overtime (apart from certain *cough* super hero movies). 

The work life at SPI why I was giving it my all to try to create a home during the 7+ years I was there in Vancouver. I just could not get a good social life, and after covid hit I was like... fuck this. It's time to try somewhere else. 

Moving from Vancouver is a big deal for people working in vfx; Vancouver and Montreal handle a very large percentage of the work thanks to the tax subsidies, and the pay is good, even for an expensive city like Vancouver.

But there was a nagging feeling in my mind. Do I just want to be working working working and then... die? Thats it? I tried to combat the lonesomeness with buying a car, buying material stuff. It did not work for me.

When this opportunity to Madrid came up I was in the progress of moving to Ontario (hoping the bigger city would allow me to meet more people), so I was was like sure, let's do it. The job paid less than half of what I earned in Canada but the cost of living here is also much cheaper (my rent is less than half of what I paid in Vancouver). I'm now in close proximity to my friends as well.

However, I made the mistake of not doing enough research. Most of the european countries I've visited were up north; netherlands, belgium, germany and the nordics. People there spoke passable to good english, and the nordic people spoke impeccable english! My spanish colleagues in Vancouver also spoke perfect english.

However that is not the case here in Madrid. I already had a sinking feeling in my gut on the first day when trying to get a taxi. No one spoke English. Thankfully I'd been learning Spanish on several apps so I spoke enough to get to where I needed to go. 

Fast forward to the next week, I started work and started to look for an apartment and oh boy, if you did not speak Spanish, no one would reply to you on the house hunting websites, and for those times I did manage to get an appointment, they would ask for rather invasive details, like the amount of money I had in my bank - and then left me hanging after I provided that information. HR had to come visit the apartments with me, and basically vouch for me. 

Similarly day to day stuff like shopping, going to the doctor, is made so much more difficult because my command of the language was basically nonexistent. Me and the pharmacist could only have a conversation using translation apps. About 5 months in I decided I was done. I cancelled my Spanish language tuition, though I still did continue to learn using duolingo for another few months. I didn't want to leave immediately as I had to pay back the visa costs plus, I signed a one year rental contract.

One top of the language difficulties, I appear to stand out like a sore thumb - I got pickpicketed on the 2nd day here. Only lost like 15-20cad but that was just the start. I've had my bag opened several times while I was here, always around Sol (which is downtown). At night, when I was walking past bars I'd get yelled at "chino chino etc etc" I don't know enough spanish to know what they were yelling. I also have had someone just walk into me, shout into my ear and walk off. 

Look, I'm an asian living abroad. Getting... incidents like that is not uncommon. I get that in UK (people using their fingers to stretch out their eyelids and going "nihao"), getting told to go home in Montreal, Vancouver or Port Adelaide. 

However, the frequency of these incidents are at another level. Vancouver I'd experience negative moments like these maybe once a year. I experienced so many incidents the first few months here I just felt like I am an intruder in their world and I should just leave. I asked my asian colleagues about their experiences here and they said they never had any incidents like I was having. I wonder if I have a face that annoys the locals or something!

So life outside of work sucks. But how about life at work? Well I'll not go into details here but lets just say... if your work sucks but you have a good personal life, you can live. If you have a terrible personal life but have a good work life, hey, I enjoy my solitude, I can make it work. 

But if BOTH suck... yeah. It's time to go. 

I cannot be independant here. I was going to write, I feel like I cannot be independant here. But no, I simply cannot be independant. Looking down the road, if I wanted to buy property here, jesus how would I deal with the bank, get a mortgage? How would I get renovations and repairs done. I remember setting up the internet was difficult, as was getting a sim card. In Canada, UK, Australia, USA, I could do everything on my own. The bag opening issue has gotten me so bad I've stopped going out apart from groceries. Last month I went downtown to shop for asian groceries and would you have it. Got my bag opened again. FUCKING HELL.

Anecdote: On one of my several trips to the UK, I stopped by Mei Mei in Bourough market. It's a famous Singaporean stall that sells 95% authentic Singaporean food. Its overpriced of course, but given the location, quality and authenticness... Yeah, I always blow around 20 quid a meal there.

On one of these trips, another Singaporean was there, travelling around europe. He mentioned he just came over from Madrid and I was like, hey, I work there! He then shared that he had his bag opened in Sol. Another of my friends on FB also shared they got their bag stolen when in Madrid as well, after I ranted on there about having my bag opened yet again. 

I am so done.