I have officially tendered my resignation early last week and will be starting my new job mid July. It was a good run while it lasted, but it is time to finally say goodbye to my Visual Merchandising career with my current company and return back to the Interior Design industry,
Hopefully the Interior Renovation company I have decided to join will be able to offer me a better career moving forward. The role that I have gotten is a design position, so I am not expected to do sales nor am I am expected to do project management, although I think I will probably end up doing a bit of the latter at some point, this role is exactly what I am looking for in an Interior Design position, the only downside is that I will have return back to a Monday - Friday work schedule, no more "3 days work, 1 day off, 2 days work, 1 day off" retail schedule anymore. The last time I had a Monday - Friday schedule was when I was working for my Dad, it has been 7 years since, but being in an office beats being in a retail environment for sure.
The new ID company is relatively small, so I don't think I will have a lot of "work friends" like I did back at ID4 and like I do now at my current company. My social circle at work will probably return to the state that it was in when I was working at my Dad's company, which is essentially non-existent and I think because of that, when I start work at this new company, the lack of colleagues to chat with will definitely make me miss my current colleagues.
I had about 2 weeks worth of Annual Leave and Public Holiday Leave to clear and had initially thought the company would choose to encash all my Leave so I could stay for as long as contractually possible to help out in the store, or at least that's what my Manager and most of my colleagues thought would happen, but the company decided not to because it's too expensive, so my 1 month notice period has now been reduced to 2 weeks, which also goes to show how lazy I am in general to actually use up my Leave.
I have 1 week of work left and will have another 1 week break before the new job starts, so I figured it would be a good idea to make full use of that 1 week break to go for an overseas again, another solo trip. I was thinking of going back to Taipei just because I am now familiar with the country, but because both my Sisters and Mum will be going there separately next month, it just feels a bit excessive for almost everyone in my household to visit Taipei in July because that would mean that at any given time, there will always be someone in our household who will be in Taipei during that month. The amount of Taiwanese snacks that will start to accumulate at home because of that just sounds a bit excessive.
I knew I wanted to go Overseas because I got hit by the travelling bug after my Taipei trip, but I wasn't sure where. It has to be somewhere that's far enough to warrant a plane ride but not too far so I can justify only spending 3 days there, and it also had to be cheap, so after putting some thought into it, I decided that the perfect destination for my next solo trip will be Bangkok Thailand.
It will be a very short 3 days 2 nights trip, I decided to splurge a bit and go for Premium Economy again, but this time on a budget airline because the flight will only be 2.5 hours long. I know I wasn't going to just settle for the Economy cabin on a Budget Airline, it has to at least be Premium Economy because I tried a budget airline before back in 2011 and that short 1 hour trip to Phuket was horrible, there was barely any leg room, the seats couldn't recline and there wasn't any form of entertainment on board to make the time pass by faster, it genuinely sucked!
All in all, the flights and accommodation for that 3 day trip has set me back by about $780 because I did end up also booking a decently nice 4 star hotel, I will probably bring another $300 for food and shopping, so it will not even cost me an iPhone 14 Pro. I don't think I will like Bangkok as much as I enjoyed Taiwan, just because I have been to Bangkok multiple times before in the past for family vacations and it has always been quite meh, but hopefully this trip will be enough to scratch my travel bug itch until my plans to return back to Taiwan again in January, if my new job will allow me to take a one week break to do that.
