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I gave my resignation letter 2 weeks ago and I know that several people are wondering what we (Guillaume and I) are planning to do in a near future : staying in England or going back in Belgium? So that's times for me to reply to this question.
Actually, I left Taptu for a simple reason : Guillaume and I decided few weeks ago to go back to live in Belgium (Brussels). We are planning to leave UK around the end of February, after 1 year and a half living in Cambridge.
Note that Guillaume will continue to work for Collabora but from Belgium, don't worry ; )
Why did we decide to go back ?That's difficult to explain because that is all about feelings. And I think that you can only understand that if you lived in a foreign country during a while.
However, if I can explain some of my personal reasons:
1) Cambridge is a nice city but too small for me. That's always the same streets, the same things. I want to discover new landscapes!
2) I don't want to share a house anymore. I'm too old for this stuff! I want to live with Guillaume as a couple without housemates anymore.
In UK, renting a house or a flat for 2 is too expensive. That's why we had thought to buy a house at a certain moment. But if you buy, you have other troubles, you have to stay in the house several years to make profit of it... I wasn't sure I wanted to stay in England 5 years, so at the end of the day we decided not to buy.
3) I don't drive (no driving licence) so, when I travel that's always by bike or train or bus or taxi. Train is really expensive in England, so I don't have the opportunity to move a lot. As a result I spend my life in Cambridge and I have the feeling to be in a cage as I explained in my point 1.
4) Cambridge is a big village where everything closes early. I'm used to live in a big city, to go to the theatre, to the restaurant, to go out late, to take the subways/undergrounds, to see friends, to invite people to my place, to go to friends' place, to have passionated arguments with friends and family about politics,... I put all these things in my freezer when I came in UK and I have to say that I miss more and more my social and cultural life from Brussels.
5) I realized that English people and Belgians have a really different conception of the friendship and the intimacy. In Belgium, friends invite friends in their private life, in their intimacy. A couple will invite another couple of friends to have a long diner around a wine bottle to their house. A friend will invite a single friend to do stuff with him even if their are not close friends (shopping, walking, ...) or if they've just met.
Of course we have also group's gatherings but that's something else. We can see people together but also individually.
In England, that's different. People go out a lot but in public places (pubs for example) and in groups but they rarely invite single people to their place. English people invite people in their place but for a big party and never for a little dinner. As a result that is quite difficult to have intimacy or to become close to somebody because people see each other always in a group with several people.
For example, this year a lot of parties were to our place. We invited a lot of people but we have never seen the place of all our guests. That's weird.
In another hand, few times I had cool things to do with another single person in Cambridge, it was with other foreigners, just like us (Mathilde from Senegal, Alban from France, Sabine from Germany...). As you can notice, that's really difficult to become intimate and close of an Englishman or woman.
In the same kind of idea, the English people show the distance directly between people by the absence of kiss to say hello. Sometimes they hug when they didn't see each other for a while.
In Belgium, we kiss each other on the cheek to say hello and goodbye.
That's one of the things that touch me the most when I arrived in UK : this distance between people directly shown by the physical distance.
I don't like this polite distance. I like to kiss people and to be kissed. I like to invite friends to eat, to go to friends place, to sleep to my best friend house, to invite friends to sleep in my place. I like to be close to people and to fell intimacy and deep friendship. I have a south mentality, that's why I'll never understand England on that point : )
There are also other reasons that I could call : "homesick".
BUT there are also a lot of things I discovered in UK that I will miss, of course:
1) I'll miss lot of people.
2) I like the English spirit of companies and the polite and nice atmosphere of work life.
3) I like the idea of seasonal parties : Spring party - Summer party - Autumn party - Christmas party!
4) I like to cycle in Cambridge. I had a lot of unfortune with my bikes but bikes are ecologic, healthy. You are on form after that. Last year I never had pain in my legs or in my back. Cycling is really great!
5) I like to go to work cycling and to have a job close to my place.
6) The center of Cambridge and the college are wonderful.
7) Cambridge is a great place to meet people from around the world. Even if after it' s difficult to continue to see each other, at least you develop your tolerance spirit and you learn a lot about other cultures.
8) Cambridge is calm and sometimes that's good to rest!
9) I love the VISA debit card!
10) There are not a lot of taxes on the work (only 20%). That's great if you compare to Belgium!
11) I like to play squash with my colleague Sabine.
12) I like Collabora people, their party, the atmosphere of the company. I'll miss all that.
13) I like the fact to speak fluently 2 languages!
... and there are other reasons again.
So, I know that when you choose, you renounce in the same times. I did my choice.
I tried to explain my principal reasons of leaving but there are of course other reasons in the both part of the scales.
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