Jim (68), an English freelance consultant in the packaging technology industry shares his nomadic lifestyle and explains why his home is ‘nowhere really’.
By Jennifer Pompe & Quynh Nguyen
© Quynh Nguyen, Jennifer Pompe; Jim has almost seen every place, but Berlin is still on his bucket list.
“I pick up friends and let them go”
Born in Egypt and having lived in several different places, amongst them Singapore, Hong Kong, New York City, San Francisco, and more, made him more outgoing to strangers but also less attached to people. He didn’t get the opportunity to build strong relationships apart from his wife.
“ My parents flew around the world”
Within 12 years only Jim visited 13 different primary schools. Then, as a teenager he was put in a boarding school by his parents in the East side of England. But Jim is very laid-back about it and refers to himself as a ‘gipsy’.
“ I did the same to my children”
Moving a lot as a child himself, he continued this family tradition with his own children. When he asked his daughter if she’d like to take a gap year after graduating from university, she simply said: “ Why? I’ve been everywhere. Why should I travel around the world?”
“ Paris is boring and London is dirty”
Jim lived in Rotterdam for 12 years. There, he worked for Unilever, a British-Dutch consumer goods company. Because of that, his Dutch is ‘uitstekend’, Dutch for excellent.Nevertheless, whenever he wants to order in a Dutch restaurant, they don’t serve him right away because he sounds like a German speaking Dutch, he jokes.
The reason for it could be that Jim also speaks a bit of German. Besides that, he is fluent in French but he is not really impressed by Paris. The same goes for London. One of his favourite places in the world is Buenos Aires because it’s not as dangerous as other Latin American countries.Even after Jim retired from Unilever, he decided to consult other companies in that field and keeps on travelling because of that.
