Oops, I did it again!

I’m back! Back to working full time for Raja4Divers, and also back to beautiful Pulau Pef! After leaving the island five years ago – while Indonesian borders were still closed because of Covid and Raja4Divers was in lockdown – I worked in Swiss cinema marketing for five years. I loved my job, and the pay and the perks were great. But after a few years, I started missing the creativity that used to be part of my job and that was gradually being restricted. When I realized there might be a chance to go back to the island, I didn’t hesitate and contacted Maya (the founder of Raja4Divers). Having continued to work as a freelance marketing support for Raja4Divers all the time, I was still very familiar with the resort and its challenges over the years.

So, how does it feel to be back, you may ask? It feels like I never left! Everything is still so familiar: the infectious laughter of our staff that resonates all over the island, the sound of the waves that makes me sleep like a baby every night, the hard wooden floor we sit on for our daily morning staff meeting, the delicious food that our kitchen team manages to prepare with the limited means they dispose of, but also the slight frustration that I feel because I still don't understand and speak more Indonesian after all these years (I know this will improve, but patience was never one of my virtues…). It just feels unexpectedly normal to be back and to be part of this amazing team, and I'm fully aware of how incredibly lucky I am to experience this again.

When I decided to come back to Raja Ampat, people asked me if I was going to write a blog again. And I did feel like reviving my blog. But then, before actually moving here, I was wondering what topics might strike me this time as interesting for my readers. I had covered quite a few of the obvious differences between living in Europe and West Papua/Indonesia already, so I was worried that topics might not come to me as easily as they did six years ago. My first reaction was to ask AI. So I did. Not because I wanted ChatGPT to serve me a ready-to-post text on a silver platter. That would feel like cheating. But to help me find ways to get ideas. Because AI feels like a distant reader that takes an outside perspective, and I thought this might be helpful at the beginning. You may say that AI only gives you commonplace as it merely gathers the most often published content in one place. While this is certainly true, it also means that it is probably what readers are most interested in.

But now, after only three weeks on the island, I already start seeing and hearing about topics that I want to write about. There still is a lot of interesting stuff happening here, and out of the blue, someone tells you about some typical tradition or something special they do that makes me realize that I am far from running out of interesting topics. I am confident now that the ideas for topics will come with time. As the days and weeks go by they will pop up just like the did the first time around. Because the resort and the people here have evolved as have I in Switzerland. So this should give me plenty of material to philosophize about. 

And last but not least, I am also relying on you, dear reader, to let me know what you are interested in. Please don’t hesitate to comment on this blog and give input. I am looking forward to it.

If you are new to this blog and would like to read about my first two years on the island, have a look at the blog posts I wrote six years ago. I recently did this myself and was quite surprised to find a few things I had completely forgotten about.
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Thank you for reading! I look forward to sharing more in the weeks and months to come.
Same island, same job, but a different set of eyes. Let's see what they discover!
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