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Living Abroad

Living Abroad
Living Abroad

Living Abroad

I have spent a lot of time living abroad, and have recently been wondering why. My history of being and living abroad is roughly as follows.

I went on a two-week school cruiseir?source=bk&t=styhomdec 20&bm id=default&l=ktl&linkId=f3014ad62cee6db94ec5632caaa4af9f& cb=1497222818841 to Leningrad in July 1968 when I was fourteen. At sixteen, I wrote to the mayor of Rheinfelden, our sister town in Germany asking for a job and accommodation. I worked there in the town gardens for about ten weeks. Then another school cruise when I was seventeen, but in the Mediterranean.

At eighteen, I moved from Barry in South Wales to Portsmouth to study Russian at the polytechnic for four years, which included two six-week study periods in Leningrad and Moscow. I often hitchhiked abroad during the holidays.

After that, at twenty-two, I moved to the Netherlands for nine years and used it as a base to hitch-hike all over western Europe and north Africa. After returning home to Barry for thirteen years, during which, I travelled abroad once or twice a year, I went to live in Thailand for thirteen years.

I went from there to Spain to live and am still there now.

An interesting fact, is that the two other most travelled people in my immediate family are: Owen Jones, my grandfather, who sailed around the world three times in the days of the clippers; and his son, Owen Jones, who spent the last forty years of his life living in the town where I live now, although he lived in other countries too, while in the RAF.

Three generations of Owen Joneses out of a huge family, all travellers.

Is that weird, or what?

What I have been wondering is whether living abroad is an excuse for not having to take part (in society, the family, the local community) because of shyness or the person being a so-called loner?

I know that some ex-pats do take part where they live, but the overwhelming majority do not.

What do you think?

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All the best,

Owen (Jones)

Podcast: Living Abroad

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Owen Jones, Amazon Best-Selling Author from Barry, Wales, has lived in several countries and travelled in many more. While studying Russian in the USSR in the '70's, he hobnobbed with spies on a regular basis; in Suriname, he got caught up in the 1982 coup; and while a company director, he joined the crew of four as the galley slave to sail from Barry to Gibraltar a home-made concrete yacht, which was almost rammed by a Russian oil tanker and an American aircraft carrier.
“I am a Celt, and we are romantic”, he said when asked about his writing style, “and I firmly believe in reincarnation, Karma and Fate, so, sayings like 'Do unto another...', and 'What goes round comes around' are central to my life and reflected in my work. I write about what I see, or think I see, or dream... and, in the end it is all the same really”. He speaks seven languages and is learning Thai, since he lives in Thailand with his Thai wife of fifteen years.
His first novel, Daddy's Hobby is from the seven-part series 'Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya', but his largest collection is 'The Megan Series', twenty-three novelettes on the psychic development of a teenage girl, the subtitle of which, 'A Spirit Guide, A Ghost Tiger and One Scary Mother!' sums them up nicely. He has written fifty novels and novelettes, including: Dead Centre; Andropov's Cuckoo; Fate Twister; The Disallowed (a philosophical comedy); Tiger Lily of Bangkok; and A Night in Annwn (Annwn being the ancient Welsh word for Heaven). Many have been translated into foreign languages and narrated into audio books.
Owen Jones writes stories set in Wales, Spain and Thailand, where he now lives. He is a life-long Spiritualist, and this belief is interwoven, in a very realistic way, into many of his books and storylines. If you like a touch of the 'supernatural', try his books
He sums his life up thus: “Born in the Land of Song, Living in the Land of Smiles”.

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