by Dr. Iain
Corness
Andy
Gombäz is a young man who has already shown an amazing resilience in his
life. He has discovered himself, rising above a childhood that a lesser
person would have used as an excuse for all personal failings. Quiet and
mild mannered, he is a remarkable person behind the bright smile.
Andy was born in Innsbruck in Austria, the youngest of
three children born to a carpenter. Unfortunately this was not a happy
home, and when Andy was still a toddler, his mother left home, leaving the
three children. “I don’t blame her for this,” said Andy, “She
perhaps didn’t want to spend her life in the family situation with my
father, who was a much older man.” An amazingly forgiving statement.
If that start to his young life was not traumatic
enough, his father then took an overseas job and the children were sent to
an orphanage! From two parents, he now had none. After two years his
father returned to arrange for his children to go into a foster home. The
fostering was with a single mother who already had four children, and this
was where he spent his ‘formative’ years. Andy shrugged it all off
with a “I don’t have any grudges against my parents.”
He spent the next 11 years in the care of the foster
mother, attending elementary and secondary school. During this time he
showed a flair for art and drawing, but this was not a time for him to be
able to see this as a direction his life could take. Life was surviving in
a foster home.
As he became a teenager, life with his foster mother
became even more difficult, and Andy followed his elder siblings out of
foster care. “I moved into a boy’s home,” said Andy. “For me, my
life started then. It sounds weird, but in the boy’s home you got
psychological help. There was so much relief in leaving the foster home.
Life for me started when I was 15 years old.”
The boy’s home suggested that Andy think about going
to art school, having also noticed his talent in that direction. However,
there was another avenue that Andy could follow, and that was into an
apprenticeship. That paid money – not much, but for the first time in
his (young) life he had the opportunity to earn money. “I wanted to do
that (earn money) to be able to do what I wanted to do.” He began as an
apprentice draftsman for a company that specialized in sewage projects.
This was certainly no bed of roses either, and Andy grinned when he said,
“It could be interpreted as spending my apprenticeship time in the
gutter!”
He was 18 years old when he received his drafting
diploma but then realizing that he needed to get further on with his
education enrolled in night school. This was a five-year course to do
engineering. Unfortunately for that plan, Andy dropped out after six
months.
This was not because he could not make the grade, but
because he had two co-workers with itchy feet who told him about an
exciting new world. The big world outside Austria. A world that was
enclosed between the covers of a Lonely Planet guide.
“I was really too young,” said Andy in retrospect,
but he applied himself to working out the seasons when the monsoons hit
Asia and decided to start the great adventure in India. For the young man
from the orphanage, foster mother and boy’s home, India was an enormous
culture shock. His carefully laid plans that included two months in India
and another four months traveling through Asia went out the window when he
saw bodies lying on the platforms of the train stations. “You didn’t
know if they were alive or dead!” After ten days he was in India trying
to change his ticket to an immediate return to Austria!
He described sitting under a Banyan tree in Calcutta,
when a momentous occurrence was to change his life. This was not a
Buddhist enlightenment occurrence, but a serendipitous meeting with an
Australian who talked him out of going back to Europe, by offering him a
“job” in Pattaya.
So with his Lonely Planet in one hand, now opened at
“Pattaya” he arrived for the new job. That job was to translate
English into German. It turned out to be translating begging letters for
bar girls!
But Andy Gombäz was young, and Pattaya offered sea,
sand and sun. It did not offer much money, however, and so he had to start
looking at what he could do before he ran out of his scant financial
savings. Once again it was a serendipitous meeting with the editor of a
newspaper that was just kicking off in Pattaya. That newspaper was called
the Pattaya Mail!
So Andy Gombäz joined the tyro crew on the new
newspaper. “Not having the know-how made it difficult,” said Andy in a
masterpiece of understatement. However, the young man rose to the occasion
and embarked on a process of self-education. This included expanding his
knowledge of computing, building on the Auto-CAD he had used while
designing sewers in Austria. “Use the ‘Help’ files,” said Andy, as
if that makes it easier. He improved his English by reading voraciously.
He became interested in the internet and wondered if this was a career
opportunity, going on to designing websites and similar internet related
activities. He became involved in German language publications as well,
all part-time positions, but enough to keep him here until he (re)joined
the Pattaya Mail in a full time posting that covered graphic
designing and PR and editorial work.
However, just as he knew when he was 15 that he wanted to earn money,
he now also knows that he must think of a more secure future. He is
returning to Austria, to see if it is there, and goes with all our best
wishes. I also know he will return to Pattaya!
