This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Ward Chartier, a 70-year-old retiree living in Penang, Malaysia. It has been edited for length and clarity. I've lived border to border and coast to coast. Born in Wisconsin, I moved around the US as a kid because of my dad's job. After college in Michigan, I headed to Texas for work and ended up calling it home for two decades. My career in high-tech manufacturing eventually took me abroad, and for the next 14 years, I lived and worked