Was hoping to finish writing this before I arrived in Mexico City, but the jellyfish that stung me had other plans :p. Mercifully, it happened after my last morning of kayaking in the Sea of Cortés and as of now the burning and itching sensations have mostly subsided. Below are some reflections about this first chapter of my seasonal migration experiment.
Reflections
Overall, I feel like my time in Hong Kong was a huge success! Since moving to London in 2015, I have travelled back to HK 5 times, usually for a week or two at a time. As a result, the city remained very familiar even though there have been plenty of changes, both good and bad. Unsurprisingly, a number of my close friends have left over the years. Thankfully, a handful still remain and many of them have started to raise families in HK. In general, it was easy to reintegrate with most of my old friends and start to build relationships with their children. It was harder to reconnect with previous weak ties where I hadn’t seen them since I left in 2015.
Hong Kong continues to be a serendipity generator and I had a number of experiences where small groups of people snowballed into a much larger group of mutual connections. It’s always been easy to meet new people in Hong Kong, and I made some new friends while I was there. The Wednesday dinner club series certainly helped with this. However, I found it challenging to solidify those friendships in such a short period of time. Hopefully my longer stint this coming fall will help. Unfortunately, my family decided not to come to HK for Thanksgiving, so I didn’t get to see them during my time there. One benefit I hadn’t anticipated is that fall is a popular time for conferences, events, and out of town visitors. It was great to take advantage of this!
The Stats
Here is the data I’m currently collecting about each chapter of my experiment:
- Days I spent in HK: 61
- Days of family time in HK: 0
- People I saw in HK: 44
- People I saw 3 or more times in HK: 19 (43%)
- People I met in HK: 74 (on average >1 per day)
- Kids I met in HK: 10
- Direct, local intros I received: 0
- Visitors passing through HK that I was able to see: 10
- Total number of people I connected with in HK: 128
If you have ideas for other data I should track, I’m all ears!
Thought I’d try using the “Stop Start Continue Change” model to help me reflect on my time in Hong Kong and better prepare me for the next 3 months in Mexico City. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far:
Stop
- Choosing alcoholic drinks by default
- Going to sleep at irregular times
Start
- Blocking out timezone compatible slots in my calendar for non local catch ups
- Host smaller groups at home in addition to the Wednesday dinner club
Continue
- Co-hosting a Wednesday dinner club series in HK for 4+ weeks (if you want to read more about the Wednesday Dinner Club experiments, you can read about London here and Hong Kong here.)
- Planning and participating in physically active social activities
- Sending holiday cards from HK (in many cases it’s 1/4 the price!)
- Practicing my Mandarin language skills
Change
- More consistent about scheduling non local catch ups using recurring calendar invites
- Plan a little more regional travel, maybe once a month
- Cook more Chinese food
That’s all for now. Look forward to sharing more about this latest chapter in CDMX soon! Hope your 2024 is off to a great start!