All posts tagged: seasonal migration

Two Years of Seasonal Migration

The headline on my LinkedIn bio proudly displays the Barabasi quote: “Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success.” To anyone who will listen, I’m always saying things like “it’s not only what you know, it’s who you know” and that the quality of our relationships is the strongest indicator of happiness and health long-term. Unfortunately it feels like modern life is often at odds with this worldview. What better way to embody these beliefs than to reorient my life around my relationships?It was this seed that grew into the Seasonal Migration experiment. My family is extremely small, so I don’t have a strong gravitational pull to a specific place. Having moved internationally from the Americas to Asia and then Asia to Europe, my ‘chosen family’ are more geographically dispersed than most. Since I left the US in 2008, all but my closest relationships there have withered. Many people might describe this lifestyle as nomadic, but I feel there’s an important difference: nomadic movement is generally unpredictable and acyclic, while migratory …

Seasonal Migration Chapter 6: London

September was a blur. My friend, her mom, my mom, and I spent the first week racing through Mexico City’s greatest hits like the Museum of Anthropology, Frida Khalo’s house, Contramar, and Rosetta. The second week mom got a private tour of Chapultepec Castle, finally made it to Quintonil, and we hosted another successful dinner party (same Italian white bean soup, if anyone was curious). My ‘uncle’ visited for week three and we both caught up on work between meals and walks. This past week I met my good friends and their 3 girls in Bali. The girls had lots of firsts… first açai bowls, first rafting trip, first time feeding a komodo dragon. We had an amazing time, but I’m looking forward to settling back into a routine. Below are reflections from the 6th and final chapter of my seasonal migration experiment. ReflectionsIt’s amazing how even after 2 years of this lifestyle, I’m still (re)learning things. In some instances I’m not necessarily making the same mistakes per say. Constraints (sometimes self inflicted) have put …

Seasonal Migration chapter 5: Mexico City

As some of you know, I am a terrible patient. I am the most frustrated when I’m not feeling 100% and can’t do things I was looking forward to with energy and excitement. Often I behave like a dog playing fetch, who doesn’t notice that they’re tired until well after they’ve exhausted themselves. This got me in serious trouble when I was young. In fact, I was hospitalised with recurrent tonsillitis during my freshman year at university and missed a whole quarter. In Hong Kong in my 30s, a therapist recommended that I schedule “stay home” in my calendar so that I wouldn’t overextend myself and burn out.These last few weeks have been a real test of these learnings, and I can’t say that I’ve passed with flying colours. My last full week in Mexico I had a triple whammy: heat exhaustion, food poisoning, and an allergic reaction (my best guesses). I was in bed for days. Then I added a long haul flight, jet lag, and hay fever to the mix. To be honest, I don’t …

Seasonal Migration Chapter 4: Hong Kong

It still surprises me how quickly you can switch from one reality to the next. On Friday I was eating award winning Chinese food with my family overlooking the HK skyline. Saturday I was jogging along the beachfront in Santa Monica. Monday I was stumbling through a conversation in Spanish over lunch with my host family in Cusco. As I walked up to my host family’s door on Monday morning, a hummingbird was feasting on nectar from the flowering bushes outside. I’m taking that as a sign that I’m in the best reality for me right now :]. Below are reflections from the fourth chapter of my seasonal migration experiment. ReflectionsIt was even easier to slipstream into Hong Kong life this time ’round. Healthy habits around exercise, eating, and work formed quickly and were fairly easy to maintain even after my mom arrived. I had much less life admin because I had sorted most of it last fall (e.g. mobile phone number, China visa, apartment). My friends and I quickly found our rhythm, so we got to …

Seasonal Migration Chapter 3: London

There were about 12 days in the middle of August that honestly felt like pure bliss. It’s funny, because if you had caught me at the moment I was thigh-deep in mud pushing my kayak downstream, you might think otherwise. Or the moment I raced home to meet someone who was buying a piece of furniture and then didn’t show. Or the moment I was awake at 3am worrying that I had upset a friend. My baseline was so positively buoyant that those types of moments couldn’t detract from my overall mood. It felt like I had finally unlocked how to live well in the UK. I guess absence does really make the heart grow fonder :p.Below are reflections from the third chapter of my seasonal migration experiment and my first time returning to a place in the seasonal migration rotation.ReflectionsThis summer I really fell in love with the UK. I can’t say that it was ‘again’, as my relationship with the UK didn’t begin with love at first sight like Hong Kong. It also didn’t get serious …

Seasonal Migration chapter 2: Mexico City

My ‘Hasta Entonces’ party was almost a slow motion train wreck. At 5:30pm it started to pour, which brought everything in CDMX to a standstill. It also caused a power outage at the bar, so we had no electricity for lights, music, or air conditioning. We gathered as many candles as we could find and set up a fully-charged laptop to play music. Then the electricity pole outside the bar caught on fire, dropping burning ash onto the sidewalk. When the fire department came to put out the fire, it provided entertainment to the handful of guests who braved the rain. Eventually the skies cleared, the electricity came back on, the bar filled with guests, and we found the bottom of a bottle of bacanora ;p. For the last act, an adorable ringtail appeared in a tree outside the bar and then darted across the street in front of a passing car. Thankfully it reached the far side unscathed. Let’s just say it’s a party I won’t soon forget! Below are reflections from the second chapter of my seasonal migration experiment. Decided that I need …

Seasonal Migration Chapter 1: Hong Kong

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. ReflectionsOverall, 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 …

Seasonal Migration Experiment

(first written in Sep 2023, updated Sep 2025)Recently I’ve mentioned to many of you that staying in one place all year round doesn’t spark joy. So, I’ve decided to experiment with a new rhythm. For the next year, I’m going to split most of my time between three cities. If it works, going forward I will spend the fall in Hong Kong, travel for a month over the holidays, spend the spring in Mexico City, travel for another month around Easter, and then enjoy summer in London before hitting the road again. Notice how I don’t even mention winter ;]? For now, I expect the three main cities will remain the same from year to year and where I travel in between will vary. What’s the experiment? Here are some of the things I’ll be testing out over the next year:Why Mexico City? Both Hong Kong and London make sense because I already have a network in each of those cities. Here are a few of the reasons I’ve chosen to give Mexico City a try:Seasonal …