Year: 2024

Seasonal Migration Chapter 4: Hong Kong

Published by ericaeyoung

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

Published by ericaeyoung

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

Published by ericaeyoung

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 …

Wednesday dinner club experiment – Mexico City edition

Published by ericaeyoung

This was my third Wednesday dinner club series after hosting the first series in London during the summer and the second series in Hong Kong this past fall. Here are a few stats and reflections about this iteration of the experiment now that it’s over. Many of my qualitative reflections below are also based on comparisons between these dinners and the ones I hosted in HK and London. ExperienceEven though I hosted the CDMX dinners at an Airbnb and not MY home, it still felt slightly nicer than the rental space in HK. Not sure if the design of the space or the fact that we were also outside (same as London) made the difference, but it felt more unique. I decided not to co-host the dinners in CDMX even though my network here is much smaller than Hong Kong. The main reason was that since I hosted the dinners in my last month here, I wouldn’t have had time to follow up and build meaningful connections with the new people I met at these dinners. In HK I …

Seasonal Migration Chapter 1: Hong Kong

Published by ericaeyoung

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 …