All posts filed under: Outward

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 …

Wednesday dinner club experiment – Mexico City edition

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

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 …

Wednesday dinner club experiment – Hong Kong edition

This was my second Wednesday dinner club series after hosting the first series in London during the summer. The main differences between the two were that I hosted the London dinners by myself in my own home. In Hong Kong, I cohosted each dinner with a friend in a hired, private space with a kitchen. As a result, we asked people to help cover the cost of the dinners rather than asking them to bring food or drinks to contribute to the meal. Here are a few stats and reflections about this 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 London. You can read more about that first experiment here.ExperienceIt was great to see that hosting in a private space that wasn’t my home didn’t seem to make a difference in terms of the experience. I also worried that asking people to share the cost of the space would change the dynamic, but if anything it made people more committed …

Seasonal Migration Experiment

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:Hope you’ve had a wonderful summer. Can’t wait …

Wednesday dinner club experiment – London edition

This past summer I decided to host dinner at my place in London every Wednesday for 8 weeks in a row. My goals were varied, but in general I wanted to see who would participate and what impact that had on my network. I also wanted to understand how important curation actually was for dinner parties I hosted. Last but not least, I wanted to see how much more efficient it would be to host dinners this way in terms of coordination and preparation. To kick things off, I sent an email out to my entire network that went something like this:It was a huge success and I learned lots from the experience. Thought people might enjoy a few stats and reflections about the first experiment now that it’s over. ExperienceAs I have previously shared, there is a sweet spot in terms of size, usually around 10 people. Smaller groups basically require the table to have one conversation, where larger groups make it near impossible without facilitation. After this experiment, I’m even more convinced that active …

The Reliants Project in Kumu

Finally, I’ve managed to embed an anonymised version of the latest Reliants Project network graph onto the front page of the site. I think it is much more interesting to engage with an interactive map than static images. Back in 2017, I shared maps showing my London personal network before and after pairing up with my partner. Before that, I shared a global map showing how my network has evolved over my adult life. Over the last year, I have introduced my partner to many people within my global network. We have also introduced many of our friends to each other. The resulting 2018 graph is more complex than the previous versions and shows a more developed London network.Reading the map. In Kumu, nodes are called elements and edges are connections. Each element represents an individual in my personal network. The connections show who knows who in that network. In this map, the colors indicate which geographical group the individual is part of (United States, Hong Kong or the United Kingdom). The large elements identify …

Primary relationships impact personal network structures

In my post “Change over time“, I hypothesised that coupling up and separating with someone would have a significant impact on the structure of an individual’s personal network. After my divorce many years ago, my network structure shifted from one that was compartmentalised to that of a ‘sampler’. Little did I know that I would soon have the opportunity to actually test this theory.Between 2015 and 2016, I tracked how my London social network grew from a small group of pre-existing connections to a reasonably strong support system. In the resulting graph, I emphasised the role that non-local contacts had in helping me expand my community. Now I’ve taken 2016 data and compared it to the present in a new visual:The most dramatic differences between the 2016 and 2017 visualisations are the new node sitting at the centre of the graph and the cluster of new nodes on the far right. That central node is my new partner and the cluster to the right is the portion of his London network that he has introduced to me. His …