HK 2016 | My Tribe | Estrangement

In my maiden trip to HK this year, I happened to experience a more local, and comfortable, side of HK. During earlier trips, HK had been an off-putting experience due to a combination of bad weather, cold people and claustrophobic cityscape. I stayed with a close friend of mine and, on my last day there, met a couple of other good friends with whom I share some good memories of my time in Singapore. There were either long discussions of common friends or passing references to people I barely knew.

These were the people of my tribe - people with similar backgrounds who went on to do further studies and were comfortably settled in their newfound career paths. I forknew a lingering feeling of estrangement as we gathered. Their social fabric was mostly colored with their workplace experiences and their actions leading to a certainty of future. I had little to contribute. I have been trying to dispel the clouds of uncertainty as I grapple with an unprecedented financial crunch. As I have mentioned earlier, the gutsiness to embrace uncertainty has more or less gone (ref: Priorities Backslide). 

Richness of a lifestyle lies not just in soaking in new experiences, but also in using them to create something that reduces disorder (ref: Thinking Dangerously). 

I have done well with the former part but have been struggling with the latter part. 

Creating is much more complex than learning. While learning is an individual experience, creation is typically an outcome of a concerted effort of many.

While in HK, it was for the first time that I spent some time thinking about the amount of planning that must have gone while building this city. It’s intricate network of roads settles harmoniously in little gaps between towering buildings. I’ve never seen a traffic jam here. There’s lots of energy in certain neighborhoods. But it also smacks of an unwelcoming alienation. I still don’t understand the people here, and probably never will. 

I miss certain aspects of my friendships I seem to have lost over the time. I almost never share my experiences of an itinerant lifestyle with anyone. An ever thickening and ever softening financial cushion seems to be the sole driving factor for most people. I had a friend with whom I could discuss the trappings of our lifestyles. He was much more focused, intense and likeable than me. He severed all ties with some of us about a year ago. 

What I want to do in addition to what I mentioned in Priorities Backslide:

• Spend some more time in East Asia.
• Build a social construct to enable implementation of a few of my ideas.
• Earn money