Luckily, COVID hasn’t struck my family and friends, and I can’t complain about the current projects. But, after 1.5 years of lockdown I do get a bit melancholic every now and then.
Despite the difficult weather in Hong Kong, I miss the long morning walk from Cheung Shue Tan to Science Park, watching the banana trees and spotting monkeys doing their tribe initiation rituals in people’s backyards. Along that same road, builders were raising huge apartment blocks with signature Hong Kong bamboo scaffolding.
I miss the night drive from LA to Las Vegas, transporting parts to try and conform to some insane travel schedule. It’s simultaneously one of the most interesting and most boring roads in the USA. Interesting because of the misaligned gambling laws and Vegas tourism that come by this road. Boring because it’s really just one very long road through the desert.
I miss complaining about politics with the Fonco crew, and the mandatory Star Wars references, whilst getting a burrito at the presumably best burrito place in the west. More Star Wars references would come when we all hung out at the Scum and Villainy Cantina in Hollywood at night.
I miss the Feabie meetups around town, were everyone would sort of awkwardly sit and stare at each other, whilst the meetup veterans got out their board and card games. I think I left my Cards Against Humanity set and one of those pizzerias.
(cue sad music)
I miss walking across the Golden Gate bridge, trying to solve the painfully obvious financial inequality and other world problems on display there. Always baffling how a society that advanced has such a huge poverty problem. Maybe laissez-faire capitalism isn’t really any different from brutal feudalism…
I miss actually trying to build a proper perception system. Sure, nobody stops me from doing that anyway, and I probably still will, because Rust is more efficient/bladibla, but there is much less of a drive of purpose. Not a common goal.
I miss the entirely awkward but also entirely right few minutes at the Kahuna Tiki bar in North Hollywood. I had no idea what this place was, and where this was going, but they had expensive cocktails, and my date had an awesome blue dress.
I miss loading up the blue rental van at 5AM to drive to this crazy location so we could give creative experience trainings. Far out of my comfort zone, but very educational. BTW, you only realize this once you interact with people that are completely unaware of how to employ creativity at their job.
I miss having real conversations about the future with a positive attitude, not stepping into the same old tropes of “we can’t solve it, so we shouldn’t” and “it’s all going down anyway”. I miss aikido seminars in Hungary and Greece, gaining inexplicable yet useful life knowledge, and palinka.
(cue hero part in the music)
So my heart is all over the planet, but I am here. In my office. In my apartment. Trying to accept and find a new balance.