Avoiding the unavoidable

We are all pretending to uniqueness, I think. In the winter of twenty five I am sick for much of three months. Slow coughs that do not fade, light headaches, stuffed noses, the occasional mysterious fever; each symptom of illness sweeps across me from the direction of our daughter to the direction of my partner. None of us appreciate this pathway, and the months of excellent Hong Kong weather past mostly with sniffles and discontent. We are, in many ways, exhausted, unable to compel our bodies to simply endure.

These are the struggles of toddler-hood, friends assure us. It’ll get better as she gets older.

“We were all sick the whole year our daughter started school,” I hear, which does not carry the reassurance it might, given that we have not yet begun to plan for that next step.

“The winter is the worst,” we are told, as though the season will not come again next year.

We try flu shots, staying indoors, playing outdoors, eating fresh fruit, traveling more, traveling less. We largely fail at the thing that would help most, sleeping more than 3 hours at a stretch. The thin walls, the lack of doors, the uncomfortable plane seats, the strange beds, the late work calls, the early work calls, the toddler, the world, something always prevents a deeper rest, and we pay a knowingly high price.

Fitness suffers, and yet we work out between calls, between travel, between other commitments, such that fitness retains it’s place as the third pillar of our life, after child and work.

We snuggle and hold hands furtively, across her sleeping form on long haul flights, briefly while she naps, or before we start another tough series of calls. We try to grant each other strength we do not feel through willpower alone, and sometimes succeed. In the early evenings we walk through the park to find the children and celebrate the beauty of Hong Kong, of this perfect weather, familiar to those relocated from San Francisco. The tones between 12 and 18 C are our home, and we relish their return, finding hoodies and pants we’d forgotten in Hong Kong’s extended summer sweat. As the sky shifts colors to evening we remind each other how lucky we are to be this tired, to be here and alive, to be parents to this growing human and partners to each other. We celebrate the world and the beauty we have found, even in our partial health, together.

Thus the winter passes.

Human interest

Looking over Santa Monica beach towards Malibu in the sunset, with the ferris wheel lit and the sky shifting from blue to orange and purple. Taken the week of the fires in the Palisades

On the move again, I watch passers by. People have always fascinated me, and traveling with a toddler increases the chance of interactions. In a hotel in Santa Monica we meet an older man because his grand daughter is the same age. He’s lived in Beijing and we have mutual connections in New York. The world surprises easily when we open up to each other. Toddlers provide a good vector.

On the beach our group of friends watches the children in loose rotation as we play frisbee. It’s the kind of community that builds itself, structured on no specific guidance other than care for one another. These groups take time to build, which is part of why we’ve flown across the pacific to be here. Time and distance may separate us, but children and plastic discs are strong ties.

In my home town the snow comes down in the mornings, and we sled on the front hill down into the street. The world feels quiet enough to forget where we have been, LA and airports in between. I’m sure I’ll remember these evenings, the reasons for all our days on the road. The toddler is happy, is sleepy, is learning, and I hope she remembers the outline of these hours.

Looking out at Brooklyn from the 36th floor, our friends’ belongings in boxes all around us, I am glad to stand here one more time. I think of our own view now gone, to the two years of waking to boats on the harbor and evenings spent watching the sun set on Hong Kong. Our friends are likewise giving up the view for a future, giving up the height for a longer-term home. Together we linger into the evening, entertaining the youth of tomorrow today and opening well-sealed boxes to look for whisky. in this soon empty apartment.

Our travels across America are always brief. We make quick hops into the lives of people we wish we saw more often, scenes of joy jump cut together with tired airport shots, with us carrying both bags and toddler around yet another set of boarding gates, yet another jet bridge. Eventually, we are home again, bodies weary and hearts full.

Far from home

Children play on the rocks with sailboats, the ocean, and container ships visible behind.

In Hong Kong’s winter we sit on rocks next to the ocean and talk to our friends. The breeze is brisk, and we wear jackets in between climbs. The months of shorts and tank tops, of sun screen, hats, and seeking AC feel like a distant memory. These spots, on the rocks near the water, are our hideaways. We found them first during covid, when there were no other places to go, and still they feel that way, refuges from the city.

The children are two, three years old now. Children who were not born when we first found these rocks. Children who were carried down to the boulders in slings, in backpacks, in carriers. Children who napped strapped to us, or tucked into shady spots, now rumble around moving snails industriously from one tidal pool to another. They cut their feet, or slip on the rocks, and keep going. We are building the next generation like this, outdoors on the rocks. Unafraid, at least for now. It’s a great break from airplanes and urban spaces, from rooftops and parks, from restaurants and malls. It’s a great break from the years since covid, where we’ve all gone back to our old lives, to our busyness.

Out here on the rocks we look at the ocean, at the tiny sailboats and the huge container ships, and talk about schools, about moving. The conversations aren’t urgent, because it’s Sunday and the sun is shining, because in the winter Hong Kong is a fantastic place to live, and because we all are, underneath, happy and lucky to be here. The questions about moving, about public schools in Canada or private schools here, are for future parents to solve, for our own future selves.

Those are Monday problems for Monday people.

Places I slept, 2024

Looking towards Tsim Sha Tsui from the harbor front near Sheung Wan on one of the last days of the year

As ever this endeavor reminds me of the things we leave behind, or will shortly. Tracking these lists, and reviewing them, points out changes I’d have otherwise ignored. Usually these shifts indicate job changes, such as my frequent crossings of the El Paso / Juarez border, which ended in 2014 when that job did. Sometimes what appears temporary becomes less so: I haven’t spent a night in China since 2019.

Our travel this year has the look of the familiar, which may explain why 2024 felt quite short. As planned, Japan has become a familiar zone. With visits in February, April, June, August, October, and November, we grew more comfortable in our new neighborhood. Watching Clara remember aspects of Tokyo and exploring it through her eyes has been worth every bit of effort. Even better, we were able to share the city with so many, from family to some of our oldest friends, an aspect of this gift we hope to continue.

Outside of Tokyo we traveled more for work and less for pleasure, with San Francisco for me and Vietnam for Tara the dominant features. Family-wise we limited ourselves to one whirlwind multi-stop tour of the United States, which features here as a chunk of familiar friend and family locations, all of which we’re grateful to have seen. We got enough summer eveningsto catch fireflies more than once, which had been a goal.

In this list of twenty seven beds (for me) I see the patterns of a new age, of toddler-hood and short inter-Asia flights, merging successfully with old habits built around long distance friendships and frisbee tournaments. It’s a good view of who we are trying to be, comfortably out here in the world.

Tai Hang, HK
Singapore (three times, three spots)
Otsuka, Tokyo, Japan (five times)
San Francisco, CA (three times, three spots)
Taipei, Taiwan (three times, three spots)
Oakland, CA (once, two spots)
Fort Collins, CO
Walden, CO
Manhattan, NY
Brooklyn, NY
Cherry Hill, NJ
Philadelphia, PA
Rumson, NJ
Fukuoka, Japan
Chennai, India (twice, two spots)
Bangkok, Thailand (once, two spots)
Atami, Japan

Prior lists visible here.

From boxes once again

Looking out of a Chennai hotel window at the city

For the first time in years, I have a day off in a hotel in a country not my own. For the first time in years, I am sick in a foreign country, and hunt familiar cures. My colleagues bring me coconuts and local concoctions, which I appreciate. It’s been a while since that happened, too.

These are not the adventures we seek, though they do seem to be some of the ones I write about. Outside my window in Chennai military jets do barrel rolls and launch flares, celebrating Ghandi’s birthday and preparing for the upcoming air show. The spirals and tight maneuvers are as impressive as ever, a reminder of what humans can build, and what the edge of possible looks like. “They’re basically space” my partner used to say, watching the Blue Angels in California, and I agree. Would that we used them less for war. Still, I am grateful for this view, once gain granted something I have never expected to see. Cities of accident, I called them long ago, and while they are not particularly accidents, this time, they are definitely not places I had on any kind of list.

Below them people play in the pool while birds wheel above, the best part of this view. Chennai feels dense with animals. Small chipmunks scamper across the pool deck when people are absent, and the birds perch on the edge constantly. Pigeons float up to a ledge just beneath my window, and a hawk lingers in the wind. Further off I can see stadiums, towers, and new construction. I can see a half-built and abandoned apartment building and smaller concrete houses that, with their unfinished walls, show marks of aging expected from this humid climate.

After a day of rest in Singapore last weekend, where the surroundings were more commercial and the hotel room far smaller, I am feeling better. Sometimes the breaks we need are enforced rather than planned. The gift of these days, then, is both in my lack of other plans due to the focused nature of work travel, and the weakness of illness that saps my body of it’s normal activity requirements. For the first time since my last illness I take more than one nap a day and feel no regrets for missing something. For the first time in ages I do not mind what the world is doing, instead content to hold my own body and mind together.

And yet I talk to people. The world is changing, they tell me. “My plane from Delhi to Singapore was full of VC’s heading home,” says a colleague, “All the money in one place all the opportunity in the other.” We live in these small capsules of learning, of shared experience, aggregating our conversations and readings into a world view. “Delhi is a great food city now,” another colleague says. From Chennai I can not say, but there is a sense of an entire section of the world becoming visible. This is my second time in India, both for this job. Neither has given me a deep view, nor covered the kinds of things I would on my own initiative. That is work travel. It breaks us from our patterns, puts us into situations we would never otherwise approach, and shows us people in their normal context, working hard. In most contexts we are all working hard.

I’m grateful for the window into Indian office life, into Singaporean and Indonesian factories. I’m grateful for the time on ferries between countries not my own, on domestic flights in other nations, and on windowsills like this one, looking out at the world.

Even if the cost is high.