What we experienced as Asia crawls out of lock-down Around the world, many are stuck at home, inundating by scary tweets, dreading about the next 12 hours. Meanwhile, here in Asia, after about 8 weeks of lock-down, restaurant queues, traffic jams, and pollution have returned, and demand for network bandwidth (and face masks, toilet papers …)…
Tag: hong kong
SARS Taught Us 1 Thing: Panic, because We Know Nothing
The reasons why we in Hong Kong hoard face masks and hand sanitisers (and what I wish the foreigners in Hong Kong would choose to understand) “Individual precaution does not scale to collective precaution…. Hence one must panic individually in order to avoid systemic problems.” Nassim Taleb When SARS happened, we had a very limited…
The Coronavirus Lock-Down: Make the Most Out of It.
Time to Practice Cheesiness. Because of the coronavirus, school has paused for weeks, and my wife and I had to take turns to deal with the increasingly bored kids. The world seemed to have shrunk too- All the news and conversations during this time seemingly all circled around face masks and cruise ships. At the…
Seeds of Sanity: 250 Days of Chaos in Hong Kong
Tales of compassion and normalcy. For 250+ days, Hong Kong has been tormented by the political turmoil and the coronavirus. We are still adjusting to this “new normal.” The driver demanded him to alight the bus. On a bus ride, an unmasked man was coughing. We crucified him with disdained looks and harsh criticism. I angrily…
40 Years of Being a Hong Konger
In the last few months, Hong Kong has descended into chaos. Riots, rallies, and street fights ripped through the city. I was born in the 70s, right at the watershed of the millennials and Generation X. I grew up with Nintendos and Japanese comic books. I lived through 1984 when the Mac and the Sino…
What is it like being a manager in today’s chaotic Hong Kong?
For the last three months, Hong Kong has been in great turmoil: Petitions, rallies, violence, injustices, and lots and lots of spilled over emotions, from streets to schools to work to homes. Counsellors and psychiatrists had been seeing an acute spike in asks for mental support. It felt like the whole city was sick and…
The Ultra Review: 10-Day Vipassana 🧘🏻♂️ Silent Retreat in Hong Kong (Part 1 of 3)
First, that wasn’t a retreat. It was a Buddhist monk boot camp! The word retreat signals comfort. This was anything but comfortable. It had all the classic attributes of a boot camp: hardship, excruciating self-inflicted pain, extreme restrictions, irrational submissions, perennial failures, imaginary successes, why-the-fuck-am-i-doing-this, I-am-quitting, I-suck, and ultimately self-fulfilling sense of reward. I figure…
The Ultra Review: 10-Day Vipassana 🧘🏽♀️ Silent Retreat in Hong Kong (Part 2 of 3)
Stardusts, gong baths, and the madness of Vipassana (insight) Meditation (Part 2 of 3. Go to Part 1, Part 3) The purpose of this boot camp was meditation. The conditions and setup of the retreat were there to allow us to experience the madness of meditation fully. Vipassana meditation was all about building awareness of…
The Ultra Review: 10-Day Vipassana 🧚🏼♂️ Silent Retreat in Hong Kong (Part 3 of 3)
Torture of pillows, insanity, greatest game on earth. (Part 3 of 3. Go to Part 1, Part 2) 6. Quitter, Wimp, Pain Around 20% of the male participants quitted. Most of them left on day 2, and some on day 6 and beyond. I wanted to quit every other day. I would come up with ridiculous…
The Panacea Against Tear Gas
The last few days forced me to come face to face with many sad realities. The only way to feel less hopeless, less helpless, and to have fewer regrets, is to make sure that every second of my short life I am working my ass off to become useful and good; the kind of usefulness…