MadagasCal

It was probably the distant shouting that awoke me from my uncomfortable sleep. Shifting from my tight corner seat in the back of the "taxi-brousse", Malagasy French for an over-stuffed minibus, I noticed we were not moving. This didn't seem ideal for a roughly 18 hour journey from Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, to Morondava, a west coast city on the strait of Mozambique. I drowsily followed some of the passengers out onto a random stretch of road. In the 10pm darkness, I could make out that all the cars were stopped. I heard the shouting erupt again and my fears flared to the worst. "Is there fighting?" I asked my guide Vonjy. "No," he simply replied. We walked towards a bridge in the road and saw a dirt path leading off road down to the river from where the commotion was coming. There I found myself amidst a crowd of Malagasy people shouting and cheering, and witnessed a taxi-brousse attempting to ford the river. Well the river wasn't the problem, it was the steep river bank on the other side.

The taxi-brousse charged up the river bank, reaching halfway before dejectedly sliding back down. A good portion of the crowd laughed, while the rest shouted what I guessed were a mixture of instructions and heckles. Someone procured a rope and tied it to the front bumper, and a group of people coordinated to drag the van up while another group pushed from below. Then the rope snapped, and the woman next to me laughed hysterically. 

Ok so these taxi-brousses, secondhand imports from Korea or Germany, were trying to all-terrain up a ravine in the middle of the night. Confused, I trudged back up and found a truck with its hood popped open right at the entrance to the bridge. This was a semi-truck, 18 wheeler perhaps. Suddenly I realized the gravity and unfortunateness of the situation. The road narrowed into the one-lane bridge and this truck had died in a spot where no car could possibly cross the bridge, leading to the off-road theatrics below. 

"What do we do now?" Vonjy produced another simple reply. "This is Madagascar." How often I've heard variations of that phrase - This is China. This is Africa. Pura vida, eso es Costa Rica. So often we with the privilege of the developed world, when faced with problems, instinctually want to solve them. It can be a tough transition to adopt the mindset of those in less resourced places to accept that sometimes situations are outside your control. As I stood there under the light of a full moon, in the middle of Madagascar far from cell phone coverage, watching the vehicular bottleneck slowly increase, all I could do was smile. If nothing else, I had blog material. 

Up til then, I had done little in Madagascar. This was my first ever trip to Africa, and I had chosen this island nation that had long fascinated me to explore. However, immediately after my first meal, a dessert crepe, in Antananarivo (the capital), I experienced one of the worst food poisonings of my life. I was bedridden for a full day and a half, saved by a doctor who gave me an IV injection in French. I suspect that the crepe was just the straw that broke the camel's back, for my stomach had already made its struggles to adapt to foreign bacteria in my preceding two day layover through Ethiopia. After sleeping off the doctor's visit, I was able to drag myself out to see the palace, and then inquire about a tour to the west coast. Madagascar is one of the poorest countries in the world (183 out of 191) and not a place you can easily see the sights on your own. I had already lost too many days to do the full tour, but the tour company made a revised itinerary. After sending me four emails between 2-4am asking me to confirm that I was ok with the plan, we met early in the morning and he pressured me to leave for the tour right then and there. Realizing that I didn't have many other options for seeing the country, I reluctantly agreed to go, just a day into recovery. The original plan involved taking a "comfort luxury bus" 4 hours to Antsirabe and then 12ish hours to Morondava the next day. However, as we drove around looking for public buses, we couldn't find any supposedly due to the Independence Day three days out. It took a few hours before we found a taxi-brousse, a packed heap (four to a row) far from comfort or luxury, leaving directly for Morondava. I wasn't excited to spend 16 hours in that thing when I couldn't even pass something solid, but I also didn't want to mope around Antananarivo either.

So I had plenty to gripe about even before this indefinite delay. However, the Malagasy spirited imbued the blockade with positivity. Through more shouting of instructions, the taxi-brousses learned to reverse far down the river, then accelerate with enough of a head of steam to clear the riverbank. I saw maybe four or five do this successfully, all to thunderous cheering. A handful of other taxis also swapped out people and cargo, and then U-turned back where they came. Unfortunately our driver was not willing to make either this exchange nor the riverbank maneuver. As the night got colder and colder, folks gathered brush and created fires which dozens of us would huddle around. Someone started brewing coffee, someone else started a small dance party. The waylaid crowd, which might have exceeded two thousand, seemed genuinely upbeat overall. Somehow as so often is the case, I was the only foreigner around. 

Food poisoning update? I had thankfully stopped being desperate to go, but let's just say it was crucial having my own tissues, and there was plenty of remote ground to explore. 

In fact, in that exploration I had climbed to higher ground and saw the roof of my taxi-brousse where a duck was tied up in a bag and rolling around. This explains a phenomenon where earlier I had been spooked by squawking from above. Now I understood - this is Madagascar. I had to accept that I couldn't inform my girlfriend and family of my predicament.  My phone, kindle and external battery slowly drained, and losing my digital attention crutches, I stared up at a night sky teeming with more stars than I'd seen in years and made out the Southern Cross. My thoughts ranged freely from the poverty in the environs, to the plot points of scattered movies from long ago, to the still beauty of this dry remote part of this remote island to sailors from long ago on wooden ships passing the equator and seeing the Southern Cross emerge, this same set of burning gas orbs unfathomably distant as I accessed neurological linkages typically inactive during my domesticated internet-addicted routine-filled existence that now also felt unfathomably distant.

At 5am, the cows came home. Actually they were leaving home going to work. A farmer led four zebus down the road, around the dead truck, over the bridge, and presumably onto his fields. It took until 6:30am for the cavalry to arrive, one small truck to tow the head of the dead truck and a new head to take over the body. It took two frustrating hours before they figured out how to free the head, and just eight more minutes to tow away the body and decongest this rural road. 

Hurdle removed, but there was still so much road ahead. I had been warned that the roads were bad. While this entire route was paved, much of the paving had deteriorated into potholes or worse, and the taxi-brousses would slow down to a crawl when going over them. Finally 80km from Morondava the road stayed paved, and the driver would speed through, making some shocking passes on tight roads. Within sight of our destination, the taxi-brousse made pitstops, picking up firewood and chatting with the vendor. I was apoplectic, having run out of patience hours ago and desperate just to stretch my legs. Remarkably, no one else in our bus seemed perturbed and even the kids behaved well. No one else that is, except for the duck, which had made enough trouble on the roof that they packed him in the trunk with our luggage, where his excrement leaked his way onto my bag. And you didn't think it could get worse. It was night again when we finally rolled into the bus station in Morondava, 29 hours after we had set off.  While passengers alighted and engaged in joyful family reunions, I hightailed it to our hotel and was asleep within 10 minutes. 

*****

The actual tourism part of the trip proceeded and featured a more favorable highlight-to-disaster ratio. Vonjy showed up with a driver friend Nono and a Range Rover that had Korean on its mirrors and romanized Arabic on its license plate. We went north onto dirt roads that made the awful paved roads of the previous day seem like the Autobahn.

Allée des Baobabs

Though many may know Madagascar as a DreamWorks movie, this trip was actually inspired by Geoguessr, where I had once been placed in the Avenue of the Baobabs and learned about a stretch of iconic trees naturally lining the sides of a road like Stanford's Palm Drive. The baobabs arrived surprisingly quickly, popping up sporadically before reaching at the Avenue a density that you'd think might be cultivated. You'd be mistaken, as baobabs reach maturation after a thousand years, nearly as long as humans have been living in the region. Some baobabs had been planted in suitable spots along the road but they were pitiful runts next to the majestic giants whose stout trunks towered in the sky, branchless until they petered out horizontally. What had seemed so far-flung and nearly mystical in Geoguessr was now living and breathing in front of me. Baobabs in Malagasy are called Rainala, mother of forest, and 6 of the 8 species are in Madagascar (one is in mainland Africa, one in Australia, and another in Le Petit Prince). The road meandered around the baobabs and continued through tiny villages. I was surprised to learn that this Avenue was not a tourist trap like the Avenue of the Stars but actually the only way for us to go north. We bumped ahead slowly on a road that during the wet summer season would get untraversably muddy. Now in the winter, it was so uneven that my Fitbit registered 30k steps merely while sitting in the car. 

We passed by cassava and peanut fields and small villages where children would emerge to run after the car. They may have been motivated by money, as they would disappear if you handed over a bill, but likely they were also bored and curious. Frequently children would spot me and shout "Vaza! Vaza!" short for vazaha meaning foreigner.  The villages were mainly collections of thatch huts with few synthetic materials to be found. Madagascar basically doesn't have an electric grid (~25% of the population has access), and villages like these may have had at best a few portable solar panels able to charge phones. I was witnessing the type of poverty one hears of in Ted talks, comparable in my life experience only to some villages I'd trekked through in Myanmar. Some of the huts looked like they could be blown over by a huff and puff from a big bad wolf. One of the villages though did boast a full grown baobab.

We reached the Tsiribihina river, at a place that Google Maps calls "Port Bac Tsimafana" and classifies as a "marina." The marina fleet consists of one wooden raft with a loud motor that can ferry maybe three 4x4s across the river.  Rice cultivation was on the river, a wintertime necessity as the regular paddies dried up. While waiting for another 4x4 to arrive, I witnessed one man stuffing straw into the roof of the only structure around, while another man followed me around staring intensely at my face, undoubtedly wondering what ethnicity I was. The other 4x4 did arrive, and on the ferry I chatted with a gay couple who spoke German to each other, although they told me one was Croatian and the other Turkish, both moving to Munich as adults. The Croatian was shocked to learn that I had randomly spent a night at his hometown of Osijek.

Not the last straw

Belo sur Tsiribihina was a proper city on the other side of the river with its own electric generation. The tour had me getting lunch at a restaurant with an unsettlingly extravagant French menu. Vonjy and Nono didn't even sit with me, likely getting cheaper Malagasy dishes off a separate menu. While I knew this was a scheme to milk tourists with higher prices, the fancy French meal was still $10-$15 US, a huge bargain for Langue de Zebu au poivre (cow tongue). 

After a full 8 hours of jerky driving and two raft ferries, we pulled into a luxury resort. While it wouldn't merit 5 stars in Aruba (the internet trickled out from the one router), the sprawling sets of bungalows, landscaped horticulture, multiple pools and decorated bar felt jarringly opulent after all the poverty I'd just seen. As I stood under a hot shower, made possible by a farm of solar panels on-site, I wondered how many of those villagers had ever had a shower like this.

Left: Sportive Lemur
Right: Decken's Sifaka

The other guests were mostly Europeans, with one lone Japanese woman who did not want to be bothered. I befriended an older Spanish couple who'd traveled together to around 90 countries. Unsurprisingly the travelers in Madagascar were all experienced. We were all with tour guides and convened the next morning to reach the tours' main selling point, the Great Tsingy de Bemaraha. Due to potential of banditry (!), we drove as one long convoy and hiked together. The 5 hour hike started through the forest, where we were delighted to see two species of lemurs hiding or leaping through the trees. The guides also pointed out rare birds and ant holes that tricked snakes into crawling in and getting suffocated. 

Then the trail entered the famous limestone formations of the Tsingy. We alternated between crawling through caves, climbing up ladders, rock climbing through narrow formations (using harnesses) and even crossing a rope bridge. This part felt like a fun adventure course with a UNESCO view.

The Tsingy is a massive series of limestone karst formations, where water and acid rain have cut distinctive patterns. The area used to be seabed, evidenced by fossils of shells that were commonplace. While it was our main destination and certainly a top trip highlight, I don't think I can do this experience justice in writing other than saying natural is marvelous.

The older Spanish couple were able to manage the whole course with great difficulty, and while waiting for them, I shared a glass of orange juice with the German-ish couple. Lacking enough cups, their guide ripped a water bottle in half and poured the orange juice into both halves.

 

Coming back through the main town, it was clear that National Day had arrived. The entire road was crowded surrounding some sort of competitive fighting event. The hotel staff would ask me to eat dinner early for they were going into town to party. Following Cal's travel rule #1, when in doubt go for the better story, I knew I'd need to check this out. And then there I was, walking into a "bar" (read: building where lots of people had beer) with Vonjy and being immediately forced to dance. Vonjy explained to me how different regions of Madagascar had their own types of dance (more hips in the

Most awk photo since braces

north, more shoulders in the south, and in this region join the conga line). Anyone who's ever walked into a party where they didn't know anyone should relate to my awkwardness, and anyone who's a poor dancer should exponentially increase that awkwardness. But hey, when in Madagascar, do as the Malagasy do. 

We departed back the way we came, and now armed with many small bills, I was able to stop by a village and pass them out to a small throng of kids. Eventually we reached the Avenue of the Baobabs again, this time for a sunset money shot.

This Insta destination was where I met the most travelers, including a tour group of 8 old Hong Kongers, who wanted to buy me dinner, and one Brazilian wannabe-model who pushed me out of her photo op.

The tour concluded dropping me off in Morondava, and I spent the next day exploring the city. I walked to the end of the road, the same road I'd spent 29 hours on, and found a plaque commemorating the inauguration of the road in 2012, unexpectedly financed partially by the Import-Export Bank of Korea. I had always pictured infrastructure investments as rail or ports, but now I couldn't have even imagined this trip had that road not been paved, even if sections were in poor condition only 12 years later. Past the road lay an enormous stretch of white sandy beach which was largely devoid of sun bathers despite the 85 degree heat. Many ramshackle dwellings lined the edge of the sand. Several people sold me on a dinghy ride to a nearby island fishing village, where I witnessed several damaged boats beached waiting for the funds to repair, open air markets held in shallow water on boats, a mission led by an Italian priest, and a man climb a coconut tree, knock off two coconuts, then open them with a machete and hand them to me. I found Morondava pretty fascinating - it was much safer than Antananarivo and clearly helped by tourism but demonstrating a vibrant, diversified economy.

I flew back because I wasn't going through that bus experience again. I took a tuk-tuk to a one room airport without x-ray machines, boarded a twin-engine turbo prop ATR72, a plane so old it was made by the company that later became Airbus, and despite preparing for untold delays, arrived on time in Antananarivo. Ironically I would suffer through three separate airline inconveniences on this trip, but none in Madagascar. 

I rounded out my remaining nights in Antananarivo with some visits to smoky pubs where I used more French than I had ever had in my entire life, conversing with people from Madagascar, Réunion, France and Seychelles. I met some people who'd lived all over the world exclusively in French-speaking places and barely spoke English and realized just how parallel the Francophone and Anglophone spheres could be. On a Sunday, I found the normally cantankerous city almost devoid of life, and asked my hotel for help visiting a lemur reserve an hour outside of town. The hotel owner, a Mauritian of Indian descent, showed up and over the car ride told me about his business exploits in the country, how he was divesting from tourism after Covid (Madagascar's tourism still hasn't recovered to half of pre-pandemic levels) and into agriculture. He spoke Mauritian Creole, French, English, Hindi, Bhojpuri, Malagasy and for some reason, Malay. 

Food wise, I was forced to eat a lot of French cuisine as the restaurants on our tour served nothing else - which wasn't the worst. Though I stayed away from the most unprotected street food (even the hotel owner said his stomach couldn't handle it), I did manage to sample the heavily rice-based Malagasy cuisine. Just like in Chinese, the verb "to eat" in Malagasy miniham-bary means "eat rice." I had the national dish Romazava, a thick stew of greens, zebu meat, tomatoes and onions that I poured over red rice, and Ravitoto, a cassava leaves and coconut milk based curry that I ate with shrimp and rice. Occasionally I ate plates with excellent spaghetti thrown in. In Antananarivo I briefly met two Chinese owners of restaurants. One of them had roots in Madagascar dating to 1910 when his Shanghainese grandparents immigrated. He spoke rough Cantonese, and in a first for me in my interactions with the diaspora, we switched back and forth with French to ease intelligibility. Overall I tasted in the cuisine the island's uniqueness as well as its ties to French colonialism and Indian and Arabic trade links.

This was a monumental trip for me bringing me further away from my comfort zone than ever before. I saw a beautiful country with unique biology and a simpler way of life. I was reminded that we sometimes have to accept what we cannot control but that we are also tougher than we think. 

The Great Man Fallacy

There's a famous approach to the study of history called the Great Man Theory of history. I'm not sure when I started believing so strongly in the erroneousness of this ideology, but I very much do now. I'm motivated to write this because counter to my convictions, the Great Man Theory (GMT) holds much sway in how people think, consciously or subconsciously, because of how it simplifies history. This is often particularly true when thinking about nations and their leaders. However, I think this historical lens is flawed and dangerous, appealing to our base instincts but leading to a misunderstanding of the true scope of social movements. Doing the hard work of understanding social forces at play is a better way to understand nations as well as how to tackle massive problems like climate change.

The gist of the GMT is that super smart people, men invariably, have shaped our nations, advanced our science, and single-handedly helped our understanding of the world. We know their names - Einstein, Jobs, Hitler, Stalin, Kennedy, Napoleon, Gandhi. Through their forces of personality and perhaps lucky timing, they have had outsized individual impact on our societies. 

Like all compelling theories, GMT has elements of truth. Most companies, organizations and countries assign controlling power to an individual, as many real world decisions need to be made with a speed and efficiency that's enabled by a single executor. When debating the formation of the office of President of the United States, Alexander Hamilton dedicated an entire Federalist paper (#70) examining the flaws of a dual executive in Ancient Rome. As a result, when an individual does ascend to a position like CEO or President, they have the power to apply their personal worldviews and ideas to great effect.

But even when a chief makes an executive decision, they are often responsive to larger forces rather than shaping them. CEOs feel the pressure from shareholders to buyback stock, or face revolt from employees unless they focus more on diversity, or they order a reorganization based on a Harvard Business Review article. Understanding those drivers is often more important than understanding an individual leader's personalities or opinions.

Those drivers, or forces, are abstract and nebulous. It's much easier to study an individual person, wherein lies the attractiveness of GMT. The individual is the smallest unit of society, the propellant behind any action. And we are all individuals. We can understand others like us, with their own unique stories and motivations. 

Nevertheless, we can and should still examine the forces behind notable individuals. Take Barack Obama’s rise. He’s often described as a generational political talent, with his charisma and oratory skills particularly exclaimed. Indeed I have high praise for his intelligence, work ethic and values. One could read US history and Obama's election focused on his singular abilities. Or they could focus on the appetite of the country (or half the country) for the values Obama embodied. He was a product of a white/black pre-marital coupling that was received better in 1959 Hawaii than it would have been in many other places and times. Economic growth and social programs helped him to gain an elite education. His presidential candidacy came in an era where the tide of racial prejudice had turned with a whole generation born and grown post Civil Rights movement.  Had he been raised earlier in the Jim Crow south, even with his prodigious talents, it's hard to imagine him becoming president. But one could argue that by 2008, the liberal-leaning American public wanted someone to break the streak of white male presidents, and that were it not Obama, the Democratic establishment may have coalesced around a man like Deval Patrick or Cory Booker.  Once in office, Obama was as subject to larger political forces as any before him. Despite his reputation as a liberal stalwart, Obama did not support gay marriage until 2012. He did not let up on the war on terror, did not close Guantanamo, and could not accomplish many of his objectives in immigration reform, taxation reform, etc.  

Many Americans understand the Russian government and major decisions such as the invasion of Ukraine through the framework of Vladimir Putin. Indeed his worldview has been the obvious driver of a hardline change in Russia's international standing.  But if his worldview were singular and not shared by Russians, it is likely he would not be able to exact his agenda or even remain in power. While there is certainly plenty of quashed dissent within Russia, there is also a groundswell of animosity against Western nations and historical grievances. When Putin launches accusations of hypocrisy, it lands with the populace, enhanced but not created by his tight grip on the media.  Putin is easy to vilify, but he is not a video game boss whose demise means the game is won. The populist resentment against the west, the structure of natural resources wealth controlled by oligarchs and evolving capabilities of cyberwarfare are some of the other forces that shape Russia today and would likely contribute to a post-Putin Russia.

Xi Jinping is probably the only person an average American knows of in the Chinese government. He's been called a dictator who managed to remove term limits. His rise to leadership has coincided with a dramatic shift in China's relations to the international world, particularly the US. One could certainly attribute this turn to his ideology. But an equally valid and much less common approach would require examining the inefficiencies of his predecessor Hu Jintao, the appetite amongst the CCP leadership for a stronger central authority, and deep anti-western resentment stemming from events during the Qing Dynasty. Xi Jinping would not be able to orthogonally change China's course were he not propelled by larger forces.

Perhaps the single best examination of the GMT is its manifestation in Donald Trump. Here we have a man who seems to defy the conventional wisdom, who appears to be singular in many ways. In addition, here is a man who thrives off the simplicity of GMT, who convinces his base that problems are caused by bad individuals. He simplifies the entire legal system to the prosecutor and the judge and he personifies the Covid-19 restrictions enforced by the government as Anthony Fauci. He knows there are a myriad of reasons behind America's Covid-19 response and rules, and that Anthony Fauci was more a figurehead than anything. But it is easy to galvanize supporters to denigrate Anthony Fauci. The Trump campaign feeds off the GMT, both in promoting their man and in demonizing the enemy. The true issues in this country are the forces, from demographic change, wealth redistribution, technological changes in media to name a few, that have enabled Trump's rise and polarize American society. 

These forces are not easy to understand, let alone combat. Digging into how American society became more polarized, from our geography, consumer choices, media diet to political and religious beliefs, is a book unto itself. But if we truly want to understand the world, we can't just understand a handful of people. 

Mexico redux

I didn't publish a single post in 2023. It was largely a year where I was not in a great mental space for sharing, exerting energy on the hardest job search in my life, a life that's had its fair share of hard job searches. Fortunately, I was able to end the year visiting Mexico with my girlfriend Jenny. Our trip created new stories and rekindled my interest in Mexico, where I'd spent 2 months bumming around in 2021 but never got to writing about. Though those 2021 travels were noteworthy, at that time I couldn't summon the energy to execute with the effort Mexico deserved. I can try to make amends for that here. 

On that 2021 stretch, I had worked remotely for two weeks in Roma Norte, Mexico City. Two weeks is a decent amount of time in one place but between work, Covid restrictions and the sheer size of Ciudad de Mexico (CDMX), there was plenty I hadn't gotten to see. Jenny and I found an Airbnb on the edge of Condesa overlooking Bosque de Chapultepec park, a large forested park that contains several museums. Chapultepec means "grasshopper hill" in Nahuatl, the Aztec language, and chapulines means grasshopper in Mexican Spanish today. I had wanted to see the Castillo de Chapultepec, a castle museum prominently on the top of the hill, but it turns out the National Anthropology Museum was by far the more worthwhile visit. Documenting the many pre-Hispanic peoples and civilizations of these lands, from the Olmec to the Maya and Aztecs, the museum contains priceless artifacts including the massive Aztec Piedra del Sol. Despite the Museum being the #1 attraction on TripAdvisor, it had somehow slipped past my radar last time.

I had started to get a sense of Mexico's massive scale and diversity. The Mexican culture that bleeds into America doesn't quite reflect this. Mexican food in America largely derives from northern Mexico including the parts of Mexico that the US conquered, and has additionally been heavily Americanized. Burritos and quesadillas are rare in the parts of Mexico I've visited.

Historically, diverse civilizations and language families influenced the areas comprising modern day Mexico. The Mayans, who built Chichen Itza and Tikal (Guatemala), and the Aztecs, whose capital Tenochtitlan became Mexico City, are the most notable, but they did not even overlap temporally or linguistically. The Mayan Empire, based in the Yucatan peninsula and extending into modern day Belize and Guatemala, mysteriously collapsed in the 9th century AD, while the Aztecs arose from well north of Tenochtitlan and expanded southward in the 13th century. From the Baja California peninsula in the west, the northern border between Chihuahua and Texas, Oaxaca in the south and the Yucatan peninsula in the east, Mexico is full of different climates and indigenous cultures. Like India or the United States, once you get familiar, Mexico doesn't really feel like a single country.

Enough history. I have three short modern stories from this trip. 

One - in CDMX, at a market trying to buy some craft backpacks. I handed the vendor a 500 peso bill and she immediately started muttering, crumbling the bill over and over and walking around. After enough pacing and muttering she pointed to the rip in the bill and said she wouldn't accept it. Similarly, a taxi driver had earlier had balked at our ripped currency. We just said sorry and moved on without the purchase. I ended up nursing a beer at a cafe inside the market while Jenny shopped around. Again that server rejected my 500 peso bill, but unlike the backpack woman, accepted my credit card.

As we exited the market, a cop came running and yelling at us. She said some of the vendors had told her that we had bad money or something, and seeing my limited comprehension, asked if I spoke Spanish. I said a little yeah, but slow down. She waved a colleague over and a male cop came and tried to explain in English, but quickly ran out of words and ended up asking again if I spoke Spanish. "Sí, qué está pasando aquí?" He tried to explain and I caught words like "moneda" or "billete" and "pesos." The first cop radioed for more backup. Suddenly I remembered the 500 peso note, and fished it out of my wallet. Light bulbs went on for both cops, and they took the bill and rubbed it with their fingers.  They took out another 500 peso bill and pointed out subtle differences and asked me to feel them. I recall feeling and seeing slight differences, maybe the real one felt more plastic-like, but it was quite abstruse and I had no confidence I could repeat the differentiation later on.

Two more cops arrived, in more military-looking outfits with big guns, and suddenly my confusion gives way to alarm. Could this be an imprisonable offense? These military cops try English as well, before quickly resorting to Spanish. Clearly this system was not designed for linguistic backup. This cop says essentially the exact same things the previous guy said, telling me to feel the difference as well. It seems the rip had nothing to do with anything. Finally I asked "necesito ir al estadio de la policia?" and all four cops vehemently shook their heads and went no, no, no. "Podemos salir ahora? Can we leave now?" Si si si. It ended up being much ado about nothing.

Two days later Jenny and I made a quick trip to Puebla, about two hours east of CDMX. One of Mexico's oldest colonial settlements, Puebla has a historic cathedral plaza and I figured we could have a good time just walking around, but I also had Jenny scan through Puebla highlights to make sure we didn't miss anything. She spotted a geodesic dome à la Buckminster Fuller in a park southeast from city center. I don't quite understand Jenny's architectural affiliation with domes, but it seemed like a reasonable site to visit. After checking out an old battle fort (the site of the Cinco de Mayo battle) and dropping our bags off at our hotel, we rushed to the Parque Ecológico, the site of an aviary in the geodesic dome. 

Our first signs that something was off was the price of the tickets. I can't remember exact numbers but they felt higher than I would a dome to cost. Then after acquiring the tickets, we were directed to wait outside the park entrance. We stood there for five minutes as a young man fiddled in the back. Finally I asked can we just walk in already? We just wanted to poke our heads in the dome and move on. The young man then assented and announced the tour would begin after providing some instructions. He continued at length about not petting the animals and other rules that didn't seem important enough for me to keep up with translating. Finally he led us onto a walkway through a garden with flamingos and tortoises, leading into a massive plastic tree. The guide kept providing scientific descriptions for animals, and I kindly said something to the effect of, "hey, we're good, can we just check out this dome in peace?" And he left, and we had peace.

Until a large shirtless man in green body paint stepped out from the dome entrance. "HOLA CHICOS!" Jenny and I took a step back, frightened of an ambushed by a malevolent ogre. But Mexican Shrek was friendly, inviting us into the tree, pointing out some of the animals within, and explaining that he had lost a "talismán de aguamarina" - an aquamarine talisman. He mimed searching high and low. Suddenly it dawned on us - we had signed up for a children's quest.  Buckminster Fuller may have envisioned his domes as inexpensive housing, but in Puebla it contained a Disney-esque kids experience in a plastic treehouse. Mexican Shrek continued guiding us, speaking to us as if we were children, which was convenient given my level of Spanish. He mostly stuck to his script, but occasionally threw in English words when he knew them, and broke the 4th wall to ask where we were from. The talisman was nowhere to be found. 

Green man left us and for a moment we could hear the birds chirping, a large blue man reminded us that we were still in a theme park. This blue man explained that he represented the earth, and that the green man was actually an evil force trying to destroy nature.  Then he broke character and chatted with us. I told him we were looking for an aquamarine talisman. Gone was our desire to poke our heads in, I had firmly embarked on this quest. The blue man laughed with self-awareness and we eventually found the talisman in a box of sand. We made our way to the park exit where a thick ceremonial door awaited. The blue man asked if we knew any magic words. "Ooh, open sesame!" I shouted. The blue man pushed, but the door wouldn't budge. "Quizas la puerta solo habla espanol," he chuckled. I cracked up and said "Abre seseame!" and the door opened.

Story #3 is set in our CDMX neighborhood of Condesa. I glimpsed a thin pizza bar a block from our apartment and convinced Jenny to swing by. We were the only patrons there, and I ordered a mezcal and coke. This bar clearly expected mezcal to be drank straight up and didn't have coke, but the owner asked me what type of coke I wanted. Then he left the bar completely unattended, and walked several blocks to a supermarket, returning with a bottle of coke. This fairly extraordinary act of service merited a conversation, and after thanking him profusely, I asked him about a flag hanging inside.

I know my national flags pretty decently, but what on earth is that? The bar owner, Fabricio, introduced us to the nation of the Yaqui. "Qué es Yaqui?" The Yaqui are an indigenous people mostly based in the Mexican state of Sonora, but also in Arizona. Fabricio explained that they had an autonomous government, and could even issue papers for their tribal members to cross the border. My mind imagined an ICE officer examining Yaqui documentation and having no clue what to do. Fabricio continued with a history lesson, of how the Yaqui were the last indigenous group to resist Spanish colonization, how the Spanish tried to enslave them and split up their men and women, resulting in many Yaqui women taking Chinese immigrant husbands, and that he himself had Chinese ancestry. He was quite extraordinary, pursuing a PhD in Dance Anthropology while running this bar, and actively writing poetry. He shared a small book with his poems in Yaqui and Spanish, and bizarrely, one that was translated into Japanese. I asked to purchase his book and he agreed, but said it was his only copy with the Japanese. I didn't want to take his only copy. He said he would get more, and in fact he could have them on Monday when he'd be hosting a birthday party / poetry slam at the bar. Would we like to come?

And so on Monday we found ourselves squeezing past a tiny room full of Mexicans we didn't know to say hi to Fabricio. We then did that awkward thing you do when you arrive at parties, staring at people in conversations hoping they'd stop and say hi. Slowly we ingratiated ourselves in with our story of being visitors from Seattle who had just met Fabricio. Fabricio introduced us to Taiga, an artist / filmmaker / playwright from Sapporo, in Mexico on an advanced scholarship program, who had been the one translating the poem into Japanese. We switched from our rudimentary Spanish when we realized we were both better in English, making me wonder how he had done the translation. 

Then the poetry began, and four poets read long original passages. Following poetry is an ultimate test of language acquisition, and I'd have to say my Spanish level wasn't even close enough to make an attempt. However I was able to use Google Translate's voice feature to transcribe the speaker and discovered that one of the poems was about narwals. At least two of the poets were indigenous and spoke partially in indigenous languages (Zapotec, Nahuatl), culminating with Fabricio himself sharing poetry in Yaqui.

After the poetry, Fabricio let the mezcal loose and we started to break into the crowd more. One of the guests was a gynecologist who spoke excellent English and helped us into the conversation. Most everyone assumed we were friends with Taiga and were shocked to discover we had only met that night. A lot of confusion was apparent in the differences between China, Korea and Japan, not to mention Hong Kong and Taiwan. Fabricio was very interested in our Asian-ness, and for better or worse, I'd describe our interaction as having an air of mutual exoticism. Noting the international representation in the room, I stated, "necisitamos hablar en el mismo idioma - Yaqui." Fabricio whistled and said, "Ojalá! I wish." He proceeded to show his intoxication by delivering a monologue about how the Yaqui see nature and the world and our interconnectedness, but not fully landing it. Despite the mezcal-induced chaos in that cramped pizza bar, I felt a true elation from happening onto a Mexico City experience that one simply cannot buy, a spontaneous night of human connection that could never show up on TripAdvisor. Fabricio then forgot that I had already paid and charged me a second time. I wished him "feliz cumpleanos" and happily paid again.

Once Upon a Time There Have a Place Called Hong Kong

When I left Hong Kong in 2016, I wanted to write a love letter to the city. I wanted to wax poetically about the skyscrapers, the ocean, the jungle, the dim sum, the mountains, the cultural mishmash. But as I started typing, it felt wrong. The words were so sappy and my perspective felt too shallow. So much had already been said about this place, what could I add? 

Since then I have lived in three other cities and visited dozens of others while Hong Kong has come under existential attack. What once felt over-the-top now felt therapeutic, and the time away allowed me to offer a knowledgeable yet outsider perspective. With the intense protests beginning in 2019 followed by the pandemic, during which strict quarantine requirements for arrivals reaching as much as 21 days were enforced, Hong Kong became this far-off unreachable place where no one went in and only bad news came out. 

They finally dropped the quarantine in October 2022, and I returned in December. Though the intense Covid protocols had turned the airport into a medical site, the consistency of the city amazed me. That simple jingle of the MTR (subway) brought out a feeling of internal dissonance, as my soul struggled to reconcile how this MTR station had operated unchanged while I had changed so much, like when you return to your high school and see strange young faces doing what you used to do. Returning to find the city so resilient after several traumatic years and aware that the future may call for further resilience gave me some courage to at least put out that love letter.

I believe there are hundreds of cities in the world where residents who love their home can argue in good faith that they live in the best place on earth. When you get to know the nooks and crannies, the founding mythologies, the juicy political scandals, the hole-in-the-wall restaurants, the hidden walking paths, the generational stories of family-owned businesses, the cheapest happy hour deals and the best sunset view, you feel a sense of earned personal attachment. Each city has its own story that makes it like nowhere else.

Even given this caveat, Hong Kong objectively stakes a singular claim. It is a true creation of merging civilizations, the type of place that made the English language steal a word like entrepôt. Hong Kong has as complicated a colonial legacy as anywhere, but is unlike most former colonies where either the indigenous culture was dominated or dominates. In Hong Kong the colonized Chinese maintained an independent identity but English law, customs and know-how were thoroughly integrated. Many aspects of English rule, starting with its origins in the Opium Wars, remain despicable, but the small fishing settlements did soon transform into a major outpost for maritime trade. Not only did many more Chinese move in, but many whose ethnicities had left them essentially stateless - Armenians, Jews, Parsis alike - found a home in Hong Kong. Their legacy is largely forgotten today but remains in institutions and place names, like Kadoorie Hill, Mody Road, Chater House. Hong Kong was a place of all nations and no nation, a stateless city state.

Hong Kong retained geographic continuity with Cantonese culture, even after China became the People’s Republic of China and legal migration became limited. During the turbulent early years of the PRC, Hong Kong benefitted as a haven of relative stability and its population nearly tripled from 1.75 million in 1947 to 5 million by 1981, driven largely by migration from the mainland. The migrants found a capitalist society with a bustling harbour and accentuated it with industry and manufacturing. Aided by English rising to global lingua franca status, entrepreneurial people of many nations found their way to Hong Kong.

And so Hong Kong became this city of contradictions. Its cityscape inspired futurist films like Blade Runner, while its preservation of Buddhist rituals and Tin Hau temples make it a bastion of traditional Chinese culture. It’s a city where you can walk from a luxury mall allergic to blemishes directly into a filthy back alley with exposed pipes and chefs on their cigarette break. It’s a finance hub that still runs on cash. It’s a city operating at breakneck speed but filled with slow walkers. It runs on the most intuitive, efficient subway system but also a semi-lawless minibus with its own special jargon. It's filled with skyscrapers of steel and glass built using bamboo. It’s half concrete jungle, half actual jungle. It’s overwhelmingly cosmopolitan and also 95% Chinese. It can feel so global and simultaneously so parochial. It's a place where many people find freedom, despite not being particularly free.

Immersed amidst all those contradictions, living in Hong Kong is inescapably a love-hate relationship. The incessant fighting through crowds and the cost of the cramped housing gets to everyone, and these two struggles join forces when air conditioner condensation (aka building juice) drips over you on a Mong Kok sidewalk. Many Hong Kongers are fiercely pragmatic to the extent that dreams are not entertained. Sometimes it seems all people talk about is buying a flat. It is a society particularly glued to their phone, that loves the pre-packaged tour industry. And it's easy to walk into a dinner party where everyone works in finance and complains about their job.

New York has this belief that dreamers move there and non-believers move out - “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” However, for most born in Hong Kong, there’s really no moving to the 'burbs. Thus Hong Kong has to cater to everyone, including those who don't like the urban busyness as well as the elderly and disabled. Communities like Lamma Island and Sai Kung offer rural camaraderie just beyond the shadows of the skyscrapers, while top-notch facilities and a sense of community obligation make Hong Kong a good place to grow old.

After years I'm still amazed how much there is to do in Hong Kong. The skyline view from Tsim Sha Tsui Kowloon-side is the best in the world, matched possibly only by its reflection from the island-side. Central is a concentrated block of the fanciest shopping and offices mixed in with historical gardens, government buildings and prisons. There are kilometers of continuous elevated walkways through past Admiralty, even more kilometers of electric trams locals call the Ding Ding that somehow are still useful. There's a Times Square in Causeway Bay,  sketchy nightlife solicitation in Wan Chai, beach and market life in Stanley, artists working in warehouses in Aberdeen, a chill waterfront bar street in Sai Wan Ho and 100 trails from the Peak to Shek O. There's betting on weekly horse races in Happy Valley, and a jetfoil to Macau for even more intense gambling.  And that's just Hong Kong island! 

In Kowloon and the New Territories, collectively making up >90% of Hong Kong's total area, there might be 1,000 shops in the kilometer and a half between Yau Ma Tei and Prince Edward via Mong Kok. There's history and Thai food in Kowloon City, a Buddhist complex near Diamond Hill, and the former airport in Kai Tak that doubled as the endpoint of an aerial obstacle course. There's a street that sells goldfish, a street that sells toilet seats, one that sells dried seafood, one that sells kitchen tiles, one that sells elaborate funeral provisions, another that sells flowers and a bunch that sell electronics. There are scores of hiking trailheads accessible by public transit, and when it gets too hot and humid to hike, it's junk boat season. There are 10,000 Buddhas in the hills overlooking Sha Tin and the highest bar in the world in the ICC overlooking the whole city. There are African bistros, great South Asian food and the sketchiest backpacker stories all within the legendary Chungking Mansions. There are waterfalls and infinity pools hidden in the wilderness. And I can't even get started with the food for fear of salivating over my keyboard. Despite all this, swarms of tourists visit just for Disneyland.

For multinationals like me, Hong Kong was/is a dream city. Everyone could find bits of culture that made them comfortable and bits that piqued their curiosity. It was routine to attend at a large gathering where everyone had lived in multiple countries, where everyone spoke multiple languages. It never ceased to amaze me the range of people with whom Hong Kong resonated. The success and brilliance of Hong Kong was a celebration of internationalism itself, a celebration which has come under attack with the recent global rise of nationalism, a rise which has rendered Hong Kong a pawn in a much larger contest.

On my recent trip, I found in Tai Kok Tsui this graffiti saying "Once upon a time... There have a place called Hong Kong" from which I've taken the title for this post. I found it a simple and encapsulating work of sidewalk penmanship. Hong Kongers have never taken that their way of life for granted, aware that their city could be undone by political turmoil at any minute. Nor have they always written English with correct grammar. Once upon a time, there have a place called Hong Kong, and the world was better off for it.

Tourism beyond the Gram

The body heat remains far more vivid than any of the books. If I spent too much time at any particular shelf, someone from the swarm of other tourists would bump by and spread their warmth, and so I kept moving, vainly trying to find my own space within that crowded bookstore. I had thought the Livraria Lello in Porto would be a cool little find, a travel suggestion I'd come across in a random article about the most beautiful bookstores in Europe. Bookstores are fun! Never did it cross my mind that so many people might be interested in reading.

But they weren't interested in reading per se. The Livraria made the list because of its ornate cladding, the elegant gold accentuating its shelves, the central spiral staircase that branches and merges and branches back out, and its association with Harry Potter - JK Rowling once lived in Porto and reportedly frequented the bookstore. As a result, the Livraria Lello fame has skyrocketed, transforming it essentially into a small museum. Entering the store/museum now requires pre-purchasing a $5 ticket and still queuing for a long while. Once inside, all the tourists mill around undertaking the Herculean challenge of trying to photograph the bookstore's glory with as few human distractions as possible.

The Livraria is emblematic of Porto as a whole. Portugal's second largest city located in the country's north, Porto has contributed much to the world in its two thousand years of history, notably port wine. The Ribeira, the beautiful medieval square along the river caters entirely to tourists, is teeming with hotels, restaurants, bars, street performers and vendors. With bright orange tiled roofs, sweeping arching bridges and overelaborate gold-gilded clock towers, Porto might be the most beautiful city I've ever visited. But as I watched groups of Italians and French taking selfies, I pondered about how this charm came about. It must have originally evolved naturally as commerce grew along the square, but it was clear that today's neighborhood is artificially maintained to look beautiful and to encourage travelers to part with their money. The economic activity that spawned the Ribeira can ironically no longer continue, displaced by its own success.

Tourism as an economic driver has been called the devil's bargain. As the Ribeira neighborhood of Porto attracted more and more tourists, it became more profitable for businesses to cater towards tourists rather than residents. Another store, the Casa Oriental, encompasses this change. Founded in 1910, its storefront plaque depicts a "native" serving something to his colonial master and yeah somehow they've neither changed that nor its name. What they have changed is what the Casa sells, originally stocking groceries and meats but now peddling factory-made chocolate bars, canned sardines and kitschy trinkets. Tourists got a place to bring back souvenirs - locals lost their source for cooking dinner. This precipitates a feedback loop, causing locals to move out and clearing space for more hotels and tourism-based businesses. Eventually the area becomes so filled with out-of-towners ambling slowly, taking photos, not speaking your language and getting so rowdy late at night that no one wants to live there year-round. Additionally, the place becomes generically touristy, no longer displaying the daily culture of the Portuguese.

As I admired the river and soaked in the Portuguese summer, I felt a pang of guilt at contributing towards this devil's bargain. Was this an inevitable economic evolution, or was it a result of a fixable human flaw? I think there is a bit of both.

Porto, and the Livraria in particular, are extremely photogenic. Photos have become the dominant way of sharing information through our society.  Facilitated by Instagram, cool photos are how tourist sites effectively market themselves and how travelers share their trips. I don't find this alone intrinsically bad, and I personally love taking interesting pictures and sharing them on Instagram. But after arriving at the bookstore and getting the best shots I could, I was left wondering "what now?" I had little tangible interest in the Livraria other than its superficial beauty, and now I was bothered by all the other people in that cramped space. The photos ironically portrayed a special experience, belying my annoyance and discomfort at the time. I realized that the popularity in sites like the Livraria had blown up in recent years precisely because of Instagram and targeted advertising. Photogenic places that successfully attracted tourists then organically got more social media attention, thereby attracting more interest and more Instagram posts. 

Planning for Instagram has taken a disproportionate role in my travels. There are many great reasons to travel, and visual pleasure is only one of them. Sounds, smells, conversations and discovering different customs make traveling to new places so fulfilling, yet these are so difficult to share. There are even beautiful sights that don't fit neatly within a camera frame. Videos and stories can do their part, but most of the best aspects of travel cannot be truly shared. 

Part of the virtue of travel is growth by going far outside one's comfort zone, whether it's developing villages in Myanmar, rural Idaho, or Fort Lauderdale. I've found great joy in traveling to places to learn more about their history, with no clearer example than my Bosnia trip. Going there a week after Porto, the types and numbers of tourists I met in Sarajevo was juxtaposing. It seems everyone there was curious to know more about the unique history and present, not just to capture great photos. Furthermore, there's joy in simply satisfying the curiosity of what an unknown place is like. Sometimes, the joys of traveling manifest only after the trip. Now when I meet someone from Bosnia, we can more meaningfully connect. I'd likely have a less interesting conversation with someone from Porto because I only learned superficial things about the city.

If we are all collectively over-emphasizing shareable photos, we will find ourselves rubbing elbows with strangers and over-taxing a local ecosystem. Beautiful places are certainly worth visiting - I don't regret going to the Livraria bookstore, and it's likely that I would have regretted not going. The crowd was an experience in itself, and it ultimately inspired this post. My main takeaway is that anything pretty is likely to be popular, and it's worth counterbalancing these with other places that pique your interest. A little genuine curiosity and research can go a long way towards making a trip more distinctive and memorable. 

Layoffs and Relationship to Work

I was so nervous as I finished typing out my resignation letter. I looked up resign in Chinese, 辭職, prepared what I'd say, and trembled as I walked over to my manager. He initially refused to accept it, telling me to think about it til the end of the day. Had I considered a different team? Transferring to London? Arup had been my home for over 4 years, and neither side took the idea of splitting lightly. When he did accept it, I followed through with the standard one month of notice and worked as hard as ever to wrap up and document my projects. The phrase "好頭好尾", literally "good head good tail" but idiomatically start well and end well, rang through me as I felt an obligation to coworkers and clients to leave everything in good standing. On my last day, my colleagues surprised me with a cake and a sweet card with a fold-out Hong Kong junk boat which I've kept to this day.  That was the last time I left a company with good vibes. Since then I've had four layoffs and one ignominious resignation. 

This time, it was the Microsoft Teams App that foreshadowed something might be wrong. Teams lets you know when someone starts a meeting, and at 9am when my 1 on 1 with my boss was set to begin, it was my boss' boss who instead started the call. This unprecedented gatecrash couldn't be good. He got right into it, delivering in his business-like manner how my role had been eliminated in a non-performance based restructuring across the organization. He refused to tell me who else was affected, although he said it affected a lot of product managers and not data scientists. Ironically I had switched from data science to take a product role but had been coding data science work for the last month. I asked if I could just be a data scientist here. The director was initially stymied, then replied, "that option isn't on the table, but you can reapply for those roles." I had to suppress a laugh. There was no need for "好頭好尾" - within an hour my accounts were disabled.

Layoffs expose the transactional nature of jobs. With system accesses revoked, suddenly you have no ability to message your colleagues, no way to retrieve old emails or other important documents you'd inadvertently saved on the work computer on which you'd spent so much time. You find your phone left with useless apps which you just delete. You've still got loads of activity in your brain space concerning project details, or a to-do item, or how to access a particular dashboard. These all go from being critical to your livelihood to complete irrelevance. People whom you used to speak to weekly or daily soon get forgotten. One second this company needed you, the next it doesn't. 

Reactions come in waves. The initial event delivers somberness and shock, even in the cases when I knew it was coming. The tone of the conversation is so unnatural. In my first layoff, my boss had been too ashamed to look me in the eyes, and read corporate speak from a script. In my second, a seasoned HR professional sent me off as one of many in a sequence, able to show perfunctory sympathy but clearly eager to get everything over with.  In my third, my boss read a script then immediately signed off, displaying the backbone of a jellyfish as a young HR leader talked through the details. This past one was actually the most pleasant experience of the four. 

There's the horror when you reflexively try to access your email and find yourself locked out. There's the indulgent joy slacking off from all the work you'd thought you'd have to do. There's the sharing of the news, and the steady outcry of support from friends. There are offers of free drinks and plenty of reasons to accept them, and lots of laughter, mirth and sympathy.  The criticism of the company or coworkers that you'd held in come gushing out. Layoff day is a hell of a holiday.

Then there's the next day when you wake up and realize that you have nothing to do. No commute, no first meeting, no reports to review. There's seeing your company's posts on social media, marketing posts with trite descriptions of business problems that now induce vomit. There's freedom, the perks of exploring areas and venues in broad daylight.  There's the shame, the self-doubt, the retrospective analysis of assignments and meetings and wondering if there's anyway you could have done better with the people who made this decision, if you're truly unlucky or just bad or somewhere in between. There are trickles of emails and LinkedIn messages from coworkers revealing which of these transactional relationships might have evolved in something slightly more. There's the updating of the resume, the responses to recruiters even as you figure out what next steps might possibly be.  As the days go by, a new normal starts to establish itself, but small memorandums of the lost life creep back in - a business card, a bookmarked article, a conference badge. 

Work does not need to be so transactional. In previous generations, many people worked for the same company their whole lives. Single factories could provide a sense of community for an entire town, and their closings were often devastating. But in 2022 America, the tech industry has reached a state where rapid growth and reactive pullbacks have become standard. Several companies have demonstrated success by faking it until you make it, operating at losses for many years, doubling down on unbridled blitzscaling, and reaped staggering financial rewards for their efforts.  Despite plenty of examples of burst bubbles and failed startups, human nature fixates on the winners. Investors and entrepreneurs buy in on these dreams together and an entire system emerges upon an unrealistic foundation. Employees took a back seat to shareholders. Since the pandemic began and upset society's preexisting rhythms, the economy has seemed extremely kneejerk-y. Stocks collapsed with the first lockdown, then soared disproportionate to fundamentals. Tech companies entered into an arms race that they couldn't sustain, and pawns like me got caught up in it. 

Personally, this layoff caught me at a terrible time. I was already struggling, and this layoff isn't even the major negative event in my life. While I do see some potential upside as I didn't exactly love this job, I don't feel confident entering a tight job market alongside tens of thousands of Meta, Twitter, Amazon and other tech employees. What hurts worse though is the time and effort I spent at this last job, now seemingly wasted. I've worked in so many industries - buildings, manufacturing, agriculture, gas utilities, electric utilities, trucking.  I know about the silking phase in corn growth, the operations of 811 call centers, and the seasonality of truck prices Florida inbound. All the effort to grasp a new industry seem for naught. 

Intellectually I know that this is not my fault, that none of these layoffs were my fault. Never have I been fired for underperforming, never have I compromised my integrity. I know that I'm a badass data scientist and product leader who's fun to work with and valuable to society. But it's hard to justify how you can have this much bad luck without wondering if you are the problem.  

I don't think it's healthy when work becomes too great a part of one's life. Companies are not families, and work will not love you back. But there is a balance, and the degree to which my last few jobs have felt so transactional is not healthy either. With remote work and camera-off cultures, lots of coworkers feel like faceless mercenaries. It makes me resentful of the number of hours I spend with them, without a relationship growing, instead of with my friends. Ideally coworkers can reach a state of mutual respect if not mutual admiration. It hurt so much when my boss ghosted me after my recent layoff - it made me question his intentionality in any of our previous transactions. I had learned his kids names, his high school track times and we had joked about sports. Suddenly he did not need me to drive a product roadmap and any desire to talk to me vanishes. 

I believe there is room for human connection and basic decency even in competitive corporate cultures. We are all here on earth trying to do the best we can.

The Rest was History

When planning where to travel with friends, exploring recent war and genocide history is typically not the deciding factor. However, my friend Sam and I were surprised to discover a mutual interest in understanding the Bosnian civil war, a topic I daresay few of my other friends would be interested in, and we decided to make Sarajevo the focal point of a trip to Eastern Europe (piggybacking off my week in Portugal with family). We met up in Budapest, and originally I wanted to start this blog from there, but so much happened in the Balkans (the former Yugoslavia) that with apologies to the great Hungarian capital, I have decided to skip over Budapest entirely. Our jaunt through territory that had passed through many empires would be steeped in history with a side of modern day fascism.

We drove west from Budapest to Lake Balaton, a resort destination and the largest lake in Central Europe. We were pleasantly surprised when the restaurant I randomly picked welcomed us with a sweeping view of aquamarine water. Lake Balaton also comes with kitschy craft stores, a bizarre Stations of the Cross setup complete with 14 crosses laid out across 100 yard on a hill, a rocking nightlife scene that we didn't get to experience and a car ferry which we did. 

Crossing the Hungarian border got us some perfunctory questions and a passport stamp. As we entered Croatia, a line of trucks a half mile long faced us, with bored drivers standing outside their trucks, waiting for whatever inspections were needed to enter Hungary. We gave this horrific line a passing glance of curiosity, unaware of what it foreboded.

Croatia is oddly shaped, like a C. The most well known parts of Croatia, including Split and Dubrovnik, border the Adriatic sea at the bottom of the C. Our trip passed through the top of the C, a region known as Slavonia, with its capital Osijek our planned stop. Osijek boasts an old Habsurg-era stone fort, complete with a dry moat. The fort interior now holds restaurants, bars, parks and our hotel. The city also had a charming trolley and old town square with no obvious tourism - it really felt like an unexplored gem. I wondered if the hotel concierge / bartender was at all curious why these two Americans of different ethnicities had wandered through this town, but when I engaged with him, he displayed absolutely no interest.

We continued through slow rural mountain roads into Bosnia and Herzegovina where signs alternated between the Latin alphabet and ћирилица. Our map showed a curious dotted inner border indicating we were in the Republika Srpska part of Bosnia. I spent much of the ride researching what that even meant, and only then realized I had fundamentally misunderstood the outcome of the Bosnian civil war.

A college course on Europe and Nationalism assigned us a book of poetry written during the war by a Bosnian poet besieged in Sarajevo. I remember asking at the outset how the different sides, who all looked the same and spoke the same language, even recognized who the enemy was. How could there possibly be genocide amongst these white people? The professor said I'd understand after reading the book. During the pandemic in 2020, I found the book, thought back to my question, and realized I still didn't know the answer. So I re-read Sarajevo Blues and got absorbed and kept researching. I learned that the different empires that had dominated the Balkans over the years, namely the Austro-Hungarians, the Ottomans and the Venetians, had created borders that split these people up. Political borders can forge new identities independent of ethnolinguistics - as a Hong Konger, I get this. To oversimplify, the folks living within Austro-Hungarian and Venetian territory, called Croatia, became mainly Catholic while those living within Ottoman territory, called Bosnia and Herzegovina, largely adopted Islam. The territory of Serbia changed hands between these empires but achieved independence in 1815, with its inhabitants overwhelmingly following Eastern Orthodox Christianity. 

Nationalism was sweeping through Europe and the independent Serbs wanted to liberate their fellow South Slavs from their imperial yokes and create a Greater Serbia, with them in charge.  World War I started in Sarajevo when Serb nationalists, who might not have had direct ties to the Serbian government, assassinated the heir to the Austrian throne. The outcome of two world wars eventually did lead to the union of South Slavs in socialist Yugoslavia. By all accounts, though Yugoslavia's capital was Serbia's Belgrade, nationalism was kept in check by the dictator Josip Tito during this time. However, when Tito died, nationalism erupted again. Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia all wanted to be their own countries, and the idea of Greater Serbia regained popularity. Because there'd been no internal borders during Yugoslavia and identities are fluid, plenty of people who identified as Serb lived in these areas, especially in Bosnia. Serbs were used to being the dominant ethnic group but now faced the prospect of being minorities. When Bosnia declared independence, many of the Bosnian Serbs had been preparing and quickly showed up around Sarajevo with artillery. They nearly conquered the city in the early days of the war, but ultimately settled for an endurance approach with a brutal siege that lasted over 4 years. I learned from this history that the most dangerous people are people formerly in power now facing a loss of that power - a situation very relevant to the United States in 2022.

Sarajevo itself had been a bastion of multiculturalism where Bosnian Muslims, Croats and Serbs had lived side by side. Before World War II there was also a substantial Jewish population. With synagogues, mosques, Catholic and Orthodox churches, Sarajevo was called the Jerusalem of Europe. Though the Yugoslavian wars pitted religions against each other, religion hadn't been such an identity marker in Sarajevo itself, since like most cosmopolitan European cities, atheism had been growing. Many Serbs ended up fighting alongside Muslims during the war, and the Bosnian government was careful to label the other side "Chetniks" or extremist Serbs and avoided demonizing all Serbs. The war was not Muslims vs Orthodox but those who believed in a diverse Bosnia vs Serb nationalists. I learned that identity is all what we choose to make of it - all differences amongst humans are simply ones we've chosen to believe are differences.

Republika Sprska is non-contiguous with very irregular borders and a "capital" in Banja Luka. I had thought that at the tail end of the Bosnian war, US & NATO got involved, bombed the Bosnian Serbs and helped the Bosnian Muslims win the war. In reality, the Dayton Accords peace treaty that ended the war wasn't really a victory for any side. The Dayton Accords carved three autonomous regions in Bosnia more or less based on where the armies were, one to each side and one in the middle that they couldn't decide on. The regions are so autonomous as to be functionally separate countries, with a very weak Federal government. The Dayton Accords also created the unusual position of High Representative, a person chosen by other nations to have total veto power over the Bosnian government. Essentially everyone realized the two sides would fight over legislation and thus implemented an overlord to babysit the country, until they showed they had sufficiently grown up. The current High Representative is a German man who speaks no Bosnian.

All this I was absorbing as we drove past Cyrillic signs in the Republika Srpska. The only flags we saw were the flag of the Republic of Serbia, and the Republika Srpska's similar own flag, both using red/white/blue horizontal bands. Given the history of the war, the refusal to fly the blue and yellow Bosnian flag and insistence on the Serbian flag is asking for a fight. We saw police checkpoints periodically on the road, where a policeman asked for our passports and registration in German before letting us move on with an "alles gute!" Even as outsiders, we felt the tenseness of a frozen conflict.

Across the river from Serbia proper, in the city of Zvornik, we stopped for lunch. Walking into a random restaurant, the owner greeted us like he had never seen a blue-haired Asian man before. No one spoke any English, and our Bosnian-Serbo-Croatian was limited to about 5 words. He offered us a drink, and I indicated a no, and he gave an aha and hurried into the kitchen. We awkwardly took seats and marveled at the table cloth decorated with cigarette burns and the pictures of Jesus and Putin side-by-side on the back wall. The toilet was a squatter. After about 15 minutes, Sam asked if we should just grab snacks at a convenience store, but I replied with 50% confidence that the owner was probably cooking for us. And so he did return out with a steaming tray of barbecue and stretchy bread. Considering we literally did not order, it was the best possible outcome in that Putin-worshipping restaurant.  

After two hours on mountainous country roads, we arrived at Srebrenica. In July of 1995, after intense negotiations, Dutch UN Peacekeeping troops handed over the Bosnian Muslims who had been under their protection. Over 8,000 boys and men were separated from the group and methodically murdered by the Bosnian Serbs in what the US recognizes as a genocide. A genocide memorial has been set up over several acres of grassy hills. Reminiscent of the Holocaust memorial in Berlin, gravestone pillars are setup in a grid, each representing one of the slaughtered with an Islamic burial epithet written in Bosnian. Signs in the front were written in Bosnian, English, Turkish and Arabic. Across the street, where the Dutch UN headquarters had been, dilapidated buildings house exhibitions about the massacre. The buildings lacked any markings, and seeing broken windows and empty door frames, I was skeptical that it was a museum at all. I was shocked to find inside a well curated assembly of personal items and video recordings from survivors. It struck me that this memorial was deep within the territory of its perpetrators, the area having been awarded to Bosnian Serbs after they had cleansed it of Muslims. The Bosnian Serbs unsurprisingly showed little interest in maintaining the memorial, evidenced by the near absence of road signs to it. It crossed my mind that the restaurant owner from earlier was old enough to have served in the Serb army. We spent well over an hour in Srebrenica and saw maybe a dozen other visitors, understandable given the remoteness. I wondered if any other memorials in the world could match Srebenica in this unusual combination of being distinguished yet unvisited. 

Finally, in a spectacular sunset drive descending from the mountains, we reached Sarajevo. The city met our expectations. It attracted just the right amount of the right tourists, those who have also put in the requisite Wikipedia research. Minarets and calls to prayer reminded us we were in a predominantly Muslim city, but the nightlife indicated that this was "Islam lite" and still very much a European city. We stayed a block from the Latin Bridge spanning the Miljacka River and the site of Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination. A memorial featuring a metal imprint of assassin Gavrilo Princip's position when he fired his gun struck me as a strange glorification of murder.  Nonetheless, the site conveyed how this restless, diverse city had been a happening place and would witness so many events of consequence just in the 20th century.  Of course, our neighborhood had more to offer than Sarajevo's dark history - a delightful mix of restaurants, shopping, gelato, bakeries and bars made me want to explore every corner and nook. A historic market square called Baščaršija hosted a lovely scene of elderly folk sitting and drinking Turkish coffee in the mornings surrounded by ancient stone buildings.

A guided tour of Sarajevo took us to a damaged and graffitied bobsled trek in the mountains east of the city. Sarajevo had hosted a successful Winter Olympics in 1984, only 8 years before war would engulf those venues. It's a travel hobby of mine to visit Olympic cities and look for Rings or the host stadium, but with Sarajevo, a dilapidated concrete slide seems to better represent the city's Olympic memory. The tour continued to the Tunnel of Hope. With the city besieged and constantly shelled by artillery, an 800m long tunnel was dug underneath the UN-controlled airport runway. The tunnel allowed supplies to be brought in and likely saved the city from capitulation. As the airport runway is still used, most of the tunnel is not made accessible for tourists. We were able to walk through a small authentic stretch, and while it was crouchingly tight, it didn't reach the claustrophobic levels of the Cu Chi tunnels in Vietnam. We continued to the War Childhood Museum, where stories of children during the war were documented. The museum reminded us that when we talk about nationalism, and geopolitics, the effect on people's lives can get lost in the large numbers, but when we are shown war's effect on the innocent individual, we understand better what is truly at stake.

We drove southwest along the gorgeous Neretva River to Mostar. The 5th largest city in Bosnia (technically in Herzegovina), I'd imagined Mostar to be a bit of a random spot with an elegant old bridge. Imagine my surprise when I arrived to find out Mostar is the most popular destination in Bosnia. Old Bridge, or Stari Most in Bosnian, was originally commissioned by Suleiman the Magnificent in 1566. The entire structure of the bridge, included the walking path, soars over the Neretva at such an acute arch that the original builder, so worried it would collapse, prepared for his own funeral after it opened. Instead, Stari Most stood as a wonder for over four centuries until the civil war when Croat forces, not Serbs, destroyed it. Though they claimed the bridge was of strategic military value, the general who ordered it was convicted of a war crime. The bridge was rebuilt in 2004. Now, its every inch and every viewing angle is capitalized, with wall-to-wall restaurant coverage along the riverside. A man was diving off the top of the bridge every couple hours with his accomplice collecting money. Initially confused on where this influx of tourists came from, I realized that Dubrovnik, aka King's Landing,  was just over 2 hours away. While the main town square was cobblestoned and charming, the touristy nature made me believe it was designed to look charming. Outside the center of town felt more authentic with many shelled buildings still in ruins, and inexplicably a statue of Bruce Lee in a park. 15 minutes drive away was a Dervish House, built into a cliff alongside where a river enters a cave. Though this was also extremely touristy and I was unable to appreciate the Islamic spirituality of the location, Sam and I did find a rocky hiking path ignored by everyone else that led to scenic views of the valley, and randomly some climbing equipment.

We had decent luck meeting interesting people in the Sarajevo bar scene. A tall German got to talking to me and Sam at the bar, while his girlfriend remained at their table for 15 minutes. Gathering that his girlfriend was Nicaraguan, I asked if we could join them at their table. The German replied, "sure, but uh do you talk the Spanish?" An hour later he remarked, "I definitely wasn't expecting the two Americans to speak Spanish...in Sarajevo." We learned that they were waiting for a Schengen visa to process and had somehow survived 5 days in the boring Banja Luka. The next night, after failing to strike up any conversations, a group of young Bosnian guys approached us out of nowhere. What transpired was tremendous for we had lots of questions for them and they had lots of questions for us. Some question examples were: 

"You could've chosen Spain, Italy, France, Germany - why did you come to Bosnia? What do you think of Joe Biden? Do most Americans have guns?"

And my questions for them included:

"Who did you root for in the World Cup when Croatia made the final? Would you root for Serbia if they were in the final? Do most people drink here? Do you think there will be another war here in your lifetimes?" One of them responded, "When we're in the Balkans, we all hate each other. When we're outside the Balkans, we realize we're all the same. I rooted for Croatia and I could root for Serbia." With regards to drinking, Bosnian Muslims either drink alcohol or smoke hookah, with very little overlap. Avoiding pork was far more commonly followed. I enjoyed tremendously watching how they interacted - I was shocked to see how much internet meme culture, jokes that I thought were English-specific, was part of their lives. One guy demonstrated via meme about how his friend was a ladies' man, with a picture of a man videochatting 50 phones. The tallest of the group, a good looking guy with glasses and a crew cut named Harun explained his position as one of 4 Bosnians at a US sponsored army training program in Turkey. He said there would only be war again if the US allowed there to be a war. 

We got up early the next morning, unfortunately smelling of Bosnia's lack of indoor smoking regulations, and set out for Belgrade. Sam had messaged his Serbian-American friend Igor when we'd previously driven along the border, and in an incredible coincidence Igor told us he was currently in Belgrade. We changed our plans to swing by Belgrade. Igor had moved from Belgrade to the US when he was 5, but he spoke Serbian fluently and knew Belgrade pretty well. As he took us through historical squares, respected restaurants and a Roman-era fortress, I recognized in him a joy of showing Americans a country he knew intimately, a joy I shared when friends visited me in Hong Kong. He gave us a culinary tour with cevapi, which I recognized as the barbecue plate from the Putin restaurant, the soft yet crispy pastry borek and a dessert shop with delicious knedle, potato doughballs filled with chocolate or fruit. He explained how Serbian soccer was talented but disappointed in big tournaments, how much people revere Nikola Tesla (born in Croatia to Serb family) and NBA MVP Nikola Jokić, and how they also take credit for Slovenian  Luka Dončić who "has a very Serbian name." 

Though he'd spent decent time as an adult in Belgrade, Igor hadn't really partied in the city with friends. Apparently Belgrade is known as a party town, with Europeans from richer countries often coming to splash for a weekend. Through extensive Instagram research, he chose some bars and clubs and we went hopping. We were a few drinks in and quite tired from the long day when we reached our final club, but the cool design and 90's music revitalized us. We knew all the lyrics and so apparently did the Serbs. Igor ordered each of us a shot of the Serbian national drink Rakija, which he subsequently described as "moonshine brandy." After an hour or so, I was feeling in a good place, until I turned around and saw six more shots of Rakija arriving which Igor had apparently ordered in Serbian. I stumbled home at 1am and puked so badly I made it to the sink because I couldn't reach the toilet. I felt terrible for being a drunk mess until Sam came home and started his own chunder show. We traded puking bursts all night. I started to feel stable around 9am, but Sam was still in bad shape and not helped by our need to drive 3.5 hours back to Budapest that day. 

Mercifully, a dual carriage highway connects Belgrade and Budapest, and we didn't have to deal with the hairpin curves through Bosnian mountains on a hangover. The most notable sight were numerous signs in English saying "Kosovo is Serbia." While we had been primed to look out for anti-Bosnian sentiment, it was another conflict with NATO involvement that still riles up nationalism. The 1998-1999 war with ethnic Albanians trying to breakaway had ended in NATO bombing Belgrade and Kosovo becoming de facto independent, although it seems none of the highway signs agree.  I thought about how much pride played into these conflicts, with people willing to kill each other over perceived historical wrongs.

As we approached the Hungarian border, Google directed us off the highway and onto a small road where all the cars were stopped. I was confused when a woman exited her car with Slovakian plates and took her dog for a walk. We had never expected to wait at the border. I walked out as well, and in addition to the hundred cars ahead of us, abandoned buildings and barbed wire gave me an uneasy feeling. Piles of litter contained old clothes and broken tents hinted at a former refugee camp of sorts. Suddenly I realized we were "entering Europe." It had not dawned us the entire trip that we had left the EU - Bosnia and Serbia are not member nations. Hungary has famously been unwelcoming to migrants at its border, and this crossing of Horgos had been the site of clashes in 2015. I suspected that our lengthy border wait was both typical and planned. It took us two and a half hours to get to the customs officers (who seemed genuinely surprised to see American passports) and two minutes to get past them. We finally made it back to Budapest where we checked into an airport hotel, returned the car, and fled with our tails between our legs, more knowledgable of the potency of Balkan conflicts and moonshine brandy.