Stories by Tania Tan Wu on Medium

In a little bit less than 7 months of joining <a href="http://gitstart.com/">GitStart</a>, I have become a developer team manager for the first time.<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*Rhq7Z5ZGPYvPtLuqKWuaLg.png" /><figcaption>Just a small part of the whole GitStart community 🥰</figcaption></figure>Even with previous experience of working on my own startup involving critical decision making and am used to holding up professional responsibilities, starting to manage people is a whole new level. Luckily I wasn’t the first person to manage people within our community, so there are a lot of shared processes that I can follow.At a fast growing startup, there wasn’t a lot of “heads up” before I officially became a manager. It was announced on Friday that I was to build up my own team starting the coming Monday. Since there wasn’t a lot of time, I focused on resources readily available within the company (and thankfully I was already almost finished reading <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/38821039">The Making of A Manager</a> by Julie Zhuo)The difficulties that I anticipated were mainly:<ul><li>how to effectively balance productivity and physical &amp; mental well-being amongst the team</li><li>how to give and receive constructive feedback and not making it personal</li><li>how to onboard new team members technically and culturally</li><li>how to ensure the team has a positive collaborative culture (and remote!)</li><li>how to help each team member grow personally and professionally</li><li>and of course how to interview and grow the team</li></ul>As mentioned earlier luckily we have processes and policies within the company to follow already which makes being a manager a lot easier.These are the few things I’ve done so far while setting up my team:<ul><li>Daily Standups (recurring calendar invites + async standup system on our GitStart dashboard) How it works: During the daily standup meeting, we go through the pre-posted written standups (on our system) on what they worked on, what is coming next and if they faced any blockers. This won’t exceed 30 mins per day. Things to watch out for: If any team member misses a daily standup, their async standup must be posted in due time, and jump on a quick call whenever available.</li><li>Weekly Retrospectives (recurring calendar invites) How it works: Every Friday, we have a weekly retrospective where everyone shares what went well and what can be better + action items. Meeting notes are posted in the Workplace Groups “post” sections (yes we use Workplace) where we can go over what can be better in the previous week and see if we have addressed it already. Things to watch out for: when some things didn’t go well for a certain team member that week, feedback that the team giving the person might end up being too personal rather than focusing on the problem itself. Always be alerted if feedback is constructive and intervene if they are not.</li><li>Biweekly Office Hours 1:1s (also, ofc recurring calendar invites) How it works: This is similar to weekly retrospectives but a lot more candid and personal as it is just me and one team member per call. It is usually more goal oriented, and we often leave with very actionable items for the next two weeks which can be: spent x hours learning on re-learning GraphQL basics or y hours on writing their first blog post etc. Things to watch out for: Feedback to be given should not be feelings based but numbers based to be more constructive, and easier to take action upon. Eg: your work (pull request) typically goes through at least three review cycles, let’s aim to reduce it to two review cycles only by being more thorough and ensuring your work is fully ready before being reviewed.</li><li>Improving the Onboarding Process with Documentations Managing a technical team, onboarding a new team member is always painful when the documentation is not complete enough. A good way to improve is keep notes whenever a new joiner joins and make sure to resolve all the most asked questions during onboarding and formalize it into the company’s official documentations.</li><li>Maintaining Authenticity and Professionalism in Meetings Before I became a manager, I found it difficult sometimes to stay authentic but also be professional given my bubbly personality. However, since being a manager I focus on using more assertive and neutral sentences, giving positive and clear praises, admitting when I don’t know something or when I am wrong, showing care towards team members all while being mindful if the words and tone I use are professional.</li><li>Practice Interviewing As a person who is not a big fan of typical algorithm questions and very difficult whiteboarding questions that have no real world usages, I was very wary of what type of questions to ask in a technical interview. Preparing for an interview that can be done in a 30 minute timeframe meant constantly practicing with my teammates, and asking for everyone’s feedback including their favorite methods of interviewing and how they measure success of an interview (which can probably come through in a different article). One biggest feedback I had was to make sure I can communicate the question well enough as most of our developers joining GitStart come from all over the world. We want to make sure language is not a barrier for great developers to excel!</li></ul>And that’s a wrap for the beginnings of a manager for me. Mostly these are some great practices that we have at GitStart already — and I’d love to share more when more learnings arises. I reckon there are more specific steps to take while mentoring someone technically vs non-technically, tips and tricks to preparing for an interview, and many more!And for now, happy December ☀️🎄If you’re curious about how <a href="http://gitstart.com/">GitStart</a> is helping companies scale up their technical capabilities autonomously (think: Pull Requests as a Service), feel free to <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/wutania">reach out to me</a>! Love to share more 💫<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=fc2fb33af056" width="1" height="1" alt="">

In a little bit less than 7 months of joining GitStart, I have become a developer team manager for the first time.
Just a small part of the whole GitStart community 🥰
Even with previous experience of working on my own startup involving critical decision making and am used to holding up professional responsibilities, starting to manage people is a whole new level. Luckily I wasn’t the first person to manage people within our community, so there are a lot of shared processes that I can follow.
At a fast growing startup, there wasn’t a lot of “heads up” before I officially became a manager. It was announced on Friday that I was to build up my own team starting the coming Monday. Since there wasn’t a lot of time, I focused on resources readily available within the company (and thankfully I was already almost finished reading The Making of A Manager by Julie Zhuo)
The difficulties that I anticipated were mainly:

how to effectively balance productivity and physical & mental well-being amongst the team
how to give and receive constructive feedback and not making it personal
how to onboard new team members technically and culturally
how to ensure the team has a positive collaborative culture (and remote!)
how to help each team member grow personally and professionally
and of course how to interview and grow the team

As mentioned earlier luckily we have processes and policies within the company to follow already which makes being a manager a lot easier.
These are the few things I’ve done so far while setting up my team:

Daily Standups (recurring calendar invites + async standup system on our GitStart dashboard)
How it works: During the daily standup meeting, we go through the pre-posted written standups (on our system) on what they worked on, what is coming next and if they faced any blockers. This won’t exceed 30 mins per day.
Things to watch out for: If any team member misses a daily standup, their async standup must be posted in due time, and jump on a quick call whenever available.
Weekly Retrospectives (recurring calendar invites)
How it works: Every Friday, we have a weekly retrospective where everyone shares what went well and what can be better + action items. Meeting notes are posted in the Workplace Groups “post” sections (yes we use Workplace) where we can go over what can be better in the previous week and see if we have addressed it already.
Things to watch out for: when some things didn’t go well for a certain team member that week, feedback that the team giving the person might end up being too personal rather than focusing on the problem itself. Always be alerted if feedback is constructive and intervene if they are not.
Biweekly Office Hours 1:1s (also, ofc recurring calendar invites)
How it works: This is similar to weekly retrospectives but a lot more candid and personal as it is just me and one team member per call. It is usually more goal oriented, and we often leave with very actionable items for the next two weeks which can be: spent x hours learning on re-learning GraphQL basics or y hours on writing their first blog post etc.
Things to watch out for: Feedback to be given should not be feelings based but numbers based to be more constructive, and easier to take action upon. Eg: your work (pull request) typically goes through at least three review cycles, let’s aim to reduce it to two review cycles only by being more thorough and ensuring your work is fully ready before being reviewed.
Improving the Onboarding Process with Documentations
Managing a technical team, onboarding a new team member is always painful when the documentation is not complete enough. 
A good way to improve is keep notes whenever a new joiner joins and make sure to resolve all the most asked questions during onboarding and formalize it into the company’s official documentations.
Maintaining Authenticity and Professionalism in Meetings
Before I became a manager, I found it difficult sometimes to stay authentic but also be professional given my bubbly personality. However, since being a manager I focus on using more assertive and neutral sentences, giving positive and clear praises, admitting when I don’t know something or when I am wrong, showing care towards team members all while being mindful if the words and tone I use are professional.
Practice Interviewing
As a person who is not a big fan of typical algorithm questions and very difficult whiteboarding questions that have no real world usages, I was very wary of what type of questions to ask in a technical interview. Preparing for an interview that can be done in a 30 minute timeframe meant constantly practicing with my teammates, and asking for everyone’s feedback including their favorite methods of interviewing and how they measure success of an interview (which can probably come through in a different article). One biggest feedback I had was to make sure I can communicate the question well enough as most of our developers joining GitStart come from all over the world. We want to make sure language is not a barrier for great developers to excel!

And that’s a wrap for the beginnings of a manager for me. Mostly these are some great practices that we have at GitStart already — and I’d love to share more when more learnings arises. I reckon there are more specific steps to take while mentoring someone technically vs non-technically, tips and tricks to preparing for an interview, and many more!
And for now, happy December ☀️🎄
If you’re curious about how GitStart is helping companies scale up their technical capabilities autonomously (think: Pull Requests as a Service), feel free to reach out to me! Love to share more 💫

The Beginnings of A Technical Manager

<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*lo4OQGlf82g3FSPvTig1wA.jpeg" /></figure>First week of August, marks the beginning of the fifth month of me working fulltime as a software engineer at GitStart. It also marks the start of the fifth month simultaneously trying to make progress on my project <a href="http://immiwatch.com">immi watch</a>. It also is the fifth month where I swapped social interactions with edX/ Coursera courses. I’ve also tried to get back on my Goodreads reading challenge which I totally left out for a few months this year…<h3>Reflections</h3>While it should be a weekly reflection, this is the first time this year I’ve tried to reflect outside of my bi-weekly therapy sessions, and I have decided it is something I would like to continue to reflect upon in a more business / career / personal growth manner.Graduating in the peak of a pandemic, I am definitely starting my quarter life crisis early with the surge of “me time” I have over the past seven months.<blockquote>What do I want to do? Where do I want to be? What skills do I want to have? What is blocking me from doing what I want? What do I want? What are plans? Can we even follow through plans?</blockquote>Pretty clueless, yet starting to understand there is no looking forward or pondering, there is only the present, and taking action.I’ve also learned that… working from home does not mean you never leave home. Making time for walks outside or exercise is equally as important as being productive while you wfh. In fear of COVID and in the name of laziness, two weeks ago I spent 10 days indoors not going out at all. By the end of it I had to really block time on my calendar and try hard make myself go for a walk. Just having sunlight on my skin made me feel much better, and not dread work for the next day.Working on a startup while working at a startup is hard. Especially when you have been working from home all the time, where time before, during and after work seems to be the same. There is no rest and no change of scenery, there is just you and the computer. To keep your passion and stay motivated is hard. Having more discipline to exercise regularly, to be stricter and follow your daily schedules… all seem to help it a little bit!And I’ve also realised a lot friends have started their own podcasts, their own substacks over the past year. I’m amazed by how they can product such consistent content, and how they can stick to their voice (and have so much to say!? haha). The only way I can find out what my voice is — is to start writing about my reflections, goals, and thoughts in between. And maybe something will stick :)<h3>Professional Goals</h3><h4>1. I want to do product management better</h4>My role at GitStart has slowly transitioned from full stack engineering to more product management where the company has a need, and I have an interest. I’ve been trying to do more product stuff (creating a template for product specs, doing more product specs) in the past month, however, I constantly felt like, I had to code a bit to still be “productive”. To define personal growth in a growth stage startup is difficult, and to give yourselves clear OKRs where there is nothing to reference from is also difficult.<h4>A few things I’m going to try out:</h4><ul><li>Make clear goals for each week (oh, structure!)</li><li>Stick to my weekly schedule… put my days in blocks and spread out the key things I am trying to achieve at work in those time blocks.</li><li>Proactively schedule a checkin with our CEO weekly to reflect on the work being done in the past week.</li><li>Make a list of top product management tools for next week’s journal. (Try the tools, and compare it!)</li></ul><h4>2. I want to be better at using Twitter (lol)</h4>It seems to me that I need to structure my questions, my reflections and my thoughts more. To create your personal brand on Twitter, unlike LinkedIn where you just post about achievements, in my opinion it’s more about your humility, your humour, your thoughts. And why I want to do this? Because I’ve witness too many fun projects, cool friendships coming out from just interacting with each other authentically on Twitter!<h4>A few things I’m going to try out:</h4><ul><li>Spend 5–10 minutes per day trying to engage with other people on Twitter by sharing my thoughts on mental health, women’s health and software.</li><li>Ask at least 2 engaging questions per day.</li><li>Maybe even send a dm to a random person to ask a professional question per week!</li><li>Reflect back monthly to see if there is growth :)</li></ul><h4>3. Continue my weekly journals!</h4>I aim to spend 1 hour per week reflecting and writing, and spend time everyday to bullet point thoughts and points I’d like to write about. Let’s see how this thing goes!<h3>Thoughts in between</h3><ul><li>Every thing is interlinked</li></ul>For example, the courses I have been taking on Coursera seems to be connected with one another, unintentionally. In early May I took a course on edX about “Strengthening Community Health Workers Programs” as I would like to learn more about healthcare in the low resources communities that <a href="http://immiwatch.com">immi</a> is also likely to be overlapping in. I barely knew anything about community health workers before, but now I understand how it is a crucial part of healthcare, and though it seems to be a huge investment of low return in terms of governmental finances, it in fact has a very high ROI, in fact a more comprehensive community health worker program can guarantee a much robust healthcare system, ensuring more preventable diseases to be prevented, and primary health services (which are more expensive to maintain) not to be overwhelmed. This linked to the next course I am currently taking, where I am learning about Major Depression Disorder and Public Health, where one of the assignments I had to finish was about if I were implementing a depression diagnosis scheme on the community health workers level, how will I plan it etc. Without taking the first course, the response for me on my second course would’ve been less engaged. Though not intentional signs of synchronicity appears on its own.Another example is the relations between books I am reading and the current state of the world/ my mind. I picked up the book “A Gentlemen in Moscow” in the past two weeks solely because I love reading historical fiction (if not non-fiction), and this was very high on the list on Goodreads. Throughout reading the book, though it’s historical fiction in nature, it depicted how Russia was like entering USSR-era, which mirrors other books I’ve read about early communism China. And for the main character who was a Count and then being put on house arrest and it quite mirrors my personal struggles lately. Being in Hong Kong since 2019 summer, being quarantined over the past 7 months because of rising COVID globally, graduating in the peak of a global pandemic… there’s a feeling of hopelessness, there’s a feeling of being stuck; but the stories of the ex-Count teaches you to navigate and find peace within your boundaries, and eventually plan your way out to break through.It’s definitely easier to see “coincidences” once you are exposed to one thing. But it just makes me wonder, if I hadn’t have a previous experience of taking a course, or reading a book, or hearing a story from a friend, how would my mind react to a certain events or situations when I encounter to it the first time? And isn’t it amazing that every small interaction literally carries weight and will help you interpret future events differently!<h3>End</h3>To try to keep a journal within an hour of writing, I have to end it here… as I started off pretty spontaneously, these are my rough reflections, goals and thoughts in between. If it resonates with you, this way of journalling — to make sense of what’s going on in this crazy world, to create structure and measure growth, while being completely clueless — maybe try journaling with me!See you next week.Best, Tania<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=f3d33f1fa108" width="1" height="1" alt="">

First week of August, marks the beginning of the fifth month of me working fulltime as a software engineer at GitStart. It also marks the start of the fifth month simultaneously trying to make progress on my project immi watch. It also is the fifth month where I swapped social interactions with edX/ Coursera courses. I’ve also tried to get back on my Goodreads reading challenge which I totally left out for a few months this year…
Reflections
While it should be a weekly reflection, this is the first time this year I’ve tried to reflect outside of my bi-weekly therapy sessions, and I have decided it is something I would like to continue to reflect upon in a more business / career / personal growth manner.
Graduating in the peak of a pandemic, I am definitely starting my quarter life crisis early with the surge of “me time” I have over the past seven months.
What do I want to do? Where do I want to be? What skills do I want to have? What is blocking me from doing what I want? What do I want? What are plans? Can we even follow through plans?
Pretty clueless, yet starting to understand there is no looking forward or pondering, there is only the present, and taking action.
I’ve also learned that… working from home does not mean you never leave home. Making time for walks outside or exercise is equally as important as being productive while you wfh. In fear of COVID and in the name of laziness, two weeks ago I spent 10 days indoors not going out at all. By the end of it I had to really block time on my calendar and try hard make myself go for a walk. Just having sunlight on my skin made me feel much better, and not dread work for the next day.
Working on a startup while working at a startup is hard. Especially when you have been working from home all the time, where time before, during and after work seems to be the same. There is no rest and no change of scenery, there is just you and the computer. To keep your passion and stay motivated is hard. Having more discipline to exercise regularly, to be stricter and follow your daily schedules… all seem to help it a little bit!
And I’ve also realised a lot friends have started their own podcasts, their own substacks over the past year. I’m amazed by how they can product such consistent content, and how they can stick to their voice (and have so much to say!? haha). The only way I can find out what my voice is — is to start writing about my reflections, goals, and thoughts in between. And maybe something will stick :)
Professional Goals
1. I want to do product management better
My role at GitStart has slowly transitioned from full stack engineering to more product management where the company has a need, and I have an interest. I’ve been trying to do more product stuff (creating a template for product specs, doing more product specs) in the past month, however, I constantly felt like, I had to code a bit to still be “productive”. To define personal growth in a growth stage startup is difficult, and to give yourselves clear OKRs where there is nothing to reference from is also difficult.
A few things I’m going to try out:

Make clear goals for each week (oh, structure!)
Stick to my weekly schedule… put my days in blocks and spread out the key things I am trying to achieve at work in those time blocks.
Proactively schedule a checkin with our CEO weekly to reflect on the work being done in the past week.
Make a list of top product management tools for next week’s journal. (Try the tools, and compare it!)

2. I want to be better at using Twitter (lol)
It seems to me that I need to structure my questions, my reflections and my thoughts more. To create your personal brand on Twitter, unlike LinkedIn where you just post about achievements, in my opinion it’s more about your humility, your humour, your thoughts. And why I want to do this? Because I’ve witness too many fun projects, cool friendships coming out from just interacting with each other authentically on Twitter!
A few things I’m going to try out:

Spend 5–10 minutes per day trying to engage with other people on Twitter by sharing my thoughts on mental health, women’s health and software.
Ask at least 2 engaging questions per day.
Maybe even send a dm to a random person to ask a professional question per week!
Reflect back monthly to see if there is growth :)

3. Continue my weekly journals!
I aim to spend 1 hour per week reflecting and writing, and spend time everyday to bullet point thoughts and points I’d like to write about. Let’s see how this thing goes!
Thoughts in between

Every thing is interlinked

For example, the courses I have been taking on Coursera seems to be connected with one another, unintentionally. In early May I took a course on edX about “Strengthening Community Health Workers Programs” as I would like to learn more about healthcare in the low resources communities that immi is also likely to be overlapping in. I barely knew anything about community health workers before, but now I understand how it is a crucial part of healthcare, and though it seems to be a huge investment of low return in terms of governmental finances, it in fact has a very high ROI, in fact a more comprehensive community health worker program can guarantee a much robust healthcare system, ensuring more preventable diseases to be prevented, and primary health services (which are more expensive to maintain) not to be overwhelmed. This linked to the next course I am currently taking, where I am learning about Major Depression Disorder and Public Health, where one of the assignments I had to finish was about if I were implementing a depression diagnosis scheme on the community health workers level, how will I plan it etc. Without taking the first course, the response for me on my second course would’ve been less engaged. Though not intentional signs of synchronicity appears on its own.
Another example is the relations between books I am reading and the current state of the world/ my mind. I picked up the book “A Gentlemen in Moscow” in the past two weeks solely because I love reading historical fiction (if not non-fiction), and this was very high on the list on Goodreads. Throughout reading the book, though it’s historical fiction in nature, it depicted how Russia was like entering USSR-era, which mirrors other books I’ve read about early communism China. And for the main character who was a Count and then being put on house arrest and it quite mirrors my personal struggles lately. Being in Hong Kong since 2019 summer, being quarantined over the past 7 months because of rising COVID globally, graduating in the peak of a global pandemic… there’s a feeling of hopelessness, there’s a feeling of being stuck; but the stories of the ex-Count teaches you to navigate and find peace within your boundaries, and eventually plan your way out to break through.
It’s definitely easier to see “coincidences” once you are exposed to one thing. But it just makes me wonder, if I hadn’t have a previous experience of taking a course, or reading a book, or hearing a story from a friend, how would my mind react to a certain events or situations when I encounter to it the first time? And isn’t it amazing that every small interaction literally carries weight and will help you interpret future events differently!
End
To try to keep a journal within an hour of writing, I have to end it here… as I started off pretty spontaneously, these are my rough reflections, goals and thoughts in between. If it resonates with you, this way of journalling — to make sense of what’s going on in this crazy world, to create structure and measure growth, while being completely clueless — maybe try journaling with me!
See you next week.
Best,
Tania

Being Clueless with Structure | journals with wutania #1

In the recent years there has been a trend moving from using APIs where you have to constantly request data from a third party service, towards Webhooks where the third party service you are using instead will send a POST request to your url of choice whenever there is any change you subscribed to (eg. a new Github issue being created, a new comment…).That’s what we are doing at 🌟<a href="http://gitstart.com">Gitstart</a>🌟as well, and here’s how we are building our infrastructure to run webhooks from multiple sources, at scale.For simplicity purposes we will be using Github webhooks as an example 👀Most code examples are in NodeJS &amp; Typescript. We are using <a href="https://medium.com/u/5f5557965017">Hasura</a> as our backend GraphQL engine to scale our PostgreSQL database, allowing our webhooks solution to be truly scalable!A key point about Hasura is that it allows us to utilise <a href="https://hasura.io/docs/1.0/graphql/manual/subscriptions/index.html">subscriptions</a> which is “essentially a query where we receive an update whenever the value of any field changes upstream”.<h3>0. How to Webhooks…?</h3>As we mentioned earlier, webhooks basically allow you to subscribe to events you’re interested in from third-party APIs or services.And here’s a quick overview on “How to Webhooks”:<ul><li>First you create a webhook on your third party service and point it to end endpoint (eg. https://your.url/subscription/webhooks/[some_id]).</li><li>Now that the webhook is initialised on the service (Jira/ Github/ Zapier/ Zoom… you name it!), we need to first list out all the different webhooks we are going to work with</li><li>then we will deal with the webhook events coming in to our url (Github issue being created, new Github branch being created etc). Documentations of the webhook event payloads often are available for the services that support webhooks (<a href="https://developer.github.com/webhooks/event-payloads/">here’s Github’s</a>!).</li><li>You can choose to save all those events to your database temporarily, then address them separately (which is how we are doing it at Gitstart).</li><li>Lastly you need to decide how you would like to process each event, either upserting each entry according to action to a respective database table, or trigger a hook or an action…</li></ul>Why do we save webhook events to database? Can’t we just process the webhook events directly? We chose to save events to an webhook_events table before processing them because in case any errors while processing events, we can safely retry without losing any events. It’s also a good way of balancing out our internal systems in case there is a spike of webhook_events that compromise the performance of other workflows.An alternative and even more scalable way would be to have an extra step before the saving webhook_events into the database by utilising <a href="https://medium.com/codait/build-scalable-webhooks-with-a-queue-and-workers-setup-3b2cbc228220">a message queue</a>. 📩<h3>1. Designing the Infrastructure for Webhooks</h3><h4>Database Infrastructure</h4><ul><li>A table for all Webhooks, example fields include but not limited to:</li></ul><pre>- id // unique id for Github or other sources - source</pre><ul><li>A table for all Webhook Events, example fields include but not limited to:</li></ul><pre>- id - eventType - eventSubType - isIgnored - mergedAt - data - webhookId</pre><ul><li>(Optional): Check the types for the data you may want to capture from the third party services. Look at <a href="https://www.npmjs.com/package/@octokit/types">@octokits/types</a> for all pre-defined types for Github.</li></ul><h4>ThirdParty App Webhooks Infrastructure</h4><ul><li>Setup a Webhook Url pointing from the third party app’s settings: eg. <a href="https://your.url/subscription/webhooks/[some_id]">https://your.url/subscription/webhooks/[some_id]</a></li><li>(Optional but highly recommended) : Setup Webhook Secret Token</li></ul><h3>2. Dealing with Webhooks, 1 at a time</h3>For each webhook_event that comes through, say you are dealing with Webhooks from Github, Jira, Zapier, Zoom… etc. You need to first divert them into different buckets to be able to apply custom actions to them in parallel. Before we store the incoming webhook_event into our webhook_eventstable, for security reasons, you should:<ol><li>Setup Github Webhooks Secret Token <a href="https://developer.github.com/webhooks/securing/">here</a> 🤫</li><li>Make sure the header of the Response to include secret signature eg x-hub-signature</li></ol>With that in place, you can insert the following into the webhook_events table (Payload of a push event on Github can be found <a href="https://developer.github.com/webhooks/event-payloads/#push">here</a>):<ul><li>unique webhookId for Github (as you are designing for multiple datasources, this is important)</li><li>eventType (eg push)</li><li>eventSubType (eg added)</li><li>data (aka the part of the Response payload that is useful data)</li></ul>Why do we do this step? By doing this, we are creating a backlog of webhook_events which are all secure events that are using the right secret token. This is useful for in case your event processing pipeline was down, or in case there was an error processing your realtime webhook_events, all the webhook_events are still stored in the database and you can pick it up again when you fixed the processing part.<h3>3. How to... processThoseWebhookEvents()</h3>Now that all the webhook events are stored in our webhook_events table, before we start processing those webhook events, we need to first query (/listen to) the database for all the events, filter through and choose the webhook events we are going to process, and then write the respective processing code.Why do we do this step? Oftentimes our webhooks will receive more events than we need, or at different stages of development, we would like to first ignore some less important events, etc.<ul><li>At Gitstart we are using <a href="http://hasura.io">Hasura</a> for our backend GraphQL, where we can subscribe to the table and have a stream (Observables) of webhook_events coming in instead of querying it once)</li><li>We need to set the source to specify the webhook sources we are dealing with. In our example, we only have Github so far, but our infrastructure is extendable with other sources like Gitlab, Bitbucket, Zoom, etc.</li></ul><pre>const SOURCE_PROCCESSOR: { [key: string]: { [key: string]: (data: WebhookEvent) =&gt; Promise&lt;ProcessorResponseType&gt;; };} = { github, };</pre>Note: each source points to its own file where we specify all the webhook subevents that we will process, or ignore.<ul><li>We will filter through the webhookEvents when we query for (/subscribe to) the database with the keys of SOURCE_PROCESSOR.</li></ul><pre>const consumer = subscribe_or_query_to_your_webhook_events_table(); // filter done here</pre><ul><li>Of all those events we will first processWebhookFromVariousSources then go to processWebhook (for each source) … see in code snippet below</li><li>We will then check if each webhook_event has been process already, which we can have a helper function to track the flag timeOfLastEventProcessed to hav.</li><li>Later we will processEvent individually according to the different eventTypes and actions under the Github file.</li><li>Lastly, upsert back to webhook_events table to show that you’re done with this event (eg with fields like updatedAt, mergedAt, isIgnored…)</li></ul>Here is some pseudocode to help illustrate our design 🎨. In the code you can see, we are processing different sources in parallel, which really speeds up lots of things.<iframe src="" width="0" height="0" frameborder="0" scrolling="no"><a href="https://medium.com/media/934503f6fc287b0a8a55de80834e0d16/href">https://medium.com/media/934503f6fc287b0a8a55de80834e0d16/href</a></iframe><h3>4. Structure all eventTypes you will be working with in a single file for the source (eg: Github)</h3><pre>export default { pull_request: processPR, // processPR refers to the file where we actually, finally, design how to process events related to the PR!</pre><pre> issues: processIssue,</pre><pre> // ignored events team: async () =&gt; ({ isIgnored: true }), }</pre>Why do we do this step? You can easily manage all the eventTypes you’re dealing with in a single file, link the right processing files, control what type of events we want to fetch from the database and also make note of what are the eventTypes to skip.<h3>5. Finally we can process the event!</h3>Say we are in the processPR file — under this eventType, there are a few different eventSubTypes, which you can first have a handler to filter through each webhook_event and only work on the specifiedeventSubTypes (eg. created, closed etc).As mentioned earlier, you can decide how you want to process each event. A common one is to store the data of that event into the respective table you have created in your database for further manipulation. Or you can trigger an internal hook, or an action!<h3>6. Final Notes</h3><ul><li>During development you may want to point the URL endpoint to expose your localhost with something like <a href="http://serveo.net">serveo.net</a> or <a href="https://github.com/localtunnel/localtunnel">localtunnel</a></li></ul>Credits to Arslan &amp; Hamza @ Gitstart for the webhooks infrastructure design &amp; implementation 💡Thanks to team members @ Gitstart for taking their time to review this article! 🥰If you’re interesting in learning more about how Gitstart can help accelerate your company’s tech team efforts autonomously — check us out at <a href="http://gitstart.com">gitstart.com</a><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=349c28c6ac96" width="1" height="1" alt="">

In the recent years there has been a trend moving from using APIs where you have to constantly request data from a third party service, towards Webhooks where the third party service you are using instead will send a POST request to your url of choice whenever there is any change you subscribed to (eg. a new Github issue being created, a new comment…).
That’s what we are doing at 🌟Gitstart🌟as well, and here’s how we are building our infrastructure to run webhooks from multiple sources, at scale.
For simplicity purposes we will be using Github webhooks as an example 👀
Most code examples are in NodeJS & Typescript. We are using Hasura as our backend GraphQL engine to scale our PostgreSQL database, allowing our webhooks solution to be truly scalable!
A key point about Hasura is that it allows us to utilise subscriptions which is “essentially a query where we receive an update whenever the value of any field changes upstream”.
0. How to Webhooks…?
As we mentioned earlier, webhooks basically allow you to subscribe to events you’re interested in from third-party APIs or services.
And here’s a quick overview on “How to Webhooks”:

First you create a webhook on your third party service and point it to end endpoint (eg. https://your.url/subscription/webhooks/[some_id]).
Now that the webhook is initialised on the service (Jira/ Github/ Zapier/ Zoom… you name it!), we need to first list out all the different webhooks we are going to work with
then we will deal with the webhook events coming in to our url (Github issue being created, new Github branch being created etc). Documentations of the webhook event payloads often are available for the services that support webhooks (here’s Github’s!).
You can choose to save all those events to your database temporarily, then address them separately (which is how we are doing it at Gitstart).
Lastly you need to decide how you would like to process each event, either upserting each entry according to action to a respective database table, or trigger a hook or an action…

Why do we save webhook events to database? Can’t we just process the webhook events directly? We chose to save events to an webhook_events table before processing them because in case any errors while processing events, we can safely retry without losing any events. It’s also a good way of balancing out our internal systems in case there is a spike of webhook_events that compromise the performance of other workflows.
An alternative and even more scalable way would be to have an extra step before the saving webhook_events into the database by utilising a message queue. 📩
1. Designing the Infrastructure for Webhooks
Database Infrastructure

A table for all Webhooks, example fields include but not limited to:

- id // unique id for Github or other sources
- source

A table for all Webhook Events, example fields include but not limited to:

- id
- eventType
- eventSubType
- isIgnored
- mergedAt
- data
- webhookId

(Optional): Check the types for the data you may want to capture from the third party services. Look at @octokits/types for all pre-defined types for Github.

ThirdParty App Webhooks Infrastructure

Setup a Webhook Url pointing from the third party app’s settings: eg. https://your.url/subscription/webhooks/[some_id]
(Optional but highly recommended) : Setup Webhook Secret Token

2. Dealing with Webhooks, 1 at a time
For each webhook_event that comes through, say you are dealing with Webhooks from Github, Jira, Zapier, Zoom… etc. You need to first divert them into different buckets to be able to apply custom actions to them in parallel. Before we store the incoming webhook_event into our webhook_eventstable, for security reasons, you should:

Setup Github Webhooks Secret Token here 🤫
Make sure the header of the Response to include secret signature eg x-hub-signature

With that in place, you can insert the following into the webhook_events table (Payload of a push event on Github can be found here):

unique webhookId for Github (as you are designing for multiple datasources, this is important)
eventType (eg push)
eventSubType (eg added)
data (aka the part of the Response payload that is useful data)

Why do we do this step? By doing this, we are creating a backlog of webhook_events which are all secure events that are using the right secret token. This is useful for in case your event processing pipeline was down, or in case there was an error processing your realtime webhook_events, all the webhook_events are still stored in the database and you can pick it up again when you fixed the processing part.
3. How to... processThoseWebhookEvents()
Now that all the webhook events are stored in our webhook_events table, before we start processing those webhook events, we need to first query (/listen to) the database for all the events, filter through and choose the webhook events we are going to process, and then write the respective processing code.
Why do we do this step? Oftentimes our webhooks will receive more events than we need, or at different stages of development, we would like to first ignore some less important events, etc.

At Gitstart we are using Hasura for our backend GraphQL, where we can subscribe to the table and have a stream (Observables) of webhook_events coming in instead of querying it once)
We need to set the source to specify the webhook sources we are dealing with. In our example, we only have Github so far, but our infrastructure is extendable with other sources like Gitlab, Bitbucket, Zoom, etc.

const SOURCE_PROCCESSOR: { 
 [key: string]: { [key: string]: (data: WebhookEvent) => Promise<ProcessorResponseType>; };} = { 
 github,
};
Note: each source points to its own file where we specify all the webhook subevents that we will process, or ignore.

We will filter through the webhookEvents when we query for (/subscribe to) the database with the keys of SOURCE_PROCESSOR.

const consumer = subscribe_or_query_to_your_webhook_events_table();
// filter done here

Of all those events we will first processWebhookFromVariousSources then go to processWebhook (for each source) … see in code snippet below
We will then check if each webhook_event has been process already, which we can have a helper function to track the flag timeOfLastEventProcessed to hav.
Later we will processEvent individually according to the different eventTypes and actions under the Github file.
Lastly, upsert back to webhook_events table to show that you’re done with this event (eg with fields like updatedAt, mergedAt, isIgnored…)

Here is some pseudocode to help illustrate our design 🎨. In the code you can see, we are processing different sources in parallel, which really speeds up lots of things.
https://medium.com/media/934503f6fc287b0a8a55de80834e0d16/href
4. Structure all eventTypes you will be working with in a single file for the source (eg: Github)
export default {
 pull_request: processPR, 
 // processPR refers to the file where we actually, finally, design how to process events related to the PR!
 issues: processIssue,
 // ignored events
 team: async () => ({ isIgnored: true }),
}
Why do we do this step? You can easily manage all the eventTypes you’re dealing with in a single file, link the right processing files, control what type of events we want to fetch from the database and also make note of what are the eventTypes to skip.
5. Finally we can process the event!
Say we are in the processPR file — under this eventType, there are a few different eventSubTypes, which you can first have a handler to filter through each webhook_event and only work on the specifiedeventSubTypes (eg. created, closed etc).
As mentioned earlier, you can decide how you want to process each event. A common one is to store the data of that event into the respective table you have created in your database for further manipulation. Or you can trigger an internal hook, or an action!
6. Final Notes

During development you may want to point the URL endpoint to expose your localhost with something like serveo.net or localtunnel

Credits to Arslan & Hamza @ Gitstart for the webhooks infrastructure design & implementation 💡
Thanks to team members @ Gitstart for taking their time to review this article! 🥰
If you’re interesting in learning more about how Gitstart can help accelerate your company’s tech team efforts autonomously — check us out at gitstart.com

How to Handle Multiple Webhooks At Scale 

8 June 2019*Us watching <a href="https://www.nbc.com/little-big-shots">Little Big Shots</a> (TV show about little kids doing big things)*🙋🏻‍♀️: Grandpa, what were you up to when you were 7?👴🏼: I was fighting.<blockquote>Grandpa, Dr CK Lim was born in Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia, then moved to Johor Bahru to continue his secondary education, eventually he went to Singapore for his pre-college and MBBS at University of Singapore. He wears a suit or at least a buttoned up shirt with nice dress pants and dress shoes every day. Classy as he is, he is also very serious and uptight — a very traditional gentlemen who I look up to every day.</blockquote>🙋🏻‍♀️: What?! (this is totally different from my understanding of the serious grandpa figure)👴🏼: Oh yea, it was during the Japanese occupation, and everything was out of control. If I didn’t fight, the other 8 year olds would beat me up!🙋🏻‍♀️: So did you join a gang?👴🏼: Um, yea, I kind of had to. There were more than 20 of them terrorizing me. I don’t think I can recover if I get beaten up by all of them.🙋🏻‍♀️: So what did you do in this little gang?👴🏼: We went around terrorizing other people.🙋🏻‍♀️: Wow… have you had to terrorize any family members?👴🏼: No lah, we just terrorized other kids in the neighborhood. The Japanese occupation caused chaos and ended lawfulness and justice within the region. Kids were wild. That was the most mischievous past time I had.🙋🏻‍♀️:Dang. Good job grandpa.👴🏼: Not long after, I was sent to my grandpa’s place to live (which was more suburban, at a big mansion, much further away from the streets where all the mess was happening). Eventually I finished my elementary studies when I was there.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=ce0d47e605b3" width="1" height="1" alt="">

8 June 2019
*Us watching Little Big Shots (TV show about little kids doing big things)*
🙋🏻‍♀️: Grandpa, what were you up to when you were 7?
👴🏼: I was fighting.
Grandpa, Dr CK Lim was born in Batu Pahat, Johor, Malaysia, then moved to Johor Bahru to continue his secondary education, eventually he went to Singapore for his pre-college and MBBS at University of Singapore. He wears a suit or at least a buttoned up shirt with nice dress pants and dress shoes every day. Classy as he is, he is also very serious and uptight — a very traditional gentlemen who I look up to every day.
🙋🏻‍♀️: What?! (this is totally different from my understanding of the serious grandpa figure)
👴🏼: Oh yea, it was during the Japanese occupation, and everything was out of control. If I didn’t fight, the other 8 year olds would beat me up!
🙋🏻‍♀️: So did you join a gang?
👴🏼: Um, yea, I kind of had to. There were more than 20 of them terrorizing me. I don’t think I can recover if I get beaten up by all of them.
🙋🏻‍♀️: So what did you do in this little gang?
👴🏼: We went around terrorizing other people.
🙋🏻‍♀️: Wow… have you had to terrorize any family members?
👴🏼: No lah, we just terrorized other kids in the neighborhood. The Japanese occupation caused chaos and ended lawfulness and justice within the region. Kids were wild. That was the most mischievous past time I had.
🙋🏻‍♀️:Dang. Good job grandpa.
👴🏼: Not long after, I was sent to my grandpa’s place to live (which was more suburban, at a big mansion, much further away from the streets where all the mess was happening). Eventually I finished my elementary studies when I was there.

Stories from 1922: Dr CK Lim | My young mischievous times

Congratulations on getting your first, or second, or fifth internship in the Bay Area! 🌉 You must love tech! 💻This article is for interns who are extroverted, from major cities, and would like to make the most out of your summer social life in the Bay, in specific — South Bay.In my short and sweet stay in Mountain View, I got to visit Pixar, 23AndMe, Quora (in addition to so many other tech companies!); went to a music festival by the beach; spent most weekends in SF (despite living almost 2 hours away in Mountain View); met Marissa Mayer; interacted with Emily Chang (author of Brotopia); and even have a favourite Google building for lunch (1365 is awesome 🤤) Attending countless intern events, re-connecting with university friends, and meeting new people every day helped me build more meaningful friendships, expand my startup network, and have so much fun!A little bit about me: I’m <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/wutania">Tania</a>, study in HK, and I did a 6-month internship in a startup called Zingbox in Mountain View writing front end code. I am quite extroverted — I get energy from socialising and meeting new people. You should be able to tell from the rest of the article. I spent most of my weekends in SF because I am a city girl, but I still made the most out of living &amp; working in Mountain View.Here are a few things I’ll write about:<ol><li>Understanding your internship</li><li>Housing</li><li>Transportation</li><li>Fun stuff (so what can I do exactly other than work???)</li><li>How I got the most out of my 6-months</li></ol><h4>Ok let’s start with “Understanding your internship”.</h4>Your internship is highly correlated to your social life, especially if it’s your first time interning in the Bay Area! Are you working at Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Nvidia, Adobe, Cisco… etc? Are you in the Bay for summer internship programs, off-cycle internships or 1-year long internships?<ul><li>Working at a big company: you have a huge network of intern friends already who you will spend a lot of time working together (though on different teams), doing intern activities (Microsoft even flies you out to Redmond for a 1-week intern week, last year Pitbull was a featured as a suprise artist 😳). There’s probably an intern group chat, and most interns probably get housing together (many companies provide housing for you), so you won’t have to worry too much about not knowing anyone in the Bay Area, and how to not feel too lonely. Some friends I’ve talked to literally never interacted with people out of their company’s group of interns over a course of an internship program. Given that there are hundreds to thousands of interns depending on company size and its intern programs — that’s a lot of people already.</li><li>Working at a startup: You’re in luck. There are probably just 10 or fewer interns in the entire startup, and you likely will feel more like a full time employee. There probably aren&#39;t many intern specific events at work, so if you don&#39;t know anyone in the Bay Area prior to this internship, “housing” &amp; “events” can make your social life easier. If you have friends from your university interning in the Bay as well: tag along their intern activities 🤯, then it’s not that hard to make friends.</li><li>Summer internships: you’re in the Bay Area where thousands and thousands of other interns are also there! <a href="https://interncommunity.com">interncommunity.com</a> is a great organized platform that benefited me a lot and helped me navigate the Bay Area while I was there. You will see fun tech events hosted by big companies literally every day, sometimes even 3+ events crash on the same date (I recall one night Portfolia had an “Investing in FemTech” event in Palo Alto, Uber had an open house, and there was another event in SF “@20 — What I Wish I Knew @20 Intern Event”). There will be fun summer parties, major ones are probably: Startup Grind Summer Party (Free), TechCrunch Summer Party (Paid, but you could volunteer) and endless other intern parties (from <a href="https://interncommunity.com">interncommunity.com</a> or just interns hosting their own parties).</li><li>Off-cycle internships: you don’t get the crazy thousands of interns running around the Bay Area with you. There are other interns, of course, but many might 1) have enough friends to begin with 2) don’t really mind not socializing. In my opinion, this is a great opportunity to meet people who are living in SF/ Bay Area long term, and to join more professional events (not intern-specific). My tip is: if you can’t find a community, create your own (and leverage existing platforms like <a href="https://interncommunity.com">interncommunity.com</a> and other Facebook groups: LSH, The Violet Society, Female Founders Community, Bay Area Interns…etc).</li><li>Perks and benefits of your respective company: does your student insurance still apply during your internship? Does your company provide health insurance? Do you have housing/ transportation reimbursements? How would your budgeting be like over your internship period? Are you trying to save up while on your internship?</li></ul><h4>Let’s move on to “Housing”.</h4>Location is really key. Everything is so spread out in South Bay, so if you don’t have a car, and don’t want to spend hella on Uber/Lyft rides (if your company reimburses you then you’re lucky) then you better choose a place with good access to supermarkets, restaurants and ideally the Caltrain station (especially if you’d like to go to SF often). Close to an In-n-Out or Five Guys is always a plus (normal South Bay restaurants, excluding Palo Alto &amp; San Jose, don’t go past 9pm). Palo Alto seems to be the most poppin’ when it comes to nightlife, and there’s San Jose and Mountain View. If you’re living south of Mountain View, I doubt you’d want to go to San Francisco much. In my experience, Sunnyvale &amp; Santa Clara are really quiet. Cupertino is too but it has a few good boba places &amp; really good Asian food. Places like <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/492998554404284/">FB housing groups</a>, <a href="https://www.padpiper.com">PadPiper</a>, and CraigsList will be your best friend 🙌🏼. Personally I found housing via CraigsList! A lot of people are looking for roommates during internship periods too :) you are not alone in the housing search.Tips: Find or create a community house and live with cool people OR live with friends you know already and enjoy spending time together OR find a convenient location and socialise crazy outside of work/ home — this is what I did!<h4>Transportation</h4>A lot of companies have <a href="https://www.ticketsatwork.com/tickets/">TicketsAtWork</a> perks and you can get discounts for car rentals as well (know your perks)! However if you are under 25 years old, might need to pay more insurance for underage fees. Personally, most of my weekends are spent in SF and I had Uber-reimbursement for getting to work so a car rental didn’t make too much sense.Other options:<ul><li>Caltrain: this is the cheapest to get around cities in South Bay or to SF. During commute hours it comes every 15–30 minutes, during off hours it comes every hour or so. I come from Hong Kong so this is really inconvenient imho.</li><li>Uber/Lyft: good for short distance, or you’re just loaded and can pay SF &lt;&gt; South Bay trips regularly (using a lot of SF &lt;&gt; South Bay references because I like the social scene in SF too much). You can also get 2 dollars back per ride by linking your Uber account to ShopYourWay (I’ve used my cashback money to buy all kinds of household stuff like slow cookers and bedsheets all for freeeeeeeeee) or other apps.</li><li>Bike! Makes getting around less painful!</li><li>Get a car… I have friends who drove all the way from Michigan/ Minnesota to the Bay with their cars. Mobility is really nice in South Bay, your food-cost-life balance will be better if you own a car. Note: If you want to drive to SF from South Bay, SF parking is horrid — beware.</li><li>Scoop/ Waze Carpool are so amazing for commuting SF &lt;&gt; South Bay Monday to Friday during typical commute hours. I like to come back to South Bay Monday morning to go to work, so $10 for SF to Mountain View door-to-door was amazing. Trust.</li><li>Walk: I lived close enough, within 20 minutes walking, to many things other than my work — so from grocery shopping to hanging out in Mountain View, getting to and from Caltrain station, I mostly walked.</li></ul><h4>Fun Stuff! What are fun stuff to do in the Bay?</h4><ul><li>Weekend Roadtrips 🚙: Ocean Beach, Lands End (these 2 parking might be tough because they are in SF), Half Moon Bay, Big Sur, Carmel (my fav), Santa Cruz, LA (really pushing it for a road trip — recommend flying or bus-ing, seriously), Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Napa</li><li>Parties: Honestly if you can&#39;t find one, host one (I hosted my own Bachata party!)✌🏼; As mentioned early: <a href="https://interncommunity.com">interncommunity.com</a> is a great channel to find new friends and find parties to go to. Last year on the 4th of July I went to 3 parties through <a href="https://interncommunity.com">interncommunity.com</a>… 😳 If you are friends with people who are living in dope community houses, everyone likes throwing parties in the summer. Most big company interns like to host parties too — maybe at their dope company housing 😉. Other events to look out for: TechCrunch Summer Party (free if you volunteer); Startup Grind Summer Party (free!); Google Cloud Next Conference (tickets usually come w a free concert — last year I saw The Chainsmokers Live 🥰)</li><li>Mountain View specific (cuz I lived there): Monday nights 7pm — Red Rock Coffee Open Mic; Wednesday/Friday nights — Bachata/Salsa @ Alberto’s Night Club; Drinks at Mervyn’s every night; Grabbing free food at Google (your friend who works there is your homie 🤫); Join a gym…. I joined SMASH GYMS for their kickboxing; Eating on Castro Street (the one and only street of downtown 😬) — CrepeVine, Ramen Izakaya Yu-Gen, Pho To Chau &amp; Oren’s Hummus are all pretty great 👅</li><li>Events: If you love events &amp; networking like me… <a href="https://lunchclub.ai/?invite_code=tania">LunchClub.ai</a>, Eventbrite, Meetup.com, <a href="https://interncommunity.com">interncommunity.com</a>, Facebook events, Facebook groups (Ladies Storm Hackathons, LSH BAE, The Violet Society, Female Founders Community) are your best friends. Note: in the summer most tech companies have recruitment events (or “tech talks”). Also, feel free to reach out to different interns in different companies for company tours (yet again, interncommunity.com and other Facebook groups are great sources)! I visited Google, Facebook, 23AndMe, Quora, GRAIL (South Bay companies), Pinterest, Segment, Twitter, Rainforest QA, Scale.AI (SF companies),… via different events/ office tours!</li></ul><h4>So last topic: How did I get the most out of my 6 months?</h4>During the summer — on weekdays — I spent 8 hours of my day at work, and lined up every evening with events (easier if they are in Palo Alto/ Mountain View/ Sunnyvale) and dinners with new friends. When summer was coming to an end, I discovered Open Mic @ Red Rock Coffee and went there religiously almost every Monday afterwards (even tried standup comedy at open mic once 😝). Soon after I started discovering communities like Mission Control (not the play party place in Oakland), Castro Crib, Fell House, Minerva students… etc (they&#39;re all in SF). It’s just much easier to make friends in SF if you are in the Bay not during the summer (less interns for off-cycle internships!). I spent every weekend throughout my stay in the Bay in SF (got lucky and always had a place to crash) hanging out at Dolores Park, going to Female Founder Happy Hours and other events. I went to several DJ shows and a music festival. After summer ended, I didn’t do too much crazy networking, event hunting or traveling, but just focused on living in the city (and Mountain View, barely). 🏔I became so much closer with a school friend who lived in SF during the summer because I crashed at her place every weekend and we went to events together. I even met my boyfriend through going to startup-related events in SF. From not knowing anyone in the Bay prior this internship to now in the process of starting a femtech company with <a href="http://joinef.com">Entrepreneur First</a> in Hong Kong, the network I have built over time in Femtech, female founders communities, VCs, and startups in general has been really helpful! Thank you SF/Bay Area!I hope the examples in this article will be useful for your upcoming internship in the Bay Area. I really liked both SF and Mountain View a lot in different ways, hope you do too!Ta-da! There’s your ultimate South Bay guide as an intern. All in all, there’s a lot to do in the summer (especially if you work in a big company with big intern programs); if you’re working hard for a return offer — don’t forget to relax a little, make a few new friends and enjoy the city (SF)! For meeting people: other than going to events, grabbing coffee ☕️ is always great. Bay Area people generally are quite down to meet.Side note: for fellow ladies out there — I’ll write a separate guide on how not to accidentally be misleading (dating wise); from experience: anything happening after sundown/ over the weekends &amp; alone can be easily considered as a date/ flirting. Otherwise, grabbing coffee is great. ✌🏼<blockquote>Have fun in the tech capital of the world 🌎, make the most use of your time⌚️, and all the best 💯🎉!</blockquote>Feel free to reach out to me on <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/wutania">LinkedIn</a> — I’d love to share more about Entrepreneur First (they have global locations!), chat about femtech, or if you just want to say hi 👋🏼<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=d1aedbc0b560" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Congratulations on getting your first, or second, or fifth internship in the Bay Area! 🌉 You must love tech! 💻
This article is for interns who are extroverted, from major cities, and would like to make the most out of your summer social life in the Bay, in specific — South Bay.
In my short and sweet stay in Mountain View, I got to visit Pixar, 23AndMe, Quora (in addition to so many other tech companies!); went to a music festival by the beach; spent most weekends in SF (despite living almost 2 hours away in Mountain View); met Marissa Mayer; interacted with Emily Chang (author of Brotopia); and even have a favourite Google building for lunch (1365 is awesome 🤤) Attending countless intern events, re-connecting with university friends, and meeting new people every day helped me build more meaningful friendships, expand my startup network, and have so much fun!
A little bit about me: I’m Tania, study in HK, and I did a 6-month internship in a startup called Zingbox in Mountain View writing front end code. I am quite extroverted — I get energy from socialising and meeting new people. You should be able to tell from the rest of the article. I spent most of my weekends in SF because I am a city girl, but I still made the most out of living & working in Mountain View.
Here are a few things I’ll write about:

Understanding your internship
Housing
Transportation
Fun stuff (so what can I do exactly other than work???)
How I got the most out of my 6-months

Ok let’s start with “Understanding your internship”.
Your internship is highly correlated to your social life, especially if it’s your first time interning in the Bay Area! Are you working at Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Nvidia, Adobe, Cisco… etc? Are you in the Bay for summer internship programs, off-cycle internships or 1-year long internships?

Working at a big company: you have a huge network of intern friends already who you will spend a lot of time working together (though on different teams), doing intern activities (Microsoft even flies you out to Redmond for a 1-week intern week, last year Pitbull was a featured as a suprise artist 😳). There’s probably an intern group chat, and most interns probably get housing together (many companies provide housing for you), so you won’t have to worry too much about not knowing anyone in the Bay Area, and how to not feel too lonely. Some friends I’ve talked to literally never interacted with people out of their company’s group of interns over a course of an internship program. Given that there are hundreds to thousands of interns depending on company size and its intern programs — that’s a lot of people already.
Working at a startup: You’re in luck. There are probably just 10 or fewer interns in the entire startup, and you likely will feel more like a full time employee. There probably aren't many intern specific events at work, so if you don't know anyone in the Bay Area prior to this internship, “housing” & “events” can make your social life easier. If you have friends from your university interning in the Bay as well: tag along their intern activities 🤯, then it’s not that hard to make friends.
Summer internships: you’re in the Bay Area where thousands and thousands of other interns are also there! interncommunity.com is a great organized platform that benefited me a lot and helped me navigate the Bay Area while I was there. You will see fun tech events hosted by big companies literally every day, sometimes even 3+ events crash on the same date (I recall one night Portfolia had an “Investing in FemTech” event in Palo Alto, Uber had an open house, and there was another event in SF “@20 — What I Wish I Knew @20 Intern Event”). There will be fun summer parties, major ones are probably: Startup Grind Summer Party (Free), TechCrunch Summer Party (Paid, but you could volunteer) and endless other intern parties (from interncommunity.com or just interns hosting their own parties).
Off-cycle internships: you don’t get the crazy thousands of interns running around the Bay Area with you. There are other interns, of course, but many might 1) have enough friends to begin with 2) don’t really mind not socializing. In my opinion, this is a great opportunity to meet people who are living in SF/ Bay Area long term, and to join more professional events (not intern-specific). My tip is: if you can’t find a community, create your own (and leverage existing platforms like interncommunity.com and other Facebook groups: LSH, The Violet Society, Female Founders Community, Bay Area Interns…etc).
Perks and benefits of your respective company: does your student insurance still apply during your internship? Does your company provide health insurance? Do you have housing/ transportation reimbursements? How would your budgeting be like over your internship period? Are you trying to save up while on your internship?

Let’s move on to “Housing”.
Location is really key. Everything is so spread out in South Bay, so if you don’t have a car, and don’t want to spend hella on Uber/Lyft rides (if your company reimburses you then you’re lucky) then you better choose a place with good access to supermarkets, restaurants and ideally the Caltrain station (especially if you’d like to go to SF often). Close to an In-n-Out or Five Guys is always a plus (normal South Bay restaurants, excluding Palo Alto & San Jose, don’t go past 9pm). Palo Alto seems to be the most poppin’ when it comes to nightlife, and there’s San Jose and Mountain View. If you’re living south of Mountain View, I doubt you’d want to go to San Francisco much. In my experience, Sunnyvale & Santa Clara are really quiet. Cupertino is too but it has a few good boba places & really good Asian food. Places like FB housing groups, PadPiper, and CraigsList will be your best friend 🙌🏼. Personally I found housing via CraigsList! A lot of people are looking for roommates during internship periods too :) you are not alone in the housing search.
Tips: Find or create a community house and live with cool people OR live with friends you know already and enjoy spending time together OR find a convenient location and socialise crazy outside of work/ home — this is what I did!
Transportation
A lot of companies have TicketsAtWork perks and you can get discounts for car rentals as well (know your perks)! However if you are under 25 years old, might need to pay more insurance for underage fees. Personally, most of my weekends are spent in SF and I had Uber-reimbursement for getting to work so a car rental didn’t make too much sense.
Other options:

Caltrain: this is the cheapest to get around cities in South Bay or to SF. During commute hours it comes every 15–30 minutes, during off hours it comes every hour or so. I come from Hong Kong so this is really inconvenient imho.
Uber/Lyft: good for short distance, or you’re just loaded and can pay SF <> South Bay trips regularly (using a lot of SF <> South Bay references because I like the social scene in SF too much). You can also get 2 dollars back per ride by linking your Uber account to ShopYourWay (I’ve used my cashback money to buy all kinds of household stuff like slow cookers and bedsheets all for freeeeeeeeee) or other apps.
Bike! Makes getting around less painful!
Get a car… I have friends who drove all the way from Michigan/ Minnesota to the Bay with their cars. Mobility is really nice in South Bay, your food-cost-life balance will be better if you own a car. Note: If you want to drive to SF from South Bay, SF parking is horrid — beware.
Scoop/ Waze Carpool are so amazing for commuting SF <> South Bay Monday to Friday during typical commute hours. I like to come back to South Bay Monday morning to go to work, so $10 for SF to Mountain View door-to-door was amazing. Trust.
Walk: I lived close enough, within 20 minutes walking, to many things other than my work — so from grocery shopping to hanging out in Mountain View, getting to and from Caltrain station, I mostly walked.

Fun Stuff! What are fun stuff to do in the Bay?

Weekend Roadtrips 🚙: Ocean Beach, Lands End (these 2 parking might be tough because they are in SF), Half Moon Bay, Big Sur, Carmel (my fav), Santa Cruz, LA (really pushing it for a road trip — recommend flying or bus-ing, seriously), Yosemite, Lake Tahoe, Napa
Parties: Honestly if you can't find one, host one (I hosted my own Bachata party!)✌🏼; As mentioned early: interncommunity.com is a great channel to find new friends and find parties to go to. Last year on the 4th of July I went to 3 parties through interncommunity.com… 😳 If you are friends with people who are living in dope community houses, everyone likes throwing parties in the summer. Most big company interns like to host parties too — maybe at their dope company housing 😉. Other events to look out for: TechCrunch Summer Party (free if you volunteer); Startup Grind Summer Party (free!); Google Cloud Next Conference (tickets usually come w a free concert — last year I saw The Chainsmokers Live 🥰)
Mountain View specific (cuz I lived there): Monday nights 7pm — Red Rock Coffee Open Mic; Wednesday/Friday nights — Bachata/Salsa @ Alberto’s Night Club; Drinks at Mervyn’s every night; Grabbing free food at Google (your friend who works there is your homie 🤫); Join a gym…. I joined SMASH GYMS for their kickboxing; Eating on Castro Street (the one and only street of downtown 😬) — CrepeVine, Ramen Izakaya Yu-Gen, Pho To Chau & Oren’s Hummus are all pretty great 👅
Events: If you love events & networking like me… LunchClub.ai, Eventbrite, Meetup.com, interncommunity.com, Facebook events, Facebook groups (Ladies Storm Hackathons, LSH BAE, The Violet Society, Female Founders Community) are your best friends. Note: in the summer most tech companies have recruitment events (or “tech talks”). Also, feel free to reach out to different interns in different companies for company tours (yet again, interncommunity.com and other Facebook groups are great sources)! I visited Google, Facebook, 23AndMe, Quora, GRAIL (South Bay companies), Pinterest, Segment, Twitter, Rainforest QA, Scale.AI (SF companies),… via different events/ office tours!

So last topic: How did I get the most out of my 6 months?
During the summer — on weekdays — I spent 8 hours of my day at work, and lined up every evening with events (easier if they are in Palo Alto/ Mountain View/ Sunnyvale) and dinners with new friends. When summer was coming to an end, I discovered Open Mic @ Red Rock Coffee and went there religiously almost every Monday afterwards (even tried standup comedy at open mic once 😝). Soon after I started discovering communities like Mission Control (not the play party place in Oakland), Castro Crib, Fell House, Minerva students… etc (they're all in SF). It’s just much easier to make friends in SF if you are in the Bay not during the summer (less interns for off-cycle internships!). I spent every weekend throughout my stay in the Bay in SF (got lucky and always had a place to crash) hanging out at Dolores Park, going to Female Founder Happy Hours and other events. I went to several DJ shows and a music festival. After summer ended, I didn’t do too much crazy networking, event hunting or traveling, but just focused on living in the city (and Mountain View, barely). 🏔
I became so much closer with a school friend who lived in SF during the summer because I crashed at her place every weekend and we went to events together. I even met my boyfriend through going to startup-related events in SF. From not knowing anyone in the Bay prior this internship to now in the process of starting a femtech company with Entrepreneur First in Hong Kong, the network I have built over time in Femtech, female founders communities, VCs, and startups in general has been really helpful! Thank you SF/Bay Area!
I hope the examples in this article will be useful for your upcoming internship in the Bay Area. I really liked both SF and Mountain View a lot in different ways, hope you do too!
Ta-da! There’s your ultimate South Bay guide as an intern. All in all, there’s a lot to do in the summer (especially if you work in a big company with big intern programs); if you’re working hard for a return offer — don’t forget to relax a little, make a few new friends and enjoy the city (SF)! For meeting people: other than going to events, grabbing coffee ☕️ is always great. Bay Area people generally are quite down to meet.
Side note: for fellow ladies out there — I’ll write a separate guide on how not to accidentally be misleading (dating wise); from experience: anything happening after sundown/ over the weekends & alone can be easily considered as a date/ flirting. Otherwise, grabbing coffee is great. ✌🏼
Have fun in the tech capital of the world 🌎, make the most use of your time⌚️, and all the best 💯🎉!
Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn — I’d love to share more about Entrepreneur First (they have global locations!), chat about femtech, or if you just want to say hi 👋🏼

Ultimate South Bay Guide For Interns

To describe 2018 with a few words, it would be: femtech, insatiable, balanced, love, and growth.I spent half of my 2018 in Hong Kong, and the other half in Bay Area. For the first half I was struggling with hormonal imbalance, and the second half I was pondering upon an idea of starting a company in hormonal research (hint: #femtech | <a href="http://myhermones.com">myhermones.com</a>).For half I was a student, and for more than half I was a working professional doing events &amp; talent sourcing at <a href="https://medium.com/u/7ce41be5acf1">Entrepreneur First</a> HK as well as writing code at Zingbox.<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*ExF2IN9ep4wVjvrGwsf-Fw.jpeg" /><figcaption>team at entrepreneur first 🖤</figcaption></figure>I built <a href="http://hkusttech.github.io">HKUST Tech Club</a> with my best friend Jin Young Park and created an offline &amp; online community of 400 strong members via regular weekly student-led workshops and/ or dinners with the help of <a href="https://medium.com/u/f939717fd7fb">李婷婷 Lee Ting Ting</a>, <a href="https://medium.com/u/6165215ae85f">Jeff Hu</a>, Christine Lee and many more talented individuals of HKUST.<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*oDKNnPUh8nIRwHYPbGzqgQ.jpeg" /></figure>I spent many hours with Global Shapers Hong Kong, and started an art &amp; sustainability initiative with <a href="https://medium.com/u/67faf54dcdd5">May Yeung</a> and John Mak — together we led more than 30 underprivileged students to make tie-dye shirts using used coffee beans &amp; tea leaves as dye! Together we learned that art is not just fun but also accessible and sustainable.<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*TplcndCUGu5YlQH-AvzpxQ.jpeg" /></figure>Also I turned 22! I officially announce that from now on birthdays are overrated!I’ve been described as “feisty”, “beating Kevin Bacon easily by 6 degrees”, and “I thought you had to be at least 15 to work in the US”.I’ve attended countless SF parties (ZANEAPALOOZA!), went to a lot of free concerts (The Chainsmokers, courtesy of Google Now Conference; Grammatik &amp; Tycho, courtesy of MixMob…), the best music festival ever: Solaura Fest.<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*azgXJGYeyuriy2ulLHlvSg.jpeg" /><figcaption>solaura ’18 @ mendocino, ca</figcaption></figure>I’ve met &amp; reconnected with crazy smart and inspiring women doing great things: Jenny, <a href="https://medium.com/u/77be8ab2ce28">Shriya</a>, <a href="https://medium.com/u/725340e4fbe3">Gemma</a>, <a href="https://medium.com/u/30fab99d2b20">Charlene</a>, <a href="https://medium.com/u/d6cbf87c5c5e">Hayley</a>, Bianca, <a href="https://medium.com/u/a40415f3617c">Estela</a>, <a href="https://medium.com/u/6e19630a85d0">Lavanya</a> and many many more… :)<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*SCW_b_WQgEN8bkvKoILiBA.jpeg" /><figcaption>female founders happy hour @ product hunt / angellist</figcaption></figure>I’ve also encountered ridiculously inappropriate people (for friendos who know — that certain 4x HealthTech founder) who felt entitled to ask me for outrageous demands… which I can leave this to another medium post ;) &lt;not inserting pic for this :) &gt;I’ve “expanded my horizons” from one side of the Pacific to another, I’ve been inspired, I’ve been challenged, I’ve been supported, I’ve rejected &amp; been rejected, I’ve started to buy one way tickets, and most importantly I’ve become financially independent. Oh, and I’ve also tried being a standup comedian ;)2018 in locations: NYC HK, TPE, SF/ Mountain View, SEA, LA/ Venice Beach, DC/ Maryland, and NYC.I started off 2018 in New York City, and again ended it in New York City. 2017 ended on a high note, and 2018 ended with the greatest happiness and feeling of satisfactory and content. I couldn’t have asked for better humans in my life to share my experiences, to discuss on random topics and to challenge each other to grow day in and day out.I have nothing planned for 2019, but to spend more time on building communities, researching on female hormones, creating impact and living the life I deserve. I don’t know where I’d be at the end of 2019, but oh isn’t that the joy!Hugest thanks to my family for being the most supportive, my friends for being my friends, and my boo for being my boo.Bring it on 2019. I am ready for ya.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=502c613089b2" width="1" height="1" alt="">

To describe 2018 with a few words, it would be: femtech, insatiable, balanced, love, and growth.
I spent half of my 2018 in Hong Kong, and the other half in Bay Area. For the first half I was struggling with hormonal imbalance, and the second half I was pondering upon an idea of starting a company in hormonal research (hint: #femtech | myhermones.com).
For half I was a student, and for more than half I was a working professional doing events & talent sourcing at Entrepreneur First HK as well as writing code at Zingbox.
team at entrepreneur first 🖤
I built HKUST Tech Club with my best friend Jin Young Park and created an offline & online community of 400 strong members via regular weekly student-led workshops and/ or dinners with the help of 李婷婷 Lee Ting Ting, Jeff Hu, Christine Lee and many more talented individuals of HKUST.

I spent many hours with Global Shapers Hong Kong, and started an art & sustainability initiative with May Yeung and John Mak — together we led more than 30 underprivileged students to make tie-dye shirts using used coffee beans & tea leaves as dye! Together we learned that art is not just fun but also accessible and sustainable.

Also I turned 22! I officially announce that from now on birthdays are overrated!
I’ve been described as “feisty”, “beating Kevin Bacon easily by 6 degrees”, and “I thought you had to be at least 15 to work in the US”.
I’ve attended countless SF parties (ZANEAPALOOZA!), went to a lot of free concerts (The Chainsmokers, courtesy of Google Now Conference; Grammatik & Tycho, courtesy of MixMob…), the best music festival ever: Solaura Fest.
solaura ’18 @ mendocino, ca
I’ve met & reconnected with crazy smart and inspiring women doing great things: Jenny, Shriya, Gemma, Charlene, Hayley, Bianca, Estela, Lavanya and many many more… :)
female founders happy hour @ product hunt / angellist
I’ve also encountered ridiculously inappropriate people (for friendos who know — that certain 4x HealthTech founder) who felt entitled to ask me for outrageous demands… which I can leave this to another medium post ;) <not inserting pic for this :) >
I’ve “expanded my horizons” from one side of the Pacific to another, I’ve been inspired, I’ve been challenged, I’ve been supported, I’ve rejected & been rejected, I’ve started to buy one way tickets, and most importantly I’ve become financially independent. Oh, and I’ve also tried being a standup comedian ;)
2018 in locations: NYC HK, TPE, SF/ Mountain View, SEA, LA/ Venice Beach, DC/ Maryland, and NYC.
I started off 2018 in New York City, and again ended it in New York City. 2017 ended on a high note, and 2018 ended with the greatest happiness and feeling of satisfactory and content. I couldn’t have asked for better humans in my life to share my experiences, to discuss on random topics and to challenge each other to grow day in and day out.
I have nothing planned for 2019, but to spend more time on building communities, researching on female hormones, creating impact and living the life I deserve. I don’t know where I’d be at the end of 2019, but oh isn’t that the joy!
Hugest thanks to my family for being the most supportive, my friends for being my friends, and my boo for being my boo.
Bring it on 2019. I am ready for ya.

2018 in a nutshell

I came here without expectations, but every day has been exceeding expectations…<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*G58wKeZCO1HfVfW8GJA9nw.jpeg" /><figcaption>Visiting Big Sur &amp; Carmel Beach with new friends and old friends</figcaption></figure><h3>Checklist of things done.</h3><ul><li>Met a new friend at the Caltrain Station, and was invited to his friend’s pregame party before celebrating pride at Dolores Park.</li></ul><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*cGlxPbiUR2-51Ja0IzqBlQ.jpeg" /><figcaption>Pride Weekend Celebrations!</figcaption></figure><ul><li>Couchsurfed at <a href="http://summerplaybook.com">Summer Playbook</a>’s HQ for five nights, and befriended the coolest Harvard boys of all time ;)</li><li>Found a permanent housing through Craigslist upon the 3rd day of arrival with 2 amazing flatmates and 2 cute flat-cats.</li><li>Couchsurfed at my own apartment for a week before officially moving in last Thursday (yay)</li><li>Visited Ocean Beach x2 and saw amazing sunsets, x2</li><li>Visited San Francisco x3, and the last time was just to have lunch…</li><li>Couchsurfed at a friend’s place in SF</li><li>Met up with old friends — Charlene, Zac, Shahd, Addie</li></ul><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*gcz1zktUtVAzrQOQqCNptA.jpeg" /><figcaption>❤</figcaption></figure><ul><li>Learned that if you say ‘San Fran’, you’re not from ‘San Francisco’, must say ‘SF’ or ‘the city’</li><li>Visited Google (thanks to Bianca!), Facebook (thanks to Alejandro!), 23AndMe (thanks to Suraj!), Docker</li></ul><figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*8KEw1PNAl6o9xik874cS2w.jpeg" /><figcaption>Google HQ Tour</figcaption></figure><ul><li>Learned some Angular JS</li><li>Went to 3 amazing parties on the 4th of July</li><li>Tried a keg stand, twice — at the old Facebook House where Zuck started Facebook — which was where <a href="http://intern.community">intern.community</a> hosted their 4th of July Pool &amp; Grill Party (with more than 600 people attending!! 🎉🎊)</li><li>Went to Big Sur — ended up liking Carmel Beach much better — and spent time with a great group of people</li><li>Went to Pescadero — attempted to watch the sunset but it was too cloudy that night</li><li>Cooked a lot of Taiwanese noodles, dumplings and scrambled eggs</li><li>Got connected to NavTalent</li><li>South Bay is way quieter than SF but living near downtown Mountain View is not too bad :)</li></ul>What is Summer Playbook? Summer Playbook is a startup that allows you to find other college students around the globe location based. It connects students from 373 universities around the world, and creates a community where you can meet other college students around, and have an amazing summer. It was founded by Luke, Raph and Sean, and they went through YC’18’s batch in January. Probably the kindest and most genuine people I’ve met in Bay Area. Every university student should try out Summer Playbook at <a href="http://summerplaybook.com">summerplaybook.com</a>.<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*U51pElaKxzPnkhuJmlvJvQ.jpeg" /><figcaption>Dinner Party at <a href="https://medium.com/u/ec90e1bb305d">summerplaybook</a></figcaption></figure>What is Caltrain? Caltrain is the main transportation method that brings you from San Francisco to San Jose (which combined together is called Silicon Valley, SF Bay Area) It takes around 1 hr and 45 mins to get from SF to SJ via Caltrain. Mountain View is between those two stations and much closers to SJ than SF. It’s kind of ridiculous how there is only 1 train per hour, coming from Hong Kong/ Taiwan, where trains come pretty much at most every 10 minutes.What is <a href="http://intern.community">intern.community</a>? It’s a Slack Channel exclusively for summer interns in the Bay Area, Seattle and New York. Just in the Bay Area channel there are 2500 + interns! Can you believe it! Shout out to Anant who made this happen! There are more than 30 channels, there are always events, office-tours, and my first bonfire was with them, as well as my 4th of July celebrations!<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/750/1*9pnYQT_w7JMwQMrPB7XWww.jpeg" /><figcaption>intern.community’s bonfire @ Ocean Beach</figcaption></figure>A little more background on how and why I am in the Bay Area — I joined Zingbox as an UI Engineer to work on the front-end of an IoT security platform for hospitals. I have been in the Bay Area since 6/21 and will be here for several more months. I applied to this position through a special program called <a href="https://www.cuspei.com/">CUSPEI</a>, which links Chinese universities with startups in Silicon Valley — and I was lucky enough to be chosen to participate. Coming to Silicon Valley was a tough journey. When I was studying abroad at University of Washington, I applied to 20+ software engineering positions and only heard back from 2: Twitter and Airbnb. Even with an internal referral at Amazon, I still didn’t make the cut. After applying for the CUSPEI program, I waited 1.5 months until hearing back from them, and was scheduled an interview for ~ 2 hours. Soon enough I was given the role as a UI engineer, and I have been waiting for the moment to be in Silicon Valley every since.But first impressions of Silicon Valley? Why is it so spread out? The lack of accessible public transportations like many other places in the USA makes going from places to places expensive (Uber) or almost impossible (1.5 hr + via buses/ trains). If you live in the South Bay (Palo Alto/ Mountain View) and you would like to go for an event happening in downtown San Francisco, it’s actually 3+ cities away in real life and that it is either time-consuming or costly to go just for an evening. I even joked with my friend yesterday, Bay Area should be called Big Area instead…Is everyone talking about starting a company? Definitely not everyone — but there is a good amount. Many people I’ve met has had a startup before or is working on something right now. Some dropped out to work on their own startup. Some do enjoy working in big companies because of its perks, comparably risk-free life and high concentration of smart people.What do I do at work? I work on front-end! Basically anything you can see on a software application. I also watch World Cup with colleagues, go out for meals, have snacks, chat about life.What are my hacks of the Bay Area up till now?<ul><li><a href="http://craigslist.com">Craigslist</a> is useful — I found my housing up here! It may be frustrating at times given it’s not the best UI… also it takes forever for people to respond, and usually for housing posts, they would require immediate move in.</li><li>Join as many groups/ communities as you can, eg. <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/396688090748522/">2018 Bay Area Summer Interns</a>, <a href="http://intern.community">intern.community slack channel</a>, <a href="http://summerplaybook.com">Summer Playbook</a>…</li><li>Use <a href="http://eventbrite.com">Eventbrite</a>! There are so many free events where you get to hear first hand experiences and have some free pizza &amp; beers.</li><li>Don’t say no too often — opportunities usually don’t knock on a closed door.</li><li>Reach out to friends in the area! Reach out to strangers!</li></ul>And, that’s a wrap for now! More articles to come…Adios, Tania<figure><img alt="" src="https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/1024/1*TqIRS1q6FdePsajColjxLQ.jpeg" /><figcaption>Facbook HQ Tour</figcaption></figure><h4>More where this came from</h4>This story is published in <a href="http://blog.usejournal.com">Noteworthy</a>, where thousands come every day to learn about the people &amp; ideas shaping the products we love.Follow our publication to see more product &amp; design stories featured by the <a href="https://usejournal.com/?utm_source=usejournal.com&amp;utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_campaign=guest_post">Journal</a> team.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=cc882cf4c754" width="1" height="1" alt="">

I came here without expectations, but every day has been exceeding expectations…
Visiting Big Sur & Carmel Beach with new friends and old friends
Checklist of things done.

Met a new friend at the Caltrain Station, and was invited to his friend’s pregame party before celebrating pride at Dolores Park.
Pride Weekend Celebrations!
Couchsurfed at Summer Playbook’s HQ for five nights, and befriended the coolest Harvard boys of all time ;)
Found a permanent housing through Craigslist upon the 3rd day of arrival with 2 amazing flatmates and 2 cute flat-cats.
Couchsurfed at my own apartment for a week before officially moving in last Thursday (yay)
Visited Ocean Beach x2 and saw amazing sunsets, x2
Visited San Francisco x3, and the last time was just to have lunch…
Couchsurfed at a friend’s place in SF
Met up with old friends — Charlene, Zac, Shahd, Addie
❤
Learned that if you say ‘San Fran’, you’re not from ‘San Francisco’, must say ‘SF’ or ‘the city’
Visited Google (thanks to Bianca!), Facebook (thanks to Alejandro!), 23AndMe (thanks to Suraj!), Docker
Google HQ Tour
Learned some Angular JS
Went to 3 amazing parties on the 4th of July
Tried a keg stand, twice — at the old Facebook House where Zuck started Facebook — which was where intern.community hosted their 4th of July Pool & Grill Party (with more than 600 people attending!! 🎉🎊)
Went to Big Sur — ended up liking Carmel Beach much better — and spent time with a great group of people
Went to Pescadero — attempted to watch the sunset but it was too cloudy that night
Cooked a lot of Taiwanese noodles, dumplings and scrambled eggs
Got connected to NavTalent
South Bay is way quieter than SF but living near downtown Mountain View is not too bad :)

What is Summer Playbook?
Summer Playbook is a startup that allows you to find other college students around the globe location based. It connects students from 373 universities around the world, and creates a community where you can meet other college students around, and have an amazing summer. It was founded by Luke, Raph and Sean, and they went through YC’18’s batch in January. Probably the kindest and most genuine people I’ve met in Bay Area. Every university student should try out Summer Playbook at summerplaybook.com.
Dinner Party at summerplaybook
What is Caltrain?
Caltrain is the main transportation method that brings you from San Francisco to San Jose (which combined together is called Silicon Valley, SF Bay Area) It takes around 1 hr and 45 mins to get from SF to SJ via Caltrain. Mountain View is between those two stations and much closers to SJ than SF. It’s kind of ridiculous how there is only 1 train per hour, coming from Hong Kong/ Taiwan, where trains come pretty much at most every 10 minutes.
What is intern.community?
It’s a Slack Channel exclusively for summer interns in the Bay Area, Seattle and New York. Just in the Bay Area channel there are 2500 + interns! Can you believe it! Shout out to Anant who made this happen! There are more than 30 channels, there are always events, office-tours, and my first bonfire was with them, as well as my 4th of July celebrations!
intern.community’s bonfire @ Ocean Beach
A little more background on how and why I am in the Bay Area — I joined Zingbox as an UI Engineer to work on the front-end of an IoT security platform for hospitals. I have been in the Bay Area since 6/21 and will be here for several more months. I applied to this position through a special program called CUSPEI, which links Chinese universities with startups in Silicon Valley — and I was lucky enough to be chosen to participate. Coming to Silicon Valley was a tough journey. When I was studying abroad at University of Washington, I applied to 20+ software engineering positions and only heard back from 2: Twitter and Airbnb. Even with an internal referral at Amazon, I still didn’t make the cut. After applying for the CUSPEI program, I waited 1.5 months until hearing back from them, and was scheduled an interview for ~ 2 hours. Soon enough I was given the role as a UI engineer, and I have been waiting for the moment to be in Silicon Valley every since.
But first impressions of Silicon Valley? 
Why is it so spread out? The lack of accessible public transportations like many other places in the USA makes going from places to places expensive (Uber) or almost impossible (1.5 hr + via buses/ trains). If you live in the South Bay (Palo Alto/ Mountain View) and you would like to go for an event happening in downtown San Francisco, it’s actually 3+ cities away in real life and that it is either time-consuming or costly to go just for an evening. I even joked with my friend yesterday, Bay Area should be called Big Area instead…
Is everyone talking about starting a company? 
Definitely not everyone — but there is a good amount. Many people I’ve met has had a startup before or is working on something right now. Some dropped out to work on their own startup. Some do enjoy working in big companies because of its perks, comparably risk-free life and high concentration of smart people.
What do I do at work?
I work on front-end! Basically anything you can see on a software application. I also watch World Cup with colleagues, go out for meals, have snacks, chat about life.
What are my hacks of the Bay Area up till now?

Craigslist is useful — I found my housing up here! It may be frustrating at times given it’s not the best UI… also it takes forever for people to respond, and usually for housing posts, they would require immediate move in.
Join as many groups/ communities as you can, eg. 2018 Bay Area Summer Interns, intern.community slack channel, Summer Playbook…
Use Eventbrite! There are so many free events where you get to hear first hand experiences and have some free pizza & beers.
Don’t say no too often — opportunities usually don’t knock on a closed door.
Reach out to friends in the area! Reach out to strangers!

And, that’s a wrap for now! More articles to come…
Adios,
Tania
Facbook HQ Tour
More where this came from
This story is published in Noteworthy, where thousands come every day to learn about the people & ideas shaping the products we love.
Follow our publication to see more product & design stories featured by the Journal team.

My First 2.5 Weeks of Silicon Valley

Over 7 years and across the globe, EF has successfully identified 700+ talented and ambitious individuals, helped built 100+ deep tech companies and have an overall valuation of 1 billion USD.This year, they chose Hong Kong to be their 4th location after London, Singapore and Berlin. At the end of July, 50 talented individuals from the region, each having a unique edge in either technical skills, domain knowledge or product, will come together, pair up, become co-founders, and each build a million/billion dollar deep tech company.2 months ago I was lucky enough to be introduced to EF by two friends, Kirill from Talis Capital in London and Eric from Startup Weekend in Hong Kong — and was soon on-boarded to take part of the Hong Kong journey.Over the past 2 months, I was able to work closely with extremely driven people with a tremendous growth mindset — Freddie, AnneMarie, Lavina, Roy, Jessica, Udbhav, Gordon and Larry — and understand how Entrepreneur First’s unique model is able to not only scale globally, but really help entrepreneurs locally.<blockquote>Team.</blockquote>Having a smart and driven team, gave me insights on different industries and huge learnings about ambition and scale at all times. I am appreciative of the coaching I received from Lavina, who at her time at Google, was working under Kim Scott, who was working under Sheryl Sandberg. To work under a good boss grows you not just professionally and personally, as you are able to see how she mentors and coaches young people working under her. I was given complete ownership to all events hosted by EF in Hong Kong, and what’s more, she completely trusts me. I hosted 4 events in the meanwhile — a fireside chat with Teck Moh Phey, an Open House event, a joint event with HKU iDendron, and a EFHK’s Female Founder Breakfast. I really appreciate how she manages as a boss, as you wouldn&#39;t feel the stress and pressure from her, and you’re able to take initiatives and raise your voice. Another observation I made was how organized she is, following up on the right tasks over the right period of time, and having multiple excel sheets ready to keep track.<blockquote>“What? You’re looking for tech talent in Hong Kong?”</blockquote>Every person I talked to was more surprised than another, in fact, HK — where many people believe is a technical talent drought — has more technical talent than you can imagine. We&#39;ve talked to local university professors, PhDs, researchers, software engineers and tech leads working in various startups and institutes: those talents are not just passionate about their research, many of them are even eager to transfer their skills and knowledge to a cutting-edge company.Over the past two months, we have talked to 2000+individuals and almost filled up our inaugural cohort of 50 talented and ambitious individuals. The tremendous growth of our team, starting off by having limited connections and resources in HK and re-announcing our UK brand to a brand new location — to now in contact with local institutions and entrepreneurial spaces all across Hong Kong.* Personally I met over dozens of PhD holders and the rise of interest to make their research more useful is astonishing, and exciting.The two months at Entrepreneur First was short, but I learned more than I would have anywhere else. Utterly grateful to be part of the vibrant team, and I shall bring the spirit with me wherever my next steps take me.<ul><li>please contact roy@joinef.com if you’d like to know more about our Hong Kong program.</li><li>also apply now <a href="http://joinef.com/apply-now">here</a></li></ul><img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=5a2f177af913" width="1" height="1" alt="">

Over 7 years and across the globe, EF has successfully identified 700+ talented and ambitious individuals, helped built 100+ deep tech companies and have an overall valuation of 1 billion USD.
This year, they chose Hong Kong to be their 4th location after London, Singapore and Berlin. At the end of July, 50 talented individuals from the region, each having a unique edge in either technical skills, domain knowledge or product, will come together, pair up, become co-founders, and each build a million/billion dollar deep tech company.
2 months ago I was lucky enough to be introduced to EF by two friends, Kirill from Talis Capital in London and Eric from Startup Weekend in Hong Kong — and was soon on-boarded to take part of the Hong Kong journey.
Over the past 2 months, I was able to work closely with extremely driven people with a tremendous growth mindset — Freddie, AnneMarie, Lavina, Roy, Jessica, Udbhav, Gordon and Larry — and understand how Entrepreneur First’s unique model is able to not only scale globally, but really help entrepreneurs locally.
Team.
Having a smart and driven team, gave me insights on different industries and huge learnings about ambition and scale at all times. I am appreciative of the coaching I received from Lavina, who at her time at Google, was working under Kim Scott, who was working under Sheryl Sandberg. To work under a good boss grows you not just professionally and personally, as you are able to see how she mentors and coaches young people working under her. I was given complete ownership to all events hosted by EF in Hong Kong, and what’s more, she completely trusts me. I hosted 4 events in the meanwhile — a fireside chat with Teck Moh Phey, an Open House event, a joint event with HKU iDendron, and a EFHK’s Female Founder Breakfast. I really appreciate how she manages as a boss, as you wouldn't feel the stress and pressure from her, and you’re able to take initiatives and raise your voice. Another observation I made was how organized she is, following up on the right tasks over the right period of time, and having multiple excel sheets ready to keep track.
“What? You’re looking for tech talent in Hong Kong?”
Every person I talked to was more surprised than another, in fact, HK — where many people believe is a technical talent drought — has more technical talent than you can imagine. We've talked to local university professors, PhDs, researchers, software engineers and tech leads working in various startups and institutes: those talents are not just passionate about their research, many of them are even eager to transfer their skills and knowledge to a cutting-edge company.
Over the past two months, we have talked to 2000+individuals and almost filled up our inaugural cohort of 50 talented and ambitious individuals. The tremendous growth of our team, starting off by having limited connections and resources in HK and re-announcing our UK brand to a brand new location — to now in contact with local institutions and entrepreneurial spaces all across Hong Kong.* Personally I met over dozens of PhD holders and the rise of interest to make their research more useful is astonishing, and exciting.
The two months at Entrepreneur First was short, but I learned more than I would have anywhere else. Utterly grateful to be part of the vibrant team, and I shall bring the spirit with me wherever my next steps take me.

please contact roy@joinef.com if you’d like to know more about our Hong Kong program.
also apply now here

Learnings at Entrepreneur First.. in Hong Kong

It’s my 15th day in Seattle, and my 1st official day in the University of Washington. For those who come from Hong Kong/ Taiwan — here is my view of the differences (or just fun facts)I’ve seen since I’ve landed in Seattle-Tacoma Airport.Fun Fact #1: Mandarin is everywhere in the airport!From when I landed to lining up in the customs, the only English words I heard were from the officers at the customs. All announcements, help prior to the customs officers were in Mandarin Chinese! This is probably because I flew in on a HKG — PKG — SEA flight…but still, cool stuff!#2: Introduce yourself with ‘pronouns’…Seattle is a super liberal city, and so is UW. Today, in my first Gender, Women and Sexuality Class, all of my classmates introduced themselves not only by there name, year of study, major but also which pronouns they preferred to be called by [‘he/him’ / ‘she/her’ / ‘ze/they’] — while I was the second one in turn to self introduce, I did not know that that was a suggested way of introducing myself…until the whole class after me specified. It is interesting because in Hong Kong and Taiwan, there hasn’t been enough highlight on these issues and I never thought of mentioning it.#3: Free stuff everywhere!UW has a lot of free events for incoming freshmen (including: transfer students, exchange students) and many come with free schwaggg. Companies, departments of schools, and different societies attract you with free water bottles, pins, frisbees, pens, food… week 1 is full of free things, and make you feel like you’re making your money’s worth. I should start counting how many new things that have become my possessions…#4: Weed.It’s legal y’all in the state of Washington. You can occasionally smell weed on the streets and today I smelled it on the Link [like metro] — someone near me was immersed in the smell. If you’re here on student visa, you’re governed under federal law, so it conflicts with the state law… so technically you can’t have weed. Technically. ;)#5: Bubble teas are easily accessible.I just had my 2nd cup of bubble tea so far… ShareTea is located just a 10 minute walk from West campus (where most dormitories are). But it’s hella expensive. But it’s delicious and homey and very Asian.#6: Try Lyft, it’s cool.I just tried Lyft today because I missed my bus to go back to campus by 30 seconds when I’m at downtown. The next bus comes in 15 minutes however I don’t feel that safe alone in the city (I was being too paranoid… but do be careful when you’re alone on the streets). And I tried <a href="http://lyft.com">Lyft</a> and it’s fast, and the Lyft Line feature is very convenient — it’s simply carpooling like UberPool, just cheaper. Anyone interested do check out my Lyft Promocode: TANIA25315 — it should give you some free rides!#7: Or you’ll need a good friend who owns a car :PMany places are quite far away… not as nearby as things in Taipei / Hong Kong are. Public transport might work, but it’s tedious. So you might want a good friend who owns a car :POk that’s it for today!Follow for more stories of little Taiwanese girl / HongKonger in Seattle.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=185ad9ffeb94" width="1" height="1" alt="">

It’s my 15th day in Seattle, and my 1st official day in the University of Washington. For those who come from Hong Kong/ Taiwan — here is my view of the differences (or just fun facts)I’ve seen since I’ve landed in Seattle-Tacoma Airport.
Fun Fact #1: Mandarin is everywhere in the airport!
From when I landed to lining up in the customs, the only English words I heard were from the officers at the customs. All announcements, help prior to the customs officers were in Mandarin Chinese! This is probably because I flew in on a HKG — PKG — SEA flight…but still, cool stuff!
#2: Introduce yourself with ‘pronouns’…
Seattle is a super liberal city, and so is UW. Today, in my first Gender, Women and Sexuality Class, all of my classmates introduced themselves not only by there name, year of study, major but also which pronouns they preferred to be called by [‘he/him’ / ‘she/her’ / ‘ze/they’] — while I was the second one in turn to self introduce, I did not know that that was a suggested way of introducing myself…until the whole class after me specified. It is interesting because in Hong Kong and Taiwan, there hasn’t been enough highlight on these issues and I never thought of mentioning it.
#3: Free stuff everywhere!
UW has a lot of free events for incoming freshmen (including: transfer students, exchange students) and many come with free schwaggg. Companies, departments of schools, and different societies attract you with free water bottles, pins, frisbees, pens, food… week 1 is full of free things, and make you feel like you’re making your money’s worth. I should start counting how many new things that have become my possessions…
#4: Weed.
It’s legal y’all in the state of Washington. You can occasionally smell weed on the streets and today I smelled it on the Link [like metro] — someone near me was immersed in the smell. If you’re here on student visa, you’re governed under federal law, so it conflicts with the state law… so technically you can’t have weed. Technically. ;)
#5: Bubble teas are easily accessible.
I just had my 2nd cup of bubble tea so far… ShareTea is located just a 10 minute walk from West campus (where most dormitories are). But it’s hella expensive. But it’s delicious and homey and very Asian.
#6: Try Lyft, it’s cool.
I just tried Lyft today because I missed my bus to go back to campus by 30 seconds when I’m at downtown. The next bus comes in 15 minutes however I don’t feel that safe alone in the city (I was being too paranoid… but do be careful when you’re alone on the streets). And I tried Lyft and it’s fast, and the Lyft Line feature is very convenient — it’s simply carpooling like UberPool, just cheaper. Anyone interested do check out my Lyft Promocode: TANIA25315 — it should give you some free rides!
#7: Or you’ll need a good friend who owns a car :P
Many places are quite far away… not as nearby as things in Taipei / Hong Kong are. Public transport might work, but it’s tedious. So you might want a good friend who owns a car :P
Ok that’s it for today!
Follow for more stories of little Taiwanese girl / HongKonger in Seattle.

New experiences in UW

This week, precisely on 19 Feb, 2017, an astonishing <a href="https://www.susanjfowler.com/blog/2017/2/19/reflecting-on-one-very-strange-year-at-uber">article</a> surfaced the internet. Sexism was brought to life with the very, very strange experience of Susan J. Fowler at Uber.Also being an engineer, there has always been a slight fear that, no matter how hard you try, there will be a glass ceiling forbidding you for achieving in life; there has always been a hope that I will be judged not by my appearance, but my performance. During high school, I had the opportunity to join Sheryl Sandberg’s online conference and was first introduced to her best-selling book Lean In, and since then firmly believe that I wouldn’t be held back by my gender. By being proactive, and trying to “get myself to the table”, opportunities wouldn’t close its doors to me — because new technology companies like Facebook fights for equality. However, after reading Fowler’s article, I am feared once more.After ready Fowler’s article, it is indeed disturbing. Despite the fact that there are always two sides of the story, and the article may be slightly exaggerated and biased, the elements of the story is horrifying. Given the situation based on a girl like Fowler, or any other man, it is horrifying.Think about it — You’ve worked so hard to become an engineer at a world-renowned company. Your expectation of a new company in the ICT is high. Unlike traditional corporates, hierarchy shouldn’t exist, the company structure should be “flat” and you shouldn’t worry about your voice being swallowed by anyone. In fact, your performance scores are manipulated; your sexual harassment scar has been overlooked; you are basically frozen in your position, and your voice can’t be heard. It seems everyone else in the company is more important than yours. Reality just kicks your really hard.We all want to be treated equally, unless you’re in the upper-hand.And this comes down to: “What is equality to you?” Being an equality activist, and I would say I’m even a feminist — I got in an argument with my boyfriend earlier on what exactly is equality, and what exactly am I trying to fight for. This is what I am trying to fight for:Earlier in my childhood, I had a playmate living in the next block of our neighbourhood. I was at his place once, and while playing lego, he came over and put his hand under my shirt to play with my tummy. Not knowing how to react at first, I just laughed it off. However, after a few days, I felt kind of uncomfortable, as the feeling of shock kept arising. I confronted him on the school bus at that time, and he just shamed me and said something like, “Well, you should have said you didn’t like it earlier. It’s been too long already, you can’t do anything about it. Plus, my mom is a lawyer. She said so.” And so young me, fear of not fitting in, fear of telling family, fear of fighting against the so-called “law”, ashamed, I stay silent until a few years later when I finally told my mom.Indeed, the act didn’t cross the line too much, but things like this, you can call it sexual harassment, or I would simply put it as disrespect. Disrespecting others’ bodies seems to ‘allow’ you to touch others; disrespecting others’ feelings seems to ‘allow’ you to call them names.Because of disrespect, you overlook someone’s achievements because you have to protect someone else in a higher position; because of disrespect, you think it’s okay to welcome your new employee by saying you would like to have sex with her; because of disrespect, you hide facts and try to fool the person with complaints; because of disrespect, you overlook others’ issues, and assumed that it’s nothing major.So in my mind, equality is respecting each and every individual, and try to view things without bias. True equality can never be achieved, as George Orwell said in his political novel that someone is always more equal than others, but we can’t stop fighting for it. Day in day out, we keep fighting for equality. And as we can’t reach the perfect state, we can reach a much more stable equilibrium, built upon respect.<img src="https://medium.com/_/stat?event=post.clientViewed&referrerSource=full_rss&postId=72400e890e3c" width="1" height="1" alt="">

This week, precisely on 19 Feb, 2017, an astonishing article surfaced the internet. Sexism was brought to life with the very, very strange experience of Susan J. Fowler at Uber.
Also being an engineer, there has always been a slight fear that, no matter how hard you try, there will be a glass ceiling forbidding you for achieving in life; there has always been a hope that I will be judged not by my appearance, but my performance. During high school, I had the opportunity to join Sheryl Sandberg’s online conference and was first introduced to her best-selling book Lean In, and since then firmly believe that I wouldn’t be held back by my gender. By being proactive, and trying to “get myself to the table”, opportunities wouldn’t close its doors to me — because new technology companies like Facebook fights for equality. However, after reading Fowler’s article, I am feared once more.
After ready Fowler’s article, it is indeed disturbing. Despite the fact that there are always two sides of the story, and the article may be slightly exaggerated and biased, the elements of the story is horrifying. Given the situation based on a girl like Fowler, or any other man, it is horrifying.
Think about it — You’ve worked so hard to become an engineer at a world-renowned company. Your expectation of a new company in the ICT is high. Unlike traditional corporates, hierarchy shouldn’t exist, the company structure should be “flat” and you shouldn’t worry about your voice being swallowed by anyone. In fact, your performance scores are manipulated; your sexual harassment scar has been overlooked; you are basically frozen in your position, and your voice can’t be heard. It seems everyone else in the company is more important than yours. Reality just kicks your really hard.
We all want to be treated equally, unless you’re in the upper-hand.
And this comes down to: “What is equality to you?” Being an equality activist, and I would say I’m even a feminist — I got in an argument with my boyfriend earlier on what exactly is equality, and what exactly am I trying to fight for. This is what I am trying to fight for:
Earlier in my childhood, I had a playmate living in the next block of our neighbourhood. I was at his place once, and while playing lego, he came over and put his hand under my shirt to play with my tummy. Not knowing how to react at first, I just laughed it off. However, after a few days, I felt kind of uncomfortable, as the feeling of shock kept arising. I confronted him on the school bus at that time, and he just shamed me and said something like, “Well, you should have said you didn’t like it earlier. It’s been too long already, you can’t do anything about it. Plus, my mom is a lawyer. She said so.” And so young me, fear of not fitting in, fear of telling family, fear of fighting against the so-called “law”, ashamed, I stay silent until a few years later when I finally told my mom.
Indeed, the act didn’t cross the line too much, but things like this, you can call it sexual harassment, or I would simply put it as disrespect. Disrespecting others’ bodies seems to ‘allow’ you to touch others; disrespecting others’ feelings seems to ‘allow’ you to call them names.
Because of disrespect, you overlook someone’s achievements because you have to protect someone else in a higher position; because of disrespect, you think it’s okay to welcome your new employee by saying you would like to have sex with her; because of disrespect, you hide facts and try to fool the person with complaints; because of disrespect, you overlook others’ issues, and assumed that it’s nothing major.
So in my mind, equality is respecting each and every individual, and try to view things without bias. True equality can never be achieved, as George Orwell said in his political novel that someone is always more equal than others, but we can’t stop fighting for it. Day in day out, we keep fighting for equality. And as we can’t reach the perfect state, we can reach a much more stable equilibrium, built upon respect.

What is equality to you? — Lessons learned from Uber.

寫給城市女孩的慢活筆記 A place to talk about intentional slow living in fast pace cities. Written in English & Chinese primarily for the Chinese/Taiwanese diaspora


City Girl Slow Life 🧿 城市女孩 慢生活

A 10-day meditation course to wrap up February and start off March

This morning I woke up at 6:30 am, did a 45-minute meditation, made myself a cup of tea, did laundry, and headed out for a yoga class by 8:30 am. Since moving back home two months ago I had been struggling with waking up in the morning — if you were here too you’d see me rolling out of bed later than my grandma at 10 am, I hadn’t been meditating at all. Even yoga classes that I enjoy doing frequently get canceled at the last minute due to my lack of energy. But this morning, the lethargy that engulfed me left without a trace. I knew this had to do with the 10-day Vipassana course I completed the day before. Though I didn’t sign up for the course to fix this specifically, I am so glad I took the course.
今天早上我六點半起床、八點半出門去做瑜伽。中間我完成了四十五分鐘的冥想、泡了茶、吃了簡單的早餐、甚至還洗了衣服也曬了衣服。你不知道的是：自從兩個月前我搬回外婆家住，經常我比外婆還晚起床，也根本忘記平常冥想的習慣。連喜歡的瑜伽課也常常因為怕體力透支就臨時取消了。但今天早上那了無生氣的自己消失得無影無蹤，當然這和我剛完成的十天的內觀冥想課程有極大的關係，雖然也不是因早上起不來而報名這課程的，但我好開心我完成了這課程。


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For those who don’t know, Vipassana means “to see things as they really are”. The technique to be learned was the exact technique that Gautama Buddha discovered and reached enlightenment with. During the course, you would learn the meditation technique first and then learn the theories behind it. The technique though originated in India, ended up being preserved in Burma for 2500 years until it was revived again in the 1960s. I didn’t know any of this before going in, so I guess I didn’t do my proper research. I did know that it was an intensive meditation course that is very strict, but people seemed to be getting a lot of benefits from it, and hence why the number of centers to teach the course kept on growing despite the organization being fairly decentralized and not part of any organized religion. And that for 10 days you’re going to live in the center, not talk to anyone, and just meditate (10 hours a day!). I wasn’t scared by that because in my mind there were many experiences that were vaguely parallel to this: the countless hotel & home quarantines I had to do during COVID in Hong Kong and Taipei — the longest I had to quarantine was 21 days in a hotel; my then-boyfriend participated in the same course last year and I was on the receiving end of not being able to talk to the person I love dearly for 10 days; a 2-day insight meditation course I took last year; and practicing yoga regularly over the past year (though at a level much, much, much less comparable in hindsight).
Vipassana 中文的翻譯是內觀，意思是如其本然地觀察事物，課程便是教你當時釋迦摩尼佛研發並從中獲得覺悟的方法以及其背後原理。這個法從印度傳到緬甸後在印度本土失傳多年，但在緬甸二千五百年的代代相傳後在一九六零年代又傳回印度並傳向全世界。我在報名參加前並不知道這些，顯然我並沒有做好功課，但我知道這是一個蠻嚴格的課程，而很多人在完成後都獲益良多，即便這課程不隸屬任何宗教組織，在短時間內為了配合需求在世界各地不斷的增設新的中心授課。課程一次參加便要參加十天，每天必須住在中心，不能和任何人講話，就是一天十小時的專心學習冥想。我並沒有因為這打退堂鼓，也覺得過去不同的經驗跟這十天課程有些相似之處：在新冠疫情中在香港、台北兩地隔離超多次，最長一次是二十一天的酒店隔離，去年時前男友也參加了這個課程而我體會過十天不能和心愛的人講話，而我也在去年參加了一個兩天一夜的內觀冥想課程，以及每週固定練習瑜伽很多天。
I knew it was going to be intense, but I had other demons I was fighting: I was extremely emotional about the ups and downs in life (work, family, relationships, all of it) — so emotional I could feel ecstatic or ball my eyes out within minutes. Now and then I also get very anxious about the impending death, which I know logically everyone dies, but I just erratically feel very, very anxious about it! For the last three years, I set my word of the year each year to be “centered” I want to weather all the ups and downs with more grace. And I want to just be okay with the fact that everything is impermanent, including the life I am living. So, even if the course is intense, and some people might not be able to take it and quit midway — I want to just finish it and see if “seeing everything as it is” can lead to being more “centered”. Even if I spiral in anxiety during the course, the only way out is through!
我知道課程會很辛苦，但我也有其他極煩神的事情：我是個非常情緒化的人，不論是工作、家人、感情生活，個人經常受到很大的內在風波，也甚至可以在短時間內由極度開心到嚎啕大哭都有。而時不時我也會對於死亡有很大的惶恐，即便理性的知道死亡是人生必經的道路，還是很不理智經常感到惶恐。已經連續三年了，每年我的期許就是那年自己可以更堅定，不要有那麼多內在風波，所以既然決定要參加這個課程了，不管辛苦，我也想知道「如其本然地觀察事物」是否能讓自己更加堅定，課程再怎麼難，我就想完成它試試看，即便惶恐症爆發，唯一的出路是去經歷它。
The 10 days passed by quickly, and I am really happy I took the course and completed it. Initially, I was a bit hesitant to share the exact experiences I had because experiences written down and consumed over text seem to become an intellectualization of it and a very particular version: my version. And my experience will differ from yours, the wisdom I gained is specific to myself only. Also, it would be impossible to write down everything that I have experienced, so here are just some excerpts for now:
十天過得很快，我很開心我完成了這個課程，但其實我一開始有點遲疑是否該分享我的經驗，畢竟每個人的經驗是不同的，而用文字寫出的經驗也不能精準表達當下實際經歷到的，只是一個最接近的形容而已，而且實在不可能以一篇文章內寫表述所有的經歷，所以這只是一部分：
Before coming to the course, I was very aware that intellectually I understood concepts like “everything is impermanent” and “suffering is because of unwholesome cravings and aversions” but did I really understand it? No! I remember repeatedly being told that by someone in person and through books… but it’s as if those words carried no weight, it did make sense at the moment but it would also pass straight through my head immediately. Yet through the course, I was able to get actual glimpses of the abstract concepts of impermanence, craving, and aversions. I was able to observe the sensations in my body, really see them arising and passing away (the impermanent nature), and see that I had a clear aversion to pain, and remaining equanimous when feeling pain is very difficult. I could also see that when I disregarded pain as “pain”, and just treated it like any other sensation I would feel in the body, the pain stopped bothering me as much, and eventually I was unbothered — yet this is not an act of suppressing the pain, this is just seeing it as it is, and seeing it pass away. And then I would feel pain again and get bothered, and then be unbothered again. As such is life! It’s not about not feeling pain, but how you respond to it equanimously and let it pass away.
在來參加課程錢，我以文字上已了解「萬物無常」的概念，也知道眾多人生中的「痛苦來自於過度渴望或排斥事物」，雖然我以為很了解了，但事實上並沒有，畢竟除非身體力行，該如何真正了解呢？如果真的了解了，為什麼還是會有那些動盪的情緒以及焦慮呢？很幸運的是，在課程我有辦法去稍微親身體會這些概念，透過仔細地覺察自己的呼吸以及身體上細微的感受，從感覺發起到沒有感覺的那稍縱即逝感，真的是「無常」。而在身體上察覺到疼痛的感覺時，又能察覺隨之而起的不悅感，但我若將各種感覺（包含疼痛）統稱為「感覺」那疼痛便不再那麼引起我的不悅感了。這令我很驚豔：原來真的可以用不壓抑自己的情緒、想法的方式，以非常平靜、客觀的角度去對待所有的感覺，連痛也沒那麼痛了。當然，時不時還是會感到痛，那就要提醒自己，這只是一個感覺而已，稍縱即逝。
Thoughts, like sensations, would also keep arising and passing away. And I noticed, if I indulge in a thought, I would start doing something crazy like writing a business plan for an imaginary startup in my head and forget I was supposed to be meditating. All the exciting ideas! Yet if I just see it as a thought, I can continue my meditation, though soon another thought would arise. You can apply this to happy thoughts, unhappy spiraling thoughts, fun or depressing ideas — when you indulge in it, in essence, you’re giving in to your cravings or aversions. If you’re aware and equanimous then you’d be able to be objective. Again, I’ve read all of this in theory before coming to the course, but the experience makes all the difference.
腦袋裡的想法跟身體上的細微感受一樣，不斷地會升起、滅去。我也發現，當一個想法升起，我只要去多想一下，不知不覺我就突然開始在腦袋裡編織故事，有一次就天馬行空的開始想各種創業想法，忘記自己應該要在冥想。但若我在冥想時，跟冥想無關的想法升起時，只要意識到：「啊，是個想法耶」，便能專心回到冥想，但不論是什麼開心的、難過的、憂慮的、刺激的念頭，只要放縱自己去多想一下，便容易因為放縱自己的渴望而帶來自己痛苦。反而需要平和的察覺所有的想法才能確保自己不會受自己的想法擺佈的。當然，這些看似悟出的道理，也都是之前字面上閱讀過的，還是要自己體會過才能真正了解。
Many people ask me: Did you feel like quitting midway? Perhaps once, on Day 8 when the temperature suddenly dropped 10 degrees when I only had summer clothes on and the wind started howling outside (as if maintaining internal peace with the storm within wasn’t difficult enough!) so strong that the windows to the meditation hall were shaking almost nonstop throughout our hour of meditation — it was the weakest moment I felt. And the moment I felt weak, I saw that I started thinking about how cold I was feeling despite being indoors. I started contemplating that I perhaps shouldn’t leave on Day 8 out of a 10-days course, but wow it felt so daunting to just step out of the hall later. I started wondering if people who have left the course already felt as much or more despair. And more importantly how long did it take for them to make the decision to leave? Is it something that happens at the moment? Or a calculated decision?…… Noticing the thoughts were growing, I managed to pull myself back to my senses: Tania, you’re going to stick it out. You will be fine. And that’s how I ended that train of thought that could have ended up in a spiral and went back to focusing on my breath which eventually got me back into the zone of meditation.
很多朋友問我：你有沒有想要半途而廢啊？在第八天的時候，那天剛好天氣變化「無常」，從下午的夏天氣候，突然驟降了十度，馬上變成冬天的感覺，又因為我們在山上，開始刮超級強的大風，寒風刺骨，連冥想的法堂的窗戶也不斷的被風吹的格格作響，那時候我意志力好薄弱。即便我大部分時間在室內，但我不斷的想外面的風有多可怕、我會有多冷，我甚至想了一下，我不應該十天課程內的第八天離開啊，都快過完了！我也不禁納悶，其他早退的同學是否也是跟我現在的意志力一樣低迷，還是比此時的我狀態更差呢？而一個人決定要放棄的時候到底是一時的決定呢？還是考慮很久的啊？想了又想，我阻止自己己再繼續想下去，我便跟自己說：妳不會放棄。妳會沒事的。慢慢地我把注意力拉回呼吸上面，漸漸的回到了冥想的狀態中。
On the morning of day 11, everyone left the course smiling. A big task was completed. Despite the task being quite uncomfortable at times — mostly in confinement and silence — it is after all not a task in the real world: it was a very, very safe place to learn and grow. It was made possible only by countless other students before us who benefitted from the past who donated their time to help recreate the experience and money necessary to fund everything. In this well-designed course that at times may give prison-like vibes, we learned a skill that we can use for life. In fact, now we each have 100 hours of meditation under our belts, perhaps we now feel somewhat ready to weather the storms of the real world. The cliche saying goes: you can’t change what others say or do, but you can change how you react to it. These 10 days really taught me that.
第十一天早上，大家離開的時候都是微笑的。一個大個任務完成了，即便任務過程中時而很不舒服，少了很多身體上的自主，也不能講話，但這個任務畢竟是在一個安全的環境下完成的。我覺得我是在一個備受保護、呵護的情形下慢慢學習、成長的。能有這個環境學習，都是因為有之前的學員回來做義工服務、並捐款才能不間斷地繼續開設課程。雖然這個環境有時候有點像監獄，但也是這個環境讓我學習一個終身可以受用的技巧，在短短十天內，因為那麼辛苦的練習冥想，竟也有一百個小時的冥想經驗了，也對回到現實生活中的人生大小事情也比較能堅定地面對。俗話說，你不能改變別人對的說的話、做的事，但你可以改變你自己的感受——而這十天真的教會我了這個道理。


Lastly, I am very grateful to all the people before me who practiced Vipassana which eventually led to me. I’m grateful for meeting work friends who happened to have attended the course before and shared on social media which planted a seed in me. I am grateful for yoga which taught me loads of core strength and allowed me to meditate for long hours without back pain. I am also grateful for previous quarantining experiences which made life away from society this time around much easier. I am grateful to myself for running around Hong Kong on low sleep and organizing and attending events nonstop right before going into the course, which helped me persevere when I was mad exhausted during the course. I am also very grateful to my ex-partner who participated in the course before I did, which inspired me that: if he can do it, so can I!
除了感謝能有機會受前人恩惠參加這個課程，更謝謝過去的幾年在社群媒體上看到不同的工作上認識的朋友分享他們先前參加內觀冥想課程的經驗，我才知道有這個課程的存在。我也感謝透過瑜伽課練習很多身體核心技巧，讓自己即便久坐也沒有感到背痛。除此之外當然還有之前的隔離經驗讓我可以可以輕鬆過完遠離社會的日子，也謝謝參加課程前兩個禮拜的自己在睡眠不足的情況下仍勞碌的辦活動，讓我可以在即便睡不好仍舊可以提起精神冥想⋯⋯最後也謝謝前男友比我早參加這個課程，讓我知道他可以的話、我也可以的！
I hope some of you may want to try this 10-day Vipassana course, let me know if you do! May you be happier, and make the people around you happier as well.
希望你也會想要嘗試這十天的冥想課程，期待你分享你參加後的心得。祝福你開心，也祝福你和你身邊的人一起更加開心！

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#17 Seeing reality as it is 平和冷靜的面對現實

15 articles later, I felt stuck. &#23531;&#20102;&#21313;&#20116;&#31687;&#25991;&#31456;&#20043;&#24460;&#65292;&#25105;&#38931;&#26178;&#19981;&#30693;&#35442;&#24590;&#40636;&#32380;&#32396;&#23531;&#19979;&#21435;&#12290;

When I started the newsletter, I embarked on my <a href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/on-a-sabbatical">6-months sabbatical</a>. More than 6 months have passed, and I have decided to extend my sabbatical for another 6 months for me to figure out what I want to do which can also potentially sustain myself without getting into employment again. The purpose of the newsletter at the time was for me to live slower and to reflect and share my life observations.&#36889;&#20221;&#38651;&#23376;&#22577;&#30340;&#38283;&#22987;&#65292;&#20063;&#26159;&#25105;&#28858;&#26399;&#20845;&#20491;&#26376;&#30340;<a href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/on-a-sabbatical">&#30041;&#32887;&#20572;&#34218;&#29983;&#27963;&#30340;&#38283;&#22987;</a>&#12290;&#20845;&#20491;&#26376;&#24460;&#65292;&#25105;&#27770;&#23450;&#35201;&#20877;&#35731;&#33258;&#24049;&#22039;&#35430;&#20845;&#20491;&#26376;&#65292;&#30475;&#30475;&#26159;&#21542;&#33021;&#21109;&#36896;&#40670;&#20160;&#40636;&#25345;&#32396;&#25105;&#30340;&#26032;&#22411;&#29983;&#27963;&#27169;&#24335;&#12290;&#38651;&#23376;&#22577;&#30340;&#20027;&#26088;&#22312;&#26044;&#24171;&#21161;&#25105;&#24930;&#27963;&#20197;&#21450;&#23450;&#26399;&#21453;&#24605;&#65292;&#20006;&#20998;&#20139;&#25105;&#25152;&#35264;&#23519;&#21040;&#30340;&#20107;&#29289;&#12290;I used to publish once a week, and the moment I slipped two months ago, the routine became extremely hard to enforce again. Especially with <a href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/farsha-cafe-egypt-travel-diary">traveling</a> and other life priorities coming in the way, I allowed more questions and doubts to come in and prevented me from writing publicly again:&#25105;&#19968;&#38283;&#22987;&#27599;&#20491;&#31150;&#25308;&#26371;&#23436;&#25104;&#19968;&#31687;&#25991;&#31456;&#65292;&#20294;&#20841;&#20491;&#22810;&#26376;&#21069;&#22312;&#19968;&#38499;&#24537;&#30860;&#20043;&#20013;&#65292;&#25105;&#37679;&#36942;&#20102;&#25105;&#33258;&#24049;&#35330;&#30340;&#26178;&#38291;&#34920;&#65292;&#19968;&#25302;&#20877;&#25302;&#65292;&#25165;&#30332;&#29694;&#22909;&#38627;&#20877;&#36914;&#20837;&#27599;&#36913;&#19968;&#31687;&#30340;&#29376;&#24907;&#8212;&#8212;&#25105;&#19981;&#26159;<a href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/farsha-cafe-egypt-travel-diary">&#20986;&#21435;&#26053;&#36938;</a>&#12289;&#23601;&#26159;&#22312;&#24537;&#33879;&#20854;&#20182;&#20107;&#24773;&#65292;&#21516;&#26178;&#33126;&#34955;&#35041;&#36012;&#24618;&#30340;&#32882;&#38899;&#19968;&#20877;&#20986;&#29694;&#65306;<blockquote>What is my voice? How do I narrate my experience? How is anything I write interesting? What am I writing about? Who am I writing for? Why do I write?&#8230; the questions and doubts go on and on. &#25105;&#21040;&#24213;&#22312;&#23531;&#20160;&#40636;&#65311;&#25105;&#26377;&#20160;&#40636;&#29544;&#29305;&#30340;&#30475;&#27861;&#65311;&#25105;&#26360;&#23531;&#26377;&#20160;&#40636;&#29305;&#33394;&#65311;&#25105;&#26159;&#28858;&#35504;&#32780;&#23531;&#30340;&#21602;&#65311;&#28858;&#20160;&#40636;&#25105;&#35201;&#26360;&#23531;&#21602;&#65311;&#8212;&#8212;&#23565;&#33258;&#24049;&#30340;&#25079;&#30097;&#25509;&#36405;&#32780;&#20358;&#65292;&#21482;&#35731;&#37325;&#26032;&#23531;&#20316;&#38627;&#19978;&#21152;&#38627;&#12290;</blockquote>Since last I wrote, I dealt with a two-week heart palpitation, thought deeply and decided to extend my 6-months sabbatical further, traveled to India for an Indian wedding, visited Taiwan three times for family members&#8217; birthdays, managed a music &amp; tea shop, ran two parties every single week, decided to wind down daily operations of said shop, got sick twice (COVID + flu?!), and moved apartments in Hong Kong&#8230;&#8230;. frankly, it was a lot.&#33258;&#24478;&#19978;&#19968;&#31687;&#25991;&#31456;&#20986;&#22303;&#65292;&#25105;&#32147;&#27511;&#20102;&#20841;&#36913;&#30340;&#24515;&#24760;&#12289;&#33510;&#24605;&#26159;&#21542;&#35201;&#24310;&#38263;&#30041;&#32887;&#20572;&#34218;&#30340;&#26085;&#23376;&#12289;&#21435;&#20102;&#21360;&#24230;&#21443;&#21152;&#21360;&#24230;&#23130;&#31150;&#12289;&#20063;&#22238;&#21488;&#28771;&#19977;&#27425;&#24171;&#23478;&#20154;&#24950;&#29983;&#65292;&#32780;&#25105;&#20063;&#32147;&#29151;&#33590;&#24215;&#12289;&#27599;&#36913;&#33289;&#36774;&#20841;&#27425;&#30340;&#27966;&#23565;&#12289;&#20063;&#27784;&#30171;&#30340;&#27770;&#23450;&#25105;&#26283;&#26178;&#19981;&#35201;&#20877;&#25171;&#29702;&#33590;&#24215;&#20102;&#12290;&#29978;&#33267;&#36996;&#29983;&#30149;&#20841;&#27425;&#65288;&#19968;&#27425;&#26032;&#20896;&#12289;&#19968;&#27425;&#27969;&#24863;&#65289;&#65292;&#20006;&#25644;&#23478;&#19968;&#27425;&#12290;Needless to say I was overwhelmed. It&#8217;s a classic situation where it&#8217;d probably be fine if things happened sequentially, but like an unexpected wave, it hit quietly and suddenly, all at once. Without knowing &#8212; I was gasping for air (and this newsletter was forgotten).&#28961;&#38928;&#35686;&#20043;&#19979;&#65292;&#25105;&#20687;&#34987;&#38577;&#34255;&#29256;&#30340;&#22823;&#28010;&#28153;&#27794;&#20102;&#19968;&#33324;&#65292;&#21482;&#33021;&#25306;&#21629;&#30340;&#32380;&#32396;&#21010;&#27700;&#65292;&#37325;&#35211;&#38525;&#20809;&#12290;&#36889;&#31278;&#28961;&#21147;&#24863;&#20358;&#33258;&#26044;&#20107;&#24773;&#20497;&#36817;&#20046;&#21516;&#26178;&#36914;&#34892;&#12289;&#19981;&#24471;&#29255;&#21051;&#21912;&#24687;&#12290;&#20504;&#33509;&#19968;&#20214;&#19968;&#20214;&#20358;&#65292;&#32317;&#33021;&#19968;&#20214;&#19968;&#20214;&#35299;&#27770;&#30340;&#12290;<div class="image-gallery-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;gallery&quot;:{&quot;images&quot;:[{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/bd768d5c-b29e-4d44-a13f-79b4022503e8_3024x4032.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/74b2e82b-4a7b-452f-8b2f-57dbe1c1adb7_3024x4032.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/386362c9-1025-4c01-b11f-58f5a18be384_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ea632533-731c-453b-a046-778ac15c5e5f_3024x4032.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/4aef8eba-796e-45cb-8113-6f16a00b442f_2048x1536.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/dae2e555-ad4a-4405-b061-33d96e83df0f_3024x4032.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/684d42f7-0678-42a6-b4d8-b9a9b575082d_1600x1200.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/19e6bc17-2d74-4abb-8a2e-7a49a2ce8632_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/4ea401de-278f-429d-944d-1a191f9ee99b_1200x1600.jpeg&quot;}],&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;Grateful for pretty colours from Indian weddings &amp; mosaic art in the metro, to sunsets, friends, tea, and painting.&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;staticGalleryImage&quot;:{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ad09a4f6-6eab-4216-84b7-0695381c3828_1456x1454.png&quot;}},&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true}"></div>Luckily I&#8217;ve felt overwhelmed before. The easiest way is to do a hard pause on everything and take a day off from technology and people to simply be with your thoughts and journal. The purpose is to figure out all the loose ends that seem to have a dependency upon each other, and aim to have a resolution to all of them by the end of the day.&#24184;&#34407;&#25105;&#20063;&#19981;&#26159;&#27794;&#26377;&#32147;&#27511;&#36942;&#36889;&#31278;&#28961;&#21147;&#24863;&#30340;&#65292;&#25152;&#20197;&#20063;&#30693;&#36947;&#36889;&#26178;&#20505;&#35442;&#24590;&#40636;&#36774;&#12290;&#26368;&#31777;&#21934;&#30340;&#26041;&#27861;&#26159;&#35201;&#31435;&#39340;&#20572;&#27490;&#25163;&#37002;&#25152;&#26377;&#20107;&#24773;&#65292;&#38626;&#38283;&#31185;&#25216;&#33287;&#20154;&#32676;&#19968;&#22825;&#65292;&#37325;&#26032;&#25972;&#29702;&#24605;&#32210;&#65292;&#25226;&#25152;&#26377;&#24515;&#38957;&#19978;&#25152;&#26377;&#31998;&#32399;&#19981;&#28165;&#30340;&#20107;&#24773;&#23531;&#19979;&#20358;&#65292;&#20006;&#24819;&#36774;&#27861;&#30059;&#20986;&#20107;&#20214;&#20043;&#38291;&#26159;&#21542;&#26377;&#20114;&#30456;&#20381;&#36084;&#30340;&#38364;&#20418;&#65292;&#20006;&#22312;&#19968;&#22825;&#32080;&#26463;&#26178;&#35299;&#38283;&#36889;&#20491;&#22823;&#32080;&#12290;&#24515;&#19981;&#20098;&#20102;&#65292;&#20063;&#23601;&#19981;&#26371;&#37027;&#40636;&#28961;&#21147;&#20102;&#12290;However, it&#8217;s not all that easy to do a hard pause with life &amp; responsibilities, but the thing that needs to be done is the same! Untangle, untangle, untangle! Remove as many dependencies as possible! Make quick and thoughtful decisions! Prioritise, prioritise, prioritise!&#20294;&#26159;&#20154;&#29983;&#20063;&#19981;&#26159;&#36889;&#40636;&#23481;&#26131;&#21487;&#20197;&#30452;&#25509;&#25277;&#38626;&#30340;&#65292;&#20294;&#35442;&#20570;&#30340;&#20107;&#24773;&#26159;&#30456;&#21516;&#30340;&#12290;&#23601;&#20687;&#23478;&#35041;&#24456;&#20098;&#19981;&#30693;&#36947;&#35442;&#22914;&#20309;&#25972;&#29702;&#19968;&#27171;&#65292;&#23601;&#24478;&#19968;&#20491;&#22320;&#26041;&#38283;&#22987;&#65292;&#19968;&#27493;&#19968;&#27493;&#20358;&#12290;&#24515;&#20013;&#26377;&#20160;&#40636;&#32080;&#65292;&#23601;&#21162;&#21147;&#30340;&#35299;&#38283;&#12290;&#26377;&#26178;&#20505;&#19968;&#22534;&#20107;&#24773;&#20497;&#22312;&#19968;&#36215;&#30475;&#20284;&#35079;&#38620;&#65292;&#20294;&#20854;&#23526;&#21482;&#35201;&#30332;&#29694;&#20006;&#27794;&#26377;&#20114;&#30456;&#20381;&#36084;&#26178;&#65292;&#20877;&#38627;&#20063;&#21487;&#20197;&#36814;&#20995;&#32780;&#35299;&#30340;&#12290;&#25226;&#26368;&#37325;&#35201;&#12289;&#32202;&#24613;&#30340;&#20107;&#24773;&#35299;&#27770;&#20102;&#65292;&#20877;&#34389;&#29702;&#19979;&#19968;&#20491;&#12290;&#33021;&#22312;&#30701;&#26178;&#38291;&#20839;&#20570;&#20986;&#31934;&#30906;&#30340;&#27770;&#23450;&#65292;&#20006;&#22909;&#22909;&#30340;&#32232;&#25490;&#20160;&#40636;&#26159;&#37325;&#35201;&#12289;&#32202;&#24613;&#30340;&#65292;&#20415;&#26159;&#26368;&#22823;&#30340;&#32771;&#39511;&#12290;A reminder to self: you don&#8217;t need to have everything figured out, you just need to remove dependencies, make quick decisions, and keep the wheel moving. And prioritize rest whenever you can.&#25105;&#20063;&#22312;&#27492;&#38918;&#20415;&#25552;&#37266;&#33258;&#24049;&#65306;&#20320;&#19981;&#38656;&#35201;&#19968;&#19979;&#23376;&#35299;&#27770;&#25152;&#26377;&#20107;&#24773;&#65292;&#21482;&#35201;&#33021;&#25226;&#20107;&#24773;&#38918;&#33879;&#37325;&#35201;&#12289;&#32202;&#24613;&#30340;&#29305;&#24615;&#65292;&#19981;&#30031;&#25084;&#20570;&#27770;&#23450;&#65292;&#19968;&#20491;&#19968;&#20491;&#36889;&#27171;&#34389;&#29702;&#19979;&#21435;&#65292;&#19981;&#35201;&#20572;&#65292;&#23601;&#22909;&#20102;&#12290;&#32780;&#19988;&#20063;&#35201;&#35352;&#24471;&#36969;&#24230;&#20241;&#24687;&#12290;I&#8217;m so glad that I am finally able to oil up the wheel of &#8220;City Girl Slow Life&#8221; again. I want to continue writing. I want to craft my thoughts and echo it on the internet, in hope to find someone who relates on my journey. I want to remind myself to live slower and to step back and introspect regularly. I aim to continue to share my life observations, which I hope can resonate with you in any way possible. Thanks for staying here!&#22312;&#20572;&#26356;&#20102;&#20841;&#20491;&#22810;&#26376;&#24460;&#65292;&#25105;&#24456;&#38283;&#24515;&#25105;&#32066;&#26044;&#33021;&#32380;&#32396;&#12300;&#22478;&#24066;&#22899;&#23401;&#24930;&#29983;&#27963;&#12301;&#36889;&#20221;&#38651;&#23376;&#22577;&#12290;&#25105;&#24819;&#35201;&#19981;&#26039;&#22320;&#23531;&#19979;&#21435;&#65292;&#36879;&#36942;&#29730;&#30952;&#23383;&#21477;&#20043;&#38291;&#22312;&#32178;&#36335;&#19978;&#21644;&#20854;&#20182;&#24535;&#21516;&#36947;&#21512;&#30340;&#26379;&#21451;&#20497;&#20999;&#30923;&#12290;&#21516;&#26178;&#65292;&#25105;&#20063;&#35201;&#25552;&#37266;&#33258;&#24049;&#30495;&#30340;&#35201;&#21162;&#21147;&#19968;&#40670;&#24930;&#29983;&#27963;&#65292;&#23450;&#26399;&#21453;&#24605;&#8212;&#8212;&#20006;&#32380;&#32396;&#20998;&#20139;&#19979;&#21435;&#65281;&#35613;&#35613;&#65281;&#20849;&#21193;&#20043;&#12290;See you next week, Tania

When I started the newsletter, I embarked on my 6-months sabbatical. More than 6 months have passed, and I have decided to extend my sabbatical for another 6 months for me to figure out what I want to do which can also potentially sustain myself without getting into employment again. The purpose of the newsletter at the time was for me to live slower and to reflect and share my life observations.
這份電子報的開始，也是我為期六個月的留職停薪生活的開始。六個月後，我決定要再讓自己嘗試六個月，看看是否能創造點什麼持續我的新型生活模式。電子報的主旨在於幫助我慢活以及定期反思，並分享我所觀察到的事物。
I used to publish once a week, and the moment I slipped two months ago, the routine became extremely hard to enforce again. Especially with traveling and other life priorities coming in the way, I allowed more questions and doubts to come in and prevented me from writing publicly again:
我一開始每個禮拜會完成一篇文章，但兩個多月前在一陣忙碌之中，我錯過了我自己訂的時間表，一拖再拖，才發現好難再進入每週一篇的狀態——我不是出去旅遊、就是在忙著其他事情，同時腦袋裡責怪的聲音一再出現：

What is my voice? How do I narrate my experience? How is anything I write interesting? What am I writing about? Who am I writing for? Why do I write?… the questions and doubts go on and on.
我到底在寫什麼？我有什麼獨特的看法？我書寫有什麼特色？我是為誰而寫的呢？為什麼我要書寫呢？——對自己的懷疑接踵而來，只讓重新寫作難上加難。

Since last I wrote, I dealt with a two-week heart palpitation, thought deeply and decided to extend my 6-months sabbatical further, traveled to India for an Indian wedding, visited Taiwan three times for family members’ birthdays, managed a music & tea shop, ran two parties every single week, decided to wind down daily operations of said shop, got sick twice (COVID + flu?!), and moved apartments in Hong Kong……. frankly, it was a lot.
自從上一篇文章出土，我經歷了兩週的心悸、苦思是否要延長留職停薪的日子、去了印度參加印度婚禮、也回台灣三次幫家人慶生，而我也經營茶店、每週舉辦兩次的派對、也沈痛的決定我暫時不要再打理茶店了。甚至還生病兩次（一次新冠、一次流感），並搬家一次。
Needless to say I was overwhelmed. It’s a classic situation where it’d probably be fine if things happened sequentially, but like an unexpected wave, it hit quietly and suddenly, all at once. Without knowing — I was gasping for air (and this newsletter was forgotten).
無預警之下，我像被隱藏版的大浪淹沒了一般，只能拚命的繼續划水，重見陽光。這種無力感來自於事情們近乎同時進行、不得片刻喘息。倘若一件一件來，總能一件一件解決的。

Luckily I’ve felt overwhelmed before. The easiest way is to do a hard pause on everything and take a day off from technology and people to simply be with your thoughts and journal. The purpose is to figure out all the loose ends that seem to have a dependency upon each other, and aim to have a resolution to all of them by the end of the day.
幸虧我也不是沒有經歷過這種無力感的，所以也知道這時候該怎麼辦。最簡單的方法是要立馬停止手邊所有事情，離開科技與人群一天，重新整理思緒，把所有心頭上所有糾纏不清的事情寫下來，並想辦法畫出事件之間是否有互相依賴的關係，並在一天結束時解開這個大結。心不亂了，也就不會那麼無力了。
However, it’s not all that easy to do a hard pause with life & responsibilities, but the thing that needs to be done is the same! Untangle, untangle, untangle! Remove as many dependencies as possible! Make quick and thoughtful decisions! Prioritise, prioritise, prioritise!
但是人生也不是這麼容易可以直接抽離的，但該做的事情是相同的。就像家裡很亂不知道該如何整理一樣，就從一個地方開始，一步一步來。心中有什麼結，就努力的解開。有時候一堆事情們在一起看似複雜，但其實只要發現並沒有互相依賴時，再難也可以迎刃而解的。把最重要、緊急的事情解決了，再處理下一個。能在短時間內做出精確的決定，並好好的編排什麼是重要、緊急的，便是最大的考驗。
A reminder to self: you don’t need to have everything figured out, you just need to remove dependencies, make quick decisions, and keep the wheel moving. And prioritize rest whenever you can.
我也在此順便提醒自己：你不需要一下子解決所有事情，只要能把事情順著重要、緊急的特性，不畏懼做決定，一個一個這樣處理下去，不要停，就好了。而且也要記得適度休息。
I’m so glad that I am finally able to oil up the wheel of “City Girl Slow Life” again. I want to continue writing. I want to craft my thoughts and echo it on the internet, in hope to find someone who relates on my journey. I want to remind myself to live slower and to step back and introspect regularly. I aim to continue to share my life observations, which I hope can resonate with you in any way possible. Thanks for staying here!
在停更了兩個多月後，我很開心我終於能繼續「城市女孩慢生活」這份電子報。我想要不斷地寫下去，透過琢磨字句之間在網路上和其他志同道合的朋友們切磋。同時，我也要提醒自己真的要努力一點慢生活，定期反思——並繼續分享下去！謝謝！共勉之。
See you next week,
Tania

15 articles later, I felt stuck. 寫了十五篇文章之後，我頓時不知該怎麼繼續寫下去。

#16 Back after feeling stuck & overwhelmed 我回來了

chess & awe in egypt, and finding a second home at a cafe

While you are about to pull up in front of the cafe, what comes to your eyes is the sight of where the sky meets the ocean with a depth that makes you realize you’re on a cliff. You walk into the cafe and you’re greeted by stairs. You can only walk downwards. You see a bunch of antiques, supposedly junk, gracefully decorating the space. You see art pieces that transform you back in time. When exactly? I have no idea, but it does not feel like today.
當你快抵達咖啡廳的時候，映入眼簾的是天與海相遇的景色，此時的你站在一個懸崖上，要進入咖啡廳的話必需下一層一層都樓梯。樓梯的左右兩側都是古董，抑或是撿來的破銅爛鐵，整個佈置的又好像毫無違和感似的。一件一件藝術品似乎將你送進一台時光機裡面，雖不知道被送去哪個時間點，我卻明確的感覺到——不是「今天」。


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And you hear music. The genre varies from Latin, and Arabic, to electronic beats. You start bobbing your head as you finally make your way through the other entrance of the cafe. And then you see Egyptian-style carpets and cushions everywhere, people smoking shisha, and oh the view gets better as you are now situated in the middle of the cliff — you’re closer to both the sky and the ocean. You are in a different world. You are at Farsha Cafe.
耳邊傳來的音樂一下是拉丁樂、一下是當地的阿拉伯音樂，一下是電子樂。在終於抵達咖啡廳的正門時，你已隨音樂搖擺。大家坐在充滿埃及特色的地毯及坐枕上，有人在抽水煙、有人在喝酒。此時的你同時更接近海與天空。你已進入了另一個世界。你抵達了Farsha咖啡室。








How I knew about Farsha was via E who was arranging the transportation for the chess competition my sister was attending in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt. Over the past two weeks, I was a chess mom for my younger sister (who is 16 years younger than me) chaperoning her for the first time at an international chess competition, and I did not realize how tough it could be for both of us. She had a chess game every single day for 11 days straight where each game ranged from 1.5 hours to 4 hours depending on the intensity of the game. There were many younger kids who were doing the same and I was astonished by their ability to sit still for so long! And for me, I can only sit by the courtside watching her from afar to play chess. No electronics allowed. The experience could be as boring or as meditative as possible. After two days of being extremely offline and failing at being present, I had to figure out what to do when she was playing chess. And that’s when I met E.
我知道 Farsha 咖啡室是由專門負責西洋棋比賽的交通的 E 所介紹的。前兩個禮拜，我假扮成媽媽兩週，帶著小我十六歲的妹妹去埃及的沙姆沙伊赫參與她的第一場國際西洋棋比賽。說是出國比賽好像很好玩，但對我們兩個來說都意外的辛苦。我們去的十一天中，她每一天要下一場一個半小時到四個小時的棋，而現場年紀最小有六、七歲的小孩也是這樣天天坐著下棋。我無法想像這些小朋友能坐著麼久，專心的做一件事情。當家長的則只能坐在場邊旁觀比賽，但觀賽的時候為了避免作弊嫌疑，旁觀者不能使用任何電子儀器——本來想說，那我可以好好在場邊寫文章、看書，但兩天的漫長的「靜坐」之後，我決定我在她下棋的時候應該去做點什麼。那也是我認識 E 的契機。

Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt is not an easy place to navigate alone. More so as a woman. And even more so not speaking Arabic. E was having some shwarmas in the parking lot when I approached him about going around the city during the competition. “We can go scuba diving. Let me show you the beautiful Red Sea. You cannot take taxis here alone, it’s not safe. Let’s go to Farsha cafe for sunset, you and me.” While I didn’t end up taking up his offer of showing me around the city, I did decide to check out what Farsha Cafe is all about.
沙姆沙伊赫並不容易隻身探索，尤其身為一位女性，又不會說阿拉伯文。所以我在情急之下，詢問了看起來很專業的 E ，雖然我和他搭話的時候他正在停車場吃沙威瑪。我到底可以怎麼探索這個城鎮呢？（畢竟出門前沒有做功課的我也不知道要去哪兒～） E 跟我說：「沙姆沙伊赫是以紅海潛水出名的城鎮，我們可以去潛水。你不能一個人搭計程車，太危險了。讓我帶你去 Farsha 咖啡室吧，夕陽的時候。」我最後並沒有讓他帶我出遊，但 Farsha Cafe 這個詞讓我印象非常深刻，我大算至少要去一次吧！
I held the widest smile when I went to Farsha. It’s impossible to not smile when you’re in constant awe. And to me, constant awe stems from constant surprise. And the constant surprise is possible to curate if you appreciate beauty, look for uniqueness in everything, and perhaps be in a good and light mood — which is a default feeling when I am traveling. Every single thing caught my attention when I was there. The sky. The decor. The stairs. Other tourists taking pictures. The music. Every single thing made me feel a sense of awe. And everything made me smile.
我記得我一到 Farsha 的時候我忍不住我的笑容——當你對於周遭的事物感到驚奇的時候，無法不笑吧！當你能更加的注意周遭的美麗、並在萬物中去找尋獨特性，帶著一個輕鬆愉悅的心情，便能經常感到驚奇、笑不攏嘴了。旅遊時能隨時感受到這個感覺，真好！真的每個小事情都能讓我感到驚奇耶，從天空、古董設計、簡單的樓梯、看到其他觀光客在拍照、音樂⋯⋯著實數不清。

On travelling 談旅遊
Since being on a sabbatical I have intentionally not traveled, partly because I was burned out from traveling by being on the road for two years straight without a home base, but mostly because I wanted to see if I could actually live in one place, work on interesting problems, and feel the same awe I do when I travel in my day-to-day. There are days when experiencing awe is easy, but there are days when it’s extremely difficult. Traveling makes being awe-inspired so much easier, and I could only tell the difference once I was on the road again after 5 months.
自從我開始留職停薪之後，我刻意不去旅遊，主要是因為我有點旅遊疲乏（畢竟之前連續兩年，沒有依歸的不斷旅遊），但也是因為我想要能好好的定下來，去嘗試不同的生活模式，並期許自己在定下來的同時能夠找到自己的愛好，與想要投入全力去做的事情。我也很好奇是否能將旅遊的心境帶回平常的生活裡：事實證明，偶爾可以、偶爾很難，而旅遊的驚奇之心與平常之心真的是在五個月後重返旅途的時候才能明顯的感受到其差別。
In the short 11 days I was in Sharm, every moment felt like it had to be experienced fully. I don’t just look at the sky, I observe it — from the bluest blue to the gorgeous night sky with shimmering stars. I gather my energy every day to enjoy the hotel pool and water park with my sister. I am much more open-minded in meeting people. I have no labels I need to adhere to. My only obligation outside of taking care of my sister is to enjoy every moment. I already like music, but I even feel more from the music I hear ringing from the hotel pool speakers or on the shuttle bus radio — I dance to it freely. I am fully part of this foreign world I am now in. In fact, I don’t feel foreign at all. I am here.

在沙姆沙伊赫的短短十一天中，每個瞬間都覺得必須要好好去感受。我不單單只看天空，我很認真地觀察他的每一種藍，每一塊雲朵，到夜間裡的每一顆閃爍的星星。每天我即便累，也會打起精神帶妹妹去享用飯店的泳池與水樂園。我更加的願意去認識不同文化的人、結交新朋友。此時的我沒有任何的標籤指示著我該做什麼事，除了好好照顧妹妹之外，唯一該做的事情就是細細品味每一刻。我本來就很喜歡音樂了，但在沙姆這個城鎮的我更能和音樂合而為一，隨他起舞。我似乎就這麼屬於這個陌生的世界，而我一點也不感到陌生。
End 完
And with that attitude, I’ve been to Farsha Cafe 3 times in the short time I was in Sharm El-Sheikh between chess tournaments. I had fresh smoothies alongside good conversations with new friends, danced to the vibe-y music, and simply sat still and stared at the lights and the sky and immersed myself in this cafe. Farsha also means carpet/mattress in Arabic — and I felt so oddly comfortable there that it felt like another home. Perhaps in an alternative universe, I do have a home sitting on a cliff with carpets and antiques in it. And I am grateful to have experienced this possibility for the brief moments I was in Sharm.
抱持著要好好感受每一刻的心情，我一共拜訪了 Farsha 咖啡室三次，每一次都喝著好喝的果汁、奶昔，和新朋友聊天、跳舞，並好好的享受坐著不動、觀察著天空、燈光的細微變化。我整個融入在這個充滿特色的咖啡室裡。Farsha 在阿拉伯文裡指的是地毯或床墊，也許這也是為什麼這個咖啡室讓人覺得像在家裡一樣。在另一個平行時空裡，也許我也有一個座落於懸崖峭壁邊的一個家，裡面有著諸多古董以及美麗的地毯。真開心能在沙姆沙伊赫體會另一個平行時空裡的自己，即便短暫，卻很美好。


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farsha cafe - egypt travel diary 埃及遊記

ofc i had to write this on a flight &#21069;&#24190;&#22825;&#30340;&#39131;&#34892;&#38568;&#31558;

<blockquote>Hello to all the old &amp; new friends of <a href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/">City Girl Slow Life</a> this week &#8212; after being on the road for 2 years straight, I had decided to slow down and not travel for a while as I wanted to be able to focus my energy on figuring out my &#8220;flow state&#8221; &amp; &#8220;life&#8217;s purpose&#8221; during my <a href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/on-a-sabbatical">sabbatical</a>. A few days ago I took my first flight after 4 months, and that has prompted me to reflect on flying &amp; what it means to me. Enjoy!</blockquote><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/subscribe?">Subscribe now</a>Flights symbolize reunion, adventure, and most importantly, sanctuary. As a girl with families in two cities, flying is the default activity whenever time permits. And once that said girl has obtained financial independence, flying has a newfound meaning: an escape, a chance to explore something new.But what&#8217;s more to flying is that it&#8217;s a sanctuary, especially flying long hours alone.<div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble">Thanks for reading City Girl Slow Life &#129535; &#22478;&#24066;&#22899;&#23401; &#24930;&#29983;&#27963;! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div>Growing up with cellphones that evolved into smartphones, connecting with friends from endless SMS messages to instant pings with social media &#8212; flying became the time to disconnect. Airplane mode: no more data can be transferred. It&#8217;s as if time paused, and all you can work with is the information you have already: the photos on your phone, the notes in your notepad, your journal, and your subconscious which usually gets ignored when you&#8217;re too stimulated by the outside world.With an easy few taps on the inflight entertainment system, you can easily plug your consciousness back into an endless stream of data and entertainment. However, I stopped watching movies on flights in the past two years when I started flying very frequently (the audio and visual quality aren&#8217;t even that great anyway). And I try not to purchase inflight wifi unless I have work I have to do during the flight. Instead, I try to journal and meditate when I&#8217;m 29,000 feet above sea level. When else do you have uninterrupted time, when you don&#8217;t get push notifications, when even if you try to check you will have no new mail or new messages to check?Mentally it&#8217;s a sanctuary.Then I noticed I could sleep quite well on flights which felt counterintuitive as it doesn&#8217;t seem natural in my economy seat while sitting upright. I consulted a neurologist about this in which he responded matter-of-factly: &#8220;This is normal. Being on a plane is like being in your mom&#8217;s womb when you were being conceived.&#8221; I was shocked. Flights were not designed to simulate a womb, but to simply allow people to travel from one location to another in an economical way. However, by putting people so close to one another in a metal-enclosed space with loud engine sounds, in many subtle ways, our body is reminded closely of the times when we were conceived. Our biological instincts treat this experience like being in a safe space.Physically it&#8217;s also a sanctuary.Take a deep breath, clear your mind, and enjoy the rare chance of being disconnected. And by the time you get off the flight, enjoy the first breath of fresh air that hits your nostrils again. It&#8217;s kind of like your very first breath. And you are reborn again.<div class="image-gallery-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;gallery&quot;:{&quot;images&quot;:[{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/3f4fa7b1-c19c-4cd1-b184-8630fdcfd66e_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/91e8e22d-bd7e-419a-a222-e976111bb246_1000x1572.png&quot;}],&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;views &amp; books &amp; tea (in addition to meditating &amp; journaling) are what makes flights a sanctuary&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;staticGalleryImage&quot;:{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/ff2b8fa2-b702-4ebf-a42c-b01aada4964f_1456x720.png&quot;}},&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true}"></div><h6>I finished <span class="mention-wrap" data-attrs="{&quot;name&quot;:&quot;Paul Millerd&quot;,&quot;id&quot;:327469,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;user&quot;,&quot;url&quot;:null,&quot;photo_url&quot;:&quot;https://bucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a781ac52-7174-4fe3-a435-9b8aada1ddf6_4565x3013.jpeg&quot;,&quot;uuid&quot;:&quot;77c554b8-9b57-436d-bb0a-98793f976566&quot;}" data-component-name="MentionToDOM">&#8216;s book "The Pathless Path" on my last long-haul flight, and it was great! It puts so many of my thoughts on &#8216;purpose in life&#8217; / 'working towards your calling&#8217; etc into words. I appreciate the energy &amp; time you put into this! &#128150; It inspires me to put my own story into words, and I can&#8217;t wait to share that soon as well.</h6><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/airplanes-alternative-meanings/comments&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Leave a comment&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/airplanes-alternative-meanings/comments">Leave a comment</a><blockquote><a href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/">&#22478;&#24066;&#22899;&#23401;&#12539;&#24930;&#29983;&#27963;</a>&#30340;&#26032;&#33290;&#26379;&#21451;&#20497;&#65292;&#36889;&#36913;&#36942;&#24471;&#22909;&#21966;&#65311;&#22312;&#19981;&#38291;&#26039;&#30340;&#26053;&#34892;&#20841;&#24180;&#24460;&#65292;<a href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/on-a-sabbatical">&#36984;&#25799;&#30041;&#32887;&#20572;&#34218;</a>&#30340;&#21516;&#26178;&#25105;&#20063;&#36984;&#25799;&#26283;&#26178;&#19981;&#35201;&#20877;&#26053;&#36938;&#20102;&#65292;&#22909;&#33021;&#38748;&#19979;&#24515;&#20358;&#20570;&#20854;&#20182;&#24819;&#20570;&#30340;&#20107;&#24773;&#12290;&#21069;&#24190;&#22825;&#26159;&#25105;&#22235;&#20491;&#26376;&#20197;&#20358;&#31532;&#19968;&#27425;&#25645;&#39131;&#27231;&#65292;&#25105;&#20415;&#34249;&#27492;&#21453;&#24605;&#20102;&#19968;&#19979;&#25645;&#39131;&#27231;&#23565;&#25105;&#30340;&#24847;&#32681;&#12290;</blockquote>&#25645;&#39131;&#27231;&#30340;&#24847;&#32681;&#23565;&#25105;&#20358;&#35498;&#26082;&#26159;&#37325;&#36898;&#65292;&#21448;&#26159;&#25506;&#38570;&#65292;&#20294;&#36817;&#20358;&#26356;&#35258;&#24471;&#23427;&#23526;&#38555;&#20687;&#20491;&#24199;&#35703;&#25152;&#19968;&#33324;&#12290;&#24478;&#23567;&#22240;&#28858;&#26680;&#24515;&#23478;&#24237;&#27243;&#36328;&#20841;&#20491;&#22478;&#24066;&#65292;&#25645;&#39131;&#27231;&#26159;&#21482;&#35201;&#19968;&#26377;&#26178;&#38291;&#30340;&#35370;&#35242;&#20043;&#24517;&#35201;&#34892;&#31243;&#65292;&#32780;&#30070;&#25105;&#38263;&#22823;&#12289;&#32147;&#28639;&#29544;&#31435;&#20043;&#24460;&#65292;&#25645;&#39131;&#27231;&#19981;&#20877;&#26159;&#28858;&#20102;&#35370;&#35242;&#65292;&#32780;&#26159;&#28436;&#35722;&#25104;&#25506;&#32034;&#26410;&#30693;&#19990;&#30028;&#30340;&#36884;&#24465;&#12290;&#20294;&#30070;&#25105;&#38283;&#22987;&#26356;&#38263;&#19968;&#20491;&#20154;&#25645;&#38263;&#36884;&#39131;&#27231;&#20043;&#24460;&#65292;&#27231;&#33369;&#23451;&#22914;&#19968;&#20491;&#24515;&#38728;&#24199;&#35703;&#25152;&#19968;&#33324;&#30340;&#38506;&#20276;&#33879;&#25105;&#30340;&#27599;&#19968;&#36255;&#26053;&#31243;&#12290;&#24478;&#19968;&#33324;&#30340;&#25163;&#27231;&#28436;&#35722;&#28858;&#26234;&#33021;&#25163;&#27231;&#12289;&#19968;&#23553;&#20841;&#19977;&#20803;&#30340;&#31777;&#35338;&#21040;&#26377;&#32178;&#36335;&#23601;&#21487;&#20197;&#28961;&#38480;&#37327;&#25910;&#21040;&#31038;&#20132;&#23186;&#39636;&#30340;&#21363;&#26178;&#35338;&#24687;&#65292;&#21482;&#26377;&#22312;&#39131;&#27231;&#19978;&#27794;&#26377;&#32178;&#36335;&#30340;&#26178;&#20505;&#25165;&#33021;&#36629;&#39686;&#30340;&#33287;&#19990;&#38548;&#32085;&#12290;&#38283;&#21855;&#39131;&#33322;&#27169;&#24335;&#24460;&#65292;&#27794;&#26377;&#20219;&#20309;&#36039;&#35338;&#21487;&#20197;&#36960;&#31471;&#20659;&#36664;&#24460;&#65292;&#24439;&#24447;&#26178;&#38291;&#20572;&#27490;&#33324;&#12290;&#38931;&#26178;&#30332;&#29694;&#65292;&#29694;&#22312;&#19981;&#33021;&#20877;&#21435;&#27714;&#21462;&#26032;&#30340;&#36039;&#35338;&#20102;&#65292;&#25163;&#37002;&#21482;&#26377;&#65306;&#25163;&#27231;&#35041;&#30340;&#29031;&#29255;&#12289;&#31558;&#35352;&#26412;&#35041;&#30340;&#31558;&#35352;&#12289;&#26085;&#35352;&#31807;&#12289; 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Hello to all the old & new friends of City Girl Slow Life this week — after being on the road for 2 years straight, I had decided to slow down and not travel for a while as I wanted to be able to focus my energy on figuring out my “flow state” & “life’s purpose” during my sabbatical. A few days ago I took my first flight after 4 months, and that has prompted me to reflect on flying & what it means to me. Enjoy!

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Flights symbolize reunion, adventure, and most importantly, sanctuary. As a girl with families in two cities, flying is the default activity whenever time permits. And once that said girl has obtained financial independence, flying has a newfound meaning: an escape, a chance to explore something new.
But what’s more to flying is that it’s a sanctuary, especially flying long hours alone.


Thanks for reading City Girl Slow Life 🧿 城市女孩 慢生活! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.





Growing up with cellphones that evolved into smartphones, connecting with friends from endless SMS messages to instant pings with social media — flying became the time to disconnect. Airplane mode: no more data can be transferred. It’s as if time paused, and all you can work with is the information you have already: the photos on your phone, the notes in your notepad, your journal, and your subconscious which usually gets ignored when you’re too stimulated by the outside world.
With an easy few taps on the inflight entertainment system, you can easily plug your consciousness back into an endless stream of data and entertainment. However, I stopped watching movies on flights in the past two years when I started flying very frequently (the audio and visual quality aren’t even that great anyway). And I try not to purchase inflight wifi unless I have work I have to do during the flight. Instead, I try to journal and meditate when I’m 29,000 feet above sea level. When else do you have uninterrupted time, when you don’t get push notifications, when even if you try to check you will have no new mail or new messages to check?
Mentally it’s a sanctuary.
Then I noticed I could sleep quite well on flights which felt counterintuitive as it doesn’t seem natural in my economy seat while sitting upright. I consulted a neurologist about this in which he responded matter-of-factly: “This is normal. Being on a plane is like being in your mom’s womb when you were being conceived.” I was shocked. Flights were not designed to simulate a womb, but to simply allow people to travel from one location to another in an economical way. However, by putting people so close to one another in a metal-enclosed space with loud engine sounds, in many subtle ways, our body is reminded closely of the times when we were conceived. Our biological instincts treat this experience like being in a safe space.
Physically it’s also a sanctuary.
Take a deep breath, clear your mind, and enjoy the rare chance of being disconnected. And by the time you get off the flight, enjoy the first breath of fresh air that hits your nostrils again. It’s kind of like your very first breath. And you are reborn again.

I finished ‘s book "The Pathless Path" on my last long-haul flight, and it was great! It puts so many of my thoughts on ‘purpose in life’ / 'working towards your calling’ etc into words. I appreciate the energy & time you put into this! 💖 It inspires me to put my own story into words, and I can’t wait to share that soon as well.
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城市女孩・慢生活的新舊朋友們，這週過得好嗎？在不間斷的旅行兩年後，選擇留職停薪的同時我也選擇暫時不要再旅遊了，好能靜下心來做其他想做的事情。前幾天是我四個月以來第一次搭飛機，我便藉此反思了一下搭飛機對我的意義。

搭飛機的意義對我來說既是重逢，又是探險，但近來更覺得它實際像個庇護所一般。從小因為核心家庭橫跨兩個城市，搭飛機是只要一有時間的訪親之必要行程，而當我長大、經濟獨立之後，搭飛機不再是為了訪親，而是演變成探索未知世界的途徑。
但當我開始更長一個人搭長途飛機之後，機艙宛如一個心靈庇護所一般的陪伴著我的每一趟旅程。
從一般的手機演變為智能手機、一封兩三元的簡訊到有網路就可以無限量收到社交媒體的即時訊息，只有在飛機上沒有網路的時候才能輕鬆的與世隔絕。開啟飛航模式後，沒有任何資訊可以遠端傳輸後，彷彿時間停止般。頓時發現，現在不能再去求取新的資訊了，手邊只有：手機裡的照片、筆記本裡的筆記、日記簿、 以及平常被外在環境掩蓋的潛意識。
雖然飛機可以隨時點閱機上娛樂系統，又可花錢購買機上網路，可以輕鬆地過著與地面上相似的時光，但從兩年前我開始頻繁飛行後，我決定暫時不要一直看電影，除非必要也不要買網路了。我嘗試著在飛機上寫日記、練習冥想，畢竟除了在飛機上的時候，還有什麼時候你可以理所當然的不受外界干擾、不必收任何訊息通知，即便你想分心去看，也沒有半則新通知呢？
這也就是為什麼我覺得搭飛機時有種心靈庇護所的感覺。
爾後我也發現，我在飛機上睡得很好，而且好到好像比平日睡覺還睡得好似的。這是我很難理解的，畢竟我也都是搭經濟艙啊。我有一次去看神經外科的時候，順便詢問了一下醫生，他竟然跟我說：「你在飛機上睡得很好正常啊，你的身體應該覺得回到胎兒時期，彷彿還在媽媽的肚子裡呢。」飛機雖然設計的時候不是仿造一個胎盤的樣子，卻因為是一個密閉空間、又有很大的引擎聲音，讓人有種回到母胎的感覺，即便它實際的功能也只是讓人可以加速從兩地之間通勤所花的時間。我們的生物本能將這個視為一個安全的所在地。
也就是說，除了心靈相個庇護所，身體也將此視為一個庇護所。
那下次你也搭上飛機時，記得深呼吸，試著清空你的大腦，並好好享受難得與世隔絕的機會。當你下飛機時，更可以珍惜第一口新鮮的空氣，有點想是呱呱墜地的那一刻一樣，你也可以體會一個重生的感覺～
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ofc i had to write this on a flight 前幾天的飛行隨筆

airplane's alternative meanings 飛行的多重意義

full moon edition &#28415;&#26376;&#31687;

“I landed in Kathmandu, Nepal, and went on a day tour. While immersed in the snowy scenery, I boarded a plane to glide further up the hill. Nothing made sense here, but I played along. I met up with my best friends at the top of the hill, it is no longer snowy. We met my new favorite house artist duo Polo & Pan, chatted for a bit and suddenly we were in a waterpark of sorts and started going all the way down the river on a watermobile. Perhaps it was a river raft. And I felt the wind bracing my face, the water splashing, the twists and turns, and the adrenaline rush. Before I arrive at the destination, I woke up.” — excerpt from my dream journal.
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what do dreams mean
Dreams are an extension of my subconscious — adventurous, spontaneous, and all over the place. Sometimes they are as ordinary as real-life events too, and might even serve as an implication of what will happen in the future. From a young age, I was convinced that dreams are not that separate from reality unless I dream about a gunfight with myself in it. Quoting the popular Chinese philosophy concept that “all beings are interconnected” and putting it in relation to dreamworld and our real-world, it’s not too hard to imagine the interconnectedness of dreams and reality. They can mean everything or nothing, but they are definitely not separate from what we consider as reality.
stressful dreams indicate a stressful life
Last week a Taiwanese Chinese Medicine Doctor friend of mine visited Hong Kong and while we were discussing my new venture, she took my pulse reading.  “I see you are trying to live a slow life. But wow your brain is not slow at all. You have frequent dreams?” Why yes I do! And so I’ve learned — frequent and vivid dreams, often stressful, indicate a stressful life. This is not the first time someone told me about this correlation. Earlier in the year I did a sleep study in Taipei, both for snoring (lol) and not feeling restful after waking up. Luckily there are no major issues with the nature of my sleep. However, I was told by the neurologist to relax more in my waking hours, because what is not resolved in your daily life tends to continue in your sleep — even if you’re not aware of your stress.
full moon and dreams
Lately, I’ve also been made aware of the potential effects full moon has on humans. “Aries in Full Moon”, and “Mercury in Retrograde”… things are often exemplified during the full moon. We can even learn from linguistics: the word “lunatic” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lunatic) originally meant a person who went crazy in relation to the moon. Though I cannot say with certainty what effects the moon has on me, I share the experience with many online that it’s normal to not sleep well during a full moon, have very vivid dreams, and more.

Despite getting quite exhausted when I wake up sometimes, I am grateful for all the experiences I get in my dreams. On days I get exhausted, I am reminded to be more aware of my stress levels. On days I am not that exhausted, I enjoy the fun, creative, random, spontaneous experiences I had in my dreams. Some days I dream about a friend I haven’t met in a long time, and I will proceed to text them about it after waking up — this is a fun way to serendipitously keep in touch with friends I haven’t met in a long time 

shout out to my friend  who also wrote about this in her article about Lucid Dreaming! 


Productivity, Life, and LivingOS

Chasing Lucidity: Two-Year Quest to Control My Dreams

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8 months ago · 3 likes · Charlene Wang

May you all have a sweet dream, or an adventurous one. Each one can be very telling, depending on how you interpret it! Do you have restful sleep? Do you like your dreams? Let us know in the comments below!✨😊
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一轉眼我降落在尼泊爾的首都加德滿都，並開啟我一天的探索行程。身邊的景色白雪紛飛，而下一刻我已經再度踏上飛機開始繼續滑行上坡。雖然這不怎麼講理，但我依然探索下去著。我和我的好朋友們在山頂上碰頭了，奇怪的是現在已不再下雪。我巧遇了我最近很喜歡的House DJ二人組 Polo & Pan，小聊片刻後我們抵達了一個水樂園，並搭上一個獨木舟向河川下游奔馳，此時我感到風輕撫著我的臉頰、水滴四濺，在水流湍急中、腎上腺素飆高的同時，我醒了。
夢有什麼含義呢？
夢大概就是潛意識的延伸吧，充滿探險感更充滿隨機性。有時夢的卻和現實生活沒兩樣，甚至有時候似乎可以預言未來會發生的事情。從很小開始，我就深信夢跟現實沒有太大的分別，除非我夢到我在槍戰。中國哲學經常形容事情都是息息相關的，那麼把這個套用在夢境與實境的話，也不太難想像他們之間的關聯。夢可能富有含意、也可能不能太深入去追究，但無論如何都跟現實生活不能拉得太遠。
緊張的夢境意味著緊張的人生
上週我的一個中醫生好朋友從台北到香港遊玩，我在介紹香港之餘，也在分享我的茶室以及正在寫跟慢生活相關的文章。她把了一下我的脈搏之後，眉頭一皺：「我看得出來你想要嘗試過慢生活，但妳的腦袋也要慢下來啊！妳是不是多夢？」直接正中我的下懷，我不僅多夢、而且還是特別清晰的夢，經常有緊張刺激的劇情發展，而這則意味著我可能潛意識是很緊張、有壓力的。而且這也不是第一次有人跟我提起這個前因後果了。年初的時候我回台北時做了一個睡眠檢查，因為我有時會打呼、也經常醒來的時候因多夢而覺得很累。在發現我沒有什麼實質上的睡眠問題之後，神經外科醫生也是建議我要在不睡覺的時候多多放鬆心情、多多休息。畢竟醒著的時候的心情、壓力沒有處理好，就是會在睡覺的時候由身體自主處理。
滿月與夢境
近來我也學到滿月時可能會對人的身心靈有不同的影響。從語言學的角度來看，英文的詞 lunatic 意指瘋子，但其由來是源自拉丁語 luna (「月亮」)，因為人們相信月亮樣子的改變會引人間歇性瘋狂呢！我雖然尚未因為月亮而感到無比的瘋狂，但我倒是與近期網路上說法相同，滿月的時候我較容易睡不到、也較容易有無比清晰、精彩的夢境。

即便經長在醒來的時候因為多夢而感到無比勞累，但我也蠻感恩能在睡覺的時候有這麼多精彩的經驗。當醒來很累的時候，也提醒自己要多多注意自己未意識到的壓力。而醒來不累的話，我就更能好好去回味剛剛夢到的好玩、奇特的經驗。甚至經常我會濘到一個許久未見的朋友，我也會在醒來的時候趕快傳個訊息給他們，是個讓我重新聯繫朋友的好機會（我的朋友Charlene也寫了關於夢境的一篇文章，其中也提到這點！歡迎去閱讀她的文章！）
預祝各位都能有個美夢，或是在夢境裡能有個精彩的挑戰。你對於你的睡眠品質、或者是夢境有什麼看法呢？歡迎在留言區分享討論💖

dreamworld and real-world 夢境與實境

a reflection on running a physically intensive pop-up tea shop

Since running a tea shop this has been the biggest question in my head when I think about my days: am I in a flow state or am I underutilising my brain? Every day like clockwork I go to my tea shop at around 3 and stay till 8 if I can, and 6 if I have to attend Chinese medicine class in the evening. I set up shop, put out some canned drinks, display the menu, collect some filtered water, boil it and brew tea for myself, setup the sound system, play different artists&#8217; songs based on my mood &#8212; rotating between Teresa Teng, ODESZA + friends, Tame Impala, and Daft Punk. And I watch the view. Sometimes I read my book. I smile and wave at every passerby, sometimes they come over for tea or a drink, and sometimes they just smile and walk past. And a day goes by, and I go home.<div class="image-gallery-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;gallery&quot;:{&quot;images&quot;:[{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/3c85f7ea-905c-4363-ade5-845f9a271600_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/51863b8a-7feb-45e2-a6fb-e83e8b8312ed_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/2334d7a1-3309-48aa-ae0a-abecd12cfa3d_1600x1066.jpeg&quot;}],&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;Tea shop vibes!&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;staticGalleryImage&quot;:{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/c208f1e4-5f94-4299-8916-31b60acb0295_1456x474.png&quot;}},&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true}"></div>I am unable to comprehend if I am in a flow state while doing this or not. Rather than a directional flow, I feel more in a floating motion like bobbing up and down. I am not exactly in the challenge vs. skills zone of a &#8220;flow state&#8221;. While I am working at the tea shop, I still feel the texture of the moment. It requires me to focus a lot of attention on my surroundings. However, it doesn&#8217;t seem to require the typical skill I label skills to be. It&#8217;s not solving a mathematical or coding problem. It&#8217;s more on observing and guessing if the next passerby would be a customer and trying to find ways to optimize the shop in the little moments I have in between.<div class="subscription-widget-wrap-editor" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe&quot;,&quot;language&quot;:&quot;en&quot;}" data-component-name="SubscribeWidgetToDOM"><div class="subscription-widget show-subscribe"><div class="preamble">Thanks for reading City Girl Slow Life &#129535; &#22478;&#24066;&#22899;&#23401; &#24930;&#29983;&#27963;! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.</div><form class="subscription-widget-subscribe"><input type="email" class="email-input" name="email" placeholder="Type your email&#8230;" tabindex="-1"><input type="submit" class="button primary" value="Subscribe"><div class="fake-input-wrapper"><div class="fake-input"></div><div class="fake-button"></div></div></form></div></div><div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F620588b2-152d-4f3c-bf4d-c9bf334a7ef8_3240x2146.jpeg" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F620588b2-152d-4f3c-bf4d-c9bf334a7ef8_3240x2146.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F620588b2-152d-4f3c-bf4d-c9bf334a7ef8_3240x2146.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F620588b2-152d-4f3c-bf4d-c9bf334a7ef8_3240x2146.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F620588b2-152d-4f3c-bf4d-c9bf334a7ef8_3240x2146.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F620588b2-152d-4f3c-bf4d-c9bf334a7ef8_3240x2146.jpeg" width="555" height="367.4587912087912" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/620588b2-152d-4f3c-bf4d-c9bf334a7ef8_3240x2146.jpeg&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:964,&quot;width&quot;:1456,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:555,&quot;bytes&quot;:191980,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F620588b2-152d-4f3c-bf4d-c9bf334a7ef8_3240x2146.jpeg 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F620588b2-152d-4f3c-bf4d-c9bf334a7ef8_3240x2146.jpeg 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F620588b2-152d-4f3c-bf4d-c9bf334a7ef8_3240x2146.jpeg 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F620588b2-152d-4f3c-bf4d-c9bf334a7ef8_3240x2146.jpeg 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a></figure></div><blockquote>If like what Chinese philosophy says that everything is ying &amp; yang, feminine &amp; masculine. Flow to me is a more masculine energy. It is more directed with more tangible challenges that utilize tangible skills. Floating on the other hand is the same thing but more feminine. A less obvious challenge with intangible skills required. Yet it is a challenge nonetheless.</blockquote>Or perhaps I am not actually being challenged on a day-to-day, but is that truly required to live a fulfilling life? There are no right or wrong answers to &#8220;how you live your day&#8221;. But if you have full control over it, try to make it align with your soul. Any attempts to explain it, or justify it, are answers to others. You only need to answer yourself, Tania.&#33258;&#24478;&#38283;&#22987;&#25171;&#29702;&#33590;&#33302;&#24460;&#65292;&#25105;&#19981;&#31105;&#33258;&#21839;&#65306;&#25105;&#31350;&#31455;&#26159;&#24471;&#24515;&#25033;&#25163;&#30340;&#22312;&#24515;&#27969;&#20013;&#31649;&#29702;&#33590;&#33302;&#21602;&#65311;&#36996;&#26159;&#22312;&#27627;&#19981;&#21205;&#33126;&#30340;&#24773;&#27841;&#19979;&#38969;&#24290;&#24230;&#26085;&#21602;&#65311;&#27599;&#22825;&#24456;&#28310;&#26178;&#30340;&#22312;&#19977;&#40670;&#21069;&#25105;&#25269;&#36948;&#33590;&#33302;&#65292;&#20598;&#29246;&#22240;&#20621;&#26202;&#35201;&#19978;&#35506;&#25552;&#26089;&#36208;&#65292;&#19981;&#28982;&#37117;&#24453;&#21040;&#20843;&#40670;&#24038;&#21491;&#65292;&#38283;&#33302;&#22823;&#27010;&#33457;&#21313;&#20116;&#20998;&#37912;&#65292;&#23559;&#20296;&#32622;&#29289;&#25918;&#22909;&#65292;&#33590;&#20855;&#25850;&#20986;&#20358;&#65292;&#29038;&#27700;&#12289;&#27873;&#33590;&#65292;&#38568;&#24515;&#24773;&#25918;&#38899;&#27138;&#8943;&#8943;&#28982;&#24460;&#23601;&#38283;&#22987;&#30475;&#22806;&#38754;&#30340;&#39080;&#26223;&#12289;&#20598;&#29246;&#30475;&#30475;&#26360;&#65292;&#19981;&#26178;&#30340;&#21521;&#32147;&#36942;&#30340;&#36335;&#20154;&#25171;&#25307;&#21628;&#65292;&#26377;&#26178;&#26371;&#36942;&#20358;&#21917;&#26479;&#33590;&#12289;&#26377;&#26178;&#25171;&#20491;&#25307;&#21628;&#23601;&#36208;&#20102;&#12290;&#23601;&#36889;&#27171;&#23376;&#65292;&#19968;&#22825;&#36942;&#21435;&#65292;&#28982;&#24460;&#25105;&#23601;&#25910;&#25342;&#26481;&#35199;&#22238;&#23478;&#20102;&#12290;<div 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Since running a tea shop this has been the biggest question in my head when I think about my days: am I in a flow state or am I underutilising my brain? Every day like clockwork I go to my tea shop at around 3 and stay till 8 if I can, and 6 if I have to attend Chinese medicine class in the evening. I set up shop, put out some canned drinks, display the menu, collect some filtered water, boil it and brew tea for myself, setup the sound system, play different artists’ songs based on my mood — rotating between Teresa Teng, ODESZA + friends, Tame Impala, and Daft Punk. And I watch the view. Sometimes I read my book. I smile and wave at every passerby, sometimes they come over for tea or a drink, and sometimes they just smile and walk past. And a day goes by, and I go home.

I am unable to comprehend if I am in a flow state while doing this or not. Rather than a directional flow, I feel more in a floating motion like bobbing up and down. I am not exactly in the challenge vs. skills zone of a “flow state”. While I am working at the tea shop, I still feel the texture of the moment. It requires me to focus a lot of attention on my surroundings. However, it doesn’t seem to require the typical skill I label skills to be. It’s not solving a mathematical or coding problem. It’s more on observing and guessing if the next passerby would be a customer and trying to find ways to optimize the shop in the little moments I have in between.


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If like what Chinese philosophy says that everything is ying & yang, feminine & masculine. Flow to me is a more masculine energy. It is more directed with more tangible challenges that utilize tangible skills. Floating on the other hand is the same thing but more feminine. A less obvious challenge with intangible skills required. Yet it is a challenge nonetheless.

Or perhaps I am not actually being challenged on a day-to-day, but is that truly required to live a fulfilling life? There are no right or wrong answers to “how you live your day”. But if you have full control over it, try to make it align with your soul. Any attempts to explain it, or justify it, are answers to others. You only need to answer yourself, Tania.
自從開始打理茶舖後，我不禁自問：我究竟是得心應手的在心流中管理茶舖呢？還是在毫不動腦的情況下頹廢度日呢？每天很準時的在三點前我抵達茶舖，偶爾因傍晚要上課提早走，不然都待到八點左右，開舖大概花十五分鐘，將佈置物放好，茶具擺出來，煮水、泡茶，隨心情放音樂⋯⋯然後就開始看外面的風景、偶爾看看書，不時的向經過的路人打招呼，有時會過來喝杯茶、有時打個招呼就走了。就這樣子，一天過去，然後我就收拾東西回家了。

雖然才開始打理茶舖一個多禮拜，但也想知道我有沒有好好利用時間做自己喜歡做的事情，有沒有盡量處於一個完全沉浸與完全投入的心流狀態裡，但與其說沉浸，有時還覺得不如形容自己在沉浮當中，打裡茶店雖耗體力，卻彷彿在無重力的水上輕鬆的浮著般。與心流理論中提到的，在符合挑戰性的以及符合自己行事能力的情況下所遇到的心流狀態好像不太相近，雖然顧店不是一件輕鬆的事情，卻和一般習慣的具有挑戰性的事情略有不同。現在不用解數學題，不用透過寫程式代碼，卻要隨時去注意人流、有沒有人想喝茶，若點茶的話，該給他們什麼茶，以及在忙於觀察人的同時也要去想如何將店鋪管理得更好。









若將陰陽理論套用在心流理論或是我發想的沉浮理論，我覺得心流理論是比較陽剛的，心流的流動是有方向性的，是利用明確的行事能力去完成有形的挑戰時的感覺。相較之下沉浮理論是較陰柔性的，是利用不明確的能力去完成無形的挑戰中的從容感。但不能因為感到從容而不將他視為一個具挑戰性的事情吧！
或許我也不是在什麼沉浮感中啦，也不是在什麼心流中，但一定要總是受挑戰才算是活得有意義嗎？決定如何過每一天沒有一個正確答案，但你有全權決定如何過每一天。只要捫心自問，對自己有交代就好了，任何用語言去解釋自己的所作所為都是多餘的，因為語言是與他人溝通的工具，對自己負責任不需要用語言。

如果你喜歡這篇文章的話，歡迎訂閱這份電子報，每週五將會定期的寄封信到你的電郵～一起探索慢生活的韻味～
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flowing or floating? 心流抑或沉浮?

communal & infinite &#9854;&#65039; &#27704;&#24646;&#33287;&#20849;&#20139;

Tea has been deeply embedded in my life since childhood. In my pre-teen years, it was <a href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/dining-with-grandmas-friends">yumcha (tea with dimsum) with my grandparents and their friends</a> while I spent most of my holidays in Hong Kong. In my teenage years, it was my endless purchases of bubble teas in Taipei. And in the last couple of years, I&#8217;ve started curating my own tea collection by buying from local shops around Hong Kong and also from all over the world when I travel: Berlin. Tokyo. Marrakech. Chiang Mai&#8230;.<p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/subscribe?">Subscribe now</a>What I really like about tea is its communal &amp; infinite aspect.&nbsp;As tea is often brewed in a pot and shared by pouring into little cups, it celebrates sharing and community before even taking a sip. From a young age, I was taught to be the person who offers tea at the dimsum table. The beauty of tea is that you keep pouring from a pot, and after filling everyone&#8217;s cup, you request more water once the pot is empty, and another pot of tea is being brewed. You can do this repeatedly, again and again, for hours, using the exact same tea leaves. How infinite it is.Even when drinking tea alone, with the ingrained memory of tea being involved with offering and shared with other people, I feel a fuzzy warmth inside me. It&#8217;s a hug within that reminds me about my grandparents, my culture, and all the people before me who sat together and drank tea.<div class="image-gallery-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;gallery&quot;:{&quot;images&quot;:[{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/69e9d5ed-d1c4-4911-95c4-4f6b9c31d6b7_3024x4032.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/7bbb856c-9d03-4886-b134-5ddefbe24a51_3024x4032.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/068948d3-db18-4212-92d0-c291476bd6f1_3024x4032.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/bd95f2b0-e1ab-481b-8414-ec4aa8fce814_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;}],&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;Tea I've made in the last couple of weeks / days &#128150;&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Assortment of tea i've made in the last couple of weeks / days &#128150;&quot;,&quot;staticGalleryImage&quot;:{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/a8188b24-ec91-43ff-b297-dff42c2311b9_1456x1456.png&quot;}},&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true}"></div>Soon I developed a snobbiness towards tea. I enjoy drinking loose-leaf tea much more than out of a tea bag as I&#8217;ve learned that most tea bags are made with grounded tea &#8212; typically the tea that can&#8217;t hold up a full-leaf shape gets put into a tea bag. I started enjoying seeing leaves unfold themselves and release flavor, aroma, and color over time while brewing.I&#8217;ve also learned the difference between <a href="https://senchateabar.com/blogs/blog/types-of-tea">white, green, oolong, red, and black tea</a>. Some are fermented. Some aren&#8217;t. Some are roasted. Some aren&#8217;t. Some are better aged. Some aren&#8217;t. It&#8217;s fun to know the techniques involved in harvesting, and prepping it by the team farmers, before it&#8217;s consumable. But in the end, the result is still a tea leaf. But based on how it&#8217;s dried, fermented, kept, stored&#8230; it tastes different after you boil some hot water and pour over it.Speaking of pouring water&#8230; I find that the entire process of making tea involves quite a bit of attention and focus. Though it&#8217;s quite a simple three-step activity &#8212; boil, pour, brew &#8212; with the flexible timing each step can take, I get easily distracted. I remember multiple occasions where I ended up with over-brewed tea because I forgot to take the leaves out after an extended amount of time, or I ended up with no tea at all as I simply forgot to pour the water over the tea leaves after it&#8217;s boiled &#8212; for either case, usually, I remember only when I feel thirsty, realizing the tea is now too bitter, or nonexistent &#128514;. To flow with the time it takes to make tea, not get completely distracted, and not feel completely bored while waiting for water to boil or tea to brew, is a subtle piece of art.<p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/the-art-of-drinking-tea?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Share&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/the-art-of-drinking-tea?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share&action=share">Share</a>Needless to say, I am obsessed with tea. The desire to share my appreciation towards tea transformed from making my own little tea bags with loose leaves to gift friends, to now setting up a <a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Better+Water+(slow+living+tea+house)/@22.2963711,114.1760357,16z/data=!4m15!1m8!3m7!1s0x340401b7cb702591:0x35b99d786536a33c!2sBetter+Water+(slow+living+tea+house)!8m2!3d22.2960726!4d114.1758814!10e1!16s%2Fg%2F11l2cl8wvt!3m5!1s0x340401b7cb702591:0x35b99d786536a33c!8m2!3d22.2960726!4d114.1758814!16s%2Fg%2F11l2cl8wvt?hl=en&amp;entry=ttu">physical tea house</a> in the heart of Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. So if you&#8217;re in town, come join me for a cup of tea. I can&#8217;t wait to share more with you.<p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/the-art-of-drinking-tea/comments&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Leave a comment&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/the-art-of-drinking-tea/comments">Leave a 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Tea has been deeply embedded in my life since childhood. In my pre-teen years, it was yumcha (tea with dimsum) with my grandparents and their friends while I spent most of my holidays in Hong Kong. In my teenage years, it was my endless purchases of bubble teas in Taipei. And in the last couple of years, I’ve started curating my own tea collection by buying from local shops around Hong Kong and also from all over the world when I travel: Berlin. Tokyo. Marrakech. Chiang Mai….
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What I really like about tea is its communal & infinite aspect. As tea is often brewed in a pot and shared by pouring into little cups, it celebrates sharing and community before even taking a sip. From a young age, I was taught to be the person who offers tea at the dimsum table. The beauty of tea is that you keep pouring from a pot, and after filling everyone’s cup, you request more water once the pot is empty, and another pot of tea is being brewed. You can do this repeatedly, again and again, for hours, using the exact same tea leaves. How infinite it is.
Even when drinking tea alone, with the ingrained memory of tea being involved with offering and shared with other people, I feel a fuzzy warmth inside me. It’s a hug within that reminds me about my grandparents, my culture, and all the people before me who sat together and drank tea.

Soon I developed a snobbiness towards tea. I enjoy drinking loose-leaf tea much more than out of a tea bag as I’ve learned that most tea bags are made with grounded tea — typically the tea that can’t hold up a full-leaf shape gets put into a tea bag. I started enjoying seeing leaves unfold themselves and release flavor, aroma, and color over time while brewing.
I’ve also learned the difference between white, green, oolong, red, and black tea. Some are fermented. Some aren’t. Some are roasted. Some aren’t. Some are better aged. Some aren’t. It’s fun to know the techniques involved in harvesting, and prepping it by the team farmers, before it’s consumable. But in the end, the result is still a tea leaf. But based on how it’s dried, fermented, kept, stored… it tastes different after you boil some hot water and pour over it.
Speaking of pouring water… I find that the entire process of making tea involves quite a bit of attention and focus. Though it’s quite a simple three-step activity — boil, pour, brew — with the flexible timing each step can take, I get easily distracted. I remember multiple occasions where I ended up with over-brewed tea because I forgot to take the leaves out after an extended amount of time, or I ended up with no tea at all as I simply forgot to pour the water over the tea leaves after it’s boiled — for either case, usually, I remember only when I feel thirsty, realizing the tea is now too bitter, or nonexistent 😂. To flow with the time it takes to make tea, not get completely distracted, and not feel completely bored while waiting for water to boil or tea to brew, is a subtle piece of art.
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Needless to say, I am obsessed with tea. The desire to share my appreciation towards tea transformed from making my own little tea bags with loose leaves to gift friends, to now setting up a physical tea house in the heart of Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong. So if you’re in town, come join me for a cup of tea. I can’t wait to share more with you.
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從小到大，茶在我生活中已是一個不可或缺的一部分。從童年在每個假期與外公外婆喝港式飲茶開始，到青少年在台北的街頭喝著各式各樣的茶類手搖杯，到近幾年在香港的不同茶莊品茶、買茶，甚至在各個城市旅遊的時後也會特地去試茶以及買茶當作紀念品——我也漸漸建立起一個小小的收藏櫃，滿滿的都是茶。
我最喜歡喝茶的地方在於它本質是一個共享性的活動。因為一般茶的喝法是先用一個茶壺去泡茶，再去斟到小杯子裡共同享用，在還沒喝第一口的時候都已經要先與桌邊的同好共享了，是個很溫暖的感覺。從小我就被訓練在港式飲茶的場合要扮演斟茶的角色，所以對於這個步驟非常的熟悉。而每當茶斟完了，只要請餐廳伙計再加熱水，馬上又有一壺茶了。這也是我第二個喜歡茶的理由，有種永恆的感覺，同一壺茶可以喝一整個下午，重新泡好幾次茶，喝也喝不完。
即便是一個人喝茶，潛意識裡早已把「茶」和「與人共享」劃上等號，每喝一口都覺得倍感溫暖，總是讓我想起外公、外婆，以及上千年的茶文化的傳承——茶也令人懷舊。

越喝越多茶，我對於茶的要求也越來越高了。逐漸我開始遠離茶包，開始買茶葉，只喝看得到的茶葉泡出來的茶。因為透過品茶也學到一般的茶包裡都是渣渣，不用幾秒所有的氣味都泡出來了，但用看得見的茶葉泡茶的話，總是能在反覆泡茶過程中觀察到茶葉的大小、顏色、味道的轉換，也是別有一番風趣。
我也學到白茶、綠茶、烏龍茶、紅茶、黑茶的不同，有哪些是發酵過的、哪些只是日曬的、哪些要經過翻炒、哪些需要放幾年再喝。茶農們花很多心思去研發不同的製茶技術，才把茶葉送到消費者的手裡，但我覺得很奇特的是，茶葉再怎麼經過製造的過程，到頭來都還是茶葉，但卻因一些小小的製作不同，在用熱水沖過去之後，流出來的味道都不同！
說到沖熱水，整個泡茶的過程其實也是很講求專注力的。雖然是一個簡單到不行的過程，只有煮水、沖熱水、泡茶三個步驟，但因為每個步驟所需的時間很彈性，我經常中途分心，跑去做其他的事情，等到口渴的時候才想起，啊，我剛剛在泡茶～不是泡出來的茶變得濃到不行（忘了把茶葉拿出來），就是什麼茶都沒泡（水煮好了就忘了去泡茶）。要留意泡茶時所需要的彈性的時間，過程中不要過於分心，也不要感到無聊，也是一門小小的藝術呢。
現在應該可以看出來，我是有多麽熱愛茶吧！從幾年前我就開始從我的收藏櫃裡拿出不同的茶葉包成小小的分裝包給朋友，而現今決定在香港尖沙咀開一間「慢活茶室」和人分享我對於茶的愛好。現在茶室也差不多成形了，如果你在香港的話，不妨上來坐坐，讓我再和你細細分享～

communal & infinite ♾️ 永恆與共享

the art of drinking tea 喝茶的藝術

The universe is conspiring on your behalf if you let it - Rick Rubin (from the Joe Rogan podcast) &#35731;&#23431;&#23449;&#20358;&#24171;&#21161;&#20320;&#36948;&#25104;&#22818;&#24819;

An open-hearted optimism can be confused with naivety from the lens of a nihilist. However, I believe being optimistic and open-hearted are the two crucial ingredients to allow the universe to conspire on your behalf. I cannot ignore the beautiful serendipity that comes with it. The two ways I’ve noticed how I’ve been open-hearted & optimistic are (1) applying for all and any thing that interests me and (2) meeting people with genuine curiosity instead of networking with a transactional intention in mind.
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Applying for all and anything that interests me
In the past decade, a theme I happened to follow is: that I would apply to anything that sounds interesting. It would be applying for my first software internship in the Bay Area, a robotics summer camp, a 2-day hiking trip, studying abroad in Canada at 16, a 2-week medicine study trip to Oxford, organizing hackathons before even attending one, joining Christian fellowship’s service trips while not identifying as a Christian, going on a fully sponsored trip to Poland to study Polish, hosting a 500 person beach rave, being a community manager for a student-run coworking space during university… the list goes on. The stories behind each event that took place all intertwined and led to very serendipitous friendships and opportunities that I can only see in hindsight.
But what is the why behind it?
I did most of the things I did intuitively. Somehow my intuition tells me it’s a good idea to try out things even when I don’t tick all the boxes or have a clear idea of what “the thing” is. I was like a blank piece of paper or like a new sponge, eager to quickly filter through things I potentially would like, and instead of doing that in my head, I tried it out and decided afterward. Of course, I experienced hesitance, and frankly, I missed many opportunities because I put them in my backlog for later consideration. Yet the regret of missing a deadline and not applying due to indecisiveness is greater than the frustration of being rejected from an opportunity. The ball is in my court when I decide to apply or not. And somehow my intuition is optimistic too! I trust that as long as I do my part in applying, the universe will align with me if that opportunity is suited for me.
Meeting people with genuine curiosity
I used to attend tons and tons of events and parties. It could be a HealthTech founder meetup, a Bay Area Summer Intern mixer or simply grabbing coffee or dinner with someone I’ve never met before. Meeting people is inherently fun for me. It’s almost like a game: How can I quickly find commonality between me and a stranger I just met? And given how much I enjoy chance encounters, I love creating opportunities for people to experience them, hence I love organizing parties and community gatherings as well. The moment I experience laughter, awe, or surprise between myself or another person, it’s like a spark that indicates to the universe that we “connected”. Often a few years down the line, something serendipitous would happen: either a business opportunity, a new shared common interest that didn’t exist before, a friend connected you with another friend that turns out to be your soulmate or simply bumping into each other at a complete random occasion and having the chance to observe parallel growth between both of us. Meeting people is great 💖
But what is the why behind it?
On a more fundamental level: I enjoy connecting with another human being with an open heart. I enjoy learning, sharing, and growing with another person in any capacity. I believe that once we’ve met, our paths will cross again when they should. I am optimistic that a person that I meet is not here to cheat me or wrong me but to teach me a lesson in the most suitable way possible. I am grateful for the universe for bringing people into my life, again and again.

Perhaps the ability I have for open-hearted optimism stems from the rejection of the idea that time is scarce. I don’t think time spent on things I’m not 100% certain about when I don’t have a strong opinion yet is a waste of time. I don’t think my reasoning mind can be more certain about what is “right for me”. Instead, I think my intuitive mind can tell me more strongly what is “fun for me”.
So take that chance, apply to, or try out that thing you’re interested in. Have an open mind and go to that event even if you don’t know “what I will get out of it”. Try expecting that you’ll be surprised from every chance encounter let it be an opportunity or a person. And most importantly, expect it to be fun. And my optimistic mind tells me, perhaps it just might be as you manifested, and it could lead you to things you cannot imagine in the future!
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似乎對一些人來說，敞開心胸的樂天態度是一個不負責任的天真行為，但我認為只有敞開心胸的對未來充滿樂觀的期待，你才能讓宇宙幫助你得到你需要的東西。回顧成長的過程中，我發現我有兩方面都是敞開心懷以及樂天的寫照：（１）什麼事情只要感興趣都報名（２）以真誠的好奇心與人交流（而非以純社交名目見人）
什麼事情只要感興趣都報名
前幾年我發現我經常做一件事情，就是只要我有感興趣的事情，不管有沒有信心可以完成，都事先報名再說。例如我在矽谷的第一個程式設計的實習，高中參加的機器人營隊，兩天一夜的登山活動，十六歲時申請去加拿大留學一年，去牛津大學兩個禮拜的醫學營隊，在參加駭客松之前成為辦駭客松的主辦團隊成員，在不是基督徒得時候參加團契的偏鄉服務隊，參加免費去波蘭一個月的遊學行程，舉辦一場五百人的海邊派對⋯⋯數不清了。每個活動過後總是有一些新的友誼、有趣的巧合，都是要等事後才發現的。
為什麼會這樣做呢？
其實報名參加不同活動、機會都是靠直覺去做的。我的直覺告訴我，對什麼東西有興趣就試試看呀，不需要符合所有的條件，甚至也不需要太過謹慎去深入了解這東西是不自己真的喜歡的。我彷彿一張白紙一般，想要透過實際嘗試所有事情來深入了解自己到底喜歡什麼，而非單單在腦袋裡思索。試過了，再決定適不適合。當然，我也不是所有事情都是直覺性的去做的，也是會猶疑的，也經常因為一時的猶疑而錯過了一些好機會。坦然而言，我覺得因自己的遲疑錯過一個機會比被他人拒絕一個機會還要令人懊悔，畢竟掌控權在自己的手裡，是自己錯失的！而我的直覺也是蠻樂觀的，我相信如果一個機會跟我有緣的話，宇宙會在我申請報名之後讓我知道的，而被拒絕的也就只是無緣而已。
以真誠的好奇心與人交流
我以前也經常參加很多活動以及派對，像是醫療保健科技界的創辦人見面會，或是矽谷的暑期實習的交友會，也許單純是和我沒見過的人一起喝杯咖啡、吃頓飯。與人交流對我來說是真的很有趣的。每見到一個人，陌生人或熟人都一樣，就像玩一場遊戲般：我要如何在最短的時間內，找到我們的共通點？而我也對每一個偶遇感到窩心，與其像是跟一個陌生人對話，更像是跟宇宙對話。因為我很喜歡偶遇的感覺，我也很喜歡創造讓人偶遇的機會，也就是為麼我也很喜歡辦派對以及各式活動。和一個人認真的有對到邊的感覺，通常就是因為一個不經意的笑聲、一個驚豔的感覺，而每當有這個感覺的時候，就像一個閃爍的光芒，告訴宇宙：我們倆雖素不相識，但我們對到邊了！經常過幾個月、或幾年，一些偶然的巧合會讓你們再次相見：可能是一個新的工作商機、可能是有個意想不到的興趣、或單純在偶遇的時候有個機會可以觀察兩人在貌似平行時空裡是如何成長的。💖
為什麼會這樣做呢？
我很喜歡敞開心胸的和一個人去做交流，我喜歡與人學習、分享，甚至一起成長。我也深信只要見過一次，未來時機對的時候一定會再見面的。我也很樂觀的認為，沒有人是會刻意想要傷害我的，頂多是在人生學習的道路上的一個教訓。我很感恩宇宙一再的帶不同的人到我的生命裡面～😍

也許能敞開心胸去樂觀的對待事物是因為我並不覺得時間是絕對的有限的。我不覺得花時間去做我不是百分之百確定我有興趣的事是浪費時間的。我不認為我的理性的腦能知道什麼是「對的事」，而我認為我感性的腦可以更清楚的告訴我什麼是比較「有趣的事」。與其選擇對的，我寧願選擇有趣、好玩的。
放手一搏吧！去報名、嘗試你有興趣的事情，用一個開放的胸懷去參加那個你不知道到底對你有什麼幫助的活動。開始期望你每個偶遇的人或是機會都會帶給你驚豔的感覺！而最重要的是，期望它會是有趣、好玩的。都這麼樂觀了，與人的相處或事情的進展可能就是會帶給你這些正面的感覺，並在未來的某個不知道的時機帶給你意想不到的精彩！
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The universe is conspiring on your behalf if you let it - Rick Rubin (from the Joe Rogan podcast) 讓宇宙來幫助你達成夢想

open-hearted optimism 敞開胸懷＆樂天態度

can you recreate the magical feeling in a busy city? &#22478;&#24066;&#35041;&#20063;&#33021;&#35079;&#35069;&#39764;&#24187;&#21147;&#37327;

I visited teamLab’s Botanical Gardens exhibition in Osaka recently. If you aren’t familiar with teamLab, they are an interdisciplinary art collective that organizes immersive art experiences in many cities around the world. And the one I went to was a night exhibition located in Osaka’s Nagai Botanical Garden. It’s best to not know what you’ll expect and carry an open heart, so you can let your attention and curiosity be fully guided by the artist and let them lead you towards the lights, the sound show, or simply the botanical plants in front of you.
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The botanical garden in the day is simply a botanical garden, but it is transformed into an interactive visual and audio experience at night. When surrounded by darkness, it’s quite easy to focus on the beautiful rays of colors curated by the artists who designed it. What an amazing venue to create an immersive experience! Walking around the garden, there are quite literal “easter eggs” with egg-looking light installations changing their hue alongside the music. By putting my full focus on the changing colors, I feel like the light installation is alive. And I feel connected to it. As cheesy as it sounds, I felt a magical fairy dust energy in that garden.







The lively easter eggs, pictures don’t do it justice! Pic taken when I visited teamLab Osaka on May 18th 2023
I was reminded of all the mystical fairy tale characters that existed before me: Tinkerbell from Peter Pan, the easter bunny, garden fairies, gnomes, tree nymphs, and even Snow White and the 7 dwarves… they all seem to originate from living in close proximity to nature. While it’s nice living in a busy and convenient city, I wonder how much it reduces our innate curiosity towards nature. When was the last time you appreciated the trees, the flowers, the sun, or the clouds? Do you look at a tree and wonder about its spirits? Or look at little flowers and wonder if a gnome has taken care of it? Or if a butterfly has visited before you? Or there are dwarves living in a trunk?
The experience at teamLab was very curated, yet I believe that the curiosity and awe towards nature it triggered inside me should be accessible otherwise as well. But how? Though we don’t quite have the full nature experiences in cities, let’s see how we can try to replicate a teamLab experience in our day-to-day.
Here are a few points of a successful teamLab experience:

Participants walk into a venue knowing that they will be surprised by an immersive light and music show.

The environment is curated and controlled (darkness with selected light beams), making it easy to focus on one or two sensations at once (vision & audio).

The art created by the artists is simply beautiful.

The experience is limited in time, as you are expected to make a loop around the botanical garden in about an hour or so (I personally spent two hours there 🙈)

To replicate this in our day-to-day, try doing one of the following:

Pick a park to spend 30 minutes in, and set an intention to explore in

When entering the park, pick one or two sensations to focus on. We can focus on vision & audio too.

Try to perk up your eyes and ears as much as possible. Look for something that surprises you.

In addition to focusing on what you see and what you hear, try to breathe slowly and steadily.


Turn your commute time into your “nature appreciation time”

Try to find 5 different plants during your commute time.

Try to find 5 different sounds during your commute time.

Notice your feelings after collecting the items you’ve noticed.


Though we don’t have amazing night installations all the time, we have beautiful rays of colors in the daytime blessed by the sun’s rays that touch anything it sees. The world can be an amazing light and sound show, we just need to notice it! Try setting an intention and focus on noticing what’s surrounding you — then I think even in a busy city, we can experience the magic fairy dust energy! 🧚‍♀️
And if you can, I highly recommend you to experience one of teamLab’s exhibitions. After experiencing it fully, take that and add more color to your day-to-day! 🌈
前幾個月我在大阪旅遊的時候體驗了teamLab在日本大阪長居植物園的夜間展覽，你若沒聽過teamLab的話，他們是一個多媒體藝術公司，專門創造一些讓你直接沈浸於周遭環境的展覽藝術，他們在日本有幾個常設展，而在世界各地也有不同的巡迴展。參展前，最好不要在網路上做太多功課，這樣你去的時候才會保有新鮮感～記得帶著一個開放的好奇心，才能看得到展覽人精心設計的聲光秀，或觀察到可愛的植物們～
白天的植物園單單只是一個植物園，但晚上的時候變成科技與大自然合而為一的聲光秀。在夜幕來臨時，任何耀眼的光線的到來就能馬上吸引你的目光。不知道除了植物園以外還有什麼更美的場景來製造一個聲光秀！在植物園裡散步時，有蠻多「彩蛋」的，五顏六色的彩蛋遍佈公園的一隅，雖著音樂緩緩地變換燈光，充滿濃濃的生命力，好像可以跟我對話一般。整個公園瀰漫一股魔幻的仙女降臨的感覺～







大阪植物園的展區一隅，是不是看得到可愛的彩蛋呢？（攝於2023.05.18）
這不禁讓我聯想到不同文化的神話裡有的不同的大自然相關的角色，有彼得班裡面的奇妙仙子小叮噹、復活節的班尼兔、保護花園的地精(gnomes)、歐洲神話的森林女神 (tree nymphs)、甚至有白雪公主與那七個小矮人⋯⋯這麼多神秘的大自然的想像似乎都來自於長期與大自然緊密相處的人們的想像。當我們遠離自然居住於大城市時，不知道我們的好奇心與想像力是否就也漸漸減少了呢？你記得你上次什麼時候深刻的感謝身邊的大樹、小花、暖日以及雲朵嗎？有沒有感受到大樹的靈氣？有沒有納悶花兒們是不是給地精照顧的好好的、蝴蝶上次光顧她是什麼時候？樹幹裡住著小矮人嗎？
當然teamLab的展覽是一個設計得獨一無二的體驗，但我覺得看展時對自然的的好奇心與驚奇感是在日常生活中也可以體會的。雖然在城市裡的大自然較少，但畢竟這場teamLab辦的是在植物園裡面，我相信在沒有燈光秀的時候也是可以複製當初看展的感覺的。teamLab的展成功在於：

觀展人是在進入植物園之前，因為先行購票、預定時間，並已經預期會對於聲光秀有驚奇感的。

環境是控制的：黑暗裡有特定的燈光設計，讓觀展人容易去聚焦於一兩個感官——視覺以及聽覺。

藝術家設計的聲光藝術真的很美、很精緻。

展覽時間是限時間的，大約走個一個小時就可以走完整個園區（我自己是花了兩個多小時慢慢品味的哈哈）

在日常生活中，我嘗試以下兩種方法去複製自然的驚奇感：

在居住的城市裡選一個公園，並花三十分鐘去探索：

進入公園時，可以選擇去聚焦於一兩個感官，例如視覺與聽覺。

仔細觀察，有什麼是你預料之外的呢？

在聚焦於感官的同時，試著放慢你的呼吸⋯⋯


把通勤（交通）時間當作一個〈欣賞大自然〉的時間：

試著認出五種不同的植物

試著聽出五個不同的聲音

在你找到以上的植物及聲音之後，內心有什麼感覺嗎？


雖然我們不是雖時能體驗驚人的夜間聲光秀，但白天時太陽的陽光碰到的每個東西都因而染上一身漂亮的色彩。大自然隨時都在上演一場聲光秀，只是平常我們不留意而已。嘗試一下，刻意的去留意周遭的所有細節，那在一個繁忙的城市裡，應該也可以感受的大自然的魔幻力量的🧚‍♀️
當然你如果有機會的話，我也牆裡推薦你去體驗一場teamLab的展覽，並期望你在觀展後，也能將她的色彩帶回日常生活之中。🌈

can you recreate the magical feeling in a busy city? 城市裡也能複製魔幻力量

Magic in Nature (post-teamLab Osaka) 大自然的魔法

From desperately reducing time spent to enjoying every moment &#24478;&#31934;&#25171;&#32048;&#31639;&#21040;&#31934;&#24515;&#39636;&#39511;&#27599;&#19968;&#21051;

My relationship with commuting is interesting. In a previous article called <a href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/look-up-and-youll-be-in-awe">&#8220;Look up and you&#8217;ll be in Awe&#8221;</a> I&#8217;ve briefly mentioned the idea of commuting being the &#8220;in-between time&#8221;. I love running around a city like Hong Kong, and commuting has become a necessity. To get to the gorgeous beach of <a href="https://www.discoverhongkong.com/eng/explore/great-outdoor/wellness/repulse-bay.html">Repulse Bay</a>, all I need to do is hop on a bus and I&#8217;ll be there in less than 30 minutes, or anywhere else for food to meet a friend, I&#8217;ll just hop on a bus or a train and be there in no time. Because of the convenience and efficiency of Hong Kong, I&#8217;d expect things to happen on the dot. And yet commuting to me was always the in-between time. I would pack my day with activities I want to do, and just assume the commute will just work out.<p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/subscribe?">Subscribe now</a>Commuting was the in-between time I desperately wanted to reduce. It&#8217;s the in-between. It&#8217;s not the main activity. The point of getting to a restaurant to have a nice candle-lit dinner is that nice dinner, not how I get there. It&#8217;s the person I&#8217;m meeting with when I get there, not the road I&#8217;m taking. The more tools there are to help me be more productive with my day, the more linear time seems.Here&#8217;s a true story:<blockquote>If Google Maps says it&#8217;ll take exactly 23 minutes to get there, I will leave exactly 23 minutes before. Or perhaps I&#8217;ll leave a few minutes later &#8212; I can probably be faster than Google Maps. There will be nothing standing in between me and my nice dinner. Oh no, the train left a few seconds before I arrived at the station, I&#8217;m going to be 10 minutes late now. I shouldn&#8217;t have trusted Google Maps. Or wait, I should&#8217;ve just left earlier.Or perhaps I just hop on an Uber / Taxi because I cannot deal with the commute uncertainties. Uber says, if I get on now, I will be there at exactly 17 minutes. I will hence call an Uber only 17 minutes before. Oh no, the Uber takes more than 10 minutes to arrive? I am getting late! It&#8217;s terrible!~ End story ~</blockquote>Somehow I desperately try to calculate the exact amount of time needed for getting from A to B. Yet in doing so, I feel stressed, anxious, and oftentimes quite late to an appointment. Though admittedly sometimes I do enjoy a little adrenaline rush from a sprint towards a bus, I am tired of being out of breath. Through multiple attempts to live more in the moment, I slowly came to realize that commuting is no longer the time in between. As unappealing as it may sound, it IS the present moment. And the same moment won&#8217;t be there again after it has passed.Here are a few little tips for being more in the moment while commuting:<ul><li>Focus: Focus on the sensation of your own breathing or even to the sensation of holding the handrail</li><li>Observe: Look up or look out at the window and enjoy the view! What do the clouds look like today? Or maybe look around and smile at the strangers around you.</li><li>Listen: Is there traffic? Are there birds chirping? Perhaps the wind is strong? What do you hear?</li><li>Practical tip: Leave 5-10 minutes earlier than what Google Maps tells you to. Leave some room for surprises.</li><li>And a little challenge: Can you try to memorize your commute route without looking at your phone at all? Can you make sure to keep your phone in your pocket and not use it during the commute?</li><li>Metta: Maybe you&#8217;ve practiced <a href="https://mindworks.org/blog/getting-started-metta-meditation/">Metta (loving-kindness) meditation</a>, try doing that to fellow passengers that are sharing space with you. Wish them well. Be happy to be sharing the same space with them. You can relate to each other as you all are going somewhere, and somehow you&#8217;re crossing paths in a busy city &#8212; right here and now.</li></ul>What are tips for you to enjoy commuting? Please share with us in the comments below &#10024;<div class="image-gallery-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;gallery&quot;:{&quot;images&quot;:[{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/49612a73-a8a3-4cc3-8019-2da544947939_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/97bb56a7-eb61-40c9-a094-0a8aed0e0ba8_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/78e5c695-e9ff-4739-aaf0-ca90ce991407_1326x1264.png&quot;}],&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;Lovely photos of commuting. My grandma walking with her friend with matching clothes, sunset outside the bus, and gorgeous scenery visible from the Airport Express&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Lovely photos of commuting. My grandma walking with her friend with matching clothes, sunset outside the bus, and gorgeous scenery visible from the Airport Express&quot;,&quot;staticGalleryImage&quot;:{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/879a57c6-71a3-4296-ac42-4ee28622a08e_1456x474.png&quot;}},&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true}"></div><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/slow-commuting/comments&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Leave a comment&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/slow-commuting/comments">Leave a 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href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/look-up-and-youll-be-in-awe">&#24537;&#20013;&#26377;&#39192;&#25260;&#38957;&#20208;&#26395;&#22825;&#31354;&#21543;</a>&#12301;&#25944;&#23531;&#36890;&#21220;&#22914;&#27492;&#65306;&#36245;&#20358;&#36245;&#21435;&#65292;&#22909;&#20687;&#24680;&#19981;&#24471;&#21487;&#20197;&#30636;&#38291;&#31227;&#21205;&#65292;&#22240;&#28858;&#22312;&#36335;&#19978;&#30340;&#26178;&#20505;&#26681;&#26412;&#19981;&#26159;&#33258;&#24049;&#20027;&#35201;&#24819;&#20570;&#30340;&#20107;&#24773;&#12290;&#32317;&#26159;&#20808;&#25226;&#19968;&#22825;&#25490;&#28415;&#24819;&#20570;&#30340;&#20107;&#24773;&#65292;&#20877;&#35373;&#27861;&#25226;&#37027;&#20013;&#38291;&#30340;&#26178;&#38291;&#25824;&#20986;&#20358;&#32102;&#36890;&#21220;&#12290;&#32317;&#26159;&#24819;&#65292;&#21453;&#27491;&#20132;&#36890;&#24456;&#26041;&#20415;&#22043;&#65292;&#38928;&#30041;&#37027;&#40636;&#19968;&#40670;&#40670;&#26178;&#38291;&#23601;&#22909;&#20102;&#65292;&#36245;&#19968;&#19979;&#23601;&#21487;&#20197;&#20102;&#21543;&#65281;&#36890;&#21220;&#26159;&#19968;&#20491;&#25105;&#24680;&#19981;&#24471;&#21487;&#20197;&#28187;&#23569;&#30340;&#26178;&#38291;&#65292;&#23427;&#21482;&#26159;&#20491;&#23567;&#37197;&#35282;&#32780;&#24050;&#65292;&#20027;&#35282;&#26159;&#25105;&#36890;&#21220;&#24460;&#35201;&#25269;&#36948;&#30340;&#29165;&#20809;&#26202;&#39184;&#12289;&#20027;&#35282;&#26159;&#25105;&#31561;&#31561;&#35201;&#35211;&#30340;&#20154;&#65292;&#36335;&#31243;&#21482;&#26159;&#20491;&#37197;&#35282;&#32780;&#24050;&#12290;&#26377;&#26356;&#22810;&#31185;&#25216;APP&#21487;&#20197;&#35731;&#25105;&#30340;&#36890;&#21220;&#26178;&#38291;&#26356;&#27969;&#32218;&#21270;&#23601;&#22909;&#20102;&#65292;&#26178;&#38291;&#24439;&#24447;&#30495;&#30340;&#21487;&#20197;&#34987;&#20999;&#21106;&#25104;&#31561;&#20998;&#30340;&#23567;&#22602;&#65292;&#25226;&#25645;&#36554;&#30340;&#26178;&#38291;&#25918;&#22312;&#36889;&#19968;&#23567;&#22602;&#35041;&#65292;&#25226;&#21507;&#39151;&#30340;&#26178;&#38291;&#25918;&#22312;&#26356;&#22810;&#20491;&#23567;&#22602;&#35041;&#8943;&#8943;&#20197;&#19979;&#24773;&#31680;&#37117;&#26159;&#30495;&#30340;&#30332;&#29983;&#36942;&#30340;&#65306;<blockquote>&#22914;&#26524;Google Maps&#36319;&#25105;&#35498;&#21435;&#19968;&#20491;&#22320;&#26041;&#35201;&#33457;&#20108;&#21313;&#19977;&#20998;&#37912;&#65292;&#25105;&#23601;&#26371;&#20877;&#21152;&#26481;&#25720;&#25720;&#35199;&#25720;&#25720;&#21040;&#21083;&#22909;&#20108;&#21313;&#19977;&#20998;&#37912;&#21069;&#20877;&#20986;&#38272;&#21475;&#65292;&#30070;&#28982;&#26377;&#26178;&#20505;&#26371;&#19981;&#30041;&#24847;&#65292;&#23601;&#19981;&#23567;&#24515;&#26202;&#20102;&#24190;&#20998;&#37912;&#65292;&#24515;&#24819;&#65306;&#21453;&#27491;&#25105;&#25033;&#35442;&#21487;&#20197;&#27604;Google&#24555;&#21543;&#12290;&#19981;&#21487;&#33021;&#26377;&#20219;&#20309;&#24046;&#37679;&#30340;&#12290;&#22114;&#19981;&#65292;&#22320;&#37941;&#65288;&#25110;&#24052;&#22763;&#65289;&#26089;&#20102;&#24190;&#31186;&#37912;&#36208;&#20102;&#65292;&#25105;&#35201;&#31561;&#19979;&#19968;&#29677;&#65292;&#31967;&#31957;&#65292;&#25105;&#35201;&#36978;&#21040;&#20102;&#12290;&#25105;&#19981;&#35442;&#30456;&#20449;Google Maps&#30340;&#65292;&#22114;&#19981;&#65292;&#25105;&#25033;&#35442;&#26089;&#40670;&#20986;&#38272;&#30340;&#12290;&#22240;&#28858;&#26377;&#20197;&#19978;&#30340;&#32147;&#39511;&#65292;&#26377;&#26178;&#20505;&#36996;&#26159;&#25645;Uber&#25110;&#35336;&#31243;&#36554;&#22909;&#20102;&#65292;&#40670;&#23565;&#40670;&#65292;&#19981;&#29992;&#22810;&#36208;&#36335;&#65292;APP&#20063;&#35498;&#21482;&#35201;&#21313;&#19971;&#20998;&#37912;&#23601;&#21040;&#20102;&#65292;&#37027;&#25105;&#21313;&#19971;&#20998;&#37912;&#21069;&#20877;&#21483;&#36554;&#23601;&#22909;&#20102;&#12290;&#21448;&#22312;&#23478;&#26481;&#25720;&#25720;&#35199;&#25720;&#25720;&#65292;&#20877;&#20358;&#21483;&#36554;&#30340;&#26178;&#20505;&#65292;&#31967;&#31957;&#65292;&#28858;&#20160;&#40636;&#35201;&#31561;&#21313;&#20998;&#37912;&#36554;&#25165;&#20358;&#65311;&#24920;&#20102;&#65292;&#21448;&#35201;&#36978;&#21040;&#20102;&#12290;&#23436;</blockquote>&#32317;&#20043;&#65292;&#25105;&#32147;&#24120;&#31934;&#25171;&#32048;&#31639;&#36890;&#21220;&#25152;&#38656;&#35201;&#33457;&#30340;&#26178;&#38291;&#65292;&#22909;&#20687;&#22810;&#19968;&#21051;&#20063;&#19981;&#34892;&#19968;&#27171;&#65292;&#20294;&#36889;&#27171;&#31934;&#31639;&#19981;&#20677;&#33457;&#26356;&#22810;&#26178;&#38291;&#65292;&#26356;&#33457;&#26356;&#22810;&#24515;&#24605;&#12290;&#36890;&#21220;&#21453;&#20498;&#35722;&#24471;&#20196;&#20154;&#24456;&#32202;&#24373;&#12289;&#28966;&#24942;&#65292;&#32780;&#32147;&#24120;&#32080;&#26524;&#26159;&#65306;&#25105;&#36978;&#21040;&#20102;&#12290;&#38614;&#28982;&#26377;&#26178;&#20505;&#26159;&#26377;&#40670;&#21916;&#27489;&#36245;&#24052;&#22763;&#24118;&#20358;&#30340;&#33102;&#19978;&#33146;&#32032;&#24613;&#21319;&#65292;&#20294;&#23526;&#22312;&#20037;&#20102;&#20063;&#35258;&#24471;&#22909;&#20687;&#19981;&#24517;&#35201;&#19968;&#30452;&#36889;&#40636;&#19978;&#27683;&#19981;&#25509;&#19979;&#27683;&#21543;&#65281;&#22312;&#35373;&#27861;&#26356;&#27963;&#22312;&#30070;&#19979;&#30340;&#12289;&#39636;&#26371;&#24930;&#29983;&#27963;&#30340;&#21516;&#26178;&#65292;&#25105;&#28472;&#28472;&#30332;&#29694;&#65306;&#36890;&#21220;&#20006;&#19981;&#26159;&#38656;&#35201;&#21162;&#21147;&#21435;&#28187;&#23569;&#30340;&#26178;&#38291;&#21834;&#65292;&#36890;&#21220;&#30340;&#27599;&#19968;&#21051;&#65292;&#37117;&#26159;&#30070;&#19979;&#12290;&#21363;&#20415;&#20320;&#19981;&#21916;&#27489;&#36890;&#21220;&#65292;&#20063;&#19981;&#25913;&#35722;&#23427;&#26159;&#30070;&#19979;&#30340;&#37325;&#35201;&#24615;&#12290;&#36890;&#21220;&#30340;&#26178;&#38291;&#21644;&#21507;&#39151;&#30340;&#26178;&#38291;&#19968;&#27171;&#65292;&#36942;&#21435;&#20102;&#23601;&#19981;&#20877;&#20358;&#20102;&#12290;&#25152;&#20197;&#36996;&#26159;&#35373;&#27861;&#22312;&#36890;&#21220;&#30340;&#26178;&#20505;&#65292;&#26356;&#20139;&#21463;&#30070;&#19979;&#21543;&#12290;&#36889;&#35041;&#26159;&#25105;&#24819;&#21040;&#30340;&#24190;&#20491;&#26041;&#27861;&#65306;<ul><li>&#38598;&#20013;&#31934;&#31070;&#65306;&#21435;&#24863;&#21463;&#20320;&#22312;&#36890;&#21220;&#26178;&#30340;&#21628;&#21560;&#65292;&#25110;&#24863;&#21463;&#20320;&#25163;&#25569;&#36554;&#19978;&#30340;&#25289;&#29872;&#25110;&#25206;&#25163;&#30340;&#35320;&#24863;</li><li>&#23560;&#24515;&#27880;&#35222;&#65306;&#24448;&#22825;&#31354;&#25110;&#31383;&#22806;&#30475;&#30475;&#22806;&#38754;&#30340;&#39080;&#26223;&#65292;&#20170;&#22825;&#30340;&#38642;&#38263;&#20160;&#40636;&#27171;&#23376;&#21602;&#65311;&#25110;&#29872;&#35222;&#36523;&#37002;&#30340;&#20854;&#20182;&#20056;&#23458;&#65292;&#20063;&#35377;&#23565;&#20182;&#20497;&#31505;&#19968;&#19979;&#9786;&#65039;</li><li>&#20180;&#32048;&#32838;&#32893;&#65306;&#26377;&#22622;&#36554;&#21966;&#65311;&#26377;&#20154;&#22312;&#25353;&#21895;&#21485;&#21966;&#65311;&#25110;&#26377;&#40165;&#40180;&#21966;&#65311;&#25110;&#32893;&#24471;&#21040;&#22806;&#38754;&#30340;&#39080;&#21966;&#65311;</li><li>&#23526;&#29992;&#25216;&#24039;&#65306;&#27604;Google Map&#38928;&#28204;&#30340;&#26178;&#38291;&#26089;&#20116;&#21040;&#21313;&#20998;&#37912;&#20986;&#38272;&#21543;&#65292;&#26356;&#26377;&#24392;&#24615;&#19968;&#40670;&#65292;&#20063;&#35377;&#26377;&#20160;&#40636;&#31361;&#30332;&#30340;&#36259;&#20107;&#20063;&#19981;&#19968;&#23450;&#21602;</li><li>&#19968;&#20491;&#25361;&#25136;&#65306;&#20320;&#21487;&#20197;&#35430;&#33879;&#35352;&#19979;&#36890;&#21220;&#30340;&#36335;&#24465;&#65292;&#22312;&#21069;&#24448;&#30446;&#30340;&#22320;&#30340;&#36942;&#20013;&#20013;&#37117;&#19981;&#30475;&#25163;&#27231;&#21966;&#65311;&#21487;&#20197;&#30906;&#20445;&#20320;&#30340;&#25163;&#27231;&#20840;&#31243;&#37117;&#22312;&#21475;&#34955;&#35041;&#19981;&#25343;&#20986;&#20358;&#21966;&#65311;</li><li>&#24904;&#24859;&#20901;&#24819;&#65306; &#22914;&#26524;&#20320;&#26377;&#22039;&#35430;&#36942;<a href="https://today.line.me/tw/v2/article/m8Kk2m">&#24904;&#24859;&#20901;&#24819; (loving-kindness) meditation</a>&#65292;&#35430;&#35430;&#30475;&#23565;&#21608;&#37002;&#30340;&#38476;&#29983;&#20056;&#23458;&#20570;&#24904;&#24859;&#20901;&#24819;&#12290;&#24863;&#35613;&#20182;&#20497;&#22312;&#21644;&#20320;&#19968;&#36215;&#20849;&#20056;&#65292;&#31069;&#31119;&#20182;&#20497;&#24179;&#23433;&#12289;&#26377;&#20491;&#32654;&#22909;&#30340;&#19968;&#22825;&#12290;&#22312;&#19968;&#20491;&#36889;&#40636;&#22823;&#30340;&#22478;&#24066;&#35041;&#38754;&#65292;&#26377;&#22810;&#38627;&#24471;&#22312;&#20154;&#29983;&#30340;&#36947;&#36335;&#19978;&#30456;&#36935;&#65292;&#22312;&#27492;&#21051;&#65292;&#36889;&#36635;&#24052;&#22763;&#19978;&#38754;&#12290;</li></ul><div class="image-gallery-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;gallery&quot;:{&quot;images&quot;:[{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/cfa77bc6-fa5c-403e-a570-f12fa7aee802_1326x1264.png&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e8c3cae0-155e-4883-898a-bca3e5f59d6d_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/73db6aa4-62bf-44de-83c3-85e76b3c1441_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;}],&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&#36890;&#21220;&#30340;&#26223;&#33394;&#65306;&#25645;&#20056;&#39321;&#28207;&#30340;&#27231;&#22580;&#24555;&#32171;&#12289;&#22312;&#24052;&#22763;&#19978;&#30475;&#22805;&#38525;&#12289;&#22806;&#23110;&#21644;&#22905;&#26379;&#21451;&#31359;&#19968;&#27171;&#30340;&#34915;&#26381;&#36208;&#22312;&#38651;&#25206;&#26799;&#19978;&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&#36890;&#21220;&#30340;&#26223;&#33394;&#65306;&#25645;&#20056;&#39321;&#28207;&#30340;&#27231;&#22580;&#24555;&#32171;&#12289;&#22312;&#24052;&#22763;&#19978;&#30475;&#22805;&#38525;&#12289;&#22806;&#23110;&#21644;&#22905;&#26379;&#21451;&#31359;&#19968;&#27171;&#30340;&#34915;&#26381;&#36208;&#22312;&#38651;&#25206;&#26799;&#19978;&quot;,&quot;staticGalleryImage&quot;:{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/c69d0eb6-c2b4-4828-bf74-6e38093e9164_1456x474.png&quot;}},&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true}"></div>&#20320;&#26377;&#20160;&#40636;&#36890;&#21220;&#30340;tips&#21966;&#65311;&#27489;&#36814;&#22312;&#19979;&#38754;&#30041;&#35328;&#35342;&#35542;&#65374;<p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/slow-commuting/comments&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Leave a comment&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/slow-commuting/comments">Leave a comment</a>

My relationship with commuting is interesting. In a previous article called “Look up and you’ll be in Awe” I’ve briefly mentioned the idea of commuting being the “in-between time”. I love running around a city like Hong Kong, and commuting has become a necessity. To get to the gorgeous beach of Repulse Bay, all I need to do is hop on a bus and I’ll be there in less than 30 minutes, or anywhere else for food to meet a friend, I’ll just hop on a bus or a train and be there in no time. Because of the convenience and efficiency of Hong Kong, I’d expect things to happen on the dot. And yet commuting to me was always the in-between time. I would pack my day with activities I want to do, and just assume the commute will just work out.
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Commuting was the in-between time I desperately wanted to reduce. It’s the in-between. It’s not the main activity. The point of getting to a restaurant to have a nice candle-lit dinner is that nice dinner, not how I get there. It’s the person I’m meeting with when I get there, not the road I’m taking. The more tools there are to help me be more productive with my day, the more linear time seems.
Here’s a true story:

If Google Maps says it’ll take exactly 23 minutes to get there, I will leave exactly 23 minutes before. Or perhaps I’ll leave a few minutes later — I can probably be faster than Google Maps. There will be nothing standing in between me and my nice dinner. Oh no, the train left a few seconds before I arrived at the station, I’m going to be 10 minutes late now. I shouldn’t have trusted Google Maps. Or wait, I should’ve just left earlier.
Or perhaps I just hop on an Uber / Taxi because I cannot deal with the commute uncertainties. Uber says, if I get on now, I will be there at exactly 17 minutes. I will hence call an Uber only 17 minutes before. Oh no, the Uber takes more than 10 minutes to arrive? I am getting late! It’s terrible!
~ End story ~

Somehow I desperately try to calculate the exact amount of time needed for getting from A to B. Yet in doing so, I feel stressed, anxious, and oftentimes quite late to an appointment. Though admittedly sometimes I do enjoy a little adrenaline rush from a sprint towards a bus, I am tired of being out of breath. Through multiple attempts to live more in the moment, I slowly came to realize that commuting is no longer the time in between. As unappealing as it may sound, it IS the present moment. And the same moment won’t be there again after it has passed.
Here are a few little tips for being more in the moment while commuting:

Focus: Focus on the sensation of your own breathing or even to the sensation of holding the handrail

Observe: Look up or look out at the window and enjoy the view! What do the clouds look like today? Or maybe look around and smile at the strangers around you.

Listen: Is there traffic? Are there birds chirping? Perhaps the wind is strong? What do you hear?

Practical tip: Leave 5-10 minutes earlier than what Google Maps tells you to. Leave some room for surprises.

And a little challenge: Can you try to memorize your commute route without looking at your phone at all? Can you make sure to keep your phone in your pocket and not use it during the commute?

Metta: Maybe you’ve practiced Metta (loving-kindness) meditation, try doing that to fellow passengers that are sharing space with you. Wish them well. Be happy to be sharing the same space with them. You can relate to each other as you all are going somewhere, and somehow you’re crossing paths in a busy city — right here and now.

What are tips for you to enjoy commuting? Please share with us in the comments below ✨

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通勤對我而言，是個必要的存在，因為我太愛在城市的街頭跑來跑去了。我喜歡從市區搭小巴在半小時內抵達美麗的淺水灣海灘，更喜歡一天從香港的南到北、東到西去吃東西、見朋友、參加活動。香港很方便，巴士地鐵每幾分鐘就一班，我也開始習慣它不能比現在慢一刻，不然就要來不及了！我之前的文章「忙中有餘抬頭仰望天空吧」敘寫通勤如此：趕來趕去，好像恨不得可以瞬間移動，因為在路上的時候根本不是自己主要想做的事情。總是先把一天排滿想做的事情，再設法把那中間的時間擠出來給通勤。總是想，反正交通很方便嘛，預留那麼一點點時間就好了，趕一下就可以了吧！
通勤是一個我恨不得可以減少的時間，它只是個小配角而已，主角是我通勤後要抵達的燭光晚餐、主角是我等等要見的人，路程只是個配角而已。有更多科技APP可以讓我的通勤時間更流線化就好了，時間彷彿真的可以被切割成等分的小塊，把搭車的時間放在這一小塊裡，把吃飯的時間放在更多個小塊裡⋯⋯
以下情節都是真的發生過的：

如果Google Maps跟我說去一個地方要花二十三分鐘，我就會再加東摸摸西摸摸到剛好二十三分鐘前再出門口，當然有時候會不留意，就不小心晚了幾分鐘，心想：反正我應該可以比Google快吧。不可能有任何差錯的。噢不，地鐵（或巴士）早了幾秒鐘走了，我要等下一班，糟糕，我要遲到了。我不該相信Google Maps的，噢不，我應該早點出門的。
因為有以上的經驗，有時候還是搭Uber或計程車好了，點對點，不用多走路，APP也說只要十七分鐘就到了，那我十七分鐘前再叫車就好了。又在家東摸摸西摸摸，再來叫車的時候，糟糕，為什麼要等十分鐘車才來？慘了，又要遲到了。
完

總之，我經常精打細算通勤所需要花的時間，好像多一刻也不行一樣，但這樣精算不僅花更多時間，更花更多心思。通勤反倒變得令人很緊張、焦慮，而經常結果是：我遲到了。雖然有時候是有點喜歡趕巴士帶來的腎上腺素急升，但實在久了也覺得好像不必要一直這麼上氣不接下氣吧！在設法更活在當下的、體會慢生活的同時，我漸漸發現：通勤並不是需要努力去減少的時間啊，通勤的每一刻，都是當下。即便你不喜歡通勤，也不改變它是當下的重要性。通勤的時間和吃飯的時間一樣，過去了就不再來了。
所以還是設法在通勤的時候，更享受當下吧。這裡是我想到的幾個方法：

集中精神：去感受你在通勤時的呼吸，或感受你手握車上的拉環或扶手的觸感

專心注視：往天空或窗外看看外面的風景，今天的雲長什麼樣子呢？或環視身邊的其他乘客，也許對他們笑一下☺️

仔細聆聽：有塞車嗎？有人在按喇叭嗎？或有鳥鳴嗎？或聽得到外面的風嗎？

實用技巧：比Google Map預測的時間早五到十分鐘出門吧，更有彈性一點，也許有什麼突發的趣事也不一定呢

一個挑戰：你可以試著記下通勤的路徑，在前往目的地的過中中都不看手機嗎？可以確保你的手機全程都在口袋裡不拿出來嗎？

慈愛冥想： 如果你有嘗試過慈愛冥想 (loving-kindness) meditation，試試看對周邊的陌生乘客做慈愛冥想。感謝他們在和你一起共乘，祝福他們平安、有個美好的一天。在一個這麼大的城市裡面，有多難得在人生的道路上相遇，在此刻，這輛巴士上面。


你有什麼通勤的tips嗎？歡迎在下面留言討論～
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From desperately reducing time spent to enjoying every moment 從精打細算到精心體驗每一刻

Slow commuting 慢慢的體驗通勤

Did I take energy from the future and use it again? &#25105;&#21448;&#21521;&#26410;&#20358;&#30340;&#33258;&#24049;&#20511;&#39636;&#21147;&#20358;&#29992;&#20102;&#21966;&#65311;

Hello! This week we are talking about energy levels because I got sick. And when I get sick, I ask myself (in a non-judgemental, blame-y way, or so I try): Did you take energy from the future and use it again?The reason stems from this being the fourth time I am sick this year, with the first three times I was sick while I was &#8220;digital nomad-ing&#8221; &#8212; with the flexibility of my previous job, I combined work travel, personal travel, and somehow was on the road non-stop for about 10 months. And I got the hint that my body did not LOVE it as much as my brain and heart did when I got sick in May when I was in Tokyo, which was after I got COVID in March when I was in Bangkok, which was after I got sick in January when I was in Essaouira, Morocco.So &#8212; attuning to my energy levels. From as much self-awareness as I have &#8212; I&#8217;m typically a 100% or 0% kinda gal, meaning I will either be running way too fast, doing way too many things at once, or using up too much energy without showing it. Or, I&#8217;ll be doing absolutely nothing, because I ran out of energy. It&#8217;s as if my mind and my body were completely disconnected, unaware that energy is something that is not constant, and that perhaps you can&#8217;t make plans purely based on how many hours there are in a day. I clearly remember last week one day, I did yoga, met my grandma for dim sum, met some friends for a <a href="https://buildspace.so">buildspace</a> coworking session, met a lovely TCM doctor to discuss potential business opportunities, and met another friend for dinner and light swimming. Yes &#8212; hindsight is 20/20. Now I can obviously see: perhaps I did a little too much in one day. But did I feel it at the moment? No! I felt the rush of running around a city, and the excitement that, wow! My body can handle this!I was wrong. My body was barely handling it! I was just too excited to see the hints. Yes, me, a girl writing a blog on slow living, accidentally lived too fast last week. And I got sick. Perhaps there&#8217;s nothing to do with my sickness and fast living, but it never hurts to rest a little more and go a little slower. Listen to your body. Your body is not a machine, yet even machines need to be oiled up sometimes.I recall early on in my <a href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/on-a-sabbatical">sabbatical</a>, I wasn&#8217;t doing much other than doing yoga every day. I planned the type of yoga based on my energy &#8212; Hatha or Yin Yoga for slower mornings, Ashtanga or Vinyasa for well-rested ones. And if I know I don&#8217;t have energy, I cancel yoga that day. But the moment I got used to doing yoga every day, I forgot to check in on my energy levels :) Don&#8217;t be like me, don&#8217;t forget to check in on your energy levels.Physical energy levels are still a vague concept to me, maybe because I&#8217;ve only done exercises on and off growing up. My dear readers, are you aware of your energy levels? How do you listen to your body? Please share with me in the comments below! <p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/attuning-to-my-energy-levels/comments&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Leave a comment&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/attuning-to-my-energy-levels/comments">Leave a comment</a>And for now, as a reminder to self &#8212; here are some questions I came up with to ask myself weekly:<ul><li>Do I have enough energy to do the things I want to do? If not, do I need to rest more, or do less?</li><li>What are signs that I might be taking energy from the future?</li><li>When do I time box for rest this week?</li><li>What are non-negotiable self-care routines that I will not sacrifice?</li></ul>And with this, I hope you have a lovely weekend and perhaps a well-rested one ;)<div class="image-gallery-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;gallery&quot;:{&quot;images&quot;:[{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/08711783-b34a-42be-9bf4-2251eb018329_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/4d176f98-8204-406d-a048-abfd3d02662f_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/79102ff9-0703-4ca0-ba71-d2a8bb151e34_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6abc265d-06e3-4614-932a-f023181c3299_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;}],&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;Little quiet moments I had last week BEFORE i got sick&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;Image of my tea, image of a HK building, image of a quiet street, image of a lovely lotus flower&quot;,&quot;staticGalleryImage&quot;:{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/0b0a1518-9ee3-433b-93b0-41bff1b02199_1456x1456.png&quot;}},&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true}"></div><p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/subscribe?&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Subscribe now&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/subscribe?">Subscribe 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Hello! This week we are talking about energy levels because I got sick. And when I get sick, I ask myself (in a non-judgemental, blame-y way, or so I try): Did you take energy from the future and use it again?
The reason stems from this being the fourth time I am sick this year, with the first three times I was sick while I was “digital nomad-ing” — with the flexibility of my previous job, I combined work travel, personal travel, and somehow was on the road non-stop for about 10 months. And I got the hint that my body did not LOVE it as much as my brain and heart did when I got sick in May when I was in Tokyo, which was after I got COVID in March when I was in Bangkok, which was after I got sick in January when I was in Essaouira, Morocco.
So — attuning to my energy levels. From as much self-awareness as I have — I’m typically a 100% or 0% kinda gal, meaning I will either be running way too fast, doing way too many things at once, or using up too much energy without showing it. Or, I’ll be doing absolutely nothing, because I ran out of energy. It’s as if my mind and my body were completely disconnected, unaware that energy is something that is not constant, and that perhaps you can’t make plans purely based on how many hours there are in a day. I clearly remember last week one day, I did yoga, met my grandma for dim sum, met some friends for a buildspace coworking session, met a lovely TCM doctor to discuss potential business opportunities, and met another friend for dinner and light swimming. Yes — hindsight is 20/20. Now I can obviously see: perhaps I did a little too much in one day. But did I feel it at the moment? No! I felt the rush of running around a city, and the excitement that, wow! My body can handle this!
I was wrong. My body was barely handling it! I was just too excited to see the hints. Yes, me, a girl writing a blog on slow living, accidentally lived too fast last week. And I got sick. Perhaps there’s nothing to do with my sickness and fast living, but it never hurts to rest a little more and go a little slower. Listen to your body. Your body is not a machine, yet even machines need to be oiled up sometimes.
I recall early on in my sabbatical, I wasn’t doing much other than doing yoga every day. I planned the type of yoga based on my energy — Hatha or Yin Yoga for slower mornings, Ashtanga or Vinyasa for well-rested ones. And if I know I don’t have energy, I cancel yoga that day. But the moment I got used to doing yoga every day, I forgot to check in on my energy levels :) Don’t be like me, don’t forget to check in on your energy levels.
Physical energy levels are still a vague concept to me, maybe because I’ve only done exercises on and off growing up. My dear readers, are you aware of your energy levels? How do you listen to your body? Please share with me in the comments below! 
Leave a comment
And for now, as a reminder to self — here are some questions I came up with to ask myself weekly:

Do I have enough energy to do the things I want to do? If not, do I need to rest more, or do less?

What are signs that I might be taking energy from the future?

When do I time box for rest this week?

What are non-negotiable self-care routines that I will not sacrifice?

And with this, I hope you have a lovely weekend and perhaps a well-rested one ;)

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你好～這週我想跟你們探討「體力」，因為我碰巧感冒了，而近期我感冒時我就會溫柔地問下自己：你又向未來的自己借體力來用了嗎？
我會開始問自己這個問題是因為這已經是我今年第四次生病了，前三次是在我「數位遊牧」的時候生病的。由於之前的工作彈性，時而因工作旅遊、時而自己旅遊，不知不覺地就一連十個月沒有在一個地方待超過一個月。我身體跟我明示、暗示了好幾次：它沒有像我的腦袋一樣愛旅遊。在我一月在摩洛哥工作時感冒被提醒了一次、三月在曼谷參加完朋友的婚禮得新冠肺炎又被提醒了一次、五月在東京旅遊時小感冒再被提醒一次，我才終於聽見，身體好像真的頂不住接連不斷地旅遊。
關於體力嘛，以我微薄的自我覺察力，我是一個不是用一百分力、就是用零分力在活著的一個女孩：不是一下做太多事情、跑太多地方、耗掉太多體力，就是什麼都不做（畢竟體力用完了啊）。彷彿是我的大腦跟我的身體完全沒有溝通般，大腦想做一百件事情，身體只有做幾件事情的能力；或大腦覺得每天可以做的事情大概只跟一天有幾個小時有關，只要有睡覺就會有體力了吧！我清楚地記得上禮拜有天我出門做瑜伽、和外婆一起飲茶、和幾位好友一起在咖啡廳工作、見了一位美美中醫師討論可能合作的計畫、再跟一位好友吃晚餐跟游泳。是的，我現在事後也知道我那天做的事情可能多了一點點，但我當下是完全沒有感覺的。我好喜歡在城市街頭跑來跑去，好喜歡這麼有體力的在一天之中做這麼多事情！
噢不，我錯了！我身體哪有那麼好，又不小心跟未來的自己借用體力了啦！我興奮之餘才沒空好好檢視自己的體力呢～也是蠻慚愧的，我在敘寫《城市女孩・慢生活》的同時，過了一個好快、好忙的一天，然後也感冒了。雖然感冒和「快生活」應該沒有直接的關係，但多休息、過慢一點的生活總是不會錯的。記得要聆聽自己的身體啊！你的身體又不是機器，更何況連機器也是偶爾需要修復、上油的啊！
我想起剛開始留職停薪時，我有一陣子除了天天做瑜伽之外沒什麼其他的事情，每天的計畫都是照著自己有多少體力來決定的，體力差一點的時候可能做陰瑜珈或哈達瑜珈，體力好一點就做阿斯坦加瑜伽或流動瑜伽，體力再差一點的話那天就不做瑜伽了。當我一旦習慣了幾乎每天都做瑜伽，我好像就完全忘記要關心一下自己體力有多少了，除了瑜伽之外又變出一堆行程。哎，不要像我一樣忘了關心自己的體力啊！
話說到此，我還是對於體力這個概念矇矇懂懂的，也許因為從小到大運動都只是斷斷續續地在做吧。親愛的讀者們，你是如何去觀察自己的體力呢？請跟我在留言區分享吧！
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在結語之前，來列下幾個我決定每週要定期問自己的問題：

我有足夠力氣去完成我所有想做的事情嗎？如果沒有的話，我是應該要多休息、還是要減少想做的事呢？

當我又快要開始向未來的自己借用體力時，有什麼徵兆可以參考的嗎？

我這週有排開時間來休息嗎？

我這週寵愛自己、照顧自己了嗎？

期許你看完這篇文章之後有個不僅愉快、更充滿適度休息的週末！

Did I take energy from the future and use it again? 我又向未來的自己借體力來用了嗎？

Attuning to my energy levels 觀察自身體力的多寡

observations and learnings from the past twenty years

Growing up I frequently go out for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dim_sum">dim sum lunches</a> with my grandma. My earliest memory goes back to when I was 7 years old, I was offered shoumei (white peony tea) and I insisted on chrysanthemum. I would eat chicken feet rice and charsiu buns. I would watch my grandma&#8217;s friends eat, and observe their preferences in food; I would listen to their conversations that frequent around the stock market, their kids, someone else&#8217;s kids, and the prices of items at the groceries. Fast forward 20 years, I have been spending my young adulthood in Hong Kong, and I still find myself regularly joining dim sum meals with grandma and her friends more frequently than meeting my friends sometimes. And I have become the biggest tea nerd I know.<div class="image-gallery-embed" data-attrs="{&quot;gallery&quot;:{&quot;images&quot;:[{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/fa7a4a58-66ce-4c88-aa3e-e12e1fbd5ef9_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/9024390f-48c6-42b1-b324-8b3d71bfc3f3_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/6df92c32-529c-4fca-ac31-68a042a6a8ab_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;},{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/jpeg&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/c1fd3d6c-26f3-4aaa-add2-975b9d929aee_4032x3024.jpeg&quot;}],&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;Love love love dim sum&quot;,&quot;alt&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;staticGalleryImage&quot;:{&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/0fc2957f-92e1-47cd-a2bd-e3290ed12ff0_1456x1456.png&quot;}},&quot;isEditorNode&quot;:true}"></div>Perhaps from hanging out with my grandma&#8217;s friends so much, I&#8217;ve developed a taste in food that happens to be relatively healthy. I would know that fish stomach is good for the skin, mung bean soup is good for cooling down in the summer, and fried taro balls are better if it is not over fried which you can tell by the color. And though this is not health-related: don&#8217;t order xiaolongbao at a Canton restaurant. You can only do that at a Shanghai restaurant. (Just because they will serve a dish doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s gonna be good). Oh, and you should only order 1 fried dish max per meal, any number above that is unhealthy.I&#8217;ve also picked up habits like frequenting the same restaurants and building relationships with the waiters. The service you receive will be better once you&#8217;re a &#8220;regular&#8221; at a restaurant, and that is more important than the novelty of experiencing a restaurant for the first time.I&#8217;ve also been introduced to death a lot earlier I guess. Many friends of hers I&#8217;ve met had either their husbands pass away, or them passing away themselves. I learn that the ones who have a healthy lifestyle might still get cancer for some unknown reason, and the ones with unhealthy lifestyles could also live long. Most siblings or kids fight over inheritance no matter how rich or poor they are, in my opinion, this is the worst way of parting with a family member. I also know the importance of having enough money to go through age-old illnesses, some treatments are extremely costly. And I&#8217;ve also learned that every time you meet someone may very well be the last.I&#8217;ve also been introduced to life a lot! One friend picked up yoga when she was 58 and has been practicing daily for the past 10+ years. One friend didn&#8217;t get married until she was in her 50s, she met her husband through going to painting class and I guess they were love at first sight. Some are still taking dance lessons while they&#8217;re well in their 80s. Some traveled the world in their 70s. Some married more than once. Some have a boyfriend in their 70s. Some have immigrated to Canada / USA / Singapore during the &#8216;97 handover period, but most of them have moved back &#8212; it&#8217;s much nicer to be near a familiar culture in a convenient city. Some volunteer regularly, some play mahjong &#8212; everyone has their jam. And my favorite one of all: they never stop dressing up. Every day is an occasion to dress nice, look pretty, and head out for dim sum.It&#8217;s interesting how most women are married well early in their 20s, and only experience true aloneness in their 70s/ 80s after their partner passed away. Suddenly there&#8217;s free time to care for oneself. And no one to cook for, no one to look after. Freeing, but also scary.And so here I am, a 27-year-old, who spends a lot of her time with folks in their 80s. Sometimes I wonder, what is the lesson I&#8217;m trying to learn from being around these people? I guess it&#8217;s that you can never foresee where you will be in the future, or that you&#8217;d be dining with a random 27-year-old after going through marriage, divorce, re-marriage, kids, immigration, perhaps multiple immigrations, happy days, dark days, debt, paying off of debt, kids moving away&#8230; and many more. Or that the kid who you saw growing up who is not your grandchildren will end up building a blossoming relationship with you, despite having no blood relations at all. And I guess eat healthily, and seize the day!<p class="button-wrapper" data-attrs="{&quot;url&quot;:&quot;https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/dining-with-grandmas-friends/comments&quot;,&quot;text&quot;:&quot;Leave a comment&quot;,&quot;action&quot;:null,&quot;class&quot;:null}" data-component-name="ButtonCreateButton"><a class="button primary" href="https://citygirlslowlife.substack.com/p/dining-with-grandmas-friends/comments">Leave a comment</a>&#26377;&#35352;&#25014;&#20197;&#20358;&#65292;&#22823;&#27010;&#24478;&#19971;&#27506;&#26178;&#25105;&#23601;&#32147;&#24120;&#21644;&#22806;&#23110;&#20986;&#21435;&#39154;&#33590;&#65292;&#36215;&#28304;&#26159;&#22240;&#28858;&#25105;&#22312;&#19971;&#27506;&#30340;&#26178;&#20505;&#21644;&#22806;&#20844;&#22806;&#23110;&#19968;&#36215;&#22312;&#39321;&#28207;&#20303;&#20102;&#19968;&#24180;&#22810;&#65292;&#32780;&#30070;&#26178;&#36935;&#21040; SARS 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class="image-gallery-embed" 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Growing up I frequently go out for dim sum lunches with my grandma. My earliest memory goes back to when I was 7 years old, I was offered shoumei (white peony tea) and I insisted on chrysanthemum. I would eat chicken feet rice and charsiu buns. I would watch my grandma’s friends eat, and observe their preferences in food; I would listen to their conversations that frequent around the stock market, their kids, someone else’s kids, and the prices of items at the groceries. Fast forward 20 years, I have been spending my young adulthood in Hong Kong, and I still find myself regularly joining dim sum meals with grandma and her friends more frequently than meeting my friends sometimes. And I have become the biggest tea nerd I know.


Perhaps from hanging out with my grandma’s friends so much, I’ve developed a taste in food that happens to be relatively healthy. I would know that fish stomach is good for the skin, mung bean soup is good for cooling down in the summer, and fried taro balls are better if it is not over fried which you can tell by the color. And though this is not health-related: don’t order xiaolongbao at a Canton restaurant. You can only do that at a Shanghai restaurant. (Just because they will serve a dish doesn’t mean it’s gonna be good). Oh, and you should only order 1 fried dish max per meal, any number above that is unhealthy.
I’ve also picked up habits like frequenting the same restaurants and building relationships with the waiters. The service you receive will be better once you’re a “regular” at a restaurant, and that is more important than the novelty of experiencing a restaurant for the first time.
I’ve also been introduced to death a lot earlier I guess. Many friends of hers I’ve met had either their husbands pass away, or them passing away themselves. I learn that the ones who have a healthy lifestyle might still get cancer for some unknown reason, and the ones with unhealthy lifestyles could also live long. Most siblings or kids fight over inheritance no matter how rich or poor they are, in my opinion, this is the worst way of parting with a family member. I also know the importance of having enough money to go through age-old illnesses, some treatments are extremely costly. And I’ve also learned that every time you meet someone may very well be the last.
I’ve also been introduced to life a lot! One friend picked up yoga when she was 58 and has been practicing daily for the past 10+ years. One friend didn’t get married until she was in her 50s, she met her husband through going to painting class and I guess they were love at first sight. Some are still taking dance lessons while they’re well in their 80s. Some traveled the world in their 70s. Some married more than once. Some have a boyfriend in their 70s. Some have immigrated to Canada / USA / Singapore during the ‘97 handover period, but most of them have moved back — it’s much nicer to be near a familiar culture in a convenient city. Some volunteer regularly, some play mahjong — everyone has their jam. And my favorite one of all: they never stop dressing up. Every day is an occasion to dress nice, look pretty, and head out for dim sum.
It’s interesting how most women are married well early in their 20s, and only experience true aloneness in their 70s/ 80s after their partner passed away. Suddenly there’s free time to care for oneself. And no one to cook for, no one to look after. Freeing, but also scary.
And so here I am, a 27-year-old, who spends a lot of her time with folks in their 80s. Sometimes I wonder, what is the lesson I’m trying to learn from being around these people? I guess it’s that you can never foresee where you will be in the future, or that you’d be dining with a random 27-year-old after going through marriage, divorce, re-marriage, kids, immigration, perhaps multiple immigrations, happy days, dark days, debt, paying off of debt, kids moving away… and many more. Or that the kid who you saw growing up who is not your grandchildren will end up building a blossoming relationship with you, despite having no blood relations at all. And I guess eat healthily, and seize the day!
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有記憶以來，大概從七歲時我就經常和外婆出去飲茶，起源是因為我在七歲的時候和外公外婆一起在香港住了一年多，而當時遇到 SARS 所以學校經常停課，我們便經常去飲茶。我記得我總是拒絕喝他們叫的壽眉茶，總是嚷嚷說要喝菊花茶（因為沒有咖啡因）。當時我最喜歡吃的點心好像就是鳳爪排骨飯跟叉燒包吧，而我身邊總是沒有其他小朋友，我好像是外婆朋友圈裡面年紀最大的孫字輩。從那時開始我就經常是一桌裡年紀最輕的人，當時也沒什麼話說，就只好觀察他們吃飯的習慣，以及聊天的內容。那些內容不外乎是：股市的漲跌、小孩的近況、其他朋友的小孩的近況、還有哪個菜市場的哪個東西現在有在特價，以及回味年輕的時候誰做了什麼事情、誰又和誰吵架等等。沒想到二十年後的今日，我依舊經常和外婆及她的朋友在外飲茶、吃港式點心。因為之前工作時間很彈性的因素，自己的朋友總是很難約，造就我與外婆朋友們喝茶次數可能勝於和自己朋友見面的次數。而我現在也變得非常喜歡喝壽眉茶。

也許與我和外婆的朋友們經常喝茶相關，我的飲食習慣也相對健康一些。我知道吃魚肚對皮膚好，夏天喝綠豆湯可以去濕，炸芋角的好壞在於油用的好不好（炸出來太黑代表用的油不夠好）。跟健康無關的，但也很重要的是，在港式茶樓不要點小籠包，在上海館子點的才會好吃（雖然所有港式茶樓都會有小籠包）。最後，平常叫點心的時候，炸的東西最好不要超過一樣，這樣才比較健康。
我也開始習慣只去那幾間茶樓，和茶樓的服務生打好關係，當大家都認識你的時候，服務都比較好。對他們來說，到一個服務好、食物好吃的地方，比去嚐鮮還重要。
也因為常和外婆的朋友們吃飯，我也較同年齡的人更常接觸死亡，有幾位朋友不是老公過世了，就是他們自己過世了。有些身體很好的人也會得癌症，有些飲食習慣很差的人也可以很長命。而經常子女或兄弟姊妹會因為遺產問題吵架，不論剩的錢是多、是少。我也知道年紀大看病需要花很多錢，論存錢也是很重要的。我也體會到，有時見人一面，還真有可能是最後一面。
同時，我也透過她的朋友們的生活，學習到極大的生命力！有位朋友五十八歲才開始學瑜珈，並持續練習瑜伽十多年，有人一路單身到五十歲才在畫畫課中認識現在的老公，有人到八十歲還在學跳舞，有人在七十幾歲的時候還在搭渡輪環遊世界，有人結了第二、三次婚了，有人在七十幾歲的時候交男朋友：）有些人在９７年移民潮的時候去了美國、加拿大、新加坡，但很多人也都回來方便又熟悉的香港了。有些每週定時會去慈濟做義工，有些則一定要一週打三次麻將以上。我最喜歡的是，她們總是會有儀式感地、打扮漂亮地，一起去茶樓飲茶。
值得探討的是，許多人二十幾歲就結了婚，第一次長時間一個人是在她們六七八十歲，另一半過世之後才體會的，突然可以全心全意照顧自己了，不用替別人煮飯、不用照顧別人，這大概蠻無拘束的感覺，但也令人惶恐。
話題回到我身上：一個二十七歲的女孩，經常和八十幾歲的人相處，我不禁納悶：我從她們身上學習的到底是什麼？我現有的答案是：你不能預知未來會發生什麼事，更沒辦法想像在八十歲的時候，在經歷過結婚、生子、離婚、再婚、移民、再移民、欠錢、還債、孩子移民⋯⋯等種種事情之後，會經常跟一個二十幾歲的女孩吃飯閒聊吧！其餘的大概就是：健康飲食、活在當下嘍！
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Dining with Grandma’s friends 和外婆的朋友們去喝港式飲茶

I feel so lost and so fulfilled at the same time &#21448;&#36855;&#33579;&#21448;&#20805;&#23526;&#30340;&#20116;&#36913;

Hi I’m Tania! The other day I went to a tea shop to buy some tea which I am a regular at, at a prime Wednesday 3pm, to which I was greeted with: “How do you have time to come by today, don’t you have to work?” That made me realize: oh indeed, I don’t! I am currently on week 5 of my 6-month sabbatical.


Looking back at my last 5 weeks, I’ve:

Moved to a new apartment in Hong Kong

Joined a yoga studio, and started doing yoga daily

Built a meditation website I’ve always wanted to build

Wrote 5 entries for this newsletter publication 😄

Continued to “figure out my life / think about what I should work on next” via catching up with friends, having dimsum lunches with my grandma, researching online and journaling while sipping on tea every morning.

In terms of my energy levels, it looks something like this…








Navigating the unknown is the most difficult part of the last few weeks (duh!), which only really kicked in by week 4 as I was busy with moving into a new apartment and building a website that I already wanted to do prior to taking time off from work. Now that both are done, the real deal kicked in: what should I really do in the next couple of months? There are so many ideas, but so much difficulty in focusing on one…… albeit stressful, writing this newsletter reminds me to live a slower and more intentional life. Doing yoga and drinking tea daily keeps me grounded, for the most part.
But wait, why am I taking a sabbatical?
A little background about myself: I’m a senior software engineer who most recently worked at an early-stage startup for the past three years. Prior to writing code, I’ve done many different projects like organizing 500-person beach raves and building a digital watch for you to track your menstrual cycle.
Work had been rewarding to say the least: starting from having a lot of ownership and agency when there were only 5 people in the company three years ago — to every day being very exciting and exhilarating while we raised money and hired from all over the world. Instead of being terribly burnt out from work, and desperately needing breathing room, I was actually having a lot of fun, but perhaps too much fun to think about other passions and interests that I have. I stumbled upon the accidental digital nomad life (which I will write about in another article), and work became almost on autopilot.
I didn’t love the fact that the day-to-day work felt like being on autopilot. I longed to build something on my own again, from ideating to execution. While having a fun full-time job, it was too easy to give myself excuses to not work on things I’m actually passionate about. For example, I’ve thought about writing this newsletter for months before actually sending the first article 5 weeks ago, only after I’ve taken time off from work. With a growing number of side projects looming in my head, and loads of excuses to delay them, I finally got tired of giving myself more excuses: I decided to take time off.
How did I actually take time off?
First off I have a very supportive team at my company, and I am very grateful for that. As for the decision-making, I would say it was part impulsive, part responsible. I checked my savings and I confirmed I can last more than 6 months without a job. Then I was invited to imagine the worst-case scenario by my mentor and consider if I would be okay with it. The following scenarios popped into my head:

Maybe I spend more money than expected and ended up with much less $ in savings than expected by the end of 6 months — what is the lowest number I will be comfortable with?

Perhaps my time off from work is extended unexpectedly. Maybe the startup that I work at before no longer needs me back. This one is especially tough because I don’t want to find a new job towards the end of the 6 months. However, worst-case scenario, I guess I’ll be okay with it.

Maybe none of the projects I set out to do become successful. I am okay with it too. I will give all my projects my all, and success or not is just “nice to have”.

Perhaps I’ll have a major conflict with my family as they are traditional and may not be supportive of my endeavors. This is one of the toughest personally, but I will be okay with it. I’ll work it out if it happens.

After deep consideration, I initiated the conversation to pause work with my manager, and fast forward a few weeks: my sabbatical has begun.
As a reminder to myself, this time off from work is for me to discover what my flow state and my life’s purpose look like. It’s for me to try out different projects and build up different hobbies. Then I’ll design my life around it. There’s no rush for anything, so it’s okay to not know what is the next project I should work on! Let’s take things one step at a time.
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Thanks for reading City Girl Slow Life 🧿 城市女孩 慢生活! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.





嗨 我是 Tania，前幾天我光顧了我在香港常去的茶舖，被熟悉的店員問：「妳不用上班嗎？今天怎麼有空來？」我愣了一下才發現：原來今天是禮拜三，現在下午三點，我不用上班耶！我已經留職停薪了五個禮拜了，而我打算半年內不會回公司工作。

回顧一下這五個禮拜，我：

搬到一個新的租屋處

加入了一個瑜伽教室，開始天天學習瑜伽

做完了一個幫助你冥想的網站

寫了五份電子報文章～

天天在「探索人生（研究我的下一步要做什麼）」——但實際上就是和朋友吃吃飯，和奶奶去茶樓飲茶，上網查資料學習，並每天寫日記個喝茶

我能量的浮動大概長這個樣子⋯⋯








想當然爾，這幾個禮拜最困難的是：在充滿未知數的每個當下決定要做什麼。其實我也蠻多想法可以去實現，但總是在選擇之中有很大的障礙，覺得好難、壓力山大。不過每當要寫這份電子報的時候，又提醒自己，把日子過得慢一點不但沒關係，反而是我理想生活的樣貌啊！每天就做做瑜伽、喝喝茶吧。
等等，我好像還沒說過我為什麼考慮留職停薪
前情提要：我是一個在一個美國Y Combinator的新創工作的資深工程師。在全職寫程式以前，我常常做不同的計劃，例如舉辦五百人參加的海灘派對，以及製作一隻紀錄女生生理週期的手錶。
在新創工作的三年以來是很有成就感的，從一開始五個人的團隊，什麼事情都要做，到募資之後不斷的精進我們的產品以及擴展我們的團隊，沒有一分一秒是無聊的。決定要留職停薪並不是說「我實在做不下去了，需要喘息的空間」，反而我過得滿開心的，隨時和團隊在世界各地過著數位遊牧的日子。但可能是旅遊方面過得太開心了（改天再來寫數位遊牧的心路歷程），工作的內容反變成配角般。
我不太喜歡工作是配角的感覺，我也蠻懷念做自己的計劃，那從零到有、一手包辦的感覺，但有全職工作的時候不去做自己的計劃的理由實在太多。譬如這份電子報是我幾個月前就想要做了，但到是五週前，剛開始留職停薪後才寄出第一份。我發現我想做的事越多，利用藉口不去做的事也越多，有時後就覺得自己好像很不像自己，怎麼藉口這麼多。當我實在是受夠了自己的藉口的時候，我就決定那暫時不要工作了。
那我到底怎麼辦到留職停薪半年的呢？
首先，我很感謝我的同事與主管們很體諒我暫時不想工作的心情。在和主管討論留職停薪之前，我半理性半衝動的決定是這麼做的：前提是先確定我有足夠的錢可以讓我可以六個月不工作，下個考慮的點是在諮詢我的益友後，他建議我去思考：「Tania 請妳去想像在留職停薪後，最糟的情況會是什麼樣子，如果妳可以接受的話，就去跟公司申請吧。」以下是我想像的情景：

也許我花的錢比想像中的多，那我最多可接受我花多少錢來探索生活？

或許我被迫有更長的時間不工作，例如原本的公司不需要我了——這蠻難的，畢竟我很熱愛我的公司，但倘若真的發生了，我也期許自己能再想辦法的。

或是我在花時間做我想做的計劃後，沒有一個計劃是成功的。這我也覺得沒關係，反正我只要盡力而為就好了，成功與否是次要的。

又或許我因為留職停薪一事和家人大吵架——這是我個人認為最難的一件事情，哎，家家有本難念的經，但我不希望這阻止我去嘗試我想做的事情。

在總和上述的要點後，我就和公司提出申請了。很幸運的是，程序上一切都很順利，我也很快就展開我的心得「留職停薪人生」了。
最後再提醒自己，暫時不工作的目的是要找尋我在心流狀態的樣貌如何，以及我人生的目標是什麼。我要利用這時間嘗試不同的計劃、建立不同的喜好，並設計自己想過的日子的型態。凡事不要急，即便對於下一件要做的事感到迷茫也沒關係。
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I feel so lost and so fulfilled at the same time 又迷茫又充實的五週

On a sabbatical 留職停薪的開始

explore a city on bus or on foot, indulge in sunset &#28459;&#36938;&#37117;&#24066;&#30340;&#22805;&#38525;&#20043;&#26053;

This week I happen to read the paris dairies on Mind Mine by Isabel and watch the 2nd movie in the ‘Before’ Trilogy: ‘Before Sunset’ which illustrated the main characters walking through Paris and having thoughtful life conversations — these two events pulled back to 2021 November when I was navigating the streets of Paris on my own. I miss Paris.
The month I spent in Paris was the first time I lived in a city where I didn’t speak the language. I could walk on the streets, while not knowing anyone, which was a frequent experience to begin with, but also did not understand a single sound. It was healing almost. Thinking back, it’s a similar healing I felt while at a meditation retreat. You can be with your thoughts and observe it when all the distractions was removed. No eavesdropping allowed. Paris allowed me to truly introspect inwards while taking in its beauty, and getting my steps in. Being in a foreign land, you don’t need to respond to any labels, you can just be you. You can also notice the surroundings exactly as it is, with no expectations: the cobblestone streets, the crispy coldness in the air, the hue of the sky, and the smell of boulangeries (bakeries). With a right turn, you’ll suddenly arrive at the Sacré-Cœur — whilst you see all the tourists trying to get a glimpse of the glamorous church, you turn your head, and suddenly you see the Eiffel Tower shimmering with its might to remind you: it’s 7 pm now. Traveling makes one feel in the moment, almost instantly.







Throwback to Paris, Oct 30, 2021, 6:54 PM, Eiffel Tower + Sunset facing Sacré-Cœur
Little did I know, over the weekend I was brought on an adventure that mirrored the feeling of freely roaming around Paris alone, but in Hong Kong. It’s as simple as hopping on a bus that goes anywhere.
Rewind to Saturday evening, I was invited to my friend M’s home, and coincidentally the weather was perfect. We hung out and had snacks until M decided, “Let’s go for an adventure”. I was confused as it was 6 pm already, “where to?” I asked. And the next thing I know, we were on a bus towards Hong Kong International Airport. The bus is a typical Hong Kong double-decker bus, instinctively we got to the upper deck and snatched the front row seats. Usually, I like to glance outside the full window from these seats already, but today with the sky extra pretty, I find myself unable to take my eyes off of the bright colors in the sky at all. And of course, the sky started to turn a gentle pink hue: it was sunset time, and we had the perfect front-row seats. 








And there we were, sitting in silence admiring the beauty of Hong Kong, through winding highways that curve in ways you don’t expect them to, and majestic bridges that are not just utilitarian (connecting multiple Hong Kong islands) but also beautiful with carefully designed light installations. We went all over Hong Kong, from the center of Kowloon to the southern tip, to the west, and all the way west past islands big and small. Without a word, and without using our phones other than snapping pics, we just observed the color difference over time, the scenery changing, the buildings evolving, and the roads connecting… all for 20 HKD (< 3 USD). You too can hop on any bus and see what your city has to offer.

I love that I still feel curious and excited after living in Hong Kong for 8 years and having the ability to feel in the moment with the city. Pearl of the East, indeed. 💛
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這禮拜我莫名其妙的想起了巴黎，可能是因為看了 Isabel 的 Mind Mines 剛好敘寫了她在巴黎的遊記，或是因為我看了《愛在三部曲》的第二集《愛在巴黎黃昏時》，我好像瞬時回到二零二一年十一月在巴黎因工作短居一個月的時候。
巴黎的浪漫對我來說不是因為她是浪漫之都，而是因為她是我第一個居住的語言不通的城市。語言不通的時候有種浪漫感，或有種舒適感。我彷彿可以完全隱藏在這個城市的大街小巷裡面，走在路上可以沈浸於所有聽到的聲音裡面，也不會因為不小心聽到別人的對談而分心，畢竟我什麼都聽不懂。現在回想起來，好像跟去靜觀冥想營的感覺很像，聽不到人講話的聲音的時候才更容易練習向內探索自己的內心。而在探索內心的同時，又在巴黎美麗的大街小巷裡走來走去，真的是對心靈來說很療癒。很療癒的同時，我又以好奇心去大量的吸收巴黎的氛圍：十一月的空氣又乾又冷，小碎石的道路很可愛但有時候也蠻難走，天空每天的樣貌都有點不一樣（印象中那時候常常陰天），每走兩步路就可以聞到麵包店的香味。有天在市區散步的時候，拐個彎就到了「聖心殿」的腳邊，而在踏進教堂前，往後一看，剛好看到巴黎鐵塔與夕陽餘暉在遠方對看著自己。旅行就是如此，輕而易舉地讓你活在當下。

很幸運的，這週末我在香港也體會了類似的感覺。我竟然能在生活八年多的香港體會自由自在地穿梭於城市之中的感覺？！
讓我們回到這禮拜六，那天天氣非常的好，我受好友Ｍ的邀請到她家吃點心、閒聊。大約六點左右的時候Ｍ提議我們可以去一趟探險旅程。「去哪兒呢？」我嘴巴上問著，但內心想的是：六點了耶，可以去哪探險呢？一轉眼，我倆已搭上前往香港機場的雙層巴士。我們下意識往巴士的上層走，剛好第一排有位置，馬上就坐下來。在意料之外的非通勤時間搭上雙層巴士，又剛好在天空特別晴朗的一天，我們倆目不轉睛地盯著窗外的風景，看著巴士穿梭於高樓大廈之中，時而奔馳於蜿蜒曲直的高速公路裡，又一轉彎上了青馬大橋。

隨著日落的到來，我們不斷的驚嘆香港的美：香港不但有城市的高樓大廈，更有美麗的高山與島嶼（而這也不都是普遍的都市都有的嗎？沒有高山、島嶼，也會有河流、公園），在夕陽餘暉之中，都顯得格外美麗。我們就這樣慢慢地晃著從九龍半島的中間一路往南，又往西邊一路這樣晃呀晃著，才發現我們整趟旅途都沒有講超過兩句話，也沒忙於手機裡的大小事（倒是有拿手機出來拍幾張照啦），所有的專注力都在於窗外的風景。要在都市裡探險的方法既平價又容易，你也可以搭個巴士，去探索你的城市！
我很開心也很珍惜，即便在一個城市生活超過八年了，依然可以享受當下，認真的體會探索城市的感覺。共勉之❤️（私心推，香港真的是個東方明珠～）
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explore a city on bus or on foot, indulge in sunset 漫遊都市的夕陽之旅

In the moment, from Paris to Hong Kong 巴黎香港的城市探索

"On your way" somewhere should not be rushed, remember to look up and enjoy the view.

I’m on my way to the metro station, I’m on my way to work, I’m on my way home, I’m on my way to yoga, I’m on my way to grab some quick groceries to cook for dinner, I’m on my way to meet a friend, I’m on my way… There are so many times a day when I am on my way to go do something — sometimes I’m entrenched in the thoughts I was having just before heading somewhere; sometimes I’m thinking about what I am going to do afterward. “On my way” becomes the time in between, the time you desperately want to reduce, because it doesn’t seem to be the main goal.
And then I look up.


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— sometimes it’s the symmetry








— sometimes it’s the color








— sometimes it’s the combination of color and symmetry








Time really slows down in the moments when I look up.
You must’ve felt it too — when the sky is blue and you can’t help but smile; when you see sunshine on the wall of a building and you realize the sun is shining its warmth on your face too. Or the cloud is in a shape you think you can recognise and your inner curiosity starts pondering what it could be. Or the feeling of surprise when you catch the sunset that day without planning for it and instinctively you just want to pull out your camera and capture the moment. Or if you’re in a city like Hong Kong, then you’ll see skyscrapers with massive windows that reflect the color of the sky. Perhaps your city is located near a mountain, and you can see the mountain tops in the distance. Or it’s the shimmering lights of massive apartment buildings late at night that catches your eye — what a common view in Hong Kong. Even better — if you’re in a more historical city you may see shrines, temples, cathedrals, synagogues, churches, or mosques with glamorous structures that lasted hundreds and hundreds of years.
If you can’t recall feeling those moments yourself then you’ve certainly seen it on someone’s Instagram story — nature’s beauty and even man-made architectures leave us humans in awe. And the cool thing is, you can feel that awe intentionally, anytime. Anytime you’re on the way anywhere, just look up from your phone. And feel it. Feel the moment.
Please comment and share the little beauty that you’ve seen in your surrounding lately when you look up!
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在都市裡生活的我總是不斷地從一個地方趕到下一個地方。我不是在回家的路上，就是在去工作的路上、或是去健身房做瑜伽的路上、抑或是去找朋友的路上、不然就是去超市買菜的路上。當我在途中時，常常腦海裡想著剛剛在做的事，或是等一下要做的事情；趕來趕去，好像恨不得可以瞬間移動，因為在路上的時候根本不是自己主要想做的事情。而當我不經意抬頭時——
我看到高樓大廈的對稱感。
我也看到天空湛藍的顏色。

連人在大型商場裡我也看到讓人目不轉睛的燈光擺設。








而在看到的瞬間，時間好像停止了。
你應該也體會過吧？在看到藍天的時候原本鬱悶的心情就好了。或看到陽光溫暖地打在牆上，進而感覺到陽光打在自己的臉上的溫度。或是好奇心突然光臨，開始研究今天的雲朵長得像什麼。或是抬頭時剛好遇到那天的夕陽，真美，真想馬上拿出手機把它給拍下來。或是看到高樓大廈的窗戶反射天空的顏色，同時再看到遠方的山頂上的綠樹，以及遠處高樓在夜晚閃閃發光，更驚喜的是看著寺廟、教堂百年來歲月的痕跡也擋不住它驚人的美。
你倘若未曾關注這些抬頭即可看到的畫面，那你滑IG時也總該看過朋友分享過吧。大自然的景觀與人為的建築，處處充滿「美」。可以讓你無時無刻都可以體會讓時間暫停的奧妙！希望未來，你在路上可以不時的抬頭一看，暫時放棄手機一下子，用心去體會那「美」的瞬間。
期盼你也可以跟我一樣愛上抬頭看天空、看建築物⋯⋯即便再忙也要停下來看看周圍的風景！
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Look up and you'll be in awe 忙中有餘抬頭仰望天空吧

I&#8217;ve meditated mostly daily for more than a year before coming to this retreat, yet I was slightly nervous as I&#8217;ve never fully dedicated even just two days to mindfulness and meditation.

過去的一年多中，我幾乎每天都會抽出十到二十分鐘冥想，但在來法航精舍進行兩天的禪修活動之前，也是不免有一點點緊張。畢竟，我也還沒試過一次超過一小時的冥想⋯⋯

An hour-long metro and bus ride later, I arrived at the serene and green Ngong Ping with my backpack for the upcoming 2-day insight meditation retreat. Not after a few steps, we came below the famous Tian Tan Big Buddha, showing her face amid the clouds. And so we begin.
Hong Kong is well known for its heat in July. Alongside humidity, it’s difficult to walk any distance without feeling completely drenched and uncomfortable. Yet, while we started trekking from the Tian Tan Buddha towards the Fa Hong Monastery, the skies had just cleared up from the rain, and the temperature in the mountains was at a perfectly slightly chill temperature. Downhill we go through the winding treks towards Fa Hong Monastery — the glistening sunlight is reflecting on every single leaf that just had gotten a big shower from the rain before, and if you listen closely, you can hear the insects and other living creatures singing the songs of joy to celebrate the big downfall. And we continue to walk.
As walking downhill requires the utmost attention post-rain — our meditation had already begun before we even arrived at the monastery.







The winding mountain trek!
Throughout the two days, we had multiple 30-minute sessions of sitting meditation, walking meditation, standing meditation, and even relational mindfulness. Mostly in silence, we were invited to just be at peace with our bodies, our thoughts, and our surroundings. Men in nature. Being fully surrounded by the forest, with birds chirping and occasional thunderstorms — nature wraps us up in a beautiful little cocoon that is the monastery and us attendees of the retreat. At times we were invited to talk to fellow attendees to share insights we gained from meditation, and in the form of peer-guided meditation, we walked through each other the sensations we feel in our bodies.
Oh, what a safe place we were in, where the labels in the ‘real world’ didn’t matter and we could be fully ourselves with no responsibility or worry; where the noise was removed, and we could listen to what our inner voice has to say. And looking next to you, you can see another beautiful being doing the same you’re doing — letting go of labels, removing noise, and going inwards.
Sometimes you’re reminded you were very recently in a bustling city where ‘busy’ is the correct answer to ‘how are you.’ From the roof of the monastery, we were able to see the skyline of beautiful Hong Kong in the far distance, which at night turns into shimmering lights. What a city full of awe. It too, is possible to feel peace in a place as fast as Hong Kong. Being in a monastery makes it much easier, but it is not the only way. You can create time and space by yourself by practicing the same 10 / 20 / 30 minutes meditation and feel at peace.


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Within a blink of an eye, it was time to return to the busy city again. Time stopped as we felt all the texture within every moment, yet the whole weekend zoomed past despite being without mobile phones, books, and talking.
I really wanted to hold on to that feeling forever — or maybe specifically, it’s the energy in the room. In silence, we had solace with each other. It’s quiet but not scary. I felt simply at ease. But I also had to remind myself — living is not just about the highs but also the lows. Yes, I loved the weekend, but I cannot seek experiences exactly like last weekend and reject opportunities of experiencing something else. No matter how great it is, every moment is just a fleeting moment in our lives. And life is made up of all these beautiful and sometimes difficult moments.
前個週末，我報名參加法航精舍兩天一夜的禪修，顧名思義就是住在寺廟一晚，吃齋、靜坐。一般的內觀、靜坐活動以初學者來說都是至少要參加一個禮拜的，但這麼恰巧有一個兩天一夜的，我就馬上報名了。
香港沒有很大，在搭僅一個多小時的地鐵與巴士之後，我們一行人便抵達了莊嚴的天壇大佛裙擺邊。參拜了大佛之後，我們起步前往法航精舍。香港的七月一般又濕又熱，但這麼恰好早晨剛下完了一陣雨，一路上不但不熱，甚至因為微風徐徐吹來而感到一點涼。蜿蜒的山路在雨後也顯得特別活潑，炎炎夏日帶來的慵懶與不耐煩都不見了——個個樹葉閃閃發光，像我們一樣慶幸上天即時滋潤大地。蟬鳴、鳥叫聲也不少，大家都出來慶祝了。不約而同地，我們一行人都很謹慎的走著山路。一來是被活潑的山路吸引著，二來是雨後的山路蠻滑的，需要特別小心行走。悄悄地，我們已經開始我們禪修的行程了。







天壇大佛在雲裡的樣貌～
抵達寺廟後，我們在靜語之中體驗了不同的內觀靜坐活動：有時我們坐著冥想（這是最普遍的），有時我們則站著冥想，也有時我們在寺廟來回步行的動態冥想。在安靜的冥想之中，真的有種和大地合而為一的感覺。整個週末不時的下著雷陣雨，而我們身處深山裡的寺廟中，完完全全地被大自然擁抱著。在老師的帶領之下，偶爾我們會有短暫的說話時間，和同修行的友人小聲地分享我們冥想的洞察以及我們聽覺、觸覺細微的感受，彷彿變成我們在指導彼此冥想一般。
在寺廟裡，要暫時忘記自己在寺廟外的職責與擔憂很容易，也因為這樣在寺廟裡大家都顯得更加輕鬆。我們不需去想任何事情，只要安靜的練習內觀冥想就好了。在這裡沒有家裡的、公司的事情要處理，沒人知道你的背景，也沒人在乎：我們都只是來練習內觀冥想的。而當你感受到每個人在你旁邊都是在做一樣的事情，在放下塵世間的職責與擔憂、在靜下腦袋裡的噪音，並在向內觀察平時太吵時聽不到的聲音。
在寺廟的屋頂，可以看到遠處高樓大廈，晚上則變成閃爍的城市光影——也不禁令人讚嘆：香港真美。雖然大部分時間都不覺自處都市之中，但那麼偶爾地，提醒了自己，置身於離市區一小時的距離而已，而此刻的自己感受到無比的平靜，似乎是一般繁忙的都市之中很少能體會的。在繁忙的都市之中，真的也能感受到深山裡的平靜嗎？教內觀冥想的老師們一致認為，雖然在寺廟裡特別容易靜下心來，不受外物干擾，但回到市區裡，更應該將在寺廟裡學會的帶去應用。生活的每個細節都是內觀冥想的好時機：你可以透過定時的靜坐冥想去感受到內心的平靜，也可以在每個轉瞬間，從觀察事物的變化去體會動中之靜。
不知不覺就到了禪修營的尾聲，在沒有手機、沒有書也幾乎沒有講話之中，兩天竟然過的這麼快！我好想要抓住整個週末個感覺不放手，真的好喜歡和大家一起靜靜地禪修的感覺，既溫暖又平和。但也該提醒自己，人生的起伏有高有低，不應堅持一再的體會很喜歡的感覺，而是要將平和與察覺力帶到各個時刻。活著的每一刻都是值得細細品味的！

I’ve meditated mostly daily for more than a year before coming to this retreat, yet I was slightly nervous as I’ve never fully dedicated even just two days to mindfulness and meditation.

A 2-day Insight Meditation Retreat in Hong Kong 兩天一夜的內觀靜坐禪修營 營後感想

From living in the busiest city to intentionally living a slow life

From every Hong Konger I&#8217;ve talked to, Taiwan is that dream island where everyone wants to retire because life is slower, a dollar goes further, and people are nicer. That&#8217;s always my perspective, too: Hong Kong is fast, and Taipei is slow. However, I&#8217;ve also known friends who have grown as young adults in Taipei who have rent to pay and are stressed from work. It dawned on me that people experience stress and worry in every place they live in, and perhaps only by intentionally slowing down can you remove the looming stress that our modern society gives us. And through this, maybe we can, in turn, change the mood of our modern society.Since meditating for more than a year regularly and traveling to 9 countries in that time frame, I&#8217;ve found a particular flow state that I get in: I feel particularly good when I let my curiosity lead my life. And when I&#8217;m not traveling, I try to practice that active curiosity in my daily surroundings.Through &#8220;City Girl Slow Life,&#8221; I would like to share findings, stories, and even practical guides on intentionally slowing down in a big city. There will be articles focusing on experiencing subtle sensations and trying out little &#8220;brain snaps&#8221; that can snap you out of a low headspace when experiencing things we typically associate annoyance with.If this is something you would like to see regularly, please subscribe (or stay subscribed), share it with your friends, and spread the word.I hope you will enjoy this with your morning cup of tea or coffee, perhaps on your morning commute to work. I hope this can help you find all the little joys in your busy life and allow you to lead your life with more curiosity, love, and intention. And through slowing down, experience all the textures life has to provide.<div class="captioned-image-container"><figure><a class="image-link is-viewable-img image2" target="_blank" href="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe3a9d379-6c1e-4edf-bfa6-4680c47f7f55_749x328.png" data-component-name="Image2ToDOM"><div class="image2-inset"><picture><source type="image/webp" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe3a9d379-6c1e-4edf-bfa6-4680c47f7f55_749x328.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe3a9d379-6c1e-4edf-bfa6-4680c47f7f55_749x328.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe3a9d379-6c1e-4edf-bfa6-4680c47f7f55_749x328.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_webp,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe3a9d379-6c1e-4edf-bfa6-4680c47f7f55_749x328.png 1456w" sizes="100vw"><img src="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe3a9d379-6c1e-4edf-bfa6-4680c47f7f55_749x328.png" width="749" height="328" data-attrs="{&quot;src&quot;:&quot;https://substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com/public/images/e3a9d379-6c1e-4edf-bfa6-4680c47f7f55_749x328.png&quot;,&quot;srcNoWatermark&quot;:null,&quot;fullscreen&quot;:null,&quot;imageSize&quot;:null,&quot;height&quot;:328,&quot;width&quot;:749,&quot;resizeWidth&quot;:null,&quot;bytes&quot;:444340,&quot;alt&quot;:null,&quot;title&quot;:null,&quot;type&quot;:&quot;image/png&quot;,&quot;href&quot;:null,&quot;belowTheFold&quot;:false,&quot;topImage&quot;:true,&quot;internalRedirect&quot;:null}" class="sizing-normal" alt="" srcset="https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_424,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe3a9d379-6c1e-4edf-bfa6-4680c47f7f55_749x328.png 424w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_848,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe3a9d379-6c1e-4edf-bfa6-4680c47f7f55_749x328.png 848w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1272,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe3a9d379-6c1e-4edf-bfa6-4680c47f7f55_749x328.png 1272w, https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_1456,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fe3a9d379-6c1e-4edf-bfa6-4680c47f7f55_749x328.png 1456w" sizes="100vw" fetchpriority="high"></picture><div class="image-link-expand"><svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="20" height="20" viewBox="0 0 24 24" fill="none" stroke="currentColor" stroke-width="2" stroke-linecap="round" stroke-linejoin="round" class="lucide lucide-maximize2 "><polyline points="15 3 21 3 21 9"></polyline><polyline points="9 21 3 21 3 15"></polyline><line x1="21" x2="14" y1="3" y2="10"></line><line x1="3" x2="10" y1="21" y2="14"></line></svg></div></div></a><figcaption class="image-caption">I went to the Hong Kong Tian Tan Big Buddha last weekend, and here&#8217;s a pic! 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the same author as (Un)learning Mental Health with Tania Wu, written in 2020, the weekly newsletter that shared therapy experiences in both English and Chinese.&#36889;&#20221;&#38651;&#23376;&#22577;&#26159;&#21478;&#19968;&#20221;&#38651;&#23376;&#22577;&#12300;&#20320;&#20170;&#22825;&#36996;&#22909;&#21966;&#65311;&#12301;&#30340;&#20316;&#32773;&#23531;&#30340;&#65292;&#23531;&#30340;&#20839;&#23481;&#26159;&#38364;&#26044;&#24515;&#29702;&#20581;&#24247;&#20197;&#21450;&#24515;&#29702;&#35566;&#21830;&#30340;&#32147;&#39511;&#35527;&#12290;&#24744;&#22312;2020&#24180;&#26366;&#35330;&#38321;&#36942;&#37027;&#20221;&#38651;&#23376;&#22577;&#65292;&#20063;&#26159;&#28858;&#20160;&#40636;&#24744;&#29694;&#22312;&#20173;&#32380;&#32396;&#25910;&#21040;&#26032;&#30340;&#38651;&#23376;&#22577;&#20839;&#23481;&#65374;</blockquote>

From every Hong Konger I’ve talked to, Taiwan is that dream island where everyone wants to retire because life is slower, a dollar goes further, and people are nicer. That’s always my perspective, too: Hong Kong is fast, and Taipei is slow. However, I’ve also known friends who have grown as young adults in Taipei who have rent to pay and are stressed from work. It dawned on me that people experience stress and worry in every place they live in, and perhaps only by intentionally slowing down can you remove the looming stress that our modern society gives us. And through this, maybe we can, in turn, change the mood of our modern society.
Since meditating for more than a year regularly and traveling to 9 countries in that time frame, I’ve found a particular flow state that I get in: I feel particularly good when I let my curiosity lead my life. And when I’m not traveling, I try to practice that active curiosity in my daily surroundings.
Through “City Girl Slow Life,” I would like to share findings, stories, and even practical guides on intentionally slowing down in a big city. There will be articles focusing on experiencing subtle sensations and trying out little “brain snaps” that can snap you out of a low headspace when experiencing things we typically associate annoyance with.
If this is something you would like to see regularly, please subscribe (or stay subscribed), share it with your friends, and spread the word.
I hope you will enjoy this with your morning cup of tea or coffee, perhaps on your morning commute to work. I hope this can help you find all the little joys in your busy life and allow you to lead your life with more curiosity, love, and intention. And through slowing down, experience all the textures life has to provide.







I went to the Hong Kong Tian Tan Big Buddha last weekend, and here’s a pic!  上週我去拜訪了香港大嶼山的大佛，這是祂在山裡的樣貌～
你好！我是一個在台北長大，在香港工作，先前又經常在世界各地出差旅行的城市女孩——在過去的一年中我去了九個不同的國家，而和一般旅行比較不一樣的是：我用比較慢的形式，花半個至一個月在一個城市，將自己完全融入個不認識的地方，假裝自己是當地人（畢竟我雖然在國外，也是天天要工作的）。我整整一年隨時充滿好奇心的探索著不同的城市，即便回到了香港、或台北，也盡量帶著這種好奇心在熟悉的街道上行走。同時我也剛好開始固定的練習正念與冥想——融合好奇心與正念，我覺得是細細品味人生百態的好方法。
「城市女孩・慢生活」這份電子報顧名思義是希望幫助住在城市的人能夠更有系統的放慢生活的速度，以增加生活的品質。
我記得當初高中從台北畢業後選擇去了香港，原因是香港比較國際化、步調也比較快。到了香港之後，遇見的香港朋友都一致認為台灣是退休後的好去所，我也內化了台北是我可以慢活的城市，而在香港的自己就是上緊發條。今年年初的時候回台北，我發現摯友們也一一因為房價、瑣事似乎被生活追著著跑，不能有片刻停歇。
希望透過電子報能和大家分享我學習慢活的心路歷程，以及我覺得可以幫助到大家的一些思考模式，讓你可以換種方式體驗都市生活～
若這是您喜歡看到的訊息，歡迎免費訂閱（或繼續訂閱），希望能伴隨您早上的那杯咖啡或茶，和您一起探索忙碌的人生的各種美妙～讓我們一起體會城市裡的慢生活吧！

From the same author as (Un)learning Mental Health with Tania Wu, written in 2020, the weekly newsletter that shared therapy experiences in both English and Chinese.
這份電子報是另一份電子報「你今天還好嗎？」的作者寫的，寫的內容是關於心理健康以及心理諮商的經驗談。您在2020年曾訂閱過那份電子報，也是為什麼您現在仍繼續收到新的電子報內容～

The reason behind "City Girl Slow Life" 城市女孩慢生活緣起

This is City Girl Slow Life&#65372;&#22478;&#24066;&#22899;&#23401; &#24930;&#29983;&#27963;.

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This is City Girl Slow Life｜城市女孩 慢生活.
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This is City Girl Slow Life｜城市女孩 慢生活.

I write a bit, sometimes ✍🏼