New digs

Quarantine D14

Let loose today and made the 80 minute trek across town to my new +7 location. It’s great to be free – went for a nice long walk, and a meal with fresh salad!

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Even though I really appreciate being able to be “outside” and have some choice in my meals, the whole quarantine experience wasn’t too bad. There’s something to be said about having and extremely simple life – few choices, highly structured and very productive.

There is the apocryphal story of Victor Hugo throwing all his clothes out the window to prevent himself from going out and being distracted so that he could complete the Hunchback of Notre Dame. It appears it was just his formal clothes and they were locked in a cupboard. Nevertheless, I remember also last year when my son and I were both in quarantine for the first time, emerging into the apocalyptic scenario where we were the only living beings in the hotel, making our way to the airport and flying home and then for a few weeks after, he kept on remarking on how overwhelming the world was, and how little one actually needs in life.

I’ve had firm admonishments from my colleagues following my journey to “seize the day” and have fun exploring Shanghai over the weekend and not working! It is in fact probably more than 20 years since I’ve been in Shanghai, so I plan to do just that.

We had our last day of the ECIS middle leadership course today, and were introduced to the work of Susan Craig Scott and Fierce Conversations and Kim Scott (the coincidence of a same surname?!) and Radical Candor. Very interesting and had a good conversation in our breakout room on how culturally transferable it would be. After 19 years in Asia I’m always cognoscente on people losing face. I’ll read the books and see where they take me.