1. Don’t Worry About Moving Alone

Leaving Canada and moving to Hong Kong for a few months was exhilarating, exciting, and scary. I was leaving behind relative comfort in Canada and moving to the other side of the world, without any close friends and family from back home. During my plane ride to Hong Kong, feelings of loneliness and regret crossed my mind and in the first couple weeks of moving to Hong Kong, the feelings persisted. However, after a couple weeks, I found that since most expats in Hong Kong went through the same thoughts and challenges upon moving to Hong Kong, the social groups were super open to inviting new people and you quickly find your circle of friends and support network.

2. Cost of Living Will Shock You

The cost of living in Hong Kong was definitely one of the greatest shocks for me.

Food — With a decent Western lunch costing $12–18 CAD and a dinner costing ~$15-$20 CAD, expenses quickly rack up, especially since the social environment of the city compels you to go out for most meals. Similarly, the average price of a cup of coffee in Hong Kong is the highest in the world, with a tall coffee at Starbucks setting you back around $6 CAD.

Entertainment — Cover at some clubs can go up to $50 CAD and cocktails at bars/clubs can range from $15–30 CAD.

Rent — Living on the island side (within a 10-minute radius of Central), expect to pay $500 CAD for a closet, $1000 — $2000 CAD for a small room in a shared apartment, and $3000+ CAD for a solo apartment.

However, the beauty of Hong Kong is its versatility. On any budget, you can likely make Hong Kong manageable which means that you’d have to move away from the island side, eat at local restaurants, and avoid some western comforts.

3. Club 7-Eleven is #1

With a fast-paced and stressful work environment, Hong Kongers are really good at relieving stress after work. The main nightlife area in Hong Kong is in the Central district, in a street/district called Lan Kwai Fong (LKF). With dozens of bars/clubs in the area, this is one of the best places in Hong Kong to relieve stress until the wee hours of the morning. As mentioned in point 2, drinks are pretty expensive in the bars/clubs, so most interns/exchange students congregate in front of 7 Eleven, where beers, liqueur, and wine can be bought in abundance and consumed on the street.

4. Get Ready to Adapt

Adapting to new environments quickly is key when travelling and moving abroad. When I moved to Hong Kong, two things in particular required quick adaptation: 1) heat, and 2) space. As soon as I stepped out of the Hong Kong airport, a wave of humid, heavy, and incredibly hot air hit me. Living in Hong Kong in the summer months proved to be extremely challenging, as the daily average hovered around mid-40s Celsius (including humidity). Initially, I would arrive at work and dinners drenched in sweat, however, after a couple weeks, it seemed like my body adapted.

The second Hong Kong experience which required quick adaptation was the lack of living space in the region. With one of the highest property values in the world, living expenses on the island side of Hong Kong are incredibly expensive. Initially, this forced me to live in a 30sq ft room for the first couple months of living in Hong Kong (literally the door and the bed). Living in such a constrained space with limited ventilation forced me to adapt quickly and learn some new yoga moves to flip into the bed.

5. Find Time for Yourself

The city is incredibly fast-paced, social, and exhilarating. However, after you find a strong social circle, it’s easy to be caught up in the circle and forget about finding time for yourself. In the first couple months of living in Hong Kong, I went out of my way to meet as many people as I could and although this did make my Hong Kong experience amazing, I did feel a little bit overwhelmed. With long work hours and a packed social life, it can be hard to find time to pause and reflect.

6. Embrace Every Second

Being caught up in the Hong Kong pace of life, I sometimes forgot to embrace every moment and appreciate the small details about life in Asia. Being back in Canada for several days now, I miss living in Hong Kong quite a bit…

Resilience. The term is newly chic and popular, commonly used in parenting books, corporate mission statements, and Bay Area start-ups. The word is derived from Latin for “to jump again” and the modern definition varies according to context and personal beliefs. Personally, the word signifies one’s ability to “bounce back” after a traumatic or challenging experience and to grow from the experience, rather than retreat.

Resilience is an interesting concept, as no test can measure one’s ability to bounce back and the only true test is through one’s reaction to life’s obstacles, challenges, and threats. Recent research shows that grit and resilience are more important than intelligence in measuring one’s ability to succeed. In fact, grit is often unrelated or even inversely related to measures of talent.

Being interested in the research areas of grit and resilience and the development of these traits, I reflected on my experience. I moved to Hong Kong just over 2 months ago through the Cansbridge Fellowship and found myself in an entirely new culture, with wildly different cuisine, work environment, and temperate than what I was accustomed to in Canada.

I remember vividly the first few nights after moving to Hong Kong. I was overwhelmed and seriously questioning my choice of moving to Asia for the summer. Laying on a hard bamboo mattress, jet lagged in my 30 sq ft micro-dorm, with the air conditioning malfunctioning, questions raced through my mind: Why am I here, half way across the world? Why did I leave comfort in Canada? After a few hours of doubt and self perpetuating negative reflection, I recalled an article that I read in the New Yorker several months prior that introduced the importance of resilience and grit. I vowed to embrace the inevitable challenges ahead, with the knowledge that the experience will ultimately lead to significant self growth.

In 1989, a developmental psychologist, Emmy Wener, published a study after following 698 children over a period of 32 years. She tracked their exposure to stress and found that a healthy amount of stress and challenge were important in the development of resiliency, however, the presence of multiple significant stressors had a detrimental effect on the development of the trait. Correspondingly, reflecting back on the past two months, I believe that Hong Kong was the perfect place to build resiliency, with a limited amount of stressors and a healthy dose of challenges. Although I did experience challenges in Hong Kong similar to the challenges that most expats face, the stressors have not been strong enough to negate and limit my self growth, but rather were strong enough to push me out of my comfort zone and build resiliency and grit.

The most important lesson that I learned from my reflection of resiliency and grit is to:

Remember the big picture — When facing stressful and painful events, think of the magnitude of the event from a high-level. Most challenging situations can be overcome without significant long-term harm, and as such, small stressors should not be blown out of proportion. This is especially the case for travelers from developed countries… Those coming from developed countries have many safety nets that would prevent a fall to rock bottom, and as such, most challenges and failures, whether significant or minimal, should be taken with a grain of salt.

If you’re interested in recent research and thought on resiliency/grit, these are great sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/magazine/the-profound-emptiness-of-resilience.html

http://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/the-secret-formula-for-resilience

Transcript of "Grit: The power of passion and perseverance"