Adaptability

Despite not having been in HK at all for almost 3 years, I adapted to HK much quicker than I thought I would. It turns out that 18 years of muscle memory just gets built in you and can get reactivated very quickly. I think this realisation has made me a lot more open to living in new places when I still can. Falling back to comfort zones has never seemed easier.

Change

I was also surprised by how little things changed in Hong Kong. Much of stores and restaraunts I used to go were still there. It felt like Hong Kong changes even slower than Oxford, which is surprising.

Coming back to Oxford

It was only when I came back to Oxford did I realise how tiny the scale of Oxford is. Oxford just felt small and its streets cramped. Perhaps the relative lack of public transport in Oxford makes distances feel longer.

I still can’t stand that it takes on average >5 seconds to get on a bus (the bus driver asks people where they’re going, the bus driver picks the right price, wait for the receipt to be printed out …) compared to one tap of the Octopus in Hong Kong (There are rarely variable pricing on buses, or even if there are you can click a button yourself and change prices quickly).