So Here I Am

Hey, I’m not unhappy. Let’s see how long that will last.

I’ve got a lot of updates, which is why it took me so damn long to write this.

I started a new job on October 2nd. That was 356 insanely stressful days that I was out of work. One might think that maybe I might kick back for some of that time, but I most definitely did not. I applied for an insane number of jobs. I stretched my severance pay as much as possible. I had six months of unemployment checks. And then it was dipping into savings far more than I preferred.

If you’re not job hunting yourself, you don’t know how much AI has killed job hunting. There are AI apps that boast that they will apply to 50 jobs a day for you without you doing anything. That leads to every new job posting having hundreds of applicants within an hour of being posted. In order to deal with that flood, HR staff are using AI to go through the pile, and candidates are getting rejected without human eyes ever seeing their application.

And, oh, yeah, not only did I start a new job, but it’s in Hong Kong. I’ve left the U.S. It is entirely possible that I won’t return to the U.S. for the rest of my life. It’s an odd thing to write, an even odder feeling, and yet I can’t think anything that might bring me back there.

Living in the US under a not-quite-but-soon-to-be-fascist dictator was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. Watching the daily destruction of the US Constitution and the rule of law, of 250+ years of commonly accepted American values, of civil rights, of women’s rights, of everyone’s rights, I started to wonder if this was what it felt like to be Jewish in Germany in the 1930s.

The United States is being led by one of the most corrupt Americans to ever walk the planet. Not only has he used the office to line the pockets of himself and his family, he has accepted bribes from foreign countries, worked to destroy centuries-old alliances in favor of relationships with other tyrants, usurped much of Congress’s power (with the backing of both Congress and a politicized Supreme Court), deployed the U.S. military on American soil against American citizens, censored news organizations, attacked universities, set the U.S. back decades commercially, threatened to withhold federal funds from cities and states on a political basis, appointed idiots and scoundrels to lead vital federal agencies, defunded free speech in media and museums, weaponized law enforcement against his enemies, destroyed civil rights, destroying health care and the environment - all of this and more within the space of 9 months, which seems fast until one realizes that this playbook was waiting in plain sight for an easily manipulated narcissist to put in motion.

The 2025 playbook being followed by Trump and the Republican party appears to be massively unpopular in public opinion polls and Trump has broken so many laws. They know that they will have huge losses in the 2026 mid-term elections and that if the Democrats take back control of the House and Senate, Trump will be impeached again.

That says to me that the U.S. will not have free and fair elections in 2026, if it has elections at all. Trump deploying the military in “blue” cities based on litanies of lies could be a rehearsal for him to declare martial law and cancel elections. Even if things don’t go that far, the redistricting taking place in states, the attempt to invalidate mail-in voting, the announcement that the Justice Department will “monitor” elections in key “blue states” says to me that the elections will be rigged. We know this because Trump has no imagination and his method of operating is to accuse others of crimes he himself has committed. (And while I don’t consider myself a conspiracy nut, I am willing to entertain the idea that the 2024 election was rigged. Yes, Kamala was a terrible candidate who under normal circumstances never would have been the Democratic nominee, but the extent of the victory certainly seems unusual.)

And here I am going from what looks to be an emerging fascist empire to a … well, I’ll simply say “China”. I know that following the 2019 demonstrations and COVID, China put the hammer down on Hong Kong. I was here for most of it. But the thing is - at least in Hong Kong I know the rules and I can trust that they will be applied in a predictable fashion. Meanwhile in the U.S., as ICE rounds up immigrants with no criminal record and has even imprisoned and tortured American citizens, every time my wife (who holds a legally obtained green card) flew to the U.S., I had to worry if they would let her in. (Have you ever had to deal with the HK Immigration Department, or the Inland Revenue Department for that matter? They’re actually incredibly nice.)

Now, I get that all of this may be perceived as more than slightly hypocritical, because the fact is that if I had gotten a new job in the US, I would have accepted it and stayed. I thought I’d be in the U.S. for more than three years - perhaps five or even ten.

I considered my choice of Austin, Texas as a mistake for many reasons but I actually liked being back in the US more than I expected to. I should have chosen to stay on the west coast, maybe Washington state, but what was done was done. I had a 780 square foot one-bedroom apartment with a balcony, dishwasher, washing machine & dryer, pool, gym, parking for approximately HK$7,000 per month. Medicare was giving me better medical coverage than I had expected. There may be a lot of things wrong with Texas (Abbott, Paxton, Cruz for starters) but it also had Texas BBQ, taco trucks, and the best supermarket I ever had in my life. I could get same day delivery from Amazon and subscribe to streaming services like the Criterion Channel.

The bad side of things was also the American health care system. My wife didn’t have health insurance - and getting it through Obamacare was costing me over US$500 a month - not an issue when I was working, but when I was out of work for a year?

Speaking of my wife, it cost me a shit ton to get her visa - legal fees, filing fees, etc. And now we can kiss that goodbye. If she’s away from the US for more than six months or a year, which she most definitely will be, her visa becomes a memory.

Such is life.

Moving on …

People want to know why I don’t retire. I am over 70 years old, so I suppose it’s a valid question. Aside from the financial aspect, it comes down to my just not knowing what the hell I would do with myself if I’m not working. Fortunately, I’m still in pretty decent shape.

I thought that at Volkswagen, I was not just at the top of my game mentally, I was better than I had been in the past. I don’t stand still. I believe in constant improvement. And the feedback I got from my peers and management backed that up. I was converted from contractor to employee. I was told that I had solved problems that had left several predecessors in the dust. In two years I had 2 trips to Germany, 8 trips to Redmond, and 4 trips to Beijing. The work (and the travel) energized me.

Physically … well, my mother lived to be 95, and she probably had a few years left but she got bored. My dad died at 75, but that was due to an error at the hospital, who knows how long he would have had? Considering the life I’ve led, I have no understanding of why my health is as good as it is - lots of little things but nothing that will kill me, even if you add all those little things up.

Being back in Hong Kong and working again is good for my health. In the last year when I was out of work and mostly staying home, I was averaging 200 steps per day. Now that I’m back in HK and going into an office three days a week, I’m walking an average of two miles per day.

I haven’t quite found my old mojo yet - beyond having dinner out most nights, the one night I did go out to a bar to hang out, I was still back home and in bed well before midnight.

(The bar I went to was The Wanch, in part because my friend Chris B was playing with her new band, and in part to show support to the owners, who are also friends, now that I’m back. I only had my iPhone to take pictures and I kind of missed not having a “real” camera any more, but do I want to go down that rabbit hole again, spending crazy amounts of money not just on a camera body but lenses, tripods, lights, bags? No, I do not.)

(Chris B, shot by me at PASM Workshop, the studio I had in the 2010’s.)

After being unemployed for a year, it feels incredibly good to have an office to go to, to have face to face meetings with people, to feel wanted and needed again. Then again, after being unemployed and essentially immobile for a year, it’s challenging to commute and spend 8+ hours a day in the office - and that’s even though the commute is super easy. I walk the equivalent of 3 city blocks to the bus stop, pay US$0.26 for an express bus, get off at the first stop, and then walk a few blocks to the office building.

Also, being back in Hong Kong gets me back to the HK health care system again. I went to see a general practitioner (cost = HK$0.00), showed her the list of prescriptions I had from the US, and walked out with a backpack filled with a three-month supply of prescription drugs (cost = HK$0.00). I’m back to eating at some of my favorite cha chaan tengs, my favorite hole in the wall Thai place, my favorite hole in the wall kebab joint, char siu from Chukfo Taipan, egg tarts from Bakehouse, and I’m making lists of new places to try.

When you think about it, you might say I’m lucky. A lot of people have told me how lucky I am that I have two countries I can live in that are not the United States. (I’m toying with the idea of a third country, somewhere in the EU.)

I’m over 70 and have a US-six-figure IT management job. My health is crazy good considering the lifestyle I led. I’m living in one of the safest cities in the world, a true global food capital, the best public transportation in the world …

Of course, this didn’t just happen, it took a lot of work. I don’t take it for granted. I’m thankful every day.

What else? This Substack. What do I do with it? Will I go back to my original intention of writing some movie and music reviews (go see One Battle After Another and listen to/watch David Gilmour’s Live at the Circus Maximus) or will I just abandon in, letting it dangle out there in the aether like some forgotten dingleberry?

I don’t know.