Big City Lights
As I sit here looking out the windows of our 18th floor apartment in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (a city even bigger than NYC!), I am so grateful for a month full of big city energy. If you read my last blog post, you know our lazy island life was giving me too much time to think and feel and I was kind of “losing it.” Well, I’m back!
I’ve always enjoyed the energy of big cities, from the European greats I’ve visited like Rome and Paris, to our own home country anchors like New York City and Los Angeles (near where I grew up). Cities have character. And they are full of characters! I remember spending a few days in San Francisco once while I was 9 months pregnant. As we walked out of a restaurant, a homeless man approached us holding out a container and asking for spare change. Before we could respond, he took one look at my bulging belly and said, “Oh, you’re having a baby! Here, you’ll need this more than I do” and proceeded to give me a handful of change. What a city character moment!
On another trip to San Fran (just 3 hours from where we raised our family), another character made an impact—another homeless man, though clearly one on drugs, was intimidating with his hulk-like physique. As he walked down the middle of the street near a theater we were headed to, everyone could hear him angrily speaking to someone only he could see. We tried to cross the street to avoid him but he started following me, yelling at me. It was rather scary. Cities have millions of people, including some characters, both good and bad. The experience is unpredictable and always surprising, which makes it especially exciting.
I love to people watch—because outside of major tourist attractions, you can really get a fascinating cross-section of what makes the city tick. I love to walk the streets early in the morning when the shops are just opening up and people are on their way to work as a new day begins. I love to see the city lights, especially from a high-rise, when the fascinating grit of the day is covered in darkness and neon that lights the city like a fairyland, even as you can imagine what goes on behind all of those windows, the good and beautiful, the bad and ugly, the myriad of human experience played out just feet away from someone else’s completely different life.
But I digress—back to the city energy. While we were on the tiny Cambodian island of Koh Rong Samloem, resting and relaxing, we could barely keep our eyes open at 8:00 p.m. But here in the big city, with our blinds flung open to light spectacles displayed on buildings around us, we are working, thinking, talking until midnight or even later. And although we often feel sleepy here and there throughout the day, we wake up with energy, passion and creative ideas. What is it about the city that wakes up my brain?!
Having only vacationed in big cities for less than a week at a time, I thought this energetic influence would wear off quickly and I’d feel overwhelmed by all the city choices—where to eat, to walk, what to see—the options seem endless. But into our third week here now, I am pleased to say the energy runs strong and I’m getting so much accomplished. I feel incredibly alive! I don’t think I could keep this up forever, but next time we hit a big city, I’d like to stay 2 or 3 months to capture the most energy I can. And far from being overwhelmed, I’ve just dialed down on the village sense of a city—for they are really a collection of small villages and that’s one of my favorite aspects. A village of choices feels far more manageable. When we were in Sydney, Australia, we quickly became known at little cafes we frequented in walking distance of our apartment, and we enjoyed seeing the locals playing tennis and soccer at the park. Feeling (though a bit voyeuristically) like we were part of a community, if only for a short time, was a surprise.
So here in KL we explore what’s around us, what we see and taste as we walk, rather than consulting Yelp or TripAdvisor so we can do what other tourists say we should do. Yes, there are museums and buildings to see. Who knows, maybe we will. For now, we’ve just visited parks, and birds and butterflies (if you want to see our place and what we’ve been doing each day, tune in to our daily vlog), because sometimes we need some nature to chill down from the city energy. It’s nice to take a break, and equally nice to come back to the apartment and rev back up.
One of the best things about nomad life is flexibility. We don’t have to commit to living any particular place. We are free to mix it up, not based only on what we want to see and do, but how we want to FEEL. When we want to chill and relax, we head to the islands. When we want to learn and explore, we head somewhere cultural. When we need some big city energy and a real community experience, we can get that too. We love the freedom of not being anchored in any one type of place. And for now at least, I am very happy here.
