networking

Looking back at my 35 year old self – #8

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In 2013, I spent a term of studies in Nanjing, supported by a Hamer Scholarship. This was a transformative experience, and a moment to pause and reflect after an intense early period of migration. At the end of that year, I wrote down a series of journal entries, one-per-day, capturing my thoughts. COVID gave me the chance to revisit them: I was somewhat moved at meeting a younger version of myself. Now that I near the end of my PhD and a major book, and begin a new major venture in green energy, I realised patterns and struggles remained oddly similar. So, I thought I might share this journal here over the coming weeks – who knows, it might resonate with someone, trigger a useful insight, or just a passing moment of self-compassion.

22 december

I have just spent a long time on Facebook, over an hour maybe. Instead of reading a Chinese book and learning new characters, I followed the progress and recent posts of old friends or classmates.

Have I just lost an hour of my time? Many people talk about Facebook in that way – time drain, waste of time. I’ve never really thought of time as something you could ‘waste’ – maybe there’s something wrong with me? I enjoy memories. I enjoy looking back at the past, remembering what happened, recollecting. I have looked at the photos of H, and it brought back my life in Dublin, in their penthouse, with M, and C and A, and D.. I looked of pictures of A.M. and C. H. which brought me back to the lycee Kleber and my teenage years in Strasbourg. And a video with X., his video installations.

Doing this, I can trace trajectories from my own long past: X., not a top student, but personable and anarchic, has become an architect of ephemeral light structures in Paris, for concerts and night-clubs – hype, uncertain substance? Y. married – stunningly beautiful as before, her husband looks friendly, both look wealthy, and that seems to matter to them.  Z. lost hair, grew a beard, and stands in a photograph with his Turkish boyfriend. J. is now working with a feminist band. W. is now HR manager for Hewlett Packard in Vienna, looking prim and efficient.

I have been listening to ‘Tonight we are young’, over and over – seizing the last strands of my own youth, empathizing with young people. Am I refusing to grow,  still a student in my mid-thirties, desperately retaining youth, or acting like a responsible adult in a complex, fast-evolving world? I have, in certain areas, acted very responsibly. I own a house, I am in a stable and happy relationship. I founded an organization. I have recognized diplomas. I don’t have debt. I work in an area that I enjoy – though I hardly make money yet. People that I respect are encouraging me.

After Facebook, I looked at other websites: the Shanghaiist and their sensationalist news from China. ‘Tattoos you regret’. The appeal of the gruesome, the grotesque, the terrifying, the freakish, is old news: Plato wrote about it. A man with a hand grafted on his ankle. The woman whose husband gouged our her eye with his hand, or the woman who snapped off her husband’s penis with a pair of scissors. Who doesn’t want to see this?

In part, I take this as research. For some reason, possibly the way my father brought me up, I have grown to believe that ‘the best way to resist a temptation is yield to it’. I have played video games, sometimes to addictive levels, as a teenager – yet, I read extensively, passed exams, achieved things. Maybe not as much as if I hadn’t, maybe more. Who knows what bizarre unbalance might have come from me not playing Civ-Evo during my Wheeler Centre residency, or minesweeper when I was working from the Hub, or watched fewer random Facebook posts during my time in Nanjing.

So dwelling in the delights of remembering, and looking at gruesome news on the internet – is this a privilege I will later regret, time available by not having children and not trying to make money, time wasted now I will regret in my old age? Or is it my way of letting off some steam, in the culture and society that I live in, a way of not getting more deeply addicted to whatever I could get addicted to?  For I have not had a television since I was 18, and how many hours have I saved by not watching stupid shows on TV?

 

On learning from people

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I headed out to read a book, and ended up having a conversation.

Last month, I joined a club called ‘Henley’ that brings together ‘interesting and interested’ people. Membership comes with access to a pleasant space in the City. Today, around 4h30, I got out of the house to read a few reports, preparing for a new role I’m about to start. Rather than pay for a cafe, I headed to the club.

Most of the good spots were taken. As I walked towards the bar, a friendly-looking guy sitting in a red armchair commented on my bag. I sat down next to him, and we spent the next two hours talking. His field of work – science communication – is the one I’m heading towards. “There’s so much I could learn from you,” I quipped. And I did.

Often, if we want to learn something, we turn to the written word, or possibly formal events. People around us, simply sitting on an armchair, are a distraction from learning.  Today, I did not only learn about science communication and synthetic biology. It was embodied learning, made emotionally relevant by a sense of personal connection. The process, meanwhile, was thoroughly pleasant, happily lubricated by a glass of wine.

What would it take for us to shit this mindset, and think of every person we pass, on the street, on the tram, at the cafe, as a potential source of knowledge? Maybe no more than replacing greed and self-importance with curiosity. To start with, we could reframe our networking events in that manner.

 

On lifespans

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Most organisations present themselves sub specie aeternitatis – as if, once in existence, they should never stop to be. These abstract giants we serve seem to deserve more attention than us mere mortals. And so, when building professional relationships, we pride ourselves in weaving new webs of connection between these abstract constructs, companies, departments, organisations.

The model has a fatal flaw. Their lifespan may not exceed that of an average human being. When my grand-mother was born, Disney did not exist. When my father was born, Monash University did not exist. When I was born, Google did not exist. These institutions, solid as they seem, have a birth date – and as all living things, they will come to an end – maybe vanishing into thin air, or maybe transforming into something different, smaller, and insignificant.

It is tempting to treat humans – including ourselves – as pure transactional intermediaries between employers, social bodies, political collectives. It is possible to do so politely. But is it wise? Ten years from now, new structures will emerge – we don’t know what they will be yet, but we know they’re likely to be run by humans, maybe the same humans we neglected to bond with today, enamoured with the glitzier abstractions featured on their business cards.

What would it take to flip things around, and treat titles and collectives as no more – and no less – than opportunities to build new concrete connections with people?  Over the long term, this may prove a wiser use of our time. But oh – concrete things are so much messier than abstractions.

On meeting people

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When preparing for a meeting, whether it’s a potential business connection or a date, it is tempting to think: what is it that I want from my counterpart? And what is it that I need to show them or tell them to get it? But presence has a funny way of surprising us, if we let her. And a simple conversation may reveal unexpected alignments and life-changing common paths ahead.

If we let her. This requires more than listening for the right cue to drop our set piece, meanwhile asking polite questions to build rapport. What shared experiences will trigger trust? Family? Geography? Similar taste in food or wine? Or a seemingly worthless but oh-so-worth-it choice of study major? There is no knowing in advance. Closeness will come in a flash, but first, there may be long, disjointed exchanges.

Often, lacking faith in the powers of genuine curiosity, we fall back on safer patterns. Let’s get to business. This is what I want. What’s your bottom line? What’s in it for you? What’s your price? The transaction might occur; the magic doesn’t. Goods, money, services, bodily fluids are exchanged: the parties can leave. But nothing new to the world has appeared. And frustration lingers.

Living in China: top 3, bottom 3

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In 2013, I spent five months in Nanjing on a Hamer scholarship. At the end of my stay, I took some notes and reflected on the best and worst things about my time there.

 

Lowlights

 

  • The internet

 

By very far, this was the worst component of my stay in Nanjing, and the one that most often caused anger. Frustration came in multiple form. Wifi not working at wifi cafes –outrageously slow, suddenly interrupted, with no clear reason. An expensive, yet unreliable 3G stick I bought, and replaced, with a card from the wrong region, so that I had to replace it again. And the annoyance of using a VPN, with sudden loss of signal. I wasted hours refreshing windows and waiting for pages to load, and every single day of my time in China, have experienced extreme frustration at the quality of the internet. It was a surprise: I actually came expecting better access than in Australia

 

  • The weather

 

I arrived in a furnace, and left an ice-box. Two of the five months I spent in Nanjing had unbearable weather – too warm, too cold. In the end, I was unable to stay home. With just a low quality air conditioning unit, even if I left it on all night, the cold humid air did not let me concentrate on intellectual work. I spent extra money to go out in heated cafés, but experienced such cold on the street my mood was strongly affected. In the summer, it wasn’t much better. Not something I had anticipated.

 

  • The road-works

 

They were building a new metro line in Nanjing when I arrived, very close to where I lived. And so, they were digging: works from 7am, the gentle sound of jackhammers. There was even a week-long water cut halfway through, because they broke a pipe when digging the ground. And the dust in the air. This was a nightmare.

 

Highlights

 

  • Online communities

 

The best things that happened to me in China came from online connections.

I attended a meetup of IT entrepreneurs organized that led to dinners, lunches, cafes, and new friendships. I connected with local gay people. By posting an ad on Douban, I recruited a local guy called Zhou. He put me in touch with an English practice group. Together, we ran an eventattended by the head of the Nanjing University business club who brought his friend Brian along: a recent graduate now working for Publicis in Shanghai. Brian introduced me to Kenny Choi, who opened the first co-working space in Guangzhou. I went there when I visited Guangzhou, and through him heard of a ‘walking’ event, which I joined. A sense of companionship and possibility.

 

  • Bookshops

 

I found a few stunning bookshops in China. The most striking was probably the Avant Garde in Nanjing: a gigantic bookstore built in an underground car park, with a large cross hanging from the roof. I spent hours there – as did many. For that bookshop, and many others in China, are less a store, and more a place to be. People stand or squat reading in the aisles, talks happen, there is a café somewhere. It is its own community centre. On my first visit, I noticed a young woman wearing a school uniform reading Kierkegaard with visible fascination. I mentioned this to a Chinese friend who said: ‘Well yes, when I was in grade 11, if you didn’t read European philosophy, you’d be bullied.’ It brought back to mind conversations I had with a friend in Middle School: he grew up in communist Romania, and migrated to France in 1991. He always told us how his friends, over there, would voraciously read the classics, and mocked our mushy consumerist brains.

 

  • food

 

Everyone knows the food in China is good and inexpensive. I would like to give a particular nomination for

  1. the fruit: from fruit shops to street-sellers, it’s excellent. Special mention to the dragonfruit.
  2. the little baked cakes – I’m not sure what they’re called. Some are filed with Gingko nuts, others with candied fruits, slightly savoury. Delicious.
  3. A Nanjing specialty: candied lotus root filled with sweet glutinous rice. Divine.