A New Normality

This morning I woke up and thought that I have to write. Lately I am on interesting period in my life (well, I can't recall a boring period in my life either, but this one is especially interesting). I've set myself on business trips since the end of October. At first, I went to Korea for few days, then Japan, then China (Shanghai), after that it was Russia for couple of days (Moscow), then Germany (Duesseldorf), then Ukraine where I had my tonsils removed, then I was back to Hong Kong for a week to pay taxes, then I went to Thailand for 10 days in Pattaya and Bangkok, from there I've arrived to Israel (Tel Aviv). So it's 9 countries in 8 weeks. It's getting dizzy now. I've moved out from my beautiful and cheap apartment in Mong Kok (why would I pay EUR 400/month the rent if I'm not living there), but still keep office in Hong Kong, so plan to come back (and live in the office, ta-da!).

Back to Korea, Oct 2018

You may wonder what do I do, so I can have such extensive travelling experience? It's easy, I am doing international business development for medical device company in rehabilitation robotics field (or rather an industry, albeit super small one). With that my day-to-day work is mainly about visiting hospitals and demonstrating the device called Luna EMG (it is a system designed to help patients with neuromuscular disorders - stroke, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, etc - to regain motor function and motor control). It's based on electromyography, those electrical signals that come out from your own muscles. It's the only device with reactive electromyography for upper and lower limbs. The picture worth a thousand words, and the video - a million. Here it is:

On top of that I am (barely) handling two other part-time jobs - as a team consultant for Douglas Gerber's project Team Quotient and organizing business tours to China. In order to handle it a bit better, I've asked for help and hired two part-time freelancers from Ukraine to work with me (Anna and Mykyta). Anna is doing all social media for Douglas (she helped to grow Douglas' following on Twitter to over 10K+, Instagram for about 3K organically, created visual content for the materials, brochures, I am just happy to find and work with her). Mykyta just joined and will be helping on business tours as well as other business development projects I am into (like searching for distributors of sweets in Asia to sell waffles from Ukraine or pharmaceutical distributors in Latin America to sell Ukrainian drugs). In between of these projects, I was handling JCI Hong Kong Magazine Harbour Lights as Chief Editor, and again, I was fortunate to have David in my team, who took the matter responsibly and helped hugely, as well as Iris Kwok and NVP Iris. 

Japan Rehabilitation Medicine Society Congress, Nov 2018

With all that I take time to have enough sleep and try to exercise regularly (but with constantly being on the road it's not easy to keep up with the routine). My life is about work and sleep. Everything has a price, of course. I've to give up on relationship, and start to feel pretty lonely, especially when cruising from country to country in known-unknown places. I'm not getting any younger and start to feel that too (metabolism is slowing down and I am getting fat, finally!).

Have you heard this story of a famous senior guy on the stage and bunch of EMBA graduates? In brief: there was an EMBA event at some famous business school. The school invited a good and accomplished professional in his fifties. The speaker, while introducing himself said:

- "I am on the board of  directors at Goldman Sacks. Who aspires to achieve what I achieved?", - and half audience raised their hand up. Then he said:
- "And I am also a Chairman at Fortune 500 company. Who wants to achieve that?", - and the other half raised their hands up. And after that he said:
- "And while I achieved all that, I don't have family, no kids, not married, even no dog. Who wants to be like that?", - and none had raised their hands. 

It doesn't mean that all Chairmen and CEOs are single and lonely and having sad life, not at all - many do have family and kids. It's also true that in about my age they had been married or had kids (my father had me in about my age now). A lot of my classmates and friends have two kids. And although I don't compare, I shall take experience of others as a reference on what works and what doesn't work in life. By Einstein, insanity is to do the same thing and expect a different result. So if I want to have family, I shall do something differently. The truth is I don't feel like having a family now. The relationship - yes, and here comes but - how do I have one if I spend 10 days max at one country? Of course, that not gonna last forever and eventually (by March 2019, hopefully), I would come back to the bay and start over again.

I was passing by after lunch and saw people just dancing and singing and eating out there. Israel, Tel Aviv, Dec 2018

At the same time, I am not desperate to get into relationship. I am very comfortable to be with myself, alone and just do stuff. That's the biggest thing that I am worrying about, that I am way too comfortable. It takes time for neural plasticity to create pathways in the brain and over past 14 years I've developed a "learned non-use" consciously, as they say "interference happened" (people in the field of neurorehabilitation will understand). Perhaps it's a time to apply constraint-induced movement therapy (CIMT) in relationship, but does such thing will be effective? In a nutshell, the main principle of CIMT is to use patient's affected extremity to perform various functional movements and tasks. Critics would say "it's mechanical, unnatural, and you can't force it". But I am not going to force it. I am just going to be more open, patient and acceptive. Did you know that the words experience and experiment come from the same Latin word experiri (to try)? So I would have to experiment with that. Stay tuned and I will let you know how the research is going :)