Freshly snow-dusted mountains dressed with sunset clouds on a rare non-rainy Vancouver evening.
Freshly snow-dusted mountains dressed with sunset clouds on a rare non-rainy Vancouver evening.

Last week I went on…a business trip! to Vancouver. This was my first time out of the country in 2.5 years(??!) which is wild considering I used to travel so much that people had the impression that I was permanently on the road even after a whole year of living in one spot.

(Passport by Masego, the soundtrack for this post \o/)

I was actually apprehensive about meeting people after my lukewarm post-vaccine social re-expansion. In a low-meeting lab environment without mantatory corporate happy hour bonding, I had just a vague impression of most of the characters orbiting the lab sphere. Throwing ten people into a Victorian mansion airbnb for a week could be risky, considering some disasterous shared-house offsites I have had (a story for another time). You know how nerds can be mean in subtle and surprising ways. In the typical pre-travel anxiety rise, I considered accidentally canceling my flight or faking my disappearance. In the end I took the required $200 PCR COVID test and Canadá let me in without additional fanfare.

It's so wet here that the trees have become moss.
It's so wet here that the trees have become moss.

In reality I had a really great time! The interests of the lab attract people who care about technology and also people, so I found everyone to be very cool and also kind and perceptive. After living in a mountain town of infinite outdoors stoke but not much art and computer stoke, it was super energising to be around multidisciplinary nerds. One of us commented on day 2 that we’d probably been talking continuously for 30 hours at that point, so maybe everyone had been somewhat deprived of this.

Doodles of my colleagues
Doodles of my colleagues

We did design jam sessions. We started out taking ubers around town and by the end we were taking the bus as a group, because it was easier to use public transit. We stayed up late sharing youtube videos of weird music/sound art. What’s amazing about this type of social environment is that people are SO EXCITED about something that I am swept up into activities I would otherwise never do voluntarily, like watching a recap of the 2021 chess world championship as if it were an Olympic event. It’s like how I can’t help but dance when I go to a dance party and everyone is moving and the vibe is all-consuming. And it just felt so different than how I’ve been living for the last nearly 2 years. I felt like a dormant part of me revived from hibernation, eager to CONSUME.

An animation doodle I made in Looom. It's a phone video because that's the only way I could figure out how to add background music!
I visited the cold beach and saw many container ships queued up.
I visited the cold beach and saw many container ships queued up.
Wild buns of Vancouver
Wild buns of Vancouver

What I got to see of Vancouver the city was AWESOME. I’d only previously driven through on my way to climb in Squamish. Even walking down main street lined with night cafes and restaurants was exciting! (to the amusement of my London/NYC hosts). There’s so many dogs, and they all have rain jackets. I felt safer with nearly every restraurant and even cafes checked for COVID vaccination; I’d never had to do that in the states. It was surprisingly pleasant to hear Chinese on the streets. It’s easy for me to devalue my increasingly distant motherculture, but the primal familiarity of a heritage language pierces through my rational brain.

Imagine being the person whose job it is to spill the disco balls into the pond
Imagine being the person whose job it is to spill the disco balls into the pond

I had some down time to visit friends old and new. Hearing peoples’ immigration stories always feels so unfair and personal. Seeing formerly iterant friends settle is bittersweet, part empathetic happiness and part yearning to feel at home somewhere, too. Maybe I’m emotionally vunerable to being extra city-struck, but I could almost see myself living here, if I hadn’t already eliminated the possibility of happiness in Berlin-core gloom. When the sun did come out, it was magical.

Shiny Vancouver.
Shiny Vancouver.

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Looking back on this trip, I’d entered Canada just days before omicron was declared. We joked nervously about whether we’d be allowed to return to our respective home countries. That trip felt like the last collective carefree moment before the mood changed and places plunged into varying degrees of COVID lockdown and stress again.