I spent last evening looking at apartment prices in Chicago and trying to convince my friends and family to move to Hyde Park, which I left a month ago. Missing places! I fell in love with Scotland when I was 11. I fell in love with Delhi’s Safdarjung Enclave, with its twists and turns and continuous surprises. Maybe it’s not really possible to fall in love with places, but subjectively, I miss them tangibly, an almost physical pain.
I’ve spent each of the last four Decembers in a different city. It’s so strange, unheard of for most of human history, to have had the opportunity to move so much. I am flighty and perhaps insincere, because there are certain things you can only know if you commit to a place, and maybe the missing itself is only an overly-romanticized vision, a symptom of the rich world’s paradox of choice. If I were to settle down, I’ve said, it probably would be in Hawaii, the only place I both sort of come from and sort of belong. But it’s very expensive there: like San Francisco, good luck ever owning a home.
I first came to Chicago in January 2020, and I remember the crisp air and the lights on the streets and the skyline silhouette outside my brother’s window, the way the river reflected the buildings and the buildings reflected the river. One summer day, I worried that I’d manifested my leaving. I don’t even believe the world works like this, I complained to my roommate, and she just smiled the smile of a metaphysician. The last time I flew into Chicago, a month ago, the light reflected like glittering beads off the freight cars to the west of the city as I frenetically wrote the city a letter. In Chicago, I fell in love with the light.
So far, I like San Francisco a lot, but for reasons that are not the city qua city, instrumental reasons like hiking every day (literally), easy access to all sorts of biking and nature, food (incl. free office snacks), mild weather, and having friends from all different stages of life and people who come through all the time (sadly, almost no one comes through Chicago). I think I could grow to love the foggy, isolated Richmond District: I have this somewhat ridiculous idea of living there and joining a mahjong club with 80-year-old women and spending every day running in the Presidio and fulfilling my ancestors’ American dream (do all Chinese American families have a story about San Francisco?)– that would perhaps feel less temporary. But I don’t actually know how to play mahjong or speak any Chinese language… Chicago?
In other news, I’ve unexpectedly become a journalist at Vox (!) and published a number of econ-related articles this year, including:
- Should charities spend your money now — or save it to help people later? My first piece in Vox. It’s on whether philanthropies funding charities – for example, those that give money directly to people, or those that are trying to fight diseases like malaria – should spend money now, or wait for even more effective giving opportunities in the future.
- Learning from Lagos in Think Global Health, on how and why a cheaper, “lite” version of a bus rapid transit system has had positive effects for commuters and the environment in Lagos.
- The long-term journey to electric public transit in sub-Saharan Africa in the IGC blog, on steps that could be taken towards expanding electric vehicle use, particularly for public transit, in sub-Saharan Africa.
- Universal Cash Transfers in India: The Case for an Inclusive Growth Dividend in the Chicago Policy Review, summarizing a paper on the benefits of everyone receiving a small amount of money from the government every year.
- Other pieces including: one on a Chicago cycling grad school project, various IGC event and econ paper blogs, one on agricultural sustainability (maybe more on this topic to come)
2021 has been a weird and often difficult year for everyone. I have thankfully remained healthy and learned a lot. I hope everyone is staying safe and healthy, and happy holidays.