Happy Tuesday!

Last week, I explored a little bit more of my neighborhood in Hyderabad. It’s relatively convenient: There are a few supermarkets within walking distance, and most of them have cheaply priced groceries.

Thinking back to the neighborhoods I’ve lived in the previous semesters, I realized that they had influenced my life in three aspects:

🔓 Sense of Safety

I grew up in Singapore, one of the safest cities in the world. If I liked, I could walk home at 1 am without much concern about crime.

In September 2021, I moved to San Francisco for college. My dorm was located at the edge of the Tenderloin, a diverse neighborhood with the highest crime rate in the city.

Despite not looking for trouble—like walking home alone at 1 am, or going out at night alone—I still had close calls with safety.

I was grocery shopping by myself around lunchtime, when the streets were busy, and a stranger followed me on my way back. I only managed to avoid an incident because I’d rushed into my dorm building in time.

Shootings happened regularly in my neighborhood, usually at 3 am.

It also happened at 7 pm one October evening, outside my dorm building, and a few meters away from two classmates making their way back.

My classmates survived unscathed, but my sense of safety did not.

When I moved to safer cities like Seoul, Taipei, and Hyderabad, I continued to feel hypervigilant and on edge whenever I went out. It’s a small nagging voice at the back of my mind that prevents me from being fully present in the moment.

🌊 Level of Friction

In college, I meal prep to save money and maintain a healthy diet.

In Seoul, the cheapest and closest supermarket near my dorm was a 15-minute brisk walk. At that time, I wasn’t exercising regularly, so carrying 3kg worth of groceries and speed-walking for 15 minutes was pure torture.

The only thing that stopped me from eating out too often was the price. The cheapest meal I could get was vegetarian Gimbap—a seaweed rice roll—for 2.50 USD.

Meanwhile, in Taipei, I could get six pot stickers for only 1.50 USD and feel full.

With very little friction for eating out, I stopped cooking healthy meals completely by the 6th week of the semester. I still wanted to maintain my budget, so I selected the cheapest meals I could find.

Unfortunately, that also meant forgoing my healthy eating goals. Most of my dinners were pot stickers or wanton noodles with a lot of oil, and my body didn’t react nicely to the oily diet.

🧘‍♂️ Level of Rest

To be at our best, we need enough rest.

You need to sleep well, but you can’t have that if people shout and fight in the streets below every night—and you can hear them, even with your earplugs on.

“Rest” involves more than just sleep. We’re not meant to be indoors all the time; a short walk outdoors can give us the novelty we need to feel refreshed.

You can’t do that if your neighborhood doesn’t have green spaces. You probably shouldn’t exercise in your neighborhood park if it’s also an open-air drug market.

Optimizing this level is a privilege.

Growing up, we’re dependent on our parents or guardians for our needs—food, shelter, and safety, among others.

We had to adapt to whatever living situation was arranged for us. In other words, the neighborhoods we grew up in were based on the lottery of birth—something we have no control over.

Our financial trajectories as adults also vary. Some of us have a headstart from our families. Others reach six-figure annual incomes in the first few years of their careers: enough financial resources to not only move out, but also choose from a variety of neighborhoods to live in.

Meanwhile, some of us begin our careers with incomes that don’t allow for any savings—even after meal prepping, using public transport, and forgoing Netflix and Starbucks coffee.

So, if you’re happy with where you currently live, I’m happy for you.

And if you’ve never lived in a neighborhood that supported you, don’t beat yourself up over it. You’re here now, and you’ve made it this far. Do what you can.