The Buriganga

Bangladesh was shaped by its rivers. The city of Dhaka grew on the banks of the Buriganga. Newcomers are arriving by boat every day.

At the river, I encountered many migrants to Dhaka. Climate migrants. As much as the rivers hold record of Dhaka’s history, they’re still major players in its current day evolution.

The Buriganga is one of the most polluted rivers in the world. During my visit, I was hoping I would find a person, an organization, or a community group that was enacting a viable solution for cleaning up the pollution from the river. Unfortunately, I never found anyone. However, I did learn that a lot of solutions, to the crowds in Dhaka, to the burden placed on the river water and air, can be enacted a little further upstream. Outside of Dhaka. In the communities that were being left behind by people in search of better opportunities

A Better Version of Yourself

Becoming a better version of yourself. It’s what we’re all working on, right?

The funny thing is, people commit to intensive workout plans, spend big bucks on conferences, and read one book after another, while often overlooking one of the simplest ways to be a better version of yourself.

Not being in a hurry.

When I’m in a rush, I’m not taking all the opportunities to fully take in life, to be in touch with my surroundings, or to reflect on what’s happening to me.

When you’re in a hurry, you’re the most likely to be short-tempered with people, unforgiving, and insensitive to what they’re going through.

Pump the brakes! It’s a simple but powerful way to be the best version of yourself.

Somebody Else's Ordinary

You go to a new place, a new environment, and every detail pretty much jumps out at you. The tone of the sky. The vehicles you don’t see anywhere else. The energy and pace of life. It stands out as otherworldly. Every new sensation is an invite to ask new questions, occasionally ones you ask out loud.

It’s different. But to everybody else out there, it’s normal.

If you were to approach even the most mundane task with fresh eyes, there’s nothing mundane about it. Take a toddler to a barbershop for the first time for a perfect example. We forget about this when we’re in one place for too long, kind of like how most people don’t recognize the smell of their own house as anything other than neutral.

I love being somewhere I’ve never been, at least partially because it makes me rethink my idea of ordinary. If all these details to me are a novelty, then that’s true in the reverse direction. My ordinary life, the parts I take for granted or think of as unamusing, would be mindblowing from another point of view.

Album Bracket

I have always loved brackets. In school, I would make brackets for all kinds of things to entertain myself in class. Now they make filters for these sorts of things… like best album!

By the way, is it common knowledge now that Kendrick’s albums are all themed after different mediums?

Good Kid MADD City has the feel of a lo-fi hip-hop movie. DAMN’s header and the packaging of its lines mimic a magazine. Listening to Mr. Morale feels like sitting in a black box theatre, listening to a two-actor performance.

If that’s the case, I’m really hoping the next album goes full nineties sitcom.

More to the Philippines

I would love to bring the kids back to the Philippines, again and again, every few years. And that’s kind of the plan!

Part of the reason, of course, is so they grow up with a relationship with the place our family has roots.

But also, because there’s so much to the Philippines and I feel like there’s still so much to it that I have yet to see.

Since I’m typically there visiting family, I’ve gone to the same spots on repeat. And there are so many other areas I’d like to get to know. The south. The mountains and Baguio. Palawan. Hopefully on each return trip, we can add on something new to the already familiar.

The Rise of Bangladesh

I don’t think any country has had a growth trajectory during my lifetime quite like Bangladesh.

In just a few short decades, it pulled itself from one of the lowest rungs on the ladder of poverty, to a soaring economy.

Some predict that Bangladesh is on its way to continue this rise, and will being a trillion dollar, upper-middle income country by 2040, surpassing Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

But to get there, it will have to contend with a few things. Like climate change, and the fact that in order to keep growing, many Bangladeshis were subject to really difficult lives.

No Manufactured Urgency

A few years ago, someone shared with me a document about supremacy in the workplace, and one of the symptoms that stood out to me was the tendency to manufacture urgency.

In American work culture, there’s a tendency to liberally label things as urgent. It’s as though our work systems don’t know how to function without the element of urgency. Once I became aware of this, I started to notice it everywhere.

So much of the stuff we consider urgent on a week after week basis is simply made up. When you start to ask the question, “is this really urgent?” you start to find out how over-used this label is.

For a while, I’ve practiced being really stingy about calling things urgent, and it’s worked out quite well.

Waterfall Slide in Colombia

This is the oldest photo on my camera roll.

I’m in Colombia. I had just spent my morning interviewing former combatants about the war. Now, I’m about to go down this waterfall in my underwear because nature just served up the perfect water slide.

It’s 2019. Rhys is on his way, but it’s early in the pregnancy. I said yes to this spontaneous invitation to Colombia, knowing how much harder it’ll get once he’s born.

I feel like my truest self in this photo. The contrast of that morning and that moment matches the weird blend of heavy and light that I want in my life. And for the next few years that followed, it would be really hard to get back to this state. A year of a pandemic and social upheavals and three kids in two years will do that.

None of us are really who we were 4-5 years ago. But as I get more opportunities to reconnect with my true self, it’s been really a journey to discover what that looks like now. I still want to hold space for the challenging parts of life while still not taking myself too seriously. I want to honor adventure, while also being totally present for the incredible parts of ordinary life. It’s a steep learning curve… but at least some things are clear. Like the fact that I’ve never regretted jumping in swim holes along the way.

Storytelling is a Climate Solution

“We’re often presented with the climate crisis through the lens of macro level trends and global statistics. These things are very useful in the right context, but if that’s our primary way of engaging this crisis, it creates this layer of distance between ourselves and those most affected by it. It makes it harder for us to tap into our own emotional connection and deflates our motivation to take action. What we’re left with is a flattened image only marked by the most disturbing headlines and reports.

These things are often true, but they also lack the depth that tells us what we can do from here and where to go next. We can’t develop and implement effective solutions if we don’t have proximity to the people who are most affected by a problem until we’ve heard their stories and engaged their perspectives.”

Watch my TED Talk

Bangladesh: A Land of Stories

Bangladesh- you contain a world of stories!

It makes sense that a place known for being densely packed with people would also be packed with their stories.

So many people I encountered living truly challenging lives, jobs that are the hardest I’ve ever seen being performed right in front of me. At the same time, even the exhaustion couldn’t override the Bengali spirit.

Resilience is a word that often gets misused. It’s admirable, but sometimes we let that warmth of admiration obscure our sense of urgency to remove the conditions that demand resilience from a population. Still, it’s impossible not to use the word when confronted with the hard, full-hearted stories up and down the Buriganga River.

The Most Crowded City

The world’s most crowded city is… Dhaka.

Rural populations are being displaced by climate change from all over Bangladesh, and they’re arriving in Dhaka in search of jobs and opportunities.

This isn’t unique to Bangladesh, though. You’ll find this pattern in any country with a large rural population and one major metro area.

So why is Dhaka in particular so crowded?

A lot of it is a byproduct of geography. Dhaka is boxed in by the city’s rivers. On top of that, the world’s fastest growing countries all have significantly more space than Bangladesh, the only smaller-sized nation in the top ten of population growth.

Dhaka grows faster than the city can keep up with. This leads to infrastructure that struggles to accommodate everyone and the city feeling even fuller than it is.

Bangladesh: Misunderstood

Bangladesh might be one of Asia’s most misunderstood countries… and I’m saying that as somebody who totally had the wrong impression going in.

Most of what I anticipated from Bangladesh came from people’s stories about intense poverty. However, those stories are pretty dated. Of course there is still poverty around Bangladesh, but it is nowhere near where it was in the 90s. Instead, the country has had one of the most impressive trajectories of economic growth within my lifetime.

Bangladesh is full of layers and nuance, and I’m happy I had the chance to visit up close. It gave me a chance to better appreciate its unique position in the world.

What we ate in Portland

It has been way too long since my last visit to Portland, and by that I mean, it’s just been two years. But that is a LOT of time in the restaurant world for new places to open up and make a name for themselves.

Unfortunately, I underestimated how far ahead I should’ve made reservations for Kann and missed a shot to try my first James Beard winning Haitian spot. But, I’m happy that I did make it to:

Magna - Filipino food wasn’t exactly abundant when I lived in Oregon, so seeing a Filipino fine dining spot thriving up here is a very good thing.

Mri Sata - I’ve had my eye on this vegan Sri Lankan spot for a really long time. And it delivered. Such good foods I can’t find easily elsewhere, other than Sri Lanka of course.

Tov Coffee Bar - I always thought the Egyptian coffee options here looked amazing, and the bus vibes always had appeal. I was right.

Ca Phe - Had to swing by for Vietnamese coffee after seeing a list of their specials. Spot on.

TEDx

I’ve been looking forward to making this announcement… my TED Talk is live!

I talk about the importance of storytelling as a climate solution.

It’s fitting that this talk comes out as we wrap up the hottest month in recorded human history. Yesterday, I watched from a hotel as the news spent half of its block showing upward graphs and talking about how people are experiencing climate change right now. It’s a big improvement over the sparse coverage a few short years ago, but it’s still lacking something: solution-focused stories.

We often engage the climate crisis through the lens of macro-level trends and global statistics… and believe me, I know the importance of those things. But without stories–stories that are told with craft, care, and ethical standards, we run the risk of detachment and despair.

Stories can help us connect to each other with empathy. Stories can hold room for nuance, since problem-solving is hardly ever black and white. And stories can show us what real solutions look like, where they’ve already happened, and where they can be taken next.

All that to say… go watch the TED Talk! I’ve been really looking forward to sharing it with you.

Last Day in Anchorage

Anchorage was a fun little city. I love places that are at such geographic extremes, they’ve just gotta find a way to make life livable.

Some highlights from the last day:

The Anchorage Museum – Five floors of exhibits that all merit a good long visit. We spent all our time on the kid friendly floor and don’t regret it a bit.

Kincaid Park – Arctic beaches, black sand, and the awareness that this ocean is extremely far north creates such an unusual feeling beach. I loved it.

Street Art – I have a whole separate video highlighting some interesting murals found around Downtown Anchorage. Alaska probably isn’t widely associated with street art, but there’s some real creativity going on over on those downtown walls.

Jeepney Arctic Food – Arctic Filipino Hawaiian food.

Arctic Filipino Food

Arctic Filipino Hawaiian food. What even is that? I can’t say for sure, but there were some menu items here that just made sense.

Sinulaw? Take the chopped pork belly of sinugba and mix it with the cured fish in kinilaw. The contrast in texture and flavor was perfect.

Calamansi slush? Guess that one felt more arctic. Most calamansi drinks are going to be winners in my book.

Skewers? Wanna play it safe and just go with BBQ on a stick? It’s still not a bad choice. This place executes.

Rickshaw Roadrage

Heat make anyone else cranky?

I hate being too hot. And apparently so do a lot of people, as evidenced by the rickshaw roadrage I ran into on this street through Old Dhaka. South Asia gets some notoriously brutal temperatures. It was an efficient brawl, the two bike cab drivers hopped off for a 90 second fistfight before carrying on their way. Not to condone violence, but at least this approach was efficient, and way less destructive than whatever happened on Beef.

For the longest time, South Asia was a glaring omission from the places I've been. I mean, I know there will always be places and parts of the world that remain a mystery to me, but to have seen so much of the world without seeing the one area that more people call home than anywhere else? I'd really wanted to rectify that.

I've got some fun prospects to return to the region, and I know that all the different population centers there offer so much to be discovered. Can't wait for that return visit

Got any parts of the world that you haven't seen but feel the need to at some point?

A Day in Bohol

A lot of the adventure guides around Bohol pack a lot into a single day. You might see a hike, a dive, and a food tour all rolled into one itinerary. I love all these things, but rushing between them without much breathing room to let each one sink in isn’t quite my style. I hope that in time, the infrastructure evolves to make more room for taking it slow, one thing at a time. It’s an island, after all.

That being said, there are certainly some activities and sights in Bohol that are simple enough to not require their own day, and these make sense to package together. Here are some of those things we did in a day on Bohol.

So Satisfied

Taking a moment to step back and see that a whole bunch of that stuff I used to daydream about has become real life.

Life at home with the kids and Deanna is a dream come true. So is being able to go places and explore the world while doing creative work I find meaningful.

There’s been a steep learning curve around how to make the space for it all, and Deanna has been so incredibly gracious and generous as I’ve been learning, but I can honestly say most days I go off to do work I love doing and then I get to come home to a life I love.

I’ve gotten some of the most exciting work, travel, and creative opportunities I’ve ever gotten in the past couple of years. And in between all of that I’m finding places to play, come back to my body, connect with people, and build community.

Days are packed and three kids give me a lot of plates to spin. There are lots of logic puzzles to be solved every week about how to make it all fit. But it hasn’t been lost on me that life right now is about as sweet and full as it's ever been.

Old Dhaka Food Tour, pt. 2

“Can you find Bengali food in the U.S.? Sure. Around 250,000 Bengalis live in the U.S.

That said… most of them are in New York City. And tracking down a Bengali restaurant isn’t always that easy to do.

Unfortunately, there’s a long history of western countries doing a disservice to the variety and regionality of South Asian food. Taking a whole category of foods and calling them all curry. Or leaving us largely illiterate when it comes to the regional identities of certain dishes.

A lot of Bengali restaurants might be labeled as Indian food. Not wrong, exactly, since Bengal is in India AND Bangladesh, but you really don’t know if you’re getting Bengali food or Punjabi food or Goan food etc. when all the sign says is Indian.

But, my favorite workaround is this. Get to know the people running the place. That typically only leads to good things.”