Present Day Convenience

Will moving to resident countries change who you are fundamentally as a person?

This has been something that's been playing around in my mind for quite sometime. I was actually thinking of post ing something similar a few months ago, but I got lazy :) I was reminded again today after reading one of Tom Kyte's recent post.

We all know about learning new things, new cultures, new environment to expand your horizons when relocating to another place. Especially when you make a shift from moving from Manila to Hong Kong. The distance is short, but despite that, it will definitely make a huge difference. But in many ways there are other things afoot that you may not expect.

But one thing that bothered me after relocating to Hong Kong was the fact that I became more impatient and unplanned. You see, in Hong Kong, almost every corner will have a grocery. It will also have bookstores, convenience stores, gift shops, pharmacies, malls. Its a metropolis, and a small one at that, and since everything is densely packed together, there is a need to address the demand of a huge number of population situated in a small area. Being a small place, everything is always in reach, and if you needed something special, it will be just a 15 minute bus ride away to your destination. Additionally, shops close late, so most of the time, they're aConvenience.

What happened was that for every whim or urge for anything, I can just come down and get what I need. At the start, it was translated to freedom of movement and choice for me, as I could go anywhere I like nearby, whenever I liked it.

It was a vast difference from where I came from, Manila, where a trip to the supermarket will take 1 hour car ride, or if I wanted a book, I had to wait when I had the time because the nearest mall was also an hour away. I'd write up a list of the things I needed, prepared before hand, so that when the time came, I'll just grab them all up in one go. Similarly, shops close relatively early, so you can't really stay up until very late before you start heading back home. Quick trips weren't the thing. This was the norm, and when I came about to Hong Kong, it was a good release. Everything was easily within my reach, anytime, anywhere, anything.

But slowly, I started to change. Every whim was satisfied so easily. Every craving for a particular food, every need for a particular item, every urge to read a particular book. It was so easy and convenient, that at some point, I would go out of the house more than 5 times in a day just to satisfy something that I'd be craving for.

Good? or bad?

It did get to a point where I was spending more time going down the our apartment building than enjoying what I bought. Not very good.

I also got a bit impatient, and was likely to splurge or panic buy than usual. Things have to come immediately, otherwise I would be short tempered.

It wasn't just the craving for foodstuffs... even the way I would process a thought would get sloppy. Planning wasn't as essential anymore, and therefore I just went ahead to do certain things without thinking. Not very good sign for work particularly, when sometimes planning is especially essential, particularly when you are doing production deployments for company critical systems.

I was a good thing I noticed it, otherwise, I would be stuck at the same loop over and over again. Messing up plans, wasting time, not thinking and judging clearly before going ahead to do certain things. That's what convenience did for me. And yet, its such a wonderful thought, when you initially encounter it. Freedom of choice, freedom of movement. Without monitoring what I was doing or transforming into, I degraded to becoming a very disorganized and reactive individual.

So is convenience any good? I'm sure it is. But it doesn't help when you rely on it for everything and risk changing yourself for the worse. Younger generations seem to be more prone to this, as you can see them living in a world when psp, mobile phones, search engines are just a few steps away. They didn't live in a world where all the mail was delivered by the postman and had a turnaround time of 7 days before you can actually get a quick reply. Lets hope that they don't fall into the same trap... otherwise, we'll be in a bit of trouble with people in the next few years :)