Shanghai

I was in a karaoke room in Shanghai, China, just six months earlier. Sam was busy talking to a group of friends. The rest of the room was filled with Chinese government officials.

At the time, I was on the board of the not-for-profit co-working space. In collaboration with the Chinese government, we'd just opened an office branch in Shanghai. It was wildly coincidental that the three men on the board had pregnant wives who were due to give birth around the time of the launch, and the other women on the board had prior commitments. The task fell on me to fly over and represent the organization.

So there I was, shaking hands and talking with the government officials, singing karaoke, eating strange food, doing shots, being introduced to other locals in the Shanghai startup scene. I reveled in the culture shock. I even began learning Mandarin when I was there, just for kicks. I continued that hobby for three months after the trip. It was a fun intellectual challenge.

A crew of entrepreneurs from the co-working space in Sydney also decided to fly to Shanghai for the launch. They wanted to check out the business opportunities in China, and have a bit of a party break.

One of those guys was Darren — a lovely Irish fellow whom I occasionally spoke to by the coffee machine. Then there was Dain, who'd built a very successful mobile game.

Dain's lifestyle looked fun. He worked hard, but had plenty of mobility to move around the world as he wanted. A few months prior, he and some other guys were having Friday night drinks at the co-working space in Sydney. Drinks turned into dinner, then shots, then dancing. Then in the wee hours in the morning, while everyone was very drunk, the group decided it would be fun to fly to another country for the weekend. They all ran home and got their passports, but no suitcase. Once at the airport, the drunken crew looked at the available tickets and got on the next flight to Japan. They arrived back in the office a few days later with plenty of wild stories. It sounded like a fun long weekend.

The lifestyle of my peers inspired me. They seemed to have found a good balance between work and play, and their businesses were doing well. I'd always wanted to try the whole 'digital nomad' thing, but there were still a few challenges to figure out first. Jesse had his job in Sydney, and I'd also made a commitment to Sam, whom I was building CodeMakers with.

I drew my attention back to the karaoke room. Another friend, Peter, was talking to me. "Did you get my email?" he asked.