Happy holidays, friends, I hope you’re doing well (and if you choose to continue reading, please brace yourself to the incredibly self-indulgent rant below).

Each year, whenever December comes around, time seems to pause, as though to give me the space to look back on everything that’s happened in the past twelve months. However, because of the state of the world, there’s this strangely quiet eeriness that has hovered over us since 2019, as though the year never ended since, and that everything was frozen in time.

Because in a sense, it did. No matter how relatively normal life is in Hong Kong (because “normal” is contributing and sustaining our bustling, non-stop Tetris game of capitalism), Covid halted rapidly-growing movements and triggered endless ever-changing “safety measures” and travel restrictions that no one had the space to breathe and process what had happened. How can one heal from this collective trauma when we are still in the middle of it?

Yet despite this feeling of being held hostage by Covid, 2021 was an extremely eventful year for me both personally and career-wise. And it’s a year that I hope to be a huge turning point when I look back on this year in the future.