Jetlagged in SF

Back in San Francisco and arrived on a downcast day - coldest its been here all year. The city is still familiar - as if I haven't been gone all that long. Its been almost six months.

I feel really sad. Homesick is the best way to describe it, but for Asia. I feel disconnected from everything here. Friends and strangers don't understand you and are living out the very lives they lived when I left, as if in a time capsule. Its true, its always worse the first few days when you get back to where you came from - the sadness sometimes doesn't fade for months. And the longer you've been away, the longer it takes. I'm also sad because my father is getting older in Taiwan and I can't be closer to him, for now.

Walked around the Mission today and caught up with some old friends yesterday. Everyone and everything's the same - those who are single are still lamenting how hard it is to meet the right people and property prices in the city are rising from already ridiculous prices to even more ludicrous prices ($700K for a 2 bedroom!?).

Sleep has not been easy. I'm couchsurfing and last night I kept sneezing from my friend's cat. I laid awake trying to also fight back anxiety over what to do next. The repercussions of each choice gets heavier as one gets older. I'm now almost 31, and the choices I make now seems to weigh significantly upon the choices I will have in 5 or 10 years.

I'm mulling a job offer back in Hanoi. Vietnam sounds sweet - but I worry that if I end up settling there it will be all that much harder to get back. There are stories of long term expats who are stuck in foreign countries, forever unable to readapt at home. But San Francisco right now feels like an old movie I've watch too many times.