How Did I Transform Myself from a Machine Learning Scientist into a Global Nomad?
Searching for other possibilities of a successful life
I never imagined I would be writing a blog post at such a tranquil and pastoral railway station nested in the heart of Switzerland.
What I see around is scenery that seems plucked from the pages of a fairytale.
Verdant meadows and towering trees on Swiss Alps form a canvas, crafting an exquisite tapestry that cascades gracefully from the mountain’s summit, ultimately embracing the emerald lake, which gleams like a precious jewel. As the ethereal dance of cloud shadows unfolds, this lush canvas appears to flutter, akin to a colossal waterfall gracefully descending upon the terrain, or perhaps a meticulously rendered 3D oil painting brought to life.
Five years ago, life was totally different. I was sitting in a modern, sleek and spacious corporate office located in San Francisco, writing some gorgeous Python code to train a new machine learning model out of my next “genius” idea. I enjoyed a high 6-digit salary, free snacks, drinks and nutritious meals offered by my generous employer.
Everyday before and after work, I was taking BART to commute between Oakland and San Francisco, with all my fellow tech workers in a crowded train. Why did I know they were all tech workers? Because they all wore the same eyeglasses, the same Bose headsets, the same backpacks with possibly the same 15-inch Mac Pros inside, and finally the same free T-shirts with logos of different hot tech company names. Don’t get me wrong — there was nothing to complain about. Even today, I feel grateful for having had such a dream job in my life:
Simply predictable, intellectually enjoyable, and highly compensated. What else did I need?
Everything suddenly changed after the breakout of Covid in 2020. I forever bid farewell to the 9am–5pm office life. Since then, I have spent more time outdoors than ever before. An engineer and not a fan of working out, I started daily jogging for a few miles in the worst months of Covid in 2020. While jogging, it was the first time that I had realized how bountiful my neighbors’ gardens were. I started to appreciate the sheer beauty of the sunset in the summer, when the golden clouds and the rolling fog melted together in the sky.
I also started listening to audiobooks where I received a chance to explore topics that would never have been on my radar, such as psychology, philosophy and impressionism. I read stories of Nietzsche, Adler, Gauguin, and Van Gogh. I also reconnected with some of the best traditional Chinese literature like Dream of Red Chamber, which I only casually read when I was a teenager growing up in China.
The first wave of Covid infections faded away in the last few months of 2020. Travel restrictions were somewhat lifted.
I took my first flight during Covid to Miami, trying to take advantage of the low season travel. It didn’t disappoint me. I rented a Mercedes GLS (a 7-seater SUV) in Miami for $30 a day. I was able to stay in a nice little boutique hotel right next to the backyard of Ernest Hemingway’s house in Key West with a budget of $100 per day. Everglades National Park became a private ranch, and the Alligator Farm tour turned into a private show.
Inspired by that successful trip, I started to live full-time in Airbnbs for the next three months. I took a few road trips to the national parks in California, such as Sequoia and Death Valley. I was able to drive through the iconic giant tree tunnel in Sequoia without any crowds. When I visited Death Valley in November, the time was so unique that it rained in the desert during my visit.
On my way back to the San Francisco Bay Area, I found solace in a beachfront pavilion at San Luis Obispo. There I sat beneath the vast blue sky, absorbing the melodious symphony of chirping birds and the soothing serenade of ocean waves.
Even though loud voices from the Zoom meeting were pouring out of my laptop, they were magically muted into peaceful white noise amidst the serenity of the scene.
A knowing smile graced my lips, and in that moment, life had never felt more sublime.
The three months of Airbnb life fundamentally changed my view of life. I started to question myself:
Why should I live in one city or even one country in the first place?
The main reasons why human beings were adapted to living in one place was perhaps, for one, it was easier for farmers to grow crops in the same place in the agrarian era, and for another, attachment to a job mandated people to live near their workplace in the industrial age. But now given the remote work policy, why should people continue to live that way?
(There is yet another important reason why people need to live in one place: to raise a family. I will write a dedicated blog about my thoughts on that in the future: family, marriage, relationships and how they all relate to a nomadic society. Stay tuned!)
With this inquisitive mind, I began the exploration of a different lifestyle. Between 2021 and 2023, I spent more time on the road than at home. The places I went tended to be more exotic to me as well. To make my journey more digestible to you, I’d like to extract three key elements from my journey.
Element One: Connecting with the nature. I spent $80 buying the famous America the Beautiful Pass, and took road trips to visit many beautiful national parks, including Zion, Grand Canyon, Olympic, Mt. Rainer and Glacier, most of which were done solo. The most surprising finding was that I did not feel lonely at all when I was driving, hiking, or sleeping in the wild.
Instead, I felt liberated, refreshed, and connected to Mother Nature. Internal peace suddenly filled my heart when I was alone in the nature.
Element Two: Connecting with people’s lives. In 2022, I met many interesting people on my way, from a black friend in Atlanta to a cool chef in New Orleans, from a Russian fisherman who lived on the islands of Toronto to a Ukrainian software engineer who were migrating on a long journey from the battlefield to North America.
I began to realize that the kind of life that I used to know very well in the Silicon Valley, was just one out of maybe thousands of kinds of lives in this world.
If I want to ever understand why and how these other lives exist and thrive, I have to personally experience some of them to decipher them. The process intellectually resembles a lot to a machine learning scientist’s searching for training data to build his/her cool model.
Element Three: Connecting with human history and culture. In 2022, I went to the Deep South to learn and to personally connect with the American history. I went to cities such as Dallas, Houston, Nashville, Atlanta, and New Orleans. Later, I set foot on Mexico and Canada. In 2023, I received an opportunity to relocate from San Francisco to Madrid, where I spent a wonderful 4 months. My original intention was to learn the history and culture of Europe by living like a local. However due to busy work, I was unable to do so during those 4 months.
After a summer of reflection and readings, I made my decision to quit the job and live like a global nomad full-time.
In the next few blogs, I will talk in more detail about the three elements of my travel philosophy. I will also explain why I’ve decided to give up so much professionally and financially from my daily tech job and instead be a full-time nomad.
Writing blogs on Medium is one of the things I will do. For me, being creative and productive is an essential part of the exploration. Creating interesting articles to inspire people of similar minds is my commitment to this nomadic life.
A person who wanders everywhere but never creates anything insightful or enjoyable is not a true explorer. He is at most a mailman.
Airbnb has a famous mission statement: belong anywhere. While I cannot agree more on it, sometimes I still cannot help asking myself: … but how to belong anywhere? If I didn’t have an open mindset, or if I just could not appreciate the beauty of the wildly different cultures around this globe, how can I meaningfully belong anywhere? The world is truly wonderful — that is my belief — now it takes my adventure to unveil its true essence.
Thanks for reading my article. Please leave your comments and thoughts. Give it a clap or repost it in your network if you like it. If you also want to share your inspiring stories, consider writing in Build Nomadland, which aims to promote nomadic life, freedom and success. I can also be reached on Linkedin for professional collaborations.
