The Homelessness Experiment – or how to AI-proof your life

Summary

AI induced or not, career transitions require savings. I didn't have any, so I tried homelessness in Hong Kong's tropical jungle 🏕️. It was amazing and I learned a lot. More below. ## Context & Motivation For context, this story happens in 2016 when I'm studying in Hong Kong. I got there on a scholarship that makes money so scarce the only expense left to optimize is rent. Lowering it is my only chance at not having to spend years saving up in a finance job before I can afford to build companies. So why not try homelessness and see if I can take it? ## Finding a Place To test homelessness, you need a tent and a location. Finding a good spot takes three days of touring the university's surroundings with two criteria in mind: distance to the university and the probability of being found over the next 6 months. This last one sets a very high bar. For example, the area below the campus swimming pool seemed ideal, but its structure is likely to get audited from time to time. The winner is by the coast. Traffic is minimal because the rocks are hard to climb, especially when the tide is high, and the thick tropical jungle vegetation can be used as camouflage. There's no flat ground to pitch the tent, but it's nothing that 1 or 2 days of carrying rocks and wood chunks can't fix. *The hideout* ![[tent hideout.jpg]] ## The Trial Learnings I borrow a friend's tent (thank you Kieran!) and decide to live in it for two weeks, just enough to get a realistic sense of the daily struggles. The rain's a pain. Day 3 at ~4 AM, I make a wrong move and boom, tidal waves gushing from the puddle my air mattress deflated into soak everything. Not the most pleasant, but nothing a good tent and heavy-duty tarpaulin can't fix. The trial also invalidates my original thesis about the ideal tent being easy to hide but small. Turns out not being able to stand makes dressing up a pain, and limited indoor volume causes water vapor accumulation from breathing, which promotes mold over time. *My origin...