Life at 0.3 Speed
Having been home from Colombia for a week now, writing this while a ton more snow falls to the ground, I can say I’m happy to be here.
Yet I also want to keep integrating parts of my experience abroad into my life at home as much as I can.
One of the biggest insights I grabbed was the idea that life is happening at 0.3 speed in Medellin. It’s the time vortex that takes a few weeks to get used to.
You think you can grab lunch with a one hour break but set your clock and give me a call when you make it back on time.
And god knows who you’re going to meet on your way back.
The Two Coffees Each Morning
I would typically do two morning coffee sittings. The first one, I would grab my guitar and head to a cafe for some creative time around 7am.
The next sitting would be work focused, with my laptop and headset1 ready to go.
One morning on my way back from coffee sitting #1, I started talking to this man and he wanted to play my guitar:
He claims to have been part of a Colombian rock band called LSD in the 1960s. It was their take on the American classic rock sound like the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin.
He said there are no artifacts of the band, so later on that evening at a bar that specializes in vinyl records, I asked the owner if this story is true, she said yes and added there are no recordings of any sort remaining.
That is the type of thing that you would get sidetracked on when heading back to your home to get ready for a day of work.
Do you see why I described it as life in slow motion or at 0.3 speed?
I don’t really have that here in Toronto, but what I do have is opportunity. I missed having the mere opportunity to focus on some of my projects.
In a home where the walls were paper thin, and all members of the house valued a good night of sleep, I took it as a sign that this is the way things have to go right now.
That’s why I would play guitar out in the cafes in the morning.
When you think about going outside with your guitar, you worry that people will hear you.
In Colombia, I realized I had the opposite problem. Playing my niece Phoebe’s 1/2 size classical guitar, it was almost impossible to hear the music without amplificado.
Even earlier on in the day before the traffic reached its apex, the din of the motorcycles was pervasive.
Yet one of the big learnings overall is that you can make a cheap, small guitar sound pretty darn good. Before I left for this trip I put much better strings on the instrument and even added a pickup with the help of my teacher. Now I don’t even want to give it back to Phoebe.
Here is one of the recordings done in the bedroom at the Casa:
When I return to Colombia next, I will make sure to have some sort of mobile amp solution ready to go for playing on the street.
One more photo from that morning where Carlos, the retired rock drummer was playing my guitar.
This man was just staying at a hotel and was enjoying a complimentary espresso it looks like. Those hands, they are the hands of hard work and wisdom.
If you’re looking for a headset that can take the loudest environments, I found great success with the Logitech Zone 301. In loud cafés, my colleagues didn’t hear anything behind me thanks to the active noise cancellation on the microphone. That means it’s filtered out before it even gets to an app like Zoom or Teams.
thanks for describing the little guitar and the note about "those hands" - what a trip