‘May you live in interesting times’  is said to be a Chinese curse, that we all have heard at one point or the other.

Seeing the protest that have sprung up in Hong Kong over the organization of somewhat free elections promised for 2017, I came to realize that I have ‘escaped’ a few political events and turmoils on this trip, sometimes just by a few days…

On my first stop, in Rio, I came a bit too late for the violent manifestations of students and teachers earlier that summer, but could still see hundreds of police forces in the center of Rio and the barricades. Ready to strike if things went out of control.

In Santiago, I witnessed what was visibly a very fortunate event, the election of Michelle Bachelet to a second term as the country’s president… the victory party in the streets of Santiago was an amazing event!

Back in Istanbul, the mining disaster in Soma triggered a new round of student protests, and my sister and me only escaped the tear gas in the main shopping street as we wisely chose to walk a huge detour back to our home, on several occasions.

In Tel Aviv, the party bubble in the middle of a war zone felt safe, but in my last days the search for the three disappeared teenagers in one of the settlements let you feel the rising tensions. And indeed, hell broke loose again only a few days after I left.

Now, as I am heading to Hong Kong in exactly two weeks, I follow the protests closely, and hope they remain peaceful. Not for me and my trip, I could easily change plans and itineraries, if necessary.

But you can only hope that no one loses nerves and that the authorities find other ways to ‘deal’ with their youth than bringing on water canons, gas, or worse, tanks.

From Hong Kong I will hop to Thailand, a country still under martial law since the military coup of Mai 2014. Though daily life seems to go on as normal.

Even if I stay in each place longer than the average tourist, and try to connect somehow to normal life there, I am aware that I am of course in a sort of a bubble.

I am actively avoiding the work’s war and crisis zones, I’m not in Ukraine, I won’t travel through Afghanistan, I’m not in West-Africa or the Middle East. For my own sake and my mom’s heart.

I also realize that I do disconnect from a lot of things: as a former news junkie who worked in the news reception room of a big German newspaper during his studies, I have weirdly disconnected from politics.

I do read the headlines on SpiegelOnline, but I somehow have no energy to read through all the world’s crisis’, wars and disasters…

That was one of the most refreshing sides to the Burning Man escape: for nearly 10 days, we were off our phones, no wifi, no idea what was happening in the outside world.

Had Russia invaded Kiev? A new crisis in the middle east? A natural disaster…? We had no idea, and didn’t even want to know.

I guess one can only process that many bad news at a time. Syria, IS, beheadings, terror attacks, our own governments spying on us, Ebola… who would not become desperate, with all this?

Which reminds me of that Swedish professor I recently read about. Hans Rosling, who paints a different picture: he tries to identify long term trends in human development, all hard-fact based.

And, above all: he is an optimist. It is really refreshing to hear him speak about human progress, despite all the news.

Watch him here, at TED or check Gapminder for a lot of interesting facts and the Professors blog for more (good) news.

Funnily, a bit of research revealed that ‘interesting times’ is not actually a Chinese proverb or curse, but rather a modern invention.

It might have been loosely based on a proverb that says, roughly: “better to live as a dog in an era of peace than a man in times of war.”