Great Floating Tribe

03/06/2026

When they land in a new country, some people need a map. or a compass.
I need a cultural interpreter.

This week in Seoul, I had the pleasure of meeting Diane Eunju Hong, one of the pioneers of cultural and cross-cultural training in Korea.
She started doing this work when the field was still emerging, long before "global leadership" and "cross-cultural competence" became fashionable topics.

Our conversation reminded me how important it is to have trusted cultural decoders around you. People who can help you understand what sits beneath behaviors. What values, beliefs, historical influences, social norms, and collective experiences are shaping what you see.

People who can help you make sense of the moments that leave you thinking:
"Why did that happen?"
"Why was that reaction so strong?"
"What am I missing here?"

For me, this is particularly valuable as I continue exploring leadership in Korea. Korea fascinates me because it is living through multiple eras at once.

The influence of Confucian values is still visible in many workplaces. At the same time, Korea is one of the most dynamic, creative, innovative, and globally connected societies in the world.

Understanding Korean leadership today requires understanding where it came from, what has shaped its evolution, and where it may be heading next.

And that matters.

Because every day, Korean and international leaders are navigating these changes in real time. Supporting them requires more than cultural tips and tricks. It requires curiosity, context, history, and the humility to keep learning.

My conversation with Diane felt like breathing fresh air.
It remind me why I love this work.

27/05/2026

She is writing a book about her experiences and her travels.
And it is going nowhere.
Oddly enough, that might be exactly where it needs to be.

This morning, I had coffee with a member of the Great Floating Tribe. Korean, raised partly in Australia, now moving back and forth between Korea and Australia. The kind of person whose identity probably requires a 2-hour conversation and several airport codes to understand properly.

At one point she mentioned, almost cautiously:
“I’m writing a book.”
My curiosity was immediately piqued. So I asked the dangerous question:
“What kind of book?”

And she struggled to answer.
Not because she lacked ideas. Quite the opposite.

She started somewhere around:
“Well… it’s based on my travels… and my life in different countries… but also reflections… and other topics that matter to me…”

You could feel her trying to compress something alive into a marketable sentence. And it made me realize there may be two very different ways people write book.

The first way is very clear from the beginning.
You have a topic.
A message you want to bring into the world.

You can already see the finished shape of the book in your mind. There is a red thread running through it from day one. The writing becomes the process of building that structure carefully and intentionally.

It is neat. Efficient. Reassuring.

You can answer easily, comfortably, to the question "What is book about?". No headache. You feel competent. On the surface.

And then there is the second way.
The writing starts long before the book exists.

You write fragments. Memories. Observations. Stories.
Moments that refuse to leave you alone.
You write here and there, often without fully knowing why.

The process is much more inside-out.
And for a long time, it can feel like… nothing is happening. It's messy.
No clear concept.
No elevator pitch.
No satisfying answer when people ask:
“So what is your book about?”

But maybe the real work is not building the structure yet.
Maybe the real work is noticing what keeps returning. What's emerging.

At some point, the fragments begin recognizing each other.
And slowly, almost quietly, the book starts emerging on its own.

I suspect many people who have lived across countries, cultures, and versions of themselves write this second kind of book.

Because when your life has unfolded through movement, the meaning often arrives late.

Sometimes years late.
Sometimes in another language.
And maybe that kind of writing looks messy from the outside because it is not trying to manufacture coherence too quickly.

It is trying to discover what was already there, taking form. Like a pregnancy.
Which may be slower.
But also infinitely more alive and authentic.

22/05/2026

Il y a un an, j’ai quitté Paris pour m’installer en Corée.
Personne ne te prépare à ta deuxième année à l’étranger. Personne n’en parle.

Comment aborder cette deuxième année en Corée ?

Le cap d’un an n’amène pas de conclusion propre et satisfaisante. Pas de bilan clair et net de l’expérience. Pas pondération rationnelle des plus et des moins, des avantages et des inconvénients.

Il demande plutôt une forme d’honnêteté plus introvertie. Une réflexion moins obsédée par l’idée de rendre l’expérience cohérente à tout prix, et plus à l’écoute de ce qui s’est réellement passé : ce qui a fonctionné, ce qui n’a pas fonctionné, ce qu’on a ressenti, ce qui a changé discrètement, invisiblement.

La deuxième année ne prolonge pas simplement la première. Elle te demande une autre posture.
Moins de projection.
Plus de présence.

Quelque chose de plus silencieux, de moins glamour, et beaucoup moins contrôlable commence après. J'en parle dans mon article, sur mon blog.

https://greatfloatingtribe.com/fr/un-an-apres/

Il y a un an, j’ai quitté Paris pour m’installer en Corée. Ma première année, je l'avais bien préparée. Quid de la deuxième ? Pas de bilan clair et précis à l'issue de cette 1ére année, mais quelque chose se dessine de plus intime, plus flou mais aussi plus riche,…

19/05/2026

One librarian mother passionate about ecology.
One father growing children with gardener care.
Plenty of nature and trees.

That combination was probably always going to produce someone obsessed with curiosity, perspective, and human ecosystems.

People often assume my interest in different cultures started when I moved abroad.

Poland. Japan. India. Italy. South Korea. That's the shortlist. It sounds like the kind of biography that earns you a seat at certain dinner tables. And yes — each of those places rewired something in me.

But if I'm honest? It started much earlier.
Probably in a tree. Read on my blog to discover more.

14/05/2026

Ice Peppermint Americano in Seoul.
🥤 A whole new level of cultural experience.

And yet here I am, in the street holding my new experiment, that tastes like a toothpaste-adjacent science experiment (not my favorite, to be honest).

What fascinates me in Korea is not just the coffee itself. It’s the level of casual experimentation built into daily life. Nobody here seems particularly emotionally attached to the idea that coffee should remain… coffee.

Peppermint americano. Sweet potato latte. Corn cream coffee. Black sesame everything. Drinks arriving with textures previously unknown to Western civilization. And everyone behaves as if this is perfectly reasonable.

There is something deeply Korean about this. A kind of collective agreement that life should keep moving, evolving, optimizing, refreshing itself slightly every 3 business days.

Back in France, in Italy, or other parts of Europe more generally, coffee feels functional and territorial. You have your café. Your early morning cappucino. Your table. Your "pause café" for the gossips (not to be missed). Your habits. People can go to the same place every day for fifteen years and become emotionally bonded to a specific coffee-machine.

"Café" is not a drink, it's a way of life. An anchor defining your day.

In Seoul, cafés feel more like circulation systems.
You wander. You test. You move.

The density alone changes your relationship to daily life. Coffee shops are everywhere, but not in a “convenience” sense only. They function almost like emotional and social infrastructure. Extensions of tiny apartments. Places to recover, study, flirt, work, hide, breathe, meet, scroll, rest, perform productivity, or quietly stare into the middle distance while reconsidering your entire existence over a cold brew latte.

Now I understand the ecosystem that supports the famous palipali culture.
Because when you think about it, modern Korean intensity runs on an extraordinary logistical foundation of caffeine, convenience stores, elevators, delivery scooters, phone chargers. There are approximately 47 cafés per square kilometer.

The iced americano is not just a drink here. It is fuel. Survival mechanism. Possibly constitutional right.

But the longer I live abroad, the more I notice something else. Embedding little experiments into routine becomes one of the most intimate ways you learn a place. Not the big landmarks. Not the “top 10 things to do.” Not even the historical facts, although those matter too.
Repeated tiny experiments, every day.

You start by trying a strange drink because you are curious. Then one day you realise you are reading an entire society through peppermint americano. Which is either a sign of cultural adaptation or a sign that I should drink less caffeine. I am not sure. 😘

13/05/2026

Every morning in Seoul, my day starts with the same conversation.
With my cat.

He wants to go outside. I want him to wear the harness. And every day, despite years of evidence that these two things are connected, he reacts as though this condition has appeared suddenly and unfairly overnight.

The moment I approach with the harness, he becomes deeply suspicious and starts to retreat. A look of betrayal. Occasionally a tactical escape under the table.

Which is slightly absurd because he already knows perfectly well how this works: outside comes with harness. No harness, no outside.

So now I find myself explaining terms and conditions to a cat at 6:45am in a tower apartment in Seoul, before my first coaching session of the day.

What I didn’t expect was how many conversations this would create. Once outside, people stop constantly to ask questions or laugh. Children point at him. People wonder what kind of animal he is. Then ask me to take photos. One person once asked me very seriously whether he was “part dog.”

Even inside the building, some people now recognize the cat before they recognize me.

And then there is the elevator, which may honestly be his favorite part. Once the harness is finally on, he sits proudly in front of the doors like a tiny executive commuting to work. If the doors open too early and he starts moving, I tell him, “No, not our floor yet,” and he waits very seriously for the correct one.

I think something is adding up through these repeated mornings, something is starting to change, although not in the dramatic way people often describe the impact of life abroad. More subtly than that.

I stopped trying to optimize every minute of my mornings, and I started noticing how much life depends on tiny repeated rituals. Strangely, walking a cat also became one of the easiest ways to talk to strangers in Seoul.

I still don’t fully understand why people soften so quickly when they see him. Maybe because he interrupts the normal script of the city for a few seconds?

Or maybe people simply recognize two slightly confused creatures trying to get along before 7am.

09/05/2026

Where you choose to live reveals a lot about who you are.

Especially in Seoul.

This city is remarkably segmented. Gangnam for the newly wealthy. Old aristocratic families traditionally closer to historic power centers like Bukchon and Jongno. Hannam and Yongsan for another kind of international middle-class life.

Every area carries signals. Ambition. History. Status. Belonging.

When I moved, I had very European reference points in mind: convenience, short commutes, walkability, and having plenty of shops, cafés, restaurants, and transport options nearby.

I still have a deeply ingrained resistance to spending 90 minutes in traffic because someone told me a neighborhood was fashionable. Some instincts survive relocation remarkably well.

But over time, I realised something else about this choice. Something probably less conscious, about the way I chose my neighborhood.

My apartment sits at the border between two very different worlds.

On one side: office towers, modern residential buildings, endless flows of commuters heading for coffee, lunch meetings, afterwork drinks.

On the other: old buildings, narrow streets, steep staircases, tiny houses, elderly people walking uphill with shopping bags, and enough churches competing acoustically every Sunday morning to make you wonder if salvation here comes with surround sound.

And from above, another Seoul appears.

I love looking at the rooftops below: jars of kimchi fermenting in the sun, small lettuce gardens, laundry drying in the wind, dogs stretching lazily on terraces.

Home life unfolding quietly beneath the office towers.

I love that contrast.

And I realised something.

I am probably less interested in status than in friction.

Not conflict-friction.

Human friction.

The places where different generations, rhythms, ambitions and histories brush against each other every day.

A lot of people choose a neighborhood as a declaration:

“I belong to this world.”

But I seem drawn to places that let me observe several worlds at once.

And the more I think about it, the more I realise it mirrors my work almost perfectly.

Most of the leaders I coach also sit at borders:

between headquarters and local realities,

between old instincts and new environments,

between confidence and doubt,

between who they were “back home” and who they are becoming elsewhere.

Maybe that’s why I’m drawn to transitional spaces.

Places where a city reveals its tensions instead of hiding them.

The older I get, the more I suspect we don’t just choose places.

We choose the kinds of worlds we want to stay connected to.

And when you’ve lived abroad long enough, you often stop choosing places only for prestige or beauty.

You choose places that make you feel connected to real life.

Now I’m curious.

What does your own neighborhood reveal about you?

05/05/2026

Seoul. Tokyo. Singapore.
Three Asian megacities—same density, same intensity, same ambition.
And yet, they couldn’t feel more different.

Singapore carries diversity in its DNA. You sense it at every crossroads, you taste it in every hawker center. It was built as a meeting point—and it still breathes like one.

Seoul and Tokyo grew from something more homogeneous, then opened—sometimes by choice, sometimes by history. You can still feel that layering. In both, past and present are tightly woven.

And then there’s everything we don’t usually “count.”

The way rain falls.
The texture of the air.
The soundscape.

In Tokyo, the harsh cries of jungle crows.
In Seoul, magpies squabbling in the street trees and hills.
In Singapore, a softer, tropical soundtrack — wild roosters calling in the background.

It made me realize something.
When I travel, I’m less and less interested in seeing places.
I’d rather sit outdoor.

On a bench. On a café terrace. Halfway up a hill.
And let the city come to me.
Not comparing. Not analyzing.
Just letting it unfold.

Letting myself be carried—me laisser bercer—by what’s there.
With all senses awake.

Maybe that’s the real privilege of traveling between places. Not collecting destinations. But letting a place seep in, slowly, until something in you settles. And stays.

02/05/2026

Some people become part of your map.

There is a particular kind of joy in picking up a conversation as if no time had passed, even though everything has changed. Singapore just happens to be where our paths cross again this time.

We first met in Tokyo, and since then life has taken us through different countries, different chapters, different versions of ourselves. And yet, every time we meet, something feels instantly familiar, and unexpectedly richer.

Some call it luck. Others say it is a small world. I see it as a quiet privilege of the Great Floating Tribe: wherever we go, there are people who already know us, who help us read the place, find our footing, and take us to the hidden gems, the places you would never find on your own, just off the beaten path, and feel, if only for a moment, at home.

24/04/2026

This week reminded me why I love living abroad — again and again — for moments like this, 𝒘𝒉𝒆𝒏 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒎𝒆𝒆𝒕 𝒔𝒐𝒎𝒆𝒐𝒏𝒆 𝒘𝒉𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒔𝒕𝒐𝒓𝒚 𝒒𝒖𝒊𝒆𝒕𝒍𝒚 𝒔𝒉𝒊𝒇𝒕𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒚 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒐𝒘𝒏.

I had the privilege to listen to Miso Yoon, and what stayed with me is how inseparable her personal story is from her entrepreneurial journey.

She escaped North Korea and navigated a long and uncertain path through China and Southeast Asia and arrived in South Korea, the place where her future could exist and her dream since childhood had a chance to become true.

It is the kind of journey that already demands more courage than most of us will ever need to mobilize.

And yet, arriving was only the beginning. Starting a business as a North Korean defector means facing obstacles, including discrimination that is still very real.

What struck me was not only her resilience, but the clarity with which she chose what to do with her experience. She did not try to erase it or work around it. She built on it.

To take what could have remained a source of pain, difficulty, even limitation —
she turned it into strength, again and again.

She speaks about it openly, and she uses it to create something that goes beyond her own success, opening doors and possibilities for younger women who are trying to find their own path.

There is something here that resonates far beyond her story, especially for those of us who have lived and worked abroad. At some point, we all face our own version of this question: what do we do with what has been hard, with what did not fit, with what once felt like a weakness?

Do you work around it —
or do you build from it?

Her warm smile and motto stayed with me: “to live in safety, to live with happiness, to live with dignity, to live in freedom.” These are simple words, but when you hear the story behind them, they land differently. They are no longer abstract ideas, but something that is built, step by step, sometimes from the most difficult parts of one’s life.

Thank you SIWA - Seoul International Women's Association (SIWA Korea) for creating spaces like this. Being surrounded by women who support and elevate each other in such a grounded and committed way matters. Especially here in Korea, where these conversations still need space to grow.