How to Build a Base in a City You Do Not Know Yet

The first three days in a city you do not know are not for exploring. They are for becoming reachable. I have blown a Monday on a pretty neighborhood walk and then spent Tuesday unable to take a call because I still had no local data, no food in the fridge, and a sleep schedule still set to the last hemisphere.

SIM first. Not because I love telecom. Because maps, 2FA, rideshares, and “I am at the door, where is the key” all assume a working number and a working packet connection. I buy the SIM or eSIM before I hunt murals. If the airport kiosk is a mess, I still treat connectivity as the first errand, not the fourth.

Groceries second. A few days of food you can actually eat, not a restaurant crawl that leaves you oversalted and broke. Protein, fruit, something you can make at 10 p.m. after a delayed call. In Tāmaki Makaurau that has meant a supermarket run before I understood the bus map. In New Orleans I already knew where the cheap rice lived. A new city does not owe you that memory. Buy the rice anyway.

Sleep third, and earlier than you think. The long-haul from Louisiana toward Aotearoa will lie to you about how fine you are. You are not fine. A dark room and a boring bedtime beat a “just one more street.” Work the next morning will tell on you if you pretend otherwise.

Internet test before you unpack the whole bag. A speed test is not enough. Open the tools you actually use: video call, git push, the docs tab that always eats bandwidth. If the apartment fails at dinner time, you need that fact on night one, not on day five when you have already told a team you are settled.

Seasonal Oceania planning is a different note: daylight, weather, rents across months. This is the 72-hour protocol that makes any season usable. Get reachable, get fed, get sleep, prove the pipe. Then you can walk the city like a person who lives there, not like a person still installing a life.

— JV · Dark Heart Labs.