Life of I, with a puma

IN 2003 when Linden Lab's virtual world Second Life launched, it was a novelty and a huge success with a community of over a million at its peak. A quaint convergence of unfettered imagination and dollar-powered real life - through avatars, business, brands, product sales, music, movies, and even news reporting and politics - its ever-changing and expanding virtual world took off.

I visited a few times to research stories and marvel at people "buying" property, creating chic haute couture, building and selling homes, and having the most absurd keyboard-bashing sex with strangers (through self-created manga-style characters), all premised on an actual exchange rate of US$1=320 Linden dollars.

It was at once exhilarating, entertaining, educative, eyebrow- raising and strange. This is the world many are returning to in different forms as lives collapse and shrink uncomfortably into small bedrooms packed with dull relatives, bawling kids, and one shared television. Unsurprisingly, as China reopens, the biggest queues are for the divorce office. Yes, there is a rediscovery of the self, books, and hobbies, but there is also an explosive urge to connect - and escape. And it is this that might provide the kernel to repower travel, this time with greater relish and less haste.