Like a prisoner being released from a life-sentence back into the civilization, Jaegar Mah may suffer post-institution pangs this weekend.
Granted, Mah hasn't been locked up for eight hours a day and his world wasn't bound by 12-foot walls, barbed wire and armed guards.
No - the 29-year-old Live@YVR winner's "cell" was a room at the luxury Fairmont Airport hotel, he had a generous $50 a day food voucher and the boundary during his 80-day "sentence" was Sea Island.
Furthermore, he hasn't been slopping out toilets (although he did blast an airport washroom with a high-tech gadget) and his only job has been to mingle among - and build relationships with - the thousands of YVR staff, passengers in order to produce a daily video blog.
Today (Friday), Mah will be allowed to leave the island for the first time since Aug. 17 - and he's none too happy about it.
Before packing his bags and waving goodbye to hundreds of new BFFs, the colourful character met up with the News and described how he's going to cope with not being able to feed off the high energy that swirls around the airport's terminal walls.
"I actually sat up to 3 a.m. last night and started thinking about my whole experience," Mah reflected, while sipping a double-double in arrivals, wearing his trademark Hawaiian shirt.
"It's like coming down from a high, this place has such energy. I started feeling kind of sad.
"This really is a community and it's a very welcoming community."
As he extended acknowledging waves, nods or a "how ya doin' man" to almost everyone that passed the food court, Mah, with a twinge of sadness, said he'd love to have a huge party to say goodbye to everyone, but he "wasn't sure what the airport's plan is."
"The one person I'll miss the most is Franco, the barber," he said.
"He's 73 and has been here 40 years. I always loved going over there and sitting with him and chatting. "The bellmen at the Fairmont as well - I'd love to hang out with those guys."
After winning the competition - set up to mark the airport's 80th anniversary - Mah has quite literally lived and breathed YVR and become as much of a fixture as the Haida Gwaii statues.
And, he's not entirely sure how he's going to handle his early days of "freedom."
"First thing I'll do is make a grilled cheese sandwich," he joked.
"I'm going to go home, unpack, sit on my bed and wonder 'what will I do now? It will be completely weird. I will be walking down the street and will be waving to imaginary people.
"People have opened up and told me the most personal and amazing things. There was this 86-year-old lady who had a 91-year-old boyfriend who knew each other back in World War 2.
"All their siblings had passed away, so they got back in touch with each other. This has been about telling the stories that people don't usually get to hear about."
But it's not all been an easy stream of old wartime stories of friends reunited, with Mah having to work hard to win people's trust.
"People were very skeptical at the start. But once they had a look at what I was about, they warmed up a little," he said.
"People began telling me stuff, very personal information. I just had to use my own judgment as to what was appropriate to use or not."
During his 80 days, Mah has cemented dozens of new friendships for life, been privy to the most inner circles of strangers' lives, lived in a luxury hotel, blast-cleaned toilets, picked up FOD (foreign object debris) from the runway and prepped a plane for take-off.
There was just one thing he really he wanted to do, but never got the chance.
"I really wanted to just jump on the belt system for oversized baggage. Just to see where it went and go along for the ride. I'd pay money to see that," lamented Mah, who will walk off into the sunset with $15,000 for his trouble.
