I still appreciate and miss the results that early phone cameras produced. These may have been captured with an early Sony Ericsson, likely the T610. I loved those phones and remembered fondly helping an early startup develop ringtones, wallpapers and characters to match the devices they were selling to at the time.
We must teach our children….
To smell the earth…
To taste the rain…
To touch the wind…
To see things grow…
To hear the sun rise…
And night fall…
To care…~John Cleal
We were fortunate to be able to send our kids to a private kindergarten and elementary school that emphasized letting them experience the world without shoes. They built things, grew their own food and we hiked through the mountains and the tall grass. They learned about snakes and the dangerous sounds of killer hornets. They would whistle at stray dogs and got chased in return. It was a marvellous time. Catriona to this day continues to talk about elementary school.
Lindsay Patterson talks about their reasons for moving to Spain back in 2017. Coming from the US, healthcare and child care was on their list, but also they left for abit of experimentation.
Our podcast is built around the idea of experimentation — in science, and in business. When we started a podcast for kids, we had the hypothesis that families were eager for high-quality, screen-free entertainment. It turns out we were right. Kids Listen’s survey of parents who listen to podcasts with their kids found that 70% found kids’ podcasts because they were seeking screen-free alternatives. And when kids start listening, they’re hooked. 80% of parents said their kids listen to favorite episodes more than once — with 20% listening ten or more times.
Now that we know kids are listening, and the numbers are there to prove it, it’s time to find out how to make our podcast sustainable. Our hypothesis is that Spain is an inspiring and safe place to take that risk. Sure, our sample size is 1, but it’s a start. Maybe you’ll add to it?
Coming to PEI was in the beginning also abit of experimentation for us. Something new, yet familiar, with what we thought was the comfort of knowing that we would be looked after when sick or during some other calamity. In a place without much in the way of “social gathering with a purpose,” The StartUp Zone provided a soft landing and a cheap place to work.
It’s amazing how the effects of not being able to travel, the rising cost of living, and the lack of confidence in a social safety net has on your desire to take risks, or to experiment. I’m sure that I am not alone in feeling apprehensive about the future, here on the Island, or in Canada in general (economic uncertainty has many follow-on effects).
A couple weeks hiking in Northern Thailand, or a week eating my way from the north to south of Taiwan would be an antidote to some of the malaise, but Taiwan is closed and Thailand requires a 2 week quarantine.
So we enjoy small treats on the Island and hope to not need to see a doctor. I enjoy coffee with my daughter at The Shed, and get to listen to sounds of the Vietnamese and Chinese language. I eat once a week at one of the many Japanese restaurants around town, where you can hear … Japanese. And we recently went to a lobster supper, which I define as local food, where we incidentally got to listen to a Chinese visitor embarrass himself with how disappointed he was with his daughters meal. My daughter goes out for Korean and works at a Taiwanese bubble tea shop where the owners fly in from Taiwan to tell her to work faster. Working in Downtown Charlottetown is in many ways similar to Hsinchu.
These sounds and tastes make living here even more enjoyable.
Somehow this little girl who used to run around Jusco singing songs turned 18 today. It is a cliché but I really don’t know where the time has gone. This morning while getting some coffee near my office I saw a group of young kids excitedly going to dance class, just like she used to, which made me wish I could experience it all over again.
I was sitting at the coffee shop while I did my end of week admin debris when I notice my 90 year old uncle in his car parked outside the optometrist office next door.
Getting out of his car after having a short chat, a guy started approaching me to let me know that I should inform Wendell that he ran a stop sign. While he was not particularly aggressive in his approach something about his manner triggered me and I became testy.
It took me many years to learn that in every confrontation, argument, or conflict of any kind, even a minor one such as this, one needs to be calm, polite and empathetic. Once your heart rate rises above baseline, and you loose the ability to think, your ability to choose the correct verbal or physical language for the situation diminishes.
While his delivery was aggravating, he was correct. Wendell didn’t see the stop sign. I should have smiled, said thank you, and moved on.
And now it’s time to encourage my uncle to get off the roads.
I’m not sure how long these have been in place, it’s amazing how one doesn’t notice these eyes encroaching on your privacy, but these cameras on the confed. centre certainly are an ugly accoutrement. It’s not like the building was attractive in the first place but one would think that more subtle methods for surveillance might exist.
While not yet approaching Asian state levels of surveillance, Charlottetown certainly does seem to be trying hard. Is there a crime problem I don’t know about?
I’m sitting here at what is becoming my second office trying a soy milk Latte, after tasting which I remember that I have always hated soy milk. The kids love of all things soy never took hold with me.
Today is supposed to be a day of writing, but with writing being my worst skill and with no real deadline, I’ve done every other possible task.
Perhaps next I should go home and clean out my son’s closet.
Now that Catriona is attending University her schedule has freed up considerably which allows us to start having the ability to enjoy morning coffee and tea together at The Shed. I don’t think we’ve had this much time alone together in years. We don’t talk much, she reads, and I wade through piles of email and such, but I think we both share the characteristic of extended periods of quiet juxtaposed by periods of manic conversation.
She is studying medieval literature at the moment, which I warned her about as I always thought it got in the way of more important things, like the study of medieval music and the drinking of beer. She obviously gets her smarts from her mother as she thinks all the stories are easy, predictable and boring. I remember struggling.
We arrive early (to her) at 8:30am but the prospect of me paying for her tea and car ride into town (I get the feeling my bike would be stolen by end of day) gets her out of bed faster than the school bus ever did.
Tomorrow is Election Day and I have still not come to a decision as to who or what party I will cast my vote for. Unlike past elections, held during our brief time back in Canada, there has been little in the way of outreach from party candidates, and with life being busier than the past, I’ve done little to understand their take on the issues that matter to me.
Here are the issues that seem to be pre-occupying my mind of late:
Cost of living. Coming home was in one small part an experiment, could we lead a similar middle class lifestyle that we lived abroad while enjoying a greater work-life balance. Before we left we knew that the medical system here was not comparable in access to what we were used to, but we felt otherwise the numbers worked. Recently at the behest of a friend and mentor, I more closely ran the numbers again (I dislike quant.) and discovered that our experiment has failed. At a time when we should be celebrating success, who the hell makes a living telling bedtime stories, we realize that despite having a household income far above the median, we just can’t make it. In many ways our lifestyle is a shadow of what it was – the cost of living is just too high.
Food has always been more expensive (Atlantic salmon is cheaper in Taiwan for some reason), housing costs are spiralling out of control (a house we thought of buying recently sold for double the price), services and education are multiples more expensive, and Canadian salaries like in Taiwan are depressed.
High taxation. To make matters worse we pay 6-7x the effective tax rate we were paying before and for what (where is the accountability)? PEI doesn’t have true universal health care, you have to pay for dental, eye exams, audiology and for any medications you might need. I have no idea if mental health is covered or where one would go to access that. If you try to look after your physical self, you have to pay for that too – physiotherapy is a thriving business on the Island.
I had this misplaced conception that by returning to Canada we would have access to greater social services, more security, and thus more peace of mind. What the pandemic has taught us is that this is far from the truth. We must be as self-reliant as in the past (in Asia we had no assistance available for anything), which is fine, but again, what do we pay such a high tax rate for.
Universal healthcare. What good is having great doctors if you can’t access medical services? Camren has an ingrown toenail, a minor problem, but one that has a dramatic effect on his quality of life. Competitive athletics are best performed without a swollen infected toe. He’s been told its a 3 month wait for a procedure that we could have been taken care of immediately by walking into any hospital in the past. I had been experiencing an irregular heart beat, was concerned and started my journey at a walk-in clinic. It took me over 6 months to get the prognosis that “if anything bad was going happen it would have happened by now.”
What is frustrating is that while you have to pay for some services, you aren’t allowed to pay for others. I would like more data as to why I have decreased energy levels and if there might be circulatory problems in my left leg. I can’t pay for blood work or get scans from a private clinic and the system here only starts to work when problems get chronic and then you begin the well known long wait.
Before I left the Island for education and work, I was raised by my mother alone on the modest salary she received. We lived in a 3 bedroom duplex, she drove a nice car, I was dressed in nice clothes, and I had regular visits to the doctor. We ate well. Sometimes it was tight, but I didn’t notice any difference between our family and those of what might have been my better off classmates. It would be impossible to have a similar life style today on a single salary. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say, under similar circumstances, you would be food insecure and perhaps at risk of being homeless.
At present, I have no idea which person and party can best represent my concerns. And honestly, I have little faith any will make much progress. Lawrence Macaulay would seem the most qualified, but I’m not sure he has ever stepped foot in Stratford, let alone gone door to door talking to constituents. The Green party’s focus on climate is something I can get behind, but when your boat is already sinking, it’s hard to focus on rising sea levels.
I have about 12 hours before I plan to vote.
I don’t think I will ever stop loving the clear blue skies that we see on the Island.
I’ve been in need of a new pair of glasses for some time, particularly for when running or other sweaty fitness activities. My old Japanese frames, though seemingly still of the same look of many glasses you can buy today, look scruffy as hell.
Eye glass frames, along with razor blades and printer cartridges, are essentially all profit, with frames being especially “scammy” as most are manufactured by a single company. Seeing as we have a family of 4 to feed I wasn’t too excited to not only have to pay to get a subscription, eye tests are not part of our universal healthcare, and pay the $400 and up, I was quoted for new glasses.
So when presented with an ad on Instagram from Kits.ca I decided to give it a try.
I measured my previous glasses, used their tool to measure my PD, gave them my prescription, and submitted an order for the pair of glasses that looked as close as possible to my previous pair.
Total cost was ~$12 for shipping, plus the time I spent entering the data. They arrived in my mailbox a week after purchase.
Kits gives you your first pair of glasses for free because they believe that you will be so impressed with the product and service that you will be back to buy another pair. I’m not so sure. The quality of the frames is on par with anything else I’ve owned and they fit right out of the box. For running and other bouncy activities they will require some slight adjustment but otherwise they are fine.
The only problem is that I don’t really like them. Online try-on can’t really compare to the experience of what you get in store, and I’m fairly certain I would never have purchased them if I had tried them on in store. The software they use is somewhat akin to a Snapchat filter. They do offer a 30 day return policy with return shipping at their expense.
It’s a great deal and an interesting business model, but I’m not convinced its for me just yet.
When I first arrived in Fuzhou I was required to stay in a dorm in the city – they had my passport for a couple weeks so I little choice as hotel stays are bit more strict in China than say the former Queens Arms Inn (which based on experience was of similar quality). Luckily the apartment I had later was in a different class all together. I remember being a bit salty when I walked into the room, but though I was recruited, I was still considered a local management hire and with their obsession with harmony, deserving of the same treatment as everyone else.
25+ yrs earlier, Sheryl’s tiny one room apartment in Antigonish had a similar arrangement in the bathroom which seemed more fun at the time.
Years ago I used to check the Island Cam(s) from half way around the world to take a peak into the goings on in the City of Charlottetown. Not much was ever going on during the times I checked but it served as a good lead in when talking to family via phone. “I see you have some snow there…” “How did you know that?” That and listening to local radio while driving in some remote locale was pretty magical in those days.
These days, with our weird and annoying changes in weather, I use to see if it’s fit to go outside. My current office doesn’t have a window.
Paid podcast subscriptions seem to be having a moment: Breaking Points, a podcast and YouTube show, has seen 10,000 paying subscribers in just two days using Supercast. The company tells Podnews that their top ten podcasters are earning more than $9 million in annual recurring revenue from paid subscribers on the platform; and that their growth rate is outperforming Substack’s early published milestones.
Via Podnews
I know of only a handful of children’s podcasts that enjoy similar success, albeit at a smaller scale. We aren’t one of them.
I’ve often described creating audio for children as my happy place. As far as products go it’s a simple problem to solve, it’s creative, has seemingly endless possibilities for personal growth, and you get immediate feedback from your customers/listeners. And despite the long hours and no days off, it feels far less stressful than the 996 culture I was embroiled in in the past.
Our growth, though slowing (we may have hit peak bedtime stories), has been amazing; we average over 700,000 downloads a month on Sleep Tight Stories alone. And yet these seemingly large numbers have not translated into a truly functioning business. A great side-hustle sure, but not something that we could support our family with, particularly with the high cost of living on PEI.
I’ve yet to identify where our execution is lacking – value prop?, messaging?, community?, my propensity for introversion?. All these areas need work, and I’m trying to improve our execution in each of them to see if there is any improvement with our anemic conversion rate.
I watched this last night and it brought back memories. Particularly the constant messages that you had to answer no matter the day or time. As a foreigner I had been given different expectations, but if everyone else on your team is working, it’s pretty hard to walk away. This work ethic was not limited to China, it was the norm in many companies in Taiwan as well. I still remember the first time I saw the Startup Zone in Charlottetown, it was just past 5pm and the place was dark and empty. I couldn’t believe that people at the beginnings of building a company would leave work before 5pm. And that in summer, so many office workers would be on their way home at 4:30pm.
Foggy in New Brunswick and PEI, sunny in Nova Scotia
We had a short pit stop in Aulac enroute to a family BBQ in Truro. While we had little trouble entering Nova Scotia, the fact that we stopped at all in New Brunswick gave the “gate-keeper” at the provincial border significant pause.
Of all the tech. purchases I’ve made in the past few years none have had as positive effect on my quality of life as my AirPod Pro’s. The sound quality is fine, but it’s sound cancelling and integration with my other Apple tools is exemplary.
Being able to discreetly mask environmental noise has been illuminating, you don’t know what you are experiencing until it’s gone. The fact that they are the only wireless in-earphones that will stay in my ears while running, is a boon to being able to communicate while active.
But after a year of use they are starting to develop some quirks; each time I take AirPods out of their case one of the ear buds will have its battery drained and as such is unusable. A quick 10 minutes in the case brings it to life, but it casts doubt on the long term viability of the product. Particularly since is becoming a regular occurrence.
Perhaps this is the (hefty) price you pay for wireless earphones, or yet another example of how so many products we buy today aren’t built with longevity in mind. I have wired over the ear headphones that have last for years and years.
