Category: personal
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1 year at Fission
Last week I passed my first anniversary at Fission, a deep tech startup where I have been working as head of Operations. It has been an entirely positive year, and I thought I would take a moment to reflect on the reasons why.
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The End
Cross-posting the greeting from this month’s edition of my newsletter, since it is of personal significance. The last day of June. A Real Feel™️ of 42 degrees celsius. Not even summer yet. But things started to settle down this month. We took the kids to Universal Studios Japan. Summer Camp started. Screen time decreased. I…
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Rainy remembrance
In the rain today I walked to Bukkō-ji 佛光寺, an important temple in the centre of Kyoto for Shinran, the founder of Shin Buddhism. I am not a temple member, but this is the neighborhood temple. In a famously gridded city, its grounds are the local shortcut. Every day we walk diagonally through Bukko-ji to…
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44 years old today. Took the kids to see the terracotta warrior exhibition at the Kyoto City Kyocera Art Museum
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Relocating to Kyoto
Good afternoon from Vancouver International Airport. I am at Gate D70, about to board the plane. Yes, I just got back to Canada 3 weeks ago, but things… have been happening. In last month’s newsletter I explained why we had to change our Spring Break destination from a drive to Squamish to an emergency flight…
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2022 Goals
Last year was one of disruption, multiple changed plans, instability, and finally settling in. I have no big plans for 2022, except maybe to try and get to Japan during the summer to tie up some loose ends there. Thus, my goals for 2022 are pretty assured. 2022 will be a year of learning. (well,…
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My year on Ikijima, a remote Japanese island
Between May 2020 and June 2021 I moved my family to the remote island (ritō 離島) of Ikijima. To find out why, check the FAQ. Three months after leaving Japan and returning to Canada, I would like to reflect on that year. Real quick though, in case you don’t already know: What are Japan’s Remote…
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Sudden Goodbyes
Our first summer spent on Iki in 2020 was a bit hectic. We had just arrived in May: new community, new house, new school, new life. We didn’t know the roads, weather, where the good beaches were, the best times to swim — we didn’t know anything about island life. So we were very much…
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Why Iki?
FAQ-style backgrounder about why me and my family moved to the remote island of Ikijima (aka “Iki Island” aka “Iki”) on a study abroad program.
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Best of 2020
I reflected on the year using Pat Kua’s End of Year Retrospective Template. I won’t share all my results here, just a bit of a roundup below, but the questions from that document I really appreciated were: What brought you joy this year? What made you sad this year? What are you grateful for this…