Hello there! 👋
The theme for the past month must be “social.” Firstly, I basically left the Twitter dumpster fire and started using my Mastodon account full-time. I forward my Masto posts to Twitter so I still have a presence there, but I basically never log into Twitter anymore. Only about 10% of the people I followed on Twitter have moved over, but since they are the most active users my timeline is pretty full. Plus I am discovering all sorts of other interesting people. It is a nice vibe! You can follow me @chadkoh@indieweb.social. I plan on changing to cosocial.ca when that gets stood up (I am going to an organizer meeting later this week). The demise of Twitter has re-ignited interest in decentralized software which has been a boon for my company which makes decentralized protocols (more on that below).
The socializing has not been limited to online. As the borders have opened and domestic tourism incentive campaigns have fired up we hosted a series of visitors to Kyoto. I met a couple of cool new friends visiting from Tokyo and Germany. An old friend from Australia came, and we had two sets of visitors from Iki, our old island home! One was a family that we took on a walking tour of Nara, guided by the father of a friend from back in Kelowna. 'Tis truly a small world.
Speaking of old friends, I spent a few days up in Tokyo visiting some mates from back in the day when I lived in Kyoto more than 15 years ago. While there I took the opportunity to connect with a few startup communities while up there which was instructive and inspiring. The startup scene has changed quite a bit since 2010 when I left for Canada to chase my startup dream.
It wasn’t all “hellos” – we finally completed the funerary rights of my father-in-law who passed this summer by interring his ashes at the cemetery.
Geez… there was also my fourth covid shot (bivalent) and a once-in-400-years lunar eclipse… and an American Thanksgiving complete with a whole chicken roasted in a BBQ! November was busy! Maybe that is why I am scrambling to write this newsletter near midnight. Tomorrow is the beginning of December, which means only a few short weeks until we get on a plane for a winter holiday in Malaysia! Expect photos!
Stay warm and stay peaceful. Only one month left of the year,
Chad
🖋 From the Blog
Traveling the familiar
Sometimes it is nice to travel to a place, and people, you already know. I had forgotten what this was like.
1 year at Fission
I reflect on a fulfilling first year, highlighting lessons for people looking for a career change – and companies looking to provide fertile environments for passionate talent. This is no bootstrap/grind/individualistic hero tale. This is a story about my own personal healing… the search for myself… the kinds of things I did to self-reflect… and how even then it required getting a hand up from a good working environment, especially after a demoralizing job search.
🧭 Elsewhere
Photos of trip to Shizuoka and Tokyo. Photos →
Photos of the interment of my father-in-law’s ashes (actually mostly food pics from the meal after the ceremony!). Photos →
The secret to working in an office Video →
📖 What I’m Reading
Riding the Crocodile by Greg Egan (100% Complete)
This novella appears online at Greg Egan’s website. The ePUB version is about 100 pages. Despite being so short it took me more than a month to ready it! My recreational reading has recently suffered a reduction since I’ve been so drawn into Andor (including the surrounding YouTube commentary and podcasts). But this story was really thought-provoking. Perfect for a bookclub discussion.