Hello! 👋

This is the February issue of the lunchbag newsletter. Last month, Justin and I left Toronto for Taipei and it's been just over a month since we've been here. Needless to say a lot has happened since.

On novel coronavirus

Let's jump straight into this. 

I'm not sure what the sentiment is in the Western world around coronavirus, but I have to imagine it's much lighter than what it is in Asia currently. People seem to be comparing this to the flu, almost scoffing at the global reaction to coronavirus because "the flu kills more people annually". I don't find this to be a logical argument at all. Why should we care about the Boeing 737 MAX debacle when way more people die from car crashes annually? We have studied the flu, we understand it, we can track its mutations and we come out with a vaccine every year. And regardless of the cause, if it were a major city in the US instead of Wuhan as the epicentre, would it be an overreaction then? I think it's fine to feel safe and privileged to be in the Western world, but it would be insensitive to downplay the situation of those affected by it daily. Even if it is an overreaction, there are large populations in mass hysteria with no end in sight. We are all just human.

Currently, we are at the beginning of a possible pandemic for which any vaccine we produce can only be used for the next outbreak. People are dying in numbers that we can't even be sure of. Combining this with the ubiquity of social media is both a blessing and a curse. Information has never traveled wider and quicker despite China's best efforts. 

In Taipei, we have noticed a lot of public trust in the government and public health system to contain any possible outbreaks. The local vegetarian self-serve restaurant that we go to put up a sign today that said that all patrons must wear a mask and not speak while taking the food. We felt embarrassed to not have masks and apologized to the owner as he was cashing us out. His response was a very casual dismissal of our concern, assuring us that as long as we don't talk, it'll be fine and that things in Taiwan are generally very clean and safe. While we don't doubt the government's competence to contain the virus, we question if this hopeful optimism stems from a false sense of early victory since Taiwan currently lists relatively low number of confirmed cases.

As for us, we're doing fine for now. We don't have any supplies other than 5 packs of Watson-branded antimicrobial wipes that may or may not even be effective. We've been washing our hands and staying in more frequently but we generally don't go out to crowded places anyway. The Taiwanese government recently started rationing face masks and have limited locals to buying 2 per week. Foreigners are prohibited from buying them altogether. But with so much conflicting information on which, if any, are actually effective, it's easy to convince ourselves that we'll be fine without them. And since we have no way of getting our hands on masks or even hand sanitizer, that's all we can do– rationalize our situation for self-comfort.

Tonight we received a country-wide alert from the Taiwanese government. It was similar to receiving an Amber Alert where everyone's phones vibrates and rings at about the same time, causing an ominous echoing effect. The government had mapped out the destinations where tourists from the currently quarantined cruise ship visited while they were in Taipei on Jan 31. We checked the map, corroborated with our Foursquare check-ins and safely concluded that we avoided the targeted areas. While we felt some relief, we also fear this could be the first of the dominoes to fall in Taipei.

Up until now, we never seriously considered leaving Taipei early. I think what it would take for us to leave would be if airlines started to cancel flights originating from Taiwan. It's not totally outside the realm of possibilities since American Airlines (along with a few others) recently stopped flights to and from Hong Kong. Taiwan also just enacted a ban on foreign nationals coming from Hong Kong. Of course, the situation there is very different considering they still share an open land border with China and various other political reasons, but let's save that for a face-to-face conversation off the record.

We're still debating where is the best place to wait out the virus if we were forced to leave for some reason. Justin suggested that we fly to a city in Europe still considered "safe". My first thought was the racism I may face when we arrive. It's heartbreaking to hear about the xenophobia that's been on the rise from this, especially in my home city of Toronto which has always prided itself in diversity.

I don't have a big ending for this or any closing thoughts really. There is an inexplicable sense of helplessness, like we're at the mercy of the media, the government and the virus. I suppose this was mostly therapeutic for me to get some thoughts out in writing. Maybe I'm being too paranoid, and it's very likely I read too much r/China_Flu. I sure hope to look back on this in a few weeks and laugh at my "overreaction".

On life in Taipei

Aside from the impending doom of nCov (I kid– it's all I can do!), life in Taipei has been great! Justin and I have carved out a routine that involves going to the gym, attending Mandarin lessons, eating vegetarian lunches and lots of work sessions squeezed in whenever we can.

The most interesting change from being in Taipei is the fact that our schedule is almost completely opposite from US/Canada, where most of our clients, co-workers, friends and family are. When we're sleeping is when the other side of the world is buzzing. This means we usually wake up to dozens of notifications and it's literally like Christmas every morning. I definitely get a dopamine rush every time I turn on my phone and see all the Lunch Money-related notifications (new sign ups, payments, feedback emails, etc). This also means that our work day is largely uninterrupted since most people are sleeping then.

On Lunch Money

Lunch Money has been doing well. We recently got a huge surge of new users from being mentioned about 10 comments down from the top on a Hacker News thread about the downfall of Mint. It's cool to see over and over again how the mission and efforts of Lunch Money seem to really vibe with the Hacker News community.

I also recently launched the Lunch Money developer API in closed beta. Already, a few users have reached out to share some tools that they built. One user built an entire CLI for organizing and managing his transactions, complete with emojis and everything. He even said he would open-source it so as to inspire others to build on top of Lunch Money. It almost brought a tear to my eye.

Latest blog posts

No new blog posts, but here are some links about Lunch Money!

• Lunch Money was mentioned in TechCrunch and MacRumors! (IndieHackers)
• The Best Financial Apps to Help You Save in 2020 (Supermaker)

How can I help you?

If I can be of any assistance to you on your own endeavours in life or business, please let me know! We're all in this together 🕺🏻💃

As always, thanks for reading!

Cheers,
Jen