Business trip to MTL!

So today I am in MTL! I am here until Wednesday evening to help out their operations here. 

I flew in the morning today and quickly took a cab to the office at 51 Sherbrooke West. The foodora office here is in a shared space with other companies.  it is an old Victorian building refurbished with modern and contemporary decor.  In the first floor,  there is a Cafe with wicker chairs spawled about. It has a really hipster startup vibe.  Really digging their space! 

In terms of my role here I am mainly helping my counter part Faris who does courier management here. 

As soon as I arrived we got to work.  On-boarding  10 people for working with Foodora.  Luckily the bags we shipped out on Friday arrived in the nick of time. We were able to get all couriers set up today as a result. 

In terms of the office,  there is Sandy the city manager.  Leo and Andreas in sales.  Ivan,  Elie, Faris and some other people I didn't get to meet today.  All really cool people.  Ivan actually spent 18 years in China and can speak perfect Chinese.  Andreas is one of the partners of O Noir the restaurant with the blind wait staff and you dine in the dark!  We might grab a bite there tomorrow!

It was a busy day today since I only arrived in the afternoon due to a flight delay.  So this evening I only got out of the office around 7:30pm.

My friends Valerie and Pierre are in Montreal.  I met them when I was in Munich and we went to beer halls together and got merry along with a bunch of other tourists.

I am waiting for them right now in a MCD.  Going to go grab some drinks in a bit and catch up 😊. 

Peace from MTL.

Opportunities in Toronto

There are so many opportunities in Toronto. Specifically downtown Toronto!

This past week I went to a couple of amazing events. The first is an entrepreneur talk series put on by MaRs institute by College and Univeristy. In the morning every month they have entrepreneurs come and talk about their field. This week it was Gimmy Chu the CEO of Nanoleaf. He talked about his journey from idea to execution.

Gimmy Chu of Nanoleaf. Morning entrepreneur series! Makes waking up at 6am that much more bearable! The event went from 8-10am. 

One of the cool things on display at the techTO. The girl in the screen was skype us from her home but she can control the robot and attend the convention as if she was there! I first saw this in an episode of Modern Family. 

Tech TO. 

I also signed up to be the lead volunteer of the Toronto Startup Job Fair. This event happens every two-three month. I was there at the last event as a volunteer. Consequently that is also how I found my current job with foodora. I connected with Shafina the coordinator and I attended some networking events courtesy of the job fair.


Peace from Toronto.

25K launch party Foodora

Our company foodora passed the 25K order count so of course we had a party to celebrate.

We went to Pursuit OCR which is an obstacle course by Queen and Dufferin.

It was a great time, the drill instructor took us through all the courses one time before she left us to our own devices.

The most interesting part of the place was the half pipe. This is a sliced up version of a halfpipe used for skateboarding. The goal is to run up the pipe and go over. It is actually really difficult because there is almost no grip from your shoes. To exacerbate the situation, the pipe goes up almost vertically at a 90 degrees angle pretty quickly.

I was able to do the smaller ramp but failed to succeed on the bigger and more impressive ramp.

I also raced one of my collegues Patrick on an obstacle course. It was neck in neck until the very end where we had to pull a rope up an incline and I simply lost my momentum. It is really tiring!

Afterwards we all went to Milagros which is a Mexican place we recently onboarded to our platform.

All in all a great night and I feel like I really got to know my colleagues better.

The whole team! 

Peace from Toronto. 

Snowshoeing adventure

So this past weekend I went snowshoeing for the first time.

My friend Adam who I play hockey with regularly invited me. We had no plans and figured out everything on the day of.

Adam, Evan, Brittany and I piled into Evan's old Buick on a clear Saturday morning and we simply drove north with no destination in mind. After picking up our snowshoe gear from a rental shop we headed further north past Barrie.

Eventually we stumbled upon a trail and started out route. Within 5 minutes Evan slipped and his foot fell into water. We were scared he was going to get hypothermia so we built a fire to warm him up.

Luckily everything was fine. After drying off and marching on we eventually got to a lake clearing in the forest. It was beautiful. Wide expanses of white vacuum as we looked out into the clearing.

We tested the waters literally with our feet and eventually made it to the other side. This was defintiely the highlight of the trip. Before the sun fell down we finished off and got back to the car.

To finish up a great day we all had all you can eat sushi down by 8 Sushi on Danforth. A great way to spend a Saturday!

lunch of champions - canned fish toasted on an open fire with Timmies bagles

Adam carefully testing the waters

Peace from Toronto.

New Jobs and new home

This is going to be a big update since I haven't written in a while. So I have found two new jobs that's right from 0-2! And I have also moved downtown as a result. 

So the first job is with Hurrier the startup I was talking about two posts ago. Our website is www.usehurrier.com and I am working as the Courier Growth Associate at the moment. Pretty much I take care of the hiring for the delivery drivers and bikers on our team. We have a very small office in Toronto with about 18 people and we just opened a Montreal office of about 5 people. It's been great working here, there is always work to be done but it is interesting and the office culture is amazing. 

The other job I started is working at True North rock climbing gym. I am the belay staff and I usually work the birthday parties on the weekends when I come home to my parent's place.

As for the rest of the time I have moved downtown officially. I am currently living at one of my places on King that I was airbnbing out. Now I am still renting it out but only on the weekends.

I am loving the downtown life. Everything is so close and there is always something going on. In fact since I moved in three weeks ago I have cooked and eaten at home a total of 2 times. Everyday after work I am either meeting up with friends or checking out some event or playing some sport. This past few weeks have been filled with nothing but awesomeness.

Matt from marketing who went to a trip to Montreal to help set up their office.

Most of the team for holiday photo. I was running an orientation session at the time in the office behind so missed out :( The guy in the red hat is Martin from Germany who was sent to us as a project manager to help us streamline our processes. He is only 22 years old! Holy crap!

Chris who had my old job as Courier Growth Associate. He is posing for a shoot we are doing to push more delivery drivers to come and work for us. We have about 70% bikers right now on our fleet.

Everyone in the Toronto Office. Alex on the right does the same job as me. Head boss is David to the left of Chris (the guy wearing the bandannas.) We are looking into the office from the entrance. We can see about 70% of the office as of now. Everyone sits together in these open desks and when everyone is on a call it can be quite loud but energetic!

Next steps for the coming month. Continue doing awesome stuff. Going to keep going to shinny hockey.

Peace from Toronto

Identity

Identity is who we are as a person.  I identify myself as a young person,  a male, a Chinese Canadian etc. 

Many of our identities have a direct relationship with how we perceive ourselves and by extension how others perceive us.

With the passing years I have had to change my identity many times. 

I was quite shy growing up.  In fact prior to university I don't think I have ever had a conversation with a girl for more than 5 minutes.  This changed after high school and I slowly came out of my shell and started to increase my social skills.

In University I switched my major from Life Science to Philosophy and Psychology and that was another big change in identity.  I changed from identifying with being a pre-med student to not sure what I am going to do.  Although at the time I thought I had all the time in the world to decide so wasn't bother by it. 

Living in Korea and abroad after university was yet another big change.  It really exposed me to many new and interesting things.  I came to love the edge.  The place where we are out of our comfort zones and feel adrenaline rushing through your whole body.  Almost everyday was a "newness" that can only be experienced and not described fully in word. 

That identity of seeking the edge and living out side of my comfort zone became my norm.  While living in Quebec I recognized I was stagnating,  slowly degenerating into a routine. Everyday it was work,  games and rock climbing or hockey.  Yet I was not bothered by it because my main identity as a young person still remained in tact.  I still felt the fountain of youth coursing through my body.

During the summer of my Quebec séjour I developed fully my player identity.  I began to pick up girls on a daily basis and it became like a game for me.  At the time I thought this is great! I was having lots of fun and getting out of my comfort zone everyday. 

In France I developed my traveler identity and fell in love with adventure traveling.  I biked on my own from Monaco to Spain. 

Why am I telling you all of this? Because I am unhappy in Canada.  I feel like I am in a rut. Some days it takes all my energy just to get out of bed.  I think it all has to do with a breakdown in identity. 

So my identity up to this point is I am a young adventurer and world traveler who is amazing with women. 

Yet in Canada almost all of these identity are breaking down. I am no longer young,  27 is only 3 more years from 30. The benchmark of a successful 30 year old leaves me very little time to get my shit together.  The identity of world traveler and adventure has been squashed due to my airbnb venture.  I have to stay here for at least 1 year to manage my properties.  Finally the identity of a Casa Nova is also in jeperody,  I am in a dry spell. 

So what is the cure? I don't claim to have a perfect solution but so far my solutions has been: abandon all the identity that are not serving me and structure new ones based on my location. 

Not young anymore? No problem I am a relatively young person.  Not an adventurer or world traveler? No problem - I am an entrepreneur working on my career goals.  Not a Casa Nova? No problem -  I am a young professional seeking a meaningful relationship. 

Will these identities be here to stay? No. Identity is and should always be fluid.  I am just starting to realize this fact.  In the future I might revert back to some or all of these identities but above all they should serve ME. 

*This was last written a couple of month back, my situation has improved dramatically in Toronto :D 

Peace from Toronto. 

Toronto Startup Open House

This Thursday I checked out the Toronto Startup Open house. 

For one day the Startups of Toronto open their doors and average Joe's can come in and see how they work and play. 

I must say it was a great event for networking,  information and just general fun. 

I checked out a couple of startups from Shopify,  Brainstation,  Hurrier,  Orchad and more. 

The best part of the event was just seeing the start up culture. Start Ups are particularly interesting to me at this point of my life because I am interested in technology and entrepreneurs.  It seems at there events every other person is trying to start a company or has a company of their own. 

In fact I met Sandra who is doing airbnb like me and has 5 properties so far.  She also was in France last year.  It seems like we have the same life. 

Peace from Toronto.