How America became a superpower

This video from Vox is amazing. I love this channel on youtube.

Australia Bound!

The move to Australia has been in the works since 3 month ago in September. My work with foodora progressing at a steady pace. Since being hired as a courier back in September of last year, I have quickly risen through the ranks. In November 2015 I was promoted to Courier Growth Associate in the office, then recently in August 2016 I was promoted to Courier Growth Lead for Canada.

This time, I am side stepping to become the Key Account Manager for foodora Australia in Melbourne. I will be managing about 50 restaurant partners for our platform. In some ways this is a step back as it is on the same ladder scale as my Courier Growth Associate position. But on the other hand it brings with it many benefits and rewards.

Before continuing here is some context; my foodora timeline:

July 2015	August 2015	November 2015		May 2016		June 2016	September  2016	September-October 2016	November 21, 2016
Return from bike trip in  France	Started work at Hurrier (now foodora)		Hired as Courier Growth Associate with Hurrier	Interview with foodora GM and HR for KAM position in Toronto & Vancouver	Passed up for KAM Toronto position. Vancouver position was in the works, awaiting launch of city.		KAM position offered for Vancouver with city launch. Also possibility of AU, France, Italy locations.	Interviews with Lionel, Head of Operations in Australia and Ana KAM Lead in Melbourne	Flight to Malaysia where we will spend 3 days as a mini vacation then continue on to Melbourne where I begin work :D !
	Running 2 full Airbnb listings downtown			This is also where the idea of moving to MTL or Vancouver came from	In the end we didn’t launch so no one was hired for Vancouver		After discussing with my GF we decided to go for AU – which meant I had to go through the interview process again with AU personnel	Everything went great, we started to look into paperwork and visa at this point.

The move to Australia is a calculated gamble. I have no idea how it will go. But I am going to give it my 100% and increase my odds of success.

For most people the biggest gamble would be the move to Australia with a girl I “hardly know” as my friends may put it. My closest friends have advised me to wait at least a year before committing to anything. Ditching everything to the wind, we moved in together after 3 month of dating, she met my parents on the third date. Finally her parents met my parents about 6 month of us being together. There is no greater feeling than finding someone you truly connect with on an emotional and physical level.

 The second gamble is financially. Izzy and I were both living quite comfortably in Toronto. We rented an apartment downtown (used to be my Airbnb). I personally had no debt to my name, as I had saved quite a bit from years of teaching and traveling. Izzy is a financial adviser in Toronto with Sun Life and making bank while doing so. She has a car she just recently leased last year. So between the old beater car my parents gave me and her car we were living the “American Dream”.

In fact one of the biggest road blocks for the move is the transfer of her lease as it is only one month old. As of right now it is still not yet transferred. If you know anyone please pass this along:
http://www.leasebusters.com/en/details.asp?ID=215275

Visa and paperwork is another stumbling block. As a Canadian citizen I can travel freely and have easy access to working holiday visa with Australia. Izzy is a Chinese citizen and there is no working holiday visa we can apply for her in Australia; at least not unless we go to China first. Even then there is a quota of 5000 people per year.  To overcome this we applied and received a tourist visa for Malaysia, and are waiting on a tourist visa for her and Australia. Hopefully it will come before November 25^th, otherwise Izzy will have to stay in Malaysia some more while I go to Australia first.

But despite all these roadblocks and challengers, one thing has remain true. I know I will regret it if I did not go to Australia somewhere down the line. I don’t proclaim to have everything figured out, and I don’t need to. Life is too short so I am choosing to live the way I want!


 
“Just Do It” – Nike

Peace from flight above the Pacific.

Foodora CA Experience November 2015-November 2016

The foodora CA experience has been tremendously helpful to my self-development. I learned about communication, office politics, results based work and most of all hustle and self-reliance this year.

In the office I loved to observe and just absorb everything. Every single person is there on merit and had something to teach me.

My main reporting officer was Mike the Head of Operations. He was my guide and model for this year. I observed his every action, from his swaggering walk to the way he talks to us. My biggest take away from Mike was talk small but carry a big stick. His communication skills are what I admire about him the most. In a particular vivid episode of coaching, I was pitching an idea to our head office in Germany. I sent in the email to Mike for criticism. He coached me as we exchanged comments and edits back and forth. Finally I trimmed down my paragraph to simply 2 sentences.  The biggest take away from that day was this: “Successful people don’t need to be sucked up to, less fluff.” (sic probably a paraphrase as opposed to word for word)– Mike M.

In the end Mike was let go, for reasons unknown to most people in the company. But whatever his shortcomings might be I respected him as a boss and leadership style. He was one of the best bosses I have ever had.

Nov 2016: Hurrier old office

October 2017: Halloween party at the office w/ 90% of the crew.

Job fair at U of T with Maude (Marketing Associate), Nour (Customer Success Lead), Shalaka (HR Director). 

Toronto Startup Open House 2016 with our MTL office on the TV.

The most OG customer service rep: Nour.

foodora impromptu drag Alleycat race 

foodora banner 

foodora Yoga @ Cherry Beach

foodora pumpkin carving contest w/ Jeremy (Courier Growth Associate), James (Dispatch Operator), Nick (Sales Associate), Liam (Rider Captain)

Peace from 2016! Hello 2017!

Freakanomics Inspired Post

The culprit in question. J'accuse!!

The air here is crisp and clean. Maybe it is only a figment of my imagination but at this altitude the air does taste better.

It is currently 5:13am in Taipei. The onscreen monitor flares to life as I check it to get a more accurate reading for this blog post. I am high above the clouds at 36000 feet. At this altitude, the pressure outside would crush me instantaneously if I somehow managed past the airline secure locks.

I am currently traveling to Malaysia with my gf Izzy.

On this flight I finished a great book by Steven Dubner and Steven Levitt -  Freaknomics: When to Rob a Bank. This gave me the inspiration to write this blog post.

Have you  ever noticed the plugs on flights are two pronged?
Thanks for Freakanomics I am beginning to see and wonder about a lot of things in my everyday life. On this recent trip with EVA Air I noticed the supplied headphones are two pronged. I had originally brought my own headphones to the flight and used them. The normal one pronged headphones works perfectly well with their onboard entertainment system.

Why would they need to manufacture these two pronged plugs? I have two hypothesis:

1. This measure is used to prevent people from stealing the headphones. I am guessing the airline recycles these headphones (hopefully after sanitizing them first). I tried the headphones on my phone and since it can only make use of one of the prongs, the music only came out of one ear.

The headphones can only work on the plane, there is little incentive for people to take them when we land. This argument is further strengthened by the fact some airlines only offer earbuds which are only single prong. Their quality is worse than the ones I received here on EVA Air, which are nice foamy over the ear headphones with pretty good quality of sound and bass.

2. It is somehow cheaper to manufacture these two pronged headphones. Since most of the manufacturing is done in China where economy of scale is key. There must be more factories making single pronged headphones than these obscure two pronged ones, this argument is discounted.



How to Fly First Class while only paying for Economy

I have nothing but good things to say about EVA Air. Out of all the airlines I flew with this one takes the cake for the service, presentation and comfort. However alas on a 15 hour transpacific flight, we can all use some more leg room and more washrooms facilities.

So how exactly do you fly first class on an economy ticket? Pause here to think about this a bit before moving on. The answer is quite simple and you may have already hit upon it. But you protest: That’s not allowed or legal!

Let’s examine that for a second, oh wait before that lets state what exactly is the method. The short gist of it is to simply walk into first class and take up one of the seats.

Sounds too simple to be true? I may or may not have done this on this flight and many others before it.

After the cabin crew does their initial round of flight checks for tickets and drinks and food. The flight descends into a dark zone where all the reading lights are off. The only thing separating your economy section and the business / first class is one or two sets of curtains.

As with everything is life it only takes someone with the chutzpah to actually do it and enjoy the rewards ;)

If you protest about how this harms others, just carefully consider your argument first and any obvious counters. I certainly couldn’t think of the golden rule equivalent objection to this or any other logical argumentations.

“Rules were meant to be broken” – anonymous.

Peace from the first class section? ;)