ellipsis_has_expired wrote:Are you still coming to Hawaii? I've been quietly following your journal (really interesting stuff!) and would be interested in meeting you. I'm in Honolulu with my wife and son.
You just missed me! I was there from the 6th to the 16th, and did not check ERE during that time. I would have loved to meet you. We spent all 10 days on the big island "Hawaii", but we could have made a day trip out to Honolulu.
Aside from the biggest downside by far, the cost, my impressions of Hawaii are positive. It's sort of a bleak paradise, the big island. There are pockets of tropical beauty but by and large it is a wasteland of this stuff I call "Satan's Diarrhea", pictured here.
It's newly formed magma rock, on its way to slowly becoming soil and supporting life. I've taken photographs at a few different stages of this process, it fascinates me.
The people were laid back and happy, including the native Polynesians. I found their history very interesting.
The king who united all the Hawaiian islands for the first time, lived in the city we stayed in, Kona.
Also on our trip, we visited the volcano and caldera, took a day trip to the town of Hilo, and hopped about to at least 5 different beaches. If we go again, we'll stay in Hilo. I found it much more charming and likeable than Kona.
It's too bad I missed you, because part of my devious plot behind this journal is to meet ERE people all over the world in the various countries I would like to visit. In fact, this October we are visiting Europe to see several people who have become important friends of mine, including one reader of this journal who has generously offered to put us up when we visit the country of my own ethnicity, the Netherlands.
We're spending 3 weeks in Europe. Our time is split between 2 countries - the Netherlands, and the UK. Our catalyst for booking the trip is an invite to our friends' wedding in the UK. They are dear friends, even though we have spent comparatively very little time with them. He has a devious genius for business, and I swear, if the two of us ever worked together on something, we would be unstoppable.
Also in the Netherlands, I am visiting a friend who I now employ. He is working for me for 2-4 hours per day, doing the sorts of tasks I myself was doing when I was building my passive website income up. He is a prolific young writer whose work I very much admire and I'm lucky to be working with him. I am young as well, although the current year of 2017 marks passage into my 30's. So I'm not sure for how much longer I will be "young".
Aside from writing new articles, updating old articles, and promoting the content online, he is doing much of my client work for me. Because of his help, I am now willing to take on many more clients than I ever was willing to before. I've actually taken on another since my last post.
I'm working slightly more, but it's a very different sort of work. I'm now instructing apprentices into journeyman, as a master SEO craftsman myself. I'll tell you the truth - it's much more interesting and enjoyable work for me, teaching. In fact - I have a "job interview" at BCIT next month, to become a teacher there. I went to BCIT myself, and have an incalculable degree of respect for them as an institution. The quality of graduates they put out
is second to none when compared with any other post-secondary graduate I am familiar with in the entire region. And I live now 2 miles from their campus, so I could bike there.
It would be part time, perhaps I will teach evening classes. This is the perfect year to teach a class or two because our new baby is born in June, which gives my wife a full year of maternity leave to take care of both children. I have the year to myself. And if I continue to enjoy it, I can continue to teach in the evenings after that. I usually don't enjoy any sort of work longer than one year but I am optimistic that working at BCIT might break the pattern. Not that they've offered me anything yet, but I suspect they will.
the Land Plan continues as usual, our community gardens at the co-op will be ready for planting by March first, 12 days from now. I paid my rent on the North Vancouver fief today, 14$ for the year. I should also bug BARAGA sometime this week to make sure they don't forget about my application >:)