I am a huge fan of the show, “The Expanse”. One of the characters in the show, Fred Johnson (who is a grizzled ex-military guy) makes a statement along the lines of: at some point in life you have to start building something.
What are you building? I know that many of us build a family and a home, but beyond that?
My current career builds nothing, and deals with garbage almost every day. I think this is one of the reasons that I find re-locating (or immigrating, really) to Taiwan, first on a Gold card, then an APRC, very attractive. I can build my own business, help my wife build her business, get involved with developing some of interests into something a bit more group oriented, etc… Most of these would be much more difficult in Canada (where we live now), primarily due to the cost of setup (and cost of living), and ultimately we don’t want to live in Canada any longer than we have to.
I think as first-generation immigrants many people take a nose to the grindstone, work hard and save money, don’t rock the boat, mentality - which is common across the world in first generation immigrants. But maybe some people here are different?
It is up to the individual, their skill set and some luck.
My cousin could not start anything meaningful in Germany.
He married a Canadian girl and moved there. Now he has a successful business there and a nice family. He is very happy.
Workwise, helping to build a department that facilitates development of quality informational materials, hopefully leading to better understanding and apprporiate use of company products. A big focus is also on professional training and career development for the team.
Startup with office/workshops in Taipei and Hokkaido. Current projects: low tech products for agriculture/food production including a home-use freeze dryer based on the lyophilization process. Long term: assisted robotics. ‘Dumb’ robots teleoperated by skilled workers in low cost countries who use 5g networks to telecommute to farms, nursing homes, factories etc. in high cost, labor short countries (Japan).
I’m trying to build a guitar business but right now I am beset by problems of very low sales due to poor marketing ability without assistance from anyone else, including family. Things would move forward faster if I could get assistance in this.
My goal was to earn enough money during tax season to sustain myself financially the rest of the year. This freed up time to focus on fitness and art. Now that I’ve arrived, I’ll be honing those two.
I was toying with the idea of a second business, but I’ve decided I’d prefer free time over money.
Interesting. This will be the issue that I will be dealing with in 3 years (not now, I’m still a wage slave).
I have learned that a business, if it is something that you are truly interested in, can be more rewarding in more than money; but it is definitely time consuming, so I get your point for sure.
This is definitely true, and I love what I do but it far from defines me. If I dedicated my life to tax work, I think I would die with too much regret. How many waterfalls are there in tw that I haven’t seen yet? How many vistas have I not climbed? This type of reward is more my style.
If you need any help with old HW/BIOS, or to some extent SW, please make a thread so we can help. I enjoy vintage HW of the x86 era ^^
Me… I built a cat feeder. That can differentiate my fat orange cat from my other cats by color… and then doesn’t feed it. And that now also correctly detects whenever said orange cat is cheating by rubbing her white chin against the color sensor, looking like a non-orange cat. And that was just destroyed by the new cat, which simply chewed through the food magazine. Hmpf. Back to the drawing board.
Oh, and a new Taiwan department in the company that employs me, after a huge shift in strategy that saw many offices, factories and people disappear - but kept the huge product line.
Two reasons, I helped a Youtuber receive a review sample of a client’s product and he does primarily retro tech, so making it work with the modern tech for his subs would make for an interesting video.
And I have an old motherboard I bought many moons ago so I might as well put it together and get a retro gaming machine working.
