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Hi from Thailand

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22 Oct 2009
:-o fish Title: :-o fish
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 20 Oct 2009 - 8:11am

We arrived in Bangkok on Tuesday afternoon and so far have just been mostly relaxing and enjoying the food. I have a Thai friend in Bangkok that I use to work with so we've gone out with him a couple times and had amazing food (I just let him choose the food :) ). It's been quite humid, but fairly moderate temperatures in the mid-20's so quite bearable. Sam's mom arrives today, so we should finally start doing some sightseeing today or tomorrow. We're staying near Khoasan Road in Bangkok until Tuesday and then heading out to the islands.

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The Tsukiji Fish Market

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20 Oct 2009
Outer Tsukiji market Title: Outer Tsukiji market
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 14 Oct 2009 - 6:36pm

The other day I pulled myself out of bed at 5am to go see the action at Tokyo's infamous Tsukiji fish market. This is a massive hub in the city, the arrival/distribution point for almost all of Tokyo's fish. With 32+ million people who love their fish, it's hard to imagine just how much seafood must flow through there on a daily basis.

To give an idea of the size of this market... from wikipedia:

Tsukiji alone handles over 2000 metric tons of seafood per day. The number of registered employees varies from 60,000 to 65,000...

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Fifty Five Square Foot Room

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18 Oct 2009

Due to a lack of planning, Sam and I stayed in Tokyo this weekend. We'd originally planned to head out to Mt. Fuji, but unfortunately was prohibitively expensive with last minute planning (all we could find was roughly $300CAD / night). So we had to move out of our previous luxurious 215 sqft apartment into a hostel for last night and tonight. Tomorrow we're staying at a hotel near the airport since our flight out is quite early in the morning.

Anyway, our current place is a whopping 55 square feet! (about 5 square meters). Let me tell you, it's been fun :).

55sqft room Title: 55sqft room
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 18 Oct 2009 - 12:39pm
Our room in the New Koyo Hostel, Tokyo

I'm pretty sure we could squeeze another person (with luggage) in here.

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New Phone Number

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15 Oct 2009

Due to the unfortunate incident with my last VoIP company I've had to switch providers. Because the number I had been assigned on that network was a Richmond number very few VoIP providers were able to transfer it to their service, for this reason I've needed to just drop my 604 number and get a whole new phone number.

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A review of my Netfone VoIP service

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13 Oct 2009

This is actually more of a rant than a review. But hopefully it will serve the purpose of other people avoiding Netfone in the future.

To start with, I've never received worse service at a company than this, not even with Telus if you can believe that. The service is so bad, that I even have trouble believing it... until I try to contact them again. I've used them for about a year now and never really needed to contact them. My VoIP phone is basically only used for forwarding to my cell or receiving voicemail. I almost never use it as an actual phone.

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Random observations in Tokyo

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11 Oct 2009
Shibuya Crowds Title: Shibuya Crowds
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 11 Oct 2009 - 10:07am
Crowds in Shibuya shopping and chilling with friends at 10pm on a Sunday night. This would never happen in Vancouver.

Always when first arriving in a new city you'll notice odd things that everyone else just perceives as normal... and you do too after a couple weeks. I wish I'd written more down in Buenos Aires, I recall there being a bunch of things but can now only remember a few. I've listed a few my random observations from Tokyo after one week below:

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Chopsticks that cost more than a years supply of sushi?

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6 Oct 2009

We stumbled upon a chopstick store today in Ginza, Tokyo. A super neat tiny store with every kind of chopstick you could imagine, chopsticks for kids, chopsticks with coloured pencils on the back, training chopsticks, great chopstick stands, etc... they also had /these/ chopsticks...

Chopsticks worth more than a years supply of sushi! Title: Chopsticks worth more than a years supply of sushi!
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 6 Oct 2009 - 3:15pm
As of today, 18,900 yen is equivalent to $226 CAD. I couldn't even see anything special about these ones!

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Tokyo and Harajuku Girls

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4 Oct 2009
Harajuku Title: Harajuku
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 4 Oct 2009 - 1:55am

We arrived in Tokyo Saturday afternoon after a nine hour flight. We'd been slightly mislead about filling out our customs entry forms and Sam needed to fill out a second form when we we arrived at the customs gate, at which point they decided to search our luggage. Anyone who's seen the way either me or Sam pack would know this is not a pleasant task. Every square inch of our bags are generally stuffed with something with the layout being fully optimized to the contents of the bag ;-). Also, Sam often needs to sit on her bag to get it to close completely. The officials were quite courteous and didn't want to make it too difficult to repack, so after painfully searching through two of our four bags (trying to leave most things undisturbed), and only opening the third bag (likely giving them a bit of a fright with how tightly it was packed, they decided to just pass on the rest and let us through.

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Heading for Tokyo

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2 Oct 2009

If you want to know how to totally pass the airline lineups for economy class, bump up your flight, AND get a great seat... you need to talk to Sam. She saved us about an hour of waiting in line and got us on the same flight.

Sunset over english bay Title: Sunset over english bay
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 23 Sep 2009 - 11:03pm

It feels like we just barely got a chance to settle into Vancouver and already we're heading out to another continent. It was great seeing everyone when I was back and I'm super sorry to anyone I didn't get a chance to see. Both Sam and I had an awesome time while we were here.

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Rocky Mountain Road Trip

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30 Sep 2009
Sunset over Lake Louise Title: Sunset over Lake Louise
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 15 Jul 2009 - 7:36pm

About two months ago Sam and I went on a short (week long) road trip through the Kootney's and Rockies. The trip was amazing, and I think on the kootney side we hit on average 2 hot springs a day. Ahhhhhh. I just got those photos up and you can take a look at them here.

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A small win over a big telco

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28 Sep 2009

I could go on for hours about the issues I have with Canadian cell phone companies and I'm definitely not alone. It's insane how Canadian (and US) cell companies screw their customers and have absolutely no repercussions. When Telus/Bell first started charging for incoming SMS's there was an impressive amount of outrage over it. Nothing happened, and approximately one year later, coinciding with the iPhone 3GS release, Rogers began charging for incoming SMS's. Somehow no one seemed to notice this (or we'd all just given up hope of changing it). Regardless, Rogers clearly has much better PR than Telus.

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Back in Vancouver

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23 Sep 2009
Prepping the carrots for the CSA Title: Prepping the carrots for the CSA
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 20 Sep 2009 - 10:35am

I arrived back in Vancouver from the farm Monday evening and just got my last few photos up now.

I had another great time out there and glad I was able to make it. Something about being out on the farm and eating mostly food that was picked that day that just really relaxes you. The greenhouse they put up in the spring when I was there had done quite well for them and saved them from losing their entire tomato crop (it was a really tough year weather wise for everyone on the east coast this year).

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At the farm

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16 Sep 2009
The three Hadfield boys Title: The three Hadfield boys
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 16 Sep 2009 - 7:53am

My dad and I flew out to New Brunswick on Monday evening (overnight flight) to visit the farm. We both wanted to visit Mike again and thought it would be great to spend a bit of time out on the farm as well. I was out previously in the spring when they were mostly prepping. So this will be a good contrast to catch some of the harvesting.

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Raising anchor

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16 Sep 2009
foot prints Title: foot prints
Author: Scott Hadfield
Taken: 21 Jan 2009 - 2:40pm
footprints heading into the atlantic on ipanema beach, rio

I bought the last of my tickets for the 3rd leg and 3rd continent of my round the world with Sam the other day. We're heading to Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong, and then Southern Africa. And I'm super excited about all of it. My primary disappointment right now is that I don't think I'll be able to spend as much time as I'd like in any of the locations.

I commonly get asked two questions (normally one after the other):

  • What are you up to lately?
  • How do you afford this?
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Next steps

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29 May 2009

Today marks my last day with NowPublic. I've been with the company almost exactly 1.5 years now... I started November 26, 2007. The decision to leave NowPublic didn't come easily but I just felt quite strongly that it was time for me to work on my own projects. The team at NowPublic is made up of extremely smart people and I'm definitely going to miss working with them.

Starting on Monday I'll be focusing on a new product idea I'm planning with Sam, random development ideas, and traveling. The product idea isn't really at a state ready to be discussed in a public forum just yet but we're hoping to have something out the door towards the end of summer (as a hint, I recently registered disposablewebsites.com which I'll possibly be using as part of this).

This will be the first time that I can remember that I just have all of my time to work on my own things so I'm pretty excited for the next several months until I run out of cash ;-).

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