Above:  A tranquil moment while on a walk outside the hospital.

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Every time it’s Sunday, I forget it’s Sunday.  And I write an on-topic blog post for you.

And then half the time during the week the motivation factor is a bit low and I really just want to put up some random pictures and totally unrelated musings.  It’s sort of like if you spend eight hours a day in the office.  You make friends with co-workers, and you bring some parts of your personal life into work.  Not that I remember much about office work life at this point.

I’ve been living like a teenager with a trust fund for many years.  Moving to new cities, countries and continents on a whim.  Picking up new hobbies and past times and finding ways to cause mayhem and amusement.  So this whole blog post and story, don’t feel bad for me.  I’ve had more than my share of fun up until now.

But right now … this project, this site, it’s solidly turning into something not so different from a 9-5 job.  More like 7-days a week job.  There’s no neglecting it for a couple of weeks at a time.  Not even a few days.  It’s an every day, must do list of things.  E-mails pile up, site things break, job applications need to be read, the accountant sends the tenth e-mail asking for invoices.  Mindset of a teenager with a trust fund, remember?  This turn of events is taking some getting used to.

And now to add to the fun, the new baby.  I’ll entirely digress on that, lest this off-topic Sunday head entirely towards yikes-Jake territory.

My fun and easy life, so screwed.

But off-topic Sunday.  A little bit of life seeping into the site, otherwise working on this every day, without going off-topic, will make me a little crazy.  Have to say hi, gossip around the water cooler, give you reasons to send me thoughts and musings in your entertaining (love them!) e-mails.

First, off-topic on-topic, still working on a few things:

The payment options I’ve been promising for months.

Almost, almost ready.  I know a lot of you don’t like Paypal, or can’t use Paypal, or just want alternatives.  We’ve been seriously working on this for a while.  It required a lot of doing of all the things, since we’re in a weird niche.  Non-US businesses first of all, the whole Internet credit card thing is still some sort of bizzaro future to banks in Asia (or at least they act that way, unless you process millions of dollars in payments).  Then you’ve got the wide range of students from dozens of countries.  Banks get nervous about this.  Then there’s processing rates that are astronomical, and having a simple system to deal with security and refunds and whatnot.  There’s also the matter of our subject matter, which being related to health, is a bit of a red flag to the few decent payment processing options out there.

It took some working things out to get everything situated.  And then we had to get to work to integrate everything so it works with the sign-up and student portal, while being all up to spec and secure and meeting various requirements.

Almost done, for real.

I know also, that the visual appeal of things matters, even students claim it doesn’t.  I want to give you better graphics and things, related to the eyesight topics we discuss.  It’s something I’m looking for in job applicants and that hopefully we’ll get to at some point.

Then there’s social media.  A topic I’d like to dodge forever.

But having a Twitter account, and it having 20 followers, that’s just not cool.  It’d be better to not have one at all than saying, hey, nobody loves us.  So this means having a social media expert minion to deal with those things.  You notice how quickly things spiral into spending all of the monies?   I don’t want to waste student payments on frivolous details.  But doing anything means doing it right, or not at all.  This means of course, more interviewing, more understanding things, trial and error.

It’s not just blog posts and answering some e-mails.

Then, video.  You probably noticed the barely hatched little test cases I upload to YouTube on occasion.  Behind the scenes I’m spending time with videographers and producers and watching lots of well produced little segments, working out how to tell stories.  Keeping it simple and manageable, but making it a point to grow the visual aspects here as well.

There’s also the matter of video and audio for BackTo20/20, which is very much in need of more attention.   And blog podcasts.

And getting into some more interviews with other health blog friends.  A list of those is waiting to get some attention, for me to stop hiding from having to speak, and answer questions about eyesight for other audiences out there.

With all that behind the scenes, you just get to see one blog posts a day (which sometimes, I’m just barely getting done) and forum questions answered.

Now there’s the new baby business.  Me figuring out that the cultural gap between an obscure Burmese ethnic minority and my Western European self, is huge.  There’s dating, which means me being gone about a month at a time, and then being around for afternoon trips and watching movies.  And then there’s the entirely different reality of 24/7 and a hungry, pooping baby.  With a girl from a totally different world and all sorts of unspoken ideas and expectations, which your darling friend Jake is spending most time guessing about.

I really spent much of my adult life coasting, having a good time.  Figured out the angles early, managed to cash out, and then really and truly doing outlandish things, without any worries, for most of my adult life.

Now the double whammy of commitment.  Babies, and you guys.  I’m doing my best to live up to both.  All your encouraging e-mails and thoughts, totally and always appreciated.

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I know just how you feel, little one.

Check out the goods from a vintage Vespa shop I found also, near that idyllic bridge from the cover picture.  Totally out of the way in an industrial neighborhood, sold to construction workers rather than fancy pants bike enthusiasts.

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$1,200 bucks.  Almost ready for a new home!

The amazing thing if you’re into vintage two-wheels and know about Vespas, is finding out how they’re thought of here still.  You see them primarily used as delivery vehicles for plumbing and construction work.  They’re the bikes getting beat the hardest, and furthest away from prized high dollar rides that they are elsewhere.

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$1,500 for this one, all done.  Note the huge rear rack.  

I’ve owned a few of these in the past.  Super fun, but also pretty pricey if you buy one in the West.  Just buying one is one thing.  But then anybody who’ll work on them knows you spent money and they try to charge you accordingly.  It’s not the super cheap hobby that it would be if you went for being all avant-garde and into cool Vespas in Asia.

There’s another kind of ride, Italian also but not quite scooter-like that your darling friend Jakey would really like to get.  Maybe more on that next Sunday.  ;-)

Enough blog time!  Time to buy a thermos so mom can keep warm water, house shoes for her, and some kind of baby swing hammock thing so he might sleep more than an hour a night.  And I have to do something about this whole thing of people asking me every day what his name is going to be.

Cheers, go get out from the computer and take your eyes for a walk outside!

-Jake