0:00

Last time we tried to set something up, you were backpacking. Was that in Scotland?

0:04

I was in Wales. You were in Wales. Okay. I mean, most of the people,

0:08

the only person who listens to this is my mom. So I think my mom knows a bit about the UK. But I've heard there's people who try to go out.

0:16

I'm asking you because I assume that you, maybe it's a big assumption,

0:19

but I assume that you know a little bit about this. There's people who go to Scotland and they're trying to do all the different

0:23

mountains and hills and peaks in Scotland in one lifetime or something like that.

0:27

Monroe Bagging, yeah. Yeah, what is that? Can you tell me about that?

0:30

So, so a Monroe is any Scottish peak that's above 3000 feet in, in elevation.

0:39

So there's, I can't remember how many, there's a couple of hundred of them, if I'm not mistaken.

0:44

Some of them are quite difficult to get to. Like if you've ever heard of the,

0:47

the Cullin Ridge, it's quite a famous one, you know, up in the Isle of Skye,

0:53

they filmed some of the James Bond bits up there and things like that.

0:56

The Cullin Ridge is one of the, one of the hardest bits in the UK.

1:00

If not the hardest but there are people that will go

1:02

out and try and bag every single monroe yeah so

1:06

i've only ever done how many have i done i've done

1:08

two okay yeah i've

1:12

done two monroes second one's a bit of a cheat because we

1:14

took a ski lift a little bit of the way up because we were really tired well that's

1:18

two more than me yeah it's and someone there's

1:21

actually just this past week there was some news

1:24

that came up there was a woman who managed

1:27

she was the first woman to finish a scottish winter monroe rounds that means

1:32

she got to the top of all of those mountains in one winter season wow and as

1:37

you say there's people who spend an entirety a lifetime trying to get around

1:41

those mountains how many do you know roughly how many there are let's have a look.

1:46

Okay google it google it while you're looking welcome to

1:50

the canadian specific podcast this time rocky mountains not included today

1:53

i got a friend of mine that we met we met at a a christmas party

1:57

here in abu dhabi and we've been

2:00

trying to to set up something because you know if you

2:02

can't tell already very articulate man we got here and i

2:05

had a quick question about your name here is it based

2:08

off of diogenes it is interesting

2:11

interesting for those who don't know diogenes he was a philosopher from the

2:15

ancient times but he was the wild one right he was the one who threw a chicken

2:19

in front of was it socrates and said behold a man i'm probably butchering this

2:23

also So a plucked chicken came to see him and he,

2:28

he held his middle finger up to him, told him to get out of his sunlight and various other things.

2:32

Yeah. I don't think I epitomize any of that.

2:36

No, no, no, no. You know, you try and take the good, leave the bad,

2:40

but I think he, he just commonly very, very.

2:44

Surprisingly very very smart guy but he i think

2:47

he took stoicism probably to the extreme of not caring about

2:50

anything and then yeah but you're

2:54

saying how many mountains did you find out so it

2:57

is 282 mountains that are over

3:00

3 000 feet in elevation so if you're

3:02

doing that in a winter you you must be camping and

3:06

going from peak to peak to peak to peak no yes

3:09

so you there are certain ones where

3:12

there's a couple of monroes in the same ridge

3:15

and you can kind of pick off a few

3:18

at a time there's other ones which are obviously

3:21

more difficult because you've got to ascend the whole 3000 and there is some

3:25

really weird nuances to it so there's a monroe and there's also something called

3:30

a monroe top so if it if the sort of drop in elevation from one peak to the

3:36

next one One is not more than a certain level. The next one's like a subsidiary peak.

3:41

And so it's not a one row by itself. Okay.

3:44

So it's really, it's really weird. You actually have to go down a certain level

3:48

to come back up for it to qualify as a second one row. Yeah. This is how I know.

3:53

Even in the summer, people will camp out. If you're doing the Kewlin Ridge,

3:57

which is sort of seven or eight, people will try to go the entire ridge over

4:00

the course of two, three days. Oh, nice. They'll camp out on the ridge and things like that. yeah this is how i know

4:06

that there's nerds involved because there's lots of rules. Oh absolutely yeah absolutely have you

4:13

ever seen uh it's an official thing that people go out for you know competing

4:18

for how quickly they could get around it there's an official list yeah of course

4:22

yeah there was all these recently there actually has been a bunch of different

4:26

documentaries that have popped up on on on netflix but have you ever seen the alpinist,

4:31

I've heard of it. I've not watched it. You have to watch it today.

4:35

It's amazing. It's amazing how a documentary film can say so much by just not

4:40

saying anything where they just like leave you with him on the mountain while he's climbing,

4:44

but he does, he does a lot of the climbing like free, free soloing and,

4:48

and, and stuff like that.

4:51

And the, the film crew, he's very, he comes across as very, I don't know if

4:56

humble's the right word, but he's quite humble, but he's very humble. He's just really into it and he doesn't really want to be doing it for anyone else.

5:02

So the camera crew and stuff, they're trying to like find him,

5:05

not on the mountain, but like in the world from time to time because they're

5:08

supposed to shoot something and he just disappears and goes and climbs a mountain

5:11

and breaks a record without them around. He's like, okay, now I'll take you to go do it again.

5:14

But it's a heart-wrenching one too, but it's amazing.

5:18

I highly recommend. If you've got nothing else to do for the rest of your day

5:21

after this, go and watch it. I think this is the second time I've brought this up on the podcast.

5:25

Oh, wow. I'll definitely look at that. the other

5:29

one i want to watch is the the news diaper jar

5:32

one i haven't got around to watching that one yet i can't remember it's seven

5:35

summits is it called oh is it is he goes

5:38

and he does them all in a year yes yes that

5:41

one was very good as well i really like that one and then there was the another

5:45

one about the earthquake in nepal yeah that we watched that was pretty good

5:51

that one's like they're not well there's some summiting but they show you like

5:55

this is the stories of of someone who was like trying to summit Mount Everest during the earth.

6:01

Maybe it wasn't Mount Everest, but they were trying to summon a mountain, a bunch of people. So I think it was Mount Everest, but a bunch of people trying to summon it.

6:06

And then people who were just walking down through some valley,

6:10

but obviously, you know, valleys in Nepal are very high up and they're between

6:13

two mountains and a whole village getting just taken out.

6:17

And then the, the, the city itself, I can't remember what the city's name is

6:21

in Nepal, but the big one. And they show you like how the one earthquake across the entire country country

6:27

just shook it pretty, pretty wild.

6:31

Also on Netflix, you can, you can find, I don't know the name,

6:33

actually find the name if I can, but I've got in a few weeks,

6:37

sort of the 19th of April. There's something that happens every summer. It's called the Kendall Mountain

6:42

Festival. So Kendall's a town in the Lake District of the UK.

6:45

Okay. And they do a little film tour. So part, they do loads of stuff.

6:49

Of course, they do up at the actual festival, they bought trails runs and kids

6:54

shows and talks and everything. It's like a, you know, any other festival, there's all sorts of things going on.

6:59

Coachella for Mountaineers, maybe you could even go that far.

7:03

But they do a film tour in the months and weeks leading up to it.

7:06

It and they're coming to one of the cinemas close to where

7:10

we live so myself and another friend

7:12

who are both hikers and both scout leaders are

7:16

looking to getting tickets for our scouts because it's it's sort of one evening

7:20

and they've got three or four sort of documentary length films they show us

7:24

a three or four sort of between 30 and 45 minute films and then they come along

7:29

to do something and so yeah we were just emailing them this week saying yep

7:32

we'll take 30 tickets yeah Yeah. Yeah. Send them away.

7:36

Yeah. No. And I mean, the kids might not understand it till later.

7:40

I don't know what age group you're working with. They might not understand it till later, but this could be very,

7:45

not just educational, but like inspiring for them to see this.

7:48

And like, it's a, it's very healthy. So it's, it's a dangerous hobby potentially on where you're going,

7:53

but a very healthy hobby at, at least.

7:55

East yeah and and they're 14 to 18 and we take them

7:58

oh there you go so they're they're they're

8:01

old enough they're old enough to understand and old enough to be at

8:04

a point where that you know that that really is the point giving them something

8:07

that could inspire them that could spark something off and say yeah do you know

8:11

what i'd like to go off into the mountains for a couple of days or do you know

8:13

what i'd like to get into this sort of photography even or i'd like to run an

8:17

event like this because there's there's sort of multiple dimensions to something

8:20

like that or You don't need drugs to get high. I wouldn't quite use that phrase, but yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

8:27

No, no, I gotcha. I gotcha. Right on. How did you get into hiking and stuff?

8:33

And then I'll tell you how I, I guess, did as well.

8:38

Yeah, no worries. So I got into it just because it's something I always wanted to do.

8:44

I mean, you see all these videos and things growing up and you'd think,

8:47

oh yeah, I'd love to do that. And sort of growing up in Abu Dhabi, I don't think I ever thought it was accessible

8:52

in the same way because you don't really have, well, you have stuff there in

8:57

sort of Atta and Oman, but didn't really see it as accessible.

9:01

Thought about it in the US, never got around to it. And then when I moved to

9:05

the UK through work, I got into something called the Duke of Edinburgh's award.

9:10

So it's an award that gets run through various sections and it's meant to help

9:17

young people develop independence, resilience, and you've got until there's

9:21

different levels. There's bronze, silver, and gold. And I ended up doing gold through work and you can do your gold until you're 25.

9:28

And there's a couple of different components to it. So you've got to do volunteering

9:33

for between a year and 18 months.

9:36

You've got to take up a physical activity for between a year and 18 months.

9:41

And you've got to work on a skill for between a year and 18 months.

9:45

You've got to go on a four-night, three-day expedition, which could be canoeing.

9:53

It could be horseback riding. It could be cycling.

9:56

But most people do hiking, at least in the UK. And then you've got to go on

10:00

a residential where you go away for five days with people you've not met before

10:05

and work on a project together. So it's sort of like semi Eagle Scout equivalent in the US, if that makes sense, but sort of not.

10:14

And so I got the opportunity to do that through work.

10:18

And for the expedition bit was, yeah, we went out walking.

10:21

So I went out on a couple of days expedition.

10:25

Edition and i think part of the reason i wanted to do

10:27

the award was it just gave me an excuse to do

10:30

a lot of stuff that i wanted to do but perhaps didn't hadn't quite

10:34

plucked up the courage or hadn't found the right people to

10:36

go do it with yes sometimes it's easier to do things

10:39

that you want to do when someone tells you to do it because now

10:42

you're almost like a scent because you probably also got like

10:45

a sense of accountability because you're with all these

10:48

timelines and so it sounds you wanted to get the award yeah yeah and it's so

10:51

yeah right on yeah so i i went off and i did the expedition and of course you

10:56

then get trained in hiking and expedition skills and then try to do a couple

11:01

other challenge hikes and things around that because i you know it just helped me work on,

11:07

work on my skills for the expedition and then for the the volunteering bit i

11:11

joined i started volunteering as a scout leader which then took me down this

11:14

whole other path of you know volunteering sharing with young people,

11:17

stuff that I always wanted to do, not having scouts access to scouts myself growing up, but hearing my parents

11:23

talk about it from when they were younger. And then it sort of came full circle because I finished off my Duke of Edinburgh's award.

11:30

I'd been meaning to volunteer in the community, find something to do because

11:34

I'd just moved to London a year before that. And just the volunteering bit gave me an excuse and gave me a reason and a sort of pathway.

11:42

And I stayed. I stayed and then sort of picked up more responsibility.

11:45

And now I look after the entire district and I run DME myself.

11:50

So I run expeditions for the young people. So it sort of become a bit of a full

11:54

circle moment. And, uh, we're, we're off in two weeks to the Brecon Beacons.

11:58

We're off in two Wales in two weeks with a group of eight or nine.

12:01

Holy smokes. That's awesome. Both awesome and admirable.

12:05

And I guess another thing, man, we've got a couple of things.

12:08

I will tell you about how I somehow got into hiking, but before we do that,

12:13

people can't tell by your accent, right?

12:16

Do you mind letting us all know? So where you've lived, where you're,

12:20

and maybe also to like where your parents are from and, and just a brief summary of how that works.

12:25

You want the plotted history then, right?

12:28

I always have this classic joke where people go, where are you from?

12:30

And I've asked them, do you want the five minute answer or the five hour answer?

12:35

I'll have to give you something in the shorter end of the spectrum, I suppose. pose.

12:39

Yeah. So as you said, my name is Greek, but nothing to do with Greece at all in the family.

12:46

My dad just liked the name and my sister's name is African.

12:50

She found it in a book and he really liked that as well. But my family from

12:55

Goa, which for those of you who know, used to be a Portuguese colony.

13:00

The Portuguese were there for 500 years. It's on the West coast of India.

13:03

And so the Families got Portuguese ties in that sense.

13:06

My granddad was in the Portuguese military. And then in 1961,

13:11

when the Indian army came in and took over Goa and the Portuguese left,

13:17

my granddad had the option to stay or leave.

13:20

And that was in December of 1961.

13:24

And my grandmother and my grandfather got married in November.

13:28

So they were sort of a month and a bit, five weeks into their marriage and they

13:32

were offered the option to either stay or leave.

13:35

And it wasn't until years later that we found out that, you know,

13:40

one of my granddad's friends who was a police officer told him he probably shouldn't go.

13:44

And probably worked out because Salazar was the Portuguese sort of dictator.

13:50

When all of his officers came back to Portugal, he imprisoned them because in

13:55

his eyes, they had failed. They had failed. They'd failed. Oh, my goodness. So I don't know what my family's history would

14:02

have been if my granddad had decided to go back to Portugal.

14:05

But he decided to stay in Goa. And my dad was born. My dad and mom met in Goa.

14:12

And then I was born there. And we lived there for the first couple of years

14:17

of my life with my granddad. Real quick, is the Portuguese why your parents are so good at dancing?

14:22

Yes. Interesting. Okay. And just the culture in Goa is far more westernized.

14:28

And if you get the chance to visit it's a lovely place yeah the culture

14:31

is so much more westernized than the rest of india it's very it's

14:34

a very different culture and many

14:37

people still think of it as a different country like my grandparents generation would

14:41

still say this is goa and the rest of it's india and there

14:44

is a difference yeah so you know

14:46

english was a medium of instruction portuguese was a medium of instruction you

14:50

know dance culture a fusion of different dances different

14:52

cultures different foods so really is a

14:55

melting pot by itself yeah and then late 90s

14:59

my my dad moved to abu dhabi for work for better

15:02

opportunities because go is lovely but it's a

15:04

bit of a tourism tourism hotspot and used to

15:07

be a bit of a hippie haven back in the 70s and 80s kind of went downhill there's

15:13

not much left there for for the people who actually wanted to live there it's

15:16

it's very touristed and not very oh yeah yeah so they're people other people

15:21

are They're buying houses and stuff there and pushing the locals over.

15:26

What's happening in other places. So yeah, they moved in the late 90s.

15:30

And then we followed in 2000, moved to Abu Dhabi.

15:34

And then we're there ever since. So most of my life, I genuinely don't remember

15:38

very much of my life in Gullah because we moved when I was four.

15:42

I don't remember very much of it aside from bits and pieces with my grandparents

15:45

and things I've seen in photos. So most of my life was Abu Dhabi. And I lived in Abu Dhabi until I was 17.

15:52

And I went off to university in the US and lived in Michigan for four years

15:56

and got a degree, bachelor's degree in aviation ops and management.

16:02

And then on the back end of that was trying to figure out what I wanted to do

16:07

and ended up moving to the UK to get my master's degree.

16:11

In the middle of that, I went and lived in Texas for a month because I got the

16:15

opportunity to work to get my aircraft dispatcher's license,

16:18

which was a sort of fallback career path or alternative career path.

16:22

Yeah. If some of the stuff I wanted to do didn't work out.

16:25

And then came over here, got my master's, and then started working where I do

16:30

now at Heathrow Airport immediately after my master's.

16:33

And it's been six and a bit years now that I've been in the UK. Okay.

16:38

So the accent is very much a combination of various things over the years.

16:46

And I still, I was speaking to some American friends.

16:49

They say, you sound awfully British now. And I, if I talk to my British colleagues,

16:52

they say, you don't sound British at all. They don't know what you sound like.

16:55

And it's really strange because you, you also realize how much it depends on

17:01

the people you're talking to. I've got, you know, if I talk to Spanish friends and

17:05

italian friends i don't know if you've ever heard of

17:08

sort of linguistic mirroring i think it's called i

17:11

where i haven't you try it you try

17:14

and pick up on the way the other person talks to sort of help the conversation

17:18

go better and it's a natural thing and i i realized it once when someone said

17:23

to me so do you realize when you talk to the spanish people your sort of tone

17:26

your inflection your sentence structure changes entirely because you're talking

17:29

to them and then And you go off and you talk to someone else and it's completely different.

17:33

So, yeah, very much a mutt of an accent, I think.

17:38

Yeah, that's funny. I do the same thing with my friends where I go like more Albertan. But then.

17:45

For work and stuff i'll be a bit more more proper

17:48

but i i still i can't i don't know what it is with my brain but i

17:51

don't like i will probably never say mate that's the

17:55

thing everyone wants me to say here i probably never will

17:57

but there's there's certain things that if you move if you move to the uk it

18:01

comes naturally yeah they say that all the time yeah but you we have another

18:06

friend here i won't name names because just they're just a friend here but she's

18:11

from the us and so that's It's the Midwest,

18:15

and sometimes she sounds like a school teacher from where I'm from.

18:20

Sometimes she sounds a little British. And she's like what I would almost call like the international accent,

18:28

which I would probably start putting you under because I notice actually now

18:32

when I'm listening to Now Without a Beer in My Hand, I pick up different things

18:38

now that I wasn't able to before. For yeah i don't quite i don't have the

18:42

best ear for this but no it's it's very interesting that

18:45

you say that so that mirroring piece is probably why i

18:49

noticed yeah when people just start talking and it's funny too because you do

18:52

it you'll even do it without seeing the person or talking with them you'll just

18:56

on the phone if you know who you're talking to you'll you can revert back and

19:00

how you usually talk with whether it's your friends or your because you also

19:02

talk to your parents differently talk to your friends too that's very interesting yeah and and it's it's.

19:07

It's very random for me because even at work, I used to be a duty manager and

19:12

you'd pick up the phone and you'd be talking to airlines and you could be talking

19:15

to anyone from anywhere in the world because we've got that many people there.

19:20

Or you could be talking to anyone anywhere in the world because you'd be calling

19:22

an office halfway across the world for something.

19:25

And you do the same thing there. Interesting. Where you just pick up on the

19:28

person's accent and you just pick up on their sentence structure and you kind of...

19:32

Yeah, I think it's quite an innate human thing. It's trying to sort of build

19:35

that relationship by subconsciously a brain goes, oh, if I sound like you,

19:40

then, you know, we can get along and we can work together. We can be friends. Yeah.

19:46

Right on. And just do you have the stats right now? Like, how big is Heathrow?

19:51

Like, top 10? Is it the biggest airport? I can't remember.

19:54

Yes, it's definitely top 10. Depends on how you measure it.

19:57

So we're not. Oh, interesting. We're not the top airport by air traffic movements.

20:03

That usually goes to Atlanta because they've got a lot of small regional stuff.

20:06

Interesting. Atlanta, US? In the US, yeah. So I'll look it up while we're talking. Okay.

20:16

By passenger volumes, we're usually quite high up there.

20:19

So last year was just under 80 million passengers, which is pretty much on what we were 2019.

20:28

Okay. pandemic yeah and i suppose this year would would surpass that but yeah

20:34

so atlanta last year 2023,

20:38

atlanta had 104 million passengers dubai had 86 and we had 79 so we're number

20:45

four actually so atlanta dubai dallas fort worth and then us and then tokyo

20:50

the top five interesting wow yeah so So we're definitely up there, definitely very busy.

20:57

Yeah, well, you got a fascinating resume, so to speak.

21:01

All right, now I'll tell you about how I got into hiking, much different from your story.

21:07

I guess I was sort of born into it, so to speak. So I grew up in rural Alberta

21:10

in the prairies, and there's a big hunting and fishing culture.

21:15

And just a few generations ago, that's what people had to do even just to eat.

21:20

You know, when you're going hunting, you got to, you got to put your boots on

21:23

and start, start walking. And then from there, you know, my family and I, we always like doing things outdoors.

21:29

We never went on specific hikes per se, but we would do trips to the mountains

21:32

quite often. And whenever you go to the mountains, you're always going to go out on a trail or two.

21:36

So the Rocky Mountains were about six hours away from us, four to six hours,

21:42

depending on if you're going to Jasper or Banff. Might have actually it's probably five five to

21:47

seven hours because we're on the other

21:50

side of edmonton but so that was something and we also went to we also would

21:53

go to drum heller so drum heller in alberta is this place where they find lots

21:58

of dinosaur bones because i can't remember what the geological terms are but

22:01

pretty much there's like a cut where like a river went through or something

22:05

at one point or i think a river but the the landscape just sort of opens up a little little bit,

22:09

and then you can see all the layers and the, there's dinosaur bones and stuff.

22:13

And they got this amazing, amazing, it's the Royal Tyrell Museum,

22:18

amazing dinosaur museum. It's, I would say one of the, yeah, if you're ever in, in Calgary,

22:24

just take a jet out there.

22:26

It's opposite direction of the, the mountains, but it's, it's an amazing,

22:30

I mean, I've been there so many times.

22:33

I, we, me and my wife, when we were in Canada, I think three years ago during

22:37

the pandemic, We still went just to go and, you know, I would,

22:40

we're going to go back to Canada in June, July. And I would, if I'm in the area, I would just go and do it again. It's so good.

22:46

But yeah. So when you're out there too, like lots of hiking and we did a lot of canoeing too.

22:50

Growing up, we would put canoes in the, so my, my, where I grew up,

22:54

it was on acreage on a river bank. So we would put canoes in the river upstream and we would canoe home.

23:01

And then we would pull, pull the canoes out of the water and come up.

23:04

And sometimes you'd fish while doing that or, you know, you'd go and you,

23:06

I think you pretend you're. Hunting but you're kind of just canoeing looking for uh you know looking for deer and stuff.

23:14

Yeah. So, you know, a lot of people from, you know, just rural Alberta are kind

23:17

of just, or rural Canada end up sort of being born into it.

23:21

But then you got like pockets of like where the hippies live.

23:24

One of them is Squamish.

23:27

Is it Squamish? I think it's Squamish. Yeah. In, in BC, they're like little

23:31

enclaves where everyone shares things, you know, there's no rule of law,

23:35

terrible place, but people will go there just to work. But their primary goal

23:39

is to like climb mountains. And I think Squamish is where, I'm pretty sure it's Squamish,

23:44

is where that one guy is from. Let me just double check that, the alpinist. But they, yeah,

23:50

yeah. So you'll see that and kind of all across.

23:53

In Saskatchewan, which is a province over from us, just tons of fishing.

23:57

I think in northern Saskatchewan, there's more lakes than there are fishermen.

24:01

There's just so many. But most people live as far south in Canada as possible.

24:06

Yeah, because isn't it something like 90% of the population is within 100 miles

24:11

of the US border, and then go up beyond that, and it's just sort of the wild.

24:15

Yeah, pretty close. There are some pockets up north, but yeah, that's how that works.

24:21

And then I guess I also did some sea cadet stuff. So I was in the prairies,

24:24

there's no ocean, but they still had sea cadets. I did that, and then I ended up joining the Canadian Army when I was old enough as well.

24:32

So lots of hiking in there, but different type of hiking.

24:36

But anyways, yeah, so I'm very happy to discuss hiking with you,

24:40

and that was very interesting. Yeah. Yeah, and I think it's just really cool, right?

24:45

Because for me, hearing about friends who kind of were able to go out and hike

24:51

and things with their families, And like that sense of adventure growing up, I guess,

24:57

growing up in Abu Dhabi was something that you got in a, in a very different

25:00

sense and something I feel like I potentially missed out on.

25:02

Like we'd, my parents still, we'd love, we used to go camping whenever we could,

25:06

but, but you camp on a beach, you camp in a wadi, you, you know,

25:11

it wasn't the same as kind of going out and going out completely into the wilderness.

25:16

You were never very far away from, from sort of civilization. optimization.

25:21

So yeah, I guess I always quite like hearing these stories from people who have

25:26

grown up in places where it's like, oh yeah, well, you know,

25:28

when I was 14, me and my older brother used to, you know, just disappear off

25:33

for the weekend into the forest. And, and, you know, yeah, we'd come back on Sunday at some point and we,

25:39

you know, we, or you could just at the end of the school day,

25:43

you know, on a typical Wednesday evening, there was a river you could go swim in.

25:47

And I would have loved to have that sort of stuff growing up,

25:49

but, you know, growing up in a city, I guess it's, it's, it's very different.

25:53

Yeah. For a while, we used to go fishing at the old ferry crossing,

25:56

just down the road from us and all the local kids would show up.

25:59

You had to be like, know someone who could drive you there, but we'd all go

26:02

there until the RCMP started showing up all the time.

26:05

I think the, there was a pesky neighbor who, you know, grew a little too big

26:09

for her breeches and she, you know, eye on that land, but I don't think she

26:13

did, but that didn't matter. We weren't trespassing though. That's the, that's the main point.

26:17

But yeah, we're, we're really, and I'm very conscious of this,

26:21

particularly with growing up because me and the missus, we want to have kids

26:25

and, you know, we're thinking lots about, okay, you know, I know tons of people who grew up here and they turned out great.

26:32

Like you're, you're a very good example of that, but yeah.

26:35

That, that way that I grew up, I think I would want to like mirror that as much as possible.

26:43

Uh, cause I think there was something very special about it.

26:45

And I look back at it so, so fondly all the time, even when I'm here,

26:49

sometimes, you know, sometimes I'll have dreams and stuff about being home.

26:52

Actually the last dream that I had about being home though, I was dreaming about,

26:55

uh, there's a specific type of beer you can get called Black Ice made by Molson

27:00

and a specific type of Canadian whiskey made by Weiser's.

27:03

For some reason I was looking for that in a a liquor store and i just couldn't find

27:06

it and i went to another store and i couldn't find it and that was my dream oh my

27:12

god yeah yeah but anyways do you mind that's really interesting you say that

27:17

though because i think because we talked about this at christmas didn't we like

27:20

i think so yeah the way people grow up and and what you get in abu dhabi because

27:24

i think talking to my parents now.

27:29

Because yeah some you know i'd like to have kids at some point as well but i

27:33

think about it too too, sometimes about the way I grew up.

27:36

And oftentimes I've had colleagues of mine who I used to work with who then

27:41

ended up taking jobs in the Middle East and they knew I grew up in the Middle East.

27:44

So quite a few of them came up to me at various points and said,

27:47

hey, I want to talk to you. And their primary concern was never how much money am I going to make?

27:53

They wanted to know what it was like for me as a kid growing up because they

27:56

wanted to know if they took their kids there for that opportunity,

27:59

what that was going to look like.

28:02

So they wanted to know what schools were like they wanted to know what the culture

28:06

was like and and i've had those conversations with my parents you know later

28:11

growing up or sort of later in my life not when i was younger about why they did things and and,

28:18

why they were certain ways and i think you know safety is a big thing out there

28:26

you yeah you're not likely to have any you know you don't get any violent crime you get.

28:32

Pickpockets and beggars but that's really about it you

28:35

know the reasons why are all different discussion i

28:38

suppose but in that sense that the sort of safety is

28:41

there but then as you said it's the other elements of your life

28:44

that you perhaps don't get as much of and yeah

28:48

like even scouts was a classic example right where i would

28:51

have loved to do it when i was a kid it would have been right up my street it

28:54

would have been fantastic but the opportunity just didn't exist i think

28:57

things have changed significantly now but at

29:01

that point the opportunity just didn't exist so the sort of extracurriculars

29:04

you were you could have were fairly limited it was kind of

29:07

you went to school then you went down and played football in the car park

29:10

with your friends or you know you did a few bits and pieces there

29:13

here and there but uh you didn't really have

29:16

the sort of you know you couldn't disappear for two

29:19

days into the woods you couldn't just go camping with your friend

29:22

yeah if you disappeared yeah it's it's

29:25

a different it's a different sort of independence I find and it

29:29

also it's a different sort of way people

29:33

react in the sort of societal hierarchy and

29:36

stuff there about the the way people the way people treat each other is different

29:41

the way people interact is different and I feel like if your parents don't if

29:48

your parents don't necessarily step in on that and and kind of reinforce some

29:52

of those values and some of those bits and pieces with you, like I knew.

29:55

I knew people who grew up in a, in a very different, very similar circumstances

30:00

to me, but in a very different way. And so the way they interact with, interacted with people and the way they,

30:06

they sort of treated other people, sometimes you kind of look at that and you

30:09

go, that doesn't make sense to me.

30:12

And then you, you kind of realized later in life that it was,

30:14

was down to the fact that, you know, where they grew up and the way their parents

30:20

did or didn't kind of have those conversations with them.

30:24

And I feel like that's one of those interesting things about growing up in the

30:27

Middle East compared to, compared to anywhere else as you're, I really

30:31

appreciate a lot more what my parents did and and

30:34

the fact that they they probably had the parent on a completely different

30:37

level to people living anywhere else

30:40

in in their sort of hometown where you had access

30:43

to the the grandparents and the wider family and everybody else

30:46

but you had to you know us parents potentially that

30:49

area would have to be absolutely everything because you

30:53

don't necessarily have the wider family there to sort of fall back on yeah not

30:57

as much not as much support you got to create your own opportunity and yeah

31:00

there is much more stuff here now i will say though from what i hear from other

31:04

parents is their uh their their children's activities can be quite expensive.

31:11

And the other thing that i need to consider too or that i think i should consider

31:16

is right like in north america if you know if i have kids and one of them wants

31:21

to be you know a trades person and a tradesman,

31:24

they can go and do that at like 16 or something.

31:28

But here you can't really get a summer job as a kid because why would they hire

31:35

you if they can pay someone significantly, you know, less to do the job and,

31:39

and just import in as well as, okay, now you are 18.

31:44

The only way to get a job here, well, there's, there, well, there's two ways.

31:48

The first way is is you need to know someone. The second way is you need to

31:52

know someone and be good. So at the end of the day, you sort of need to know someone to get a job here.

31:56

You can get here on your merit depending on the gig, but they're looking for

32:01

someone who can roll in, set up shop, and start running.

32:04

They're not interested in training people if you're not like already in the

32:09

country or if you're not, you know, a local here. Yeah, national. Yeah.

32:13

Exactly. So if I have kids here, I mean, there's probably not a problem with

32:18

elementary school, But once you got to start like, okay, now they're 18,

32:21

you're forced to send them to school.

32:24

And then, you know, if you can get them a job, once they're done,

32:28

like they're forced to do a university level education, like they got to go

32:32

right to college, not a trade here.

32:34

And then you would have to somehow be very confident that you can get them a job after.

32:40

I didn't have a question for you then, because you grew up here a bit of a different time.

32:44

So related to what I just said, do you think you could have gotten a job here

32:49

or do you think you would have had to left to find your initial work or schooling?

32:54

Was there a path available for you?

32:58

Could you have stayed in Abu Dhabi the entire time? And what would that have looked like?

33:03

I don't think I could have, right? And I've actually spent a good amount of

33:07

time talking about this or thinking about this. All right, let's hear it. Just because I've had these conversations with parents

33:14

and friends and other people I know, and they've kind of gone, oh, would you come back?

33:18

I say, yeah, I might do for the right opportunity.

33:21

I guess it drops down to sort of the culture and the way things were,

33:26

right? So I spent 13 years of my life there.

33:29

I moved there when I was four. I moved out when I was 17.

33:32

And I'm 28 now. So it's been more than 10 years since I've been gone.

33:38

But I still feel like a lot of things have changed and some things haven't changed.

33:42

You're still looked at in the light of your age.

33:48

You're still looked at in the light of your skin color. Oh my goodness.

33:52

You're still looked at on all those levels. And I feel like even though I could

33:56

turn around and say, I've been at Heathrow Airport for five years,

33:59

six years, I've been one of the busiest airports in the world, I could walk in there, and people would still look at me as being 28 years old. Yes, yes.

34:07

Oh, my goodness. I would have, after 13 years, I needed to leave.

34:12

I needed something different just for myself. Yeah. But I don't feel like I would have got the respect and opportunity and

34:19

chance to be who I am in the same way.

34:23

Man, it's interesting because I mean, to be perfectly honest,

34:25

I thought you were just going to talk about race and passport and, you know.

34:31

The fact that, you know, you're, if you're not a local, you're a class below,

34:33

and then there are many classes below that. We can talk about that.

34:37

But the, man, the, the age thing, it's like even me with my job, right.

34:41

And I got hired here and, you know, eventually people understand,

34:44

but it takes a long time, but I'm not even that young.

34:48

I'm not even that young anymore, but man, it is like the most glaring thing

34:53

that everyone recognizes and comments on.

34:57

And, and it impacts how they work with me.

35:00

So much so much is age i'm

35:03

just like at what point is someone supposed to be competent here but

35:06

people here also work way beyond like

35:10

65 55 like like the the you're supposed to stop at 65 and sometimes they'll

35:16

get rid of you but quite often they'll they'll find work somewhere else just

35:18

keep working yeah and it's like well first off why i mean if you enjoy it okay

35:23

that's great you love it but it's just this huge thing where like you know you

35:28

just so now what that does right Right. So that's probably what leads a little bit into like, OK, so if you're around

35:33

30, you're practically still 20 because everyone hired here is got so many years

35:39

of experience and then they don't really let you let you like try things.

35:44

Yeah absolutely and i feel like that would be the

35:46

struggle right when if you were if you were 18 and you would well you you probably

35:52

wouldn't walk directly into a job you'd walk into a very very poorly paid job

35:57

at 18 if you didn't have any form of education because they'd want to see you

36:01

have at least a bachelor's degree which kind of goes back to what you were you

36:04

were saying earlier yeah. But even if you did, you'd then take so long to climb.

36:10

Whereas, you know, outside, I found that whether your friends who have worked

36:15

in other parts of Europe or myself here or in the US, you know,

36:20

we've been able to take risks and take opportunities.

36:22

People have taken chances on us and said, you know what, you're competent.

36:26

I'll let you have a go at it. And then you work at it for a bit and something

36:33

works out. You get a promotion. You move into a new job. job, things work out.

36:37

Whereas over there, I don't think that that structure in the workplace still exists.

36:43

Like, you know, talking to people I know there and from like,

36:46

you know, from those are situations I've heard there, there still isn't that

36:50

sort of transparency in HR policies and things like that. Like,

36:53

you know, what is a performance review? What is an annual salary review? Does it actually happen? Do you get a raise or not?

36:58

It just depends on whether your manager decides they want or the company decides

37:02

they want to, or they don't. And so I don't feel I feel like if I had, for whatever reason,

37:09

only ever stayed there, because I could have gone to a university in the UAE,

37:13

because there were a number of universities there, and it's something I did look at.

37:16

I feel like I potentially would have been okay with it if I had stayed there the whole time.

37:20

But now that I've been outside and I've seen what the rest of the world is like,

37:24

it's potentially quite a point of frustration. I don't know that, because that's an alternate universe in which I suppose I stayed in Abu Dhabi.

37:32

But, yeah, I don't know. And I think the other thing for me is,

37:35

you know, you were talking about trades and trade school and things like that.

37:39

I feel like the other thing is also just the level of respect that you have

37:43

for different trades and different things that people could do.

37:48

If you'd like to be a carpenter in the Middle East, well, you're not.

37:52

For the most part, if you're a carpenter, you're an immigrant from one of the

37:57

developing countries and you're paid rather poorly. It's not considered skilled.

38:01

It's actually almost considered unskilled.

38:03

Whereas a really good friend of mine out here is a carpenter and he builds movie sets.

38:09

He's done stuff for Star Wars. He's done stuff for all sorts of movies. Oh, interesting. Wow.

38:15

He's a carpenter. Yeah. But being a carpenter in the Middle East doesn't get

38:19

you that, you know, it's, it's a completely different world.

38:22

And, uh, it's, it's that sort of society of, you know, unless you've got a corporate

38:28

white collar job, you're not necessarily, you don't get status.

38:32

Yeah. You don't get status. And it's, it's such a status-based society sometimes

38:36

where I feel like, yeah, the, that, that can get quite frustrating in, in its own way.

38:42

Yeah. So, yeah. Oh, yeah. I guess the long way of saying I probably could have

38:48

in an alternate universe stayed there. I don't think I would have been happy. I think at the point I got to after 13

38:54

years, I really needed a change. And that was part of the reason I wanted to go somewhere else.

38:59

And I really needed a change. I really needed something different.

39:01

I mean, 13 years is a long time. Yeah.

39:05

There's going to be a lot of people listening here like, 13 years, that's nothing. But, oh, yeah. Hopefully.

39:11

Yeah. Life. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Hopefully you don't get me in trouble here.

39:17

I'm still within the country, but I think everything we're talking about is fair game.

39:20

But no, yeah, I mean, I don't think you would have flourished as well as you did.

39:24

I mean, I see very easily, you know, a lot of people get their hands sort of

39:29

tied here, and you're kind of just waiting in an assembly line to move up or move around and stuff.

39:36

Yeah. Interesting you say that. Cause yeah, like, I mean, I mean,

39:39

I'll even say it here, like any interview, like internal interview that I've

39:44

had with my company or anything like that. First thing I do, I start growing a beard and I get a, get a haircut to try

39:49

and make myself look a little older, you know, anything I can do to like not

39:53

draw attention to my age and it still doesn't work. It still doesn't work, but yeah.

39:58

It's a funny one, right? Cause I'll, I'll just, I'll say something else.

40:02

Because like I said I've thought about this quite a lot and,

40:08

I recognize that there is an incredible amount of privilege in the fact that

40:12

I can say that I got to leave you know right like it's because my parents said

40:17

they'd support me to go off to universities because I was able to take that

40:20

risk and some people don't have that opportunity, and I've absolutely got to recognize that and I kind of value that a lot more as I get older,

40:29

just because yeah as you said some people,

40:32

they could potentially get their hands tied because they've they've never had

40:35

the opportunity to leave or they don't have the means or the resources or the

40:39

support from their parents or the support from society with people around them

40:43

to actually go away and i still say it like leaving,

40:49

leaving abu dhabi and moving to the us where absolutely nobody knew my name

40:54

was one of the biggest risks i ever took was one of the best things i ever did in my life Yeah.

40:59

And I've done it twice because I did it moving to the US and did it again moving to the UK.

41:04

Just took the absolute chance on the fact that nobody knew my name and I could

41:08

just start from zero and I could, I could be who I wanted to be.

41:11

There wasn't the sort of, I guess, 13 year hangover. I knew him when he was a little kid.

41:17

Man, you're touching, you're touching on all of the things I've been thinking about recently.

41:22

I've thought a lot about that, but before we keep going, I think one thing to

41:26

highlight is you keep talking about your parents.

41:28

I've talked about my parents. So obviously, you know, you're way ahead as soon

41:33

as you have supportive, caring parents that don't want you to end up like everyone else.

41:37

And then, however, man, like being able to kind of go away from my parents,

41:44

shake out a little bit, you know, try this, try that.

41:47

And then, and then come back to them and see like, yeah, like if,

41:52

if I hadn't gotten an opportunity to go and like, it's not entirely spread your

41:56

wings, but it's just like try, right.

41:59

And trying different things about me when you

42:02

come back and i visit you know or when i interact with

42:04

my parents like i i love my parents i have a great time and interacting

42:08

with them and it's it's not hard but it

42:11

takes like a week or two for them you know to them for them to like download

42:15

and recognize oh he does this different my perfect my favorite story and i hope

42:19

you laugh because i think it's funny growing up i used to whenever i was going

42:25

at suppertime whenever i was going to to take the first sip of water,

42:27

for some reason, I always choked on it. Like, I don't know if I would just like suck and then choke and I start coughing

42:33

and everyone laughs at me. And then like I had left home for four years.

42:38

And so I've come home many times and like, I'm not really doing it.

42:41

And then it'd been four years, probably since this had ever happened,

42:45

it happened again and everyone's like, oh, you always do that,

42:48

ha ha ha. And I'm laughing, I'm like.

42:51

This hasn't happened for almost four years, but because this is in your mind

42:56

that, oh, this is the thing that Jaden always does. It never happens anymore. It just happened once by accident,

43:01

but it's just, it just, it goes right back to like, oh, you know,

43:05

this is the, this is the person that I've always known them to be.

43:08

But it's just, it was so funny when that happened. But anyways,

43:10

yeah, like, but it's been great to, because, you know, I grew up in a small

43:15

town and I was able to go to Edmonton, which is about an hour away,

43:18

but I was still home lots visiting with family.

43:20

But, you know, you kind of stretch out a little bit, but it wasn't until like

43:23

I joined the military and, you know, I was given some, a lot of responsibility

43:28

and actually a significant amount of authority too.

43:32

And you, like, I really became something else and, and really thought about

43:38

what I wanted to be within that context. tax.

43:42

And, you know, when I can kind of take over a situation and,

43:45

and, and, and start leading a little bit and,

43:47

and interacting with people and kind of figuring out what kind of leader I want

43:50

to be and what kind of person I want to be and, and how, cause you can,

43:53

you can think about how, what you want to be, but also like how to get there,

43:57

how to interact with people in a kind way when you're frustrated,

43:59

how to help people when you only have so much time, like, you know,

44:03

how many times can you let someone fail at something before you assign the task to someone else?

44:07

Weird little things like that, but you got to think lots about it.

44:10

And then, oh, and it's just like, it's like, okay, like I, we went out,

44:15

we built a bridge over a weekend. I come back and then it's like, you go to see your parents and they're like,

44:20

make sure you lock the gate.

44:23

It's like, it's like, okay. Like I, yes, there was one time,

44:27

however many years ago, or, or, you know, like, you know, so you get on gain

44:31

all this capability, but you know, I love them for that. And it's actually nice to kind of come back.

44:35

It's not a bad thing also for that. Like, it's not a bad thing.

44:38

It's just something that I notice. us yeah what are

44:41

your thoughts i want to hear that so again a

44:45

really really really interesting thing to think about right

44:48

because i mean you've met my parents and

44:50

they were always super involved in the community everybody

44:54

always knew my parents and i

44:57

think at some point in my life i i think

45:00

i had this conversation with them i'm sure i've had this conversation with them probably after

45:03

a few drinks but at some point in my life i did

45:06

get frustrated because i was always their son i was

45:09

was never myself right like and it

45:12

wasn't because I was upset about anything it's I didn't want

45:15

to be my own person and you get to that point where you're a teenager when you're

45:17

like 15 16 and you're just like I just want to be me I don't always want to

45:22

be their son but I it was not because I was ever ashamed of it or anything I

45:28

was actually I was really proud of what my parents and I still am and if I turn

45:32

out to be you know 10% of the type of people they are I'd be really really happy.

45:38

But at the same time, I did need to be my own person.

45:41

And I'm quite sure that that was a significant factor in me wanting to leave as well.

45:46

And like you say, the whole aspect, if you could spread your wings,

45:48

you can make your mistakes, you can figure things out by yourself. But.

45:53

In that, there's also the element of I wouldn't have been able to do that coming

45:56

back to sort of families being supportive.

45:58

If they hadn't said, yeah, you know, we'll support you or they hadn't had the

46:03

confidence to say, you know what, we've taught you well, we've raised you well,

46:06

we feel confident enough that when you go away,

46:09

you can take care of yourself and you're not going to get yourself into too

46:13

much trouble and kind of just waste away a little bit.

46:17

And so I think that's a really, really big part of it.

46:20

It but yeah i i definitely understand you

46:24

know when when you go back it's kind of like i go back and my

46:27

mom's like oh here's some money for the taxi and i'm just like

46:30

i yeah thank you

46:32

but yeah i do work now yeah but i feel like parents are always going to be parents

46:37

right and it's this really weird thing where when i was there in december it's

46:40

like i'm back in the house i grew up in i'm sleeping in my childhood bed you

46:46

know the people in the neighborhood still know me they They haven't seen me for five years,

46:50

but like people around still know me and I still, like, I still know where things are in the kitchen.

46:57

And it's just like, it was an almost like strange out of body experience because

47:01

some things have changed so much in Abu Dhabi. And then I come home and my parents

47:04

are like, you know, yeah, lock the front door. You know where the spare key is.

47:08

Can you fix this for me? Can you, can you hang up this painting or fix that

47:14

bookshelf or something like that? And. There's a certain amount of it's comforting you

47:20

come back to that and it's it's nice and yeah

47:23

it does get frustrating because sometimes you go you know

47:26

i'm 28 years old you don't need to remind me to

47:28

do my my laundry it'll get done don't worry you know

47:32

or i do have money for the tax and it's it's fine but it's it's

47:35

done from i think the important thing is recognizing that it's

47:37

done from such a place of love and it's yeah it's

47:40

that version of you that they you know they've

47:44

got to watch you grow up for i think from a

47:46

distance and they haven't had that involvement

47:49

so then you you you kind of

47:52

show up after a couple of years and all of

47:55

a sudden they've got to catch up and you know you've spoken to them and you've told them

47:58

about things and you've had conversations on the phone but you you get to this

48:01

point where all of a sudden they've had to sort of accelerate through four years

48:04

of growth in a couple of days that you're there and i think it takes time you

48:09

you know it takes time to catch up and so and yeah the the water things right yeah yeah.

48:17

And and this is why i wouldn't do that anywhere else but i go back

48:20

to abu dhabi and i just do that because that's just

48:23

it becomes a reflex almost yeah where you're there and it's just it's the environment

48:29

you grew up in so like yeah i do you know i i do i do say i do say yalla when

48:36

i'm in abadabi i don't say it anywhere else but that's because i grew up in abadabi and that was a,

48:41

that was just a thing yeah no and and i like how you mentioned though right

48:46

like a lot of it comes from like it comes from a place of love but it's not

48:49

just my parents it's also my brothers with the water thing yeah yeah i'm just

48:55

trying to oh here we go how do i i was trying to find a,

49:00

a poem or a saying because it was very interesting about like step you mentioned

49:05

about like stepping and out of. Parents' Shadows. Here we go. From Alan Littman's intricate 1993 novel,

49:13

Einstein's Dreams, set in Bern in 1905.

49:16

I'll try and read this properly. With infinite life comes an infinite list of relatives.

49:21

Grandparents never die, nor do great-grandparents, great-aunts,

49:25

and so on. Back through the generations, all live and offer advice.

49:30

Sons never escape from the shadows of their fathers, nor do daughters of their mothers.

49:35

No one ever comes into his own

49:38

such a cost of immortality no person is

49:41

whole no person is free now they're sort of talking

49:44

about what if we could live forever but you know that i

49:47

kind of think as i'm going through this right and

49:50

i want to have kids i think a lot about how like how to

49:52

set them up like i almost would prefer that they

49:56

never pursue and if they want to they can it's

49:59

up to them but if they never pursue a career similar

50:03

to mine like to go do something else so that everything is kind

50:06

of on your own or for yeah a time go and just live

50:09

elsewhere and and and you know it would suck because you

50:13

know i know my parents you know they're very happy for me to to be

50:16

here and and like when i was went on tour with military and stuff like i know

50:19

they're very happy for me but yeah like the the stepping out of of the shadows

50:24

yeah interesting anyways i hope you like that uh quote maybe i'll send it to

50:27

you that is that is a really that's a really good one i'm gonna have to look

50:30

at that one yeah i'll let me see if i can i think i just need to yeah Yeah,

50:34

WhatsApp me a link or something. But as you were saying that, and you said, oh, I'm thinking about this quote,

50:40

this poem, and there was another one that popped into my head, so I've just looked it up on the side.

50:44

So I'm going to butcher this name, I promise you. But it's Ijeoma Umebinyuo.

50:49

But the thing is, it's just a quote. I don't know if it was a poem,

50:52

but it's something that comes up fairly often. It's called Diaspora Blues.

50:56

And the phrase is, so here you are, too foreign for home, too foreign for here,

51:02

never enough for both. Interesting. Amen.

51:06

It sort of ties into that. You step out of the shadow and you go,

51:09

I'm too foreign for Abu Dhabi now because I've been away, but I'm too foreign

51:14

for where I am right now as well. Whenever I go back, like when I went back to Abu Dhabi over Christmas,

51:21

it was so strange because I said to people, I felt like I was in an out-of-body

51:25

experience because there were some places where if you dropped me blindfolded,

51:28

I genuinely would not know where I was.

51:31

Like the area of town where you live, that used to be desert.

51:36

I never if you put me there i would not know where i

51:38

was you know and on the

51:41

other hand there's bits and pieces around where we live that's

51:44

changed massively but there's still that little cafeteria where

51:47

you can you can get a little snack for the ramen

51:50

the kicker to me was that a a little thing

51:53

of chocolate milk little tetra pack of chocolate milk right we used to

51:56

grab them on our way to school and stuff it's still one there are

51:59

still taxi fares have gone up like yeah three times

52:02

four times in the time i've been away but little

52:05

thing of orange juice a little thing of milk is still one there

52:08

i mean if you go to dubai and you ride the the abra

52:11

across the the creek that's still

52:14

one there i mean you still just give a coin to the driver when you

52:17

sit down yeah you know there's no contact list there's no credit card it's just

52:21

show up one there i'm sit down yeah get across the creek yeah i mean for people

52:26

who don't know that so much has changed and so little has changed at the same

52:30

time yeah for people who don't know there's just one little area in dubai where

52:32

you just hop on a little boat and you're calling it a creek.

52:36

It's pretty wide, but it's saving you.

52:41

Hours of, of, of walking to go find a bridge to get across. But yeah,

52:45

it's just, it's just a Durham, which is pretty interesting.

52:48

It's a, it's a little wooden boat, little wooden boat by them.

52:52

They probably got a dodgy little motor in the back driven with a steering wheel tied to an axle.

52:57

And you, you look at it and you go, not really sure about this, but you know what?

53:02

No life jackets, no nothing. You just sit down, pay one there.

53:05

I mean, you know, have a chat with your friend while you go across.

53:08

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's, that's how it works.

53:12

Okay, one more, if you don't mind.

53:15

So actually, you'd be a great person to talk to about this. So I've been thinking

53:18

about, I don't know if this is an article, it's just a thought,

53:21

but what I've been thinking about, I've sort of labeled it the big squeeze.

53:25

And I don't know if you have noticed this or not,

53:28

but kind of the bottom line up front is that what I've sort of seen at some

53:34

workplaces that I've worked at is that there are some workplaces where the culture pushes, it kind of like,

53:41

pulls up to management the decision-making capabilities and it pushes down to the supervisors.

53:50

All the responsibility so they're held responsible for decisions that they don't really make,

53:55

and i mean i saw this a lot with the railroad in canada and particularly with

53:59

railroad in canada they're also unionized and and it kind of what it made for

54:04

was like this whole group of people.

54:07

Supervisors or managers where they're just trying to put out fires.

54:12

There's no planning involved. They're just getting told, do this, do that. And, and, and no one's really like,

54:18

and, and because they're not able to say, Hey, no, no, no, give me a sec to,

54:22

to get a plan and put this together. And like, they're just react, they're reacting.

54:26

They're reacting both to decisions being made by higher ups and they're reacting

54:31

to the problems that are being shared with them or, or issues with the.

54:37

What's been going down below i don't know

54:39

what your workplace is like you work at a airport so that's much

54:42

more you know there's a lot a lot on the go but the the railroad's

54:45

supposed to be very very high risk high reward as well but i'm just going to

54:49

list off a few things and and then maybe you're seeing this maybe you're not

54:54

i'm not saying this is all workplaces but like what i see is like management

54:59

has like an insatiable hunger for for data so you're just constantly,

55:05

building reports putting them together and

55:08

then handing them up and then when you send the report up they find a problem and

55:12

now you got to go solve that problem so making lots of

55:14

work there's like a vacuum like people are retiring now and there's sort of

55:19

like a vacuum that's like pulling people up the chain maybe before they're ready

55:23

or pulling people out from external to the company into the company that that

55:28

weren't quite ready because they think that everyone's too young to fill a job

55:31

a poster or not qualified enough.

55:35

I got a few other things here, but I don't know, like, do you,

55:38

have you seen that with your, your work or your friends or anything like that? Or no, not really.

55:44

I mean, yes and no. And I suppose it's, it depends on where you are and what

55:49

your workplace is like and what the,

55:51

like the broader culture around is like, you know, we did talk about the sort

55:55

of workplace culture and the age factor and it's sort of Abu Dhabi and then more generally.

56:02

So yeah but i i do i do kind of see i

56:05

do kind of see it in some spaces and talking to friends as well

56:08

um i think the way

56:10

i'd probably characterize it is by asking the question of where

56:14

does the action sit is actually doing

56:18

the doing yeah yeah yeah because if you think that like yeah people higher up

56:23

in the company are sort of setting the strategy they're having the big conversations

56:26

conversations they're they're sort of taking the sledgehammer to the blockades

56:30

in the way and like breaking the path for you so you can keep going away and

56:35

and sort of doing the doing. But yeah i think i think there's there's a

56:40

there's a wider conversation just in like workforce as a

56:42

whole of you know where does where does responsibility sit and

56:46

and therefore where does the credit sit because yeah the

56:49

credit for doing something is not necessarily

56:52

with the the person at the top who signed in

56:56

the dotted line and i think it's down to your company culture and oddly

56:59

enough i think it's down to your specific team even like

57:03

i'm really fortunate in that i i worked with some

57:05

people that i i really get on with i have a really good

57:08

manager really supportive team and really supportive like

57:11

structure around me maybe that's

57:14

just characterized by being in operations because you just have to get on with

57:18

it um and you just have to do things so you've got to find ways to kind of move

57:22

things forward and everyone pitches in but i know it's not always the same because

57:27

talking to friends in in other areas and in other companies it's not always the same in other places.

57:35

I definitely do see the whole hunger for data.

57:39

I think I've got a bit of a, not a problem, but my challenge back is always,

57:44

well, what are you going to do with that? Generate the report. You can generate the report. You can slice the data any

57:50

million different ways, but there's a sort of level of intelligence that you

57:55

need to add to that data before you crunch up the report.

58:00

So it's, what am I actually trying to achieve from this data?

58:02

What do I want to see out of it? What sort of result do I want there for?

58:05

Or what sort of data do I need? And how do I need to slice it? So it needs to be a bit of a strategy around

58:09

what you're trying to do. Whereas just creating loads of reports for the sake of reports,

58:14

that's really great. We have all that data. Let's create these fancy dashboards.

58:18

Can we actually do something with it? I don't know. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

58:21

Okay. No, no worries. Yeah, it sounds like you don't have the same struggles with your work.

58:25

I'm not saying that I have the same struggles with my work right now.

58:29

Just something that I've been seeing. seeing

58:32

i i do i do take your point and

58:35

i i do see the the change in like where the

58:38

responsibility sits yeah because look maybe i'll just

58:41

see the talent vacuum as well that's a

58:43

really yeah well here let me yeah i'll just keep listing here so typically tech

58:49

being implemented to benefit the manager rather than the employee right because

58:53

they're the ones that are decision makers who have the budgets and can spend

58:56

it i'm just talking about general trends in some workplaces and usually I think they're all large.

59:04

Unions immediately sort of push up responsibility to the supervisor because

59:08

it's easier to deal with the supervisor than it is with a union member because

59:11

you've got to haul them in and do a bunch of work and stuff.

59:14

That's probably a bit more inside baseball. I don't know if you guys have any unions with.

59:19

Narcissism within managers. So the best manager is typically a narcissist.

59:23

They'll take as much credit as possible when something's going well and say that they did it.

59:27

And if something does not go well, they'll push off the responsibility to others.

59:30

Again very general the rift between

59:34

operations and business so sometimes business gets a little too much control

59:38

actually i wanted to talk to you a little bit about boeing if we have the chance

59:42

i know you're you're an air guy and i've just been i've been hearing things

59:45

but i don't really know so we'll transition that i'll just read off a couple

59:48

more things hr is not typically very helpful,

59:52

to the actual like employees do a competent system within companies where,

59:59

Where we don't just ask people like, hey, is this guy confident?

1:00:01

We're like, no, no, no, on paper he is. And then that's how they keep getting

1:00:04

these, we get these crazy people in jobs that probably shouldn't be there. Management bloat.

1:00:11

Oh, are we seeing like, there's not a lot of reward for being committed to your

1:00:15

company much anymore because you're not getting like raise all the time or,

1:00:19

and I'm not going to, some people will be like, oh, look, you're complaining for nothing.

1:00:22

But when I can, when you can just jump ship to a new company and immediately

1:00:26

get a two or 3% raise or, or there's, there's no, no well-explained development

1:00:33

plan or what's the word called?

1:00:35

It's not it's not just a development plan it's a well sort

1:00:39

of that but just like succession planning like there's

1:00:42

no like i've actually not been in a group that

1:00:45

does a lot of succession planning until once i left the military

1:00:48

and then yeah that was kind of that's

1:00:52

kind of mostly it so i definitely see some of those so okay i try and remember

1:00:56

which they were might might work backwards and ask you to repeat talent succession

1:01:01

planning and people staying in in places yeah i I think I'm in an interesting

1:01:07

situation at my company where you've got a bunch of people who have been there 30, 40 years,

1:01:11

been there on that scene at all, and they're brilliant. They're going to retire.

1:01:15

They've seen every single situation you could possibly imagine.

1:01:18

You can sit down with them and they'll talk about what happened in the winter of 84.

1:01:22

And it's great because I love that stuff, right? And I love talking to these

1:01:25

people and learning from them and hearing from them.

1:01:28

But yeah, there is that vacuum when they're going to start to go,

1:01:32

it's going to start to suck people up or in or out. And yeah,

1:01:36

I think we've moved into a different sort of culture. I don't know if that's the right word.

1:01:41

People don't stay in jobs as long. And there isn't, as you say, that reward.

1:01:47

Like loyalty is not necessarily rewarded in the same way.

1:01:51

It's almost disincentivized, if I'm honest, from talking to friends and other things.

1:01:56

And I just do sort of wonder, is that like a vicious cycle? Has it sort of been

1:02:00

self-propagating where... People don't stay as long so companies don't feel like they need to value them or

1:02:06

is it you know what came first the chicken or the egg or or

1:02:08

did companies start to not value loyalty and therefore people don't

1:02:11

stay as long so which way around was it well if we consider like let's just

1:02:15

a pension plan that was like a golden handcuffs guaranteed payment until you

1:02:20

and then also for your spouse what that became was economically not feasible

1:02:24

anymore and and and then like man like the the railroad, like that was the standard.

1:02:31

Everyone stayed for as long as they could. And then they didn't need to hire anyone for 15 years.

1:02:36

All the new hires now are, are new people showing up there. They're not getting

1:02:40

that crazy good pension plan. So what's the point?

1:02:44

Yeah. Like I could stay in the industry and just hop to the other railroad if

1:02:48

I wanted that. I mean, like, look, that's what I did. I went overseas to a new railroad and I just took that pension that I had and

1:02:53

I put it in some other account and you know, there's no, I'm not locked to them, but anyways, yeah.

1:02:58

Keep. way yeah no i think i think that's that's absolutely you know that the sort of,

1:03:04

maybe you call them like long-term incentives and long-term benefits

1:03:07

which aren't economically viable anymore and

1:03:11

you know people are finding other ways to like people are you know side hustling and

1:03:14

putting stuff in the stock market and you know investing in real estate and

1:03:19

all sorts of other things because you've you know our generation's kind of turned

1:03:22

around and said well yeah i'm not going to get the the nice fancy pension that

1:03:25

my my grandparents or my parents potentially had access to or previous generations

1:03:30

or other people at the company.

1:03:33

I think it also does create a lot of disparity sometimes in ill will.

1:03:36

And you talked about the pressures between operations and the rest of the business.

1:03:40

Absolutely see that every day, having worked both sides of the fence.

1:03:44

And I still do kind of jump both sides of the fence at times.

1:03:49

There's absolutely a pressure if, you know, oh, well, operations are always

1:03:52

going to be running from one thing to the next.

1:03:54

Operations are always going to be loss-making, and it's the other bits that

1:03:57

make money, or operations sometimes make money.

1:04:00

There's a lot of pressure there, and even within operations,

1:04:03

there's that disparity. If you know, oh, well, you know, some people have been here for four years.

1:04:07

They might be perfectly competent. Some people have been here for 40 years.

1:04:11

They might have been perfectly competent, but they might have become jaded and

1:04:14

a little bit crusty and not really ready to go. And they're just hanging on

1:04:19

for the sake of those big benefits. And is that the right thing as well? Because then you go into the loyalty has

1:04:24

been rewarded, but you're actually not getting anything out of them anymore

1:04:27

because they're checked out. They want to go. I'm not saying that I have the answers and I'm not saying like all of this is

1:04:33

directly pertinent to me. I've seen it through friends and things, but I think it's all happening.

1:04:38

It's all there. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Actually, I have one solution.

1:04:42

It's mostly comical, but you create a department called the pasture.

1:04:45

And right before they go to retire, if they start getting a little too crusty,

1:04:48

you say, we're going to put you to pasture. You show up, you run parties, you grill burgers, but you're here for eight hours and you have a phone.

1:04:58

And all we want you to do is talk, which they love to talk. And I love listening

1:05:02

to them. But hey, I've got a switch install.

1:05:06

There's a little bit of an issue here. Let me call so-and-so. He's in the pasture.

1:05:10

He's just got his phone on him. He's drinking coffee. He's calling people to

1:05:12

support. work but you call them and then that way the institutional knowledge

1:05:15

doesn't leave they're not, crusty and you know because like sometimes your decisions you're making are

1:05:20

like more of a long term impact and they don't really care anymore so they'll

1:05:23

do what's easiest and but you still have that that wealth of knowledge you can

1:05:27

just rely on them to just you know download that to you,

1:05:31

but we're going to switch gears a little bit if that's all right because we

1:05:34

got we got about five minutes until this one ends and maybe that'd be a good

1:05:37

time for me to end this but planes and stuff but particularly with Boeing.

1:05:42

I don't know if you know anything about this. To be honest, I don't know a lot about what's going on. Is something going on?

1:05:47

What's the scoop? What are you feeling? I've honestly not paid, it seems really strange, I've not paid a massive amount

1:05:54

of attention just because I haven't been keeping track of things.

1:05:56

I think there are systemic things that are going on from what I've read, at the very least.

1:06:03

And obviously, there's elements of speculation in this as well.

1:06:09

There have been a number of challenges with their new-built aircraft program.

1:06:15

There have been quality issues and things like that. So it's one of those things

1:06:20

where you sit and wonder, is it a fluke?

1:06:23

Is it just a coincidence? Is there a deeper pattern to it?

1:06:27

What's sort of driving all of it?

1:06:33

Has the company made a decision somewhere along the line that says we're going

1:06:37

to cut this in favor of this and has that done that?

1:06:40

Is it a conversation of, you know, like we were just talking about,

1:06:43

is it a conversation of talent and not necessarily perhaps having people with

1:06:48

the experience of a new-build aircraft?

1:06:50

I don't know if that's the case. I haven't sort of done enough research to know.

1:06:54

I think there's like a multitude of factors involved.

1:07:00

Or is it that there's just too much pressure and everything's just trying to

1:07:04

be rushed along and therefore things are being missed out?

1:07:07

Or, you know, you've kind of gone, well….

1:07:11

95% confidence is good enough. We don't need 99.9%. I'm not saying that's what's happened,

1:07:15

but if you've got a rush and you've got to make the 80-20 principle decision

1:07:21

of, I'll make that decision on whether I do this or do that based on this information.

1:07:27

And somehow, the outlier was the one thing that could really get you in trouble.

1:07:31

And you're being pressured to make that decision. Could that be what's going on? I don't know.

1:07:35

I think there's a number of of interesting things and it's it's going

1:07:38

to be something that's really interesting to to look at as

1:07:41

a whole and maybe maybe the way to look at it

1:07:43

is also look at what's happening with other manufacturers because

1:07:46

it's not just boeing and airbus you know you've got you've got

1:07:50

a bombardier up in canada of course

1:07:52

and then you've got embryo in brazil and you've got others so those

1:07:55

are the larger type aircrafts and other type aircraft and

1:07:58

you've you've then got loads of smaller aircraft as well

1:08:01

so yeah uh what's what's the difference in people's

1:08:04

processes and of course boeing and airbus on

1:08:07

a completely different scale yeah yeah so so just trying to pull out the things

1:08:13

that i'm i'm very interested in is what you're finding like so you've heard

1:08:17

about it probably mostly through the news not really through work or have you

1:08:22

heard about it at work i have i have heard I've heard about it through work.

1:08:25

Okay. But just incident reports? Incident reports. Okay.

1:08:31

You know, water cooler gossip, I suppose. Okay. Or just people kind of chatting

1:08:36

around and colleagues sending articles around like, hey, have you seen this?

1:08:39

Have you seen this? Okay. So it's quite interesting to kind of look at what's actually happening there. there.

1:08:47

There's an interesting article which I've had to leave, or sorry,

1:08:52

I've had on my bookmarks list, haven't read. There's a news source called the Air Current, and they're a subscription news

1:09:00

source, so you've got to pay for them.

1:09:02

But what they don't, they don't paywall safety-related things.

1:09:07

And so they've had a couple of the Boeing articles and stuff,

1:09:09

and they do sort of deep dive analysis like long form writing which is why it's

1:09:13

been on my bookmarks list but.

1:09:17

They've got a couple of interesting articles around, you know,

1:09:20

one of them, one of them I've got that I looked at was the fallout for Boeing

1:09:25

will extend far beyond 737 MAX 9 grounding.

1:09:29

And there's, there's loads of other interesting stuff in there.

1:09:34

And there's a, you know, there's one that says decades of corporate decision-making

1:09:38

have eroded Boeing's safety culture.

1:09:40

Shared and and that's that's the one that's i've also got on my on my reading list because it's a,

1:09:48

they said it was safety related it was only released a few

1:09:51

weeks ago oh sorry a month ago actually february 26th so i'll send you the link

1:09:56

because i think it's a having having read the first couple of paragraphs it's

1:10:00

quite an interesting read but i haven't had the time to sort of sit down and

1:10:03

digest the whole thing right yeah no send that send that article it'd be interesting Yeah,

1:10:09

like on the outside looking in, obviously, you know, my engineering background,

1:10:12

I went to school for mechanical engineering, so everyone's very interested in this sort of stuff.

1:10:16

I'm not, I don't have as much feet in the mechanical world as much anymore.

1:10:20

I do more civil work, but it's interesting.

1:10:23

It's interesting. I think part of why I've been thinking about what I've sort of deemed a big squeeze,

1:10:29

and I might have to change it, but I think

1:10:33

sort of what you talked about there with that article and what I've been seeing

1:10:39

and sort of thinking and what people seem to be feeling is I think a lot of

1:10:43

it is sort of like a large portion of the workforce going to retire and how

1:10:50

companies are dealing with it right now.

1:10:52

And it's not not super smooth but

1:10:55

i hope uh obviously i hope these you know as people

1:10:58

come out of poverty which they are i think officially now

1:11:01

let me double check this before i uh i want to say it

1:11:04

and then i'll fact check it which is not the right way to do it but i think uh

1:11:07

now more people are dying from obesity than poverty

1:11:10

let me just check i think so let me double

1:11:13

check this but if this is the case which

1:11:15

we'll find out in a sec we're going to see more people

1:11:18

traveling right if if everyone everyone

1:11:22

wants to travel it's just going to get busier and

1:11:25

busier and busier yeah and

1:11:28

actually always brings me back to something so

1:11:31

my my old dean of the college of aviation at western michigan where i went to

1:11:36

university it's a really cool guy he used to be chief pilot at united and he

1:11:41

won top gun awards and things like that just coolest guy ever i'm going off

1:11:45

on a tangent here but he's a really nice guy and And he refused to let people

1:11:48

call him by any sort of title. He was just Dave. He used to always say to every new student and everyone he listened to,

1:11:54

he says, you've got to realize that the amount of people entering the middle class is growing.

1:12:00

And that contributes to the success of our industry. Because when people enter

1:12:04

middle class and they have a disposable income, one of the first things they start to do is travel.

1:12:10

And people want to see the world.

1:12:13

I think there's an incredible truth in that because, you know,

1:12:18

you and I have both been fortunate enough to travel and live abroad and kind of made the most of that.

1:12:24

There really is a world worth traveling. There's a world worth living in.

1:12:28

There's loads of people who should have that opportunity. There's loads of cool

1:12:32

places around the world that I still want to see and that people should have the opportunity to see.

1:12:36

But, you know, there's the existential challenge of how do we scale that up?

1:12:40

How do we make that sustainable? How do we make sure that happens without the

1:12:44

impact of everything else, without the impact of the environment?

1:12:48

Technology's got to bring us there. Technology's brought us this far and in

1:12:53

not a very long period of time. We're only talking about 100 years or so of civil commercial aviation.

1:13:00

If we've done that in 100 years, we can do a lot more in the next 100.

1:13:04

And we should and we must because there's a lot of really cool things,

1:13:09

a lot of really cool opportunities in this world that that people have

1:13:12

you know my family moving around you

1:13:15

know ourselves as we said with jobs and things we wouldn't have had those

1:13:17

opportunities if it if it wasn't for planes if

1:13:21

it wasn't for planes yeah and like you said the poster on my

1:13:24

wall behind me living in the age of airplanes which if you're

1:13:27

a nerd if you're not a nerd it's a lovely little nat geo

1:13:31

film to watch little documentary piece and i'll i won't spoil it for you but

1:13:37

there There's a really nice moment at the end where they talk about the overall

1:13:44

journey of how civil aviation and what aviation has done in the span of like 100 years.

1:13:50

And then they talk about, there's a really nice line at the end.

1:13:54

I won't spoil it for you. Go watch it. I promise you it's worth it.

1:13:59

It's a really lovely thing to think about. But yeah, as you said,

1:14:02

we've got to make sure it's safe. We've got to make sure it's sustainable.

1:14:06

And we've got to give people the opportunity because it's the right thing to do.

1:14:11

The sort of sense that I've had this opportunity and now I want to make sure that others can as well.

1:14:17

As far as I possibly can. I'm not going to change the world. I don't think so.

1:14:21

But we all do our bit, right? Yeah, you can help. and the more we interact with

1:14:26

each other, probably the more empathy we'll have.

1:14:30

And just, you know, not just diversity of like seeing how other people are doing

1:14:34

things and improving, but also just, you know, you're more likely to get along

1:14:37

with someone if you've met them and chatted with them.

1:14:39

And I think that means something with the people in countries as well.

1:14:44

But I think this is a nice note to leave this one. I think we found a real nice break to end it.

1:14:51

So thanks so much. which I would love to do this again. Probably not back to back.

1:14:55

Maybe we'll try and fit someone else in. And I haven't been doing this much

1:14:58

recently, unfortunately. But this has been nothing but fascinating. And we spent very little time talking

1:15:03

about planes, which I said before, I don't usually write anything down because

1:15:08

then you can't go on tangents. And all I was thinking about was let the man

1:15:11

talk about planes. We probably only spent like 10 minutes on that.

1:15:15

Yeah, well, let's do one on planes. I'll be very happy to do one specifically on planes.

1:15:21

And maybe that's when we end up doing a little bit more scripted.

1:15:25

Yeah, we could do that. Just so we cover a few different things.

1:15:28

I don't know, do your listeners write in, Jaden? Do they tell us about things

1:15:32

they want to hear about? Are there things that people want to hear about planes?

1:15:35

My mom will let me know after she listens to this.

1:15:41

I'm sure my mom will let me know as well. Perfect, yeah. I'll try and package

1:15:44

this up today and get it out. But no, I don't actually know how many people

1:15:47

have listened to anything. But yeah, I don't know. I just mostly do it for fun. And it's a nice little

1:15:52

time capsule of my travels and the people that I've met.

1:15:56

Absolutely. I love the idea, to be honest, and probably something to be said

1:16:00

at the beginning of it, but we can say it at the end. I love the idea.

1:16:03

It's really fascinating. Your life becomes a sort of combination of all the

1:16:08

things you've done, all the people you've met, all the things you've learned.

1:16:11

And it's just a really nice way of keeping track of it, even if it's just for

1:16:16

posterity, even if it's just for your own sort of reflection at a later stage

1:16:20

or memory at a later stage.

1:16:23

Because I'll close on this. We were talking to my dad about this,

1:16:27

and we said some of his friends and some of the cool things they've done,

1:16:29

and with our grandparents as well.

1:16:31

Just wish that you could have sat them down at some point and spoken to them

1:16:35

for a couple of hours and just have a recording of them telling you this stuff was like.

1:16:40

So yeah i'm sure i'm sure at some point you know

1:16:42

this will all be uploaded into the matrix and in in

1:16:45

20 years time we'll we'll listen back and and have a

1:16:48

laugh yeah yeah i hope so all righty well take care and enjoy i think it's morning

1:16:53

for you afternoon for me so it's almost noon for you go get yourself some lunch

1:16:57

yeah absolutely all right right thanks jake take care buddy be in touch yeah

1:17:02

yeah send me the link when it's all done will do okay yeah bye.