Im writing this post to mark the anniversary of the event which has transformed all of our lives, mostly for the worse. Of course, Im talking about the pandemic.
In the first part below, Im going to tell the story of how my family and I moved around the world (from Taiwan to Canada) just before COVID started, and what happened to me and my business, a successful travel website, as a result (spoiler: it died).
In the second part, Ill talk about how weve passed these two years in my hometown, Edmonton, after being away for many years, and how things are going now, including my new website that Im really excited about: FunWorldFacts.
The timing of COVID was, ironically, rather ideal for my family. For some context, I first moved to Taiwan in 2008 as an English teacher, after several years of backpacking solo to various corners of the world (as I used to document mostly here on Travelblog.org).
Initially planning to stay in Taiwan for a single year then relocate to South America, I ended up falling in love (with both the country and a Taiwanese woman,
Emily), getting married, having two kids, publishing a book, and transitioning from English teacher to textbook writer/editor to full time travel blogger.
I always missed my home and family in Edmonton, Canada. But after having kids, these feelings amplified. On top of that, Emily and I felt that Canada would be a better place to raise our kids as they got older, in terms of environment, family support, and education. In Canada, they could even attend a Mandarin bilingual school and continue learning Chinese. So, after a few years of planning for the big move, we sold our apartment and most of our possessions, packed up, and left Taiwan in September of 2019.
Because Emily and I were, for the first and possibly last time ever in our careers, both unemployed at the same time, we figured this was the perfect opportunity to travel. So we shipped our adopted Taiwanese street cat to Canada ahead of us, then we embarked on a journey of a lifetime, with stops in Oman, Istanbul, southern Italy, Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Austria, Czech Republic, and Budapest. Our kids (aged 4 and 5 at the time) became travellers in the
Arriving in Canada just in time for Christmas of 2019, life was blissful. My travel blog, which had been a hobby for many years, had taken off that year after Id decided to monetize it and transform it into a business. Not knowing what I would do in Canada (and the same for Emily), Id decided to turn my passion project into a job.
My countless hours of effort were finally paying off, and December 2019 was the first month that I broke 10,000 USD in earnings, an amount I had never imagined possible. Its no exaggeration to say that it was a life true for me, to be able to support my family doing the thing I love the most. This also took away all the stress of not knowing how wed get by in Canada after our big move.
So anyways, back in Canada, we camped out at my parents place, and within a month, we had a car (the first one Ive ever personally owned, at nearly 40 in age), a mortgage, and the first backyard (and tree!) Ive
In January 2020, when COVID first broke out in Asia, few people in Canada took notice. The traffic on my travel blog nosedived as Taiwan began imposing restrictions in order to curb their outbreak. Since my website, at that time, was mostly about Taiwan, the impact was sudden and dramatic. In other words, I lost all my a solid two months before so many others in Canada did and the government started offering support.
I remember meeting my new accountant that month and mentioning this, and he said he had only briefly noted in the news that there was some kind of virus spreading in Asia, but he admitted he didnt know anything about it. In Canada, people are quite accustomed to hearing about disasters in places that seem far away and not paying much attention to them.
