Back from China & Off to Seattle

Well I got back into Guelph yesterday morning and spent the day learning more about the “restructuring” that happened at my work. While I currently have my job I lost 95% of my team due to “cutbacks” and am left wondering what the future will hold for me and the rest of the team.

Anyways on a positive note China was eventful and fun, met up with the Jianfei Zhu, who is the Yao Ming of the search world. Also had some really good meetings with Alibaba/Yahoo! China and maybe will end up sending some of my ex-team members into China to help Alibaba/Yahoo! China succeed on their SEO goals. The trip was a little long and I am glad to be back but sadly I have only 2 days here in Guelph and I have to fly off to Search Marketing Expo in Seattle.

Seattle is a city I haven’t spent much time in but will be good to go up for this event as it’s the first SMX and it should be very educational and full of interesting people. Will have a chance to meet up with Matt Cutts again at the event, it’s been a awhile since we met face to face as being in Asia all I could do was email with him.

As for Guelph it is getting warmer and prettier all the time, I am looking forward to this summer being able to walk around and enjoy some of the outdoor activities. I haven’t fully moved into my home yet, also my stuff from Singapore hasn’t arrived so won’t post any photos of my place just yet. Hopefully this month my stuff will arrive and my home will be ready to have a nice housewarming party as well as take some photos.

To all my ex-staff and to the editors and writers, I will do my best to help you find work within the industry as your knowledge is very valuable and if I had my own company setup in Canada I would be happy to take some of you in myself. The next 2 months you all will have many offers but take your time and don’t rush into the first job your offered. As while change is always difficult this might just be a really great chance to focus and find that dream job. If anyone has interest to work in China, either for copy writing, editing or SEO please drop me an email, but note that while it’s a job it is not going to pay a lot of money but will be a great personal and working experience.

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3 Days in Fort Lauderdale

Well it was really nice to be back in a humid and hot climate, even if it was just for 3 days. This was my first time in Fort Lauderdale but I had been to Florida in the past for a holiday/Disney Land themed trip. This trip was for corporate reasons and I spent most my days and nights working. It wasn’t all bad as it did allow me a chance to meet some really talented people and gives me even more hope for the future. Lets face it is sure will be nice to have the potential to do some remote office work down here in Florida during the winter months.

Fort Lauderdale is surprisingly full of canals and it has the nickname the Venice of the West, but unlike Venice there are huge 150 foot yachts. The city is really flat as there are very few large buildings and it makes it nice as even from the 10th floor of the office you can see for mile and miles around. Also the amount of money and high-end social life around downtown makes for interesting people. To give you an idea we had breakfast at a place that had Dom Perignon on the menu, while I have had some expensive meals in my time a $299 breakfast would have been a first.

The Fort Lauderdale beach was something odd as it had a very steep drop into the water, almost like they pile the sand 2 or 3 feet higher on the beach then the tide can support. But the beach was nice and Dave (my fellow co-worker) and I where able to get a little wet the first evening. The other evening was all work for me as I needed to complete a website review and training seminar for the SEO team here in Florida and now I am at the airport waiting for my flight. Hopefully next trip I will have at least a day to relax but actually at this point I am so happy to be heading home as in just a few days I will have an official place to call home.

In the next couple weeks I will be planning out my trip into China for SES, but it is looking like I will arrive in Asia on the 19th and depart around the 26th depending on the request from management in terms of looking at developing out things in Asia. So I will let you all know when that is confirmed and looking forward to seeing you all again soon.

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First Month in Guelph

Very happy to say that life in Guelph has been great and my gut feelings on Guelph where very correct. Sadly on the working in Guelph side of things a combination of confusion, uncertainty and the general stress of the move has made it a little rough. Not all that bad just try and think about doing the following:

- Get less then 30 days to: move to a new city/country, hire movers/pack, say goodbye to friends, manage 5 other unassociated trips, deal with office rentals, apartment rentals and related services.
- Arrive at a new job where you have 13 people reporting to you all of whom are eager to learn everything possible and are in need of that knowledge ASAP, but you also have dozens of other people asking for help. (If anyone wants a genie pig for a cloning experiment I am game.)
- Attend meeting after meeting with different people/departments all asking for the same thing but not being in a logistical position to give it to anyone of them.
- Come home night after night to a hotel room and have random eating habits.

That’s my life over the last couple months and its catching up to me but I do know that in the coming couple months I will have a better time both in Guelph and at work.

May will be an interesting month as I have to be in Florida and China for meetings and more interestingly I will be moving into my new home on the 8th of May. No house warming party planned for May as I won’t be around long enough but in June I hope that I have the place ready for guests.

Going to Florida for 3 days for a quick meeting with the corresponding SEO department within a company we just acquired. Will see what tools and knowledge they can bring back to the Guelph SEO team. I know that some of them SEO team in Guelph like the possibility of having a remote office in Florida to make use of during the winter months, but don’t know if that’s possible.

My trip to China in May will be for the Search Engine Strategies conference and I will be speaking on the Advanced SEO track. This year I will expand out my presentation on the top things a webmaster/SEO can do to rank better in Google. I will post a link within the blog to allow you to download a version for those who are interested. Post more on that later in May.

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First Payday

I have been working in Guelph now for 3 weeks, even had my first payday and so far it has been really eventful and fun. But a lot of changes are happening considering I was hired to be an "advisor" to the team and now I have 13 people reporting into me you can get the general idea of the restructuring within the company. But for you over at GS in Singapore the grass isn’t all that greener as even here I don't get an office, guess that gives me something to work towards.

My new team is not as experienced as some but they are all really eager to learn, plus there are a couple people within the team that do have some experience and hoping they can help in my mentoring of the rest. Also in the coming months, maybe even weeks I hope that I can further grow the team even more. So if anyone reading this blog is interested in doing SEO in Guelph send an email to me and I will put you in touch with HR.

Other then work, life in Guelph is getting better along with the weather. Last weekend I went out to a Stag and Doe (my first) and it was a lot of fun to see a bunch of laid back Canadians having fun. Really looking forward to moving into my place in May and I have found myself a Sofa, dinning room table and some kitchen items just wish I could move in sooner.

As for my plans for heading to SES China I haven’t gotten clearance on things yet, but have my first meeting with the CEO on Thursday so will bring that up then to see what his thoughts are as its getting close and I really like to know when I would be back in Asia. Wish me luck with the meeting with the CEO, don’t think I will need it as he sounds like a good guy, but still thanks for the good thoughts.

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Stressing Out on Tax in Canada

The other day I was in with HR and we were just going over things like getting OHIP, life insurance and taxes. She pulled up a program that showed the tax deductions from my salary and wow it was shocking.

POST UPDATED: I had to update this post as I have had a few negative comments and some not so nice emails about my comments on tax. So I will explain my logic on my issues, but please note Canada is a great country and I am happy to be back. But in a country that we strive for equality I don't see equality in the tax system, a basic idea of a equal tax system would be: take the average salary of everyone within a province and then assign a cap to the tax paid based on that. So if you make the average salary you pay the normal tax, if you make less you pay less tax but if you make more you are not further tax simply because your paid more. This also brings more money into the communities and back in the the salaries of the workers. To me this is a equal system but in Canada if you happen to make a high salary you are heavily taxed and shockingly instead of paying less tax the more you make it is the opposite the more you make the more you are taxed. Anyways I am very happy to be back in Canada and will happily pay my taxes where required, but I just think the system is a little strange.

Other then stressing on the taxes I am stressing on finding a place to live as I have now contacted about 200 people that had a place for rent and seen a number of them. But there has only been one place that is interesting and there is an offer currently on it so if it is accepted then I am out of luck. But wish me luck as it’s a beautiful 3 story house that has 7 bedrooms, 5 washrooms and even a room for a theater, my only problem will be trying to furnish 7 bedrooms (hehehe anyone want to rent a room).

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First Day Working in Guelph

Very happy to report that I had a great first day and my fellow co-workers turning out to be even more enjoyable then I had hoped. Funny thing was a couple of the staff members are readers of my blog and my cubical buddy Steve is also a blogger, he runs Angry in the Great White North.

Today along with me there where 11 new people joining the company, which even included an ex-NHL player who will be heading the Hockey.com website development. It looks like the company is growing very quickly, so much so that the parking lots can’t handle all the cars and they have to run mini-shuttle buses to the offices from larger parking lots.

I spent some of my day trying to setup my computer and desk, its fun to have a desk and co-workers again. For a computer they gave me an IBM T60, while it is really heavy it does have an amazing 15.4-inch widescreen and it makes my x60 look like a pocket pc. A nice surprise is they’ll be giving a company Blackberry phone for me to use, which is nice as I miss having Internet access on the go.

Still having a tough time with the time change and I didn’t get a good sleep last night but I hoping tonight I get a full nights sleep, wish me luck. This weekend I checked and there aren’t any Club Meds in Cuba so while it is possible to go, I will wait to go to Cuba when I have someone to go with me. So this weekend I will maybe get a chance to see a few apartments and also get some more shopping in as it will be another 6 weeks till the rest of my bags arrive and I released I forgot to pack enough shirts.

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