Four days ago this little girl turned 23. She has been one of my chief inspirations since the day she was born.

Twenty-seven years ago yesterday, the Taiwan earthquake of 1999, also known as the Chi-Chi earthquake, or the 921 earthquake, left more than 2,400 people dead and 100,000 without homes. A whole mountain and town disappeared, if I remember correctly.

Sheryl and I had a small apartment in downtown Hsinchu near the wet market on Minzhu Rd., we would later move to Minzu Rd., which sounds the same but for the tone you use, when the earthquake hit. The apartment already had a lack of right angles before the quake, but somehow, unlike so many other buildings at the time, it managed not to fall on top of us. The noise and the shaking were terrifying. Not the first tremor, we didn’t know what was happening, but each aftershock seemed worse than the one before.

The power had gone out before that first tremor, but that didn’t stop the people at the market from going about their work as the sun came up. The Taiwanese are remarkably resilient.

I think a lot about a time many years ago when we were driving along the road separating our house in Xiangshan towards downtown and Hsinchu proper. The kids likely had dance class, or maybe drama or piano - they were enrolled in just about everything. All around us was the scene of the place we lived in. Chinese characters on signs attached to gray concrete buildings, flashing their lights ever more brightly to grab your attention so you might stop and spend money. Crazy blue truck drivers speeding in and out, and the occasional betel nut stand with scantily clad young women sitting behind the glass facade folding up the poison in green leaf.

I had just gotten some fancy Nokia phone and I think we had 3G. There was a radio app which allowed me to tune into a Truro radio station as we drove. The juxtaposition of the sound of the maritimes, and the visuals presented outside our car window still sticks with me today.

You are driving down a vivid road in a strange land, seeing all these things, and then your ears bring you home.

When Words Collide was a great conference, and the Alexandra Writers Centre must be one of the best organizations of its kind. I’ve learned a lot from both and made great contacts. The conference is generally topic-based, and it can be easy to meet people — other than economics, there is no barrier to entry. If you write, you are a writer and should be celebrated. There is ego, and there are cliques, but it’s not entirely obvious.

The Packaging Your Imagination (PYI) Conference is right up my alley — a topic-based conference all about writing for kids. It’s small, which means fewer topics, which sometimes don’t match, and the community is tight, which makes breaking into pre-existing cliques harder. I was there last year and found fewer opportunities for the kind of serendipitous conversations that make conferences worthwhile — you walk from one room to the next and then it’s over. There is a networking lunch and other events, but mostly for those who already have their tribe. Anyone can attend, but there is a barrier to entry. To be a member of CANSCAIP — the Canadian Association of Children’s Authors, Illustrators and Performers — as an author, you must be traditionally published. Otherwise you are a friend. I find that odd. You want to be inclusive to grow interest in writing for kids — it grows the market. I’ll be missing it this year.

There is a local festival called the Cavendish Literary Festival, which is the most expensive event on my radar. At first glance it would appear to have an author focus, which makes sense, but while I read a lot, none of the authors presented are of much interest, or even known to me. There are workshops, but the venues are small and they sold out quickly. The venues are both its strength and its weakness. It feels like an event created to drive growth in the tourism sector — it’s set amongst the “charming Cavendish countryside,” after all. But with the variety of venues and the treks between each one, it’s hard to develop any sense of the community they tout. That mostly happens between events — as you line up, grab coffee, or sit uncomfortably at large round tables that encourage you to say hello. Any event that celebrates writing is a good thing, and I hope they do well. I won’t be attending this one ether.

I’m off to Calgary in October for an entirely different kind of conference, PodSummit. I should have gone to Podcast Movement in New York, but the US is a no-fly zone these days. PodSummit will be more of a challenge for me — it’s almost entirely about connections and the business side of what I do, which, though interesting, doesn’t elicit the same enthusiasm.

I delay sending an email because to send an email may mean more email, more work, more time I don't have. Weeks go by. Months, in some cases. I finally write the email — set aside time to deal with the work — then crickets. No reply. Then comes a reply and we talk, then silence. Then another email conversation while the time I set aside passes. Now I wish I had emailed someone else. Someone more immediate.

I sent a message the other night. The answer was simple. "Yes. I am available in two weeks."

Short, positive, reliable. More than willing to take my money. No long sentences about being busy, or maybe later in the fall, or further questions. I'll send the brief and it will be done. And so we have worked together for years.

Some people treat your time like their own. Others don't.

It was a lot of driving yesterday -- Montague to Sackville to Truro and back. Punctuated by whiteout conditions in parts of Nova Scotia and passing an accident in Charlottetown. Apparently Prince Edward Island ranks second only to the Yukon for car accident injuries, or car accidents in general. I thought it was just my skewed perspective as someone who hates driving. We met up in Sackville and had dinner at Fener's Place. It was good. Friendly people.

I drove from Sackville to Montague alone. No radio, no music, no audiobook. Just quiet. I never know if I am happy to be back in Montague or just happy the pain of getting here is over.

The house has also been incredibly quiet. Just me, the sound of the refrigerator, and the ringing in my ears.

Catriona moved out at the start of September -- she has always lived with us. Gone are my complaints about her terrible taste in music and the ongoing dispute over my favourite spot at the kitchen table. I like to look out the window. The bathroom is always free now.

Camren went back to Mount Allison a week earlier, where he has an apartment with his girlfriend. I expect my electricity bill to drop now that the lights actually get turned off. We may see him at Thanksgiving, but I doubt he'll be back the following summer. Relationships shape decisions in ways that being single does not.

There are more raccoons now, but they are very quiet. I know I'm not supposed to, but I left some grapes for them on the chair by our front window the other night. One came by for the snack while I was watching TV and I turned around to find its head in the window. Maybe it was watching TV too. The cats hate them.

It's noisy outside, but that's a different kind of noise -- trucks, bored boys revving their engines, the constant clanking of the bridge joints. We have a café here, but I'll likely find myself in Charlottetown a few times a week to avoid cabin fever, at least until winter, when I'm thinking of decamping to somewhere warm in Asia. Lots of noise there.

Sheryl's aunt passed away yesterday in Truro. Just over a week ago, she and Sheryl's other aunt were on their way to Montague from Truro with a car full of pies and other treats when a car pulled out in front of them on Mount Edward Road, resulting in a crash. Polly was in the passenger seat and suffered four fractures. She was rushed to the QEH where her prognosis was initially hopeful. Though she received excellent care, experience has taught that landing in emergency at that age is never a good sign. After her condition stabilized she was transferred to a hospital in Truro, where she contracted pneumonia and passed away surrounded by family.

I am not close with this side of Sheryl's family, but moments like this are a reminder that life can change completely on an ordinary Sunday, on a regular road, with a car full of pies.

If our current business fails - which, though not exactly imminent, is always a distinct possibility - I have my next venture already mapped out. I'll start a service business where I come to your house and do the things you don't have time or energy for: weeding the garden, mowing the lawn with care, raking leaves, clearing out the garage. Minor tasks that just need a body. I even came up with a bad business name: The Unhandy Handyman. Which is accurate as I am no tradesperson. But I would manage customer relationships properly and answer my email.

That last part turns out to be a higher bar than it sounds.

It could be me. Perhaps my emails are lacking, no matter how much time I spend on them. But it's not just email - it's notes left for the boss, texts, phone calls. Whatever the means of communication, it seems very difficult not only to find help but to get any kind of reply. A simple "sorry, we're swamped" or "not interested" or even a recommendation would be professional.

All summer we couldn't get anyone interested in helping with our garden. We reached out to multiple companies. The one that replied dropped by unannounced while I wasn't home and spoke to my daughter, who had no idea what I needed. He gave her a quote of $6,000 to edge the garden, and added: "I don't know if you want to invest that much in this property."

Just recently I sent a few emails to illustrators asking if they'd be interested in some work. I have a range of projects and am looking to work with someone new. One replied - she's in Vancouver, and I'm very happy to have the chance to work with her. None of the local talent responded. One of them I'd found through social media, where they were posting about whether illustration could fund their tuition. I hope they figure it out.

No one has to do anything, of course. And perhaps it's cultural. Most of my career was spent in environments where people hustled constantly, to the point of exhaustion. Maybe it's seasonal - I got one reply a year ago that said simply: it's summer and I don't want to work too much. Maybe in the fall.

I'm sitting here at The Gallery this morning, enjoying a treat and drinking coffee while listening to a trio of people discuss their plans for the novels they are writing. Their prospective stories sound interesting, as does all the thought they put into each segment.

People and their stories are interesting -- though not so interesting that I would want to be thrown amongst vast groups of strangers like I was at the last writers conference I attended. A whole room of people you don't know, sitting at round tables that make conversation necessary and polite. Working in design gave me the excuse to meet people under controlled conditions -- you have to interact at some level with the people who use your product.

Some people are fascinating in their contradictions. You can be talking to someone who seems perfectly reasonable and ordinary, and then they start talking about how much they admire a certain leader who, to anyone who can stop laughing or being alarmed long enough to listen closely, clearly doesn't have much in the way of intellectual capacity, or real leadership ability. And yet they repeat the talking points with absolute conviction. Suddenly the person you thought you were talking to is someone else entirely.

Some people confuse me in their complexity. This spring I bought a bird feeder, filled it with feed, and hung it temporarily on a tree in my backyard. It went missing a week later. I thought perhaps a raccoon had knocked it down and I just couldn't see it hidden in the tall grass. When cutting the grass the other day, I saw it hanging in my neighbour's backyard. He stole it. This is the same neighbour who has a dog so aggressive that many won't walk past his house anymore.

We have another neighbour who is incredibly kind. During a short conversation yesterday he greeted a number of other neighbours by name, and they all greeted him with a smile. He gave me some food from his garden and promised to visit ours next year – we plan on planting more after some success this year. He’ll come over, he said, as long as the aggressive dog is gone by then.

People have different personas and we don't get to see them all. The neighbour who was evicted, with police present, was someone I had respect for. Her strength was remarkable -- carrying heavy bags from the grocery store up our steep hill, day after day. The landlord has a different view. The duplex she lived in has had contractors working there almost daily since she left months ago, which suggests it wasn't well cared for.

The writers across from me have been sitting quietly typing for forty-five minutes, mapping out their characters with care -- motivations, contradictions, backstories that explain everything. My neighbours would fit right in. The man who stole my bird feeder also raises three kids on his own. Good stories reveal that people are never just the version of themselves you happen to see.

For most of this year I have at times been finding it difficult to summon the patience to start my day with pour-over coffee. Some days I am just too tired or too impatient to slow down and enjoy the process — so I found myself reaching for instant coffee, which is an aberration.

I thought I could get a machine with a timer — quality machines like that certainly exist. We have one, without a timer, and the power switch is a weird toggle that won't work with a smart plug. I hesitated to spend the surprisingly steep cost for a quality brewer.

So I bought a clever brewer like Sheryl uses — we don't share coffee equipment. It works very well and pairs with my water boiler, so I can have a cup of coffee in just over the time it takes me to feed the cats. They live on routine, and any deviation causes them to be more of a nuisance than they already are.

Along the way I had thought about a pod brewer — especially The Morning Machine, but it's pricey and never goes on any kind of meaningful sale. And pods taste like crap, right?

As it turns out, the internals of most of these machines are the same, so when Nespresso had a sale recently I picked up the Pixie, made by Breville. This is the original Nespresso, not the newer models that lock you into their pod ecosystem. And that's the important part.

It was trickier to set up than it should be, and the build quality is slightly suspect. I brewed one cup of lungo with their included pods and it was horrid — worse than instant. It's obvious they are trying to emulate espresso and have failed. Fake crema, bad taste. Store-bought pods weren't much better.

Then some pods from a variety of specialty roasters bought on Eight Ounce arrived and I gave them a try. It is a world of difference. All of a sudden there are tasting notes — pineapple tea and strawberry in the ones I've tried so far. It lacks body due to the coffee-to-water ratio, but it is surprisingly acceptable.

It's not super cheap — I use Third Wave Water and the pods themselves can be twice the price of store-bought — but it's been a fun experiment so far.

I'm not in the anti-AI camp like so many writer friends of mine - though I am anti-data centre, which I realize is a contradiction. I see AI as yet another in a long line of tools replacing various parts of the creative process, sometimes for the better, often for the worse. It started with software eating physical processes, then informational processes, and now parts of cognitive processes. I prefer to keep my ability to think alive and well.

I do find a number of use cases genuinely useful, one of which surprised me today.

I asked Claude for some possible business automations it could perform. It didn't have any particularly great ideas that didn't intrude too early in my creative process - having computation enter at the beginning takes the joy out of creation.

One thing I did ask was whether it could grab a spreadsheet from Google Sheets and pull out possible topics for future episodes from the many questions that Sheryl inputs. It's not particularly laborious, but if an automated process can save me 10+ minutes and track and categorize what we use, it might be worth it. My query was a simple, can you do this? Its response was a fully working app that lives in the browser and not only does what I asked but also generates discoverable episode titles from the questions. The interface wasn't atrocious either.

It's like some overly keen intern trying to impress.

Peter shared a couple of examples of AI intruding into his life in a malicious way in his post, The Weekend AI Came for Us. I've had a few of my own, but this is perhaps the most notable of late.

For almost 5 years we have been producing a science show, iterating year after year to get the right fit for bedtime. Writing science content in a short time frame is difficult, especially for someone without a genuine science background like me, and we have worked hard to make the process as efficient as possible. I always knew that at some point someone would come along with a similar idea, maybe even improving on it, but I hadn't thought of this. A new show launched last year with a similar name, made entirely with AI and voiced by a human, replicating what we created while stripping out every production choice we'd made - no ambient sound, no music beds, nothing but voice. Then marketing that absence as a feature.

I don't think there's any malicious intent, though some of the marketing frames others negatively, rather than simply making a positive case for itself. It's more of an unsettled feeling, that something built through years of trial and error can be assessed and remixed with a single prompt.

Coming back from Calgary on Monday we had what might be considered a normal flight experience. Normal is worth celebrating in light of the barrage of negative experiences we have had. It's not lost on me that my constant harping about the dire state of air travel might seem like someone complaining about the thread count at a four-star hotel — but I see it more as spending what little money we have on things that matter, so when Air Canada and YUL ruin our experience, I can be found harping on about it.

If there is an indication of aging, it is my body's inability to recover quickly from travel, which often feels like an athletic event punctuated by poor sleep. I have been home for four days and am only now able to think clearly. I haven't started moving my body yet — maybe I should have gone on a long run the very next morning after we arrived. Instead, I napped.

I found a cheaper business class flight for our return, which allowed us the comfort of lounge access and its rubbery eggs and unlimited lungo coffee. It was a gentler start to our short journey from Calgary. Arriving in Toronto, we went up to the inconveniently located Air Canada lounge only to find it packed, with a long line of people waiting at the buffet. There must be something about the appearance of free food that makes people revert to an almost animal-like state. Pity the service staff who work there. They do have tasty white chocolate cookies, of which I enjoyed too many. I used to have a thing for espresso drinks and Japanese cheesecake, but now that we are back in the old country, it's cookies — both work equally well at expanding my waistline.

We left the lounge and visited the Air Canada Café, which is far superior, and packed some snacks for the kids for dinner. We do that too. When Air Canada generously gave us $150 in meal vouchers, we picked up some lovely sandwiches for our son and had room to spare for a nice meal at Dudley's at the Charlottetown airport. Dudley's is probably the best deal you will find at any airport in Canada.

With snacks in tow, we arrived at our gate, where the plane boarded with only a five-minute delay. A small miracle.

Coffee experiences anchor any visit to whatever town or city we visit - it's not always specialty coffee, but even Sackville or Saint John, New Brunswick, have nice places to sit and have an espresso.

Visiting Dublin, everyone kept mentioning the need to drink Guinness; I guess it's an institution with tourists because I saw many people topping off their morning breakfast with a pint. Succumbing to pressure, I tried a taste and survived. I don't drink beer.

What we did do, happily, was repeatedly visit a couple of the best-tasting coffee shops you might experience anywhere. First was Copper + Straw, which I would characterize as a high-volume establishment. They have more than one location, and the one we frequented was a small spot near Aras Ui Dhalaigh and a Garda station—fewer tourists like ourselves, and more harried professionals wearing wrinkled suits.

The second seemed close to Trinity College, but looking on the map isn't - it's close to St. Stephen's Park. Called Brew Lab, it’s ranked as one of the top cafes in the world. Sheryl and I sat at the coffee station and talked coffee as the barista served us pour-over coffee like the wine it is. Great experience, one I wish I could experience more often. But even Tim Hortons has a role to play once it stops boiling in the paper cup. Trinity College also has a nice bakery nearby called Bread 41.

We drank a lot of coffee when we were in Ireland, and cafe culture seems only second to the many, many pubs. There is even a guidebook to Dublin's many cafes.

I’m sitting on a flight from Calgary to Toronto, en route to home. The screen is a blur, my glasses stowed in my bag in the overhead bin above. I could grab them, but the dapper old gentleman sitting behind me might have a cardiac episode if I went near his bags in the same bin. He appeared quite offended that I took time to store my luggage. Or maybe it’s my ragged dress.

I was in Calgary to attend the When Words Collide conference three days of workshops, seminars, and panels covering the whole gamut of writing. My head was full by the end. I am convinced there is no conference or community like it in Canada, something I miss living in the remote vestibule of Montague. Many seem to feel the same, which makes connecting with people there all the more special. Working from home can be isolating.

Calgary is a wonderful city with great coffee roasters and park system. I always enjoy visiting, but I’m looking forward to my own bed - which, if my flights go as scheduled, will be tonight.

It seems to work, didn’t see dog poo on the sidewalks we walked on. I’m thinking of proposing this for Montague, or simply a sign for my neighbour.

I'm sitting at a Tim Hortons in Montreal Airport, which feels familiar -- we were here a couple of weeks ago under similar circumstances. We arrived from Dublin and were funneled through some makeshift security corridor to reach our gate, like walking through the inside of an old mall, dark corridors and weird doors, except punctuated by about five layers of security. I'm tired and crotchety, and when the border agent asked why I'd been in Ireland, I wanted to say none of your damn business. I said "for fun" and let my eyes handle the rest.

Our flight left Dublin a couple of hours late -- "Montreal airport limitations," the same vague explanation we heard repeatedly last time. We missed our Charlottetown connection and were automatically rebooked through Toronto. We should have been home in Montague in time to cook dinner. We'll be lucky to arrive by one in the morning. Air Canada offered a hotel in Montreal, but we gambled that the Toronto flight will work out. We'll see.

Montreal's airport is overcrowded and cramped -- they couldn't get us off the plane because there was no crew to open the doors. That was only a 15 minute delay. Dublin's airport isn't much better, though it did offer the entertainment of watching people drink Guinness at breakfast.

I never check baggage anymore, a lesson earned from too many flights into Canada where my luggage arrived days after I did.

I'm flying to Calgary later this month, out of Charlottetown, through Montreal. Twenty-eight years of this, and I still think the next flight may be different.

Yesterday I was hiking with Sheryl up a cliff near a northern suburb of Dublin when my doorbell rang -- a delivery back home. I could see the car on the camera and asked the driver to leave the package at the door. A little further along the trail, I mentioned to my daughter Catriona that someone had come by. She was on a call with someone on the other side of the world.

Today I was in a pub in the city centre, noisy, just finishing dinner, when I joined a Zoom call with our critique group in Calgary. The table next to us was by chance a couple from Red Deer. He'd had the bangers and mash and said he'd order it again.

When we left PEI, Hozier's Too Sweet planted itself in our heads -- "I take my whiskey neat." I've heard it at least five times in coffee shops across Dublin since.

The world has changed from when we started traveling 28 years ago.

Sheryl and I went to Read by the Sea earlier this month — nice, if far too short. Apple Maps took us on a route I'd never been on, and Sheryl hadn't seen since she was a kid. Read by the Sea was held in River John, a small place I'd never heard of. You can get there via Route 6, which follows the coast through some pleasantly narrow roads from the Caribou ferry.

The actual highlight of the day was a visit to Pictou, a town I've driven past many times and always wondered about. There isn't much to see — an expensive leather goods shop, the usual tourist draws around old architecture, not unlike Charlottetown. What made the day was a stop at Thompson's Dairy Bar, which boasts around seventy soft serve flavours. Despite the selection, I had vanilla.

It was a day more about ice cream than anything else. We'd had one in River John too — the usual oversized serving common at places like that in summer.

The next time we take the ferry to Halifax, a short detour to Thompson’s Dairy Bar is on our list of things to do.