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From Oil Rigs to Intuition | Immigrant Experiences and Global Journeys | Engineering a Life Without a Plan - Cultural Explorers' Stories · Whereabouts Tales | Stories of Belonging and Immigrant Experiences

• 0:00
  Welcome back to Whereabouts Tales.
• 0:04
  Today, I'm thrilled to introduce a truly remarkable guest, Angela
• 0:09
  Jamieson. This is an episode that I
• 0:12
  recorded back in July of 2025. Angela's journey is one of the
• 0:17
  incredible transformations. She built a successful career as
• 0:21
  a petroleum engineer, living and working across the globe, from
• 0:25
  Canada to the Netherlands and Brunei.
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  Yes, you heard it right, Brunei. But as you'll hear, despite the
• 0:35
  outward success, she embarked on a profound path of self
• 0:40
  discovery, engineering a new, authentic life for herself.
• 0:44
  We'll dive into her fascinating expert experience, the
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  surprising reasons behind her career pivot, and how she is now
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  helping others find meaning. Enjoy what does this through her
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  unique and yes, wonderful cheeky of philosophy, even authoring a
• 1:03
  book on it. Get ready for a conversation
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  that's insightful, inspiring and delightfully unconventional.
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  I'm Paul and this is whereabouts tips.
• 1:16
  Enjoy Angela High and welcome to the whereabouts tips.
• 1:23
  Happy to have you. Thank you so much, Paul.
• 1:26
  It's so fun to be here. Today I have Angela invited.
• 1:32
  Angela Jamieson is it? Yes, that's right.
• 1:35
  That's that's the right pronunciation.
• 1:38
  I have Angela who engineer more than oil wells.
• 1:43
  She engineered a new life after the oil experience.
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  Andrea is a former petroleum engineer who live across the
• 1:50
  globe, but she really discovered herself when she moved back to
• 1:56
  Canada or the other way around. We'll find out today.
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  Yes, it's continual discovery, is it?
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  Yes, absolutely. But before we, before I, before
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  I gave more from your from your story.
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  Angela, tell us where on the globe are you are today.
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  I am just outside the beautiful city of Saskatoon in Canada,
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  Western Canada. Nice.
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  Nice. I have to say I envy you for the
• 2:26
  cold weather. Not today.
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  Yes, it's a it's an orphan in Europe at the moment.
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  I would like to start from the beginning.
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  Where where are you? Where was your upbringing,
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  Angela? Where did you grow up?
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  In exactly the same house I'm in today.
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  Oh my God, so lucky. I know I, I am.
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  I was born and raised here in Saskatoon, just outside of the
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  city. I think my dad was one of the
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  first to get a little parcel of land and it's the perfect
• 3:00
  location. So I had such a happy childhood
• 3:02
  here that I, my husband and I wanted to buy the acreage from
• 3:06
  my parents when they wanted to get rid of it.
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  So now we're raising our family here.
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  That's amazing. That's amazing.
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  How did you get to study petroleum engineering, Angela?
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  By total accident, I I didn't know, I'm ashamed to say it, or
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  maybe it's the education system, but I don't even know what
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  engineering was when I was in my final year of high school.
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  And I always thought I was going to be an accountant.
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  So. But I just had this little voice
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  in my head going, I think you need to explore this a little
• 3:45
  more. So I went to our high school
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  guidance counsellor. They had an aptitude test on
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  those really old computers, you know, with the flashing little
• 3:53
  green or amber. Yes, I know.
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  Them and I yeah, I had to put in what do I like to do?
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  And at the time I I did, I love math, I love science.
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  And it started spitting out these jobs called architect or
• 4:08
  engineer, you know, all these different types of engineering.
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  And I was like, what's an engineer?
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  And I went to go talk to the guidance counselor about it.
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  And she told me a bit more. I did, I did a bit more research
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  and I thought, I'm going to try this because I had not heard of
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  it. And you know, The funny thing is
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  I really consider that little voice in my head to be some kind
• 4:30
  of divine interference in my life because when I was young,
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  my dad was a university professor and we used to travel
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  with his sabbatical years. And when I was young, I, I said,
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  I want to travel with a job too. And that engineering really
• 4:47
  enabled that. That was my ticket to travel as
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  as a working person. Because if I had become an
• 4:53
  accountant, all of the tax laws are so local that it would have
• 4:58
  been, you know, very difficult to actually travel with that
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  job. So I am very thankful that I
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  looked into it that one fine day.
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  I have to say that that a pattern I keep discovering,
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  doing this discussions with interesting people like you,
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  Angela and I discovered this pattern of once a traveller,
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  always a traveller, once being outside of your home country,
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  you always have this interest. Oh, I want to do that again.
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  That was so interesting. And I think that's a.
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  That's again a pattern in your case as well.
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  Yes, for sure. You studied, you studied
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  engineering, like you said by mistake.
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  I have to say, by the way, interesting that you have a
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  counselor in high school to guide you through this.
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  I was born. I'm born and raised in Romania.
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  We had nothing like we had some parents that we had some
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  information and that was was the good paying job now, not in five
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  years. Now that's what I'm studying.
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  So makes yeah, I I like this, I like this.
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  I think that's a that's a good thing for when you're in high
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  school, because when you're in high school, you should not
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  decide about your career that you're not.
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  Able, I know. Well, you look back and you go,
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  you know, I'm 17 or 18. How could I decide?
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  Absolutely. You know my my life experience
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  is so low. Absolutely.
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  You studied Angela and then you got, you got your first job in
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  in Canada then. Yes, yes.
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  And the oil and gas, I fell to that because in between my
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  studies, we would get opportunities to work elsewhere.
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  And Alberta is a neighboring province, and they're really oil
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  and gas rich. At the time, they still are.
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  And I just saw all these amazing jobs that offered a lot of
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  money. So it would help me, you know,
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  pay for my tuition and pay for my entertainment.
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  And so, yeah, I just applied to those jobs and sort of fell into
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  doing oil and gas by accident. I probably, there again, was
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  ignorant about that. Sometimes wonder how I got
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  through life, you know? Just.
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  Floating rude things show up and I just do it.
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  And you know, I guess it's, it's been working so far.
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  I might as well keep doing it. You know, I think we are all
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  winking it, to be honest. I think we are all just trying.
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  I, I, you know, when you are a kid, you, when I'm be a grown
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  up, I will have the wisdom. Now it's not there.
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  Like you just gather some experience and you start to
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  build patterns and that's the only thing that you do, nothing
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  else. Yeah.
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  Exactly. And I find that when you're not
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  so rigid in your thoughts and you're open to whatever comes
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  your way, you just have such, you know, such a fun time and
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  you just don't know what the universe is going to bring you.
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  Absolutely. Have you had an, have you worked
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  for a company which has offshore, which had offshore or
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  outside of Canada spaces? That's how you end up working
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  outside of Canada. Yeah, so I was working for Shell
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  Canada and yeah, and they sent me.
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  Their fatal flaw was that I was one of the new hires.
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  They had like a, they had three, three years of non hiring
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  because the oil and gas price was low.
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  And then they when they opened it up, they hired 3, three
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  people and I was one of the lucky people.
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  So there he said, well, since you guys, we haven't had new
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  hires for a long time, we're going to send you to our
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  mothership, which is in the Netherlands, which they actually
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  didn't even know, didn't know very much about, you know, the
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  normal stuff like clogs and woodmills and cheese.
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  I really didn't look into it further than that.
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  And they said, OK, we're going to send you to our training
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  center over there. And going there was the fatal
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  flaw because I was just like, love all the different people
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  that came from across the Shell world, you know, people all
• 8:54
  around the globe. And we learned all the basics of
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  oil and gas together. And because some of those are
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  sort of deepest friendships they have to this day.
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  This is so interesting what you're saying.
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  So you went in the Netherlands, but you haven't actually had
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  contact only with the people from the Netherlands?
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  You've met all the international experts from the shell community
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  at the end. Yes.
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  And I think that's just made me want to travel more.
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  It made me want to be part of that world.
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  So when I got back from my training and I did three years
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  in Calgary and I said to my chief reservoir engineer, I, I
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  want to go overseas. I want to work and do everything
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  all those young people are doing.
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  And he was like, well we don't usually when we want you to have
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  a little bit more experience because when we send people
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  over, we want to get someone back and they don't want a new
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  person. You know, when you do trades,
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  you want someone with some expertise.
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  So I was a little down, you know, crestfallen with that.
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  But I ended up moving to another company, a smaller company that
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  is was fantastic experience as well.
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  And from there I applied internationally.
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  So I kind of went in the back door.
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  But of course they saw that it worked for Shell Canada.
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  They contacted my chief reservoir engineer and they said
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  shouldn't take her. And he said yes, which is really
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  nice. And I, I talked just a few
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  months ago and I said it's because of you that I was able
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  to have the career that I had. So I listen to everyone.
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  Corporation. Bridges.
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  Yeah, yeah, for sure. It's interesting, it's really
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  interesting. So OK, that's an interest
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  because then then you move to the Netherlands with a smaller
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  company. I went with shell.
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  OK, OK. Interesting.
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  And did they support you with the relocation and all that,
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  that, that complicated administrative things, right?
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  Yeah, like Shell International at the time was fabulous.
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  They are the people to move with, so they they took care of
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  everything. They send movers to your house.
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  I basically had to just throw things towards the Packers
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  because they move so fast and then everything you know shows
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  up at your doorstep eventually in another in the other country,
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  and they help you relocate, they help you find a place, they pay
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  for things. So it was a really fascinating,
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  fun time. That's nice.
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  How was your you moved to the Netherlands.
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  You you had the advantage of of having a company doing it for
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  for you. That's that's the that's the
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  perfect way because you. Don't.
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  That's the dream, That's the dream.
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  For sure that based on every discussion that I had until now,
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  that's the dream that period. But yeah.
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  How was your your day-to-day life as an engineer in the
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  Netherlands? Day-to-day life, Well, it's
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  probably the same as engineers around the world.
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  We are keyboard massage therapist.
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  That's what we do. We sit and we do our magic
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  through our keyboard. This is the nicest thing that
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  I've heard until now I ever done.
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  Yeah. And actually I just thought of
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  it. But you know when love.
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  Yeah, what I loved about living in the Netherlands that we don't
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  get here in Canada is that I could bike work and it was 9,
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  almost 10 kilometers to work and I could bike it every day.
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  But there was a cultural difference in biking as well,
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  because they have very upright bikes and they're, they're
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  heavy. They're just, but they're
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  cruisers, you know, you're just feel like you're cycling on a
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  cloud. Whereas here in Canada I was
• 13:00
  used to the racers thin tires. You just go as fast as you can
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  to get to where you're trying to get to.
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  And they're, you know, the first day that I would going to the
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  office, I was passing all these people and I'm sure they thought
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  I was this crazy speed demon. But you get to the office and
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  then you're sweating, you're sweating so much.
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  And I remember the colleague, my colleagues saying to me, why are
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  you cycling so fast? There's it's just a mode of
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  transportation. It's not like a race to get
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  here. And that was, you know, an eye
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  opener. So that's what I love about
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  living in another country, is that you get immersed in all of
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  these little everyday things. Correct.
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  Europe has a. So first of all, the Netherlands
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  has a religion of cycling. It's a religion there, like you
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  have it. I think you.
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  Have I love it. Absolutely.
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  You have the intersections for every streets are having a
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  parallel intersection of every bike street.
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  So it's amazing for whomever has not seen this, it's just an
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  experience just to see it. I've lived for not for that
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  long, but I lived for one month in Eindhoven.
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  OK, so it's close to the German border.
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  I have to say I was. Really.
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  Impressed. I was really impressed.
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  I had a project there with my work close to the border and
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  then I lived in Eindhoven because it was easier than to
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  come and go and it was it. I was impressed and but we have
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  to say cycling is a different experience in Europe in general
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  because it's the same in Germany.
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  I'll say Germany is a bit more extreme on that side because
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  they are more into the racing professional like everyone.
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  Everything that is done in Germany is done on a
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  professional level. I have to say I don't.
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  Yes, you must be the best. I don't understand.
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  I don't understand why. But if you go hiking, you have
• 14:48
  to buy the equipment first, so yeah.
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  You got to look good while you're doing it.
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  Absolutely. And you have to have the brand
• 14:54
  on you. Makes no sense.
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  Everyone has his own priority, so I will not judge on that.
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  How long were you in the Netherlands, Angela?
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  I was there for six years. OK, so nice piece of What about
• 15:07
  the language? Yeah.
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  Well, and I ended up staying for six years because the project I
• 15:15
  initially worked on was or terminated early it we just
• 15:20
  couldn't make it work. So that was only two years.
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  And I thought, you know, I just, I felt felt like I just got
• 15:25
  here. So I looked for another position
• 15:27
  within the Netherlands. And then I got to move to their
• 15:32
  national oil and gas company and was able to work a little bit
• 15:36
  more rarely. So that in itself, number one, I
• 15:41
  love languages. So it was always a goal to learn
• 15:44
  Dutch. But being in the rural areas,
• 15:47
  there were left people who actually spoke English.
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  So for instance, in those days the company even had coffee and
• 15:55
  tea ladies. So they would take their trolley
• 15:58
  to our office and give us each, you know, our coffee or tea,
• 16:02
  whatever we wanted with, with a cookie.
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  Oh my God. I know, right?
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  It was just sort of the old, I don't know, all days where they
• 16:12
  valued that kind of stuff. And it was beautiful because we
• 16:15
  get a little interruption in our day and got a chat with the
• 16:19
  coffee lady and my coffee lady did not speak any English.
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  So I had to speed up my Dutch learning so that I could have a
• 16:27
  chat with her. And she came such a good friend
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  me because she was of course very patient with my terrible
• 16:33
  Dutch. But fun fact about me is that
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  now Dutch is my best second language.
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  So looking at me, you would not be able to tell that.
• 16:44
  I would have that. I would have not catch that.
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  So I have to say Dutch sounded incredible hard before I was
• 16:50
  before I started speaking German.
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  As now since I speak German I have to say it's not that bad
• 16:56
  anymore. It's a sounds like.
• 16:58
  No, I think. German's.
• 17:00
  Got a yeah, and when I would go to Germany I would sort of say
• 17:05
  my Dutch in a German accent and most of the time it would work.
• 17:09
  Absolutely, absolutely. But Chapo, I mean, it's not an
• 17:12
  easy language. And especially for an English
• 17:14
  speaker, it's not an English language.
• 17:16
  There are some words which we might understand, but it's not
• 17:19
  an easy language. But respect, that's not easy.
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  I always like to say it's a form of respect for the country where
• 17:26
  you live in, to learn the language.
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  That's my feeling. That I think too.
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  And I think if you're going to be audacious enough to go and
• 17:35
  live in another country, then you should actually learn about
• 17:39
  them. There's a lot of people who, and
• 17:42
  I'm guilty of it too. You go to a new country and you
• 17:45
  say, oh, that's different. Well, in Canada we do this.
• 17:49
  And as I got to be an older expat and you see newer people,
• 17:53
  you know, joining the circuit and it's like, well, it's not
• 17:56
  like that here. So you're going to have to like
• 17:59
  let go of what it was, you know where you're from because you're
• 18:03
  here now. And so soak in.
• 18:06
  Correct. Why leaving the Netherlands?
• 18:12
  Why did I leave? Yeah, my time there was up.
• 18:17
  So typically shell contracts were four years and then we'd
• 18:20
  all have to move people on international contracts, you
• 18:24
  would have four years in each place.
• 18:27
  So because my first one ended after two years, my second one
• 18:30
  was four years. So I was the first six year
• 18:32
  period and then I had to look for another job, which was great
• 18:37
  because the second objective was to live in an Asian country so
• 18:42
  that I could have the potential maybe to learn a language that I
• 18:46
  look like I should be able to speak.
• 18:49
  There was, there was, there was. I don't self racism is called I
• 18:53
  don't know. Yeah, absolutely.
• 18:58
  I was just like, I should live up to my face one of these days.
• 19:05
  I love the fun. Still have, still haven't quite
• 19:08
  accomplished yet, Paul. That's that's, that's
• 19:14
  interesting. Did you went directly into
• 19:16
  Brunei or did you have the stop in Canada or you you just you
• 19:20
  just switched the countries? Yeah, I just switched.
• 19:24
  I probably went back to Canada in between, but just to say hi
• 19:29
  for the summer. So I initially wanted to go to
• 19:32
  China because I just thought, you know, let's just do it,
• 19:36
  let's dive it and learn Mandarin that.
• 19:38
  Would have been hard. I Yeah, But you know, once you
• 19:43
  get into learning languages, Chinese is actually not that
• 19:46
  default, but the writing is. But as an aside, like I was
• 19:50
  married, I had a husband and a daughter by that time.
• 19:54
  My daughter was born in the Netherlands and going to another
• 19:58
  country, my husband. Would always, you know, settle
• 20:01
  us. So I think China is a lot harder
• 20:05
  for someone who doesn't speak Chinese and he's good languages,
• 20:10
  but it kind of not that good so. It's good at languages like
• 20:16
  French, English, what we also have in Canada, and maybe some
• 20:20
  Spanish. Well, let's just say he tries,
• 20:25
  right? I mean, I see that.
• 20:29
  I see how you don't want to offend him.
• 20:32
  Yeah, just in case he listens to this someday.
• 20:35
  I'm not sure. But anyway, he will tell you
• 20:37
  himself he's not as good at languages, but so I knew China
• 20:42
  was going to be a really tough place for him because there's so
• 20:48
  many more people who don't speak English.
• 20:50
  So also the pollution there is outrageous.
• 20:55
  We're telling us in the show world that if we worked in
• 20:58
  Beijing, we would 100% be our lungs would be worse off for it.
• 21:05
  So with that knowledge, I was like, well, maybe we'll we'll do
• 21:09
  a softer entry into Asia. And that's how I chose to apply
• 21:14
  to Brunei and then was thankfully accepted.
• 21:19
  It's interesting because the the information that exists at least
• 21:23
  in Europe, on my level, and it could be that I'm I'm just
• 21:26
  ignorant, but I know that Brunei is a patriarchal society in
• 21:30
  which women are not so well received.
• 21:33
  Is that wrong? Women definitely have a place in
• 21:40
  their society. They isn't Islamic nation.
• 21:46
  So women are the backbone of doing stuff.
• 21:51
  They're they have an honored position.
• 21:54
  It's quite different from the men.
• 21:59
  But yeah, it was it was hard for me to think about moving there
• 22:04
  because of course, at that time we were, I think this was 2003,
• 22:10
  there was all all this terrorism activity that was linked to the
• 22:14
  extreme Islamic community. So there was a bunch of fear for
• 22:21
  me, yet confidence that I could figure out because in such a
• 22:28
  strange environment, I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to be,
• 22:32
  you know, disrespectful. I wanted to make sure I
• 22:34
  understood how did women dress? I wasn't going to go parade
• 22:39
  around a bikini. I wouldn't do that anyway.
• 22:42
  But, you know, those kind of thing are just common sense.
• 22:45
  You want to respect the local culture.
• 22:49
  So I'd research in terms what do women wear, what should I wear
• 22:53
  and how should I be with people? And it's something that you have
• 22:58
  to learn kind of by doing. And of course, I made mistakes
• 23:03
  because I was, you know, also looking the way they look, which
• 23:09
  is Asian. I look like maybe I was a local.
• 23:13
  So I Canadian friendliness comes off as a little bit forward.
• 23:20
  So when I would meet the local man, I very like, stick my hand
• 23:27
  out like hello, my name is Angela.
• 23:30
  But you don't do that. Like it's yeah, you don't shake
• 23:34
  hands especially it's hard for them to shake hand with a woman.
• 23:38
  So I had to learn that very quickly.
• 23:41
  Walking in the hallway saying hello to a man might be taken as
• 23:46
  a little bit too friendly. However, I didn't stop that
• 23:50
  because I was like, I cannot walk by someone and not say
• 23:54
  hello. So eventually they'll figure out
• 23:56
  that I am indeed a foreigner and then they'll forgive me later.
• 24:00
  But I couldn't, you know, shrink into myself and not be person as
• 24:07
  well. And I didn't think, you know, I
• 24:09
  think people would, would accept me eventually because they'd
• 24:13
  figure out that I'm the foreigner and, you know, oh,
• 24:15
  she's an 80 and she doesn't get it.
• 24:18
  She shouldn't say hello. She's too friendly.
• 24:21
  They're all anyhow all too friendly, so that's OK.
• 24:24
  Exactly. We'll forgive her the time, you
• 24:28
  know, and it did happen. You know that people eventually
• 24:30
  get to know you. They actually get to realize
• 24:33
  that you are not a local and then all is good.
• 24:37
  One thing that I did was I went to a local tailor and I got some
• 24:41
  dresses made that looked like what the locals were, which was
• 24:45
  maybe a mistake because then they assumed that I'm local.
• 24:48
  So it's one of those. You like to?
• 24:51
  Where to find the balance? You like to do it, but you don't
• 24:53
  know where the balance is exactly.
• 24:55
  But I think what you said at the beginning is really important.
• 24:58
  Like you did your research because when you move into a
• 25:00
  country, you don't want to adapt them to your culture because you
• 25:04
  are going to their territory. So you have to adapt to their
• 25:07
  country. And I think that says a lot
• 25:09
  about the, the migration process, which is happening at
• 25:14
  the moment in Europe when you have a lot of cases in which the
• 25:17
  the guys moving outside of their home country try to get their
• 25:20
  culture inside to the destination country.
• 25:23
  And I'm not talking about that. I know every things that I'm
• 25:26
  talking about, everyone from the Muslim countries, but I'm also
• 25:28
  talking about Romanians moving outside and only living in the
• 25:31
  Romanian communities, like not going out of them and want
• 25:34
  complaining about everything which is not Romanian in the in
• 25:36
  the, in the foreign country, which just makes no sense.
• 25:40
  But absolutely, that's that's the right way.
• 25:44
  You had the successful career. You had an amazing job in an oil
• 25:49
  company. I think you took your wife, your
• 25:52
  wife that was so bad. You took your family with you.
• 25:55
  I'm sorry that was so. Bad.
• 25:57
  It's OK you have a wife maybe. Yeah, I know.
• 26:00
  I'm. Sure.
• 26:00
  That's what comes up exactly. You took your family with you.
• 26:05
  You increased the size of your family while being abroad.
• 26:07
  So I do like to guess that you made good money.
• 26:11
  But even though you made good money, you had a good position,
• 26:13
  you had a good career. You said a few times that you
• 26:15
  felt a little empty inside. Could you describe that a bit
• 26:22
  what that exactly meant? Yeah.
• 26:26
  And I think it came down to I got to be an age where some of
• 26:31
  my colleagues around me were saying, oh, I got, I got to go.
• 26:36
  Like, I got a call last night. My dad's not well.
• 26:39
  And some of them would even just at the call that their family
• 26:44
  passed away. And I just, it just made me
• 26:47
  think, yeah, I'm, I'm pretty far away, even seeing my family for
• 26:53
  sick weeks out of the year, which was pretty intense.
• 26:56
  And maybe I needed a holiday for my holiday after that.
• 26:59
  I know what. But it's just really nice to
• 27:03
  just hop over for coffee or tea and, you know, just have that
• 27:08
  constant connection with your family.
• 27:11
  And as well, life in Asia is pretty darn good.
• 27:15
  Like we had you could hire both to do your lawn or your yard.
• 27:22
  And honestly, you want to do that because it's so hot outside
• 27:27
  and there's people who love to do that.
• 27:29
  So we would all have people who would do our lawn.
• 27:33
  There's if you had kids, you had to hire some a live in nanny
• 27:38
  because they didn't have daycare.
• 27:40
  So you have someone who takes care of your kids in your own
• 27:43
  home and then who usually cooks for you when you get home.
• 27:47
  And then we had company club where we go, I could do amateur
• 27:53
  theatrics, I could learn tennis, I could swim.
• 27:55
  And then you would just roll up to the restaurant and you'd say,
• 27:58
  oh, put that on my bill. You know, it's, it was so good.
• 28:03
  That's so good, That's so good. That's a good package.
• 28:07
  It is. And we would have these
• 28:08
  glamorous adult parties where, you know, I don't know, it was,
• 28:13
  you know, Shell is a Dutch English company, you know, at
• 28:17
  the time now it's purely English, but we had huge dress
• 28:21
  up parties. So there's themed parties at the
• 28:25
  managing director house, which, you know, there's just so much
• 28:28
  fun and a huge community of expats.
• 28:33
  So we would all get together, we work together, we play together,
• 28:37
  we grow our kids together. So it's a really close
• 28:40
  committee, but at the but there was something inside me that,
• 28:45
  you know, you're sitting at the pool, I've got my tropical drink
• 28:48
  in my hand. And then part of it just doesn't
• 28:51
  seem real because I was raised and this sounds really weird,
• 28:56
  but I was raised doing hard work.
• 28:59
  I was raised wedding the garden. I was raised working and helping
• 29:05
  my parents doing their businesses that they were doing.
• 29:10
  So is it It's part partly the family, but partly that my life
• 29:16
  didn't feel real anymore. It felt like I was living in
• 29:19
  this perfect little bowl. And you would say so makes that
• 29:23
  wrong, but it just may. It was too privileged.
• 29:27
  I don't know. They didn't feel like the roots
• 29:30
  that I grew up with. And my husband and I started
• 29:34
  thinking about it'd be so nice to actually mow the lawn someday
• 29:39
  or it'd be so nice to, I just wanted to iron my own clothes.
• 29:44
  It was very strange, those kind of feelings.
• 29:47
  And so we just started as my term, you know, ended with my
• 29:53
  work visa and everything. We just decided maybe it's time
• 29:56
  to go home. And we started charting our way
• 29:59
  home. That's an that's.
• 30:03
  An is that weird, Paul? Is that weird to?
• 30:05
  Me, no, no, I have to be honest, no.
• 30:07
  And I have to say I'm always, I have, I have, I like, I have
• 30:14
  often these discussions. And it's not about the not doing
• 30:18
  that or not doing that. But I think the, the moment in
• 30:21
  which you overcome your condition, you overcome your
• 30:24
  basic needs and you, you managed to get more money than the money
• 30:28
  that your parents used to have. It's a strange feeling.
• 30:31
  It's a strange feeling because you don't know how to handle
• 30:33
  that your biggest goal was achieved.
• 30:35
  You have money, you have no stress for tomorrow.
• 30:37
  You are having your basing needs covered.
• 30:39
  Then you have some extra needs covered.
• 30:42
  And at the end you say, OK, but this doesn't feel right.
• 30:45
  This is this is strange. What, what now?
• 30:47
  What's, what's the goal Now There is no more challenge.
• 30:50
  There is no, no one, no one to nowhere to push towards.
• 30:54
  And I think and I'm, I'm, I will do an extrapolation now to say
• 30:57
  that I think this is the moment in which all the big stars that
• 30:59
  have all the money, they start drugs and and all those the
• 31:02
  other things. Because there is no no other
• 31:04
  motivation left anymore. And I think yours was, let's say
• 31:08
  this in a bit in the other direction, but somehow in the
• 31:11
  same, in the same way like you are used to have a good, you
• 31:17
  used to have a good life outside of Canada, but you didn't feel
• 31:20
  right because that was not the culture that you go you were
• 31:24
  growing up in. And I think there was not the
• 31:26
  spirit that you're going growing up in.
• 31:28
  And I think that's that's the biggest challenge that you
• 31:30
  faced. I know that for 95% of the
• 31:34
  people who say yeah, she's just crazy, but it's not the case.
• 31:39
  I know. It's not the case, and I fully
• 31:41
  get what you're saying. I don't know it makes sense.
• 31:43
  I don't know if it makes sense, but I fully get what you're what
• 31:46
  you're saying. You've said in the past that you
• 31:50
  in your last years being an expert, you've started or you
• 31:54
  began engineering yourself one. So you said I was you're sitting
• 32:01
  with the cocktail in hand and you're thinking this is not
• 32:04
  right. Was that the moment in which
• 32:07
  there was a switch or what? Can you pinpoint the moment in
• 32:11
  which there was that mental switch?
• 32:13
  To say I think this is OK is nice, but it doesn't feel right.
• 32:22
  Not a direct moment, maybe, but I think it was building.
• 32:26
  And I think I do remember sitting watching kids play in
• 32:31
  the pool with my drink. And I'm just like, I don't know
• 32:36
  if this is the life that I want for my children.
• 32:41
  I want them to struggle. No, I just felt.
• 32:44
  Wrong like it felt like we weren't close to family.
• 32:47
  It felt a little too. I don't want to say too
• 32:54
  privileged because it feels like I'm I'm blocking abundance, but
• 32:59
  it's it was like foreign. It just felt foreign to me.
• 33:02
  And I think you're right about the money issue because I
• 33:06
  remember as a professional, my husband say, my husband and I
• 33:10
  would say, OK, we need to have $2000 at least in the account
• 33:14
  just in case the furnace blows up.
• 33:16
  But after you, you know, I stopped thinking about money
• 33:21
  because I just always had enough.
• 33:23
  I always had more than enough. I would buy spit things because
• 33:28
  I had enough, but not too many. No, because I'm still pretty
• 33:33
  practical that way. So I think when money is out of
• 33:37
  the picture, you start searching for a deeper meaning.
• 33:42
  And I think that's when that started.
• 33:44
  And it made me also realize about connection to my parents.
• 33:49
  So yeah, I think you get to a point where it's just like, what
• 33:53
  is life all out and am I living the meaning that I want to have?
• 34:02
  It makes sense and I think it makes sense, like you said about
• 34:04
  the kids that you want them to struggle.
• 34:07
  I think that, but I get your point.
• 34:09
  I think that not build that raising them up in a bubble.
• 34:13
  It's also not right because when they when they get out of bubble
• 34:17
  and they they, they end up meeting the real life.
• 34:20
  That's also that's with would also be a big issue.
• 34:23
  And that's why I think private schools are not the best idea in
• 34:27
  the world because everything that is happening in the private
• 34:29
  school is like, meh, my kids in a private school, I'm not just,
• 34:36
  but I know it's not. We're talking from experience
• 34:38
  exactly. I know it's not perfect.
• 34:40
  I know about people, kids, being around my kid, my kid.
• 34:43
  And there's not something that I think is the real world.
• 34:46
  That's not the real world. The real world is we struggle,
• 34:48
  the real world, we live in a bubble.
• 34:50
  We live in a we are successful and it's it's the result of the
• 34:54
  hard work. I'm fully with you.
• 34:56
  But it doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel right for them.
• 34:59
  And you want to show them exactly that is not that easy as
• 35:02
  it looks like for them, because it looks really easy.
• 35:05
  But it's not so easy as, as it is at the moment you you move
• 35:10
  back to your home city, which I think is a bold move because of
• 35:16
  a lot of reasons. So first of all, you are used to
• 35:18
  an expat community with an intercultural international
• 35:23
  environment, which it's not there anymore.
• 35:28
  Do you miss it? Have you missed it, at least at
• 35:31
  the beginning? For sure.
• 35:36
  Like I think having the access to all the different cultures
• 35:40
  and just the, I think awareness that things are different and
• 35:47
  that we can be respectful. I think that's kind of what I do
• 35:52
  miss. However, I spent a lot of time
• 35:56
  on Facebook because that's how I connected with my friends all
• 36:00
  around the world and the still the same.
• 36:03
  You know, I do that today and how we're able to maintain our
• 36:07
  friendships even though I moved back almost 16 years ago now.
• 36:11
  So I do remember early days. We moved back when my, I just
• 36:16
  had had my third child son and yeah, then I was kind of on this
• 36:22
  acreage in the middle of nowhere raising my children.
• 36:26
  And that was, it was interesting because part of is what I
• 36:31
  wanted. I wanted to have full control of
• 36:34
  my house and not have someone there all the time.
• 36:39
  And I wanted to spend more time with the kids.
• 36:42
  However I joke with them that you know, my older 2, they I had
• 36:46
  help raising them. And so the third one I messed up
• 36:49
  all on my own. Makes sense, Makes.
• 36:55
  Sense, yes, and my house is not always the cleanest or you know,
• 37:00
  having someone walk around 24/7, not 24/7.
• 37:03
  We didn't work that hard, but she would just pick up things
• 37:06
  and put this away, and now I've got just five beings who just
• 37:11
  leave things. You know, it's like the the
• 37:13
  first experience when you move out of of your mother's parents
• 37:17
  house and you realize that food is not cooked by itself, that
• 37:21
  clothes are not washed by themselves and then everyone
• 37:24
  someone was doing that. I know such a harsh reality for
• 37:28
  myself. And you know, I, I tell my
• 37:30
  husband, you know, whenever we were overseas and he wasn't
• 37:33
  working, we had help. And now that he's working and
• 37:38
  I'm just the I'm the help. That sounds really funny, but
• 37:45
  it's. It's how could this be fair?
• 37:48
  Life is not fair. We learned it.
• 37:49
  It's OK. No, that's right.
• 37:51
  I wanted it. I want it.
• 37:52
  Exactly. I what, Why?
• 37:54
  Why did I want this? Why?
• 37:55
  What motivated me? Exactly.
• 37:59
  It's. Interesting that you say you
• 38:00
  want to have the control of your of your household.
• 38:04
  Did you ever felt that you are not in control being having all
• 38:09
  that help in the house? I think it came that I had to
• 38:16
  learn how to accept help and that for me was hard because in
• 38:20
  Canada we don't normally have live in Annies unless, you know,
• 38:25
  you're probably super posh somewhere.
• 38:27
  But where I came from, you didn't do that.
• 38:29
  So and then our typical politeness, you know that we,
• 38:34
  it's hard to ask people to do things the way you want them to
• 38:37
  do. So remember the first time we
• 38:40
  had our maid and they called them Amas in Brunei, She came
• 38:46
  in, she's from the Philippines, lovely lady.
• 38:48
  And she wanted to show us her best cooking.
• 38:51
  So she would make us those lumpias.
• 38:54
  So the egg rolls, spring rolls, and she ate it for us the first
• 39:00
  week. She made it for every meal
• 39:01
  because that's the big treat. That's kind of like, I want to
• 39:04
  show you what I can make you, But with so much deep fried
• 39:08
  stuff that we were sort of starting to get sick because we
• 39:12
  don't eat that much deep fried stuff.
• 39:14
  So in the end, we're we're looking at each other over the
• 39:17
  meal going we have to tell her because it's so much work for
• 39:22
  her to make this and we're not appreciating it as much as we
• 39:25
  could. So I think living with her was a
• 39:30
  lesson to me that she wants to please us.
• 39:33
  So I need to tell her how to please us.
• 39:37
  Yeah. And so that's a really good
• 39:38
  lesson for me, but did take a little while and we were
• 39:43
  actually probably we're told we were too nice because there is
• 39:49
  you know, we give her time off because we like to your family
• 39:52
  by ourselves. And there's a lot of cultures
• 39:55
  who use their made a lot more like from sun up to sundown and
• 40:01
  maybe one day off a month. And I didn't want someone around
• 40:06
  that long. So we didn't could adapt to that
• 40:10
  part. The the you are, you are down
• 40:15
  towards a family and that's that's maybe not usual for for
• 40:20
  that area of the globe. I think the the the habits are
• 40:24
  there different. Yes, for sure.
• 40:27
  That means you didn't really, I don't know, I don't know how
• 40:32
  this will sound, but you didn't really embrace the local
• 40:35
  culture. There are some parts that you
• 40:37
  were not really happy about. That means you also stayed a lot
• 40:42
  of Canadian. Wherever you were, you said you
• 40:44
  kept your friendliness, you kept everywhere.
• 40:47
  What did you took home from those cultures?
• 40:49
  From what? What did you took home from the
• 40:51
  Netherlands and from Brunei? I think the biggest lesson I
• 40:56
  took was to be curious and that goes with.
• 41:03
  So if there's ever anything that I didn't quite understand,
• 41:07
  instead of saying, well, I do it this way, I would say, why do
• 41:12
  you it that way? And there's always a really good
• 41:16
  story behind it. And there's a really good
• 41:18
  reason. And it might be that they're
• 41:20
  doing something away because they've always done it.
• 41:23
  But it's really nice to know that it's really nice to to just
• 41:27
  get a broader awareness of what life is all about.
• 41:32
  And I have to say, learning the language of different places you
• 41:35
  go to, that just gives you the extra richness of the culture
• 41:40
  because it's kind of like looking at modern art.
• 41:44
  There's sometimes when you get that feeling, it's, I think they
• 41:48
  call it liminal space where it's just like, yeah, you know, like
• 41:52
  you don't, you can't even put words to it.
• 41:54
  But when you get the the language and the culture,
• 41:58
  there's just such a richness that you cannot quit words.
• 42:02
  There's just a feeling that you get.
• 42:05
  And I have to admit I did not learn I Malay as well as I
• 42:10
  should have. I tried to use that opportunity
• 42:14
  to learn Chinese. So there was a Chinese expat
• 42:19
  family there that I Chinese lessons from.
• 42:23
  But yeah, that hasn't stuck because I don't, I'm not forced
• 42:28
  to speak it. I think that's the whole key is
• 42:30
  that you have to be forced to speak it so that it can certify
• 42:34
  in your brain. Whereas we had Malay going on,
• 42:39
  there's English at the office, pockets of Chinese.
• 42:43
  So I didn't quite get there, but also when I was taking Malay
• 42:48
  lessons, I was taking with a felt Canadian and she was
• 42:52
  Caucasian. And we would go, it's like,
• 42:54
  let's go to the market and practice our numbers.
• 42:56
  So OK, let's go to the market. And we would go to the table and
• 42:59
  we'd be burgeoning and they would the people there, they
• 43:03
  would all Twitter like, oh, it's so cute.
• 43:05
  Look at that white woman trying to trying to speak Malay.
• 43:08
  And then they would say to me, why is your Malay so bad?
• 43:12
  And I'm like, I'm just like her. Give me a break.
• 43:20
  That makes sense. That makes sense.
• 43:21
  I mean, for her we understand, but for you, I mean you have no
• 43:24
  excuse. Yeah, I know, but it was just as
• 43:29
  new for me as it was for her, so it was kind of kind of funny.
• 43:32
  Did your experience abroad made you made the career pivot when
• 43:40
  you come back through to Canada to switch from engineering to
• 43:43
  being a coach and a writer? It it was kind of an accepted
• 43:51
  thing. And even when I left Brunei, I
• 43:54
  was like, this is a new chapter for us because I knew where we
• 43:58
  were going. There was no petroleum.
• 44:01
  And so Calgary is kind of the hub.
• 44:04
  If you want to be a petroleum engineer, you should be in
• 44:06
  Calgary. And I didn't want to live in
• 44:08
  Calgary. I wanted to live on this idyllic
• 44:11
  little acreage just South of Saskatoon with my family.
• 44:15
  So I knew I had to reinvent myself.
• 44:17
  My husband knew it. And you know, since I had been
• 44:21
  the main career person, and he has, he had worked as well while
• 44:25
  we were away, but always sort of maybe stuff he wouldn't normally
• 44:29
  had wanted to do. So I said, this is your turn.
• 44:32
  You go do what you want to do and I will stay home with the
• 44:36
  kids. So he embarked on his new career
• 44:40
  and I tried to learn to You stay at home, mom, But and initially
• 44:46
  it was so fun. You know, I was I was doing
• 44:49
  laundry. I had a little rota on how to
• 44:51
  clean my house because I needed to, you know, being a meeting
• 44:56
  driven person. It's like if you give me an open
• 44:59
  schedule, it's like I don't know what to do with this.
• 45:01
  So I had to say, OK, this hour we are cleaning the living room
• 45:05
  this hour, you know, and I did my rooms on rotation.
• 45:08
  I had to program myself and then there of course, time with kids
• 45:12
  that you it is often exploratory time and it's like get the house
• 45:18
  all cluttered, messy time and I have to accept that.
• 45:22
  So I enjoyed it. You know, it was one of those
• 45:26
  things. This is what I chose for.
• 45:28
  But in my plethora of laundry, I knew that what there's a point
• 45:33
  where I remember my brain going, I can do more than this.
• 45:37
  You know, I can actually do multi $1,000,000 project and the
• 45:42
  laundry is starting to bore me. So I spoke to my husband and my
• 45:47
  youngest was just 1 1/2 then and he said just go find something
• 45:52
  if you want. And my mom was around to help
• 45:55
  with child care. So I got a job that was 1 1/2
• 45:59
  days a week, which is great. It was mentoring some young
• 46:03
  engineers at a local consulting firm.
• 46:06
  So that's really great getting kind of back into the the days.
• 46:11
  And since it was 1 1/2, I used that other half of the day to go
• 46:14
  grocery shopping without kids. It's so amazing.
• 46:19
  Oh, simple, simple joys, right? Yes, but then that, that job,
• 46:23
  they asked me to be the COO after, you know, I'd worked
• 46:28
  there for a few months. They said we're looking for COO.
• 46:30
  We think it'd be great for it. Would you be interested?
• 46:33
  And I'm like, yeah, you know, it just rang all the bells of
• 46:38
  external validation importance that I, you know, as a corporate
• 46:41
  person, you, you strive for. It's like, oh, AC suite job, all
• 46:47
  that responsibility. I said, well, you know, thinking
• 46:51
  of my 2 year old, then 2 year old at the time I was like, I
• 46:54
  have to do it part time. So yeah, sure, do it 50%.
• 46:59
  But what I didn't know was that you don't do C-Suite job 50%
• 47:02
  you're so I basically signed up for 100% job, but just agreed to
• 47:06
  50% paycheck because on my times that I was at home, I'd be like
• 47:11
  typing emails telling my son, I'll be there in a moment.
• 47:15
  You know, I'll, I just could get this done.
• 47:18
  So, but because of my ambitious nature or whatever, maybe
• 47:23
  craziness, my desire to prove myself, I'd continue to do it.
• 47:29
  But at the same time, my dad is getting ill and his cancer had
• 47:35
  advanced. And it got to the point where,
• 47:38
  you know, right after the office, I'd go see him and spend
• 47:42
  as much time as I could with him.
• 47:45
  Excuse me. And it came the day where he he
• 47:49
  passed. And I remember I was supposed to
• 47:52
  be back within the next half hour and my brother was taking
• 47:56
  care of him. And he called.
• 47:58
  He called the house and he said, you know, he's gone.
• 48:02
  And that moment, it just made me think I just spoke to him, you
• 48:07
  know, a few hours ago. And now he's gone his whole
• 48:11
  life, like he lived. Yeah, exactly.
• 48:14
  Like with a snap of a finger and I it made me think of his
• 48:18
  childhood. You know, he is from a small
• 48:20
  town, Well, small town in China is huge town Canada.
• 48:24
  But he came from nothing in China to do, you know, schooling
• 48:29
  in Hong Kong, went through Japanese occupation, you know,
• 48:33
  worked his way to get his self to Canada where he was, you
• 48:37
  know, a professor here at the local university.
• 48:40
  And he lived a good life. He lived an adventurous life.
• 48:44
  And then all of a sudden, Dang, it's over.
• 48:48
  And it just made me think, what am I building?
• 48:50
  What, what kind of life am I striving for?
• 48:54
  And is this what I want? So I knew immediately I needed
• 48:58
  to quit my Co job and I needed to search for meaning.
• 49:02
  And it's still that that meaning that I had inside that pool.
• 49:07
  It's like I hadn't done the inner work to make the outer
• 49:11
  world make sense. And so I just deep dove into
• 49:16
  personal development and I came up with a way of thinking that's
• 49:20
  logical and made sense and wasn't dependent on someone
• 49:23
  telling me what was best for me. I called it inner and jeering
• 49:28
  and I started coding people on that.
• 49:31
  And nicely enough, like my whole linked to profile was filled
• 49:35
  with people that are just like me because we were colleagues.
• 49:38
  So I asked few of them to go through it and they loved it.
• 49:42
  And I created a program and started doing that.
• 49:47
  And I did have a book project that I've been wanting to do for
• 49:50
  ages. I finally, after I, I guess it's
• 49:55
  one year of doing group coaching and building my, my practice up
• 49:59
  to that, that I finally got down to finish this book that I've
• 50:03
  been wanting to write. And it's a little bit off the
• 50:07
  wall, but it goes completely into what I want people do,
• 50:12
  which is chill out a little more.
• 50:15
  You know, we're striving for all these external levels of
• 50:19
  achievement, but we forget, what about us?
• 50:22
  What do we really want in life? And that's what I'm trying to
• 50:26
  get. Everyone who's in my membership
• 50:29
  takes my courses. We talk about the inner
• 50:32
  engineering and how true happiness comes from within.
• 50:37
  So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at right now.
• 50:40
  I just published the book last month.
• 50:41
  I think one of the biggest issues that we have as a, as a
• 50:44
  culture at the moment, as society at the moment is
• 50:47
  striving for external validation.
• 50:49
  And you mentioned it before and I would like to ask you, you had
• 50:54
  two, let's call them breakouts. The first one was the fact that
• 50:58
  you said, OK, I'm living this life, which seems wrong because
• 51:03
  I don't work hard enough for it. And the second one was losing
• 51:06
  with your father. It was the combination of the
• 51:10
  two. Or do you think this emotional
• 51:13
  part of living your parent was bigger than the the realization
• 51:16
  that you had in Burundi? I think it's a combination.
• 51:24
  And of course, my dad's death was the biggest loss I've ever
• 51:29
  experienced in my life because you always think your parents
• 51:33
  are going to be there and then suddenly they're not.
• 51:38
  But I think, you know, the start of searching for meaning that
• 51:43
  what kind of the the spark that made me aware that there had to
• 51:48
  be something else. When I came back home and I did
• 51:52
  the CEO job, I thought that was getting to where I wanted to be
• 51:57
  again. I thought that that's what what
• 52:00
  I wanted. And then when my dad died, it
• 52:04
  just showed that that wasn't it either.
• 52:09
  So I think they were both ingredients that I've been
• 52:15
  putting into this crazy pot of mine to create my courses.
• 52:20
  And the way that I think, of course, I don't think you'd ever
• 52:26
  put, you know, any feeling to this loss of a parent.
• 52:31
  It's just so immense at the time.
• 52:35
  Correct. I, I think we see the reason why
• 52:39
  I'm asking you, Angela, is because we see a lot of, I would
• 52:44
  like to say people that have fuck you money, like millions
• 52:49
  and millions and they have this realization of I that doesn't
• 52:52
  make me happy. And I always like to say that I
• 52:54
  think it's too late when you realize that only when you had
• 52:56
  fuck you money, when you have hundreds of millions of dollars,
• 52:59
  that's a bit too late, my friend.
• 53:01
  And that says a lot about your level of intellect.
• 53:03
  I'm sorry to say that, but it's the case.
• 53:07
  But I think I'm sorry. Every actor, thanks.
• 53:11
  Every actor. No, it's come on.
• 53:13
  I don't think you went in the hundreds of millions.
• 53:18
  Well, yeah, not. Yet exactly, exactly.
• 53:23
  And we actually said the we actually, you actually said that
• 53:26
  I think the personal loss is the one that bring you back-to-back,
• 53:29
  back down to work. When you realize, man, whatever
• 53:32
  we do, we're just a, we have a temporary contract here and the
• 53:36
  only temporary contract is the one that we would like to have
• 53:38
  permanent and we can't. And and of the fact that the
• 53:43
  working contracts are called are for unlimited period, which in
• 53:46
  fact they are all limited. And we realized that too late,
• 53:50
  unfortunately. And I think this saying that
• 53:52
  you, we all have two lives and the second one started when you
• 53:55
  realized that we only have one. That's the biggest thing of ever
• 53:58
  of of them all. Angela, you joke about about
• 54:03
  yourself being a pop philosopher.
• 54:07
  Yes. When did that persona came came
• 54:11
  to life? Man, Paul, I've always had it.
• 54:16
  I've always like, and most of it happened in this in the privacy
• 54:21
  of my own brain and I've had to tame it and sometimes I haven't
• 54:25
  been able to. So I think if you talk to my
• 54:29
  friends they will, they will say I'm the first one to bring up
• 54:33
  something like that. But it's always, I feel in a
• 54:35
  very tasteful way, you know that because I feel like the
• 54:40
  digestive system is really the big connector in life.
• 54:44
  And no matter where I travelled, where the culture's different,
• 54:48
  the gender's different, the religion's different, everyone's
• 54:52
  got the poop. And if you aren't pooping, if
• 54:56
  you're not pooping, you're not alive.
• 54:59
  Like it's the most important process.
• 55:01
  If you stop pooping and you're full of shit, you're going to
• 55:06
  die soon. So you got to get rid of it.
• 55:09
  And it is the biggest, this is the biggest, most wonderful
• 55:15
  metaphor for personal development.
• 55:18
  And so I had the title of this book or two decades ago, this
• 55:23
  is, I just had my daughter and I told this title to a guy at work
• 55:30
  and he was fairly open minded and he thought he goes agile.
• 55:33
  That's such a great title. And so it's just been brewing in
• 55:39
  my brain and finally, you know, last this last Christmas, I
• 55:44
  said, I've got to get this book done and built to the metal.
• 55:48
  It published it in Gut Health Month, which was May this year.
• 55:52
  And yeah, now, now it's out in the world, living its own life.
• 55:56
  I think the I think the fact that if you don't poop, you're
• 55:59
  full of shit is the one of the coolest, like the one with the
• 56:03
  second life. I think this is the second on my
• 56:05
  top. I think this is the second one
• 56:08
  because if you don't poop, you're full of shit, which makes
• 56:11
  a lot of sense. I know.
• 56:15
  Absolutely. I always like to simplify life
• 56:17
  to say that as big as this, the star, as rich as the people,
• 56:21
  they all have to pull and they all have to do that that thing.
• 56:24
  And I think that's, that makes us quite, quite equal on all
• 56:29
  levels. That's the thing that that makes
• 56:30
  us equal. When I wrote first, I yeah, I do
• 56:34
  my research before the discussions when I, when I start
• 56:37
  to read this about you, I said, come on, that that's insanely
• 56:40
  hilarious. And the fact that someone had
• 56:41
  the, I would like to say audacity to put it as a title of
• 56:46
  a of a book, I think that's that's amazing.
• 56:49
  But can you unpack a bit that for us, pun intended, from the
• 56:57
  diapers perspective, like you said, that you, you see, I think
• 57:01
  you've done it for your kids as well.
• 57:03
  And you realize that that is happening, is happening a lot in
• 57:07
  the kids situation. They the kids, they release a
• 57:11
  lot of emotional baggage when they do that poop.
• 57:13
  I realize that with my son as well that he had he was grumpy
• 57:18
  and after he he managed to get the pool out, he was not grumpy
• 57:21
  anymore. So I think it's not only a
• 57:23
  physical release, it was an emotional release as.
• 57:26
  Well, absolutely, it is the that shows the, the connection, the
• 57:32
  gut brain connection. And we're, we're learning more
• 57:36
  about it now and scientists are studying more about the gut
• 57:40
  brain connection that, you know, when something's going wrong on
• 57:44
  one end, the other end is impacted.
• 57:48
  So for instance, if you are depressed or you have a lot of
• 57:53
  mental issues, you eventually start seeing it in your gut.
• 57:57
  And also the same with when you are not good in the gut, you
• 58:02
  start to feel anxious, depressed and all of that bad stuff.
• 58:07
  So I find that fascinating and it's exactly parallel to what
• 58:12
  you just described with your son.
• 58:13
  Everyone feels better after a huge elimination.
• 58:17
  And I think that's why you need to start your day out like that,
• 58:21
  because when you don't, your whole day is clouded.
• 58:25
  You just have this feeling of like I'm plugged up man.
• 58:32
  You know, the fact that we so the fact that you are so open
• 58:35
  about this makes it so real and but it's so funny and it's so
• 58:39
  it's so real because it's absolutely right.
• 58:41
  Nobody had the guts to say it, but guts pun intend again to say
• 58:46
  it. But I think the connection, the
• 58:49
  the brain gut connection is getting more and more.
• 58:51
  I think it's through what you said that we have a lot of
• 58:53
  realization by understanding the fact that the bacteria that we
• 58:57
  have in our gut is also something which is feeding our
• 58:59
  brain with a lot of information. It's not only about what we get
• 59:04
  out, but also what we feed in to be able to get real out.
• 59:07
  It's getting a lot philosophical.
• 59:11
  What was the no what's What's surprised you the most about the
• 59:16
  way people are responding to the book?
• 59:22
  I I think it confirmed the fact that it's connecting everybody,
• 59:29
  like everybody can relate. The only way you wouldn't want
• 59:33
  to read the book is you think it's going to be gross.
• 59:36
  But it's honestly, I think I do it really tastefully through
• 59:41
  stories and we don't like talk about anything like texture or
• 59:47
  any. There's a couple, There's a
• 59:48
  couple, yeah. There's a couple stores that
• 59:51
  might just across the line, but I think all at all, I try to do
• 59:58
  it in a way that people go, yeah, I know that feeling.
• 1:00:01
  Or then relate it to a personal development concept that they
• 1:00:06
  can maybe remember next time they're eating, digesting, or
• 1:00:11
  pooping. I mean, for whomever has kids,
• 1:00:16
  they've seen doll, if you ever change a diaper in your life,
• 1:00:20
  you've seen it all, like all. So I mean the parallel, it's
• 1:00:24
  there makes sense, so. And you know, the whole thing
• 1:00:28
  about talking about this subject, it's a matter it's,
• 1:00:33
  it's a fact of life. So why are we so ashamed about
• 1:00:37
  talking about it? Because sometimes what you know
• 1:00:41
  might help someone else. And so if we keep hiding these
• 1:00:46
  things that are big parts of ourselves, we might not help
• 1:00:50
  each other. Or you could have helped
• 1:00:53
  someone. I do have a story in there about
• 1:00:56
  how my university friend told me, you know, after a drunken
• 1:01:00
  night, he had to puke. And he goes, then you had to
• 1:01:03
  puke. And then I route.
• 1:01:05
  And I was like, wait, what was that feeling?
• 1:01:07
  And he goes, I was like, your saliva just rushes in your mouth
• 1:01:10
  because it's kind of lubricating the way out for the puke.
• 1:01:14
  And I was like, OK, noted. And then a few months later when
• 1:01:17
  I'm on the cruise ship of my honeymoon, they didn't realize
• 1:01:21
  how seasick I got. So we hadn't even left the port.
• 1:01:25
  And they're saying, oh, come down to the galley for a snack.
• 1:01:29
  And as I'm sitting there with my new husband, my mouth goes and
• 1:01:35
  I'm just like right back. And I ran to the bathroom and I
• 1:01:40
  swear like, I was like fire hydrant.
• 1:01:43
  I opened the stall and it went and it was all over the place,
• 1:01:50
  but without that little warning that my friend shared with me
• 1:01:54
  would have been all over everyone else.
• 1:01:56
  So I am so thankful and sometimes you gotta share that
• 1:02:00
  stuff. Absolutely, people.
• 1:02:02
  Absolutely experience. I've seen it.
• 1:02:05
  I come back to the example of my son.
• 1:02:08
  When we are travelling, he's usually not being able to
• 1:02:11
  toilet, right number. There is no number to when we
• 1:02:14
  are travelling and he's getting grandpa and Grandpa every day,
• 1:02:17
  Grandpa and grandpa every day. So we learned that in the
• 1:02:20
  meantime and we tried to adapt his food so that he has to go to
• 1:02:24
  the toilet. So if you know what I mean, and
• 1:02:28
  I think that's the advice for every parent.
• 1:02:30
  When you see that happening, you have to help him.
• 1:02:32
  Yeah. So when someone's grumpy, give
• 1:02:37
  them a laxative. Plums.
• 1:02:39
  Plums with yogurt is doing. The plums, Yes, very good.
• 1:02:43
  Very. Good.
• 1:02:45
  But Andrew, this number 2, the, let's say the name of pool as #2
• 1:02:52
  is only available in North America as far as I know, or at
• 1:02:55
  least in the Americas. How was the?
• 1:02:56
  Reaction. In Europe to your book.
• 1:03:00
  Well, can you show the title? So this is the the book using #2
• 1:03:08
  to get to #1 And so it has a poo on on the front.
• 1:03:13
  But did some of my European friends were like, we don't know
• 1:03:17
  what number 2 is. And I did look into the history
• 1:03:20
  of it and it was just people's way of commenting on that
• 1:03:24
  necessary life function without saying it.
• 1:03:27
  So it just, I don't know, there's no definitive story on
• 1:03:32
  the Internet of how this can be. But I think I'm just, I'm just
• 1:03:37
  teaching my European friends what it means.
• 1:03:42
  What's 1 lesson in the book that you think that even the most
• 1:03:46
  serious or skeptical reader needs to hear?
• 1:03:53
  There's so many stories, but you know, I have one chapter.
• 1:04:01
  Well, OK, let's just take one. For instance, it's about when I,
• 1:04:05
  I'm a bit lactose intolerant, so I can't eat cheese or milk or
• 1:04:10
  dairy or that's I guess what Latos intolerance means.
• 1:04:14
  But I went to France to visit my friend for her 50th birthday and
• 1:04:17
  she had her local cheese. I make her a birthday cheese and
• 1:04:23
  it was a 22 month aged Pompe Day cheese and her birthday.
• 1:04:28
  There's this huge platter, everyone, every table at this
• 1:04:32
  huge platter of five cheeses. And I'm looking at it going I, I
• 1:04:38
  really want to eat that cheese, but I know there's going to be a
• 1:04:41
  problem later, but I really want to eat that cheese.
• 1:04:45
  So I ate the cheese. And that's the analogy to life,
• 1:04:51
  is that sometimes you know something's not going to be good
• 1:04:55
  for you, but you do it anyway and you take full responsibility
• 1:04:59
  for what's going to happen because you just wanted the
• 1:05:02
  experience of it. So that was my lesson to like,
• 1:05:08
  if there's something that you know you shouldn't be doing, you
• 1:05:11
  still want to do it, do it. Just accept the consequence.
• 1:05:15
  Makes sense. Makes sense, but also being in
• 1:05:18
  French not having cheese is like a blasphemy.
• 1:05:20
  You have to have it. It's it's.
• 1:05:22
  You have to. I have to.
• 1:05:24
  It's like. It was the most amazing cheese.
• 1:05:27
  I probably will never taste cheese like that again. 100%
• 1:05:31
  being telling the experience of your being a European, I can
• 1:05:34
  tell you for sure the best cheese in the world is the
• 1:05:36
  French cheese. I go quite often to Strasbourg,
• 1:05:40
  which is not that far away from me, only to buy cheese and then
• 1:05:42
  come back to Germany. Yes, it's fantastic.
• 1:05:48
  Angela, writing a book is itself an act of digestion, processing
• 1:05:55
  life into story. I think it's it's also a process
• 1:05:59
  which you went through. What did you let go of during
• 1:06:04
  the writing process? That's a great question because
• 1:06:10
  what I had to let go of was maybe some warped idea of
• 1:06:16
  perfectionism that I just had to write because told you I had the
• 1:06:22
  the title 2 decades ago and I had kind of scribbled stories in
• 1:06:28
  my head. And then when the pandemic hit,
• 1:06:32
  I thought, I'm going to really write this, but I wrote it.
• 1:06:36
  I wrote stories, collections of stories.
• 1:06:38
  And then I would go back and reorder or go back and just try
• 1:06:43
  to get this perfect book because this is a book going to be carry
• 1:06:47
  my name on it. So and I don't know why I'm
• 1:06:51
  worried about it. It's about poop, right, Paul?
• 1:06:53
  So it's like, just get over it. There's other things unintended.
• 1:06:58
  Again, before you worry, just get over it before you worry.
• 1:07:01
  About Yeah, before you worry about the actual perfection in
• 1:07:05
  the book, it's already a subject that yeah, it's not everyday.
• 1:07:11
  But I knew as the years went on and I had delayed doing this,
• 1:07:16
  the voice was like, shit or get off the pot, like just do it or
• 1:07:23
  give up this dream, you crazy lady.
• 1:07:26
  So I decided let's just put I'm just going to, I'm just going to
• 1:07:30
  do it. I pulled it together in, you
• 1:07:33
  know, 2-2 months and did all the formatting, all the design, all
• 1:07:38
  that stuff. Got a beautiful cover designer
• 1:07:42
  and out it's out cold, darn it. It will be.
• 1:07:47
  But you know, another surprising thing is friends of mine would
• 1:07:50
  they this book is so helpful that they're going to give it to
• 1:07:55
  their high school kids who are graduating because they can
• 1:07:58
  relate to it. It's not like a hoity toity
• 1:08:00
  message, but it's so many good lessons based on something even
• 1:08:05
  a teenager can relate to so. It's easy to understand, lovely
• 1:08:11
  to understand, and that makes it, that makes it makes it a lot
• 1:08:14
  of fun because all the analogies inside that not rocket science.
• 1:08:18
  They are nothing about the psychology of life and about
• 1:08:21
  philosophical meaning. No, it's just these stories that
• 1:08:23
  they can make you understand. And I have to say one of the
• 1:08:27
  things that I I find cool is that everyone is going through
• 1:08:33
  this. Everyone is going through this.
• 1:08:34
  Everyone. There is no, not no person that
• 1:08:38
  didn't went through this. So I will link the book in the
• 1:08:42
  show notes description below. And then a little aside,
• 1:08:46
  daughter is also an engineering student now and she did, she did
• 1:08:50
  a 3D design of the the poop on the cover.
• 1:08:55
  Look at this. That's so nice.
• 1:09:01
  So I've been, I've been giving it away, as well as a little
• 1:09:06
  reminder to people to let their shit go.
• 1:09:09
  Absolutely. Let that thing go out bond again
• 1:09:14
  intended life's for sure to keep it in exactly don't be
• 1:09:17
  constipated in life and you know.
• 1:09:20
  See, there's so many. There's so many metaphors, Paul.
• 1:09:22
  But you know that the crazy thing is everyone is thinking it
• 1:09:25
  them. Nobody's having the balls to say
• 1:09:27
  them. And that's why the fact that you
• 1:09:29
  managed to say them out loud, that's the most important.
• 1:09:31
  Trust me, that's the most important.
• 1:09:35
  Well, I'm having fun. That's the most important.
• 1:09:37
  This is what we should all focus on, and this is what we should
• 1:09:41
  tell our kids to do as well, not to build a successful career.
• 1:09:44
  Yes, tell them to have fun and then everything will come
• 1:09:47
  together. Have fun.
• 1:09:49
  Absolutely. Old career or successful career?
• 1:09:53
  Andrea, do you miss your old career?
• 1:09:54
  Do you have days in which you miss your old environment?
• 1:09:59
  There are certainly days I miss a paycheck and I I definitely
• 1:10:06
  miss my colleague. Do you know where you're forced?
• 1:10:09
  And I bet everyone can think of a colleague they would rather
• 1:10:12
  never see again. But you actually with some
• 1:10:16
  distance, you kind of miss it, kind of miss that you know, the
• 1:10:20
  people that you like, the people that you are, fun, really
• 1:10:23
  annoying. They're all part of the tapestry
• 1:10:26
  of what creates your life. And when you do the inner
• 1:10:29
  engineering, you can see the beauty of all of this and you
• 1:10:34
  can just enjoy every positive, every negative, every whatever,
• 1:10:39
  because no, it's all positive. Now to to turn the question a
• 1:10:44
  bit on the other side, what do your older kids say about the
• 1:10:49
  fact that you are always there I.
• 1:10:53
  Know Mom, could you get a life? No.
• 1:10:59
  You know, now my youngest is almost 16 and they're, they're
• 1:11:03
  all having their own lives. The older 2 are in university
• 1:11:07
  and it's lovely to see them, you know, spread their wings and try
• 1:11:12
  new things. But what, what I really like as
• 1:11:16
  well is that they're my biggest cheerleaders.
• 1:11:18
  So they're so proud of me that I've got my book out.
• 1:11:21
  They're so proud that I'm putting myself out there.
• 1:11:24
  They they are the masters of the growth mindset.
• 1:11:29
  Like they will congratulate me on something that I did better
• 1:11:33
  today than I did the day before. And I think as being a genet
• 1:11:38
  person, we're a little bit fixed mindset.
• 1:11:40
  We just want to achieve and it's when we don't, when we can't
• 1:11:45
  perform at a certain level, we don't even want to try.
• 1:11:48
  We don't want to put ourselves out there.
• 1:11:50
  But I've learned that it's really to just try, take note of
• 1:11:56
  where you're at and then much as you get better as you do it more
• 1:12:00
  if it's something you really want to do.
• 1:12:02
  So my kids, I don't know, they were born with that or something
• 1:12:06
  and they're, they're teaching me everyday and they're proud of me
• 1:12:11
  and I love that I can show them that they can do weird things if
• 1:12:17
  it's true to their soul and just have fun doing it.
• 1:12:20
  I think that's a really nice lesson that I'm proud to teach
• 1:12:24
  them. I am now the poop lady and
• 1:12:29
  they're the poop ladies children.
• 1:12:34
  As long as they they are embracing that, that's that
• 1:12:37
  makes it amazing. Yes, absolutely.
• 1:12:40
  Angela, what do you think that the the Angela having that
• 1:12:44
  career path test in high school would say to the Pope lady
• 1:12:48
  today? She would be amazed at how life
• 1:12:57
  is turned out, but also so, so happy that I do.
• 1:13:04
  I wasn't. I used the engineering as my way
• 1:13:09
  to get my adventure sciences, science, the world round, and I
• 1:13:15
  used it to find or satisfy my inner desires for travel, for
• 1:13:20
  meeting people or appreciating cultures.
• 1:13:24
  And then it also brought me home.
• 1:13:28
  So the way my life has changed since I got home, where I'm also
• 1:13:34
  a publisher, so I've published 22 fiction titles as well as
• 1:13:40
  this book. So I was able to publish my own
• 1:13:44
  book and just build up expertise in an area that I've I've always
• 1:13:50
  loved books, I've always loved writing.
• 1:13:52
  If you asked me as a 6-7 year old what I was going to do when
• 1:13:56
  I grew up, it was a writer. So I just feel like there's so
• 1:14:01
  many little hints we have of our lives as we go through life that
• 1:14:07
  it's really a pleasure and a privilege to be able to live
• 1:14:10
  them out and to be flexible enough to be able to do that.
• 1:14:14
  And I admit the engineering career gave me the financial
• 1:14:18
  freedom to try this, that a lot of people don't have that, you
• 1:14:23
  know, backing. But now I'm having a great time.
• 1:14:27
  Now I'm just exploring and creating courses based on this
• 1:14:33
  book. I have a few corporate clients
• 1:14:36
  that are interested in talking a little crap with their people,
• 1:14:41
  you know, So this is like personal development that
• 1:14:44
  everyone can relate to, and it might even have the potential to
• 1:14:49
  stay in your brain as you go through your day.
• 1:14:52
  Sounds amazing, sounds amazing. I think the whole idea of making
• 1:14:56
  the personal development understandable and not
• 1:14:58
  philosophical makes it makes the whole concept easy to implement
• 1:15:05
  because you don't need to be tall smart yourself, you just
• 1:15:08
  need to understand simple metaphors to be able to
• 1:15:10
  understand. How exactly life is and I am not
• 1:15:13
  smart? I dare say that.
• 1:15:15
  I dare say that all of those. Those, those hormone things like
• 1:15:20
  oxytocin and dopamine and, and I tried, I was like, those are
• 1:15:23
  really important things to bring into my books, but I can never
• 1:15:26
  remember what does what. So I'm just like, that's the
• 1:15:30
  thing about our digestive system too.
• 1:15:32
  It's such a good teacher because we don't have to know the
• 1:15:36
  process of what it does. We have the experience of what
• 1:15:40
  does. So I think that's also a huge.
• 1:15:42
  We have a family friend that says, you know, I had two kids,
• 1:15:45
  so my brain got the half, half that house twice.
• 1:15:49
  So let me give me some time, give me some spare.
• 1:15:52
  Yeah, give me a break. So yeah, with my brain, I had
• 1:15:58
  already had two halves gone before I.
• 1:16:00
  Had exactly. So Angela was extremely fun to
• 1:16:05
  talk with you and I didn't expect it to be such fun, even
• 1:16:09
  though I knew the book and I knew exactly what's in the book,
• 1:16:13
  but I still didn't expect to be more.
• 1:16:15
  You're an amazing person. I think the realization that
• 1:16:18
  you've had, it's something that it's, it's, it's not easy to
• 1:16:22
  happen. So do you want to say something?
• 1:16:25
  It's a privilege to be here, Paul, and I love that, you know,
• 1:16:28
  we spoke before about your your startup podcast and then meeting
• 1:16:33
  all these people from around the world.
• 1:16:35
  And I think that's really great how you brought your love into
• 1:16:39
  your world. I mean, you created this all
• 1:16:42
  offside, so fantastic for you. It's fun and you can do from
• 1:16:46
  anywhere in the world. That's amazing.
• 1:16:47
  That's my that's why I have a new background now because not
• 1:16:50
  the background is real. I need to touch it.
• 1:16:54
  I'm not I'm not in the same place where I usually record it.
• 1:16:56
  But good point. Thank you.
• 1:16:58
  Thank you for that, Andrea. I appreciate that a lot.
• 1:17:00
  Andrea, Usually before I wrap up, I have some rapid fire
• 1:17:04
  questions. I call them.
• 1:17:05
  They are not always rapid fire, but they are dear tailored on
• 1:17:08
  the guest. OK, let's go.
• 1:17:13
  Angela, A book that changed your life.
• 1:17:20
  Autobiography of a Yogi. OK.
• 1:17:23
  I didn't know. I don't know that one.
• 1:17:25
  No, I don't know that one. I can never remember his name,
• 1:17:30
  it's like so many syllables in it.
• 1:17:33
  Yogananda something. I have the same.
• 1:17:35
  Problem. I never remember the author I'm.
• 1:17:36
  Sorry, Remember the remember the leaking brain we talked about?
• 1:17:40
  Yeah, the leaking brain is coming up for me again.
• 1:17:42
  Yeah. OK, I will, I will, I will do an
• 1:17:45
  investigation there. But I all I'm also a fan of
• 1:17:47
  books and I think it it's one of the biggest wonders that we have
• 1:17:51
  in this life that we're able to read the knowledge of the
• 1:17:54
  others. Most unexpected The most
• 1:17:59
  unexpectedly profound place you've ever visited.
• 1:18:06
  Besides toilet. That's a profound again, not
• 1:18:12
  intended. There's so many places.
• 1:18:19
  How do you how do you decide what is most profound?
• 1:18:22
  But I think it's probably a little cliche, but when you go
• 1:18:27
  into the European churches, I'm just blown away at the design
• 1:18:33
  and the care that goes into those churches that didn't have
• 1:18:37
  the modern building equipment that we have.
• 1:18:41
  Like I how did they do it? It's.
• 1:18:44
  Impressive. But anyway, it's impressive,
• 1:18:46
  yeah. Those those always hit me.
• 1:18:50
  A smell that instantly brings you back to your expat years.
• 1:18:56
  Expat years. Oh boy.
• 1:19:00
  OK. This is not a good one though,
• 1:19:02
  is it Brunei? They have open sewers.
• 1:19:07
  Yeah, yeah. Just let that one settle for a
• 1:19:09
  little bit. But no.
• 1:19:10
  OK. OK.
• 1:19:12
  On a nicer note, how about the ocean?
• 1:19:16
  Because both locations I was really close to open water.
• 1:19:21
  And where I am in Saskatchewan, well, I guess I'm like 2 miles
• 1:19:26
  from the river, but it's different when it's, you know,
• 1:19:29
  the ocean or the North Sea or the South China Sea.
• 1:19:33
  It's just different. That makes sense, but.
• 1:19:36
  So the smell of water. Water.
• 1:19:39
  The smell of water, it's. Yeah, I'm sorry about that.
• 1:19:41
  They it's. True to holiday as well.
• 1:19:43
  So I have to say that's that's an impressive 1.
• 1:19:48
  What's the most Canadian thing about you?
• 1:19:55
  My soul, I, I, I don't know, I think well and I say that in my
• 1:20:02
  book. You know, I look the way I look.
• 1:20:05
  My second language is Dutch and the next one is French.
• 1:20:10
  I'm studying Mandarin, which my family doesn't speak Mandarin so
• 1:20:15
  I'm also sure I probably won't really embed that one, but I'm
• 1:20:18
  going to try. All of this mix of, you know,
• 1:20:23
  despite of the way I look, I've soaked up everything in my
• 1:20:27
  environment and that makes me actually Canadian.
• 1:20:32
  Just a mix. The intercultural mix, right?
• 1:20:38
  Yeah, I think intercultural appreciation and probably I'm
• 1:20:44
  we're probably still a little too polite.
• 1:20:48
  We always say sorry, thank you. And I have the last one which is
• 1:20:54
  but this is a self answered one. Now after the discussion I want
• 1:21:00
  to say poop emoji or sparkle emoji.
• 1:21:02
  Which person represents your vibe?
• 1:21:05
  I think I can answer that by myself.
• 1:21:09
  You can guess that one, Yes, and it's funny since I've been since
• 1:21:13
  published the book. You know when you you pull up
• 1:21:16
  your emojis and your most common ones are there?
• 1:21:19
  It's the poop ones high on the list.
• 1:21:25
  Andrea your your story is is impressive and your journey
• 1:21:30
  reminds us that sometimes you have to travel far.
• 1:21:33
  Anyone flash a few things to come home to to yourself?
• 1:21:40
  I want to thank you for sharing today.
• 1:21:43
  I want to thank you for for being so open and so less.
• 1:21:49
  I would say judgmental about some terms and seeing them free
• 1:21:53
  and talking them free about about some taboo topics.
• 1:21:58
  I think it's impressive and it makes the philosophy much easier
• 1:22:02
  for everyone to understand. Thank you for being today in the
• 1:22:05
  in the podcast and I do appreciate my much that you take
• 1:22:09
  your time. You took your time.
• 1:22:13
  Thanks so much for your time and for for making this available to
• 1:22:17
  to people. Thank you for that Andrew, I do
• 1:22:22
  appreciate it a lot. I hope we can do this again one
• 1:22:25
  day, maybe with the second book, who knows.
• 1:22:30
  OK. Sounds great.
• 1:22:32
  Thank you so much, Paul.