Today I am talking with Trent Oster. Trent and I worked together at BioWare, where he was a founding member, as well as Project Director and Producer when I was helping with Neverwinter Nights. These days, he is the CEO of Beamdog. Aside from its own intellectual property such as Mythforce, Beamdog has been instrumental in bringing Dungeons & Dragons games such as Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, and even Neverwinter Nights back as enhanced editions that run on modern computers.

But today, Trent and I will not be talking about video games. Many of us in the tech industry have hobbies which we take to extremes of all kinds. Mine include writing and photography, but Trent's is on a scale of power hammers, steel, and red-hot chemistry. This is a dense discussion on smithing, knifemaking, and the wonders of metallurgy.

In the show notes, I've added pictures of the knives he has produced that we talk about. I've also included a video of Trent's power hammer, the machine that he affectionately calls "Thumpy".

Visit the show notes at for pictures and video

1. Tales under the cat treel: Episode 48

Dave has had a long career in video games, for a full list please check out his profile on Moby Games.

Episode Highlights

1. From IT to Audio Director: Dave shares how a chance encounter with BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuk at a computer store led him from IT to doing placeholder sound effects for MDK2. Dave eventually became a full-time audio designer.
2. Scrappy Studio Days: Listen in for a hilarious late-night outtake from MDK2 involving a monkey, a blow-dryer, and K-Y Jelly. Dave also reflects about the sheer passion of BioWare fans .
3. Behind the Sounds:
4. Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic: Dave reveals that none of the sound effects were actually taken directly from the films; they were all meticulously reproduced in-house or by contractors like Paul Gorman.
5. Lost Outtakes: Dave laments losing unreleased, hilarious outtakes of the iconic character Minsc (and his giant miniature space hamster, Boo) from Baldur’s Gate.
6. Lost in Translation: A funny anecdote about how the French localization of Baldur’s Gate combat sounds ended up sounding a bit too much like a porn film.
7. The Philosophy of Sound: Dave explains his approach to audio, such as crafting the desolate, isolated atmosphere for The Long Dark. He also breaks down why user interface (UI) sounds are actually the hardest to design: they must be noticeable, unique, and critically, not annoying after thousands of clicks.

Mentions & Links

1. Greg Zeschuk: BioWare co-CEO and founder.
2. Trent Oster: Beamdog CEO and next week’s guest!
3. Ben Burtt: Legendary film sound designer who crafted iconic Star Wars audio.
4. Episode 27: BioWare Stories Part 1 - Craig Miller
5. Episode 28: BioWare Stories Part 2 - Craig Miller
6. Episode 29: BioWare Stories Part 3 - Georg Zoeller and Emmanuel Lusinchi

The events of Sharpeville happened to be part of my master's thesis when I was studying under Dr. Christopher Youé at Memorial University. As a person of colour, and often a minority wherever I have chosen to live, race and racism is a topic that fascinates me, but also scares me to bring up.

Today on the podcast, I have my good friend and former professor, Dr. Erwin Warkentin, on the show for exactly that conversation. We are two very different people from opposite sides of the world with very different backgrounds. So have a listen to our conversation about race, racism, Apartheid, and indeed, the Sharpeville Massacre.

Further Reading

1. Read and learn more about the Sharpeville Massacre
2. A YouTube playlist of music from the movement against Apartheid
3. Anti-Apartheid Legacy: Centre of Memory and Learning

One of my favourite anti-Apartheid songs is Asimbonanga by the late great Johnny Clegg and Savuka. Here's a famous video of Nelson Mandela joining Savuka on stage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGS7SpI7obY

St. Patrick’s Day, which is the national day of Ireland, is also celebrated around the world wherever Irish immigrants settled. In Newfoundland, it’s a rare public holiday as winter blows its last. It was a day friends would gather at the pub. When I left Newfoundland and the shamrocks went up in all the bars no matter where I was living, I longed to hear the voices of my friends.

Initially I had asked friends to phone me when they were out, night or day, on St. Patrick’s Day. Later someone gave my phone number out to strangers and the calls I received got weirder and even more fun. Each year the tradition grew until in 2009 when we decided to go big with an advert on Time Square and more.

So this is the story of the St. Patrick’s Day Drunk Dial Contest along with the calls of many of the winners.

I hope you have have great St. Patrick’s Day, no matter your nationality, but especially to all my friends in Ireland and those of Irish descent.

Show Notes and Highlights

1. Interview with Niall Brown including the fallout from the Global TV news spot.
2. Watch the Global TV news spot from Montreal, 2009
3. The Times Square ad and pictures of the 2008 Montreal St. Patrick’s Day parade.

God Save the Queen, Instrumental by the Band of the Grenadier Guards, 1952 from the Wikimedia Commons

Show Highlights

1. Indian Ridge: Dups shares a personal story of a solo summit attempt in the Canadian Rockies.
2. The Philosophy of Climbing and the lure of Everest: Mike Mannion breaks down how his love for hiking and indoor climbing evolved into global mountaineering. Mike and Dups discuss the ethical issues of putting people at risk for a tourist summit.
3. Kilimanjaro, the Barafu scale, and freezing on Elbrus: Keli Ryan shares her memories of tackling Kilimanjaro. Keli recounts the reality of altitude sickness, and other stories from Kilimanjaro. She contrasts that with the cold of Elbrus and lessons for life

About the Guests

1. Mike Mannion: A seasoned trekker who has climbed alongside Dups in the Rockies, Mount Kinabalu in Borneo, and Kilimanjaro in Tanzania.
2. Keli Ryan: A long-time friend of Dups who joined the team for the ascent of Kilimanjaro and tackled the freezing, technical climb of Mount Elbrus in Russia.

Mentions & Resources

1. Scrambles in the Canadian Rockies by Alan Kane

Award-winning photojournalist Greg Locke joins the show to share his incredible journey spanning forty years of covering crime, business, politics, and war. From the surreal, celebratory chaos of the Berlin Wall coming down , to the savage heartbreak of the Bosnian War, Greg takes us behind the lens of the stories that shaped our modern world. He opens up about the moral weight of photographing grief , the absurdity of navigating lawless borders , and why we cannot simply turn away and ask, "Who cares?"

In This Episode, We Discuss:

1. The Accidental Photojournalist: How serendipity and a restless desire to explore the world launched Greg's forty-year career.
2. The Party at the End of the World: Arriving in Berlin the exact night the gates opened in 1989, and capturing the chaotic, history-making street parties.
3. Greg's "Lost Years" in the Balkans: Navigating the brutal civil war in Sarajevo.
4. The Philosophy of Bearing Witness: Why we must document human misery so the world doesn't forget.
5. Close Calls and Absurd Realities: Surviving a terrifying encounter at a burning checkpoint in Sarajevo , and how Greg bribed a guard to get into Zaire.
6. The Exodus: The story behind one of Greg's most powerful photographs

About Our Guest: Greg Locke is a veteran photojournalist with four decades of experience covering international affairs, conflict, and politics. His work has been featured in major publications including the Globe and Mail, Toronto Sun, Reuters, and Time Magazine and won numerous awards. He has spent extensive time documenting crises around the world from Africa to the Americas, and was the first photographer to be awarded the CAJ/CIDA fellowship for journalism in the area of foreign affairs and international development by the Canadian Association of Journalists and the Canadian International Development Agency.

Learn more about Greg Locke at https://greglocke.com

In this sequel to Episode 2, I explore how my own identity as a developer is being restructured—from writing syntax to managing autonomous fleets of agents that plan, code, and test on their own. I’m also joined by Tony Nysten and Mirva Laatunen from OpenOcean to discuss why this shift is dismantling traditional organizational silos and changing what it means to be a “software team.”

1. (00:00) Intro: A sequel to Episode 2
2. (00:37) The death of the traditional developer identity
3. (02:00) What is “Agentic Engineering”?
4. (03:15) Why the “Product Trio” (PM, Design, Eng) is broken
5. (06:41) Dismantling silos and the new organizational blueprint
6. (09:50) 5 steps to survival: From flat orgs to “vibe” hiring
7. (13:32) Interview: Tony Nysten & Mirva Laatunen (OpenOcean)
8. (16:00) The unit economics of AI vs. human labor
9. (18:20) How VC roles are being disrupted by AI agents
10. (23:04) Outro

Key Takeaways

1. The New Developer Identity: Coding is now less about syntax and more about reviewing plans and obsessing over outcomes. If you entered this industry just to write code, the problem has shifted.
2. Agentic Workflows: We aren’t just using ChatGPT/Gemini; we are managing agents that argue with each other to plan, code, and test independently.
3. Organizational Panic: Traditional structures like microservices and agile teams were built for human limitations. Agents expose the bureaucracy in these old systems.
4. Hiring for “Vibe”: As technical barriers lower, the most valuable engineers are those with high creativity, business understanding, and communication skills—not just LeetCode proficiency.

Links & Resources

1. Original Article: Why are we building software development teams like it’s 2020?
2. Reference: Episode 2: How deeply are engineers adopting AI in larger software teams?
3. Reference: Episode 16: MySQL, MariaDB, and AI – A conversation with Kaj Arnö
4. Talk: Brandon Sanderson: The hidden cost of AI
5. Firm: OpenOcean VC

Cast

1. Host and Producer: Duleepa “Dups” Wijayawardhana
2. Guests: Tony Nysten & Mirva Laatunen

Inside the Episode

1. Island Isolation: How being stuck on a rock in the Atlantic forced a tight-knit community to pick up instruments and create their own "cultural smorgasbord".
2. The Venues: A look back at the all-ages shows at the LSPU Hall and the legendary Peace A-chord festival—which was eventually shut down for being a bit too loud for municipal politics.
3. CHMR Roots: Dups and Johnny reminisce about their days behind the mic at St. John's alternative campus radio station.

Featured Tracklist

1. "Newfie Rastaman" by Da Slyme A "fabulous" track from the band that started it all and released Canada's first double punk album.
2. "No Protest" by Hardliner A "peace punk" anti-military anthem about a young Newfoundlander with no alternatives.
3. "Evil Drunks" by Dog Meat BBQ A fun song that serves as the ultimate reminder of university drinking days.

All songs played by permission of the artist.

You can reach Johnny @ https://substack.com/@johnnydafink

Erwin shares a story about a teenage boy, a school dance in -30°C Winnipeg weather, and a memorial scholarship that triggers a realization that his world is shrinking. But the central tension of the episode isn't the plot—it's the pronoun. Why did Erwin write a deeply personal story in the third person? They discuss the "Sin of I," the Mennonite concept of Hochmut (pride), and whether hiding behind "He" protects the writer or cheats the reader

Note: The short story discussed in this episode is not included in the text or audio. As discussed, the idea of the story—and how narrative voice changes it—is more important than the draft itself.

Key Topics Discussed:

1. The "Sin" of Autobiography: How Erwin’s Mennonite upbringing and the concept of Hochmut make writing "I" feel like an act of arrogance.
2. The Shrinking World: Exploring the theme of aging, where the cast of characters in one's life slowly disappears, leaving only memories behind.
3. The "Sauerkraut" Method: Erwin’s unique way of explaining burying a draft "in the ground" for months to let it ferment before revisiting it.
4. Literary Forms: A look at the epistolary novel (letter form) and the influence of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther on personal correspondence.
5. Winnipeg Nostalgia: A trip down memory lane featuring CKRC radio, "Hunky Bill’s" pierogi makers, and the mystery of dating girls hidden under layers of nylon and fur.

Memorable Quotes:

"You can build me a rocket to take me to Mars or anywhere else in this universe, but without literature, would I want to make the trip?" — Dr. Erwin Warkentin (quoting a former student)

"I realized that of the people that I was close to growing up, I am literally the only one left.

Mentioned in this Episode:

1. Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
2. "If" by Bread (Song)
3. Hunky Bill (Winnipeg Icon)

About the Guest:

Dr. Erwin Warkentin is a former professor of German and Communication Studies at Memorial University, currently living in Berlin. He is a writer, a scholar of German literature, and—for this episode—a brave soul willing to have his first draft critiqued on air.

However, something happens when you visit a place over a very long period—like dots on a slow-moving ticker tape, you see the change as flashes. A decades-long timelapse. This is the case for me with my visits to the country of my birth, Sri Lanka. Every few years for 45 years, I have experienced the inexorable change wrought by globalization, industrialization, and urbanization. I can stand on a road in a metropolis and remember the field. I can saunter down my parents’ once-sleepy 1970s suburban laneway to bask in the shadow of a 20-story high-rise.

In Canada, I visited the Athabasca Glacier for the first time in July 2002. The glacier reaches the Icefields Parkway in Jasper National Park, one of the tongues of the Columbia Icefield. My last visit was 20 years later, in July 2022; the glacier had retreated so far that you had to walk 20 minutes from where I had seen it in 2002.

When it comes to our environment, in my lifetime I have observed three truths.

Firstly, humans change their environment. We are a species of terraformers. We have been doing this since we gathered in groups however many epochs ago. To ask us not to explore, to socialize, to make our environment better for our own survival is akin to asking us as a species to concede defeat.

Secondly, our environment has changed at our hands so massively, how can we not expect the knock-on effects to have an impact—like that butterfly causing a hurricane?

Thirdly, nature is far more resilient than the would-be terraformers. In 2019, I stood at the center of Chernobyl: nature had grown back; trees were exulting in the lack of humans. It is not the world we should be frightened for; it is ourselves. We make it sound as if by becoming a green society we are doing it for the planet. The truth is always: we are doing it to save our children, nature will survive and come back as weird and even more wonderful without us.

Unfortunately, the first truth has shown me that if we are to address the second and third truths, the biggest movers need to be our governments and industry. We can all do our part, for sure, but the biggest gains lie in more sustainable ways to change how we build out our environment, produce energy, and of course, travel, so that we can indeed circle the globe and be one human family.

The human story is one of technological advance, from the wheel to flight. We’ve made our world smaller, our minds bigger, and our hearts wider.

It is with that optimism that I know we can, and must, solve our challenges. It is why I am very happy when I see startups like the one my friend and former Supermetrics colleague, Kurre Stålberg, is a part of: Carbonaide.

In This Episode

In this conversation, Kurre takes us inside the industrial world of concrete curing—a sector responsible for a staggering 8% of global CO2 emissions. We discuss how Carbonaide is trapping carbon dioxide into concrete making the concrete “harder, faster, cheaper, and greener”.

We also dive into the reality of the “wild west” carbon credit markets, where only a fraction of sold credits are actually delivered , and Kurre shares his unique experience as a software engineer using an “army” of AI agents to build industrial platforms almost single-handedly.

Topics Covered:

* The 8% Problem: Why cement production is so carbon-intensive.

* The Solution: How Carbonaide primes concrete to “vacuum” up CO2, curing blocks in hours instead of days.

* The Carbon Market Reality: The difference between buying “futures” and buying actual sequestered carbon.

* AI as a Force Multiplier: How Kurre shifted from “developer” to “project manager” of AI agents to scale his output.

Links & Resources:

* Carbonaide: https://carbonaide.com

* Recommended Listening: If you want to listen to an amazing story about one of the biggest concrete jungles ever, I can recommend 99% Invisible’s episode “A River Runs Through Los Angeles”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

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The definition of cultural code-switching is the act of consciously or unconsciously adjusting behaviour, language, and mannerisms to align with the norms of a different cultural context. To me, this makes sense. I’ve often described myself as a chameleon but I had never put a name to the mechanism.

In this episode, we go beyond the definition. We explore whether we code-switch to survive, to take advantage, or simply to show respect. Do we change because we want to, or because we have to?

Coincidentally, Sylvia and her husband Erwin were about to depart Newfoundland, where they had been living for decades, to return to Germany. And even more coincidentally, I would be seeing them there shortly after. So, this conversation takes place across two distinct sides of the Atlantic Ocean.

Part 1 starts in Torbay, Newfoundland, on the eastern edge of Canada. While watching a winter storm roll in over the craggy coastline, we discuss the theory of the “Third Culture” and the complicated relationship we have with the concept of “home”.

Part 2 picks up a month later in Berlin, Germany. After an unseasonably cold winter day, we sat down to see if the theory held up against reality. We discuss how the switches flipped the moment Sylvia landed—from the silence of a German grocery line to the “fighting dirty” required to navigate a new culture.

Join us as we explore how we are all, in the end, just an amalgam of everything we experience.

Also featured is music by Svavelvinter which features the vocals of Christian Älvestam. You can listen to the music on Apple Music and Spotify:

The roleplaying games we chat about include

* Dragonbane

* The Forbidden Lands

* Svavelvinter

You can find lyrics to Vanderland, the song featured in the podcast at Erik’s blog.

You can find out more about Erik at Erik’s blog as well.

Thank you for listening! Subscribe for more roleplaying, fiction, and stories!

Related episodes

Here is what I wrote about his first novel:

In Napalm Hearts, a bored, recently divorced detective, Thaddeus Grayle, takes on the case of the missing wife of London socialite and political hopeful Andrew Claymore. Since I want to make sure I don’t give away anything of the story, I want to focus on Seamus’ ability to bring alive a wide cast of characters set in modern-day London. Jumping from a name on paper to your imagination, this cast comes alive with very simple swishes and flicks of written strokes, a style reminiscent of a gleeful swashbuckler.

There’s Charlie, Thaddeus’ temp and secretary, the photographer and associate Ruddick, the bartenders, the bad dudes, the daughter, the ex-wife, the affair, the clientele. Clocking in at 158 pages, that’s frankly a rather tall order for character exposition. The style is accessible, modern, using conversation as the storytelling medium. It is fast, quick, but dangerous if you cannot give each character a voice that resonates in your head as being the individual from which it originates. It’s an ability that I admire in authors like Nick Hornby and it’s an important part of bringing the characters of Napalm Hearts alive; not to mention some very slick and well-imagined prose to sink your teeth into.

As a screenwriter, Seamus’ work has earned him entry to the 2022 Stowe Story Lab and the 2022 Willamette Writers FilmLabTV. His short fiction has appeared in The Raspberry and Louden Singletree, and his story “With Special Guests” was a 2018 Screencraft semi-finalist.

Over the years, the story of the Long’s Hill couch slide has become legend amongst my friends and even amongst those who don’t know us. It’s a story that has grown and changed in the telling. So, I went to some of the original people, including people who had heard the story from others at the time.

Thank you very much to Marc Dyke, Aaron McKim, Andrew Smith, and Mike Mannion. I hope no one is doing literal couch surfing this New Year and that you all have a brilliant year ahead.

I will be back on January 12 on a regular Monday schedule with the podcast. It’s been fun doing a couple of offbeat episodes. In the coming year, I’m looking forward to treating you to some amazing interviews, some great new stories—both fiction and non-fiction—and to delving deeper into the stories that make us human. Until then, be safe and give your pets a cuddle. If you enjoyed this or any other episode, please help me grow my listenership by subscribing or sharing.The image was generated by Gemini.

Give the gift that keeps on giving and share this episode. It would mean a lot to me!

On today’s episode we have the following folks:Friends from St. John’s, Newfoundland: Marc and Angie, Andrew Smith, Andrew Draskoy, Aaron, Rohith, and Colette

Friends from HeyOrca: Jesse, Steph, JP, Steve, Peter, Joe, and Farhan

Friends from OpenOcean: Tony, Toby, Raoul, Ralf, Patrik, and Mirva

This entire episode is the brainchild of my fabulous partner Suvi.

To all my friends and family: I wish you a very Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays, no matter where you are and what you celebrate.

Thank you for being with me on 34 episodes of Tales under the cat tree. I didn’t think I would make it all the way to a special Christmas episode. I hope you have enjoyed the episodes I have done. If you have, please take the time to subscribe, or better yet, please share the episode so I can grow my listenership.

I will return with a special New Year’s day episode and will be back to whatever is “normal” for this podcast on January 12.

Today’s episode featured the following pieces of music either in the public domain or under the Creative Commons license. No changes have been made to the compositions or performances beyond mixing in the podcast.

* "Christmas Prelude" performed by the Concert Band of the United States Air Force Band of Mid-America — License: Public Domain

* "It Came Upon the Midnight Clear" (for jazz piano) performed by the Diplomats of the United States Air Force Band — License: Public Domain

* El Noi de la Mare, a Catalan folk song on guitar. — License: Creative Commons

* Heinrich Lichner: Fantasia of Silent Night, Holy Night — License: Creative Commons 2.0

* Christmas music for Orchestra and choir MaxNegro — License: Creative Commons

All other music composed and performed by Duleepa Wijayawardhana.

When sun rays crown thy pine clad hills, And summer spreads her hand, When silvern voices tune thy rills, We love thee, smiling land. When spreads thy cloak of shimmering white, At winter’s stern command, Thro’ shortened day, and starlit night, We love thee, frozen land. When blinding storm gusts fret thy shore, And wild waves lash thy strand, Thro’ spindrift swirl, and tempest roar, We love thee windswept land. As loved our fathers, so we love, Where once they stood, we stand; Their prayer we raise to Heaven above, God guard thee, Newfoundland

Those are the verses to “Ode to Newfoundland,” composed by Sir Cavendish Boyle, without the refrains as would be commonly sung. It was the national anthem of the Dominion of Newfoundland and these days is the official provincial anthem of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.

Newfoundland is the world’s 16th largest island; it is located far to the east in Canada and makes up one part of the now Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Newfoundland was the first British colony in the Americas, and it is also where the Vikings, with Leif Erikson, landed when they first came to North America. You can visit the archeological dig at L’Anse aux Meadows on the west coast of the island.

The reason for its historical prominence in European times came from the large stocks of cod fish that inhabited the Grand Banks off the coast, though the island had long been home to the now-extinct Beothuk peoples prior to any European settlement. It is a rugged and windswept island with amazing vistas when the weather allows.

And that is often the problem.

Had I been one day early in my most recent December trip to the island, I would not have made it, as gale-force winds had cancelled flights. This can happen in December. I arrived to an island of snow and ice, a little unusual in early December, but then these days and on this island, you never know what Mother Nature will throw at you.

So it was that I found myself on a hike with my good friends Dr. Aaron McKim and Andrew Draskoy in the White Hills near St. John’s with Aaron’s two huskies. Our group has been doing “winter” hikes for decades. We used to call them Arctic Picnics, and our group we had dubbed the “Royal Anarcho-Geographic Society of Newfoundland” or RAGSN. The members of RAGSN number a multitude and these days live around the world. But today it was just Aaron, Andrew, and me on a short winter hike. The ground was icy but the day bright and a little windy, as you might hear from the audio.

Listen to the episode for some great stories and history about Newfoundland and Labrador, hiking, and more.

If you like this podcast episode and want to listen to more, please take the time to subscribe!

This is the poem Ozymandias by the great Percy Bysshe Shelley.

In this episode of Tales Under the Cat Tree, I want to explore the human egos that build our cities, kingdoms, and companies. I read “Ozymandias” when I was eleven years old. The image of the broken civilizations that thought themselves eternal and invincible has stuck with me ever since. We humans think our worlds can never die, that our present continues to the future with ever-increasing greatness, and that we, as individuals, are fully in control.

The reality is far different. So first, I will share an original short story that was inspired by “Ozymandias” called “Look Upon Our Works and Despair,” followed by a piece on “How to Become the Company MVP.” You might ask: is there really a connection between all these? Well, I will leave you to ponder that thought.

This episode was again done while on the go. This time from St. John’s, Newfoundland. Thank you to Marc and Angie for putting up with my shenanigans.

Subscribe for free for new episodes and support my work!

Since I was visiting London, where Tush lives, I thought it would be good to have a conversation about the 1980s Hong Kong that we witnessed growing up there. If there was ever a “golden era” for Hong Kong, I am sure it would have been the 1980s. Wealth and affluence abounded; the economy was growing, boasting one of the busiest airports in the world and serving as a center of global trade. This was pre-handover Hong Kong, a bustling, vibrant mix of the West and the East.

What follows is my conversation with Dr. Tushar Salukhe about growing up in Hong Kong, succeeded by an essay that I wrote right after our 25th high school anniversary in Hong Kong in 2017. I’ve included some old photos I dug up here.

Come and wander the crowded streets of one of the most amazing cities at the height of its power and glory in the 1980s, through the eyes of two teenagers.

Today, I am happy to have Lisa Mathew on the podcast with me to talk about the editing process. If you’ve been listening to the last few episodes about BioWare, you might have noticed I keep mentioning all the people who it takes to put a creative work in front of you. In fact, this very podcast goes through multiple edits, different listens, and opinions before you ever get to hear it. The same is true when it comes to fiction. Your story is often only as good as the editor or editors who contribute to it.

Today, I will read a short story in its final form. In the show notes, I have a link to the story along with the edits that Lisa provided. You can immediately see the difference. But first, let me read you the story in the final edited form.

The story is called “Climbing.” You can see screens of the edits that Lisa made.

More about flash fiction:

Please support this podcast by subscribing!

This episode is full of stories about why dragons were not originally a part of DragonAge, how The Old Republic ended up with speeder bike mounts, how the Asari came to be in Mass Effect and more. Georg and Emmanuel also touch on the massive changes in the games industry these days and even Larian and BG3. We also delve into our strange paths into BioWare and the gaming industry. For those that love BioWare games, or games in general, this is a great oral history by two industry veterans.

Please do listen to Parts 1 and 2 and do subscribe to get more BioWare interviews in the future!

I would like to always thank everyone we ever worked with at BioWare.

Here are some photos that Georg rescued!

Everyone who worked at BioWare had a part to play in getting the game out. However, people like me were peripheral, most of the time, to what went into the games. For sure, we would all playtest the games back then, and I’m sure bugs and ideas went in because of that. For example, one of the writers, Dan Whiteside, did put some of one part of a Dungeons and Dragons campaign that I had been involved in.

Thank you for listening, do subscribe so you can listen to more interesting episodes.

When you are involved in such a game studio, no matter who you are, I am sure a small part of you ends up in the game. Next week, for example, you will note that Georg had some part to play in the workings of the Mako, the vehicle in Mass Effect.

I am lucky in that I do have one very small piece of me in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.

LucasArts was very careful about what was considered “Star Wars-y” back in 2003. It’s open knowledge that BioWare chose The Old Republic era so that the writers could have more creative freedom. When the game was coming out, the QA team submitted the lists of Random Names that would come up when you created your main character. To see if they could get by the LucasArts censors they submitted a bunch of BioWare employees’ names.

The only name that apparently went by the censors without any changes was “Dups”.

Yes, if you hit the random name generator in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, even now on an iPad, you will eventually get to “Dups” as a first name. I genuinely did not know they had done this. Stanley Woo and Chris Priestly told me this well after the game had come out. So there you go, somewhere, in the randomly generated characters, it is possible that someone played a Star Wars character thinking that “Dups” might be a name from the original “Star Wars” universe.

Kind of crazy.

In-game Easter eggs featuring BioWare employees can be found as far back as Baldur’s Gate 1 when you can read the tombstones of the Nashkel Cemetery. There are inscriptions such as “Ray - Who said, “This damn game will be... the death of me!”“ referring to Dr. Ray Muzyka one of the CEOs and many others referring to those who worked on the game.

Okay, I think it’s now time to finish the interview with Craig. Please note, these stories likely mean more to those who worked at BioWare between 2001 and 2007 than perhaps to many gamers. At the same time, I hope you enjoy the joy of this oral history as we watched the people at BioWare release some of the most acclaimed games in history.

Last week, we were still at our old office on Whyte Avenue in Edmonton from where Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic were born. We then moved offices as we were building Jade Empire, Mass Effect and what became Dragon Age.

Before you listen to this episode please listen to:

Other links from this episode

In the episode we talk about singing the Infogrammes theme song. Infogrames was the publisher for Neverwinter Nights, later Infogrames rebranded to Atari. At the time that we were being published by Infogrames, they released the cheesiest corporate song of all time. We had a blast making fun of this song internally. I’ve linked to Youtube with the original song.

Seriously, I’m convinced Infogrames had to change their name after they put this out.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

If you play video games then you probably know BioWare. The game studio was responsible for bringing some of the most renowned Dungeons & Dragons computer games to life including Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 and Neverwinter Nights, the most beloved Star Wars game story of all time in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, the space opera trilogy of Mass Effect and of course the high fantasy epics of Dragon Age. The Mass Effect franchise alone has sold over 30 million copies. Over the years the staff who have worked at the studio have entertained millions in producing some of the most critically acclaimed story-based computer and console roleplaying games in history.

If this podcast glorifies the idea of words creating worlds, then BioWare and all its people are masters of that phrase. But it takes more than game developers to bring a game out the door; there’s a supporting cast of hundreds and I was lucky to be one of them for some years between 2001 and 2007.

A few years ago BioWare celebrated 25 years and produced an amazing book with artwork, stories and photos. But you can’t tell all the stories, especially all the crazy and geeky ones in a single book. So I thought it would be great to sit down with some former BioWarians like Craig to talk about those old days. This interview is quite geeky; it goes into what Craig and I were doing there helping to build, launch and run the BioWare Community.

In many ways, this is a love letter to all the people we worked with. I’m sure most gamers that recall games such as Neverwinter Nights and Jade Empire don’t know all the stories behind how a small crew managed to keep those games alive or get those games out the door.

I hope you enjoy our stories.

Some photos and videos

And finally see the crazy habit trail we talk about… c. 2002-2003.

There are many people we didn’t name in this podcast: We can’t there’s too many, just open up the credits on any BioWare game and every person there is a hero! However, thank you to Drs. Ray Muzyka and Greg Zeschuk for bringing us all together once upon a time.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

Thanks to the following:

* My colleague Viktor Djupsjöbacka

* My brother Harsha Wijayawardhana

* ElevenLabs for creating a voice clone of my father

Other links:

* About Sigiriya on Wikipedia

* About the Mahavamsa from which I quote

* And finally, enjoy some music!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

Thanks in this episode to:

* The Chapter Chasers writing group who gave me lots of feedback

* Dr. Erwin Warkentin for his constructive criticism

* The wonderful office of Supermetrics Singapore and all the beautiful people that inhabit it, as much was recorded there while on the go and especially my colleague Viktor Djupsjöbacka for his patience.

The AI work on this piece was through ElevenLabs

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

I invite Dr. Erwin Warkentin, retired professor and (not-retired) literary critic onto the show to both read my autobiographic story and discuss.

The above picture is a pictograph from Papua New Guinea that hangs on my my brother’s wall in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Another memory from that time period.

You can listen to more conversations with Dr. Erwin Warkentin in:

Thanks for listening, subscribe so you will know when I publish the text of this story!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

Today’s episode features my friends Andres, Nik, Olli, Niall and Liisa. Over six years we have adventured through many worlds and told many stories. This episode is as much about them as it is about role-playing in general. Thank you!

A future episode will feature more of the stories, characters and worlds.

Links from today’s episode:

* All about Dungeons and Dragons: I suggest this primer video for those interested.

* Critical Role

* Daggerheart

* Dragonlance Chronicles by Margaret Weiss and Tracy Hickman

* R. A. Salvatore’s original Icewind Dale Trilogy that introduces Drizzt Do’Urden to the world

* Raymond E. Feist’s Magician

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

The interview is followed by my own immigrant story and some singing!

Links:

* Visit The Shortcut in Finland for more about their programs and how to get involved.

* Learn more about the attitude change campaign run by The Shortcut and their partners.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

Without modern conveniences like YouTube, if you missed an episode during a long and arduous season of 25 episodes, your only hope was to watch it on videotape or wait for reruns. There was also the infamous “cheater” episode that many shows of that era created. Picture this: It’s episode 18 of a Golden Girls season in the 1980s. Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia are sitting around the kitchen table. Sophia brings up some ridiculous premise about her flight from Sicily, and therein ensues an episode made of clips from previous episodes. This is a “cheater” episode—no new footage, cheaper production costs, and some ridiculous framing device for the clips.

As I grew older, I noted that almost all the TV shows used this gimmick at some point in the season. There were comedy shows that I watched with my parents, like The Golden Girls and The Cosby Show, while others were more aimed at me, like MacGyver, The A-Team, Riptide, and Hardcastle and McCormick, to name a few. Television in Hong Kong in the 80s was a mix of American and British. I don’t remember if television shows from Canada, Australia, or the UK used this storytelling mechanism.

I do recall watching Neighbours, for example. This came on every afternoon, and I remember watching youngsters Kylie Minogue and Jason Donovan very clearly before their music careers. Canadians would be surprised to learn that The Beachcombers would air on lazy Sunday afternoons, usually after televised lawn bowling, and someone will have to write in and tell me whether that show had such episodes. I sincerely doubt that many Hong Kong people could make head or tail of what was happening in Molly’s Reach. It’s probably unsurprising that what I remember most about The Beachcombers growing up is a comedy skit show in Hong Kong making fun of it.

So for this “cheater” episode for Tales Under the Cat Tree, I will use the framing device of what it has taken to put out a weekly podcast of roughly 20 minutes by myself. After all, this was something I had never done before. Initially, my plan was 20 episodes in total, so, with this episode, I am considering this my first season, done and dusted. In listening to this you may get some ideas if you are considering having a podcast yourself. At the end I will talk about what’s next!

Recording a Podcast

Microphone Arm: Rode PSA 1+ microphone arm Microphone: Shure MV6 USB-C microphone. A very good microphone I could not use: a Rode NT 1 Condenser mic.

Mentioned:

Coming Up with a Theme Song

Audio effects: Artlist.

Mentioned:

Interviewing for a Podcast

Interviews: Riverside.FM. Audio editing: Audacity Audio AI: AuphonicWireless Mics: Rode Wireless Micro

Mentioned

Use of AI in Tales Under the Cat Tree

Other editing tools: Adobe Podcast. Transcription: MacWhisper whisper.cpp

The Future of Tales Under the Cat Tree

At the end of 21 episodes, which is about the same number as a season of 80s television, I need to look forward to Season 2. I didn’t know what I wanted out of this podcast, and it shows. I’ve experimented with themes, structures, publishing times, and formats. The criticism I’ve received reflects the same: you don’t know what to expect, and I don’t have a format to stick to.

Going forward each week, I will pair bigger topics with a compelling piece of fiction or autobiography. I sincerely believe that stories provide a lens into capturing and understanding any topic—whether history, technology, or business—by connecting personal narratives to the wider picture. This means more episodes such as Episode 10, where I wrote a story called “To the lands of milk and honey” to illustrate management styles, or Episode 15, “From Russia Without Love,” which had a story about Stalinist purges by Dr. Erwin Warkentin followed by an interview. This means more original writing and biography, paired with interviews and topics around an episode theme.

Thank you to everyone who has helped me thus far, you are too numerous to name. I hope you will join me or stay with me on this journey. In fact, I hope you will contribute. Everyone has or knows someone with a story.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

My name is not Dave

Dave was born bawling. He didn't really like what he saw when he popped out into the light. "Rather depressing," he drawled. But there was nothing to do about it, so he sighed, shut up and set up shop in my head.

To date, that is the shortest “flash fiction” story I’ve ever written at exactly 42 words, not including the title.

Flash fiction is a sub-genre of the short story that can range from a few hundred or fewer words to maybe a thousand words. In other words, a really short short story! As with any story, it needs to have a progression: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Flash is a genre I knew nothing about until early 2024 when I randomly decided to get back into writing fiction. Since I needed something to force me forward, I found an online course at Oxford University entitled, “Flash Fiction Workshop,” with writer and teacher Gail Anderson. On a whim, I enrolled.

Over a twelve-week period, this group of students was courageous enough to present their creations to each other and receive live feedback. I won’t lie; the first time my story was discussed, I was terrified. I can write until the cows jump over the moon for the world wide web, but here were real, live people dissecting my work in front of me while I was muted. I suppose years of code reviews by my peers have helped, but this was on another level.

Writing flash stories is an art. If I had been asked how difficult it would be to write a piece of fictional literature under 1000 words, I might have said, “It can’t be that bad.” In reality, with less space to get your ideas across, each word becomes a ponderous weight on your lips. In such a situation, your mind can lazily wander into a “telling” mode where the reader is left unsatisfied and unchallenged. With 1000 words or less, can you craft a story with any wonder at the end? Does the story leap from the page into your subconscious long after you have read it because it made you think? Can you even get the reader to see the same things you do and get to the same conclusion?

The first story I wrote for the class was called “In the looking glass.” It centered on the perspective as seen from within a mirror stationed in the hallway at the entrance of an apartment, something I had thought was obvious. But it wasn’t. It was only obvious to me because I had imagined my current apartment, which has a mirrored closet at the end of the entrance hallway. Seeing my short short story through other people’s eyes was enlightening. One person even thought there was a video camera behind the glass; another could not understand why the person was putting on shoes in their bedroom. After all, that’s where they had their mirrors!

Every week we were given “prompts” and a specific word count with which we played for the following week. The prompts could be photos, audio clips, or random words, to name a few. For me, a haunting melody turned into a tragedy for twins; a prompt about a city turned into a story about a parrot; and a photo of an old storefront bearing the name C. Sullivan turned into a version of the devil come to visit, called “Sullivan’s Choice.”

If you are interested in starting up writing again, or for the first time, Gail’s course is one of the best I can recommend. I had forgotten the joy of putting pen to literal paper. I had forgotten the cathartic release of working through reality by writing fiction. A few of us loved the course so much that we have continued to meet almost monthly since the course ended. The “Chapter Chasers” writing group celebrated its first anniversary this past month. Through this year of telling stories to each other, the members have changed jobs, survived health scares, moved cities, and found refuge in our imaginations. We have yet to meet in person!

Because of Gail, her course, and my writing group, I do believe my writing has improved. I am now on the lookout for adverbs that don’t really advance the narrative in someone’s head, where the writing becomes lazy, making for a less engaging experience for the reader. I think with care about each word and sentence, making sure they work to drive home the story. I did take a longer, advanced writing course after the “Flash Fiction Workshop.” The advanced writing course gave me more tools to explore character, plot creation, and more, however, for me, receiving live feedback from my peers was the most fun.

Storytelling is unique to each individual: their style, their experiences, and their beliefs. Courses won’t teach you how to write but give you tools with which you can get your story into the mind of another effectively. As with any skill, the only way to improve is to practice every day and every week. Every day I walk through a myriad of stories: The veins on a leaf are the map to an ancient city; a shuffling man hunched over on the sidewalk, a tale of joy or sorrow untold; a melody unlocks the path to someone’s heart. Every day I am bursting to tell you a story. I do not know how you will understand it, I do not know if you will enjoy it, but I do know that I must try. Sometimes the stories are long, but oftentimes, you can accomplish in a few words what takes a novel, and that is the beauty of flash fiction.

Since April, I have published only one of the other stories that I wrote during the flash fiction course:

The following are flash fiction stories specifically written for this Substack

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

I only met Moishe Kantorowitz once in my entire life, some 30 years ago. I have remembered his name ever since. This is not something I can say about most people that I have spent a couple of hours with.

Moishe—I hope I can get away with referring to him by his first name—came to talk to the History graduate students at Memorial University of Newfoundland, of which I was one. He was, in my memory at least, a quiet man. He came in, sat at the head of the classroom; there were some ten of us and a few professors. I can't remember when, but he rolled up his shirt, turned his arm, and showed us the tattoo of his number from Auschwitz. He talked about the forced march from what is now Belarus. He talked about what that felt like, how starved he was, and what it was like to lose all his family.

Moishe was the first and only Holocaust survivor I have ever met in person.

A decade later, I was coming down a long mountain hike in the Rockies with a dear friend, and we had incorrectly calculated the amount of water we needed. That interminable hike scrambling up a thousand metres felt like the end of the world. In that moment, for some reason, Moishe's face and his story popped into my mind. I remember thinking, how can I possibly feel so terrible when what I was experiencing was not even an iota of what he experienced?

The reality is though, unlike people I have met in Europe, in Canada, and the United States, I do not have any family ties to this war. There are no strange Sri Lankan great-uncles who found themselves traversing the countryside of Europe in World War Two. But it doesn't matter.

It shouldn't matter.

The lessons of the Holocaust and of the German Concentration Camps are there plain and simple. The hatred on display was staggering: groups of people, most of all the Jewish people, were made out to be nothing more than animals to be experimented upon and finally exterminated.

Do not hate the German people; what happened and this hatred is possible for anyone, anywhere, "anywhen". Do not say, "It cannot happen to us." Instead, ask the question, "When will it happen again?" In the 20th century, genocides have happened in too many societies, from the Rwandan genocide to the Cambodian Killing Fields.

There are of course many theories on why we commit genocide as a species. The one I ascribe to starts and ends with the mushy stuff between our ears. Neuroscience tells us not only that our brains are incredibly malleable, but that we also basically function in an illusion of the world as we have created it. For example, you can actually manipulate the brain to think you have a third arm. If you are reading this on your daily commute, I am sure that you cannot even imagine hurting one of your fellow passengers. Then again, that annoying mosquito, well, that's another story. Unfortunately, our brains can create models where you are part of an in-group and the others, well, they could just as well be one of those mosquitos. The term is "otherization". It's when we refer to "those people."

I have heard this term so often. A well-educated person used that expression to describe a homeless First Nations man in Edmonton, Canada. A Sinhalese person I met used it to describe a Tamil person some decades ago in Sri Lanka. A Finn used that term in a professional setting when talking about African immigrants to Finland. Politicians the world over use it to refer to their opponents. "Those people," the ones who are not like us, the ones that don't belong, the ones that ought not to be treated like you and me. Heck, I know, judging by at least one beer bottle thrown at me, I have been one of "those people."

There's not much distance from referring to "those people" to a place where you condone violence or aggressive action towards that same group. From there, it's not very far towards the extremes we have seen the world over. For the reader that says you are crazy, that's fine: I just know that I am no different than anyone else. I can be swayed, I can be desensitized, I can commit violence through inaction as much as action. I have seen the "other" in business settings: leaders who denigrate their staff in whole or in part and staff who talk of their leaders like some caricatures from Dilbert. We create mental models of people around us, we group them into our in-groups and out-groups, we perform actions against them whether that be simply in thought, by voice or, in the extreme, with physical violence.

There is a solution. There is very little that differentiates us as human beings. We all have different external colours and appearances, we have different beliefs, we have different preferences. However, for the most part, the similarities outweigh the differences. When I show you a green leaf, you nod at our shared greenness. We laugh, we cry, and we love in the same way. The more you talk to another person, the more you learn. The more you share, the more you connect. The more you listen, the more you understand.

Thank you! If you enjoyed reading this, please subscribe!

The solution, if I could make it happen, is for everyone to meet every other "type" of person. When you meet the homeless person and understand that he was like you until his divorce left him in a depression where he lost his job and couldn't afford the medication. When you meet the gay man and you realize that you share a passion for the same movies. When you meet the immigrant and you realize that you both had mothers who loved gardening.

The solution is the continuous updating of your mental models through new meeting new people. I would love for each person to experience life in another country, in another state, in another province. We can seek to bring those of differing views together so they can have a sensible dialogue, maybe by starting with what makes us similar instead of what makes us different. We can try not to lump "right wing" and "left wing" people into groups and instead seek out people with different views. I don't expect people to change overnight, but I do believe the more you experience, the more you change your internal assumptions.

This is when I remember Moishe, and not just him, but so many other people that I have met who have changed my internal assumptions and models. We must never forget history; we must never fail to pass on our history; we must always tell our stories. In those stories, we have the possibility to change one person, and just maybe, that one person is enough. I hope that when you hear someone saying "those people," you remember that some of "those people" never saw their parents again because other people saw to it that "those people" were exterminated.

Moishe Kantorowitz passed away in 2008. He received an honorary degree from Memorial University of Newfoundland for his work in Holocaust education. His book, published by Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program and distributed by Second Story Press, is called Lament. I never knew Moishe beyond that one single time that I met him. That one time though, he told me a short story of his life, which I have remembered ever since, and I thank him for this kindness.

* In the podcast episode, you can listen to excerpts from the film reels produced when the United States Department of Defense liberated German Concentration Camps in 1945. This film is in the Public domain and available on the Internet Archive

* The excerpt from Moishe Kantorowitz’ memoir Lament is read with permission of the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program the book Lament will be launched in St. John’s on September 18, 2025. It is entirely by coicidence that this is happening at the same time as this episode. Please purchase your copy of Lament at Second Story Press

* The...]]>If you are looking for links to various sources, materials and sites cited in the show, please scroll to the end. The article that inspired this episode is Yair Rosenberg’s The Atlantic piece: The MAGA Influencers Rehabilitating Hitler.

I only met Moishe Kantorowitz once in my entire life, some 30 years ago. I have remembered his name ever since. This is not something I can say about most people that I have spent a couple of hours with.

Moishe—I hope I can get away with referring to him by his first name—came to talk to the History graduate students at Memorial University of Newfoundland, of which I was one. He was, in my memory at least, a quiet man. He came in, sat at the head of the classroom; there were some ten of us and a few professors. I can't remember when, but he rolled up his shirt, turned his arm, and showed us the tattoo of his number from Auschwitz. He talked about the forced march from what is now Belarus. He talked about what that felt like, how starved he was, and what it was like to lose all his family.

Moishe was the first and only Holocaust survivor I have ever met in person.

A decade later, I was coming down a long mountain hike in the Rockies with a dear friend, and we had incorrectly calculated the amount of water we needed. That interminable hike scrambling up a thousand metres felt like the end of the world. In that moment, for some reason, Moishe's face and his story popped into my mind. I remember thinking, how can I possibly feel so terrible when what I was experiencing was not even an iota of what he experienced?

The reality is though, unlike people I have met in Europe, in Canada, and the United States, I do not have any family ties to this war. There are no strange Sri Lankan great-uncles who found themselves traversing the countryside of Europe in World War Two. But it doesn't matter.

It shouldn't matter.

The lessons of the Holocaust and of the German Concentration Camps are there plain and simple. The hatred on display was staggering: groups of people, most of all the Jewish people, were made out to be nothing more than animals to be experimented upon and finally exterminated.

Do not hate the German people; what happened and this hatred is possible for anyone, anywhere, "anywhen". Do not say, "It cannot happen to us." Instead, ask the question, "When will it happen again?" In the 20th century, genocides have happened in too many societies, from the Rwandan genocide to the Cambodian Killing Fields.

There are of course many theories on why we commit genocide as a species. The one I ascribe to starts and ends with the mushy stuff between our ears. Neuroscience tells us not only that our brains are incredibly malleable, but that we also basically function in an illusion of the world as we have created it. For example, you can actually manipulate the brain to think you have a third arm. If you are reading this on your daily commute, I am sure that you cannot even imagine hurting one of your fellow passengers. Then again, that annoying mosquito, well, that's another story. Unfortunately, our brains can create models where you are part of an in-group and the others, well, they could just as well be one of those mosquitos. The term is "otherization". It's when we refer to "those people."

I have heard this term so often. A well-educated person used that expression to describe a homeless First Nations man in Edmonton, Canada. A Sinhalese person I met used it to describe a Tamil person some decades ago in Sri Lanka. A Finn used that term in a professional setting when talking about African immigrants to Finland. Politicians the world over use it to refer to their opponents. "Those people," the ones who are not like us, the ones that don't belong, the ones that ought not to be treated like you and me. Heck, I know, judging by at least one beer bottle thrown at me, I have been one of "those people."

There's not much distance from referring to "those people" to a place where you condone violence or aggressive action towards that same group. From there, it's not very far towards the extremes we have seen the world over. For the reader that says you are crazy, that's fine: I just know that I am no different than anyone else. I can be swayed, I can be desensitized, I can commit violence through inaction as much as action. I have seen the "other" in business settings: leaders who denigrate their staff in whole or in part and staff who talk of their leaders like some caricatures from Dilbert. We create mental models of people around us, we group them into our in-groups and out-groups, we perform actions against them whether that be simply in thought, by voice or, in the extreme, with physical violence.

There is a solution. There is very little that differentiates us as human beings. We all have different external colours and appearances, we have different beliefs, we have different preferences. However, for the most part, the similarities outweigh the differences. When I show you a green leaf, you nod at our shared greenness. We laugh, we cry, and we love in the same way. The more you talk to another person, the more you learn. The more you share, the more you connect. The more you listen, the more you understand.

Thank you! If you enjoyed reading this, please subscribe!

The solution, if I could make it happen, is for everyone to meet every other "type" of person. When you meet the homeless person and understand that he was like you until his divorce left him in a depression where he lost his job and couldn't afford the medication. When you meet the gay man and you realize that you share a passion for the same movies. When you meet the immigrant and you realize that you both had mothers who loved gardening.

The solution is the continuous updating of your mental models through new meeting new people. I would love for each person to experience life in another country, in another state, in another province. We can seek to bring those of differing views together so they can have a sensible dialogue, maybe by starting with what makes us similar instead of what makes us different. We can try not to lump "right wing" and "left wing" people into groups and instead seek out people with different views. I don't expect people to change overnight, but I do believe the more you experience, the more you change your internal assumptions.

This is when I remember Moishe, and not just him, but so many other people that I have met who have changed my internal assumptions and models. We must never forget history; we must never fail to pass on our history; we must always tell our stories. In those stories, we have the possibility to change one person, and just maybe, that one person is enough. I hope that when you hear someone saying "those people," you remember that some of "those people" never saw their parents again because other people saw to it that "those people" were exterminated.

Moishe Kantorowitz passed away in 2008. He received an honorary degree from Memorial University of Newfoundland for his work in Holocaust education. His book, published by Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program and distributed by Second Story Press, is called Lament. I never knew Moishe beyond that one single time that I met him. That one time though, he told me a short story of his life, which I have remembered ever since, and I thank him for this kindness.

* In the podcast episode, you can listen to excerpts from the film reels produced when the United States Department of Defense liberated German Concentration Camps in 1945. This film is in the Public domain and available on the Internet Archive

* The excerpt from Moishe Kantorowitz’ memoir Lament is read with permission of the Azrieli Foundation’s Holocaust Survivor Memoirs Program the book Lament will be launched in St. John’s on September 18, 2025. It is entirely by coicidence that this is happening at the same time as this episode. Please purchase your copy of Lament at Second Story Press

* The biography I read is from the Montreal Holocaust Museum and can be read in full here. There are also photos of Moishe throughout his life.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

But is my hope too overblown and the hype too overwhelming? Will this new world of personalized applications even arrive? And if it does, what does it mean for software as a business?

First though, I have my friend and former colleague Derek Sidebottom on the show talking about his new venture, MyParentCafe.com. An application and a network which is already changing lives.

Dups: And today, I’m very happy to introduce a very good friend and a former colleague, not once, but twice. I want to welcome Derek Sidebottom to the podcast.

Derek: So excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dups: Hey, how did we meet? I think we’re going back to the first company we worked at. What was that small little company?

Derek: Yeah, we were working together at BioWare up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Dups: Yes. And for those that don’t know BioWare, it produced things like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Give me a short, brief history of where you’ve been since then.

Derek: Yeah, we were purchased by Electronic Arts and I moved down to the San Francisco Bay Area in the summer of, wait for it, 2008, right before the financial collapse. It was an exciting time to be in the Bay. And from Electronic Arts, I went on to all sorts of other places. A couple of in-house organizations, and Kabam, Rocket Fuel—we were the number one AI marketing technology company five years running in the world. Forty million to 400 million in kind of two years, we went public, just crazy growth. So I’ve been working in software, in gaming, in AI and marketing technology, fintech, you name it, probably spent a bit of time in it. I just really enjoy growing organizations. And on the HR side, it’s always about how do you make people better, faster, stronger in what they’re doing.

Dups: And that’s an excellent segue into My Parent Cafe, which is what you’re doing today. What is My Parent Cafe?

Derek: My Parent Cafe, it is a parent resource network. We were stunned when we were doing the research—it takes 184,000 hours and about $350,000 right now in the United States to raise a child. They say it takes a village, and the joke is, like, do they just show up? Is there a number to call? And the answer, stunningly, is there isn’t. There’s an app to date, there’s an app to fix your house, there’s an app for your career, and there’s no dedicated network out there for parents. And that just became our focus in terms of, like, well, what would that look like? And how could we make that happen?

Dups: So I mean, there’s parents of all types, right Derek? Who is this actually for? Like, who are you targeting in the beginning?

Derek: Yeah, no, that’s a great question. We talked to parents in France, in Costa Rica, Canada, the United States, you know, everywhere. And we narrowed it down to our real purpose is to connect the people who need to the people who know. And so our quest then became, well, let’s find the people who are most in need, right? This isn’t about sharing what I made for breakfast or my summer vacation. This is people who really need the connection outside of their normal networks. And so we began to focus in on the moments that matter the most… But we also then specialized in some of the harder special needs journeys, right? It would be chronic illness, cancer, kids with cancer, type one diabetes, autism, ADHD, chromosome disorders. These are the journeys no one signed up for. And you became a member of a club you didn’t want to be part of. And then essentially, we give you that club to be part of.

Dups: Let’s actually dig into that a little. Because Facebook groups and Reddit are there already. And there are groups for parents in both those places. What does My Parent Cafe add to the mix of this?

Derek: You can think of it like… we’ll call them social networks or entertainment networks for the generations, through MySpace, through Facebook, and even more Instagram, Quora, Reddit, now into TikTok. What we’ve found is that the parents are everywhere. They’re trying to use each of these different platforms to connect. None of it was purpose-built. We then figured out, like, let’s build it purpose-built for that parent to connect in a way that I don’t have to tell who I am. I can stay anonymous, which is the best-of-breed feature from one platform. I’m able to accumulate, we’ll call it credibility, right? So we have a coffee bean mechanism. The more helpful you are with other people, the more coffee beans you accumulate, that unlocks certain things.

As you go, you are able to post and reply, but it’s not an algorithmic platform trying to sell you things. I will add, we threw an AI co-parent in there as well to play with. So there’s now a 24/7 AI co-parent in every one of our various villages—and villages for us are topic areas—ready to help you. And once you’re done getting what you want out of that discussion with the bot, right? Like, now let me ask humans. And so we’ve linked together questions, answers, support, and solutions specifically around the parent. And that’s just something the other platforms don’t do. If you look at the people who need help the most… their existing social networks probably don’t include people who had any expertise in that area.

You need to transcend geography. You need to reach out well beyond your normal networks. The connection to people is still core. We don’t really think AI is ever going to be able to genuinely say, “I understand how you feel.” We’re just not going to believe that. So we’re going to end up still needing to connect the parent who is, in many ways, desperate, scared, nervous, to other folks who have been there, done that. But the people who’ve been there, done that do not really always want to pile on with the 101, 201 answers. And so our AI bot can actually give you the research component, can give you the core information you need, so you’re not taxing the parent network with the same questions over and over again. And we notice that that’s ultimately why a lot of traditional group forums die. People are just kind of tired of seeing the same things again and again. So the AI carries the repetitive, and the parent humans are able to sort of give the extra insight and intel.

Listen to more interviews on Tales under the cat tree for free!

Dups: Derek, how do you make money from My Parent Cafe?

Derek: We’re a startup, we’re staying lean. Originally, we thought we were going to be more of a direct-to-consumer play where the parents would pay a couple of dollars per month. We decided to remove the friction on that because as we were talking to organizations that already existed out there that serve the parent market, we heard a lot of these organizations were like, “Well, this sounds great. Could we create a group on this thing?” And we realized we’re actually sitting on a B2B-to-C model. And so how we make money is ultimately we charge organizations who want to essentially have their own private group on our platform. They pay for that.

Dups: Why My Parent Cafe? What is the personal story behind this? Why did you think this was the direction you wanted to go?

Derek: Yeah, thank you for asking. For me, after 25 years of building great workforces, so human resources, it’s not a big jump to do parent resources. It’s very similar. In the HR seat, we would always come across people who desperately needed help in their family life, but we had to stop at some point in time because we were the employer. And on that other side, my own little one, when she was born, ultimately she’s a type one diabetic and she’s on the spectrum. And we’ve moved a number of times. And so this idea of, you know, “find your village” was real. We’re like one of the high-need journeys. This just became part of the fabric of building My Parent Cafe.

After a year of thinking about this with my co-founder, we couldn’t figure out why this shouldn’t exist. Like, why doesn’t it exist? And then we realized, well, we’re going to make it exist. And then, you know, probably the last filter was, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? And what will fuel me over the next 10, 20 years? Helping parents in need is an easy one. And so that became the fuel behind this, for sure.

Dups: That’s one of the wonderful things that I love about startups and founders is that you are solving a passion. So talking of the journey, where are you going next?

Derek: Yeah, so we are very carefully—we’re in what we call our pioneer period. After that, we go gangbusters. We are going to open up another vertical for looking after your own parents. We’ve heard “elder care” again and again. It’s just one of these things where, unfortunately, you get a call sometimes in the middle of the night and boom, you need to become an expert...]]>One of my hopes for the rise of Generative AI is its ability to bring highly technical skills to a wider audience. I hope that it means the rise of applications, systems and networks that change the lives of people in a more meaningful, personalized way.

But is my hope too overblown and the hype too overwhelming? Will this new world of personalized applications even arrive? And if it does, what does it mean for software as a business?

First though, I have my friend and former colleague Derek Sidebottom on the show talking about his new venture, MyParentCafe.com. An application and a network which is already changing lives.

Dups: And today, I’m very happy to introduce a very good friend and a former colleague, not once, but twice. I want to welcome Derek Sidebottom to the podcast.

Derek: So excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Dups: Hey, how did we meet? I think we’re going back to the first company we worked at. What was that small little company?

Derek: Yeah, we were working together at BioWare up in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

Dups: Yes. And for those that don’t know BioWare, it produced things like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Give me a short, brief history of where you’ve been since then.

Derek: Yeah, we were purchased by Electronic Arts and I moved down to the San Francisco Bay Area in the summer of, wait for it, 2008, right before the financial collapse. It was an exciting time to be in the Bay. And from Electronic Arts, I went on to all sorts of other places. A couple of in-house organizations, and Kabam, Rocket Fuel—we were the number one AI marketing technology company five years running in the world. Forty million to 400 million in kind of two years, we went public, just crazy growth. So I’ve been working in software, in gaming, in AI and marketing technology, fintech, you name it, probably spent a bit of time in it. I just really enjoy growing organizations. And on the HR side, it’s always about how do you make people better, faster, stronger in what they’re doing.

Dups: And that’s an excellent segue into My Parent Cafe, which is what you’re doing today. What is My Parent Cafe?

Derek: My Parent Cafe, it is a parent resource network. We were stunned when we were doing the research—it takes 184,000 hours and about $350,000 right now in the United States to raise a child. They say it takes a village, and the joke is, like, do they just show up? Is there a number to call? And the answer, stunningly, is there isn’t. There’s an app to date, there’s an app to fix your house, there’s an app for your career, and there’s no dedicated network out there for parents. And that just became our focus in terms of, like, well, what would that look like? And how could we make that happen?

Dups: So I mean, there’s parents of all types, right Derek? Who is this actually for? Like, who are you targeting in the beginning?

Derek: Yeah, no, that’s a great question. We talked to parents in France, in Costa Rica, Canada, the United States, you know, everywhere. And we narrowed it down to our real purpose is to connect the people who need to the people who know. And so our quest then became, well, let’s find the people who are most in need, right? This isn’t about sharing what I made for breakfast or my summer vacation. This is people who really need the connection outside of their normal networks. And so we began to focus in on the moments that matter the most… But we also then specialized in some of the harder special needs journeys, right? It would be chronic illness, cancer, kids with cancer, type one diabetes, autism, ADHD, chromosome disorders. These are the journeys no one signed up for. And you became a member of a club you didn’t want to be part of. And then essentially, we give you that club to be part of.

Dups: Let’s actually dig into that a little. Because Facebook groups and Reddit are there already. And there are groups for parents in both those places. What does My Parent Cafe add to the mix of this?

Derek: You can think of it like… we’ll call them social networks or entertainment networks for the generations, through MySpace, through Facebook, and even more Instagram, Quora, Reddit, now into TikTok. What we’ve found is that the parents are everywhere. They’re trying to use each of these different platforms to connect. None of it was purpose-built. We then figured out, like, let’s build it purpose-built for that parent to connect in a way that I don’t have to tell who I am. I can stay anonymous, which is the best-of-breed feature from one platform. I’m able to accumulate, we’ll call it credibility, right? So we have a coffee bean mechanism. The more helpful you are with other people, the more coffee beans you accumulate, that unlocks certain things.

As you go, you are able to post and reply, but it’s not an algorithmic platform trying to sell you things. I will add, we threw an AI co-parent in there as well to play with. So there’s now a 24/7 AI co-parent in every one of our various villages—and villages for us are topic areas—ready to help you. And once you’re done getting what you want out of that discussion with the bot, right? Like, now let me ask humans. And so we’ve linked together questions, answers, support, and solutions specifically around the parent. And that’s just something the other platforms don’t do. If you look at the people who need help the most… their existing social networks probably don’t include people who had any expertise in that area.

You need to transcend geography. You need to reach out well beyond your normal networks. The connection to people is still core. We don’t really think AI is ever going to be able to genuinely say, “I understand how you feel.” We’re just not going to believe that. So we’re going to end up still needing to connect the parent who is, in many ways, desperate, scared, nervous, to other folks who have been there, done that. But the people who’ve been there, done that do not really always want to pile on with the 101, 201 answers. And so our AI bot can actually give you the research component, can give you the core information you need, so you’re not taxing the parent network with the same questions over and over again. And we notice that that’s ultimately why a lot of traditional group forums die. People are just kind of tired of seeing the same things again and again. So the AI carries the repetitive, and the parent humans are able to sort of give the extra insight and intel.

Listen to more interviews on Tales under the cat tree for free!

Dups: Derek, how do you make money from My Parent Cafe?

Derek: We’re a startup, we’re staying lean. Originally, we thought we were going to be more of a direct-to-consumer play where the parents would pay a couple of dollars per month. We decided to remove the friction on that because as we were talking to organizations that already existed out there that serve the parent market, we heard a lot of these organizations were like, “Well, this sounds great. Could we create a group on this thing?” And we realized we’re actually sitting on a B2B-to-C model. And so how we make money is ultimately we charge organizations who want to essentially have their own private group on our platform. They pay for that.

Dups: Why My Parent Cafe? What is the personal story behind this? Why did you think this was the direction you wanted to go?

Derek: Yeah, thank you for asking. For me, after 25 years of building great workforces, so human resources, it’s not a big jump to do parent resources. It’s very similar. In the HR seat, we would always come across people who desperately needed help in their family life, but we had to stop at some point in time because we were the employer. And on that other side, my own little one, when she was born, ultimately she’s a type one diabetic and she’s on the spectrum. And we’ve moved a number of times. And so this idea of, you know, “find your village” was real. We’re like one of the high-need journeys. This just became part of the fabric of building My Parent Cafe.

After a year of thinking about this with my co-founder, we couldn’t figure out why this shouldn’t exist. Like, why doesn’t it exist? And then we realized, well, we’re going to make it exist. And then, you know, probably the last filter was, what do I want to do with the rest of my life? And what will fuel me over the next 10, 20 years? Helping parents in need is an easy one. And so that became the fuel behind this, for sure.

Dups: That’s one of the wonderful things that I love about startups and founders is that you are solving a passion. So talking of the journey, where are you going next?

Derek: Yeah, so we are very carefully—we’re in what we call our pioneer period. After that, we go gangbusters. We are going to open up another vertical for looking after your own parents. We’ve heard “elder care” again and again. It’s just one of these things where, unfortunately, you get a call sometimes in the middle of the night and boom, you need to become an expert in long-term care or insurance and financial planning and assisted living facilities.

Even more exciting than building our own product, because when you’re building a resource network that helps people run their lives better, is you just keep coming across other innovations and entrepreneurs who are crazy enough to do the same thing. We’ve seen robotics and AI companies helping non-verbal kids speak, which is just unbelievable. We’ve got another organization that runs marathons with cerebral palsy kids in wheelchairs. It’s an ex-Marine who, unfortunately, his child passed away, but as a legacy project continued onward and has literally thousands of people running races every year with these kids who are grinning at the idea of moving in their wheelchair again. All we’re doing as a resource network is connecting people to other real humans who have been there, done that.

Dups: This is fantastic to hear, Derek. Any last parting words about My Parent Cafe and the journey you’re on?

Derek: If you’re listening right now, I encourage you, go to myparentcafe.com, click and join, and just add your wisdom. We keep running into people who are like, “Well, I’m late, I’ve already had my kids and I don’t have any problems right now.” Yeah, but that’s what we’re trying to stitch together. If you do know something, I assure you this is not a spammy platform. Just add your knowledge in your profile to the platform, and you won’t get bothered. But every once in a while, you’ll receive a little notification that, “Hey, a question’s been posted on the forum you might be able to help with. Would you care to add your voice?” If you don’t, that’s fine.

So we want to add the people who know. And obviously, if you’re a person who needs, by all means, please join us. And for organizations who are serving these spaces—you might be an influencer yourself with a community, you may be a financial planner, you might be an insurance organization, you could be a foundation, software company, wheelchair provider—we are looking to add and stitch together, frankly, the entire ecosystem that helps these high-need parents. And wouldn’t it be refreshing to have one place to go to, rather than leave the doctor’s office one day, leave the hospital, and go, “You’re on your own.” And the answer is, you’re not. You can go to My Parent Cafe now.

Dups: Thank you very much for coming on Tales Under the Cat Tree, Derek. It’s been fun watching your ride. It’s been fun being part of the ride. You are obviously a very close friend of mine, and I can’t wait to see where myparentcafe.com goes.

Derek: Thanks for having us. And Dups, you’ve been so supportive of our journey and appreciate helping to get the word out. And it’s been fun being on the podcast. Great to talk to you again.

This episode also features the article “Will personalized apps end software as a business?”

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

Welcome to Part 2 of my wide-ranging conversation with my dear friend Kaj Arnö in Nagu, Finland, in the Finnish Archipelago. For those who don't know Kaj, Kaj was one of the Finnish contingent of leaders at MySQL AB that shepherded the open source database to becoming the world's most popular before being sold to Sun Microsystems in 2008. He is one of the founders of MariaDB, former CEO, and now executive chairman of the MariaDB Foundation. To know more about all these things, please listen to last week's episode.

Kaj and I became friends because of our love of the outdoors. Kaj spends much of the summer, when he can, in Nagu and on the islands there by boat and kayak. I have written about the joy of spending Midsummer in these islands and even a kayaking trip to one of the more famous islands called Jurmo. This area is primarily inhabited by the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland and is therefore the subject of this episode.

Please note, as with the previous episode, we recorded this live in Nagu while walking and playing with Kaj's young son. As such, you will hear wind noise and the sounds of frisbees and a football.

Today, however, let's start with a poem by Finland's National Poet, J. L. Runeberg, first in Swedish, then in English. This poem talks about the birds that fly north to summer in the Finnish Archipelago.

Subscribe and listen to more great interviews with amazing people.

Project Frederika and the Soul of Swedish Finland: A Conversation with Kaj Arnö (Part 2)

Our conversation then turned to a new passion project: using open data to preserve the rich history of Swedish-speaking Finland in the age of AI.

Dups: Now, Kaj, you are involved in something called Project Frederika. First of all, what is Project Frederika?

Kaj: Project Frederika is about making Swedish Finland better represented on open data, meaning Wikipedia and Wikidata. It's also part of the general mission of making objective fact more used by humanity.

We know that there's a bias in LLMs. They can be sexist and racist in several ways because they are trained on data that is sexist and racist. This is a way to change it. The way you change it is by ensuring that the data on which the large language models (LLMs) are centrally trained—namely Wikipedia—has correct information. That is the goal of Project Frederika. Yes, we start from the luxurious, quote-unquote, problem of Swedish Finland, but the general case is a much more important one: to ensure that the base data out there is correct and unbiased.

Dups: That is really important. In a previous episode, I talked about the case of the "disappearing internet," but also how bias is entering so much of our reference material like Wikipedia, and therefore we're actually changing our own past. How do you ensure the accuracy or "correctness" of the information? Aren't you just as biased as everybody else?

Kaj: I think that's a valid question. My answer is that I don't need to provide the mechanism for accuracy; it's already provided by the design of Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a peer-review mechanism where others are checking the validity of data, and that's a functioning model.

What is broken, though, is that the amount of interest going into certain areas is not representative of the overall interest of humankind. For example, computer games happen to interest young males, and these young males are writing a lot about them on Wikipedia, which means that data is over-represented. That is an issue I noted for Swedish Finland. Here in Nagu, I inherited five paintings from two semi-famous artists, Johan Knutson and Dora Wahlroos. I didn't know about them, so I thought, "Well, I need to check Wikipedia." They only had articles in Finnish, although they were Swedish-speaking. I thought that must not remain the case. Somebody ought to do something.

At the same time, I realized that if that "somebody" is to ever appear, I have a special responsibility to take on that role because I share an interest in both openness and Swedish Finland. And through my work with MySQL and now MariaDB, I've been in close contact with the infrastructure people at the Wikimedia Foundation, because Wikipedia ran on MySQL and has been running on MariaDB for many years. So I had both the technical opportunity and the personal interest to make this happen.

Dups: This archipelago that we're sitting in is how many islands?

Kaj: We're now in Nagu. Nagu has about 1,400 to 1,500 inhabitants and way more than 3,000 islands. And if you look at Wikipedia, I think there were 1,212 articles on different islands in the Nagu archipelago.

Dups: As I understand it, the Swedish-Finnish archipelago in this area has had an outsized influence in the world. I believe seafarers from here went all around the world?

Kaj: Yes, there's an extraordinary influence from this area just because of the geography. If you look at Jared Diamond and his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, he says that geography has an influence. People are just as smart or as diligent, as good and as bad everywhere, but geography influences things. This is very much the case in the archipelago here. We who live here have been the interface between the outside world and Finland since time immemorial. You had to pass through here; the archipelago was the road.

That means we became experts on logistics and travel by sea. For instance, if you take the Russian conquest of Alaska, the Russians themselves were not seafarers and didn't have naval officers to the extent that the Germans in the Baltics and the Swedes in Finland did. The knowledge we have here about how to build boats and how to sail was what made the traffic from St. Petersburg to Alaska possible. It turns out that two of the governors of Russian Alaska came from this group of people speaking Swedish in Finland.

I've been to Alaska and I went to what's now called Sitka; it was called Novo-Arkhangelsk by the Russians. You have buildings there where Americans say, "Oh, don't you see this Russian architecture?" Well, no, it is Nagu architecture, or specifically it's Åland architecture. The houses look like what the seamen built at home on Åland, and they built the same type of houses when they came to Sitka.

Dups: For a lot of listeners, they won't know the difference between Swedish-speaking Finland and Sweden. Swedish-speaking Finns are very much Finnish, and you do not see yourselves as Swedes from Sweden. Why is that?

Kaj: Correct. Sweden and Finland were one country until we were attacked by Russia in 1808-1809. There was a war of conquest where Russia conquered the eastern part of Sweden, which is today's Finland. At that point, about one person in five in Finland spoke Swedish. It’s not like the Baltics, where the ruling class was German and the peasants were Estonian or Latvian. Oh yes, the ruling class in Finland was Swedish-speaking, but the general population along the coast—all classes of society—was also Swedish-speaking.

After 1809, everything continued in Swedish from an administrative perspective until the 1860s when the Finnish language started to grow in prominence. Ever since, Swedish has been an integral part of Finland. So yes, we have ancestry from Sweden from hundreds of years ago—our ancestors immigrated to Finland around the 1200s. But if you have been living in a different place for 800 years, you are not associated with that mother country. Look at Americans—are they associated with the UK? And that's a question of the last two or three hundred years.

One thing you should know about Swedish-speaking Finns (finlandssvenskar) is that our association in sports is always with Finland. We will always cheer for Finland. There's no chance that anyone, even those who don't know any Finnish, would cheer for Sweden against Finland.

Dups: Are there any unique words or foods from the finlandssvenska culture or the archipelago that are very different from in Sweden?

Kaj: Yes. For instance, haru. One of the island types close to us in the outer archipelago is called Gråharu. Even the fact that you pronounce it with short vowels, haru, is something they don't do in Sweden. So yes, we definitely have different words.

As for food, gravad lax (cured salmon) is one that everybody knows. Then we have what Swedes call skarpsill, which we call vassbuk. It's a small fish, about 10 centimeters long, and it's super delicious. There are various ways of preparing it, and it's a typical dish here in the Nagu...]]>Listen to Part 1 of this interview.

Welcome to Part 2 of my wide-ranging conversation with my dear friend Kaj Arnö in Nagu, Finland, in the Finnish Archipelago. For those who don't know Kaj, Kaj was one of the Finnish contingent of leaders at MySQL AB that shepherded the open source database to becoming the world's most popular before being sold to Sun Microsystems in 2008. He is one of the founders of MariaDB, former CEO, and now executive chairman of the MariaDB Foundation. To know more about all these things, please listen to last week's episode.

Kaj and I became friends because of our love of the outdoors. Kaj spends much of the summer, when he can, in Nagu and on the islands there by boat and kayak. I have written about the joy of spending Midsummer in these islands and even a kayaking trip to one of the more famous islands called Jurmo. This area is primarily inhabited by the Swedish-speaking minority of Finland and is therefore the subject of this episode.

Please note, as with the previous episode, we recorded this live in Nagu while walking and playing with Kaj's young son. As such, you will hear wind noise and the sounds of frisbees and a football.

Today, however, let's start with a poem by Finland's National Poet, J. L. Runeberg, first in Swedish, then in English. This poem talks about the birds that fly north to summer in the Finnish Archipelago.

Subscribe and listen to more great interviews with amazing people.

Project Frederika and the Soul of Swedish Finland: A Conversation with Kaj Arnö (Part 2)

Our conversation then turned to a new passion project: using open data to preserve the rich history of Swedish-speaking Finland in the age of AI.

Dups: Now, Kaj, you are involved in something called Project Frederika. First of all, what is Project Frederika?

Kaj: Project Frederika is about making Swedish Finland better represented on open data, meaning Wikipedia and Wikidata. It's also part of the general mission of making objective fact more used by humanity.

We know that there's a bias in LLMs. They can be sexist and racist in several ways because they are trained on data that is sexist and racist. This is a way to change it. The way you change it is by ensuring that the data on which the large language models (LLMs) are centrally trained—namely Wikipedia—has correct information. That is the goal of Project Frederika. Yes, we start from the luxurious, quote-unquote, problem of Swedish Finland, but the general case is a much more important one: to ensure that the base data out there is correct and unbiased.

Dups: That is really important. In a previous episode, I talked about the case of the "disappearing internet," but also how bias is entering so much of our reference material like Wikipedia, and therefore we're actually changing our own past. How do you ensure the accuracy or "correctness" of the information? Aren't you just as biased as everybody else?

Kaj: I think that's a valid question. My answer is that I don't need to provide the mechanism for accuracy; it's already provided by the design of Wikipedia. Wikipedia has a peer-review mechanism where others are checking the validity of data, and that's a functioning model.

What is broken, though, is that the amount of interest going into certain areas is not representative of the overall interest of humankind. For example, computer games happen to interest young males, and these young males are writing a lot about them on Wikipedia, which means that data is over-represented. That is an issue I noted for Swedish Finland. Here in Nagu, I inherited five paintings from two semi-famous artists, Johan Knutson and Dora Wahlroos. I didn't know about them, so I thought, "Well, I need to check Wikipedia." They only had articles in Finnish, although they were Swedish-speaking. I thought that must not remain the case. Somebody ought to do something.

At the same time, I realized that if that "somebody" is to ever appear, I have a special responsibility to take on that role because I share an interest in both openness and Swedish Finland. And through my work with MySQL and now MariaDB, I've been in close contact with the infrastructure people at the Wikimedia Foundation, because Wikipedia ran on MySQL and has been running on MariaDB for many years. So I had both the technical opportunity and the personal interest to make this happen.

Dups: This archipelago that we're sitting in is how many islands?

Kaj: We're now in Nagu. Nagu has about 1,400 to 1,500 inhabitants and way more than 3,000 islands. And if you look at Wikipedia, I think there were 1,212 articles on different islands in the Nagu archipelago.

Dups: As I understand it, the Swedish-Finnish archipelago in this area has had an outsized influence in the world. I believe seafarers from here went all around the world?

Kaj: Yes, there's an extraordinary influence from this area just because of the geography. If you look at Jared Diamond and his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, he says that geography has an influence. People are just as smart or as diligent, as good and as bad everywhere, but geography influences things. This is very much the case in the archipelago here. We who live here have been the interface between the outside world and Finland since time immemorial. You had to pass through here; the archipelago was the road.

That means we became experts on logistics and travel by sea. For instance, if you take the Russian conquest of Alaska, the Russians themselves were not seafarers and didn't have naval officers to the extent that the Germans in the Baltics and the Swedes in Finland did. The knowledge we have here about how to build boats and how to sail was what made the traffic from St. Petersburg to Alaska possible. It turns out that two of the governors of Russian Alaska came from this group of people speaking Swedish in Finland.

I've been to Alaska and I went to what's now called Sitka; it was called Novo-Arkhangelsk by the Russians. You have buildings there where Americans say, "Oh, don't you see this Russian architecture?" Well, no, it is Nagu architecture, or specifically it's Åland architecture. The houses look like what the seamen built at home on Åland, and they built the same type of houses when they came to Sitka.

Dups: For a lot of listeners, they won't know the difference between Swedish-speaking Finland and Sweden. Swedish-speaking Finns are very much Finnish, and you do not see yourselves as Swedes from Sweden. Why is that?

Kaj: Correct. Sweden and Finland were one country until we were attacked by Russia in 1808-1809. There was a war of conquest where Russia conquered the eastern part of Sweden, which is today's Finland. At that point, about one person in five in Finland spoke Swedish. It’s not like the Baltics, where the ruling class was German and the peasants were Estonian or Latvian. Oh yes, the ruling class in Finland was Swedish-speaking, but the general population along the coast—all classes of society—was also Swedish-speaking.

After 1809, everything continued in Swedish from an administrative perspective until the 1860s when the Finnish language started to grow in prominence. Ever since, Swedish has been an integral part of Finland. So yes, we have ancestry from Sweden from hundreds of years ago—our ancestors immigrated to Finland around the 1200s. But if you have been living in a different place for 800 years, you are not associated with that mother country. Look at Americans—are they associated with the UK? And that's a question of the last two or three hundred years.

One thing you should know about Swedish-speaking Finns (finlandssvenskar) is that our association in sports is always with Finland. We will always cheer for Finland. There's no chance that anyone, even those who don't know any Finnish, would cheer for Sweden against Finland.

Dups: Are there any unique words or foods from the finlandssvenska culture or the archipelago that are very different from in Sweden?

Kaj: Yes. For instance, haru. One of the island types close to us in the outer archipelago is called Gråharu. Even the fact that you pronounce it with short vowels, haru, is something they don't do in Sweden. So yes, we definitely have different words.

As for food, gravad lax (cured salmon) is one that everybody knows. Then we have what Swedes call skarpsill, which we call vassbuk. It's a small fish, about 10 centimeters long, and it's super delicious. There are various ways of preparing it, and it's a typical dish here in the Nagu archipelago.

Dups: You've mentioned Åland a couple of times. Now, Åland is very interesting because it is neither Finnish nor Swedish, in a way. It was established before the United Nations, correct?

Kaj: Correct. The predecessor of the United Nations, the League of Nations, ruled in 1921 that Åland was to be part of Finland, not Sweden. Why did that question even pop up? Because when Russia occupied Finland in 1809, Åland was part of the territory. After World War I, many people on Åland wanted to be part of Sweden because they don't speak Finnish there and are culturally very much associated with Sweden.

But the League of Nations, based on a plea from Finland, made the decision that Åland should be part of Finland, but be autonomous and monolingually Swedish. It was also demilitarized as a result of the Crimean War in the 1850s. This was confirmed by the League of Nations—Finland was not supposed to have any military presence on Åland in peacetime. That, of course, changed when peace was no longer there. During World War II, my father was on the frontlines on Hammarland in Åland.

And that demilitarized status is interesting today. Russia has closed all its consulates in Finland in other cities except for one place: the capital of Åland, Mariehamn.

Dups: If someone wanted to find out more about Project Frederika, how would they do that?

Kaj: They can go to our website, which is projektfrederika.fi, or through our Wikipedia project page, which is also called Project Frederika.

Dups: The project is named after Fredrika Runeberg, wife of the famous poet J. L. Runeberg.

Kaj: Yes. But she was not just a token wife. She was also Finland's first female journalist and a writer in her own right. That is why we decided for our project to pick a name which is not yet another man, but somebody who created value for humanity despite her gender, at a time when that was not the usual thing.

Dups: Thank you again for coming on the show at Tales Under the Cat Tree and talking about Project Frederika. I learned a lot, and I'm sure lots of other people did too.

Kaj: My pleasure. I was super happy to get the opportunity. I could talk about these things for ages.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

Many years later, as a BioWare staff member now helping to run a very highly-trafficked database, I attended the MySQL conference in Santa Clara, California, to see if I could learn a thing or two. There I met the CEO of MySQL AB, Mårten Mickos, and I had this unshakeable feeling that I just had to be part of this open-source database story. I scoured their job listings, and they were looking for a web programmer working with Jeff Wiss and the MySQL Marketing team. To many people, this seemed a step down from where I was going at BioWare. For me, it was a chance to learn about a totally different type of business. I had no idea then how life-changing that decision really was. My career as a web programmer lasted all of a year before I joined Kaj Arnö's team at MySQL to become the technical community manager for North America, working for Giuseppe Maxia.

My first company meeting with MySQL AB was quite different from anything I had witnessed up to this point. I really didn't know Nordic, let alone Finnish culture. The CEO, Mårten, finished that very frank and open meeting with a shot of vodka. I followed along remotely in Montreal, using the MySQL shot glass I had been gifted as part of joining the team. When Sun Microsystems bought MySQL AB for the then-astronomical sum of 1 billion dollars in 2008, Kaj, Monty, Mårten, Zack, and others led the company in a rousing Finnish drinking song called "Helan Går."

This is my first-ever two-part episode. It is a wide-ranging conversation with my now-dear friend Kaj Arnö while visiting him at his home in Nagu, Finland, in the Finnish Archipelago south of the town of Turku (also known in Swedish as Åbo). The interview was recorded while walking near Kaj's house in Nagu with his young son. It was a bit windy, so please pardon the various noises of us playing football and frisbee on a windy archipelago day.

[Listen] In true MySQL tradition, let's start with Kaj doing "Helan Går" in his kitchen.

A Conversation in Nagu: Kaj Arnö on MySQL, MariaDB, and the Dawn of AI

Dups: Kaj, you are my former colleague, my former boss even. We have been partners in building software and friends for a very long time. In fact, you are one of the prime reasons I moved to Finland. So here we are, walking down a lovely country road in Nagu, having a conversation. Tell me a little bit about yourself and how we met, because it all started with a database called MySQL.

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Kaj: Yes. First of all, I have to tell you how I ended up in Nagu, and that's because of genetics. Lots of my ancestors come from here. I hadn't been in Nagu more than a couple of times until I was seven years old, when my father's aunt died and we inherited her place. I've been here every summer for more than 50 years. I think it is sort of the center of the universe in many respects, and that's why you and I ended up here right now.

But how did we end up working together? That's MySQL, or some people pronounce it My-S-Q-L. At that point in time, it was the biggest open-source database and, by a couple of measures, still is.

Dups: What is MySQL, and why did it change the world?

Kaj: MySQL is a database. If you look at what is needed in IT, the most fundamental thing is the operating system, which makes the computer work at all. But the second most important thing is how you store things. Where do you store not just your written documents, but all of your data in a structured form? That predates any of the open-source databases; we've had databases since computers were invented. But applying open-source logic to databases—that's what created MySQL. It addressed the second biggest domain in IT, and MySQL was and still is the key database in that realm.

Dups: At the time I joined MySQL in 2007, it was already a very successful company. One of the attributions to that success is that it was the foundation for something called Google.

Kaj: And I believe something called Facebook.

Dups: Oh, yes. Something called LinkedIn.

Kaj: Yes.

Dups: And I think at that time, something called Twitter. It's called something else now.

Kaj: Yes, it was the foundation for about 18 out of the 20 biggest websites at the time.

Dups: Do you think that all those services we became so enamored with probably wouldn't have happened if they had to pay for a database from someone like Microsoft or Oracle?

Kaj: It most definitely would not have happened without an open-source database. You can, of course, ask, "Is it all thanks to MySQL?" And I would say no. It's about the timing. MySQL happened at the right point in time, and if MySQL hadn't been there, then a year later something else would have filled that spot in a slightly different way.

MySQL filled it in its own particular way, which is based on the pragmatism of a database that does the basic things right. Stability, performance, and ease of use were the keywords. Other databases have other criteria, but the web as we know it wouldn't have happened without open source.

Dups: But I seem to remember, if I recall correctly—and the founders were Monty Widenius and David Axmark...

Kaj: Yes, Monty and David.

Dups: The original MySQL was actually shareware. Was that not the case?

Kaj: You're right. In 1995, it wasn't yet formally open source, and the term "open source" wasn't really used at that point; it was more "free software." The point in time where they decided to go with a formal open-source license, the GPL version 2, and not shareware, was in the year 2000. So you're correct.

Dups: If I remember correctly, you have been friends with Monty and David for a long time.

Kaj: With Monty since the '70s and with David since the mid-'80s. So it's been a fairly long history.

Dups: And how has Nagu figured into that history?

Kaj: We have a common friend who has been arranging so-called midsummer parties here on Biskopsö in Nagu since 1989. Hence, all the people around MySQL come here very, very frequently. Also, the CEO of MySQL AB, Mårten Mickos, has had a place in Nagu since 1966 or so.

Dups: So, Nagu is almost central to the history of MySQL.

Kaj: It is, absolutely. And I think this is not just a figure of speech or a romanticization. It is also the culture that you have in the Nordics, where there are two concepts that are very conducive to open source. One of them is Allemansrätt and the other one is talkoot. Talkoot is more a Finnish word; Allemansrätt is more a Swedish word. Allemansrätt means "the right of everyman," where you can, here in Nagu, if you find a place you want to go with your kayak, you can go there. There's no need to ask for the permission of the landowner. Yes, it's privately owned, but part of this right is to land on an island and camp there. That, I think, has led to a focus on underlying societal needs as opposed to just selfish needs.

The Finnish word talkoot means that you help each other. Today, you're building your house. Okay, I help you. There's no financial compensation, but there's an implicit expectation that when I build my house, you help me.

Dups: You played many roles in the MySQL organization as it grew. What are some of the things that you did?

Kaj: I started by doing training because we realized at MySQL that you need people who know the product. Some users learn by themselves, but not everybody does. The organization at MySQL was, of course, an ad hoc one at first, where people...]]>In 2007, I joined an open-source database company called MySQL AB. While I was at BioWare, I was part of the team that built the BioWare Community, which launched with the game Neverwinter Nights in July 2002. In a future episode or two, my friend and I will be delving into the nerdiest of stories around those times that even the most dedicated BioWare fans have likely not heard. But back to the story... During the process of building the community, we had to do many things that were new to the time. For the scale we were looking for, we had to use an open-source database called MySQL; in fact, we had to use an alpha version due to what we needed to do. Yes, we launched the Neverwinter Nights community—one of the most important things we as BioWare had done as a business—to millions of people on an alpha version of MySQL 4.0. I was hooked on this database software.

Many years later, as a BioWare staff member now helping to run a very highly-trafficked database, I attended the MySQL conference in Santa Clara, California, to see if I could learn a thing or two. There I met the CEO of MySQL AB, Mårten Mickos, and I had this unshakeable feeling that I just had to be part of this open-source database story. I scoured their job listings, and they were looking for a web programmer working with Jeff Wiss and the MySQL Marketing team. To many people, this seemed a step down from where I was going at BioWare. For me, it was a chance to learn about a totally different type of business. I had no idea then how life-changing that decision really was. My career as a web programmer lasted all of a year before I joined Kaj Arnö's team at MySQL to become the technical community manager for North America, working for Giuseppe Maxia.

My first company meeting with MySQL AB was quite different from anything I had witnessed up to this point. I really didn't know Nordic, let alone Finnish culture. The CEO, Mårten, finished that very frank and open meeting with a shot of vodka. I followed along remotely in Montreal, using the MySQL shot glass I had been gifted as part of joining the team. When Sun Microsystems bought MySQL AB for the then-astronomical sum of 1 billion dollars in 2008, Kaj, Monty, Mårten, Zack, and others led the company in a rousing Finnish drinking song called "Helan Går."

This is my first-ever two-part episode. It is a wide-ranging conversation with my now-dear friend Kaj Arnö while visiting him at his home in Nagu, Finland, in the Finnish Archipelago south of the town of Turku (also known in Swedish as Åbo). The interview was recorded while walking near Kaj's house in Nagu with his young son. It was a bit windy, so please pardon the various noises of us playing football and frisbee on a windy archipelago day.

[Listen] In true MySQL tradition, let's start with Kaj doing "Helan Går" in his kitchen.

A Conversation in Nagu: Kaj Arnö on MySQL, MariaDB, and the Dawn of AI

Dups: Kaj, you are my former colleague, my former boss even. We have been partners in building software and friends for a very long time. In fact, you are one of the prime reasons I moved to Finland. So here we are, walking down a lovely country road in Nagu, having a conversation. Tell me a little bit about yourself and how we met, because it all started with a database called MySQL.

Subscribe and listen to more great interviews with amazing people

Kaj: Yes. First of all, I have to tell you how I ended up in Nagu, and that's because of genetics. Lots of my ancestors come from here. I hadn't been in Nagu more than a couple of times until I was seven years old, when my father's aunt died and we inherited her place. I've been here every summer for more than 50 years. I think it is sort of the center of the universe in many respects, and that's why you and I ended up here right now.

But how did we end up working together? That's MySQL, or some people pronounce it My-S-Q-L. At that point in time, it was the biggest open-source database and, by a couple of measures, still is.

Dups: What is MySQL, and why did it change the world?

Kaj: MySQL is a database. If you look at what is needed in IT, the most fundamental thing is the operating system, which makes the computer work at all. But the second most important thing is how you store things. Where do you store not just your written documents, but all of your data in a structured form? That predates any of the open-source databases; we've had databases since computers were invented. But applying open-source logic to databases—that's what created MySQL. It addressed the second biggest domain in IT, and MySQL was and still is the key database in that realm.

Dups: At the time I joined MySQL in 2007, it was already a very successful company. One of the attributions to that success is that it was the foundation for something called Google.

Kaj: And I believe something called Facebook.

Dups: Oh, yes. Something called LinkedIn.

Kaj: Yes.

Dups: And I think at that time, something called Twitter. It's called something else now.

Kaj: Yes, it was the foundation for about 18 out of the 20 biggest websites at the time.

Dups: Do you think that all those services we became so enamored with probably wouldn't have happened if they had to pay for a database from someone like Microsoft or Oracle?

Kaj: It most definitely would not have happened without an open-source database. You can, of course, ask, "Is it all thanks to MySQL?" And I would say no. It's about the timing. MySQL happened at the right point in time, and if MySQL hadn't been there, then a year later something else would have filled that spot in a slightly different way.

MySQL filled it in its own particular way, which is based on the pragmatism of a database that does the basic things right. Stability, performance, and ease of use were the keywords. Other databases have other criteria, but the web as we know it wouldn't have happened without open source.

Dups: But I seem to remember, if I recall correctly—and the founders were Monty Widenius and David Axmark...

Kaj: Yes, Monty and David.

Dups: The original MySQL was actually shareware. Was that not the case?

Kaj: You're right. In 1995, it wasn't yet formally open source, and the term "open source" wasn't really used at that point; it was more "free software." The point in time where they decided to go with a formal open-source license, the GPL version 2, and not shareware, was in the year 2000. So you're correct.

Dups: If I remember correctly, you have been friends with Monty and David for a long time.

Kaj: With Monty since the '70s and with David since the mid-'80s. So it's been a fairly long history.

Dups: And how has Nagu figured into that history?

Kaj: We have a common friend who has been arranging so-called midsummer parties here on Biskopsö in Nagu since 1989. Hence, all the people around MySQL come here very, very frequently. Also, the CEO of MySQL AB, Mårten Mickos, has had a place in Nagu since 1966 or so.

Dups: So, Nagu is almost central to the history of MySQL.

Kaj: It is, absolutely. And I think this is not just a figure of speech or a romanticization. It is also the culture that you have in the Nordics, where there are two concepts that are very conducive to open source. One of them is Allemansrätt and the other one is talkoot. Talkoot is more a Finnish word; Allemansrätt is more a Swedish word. Allemansrätt means "the right of everyman," where you can, here in Nagu, if you find a place you want to go with your kayak, you can go there. There's no need to ask for the permission of the landowner. Yes, it's privately owned, but part of this right is to land on an island and camp there. That, I think, has led to a focus on underlying societal needs as opposed to just selfish needs.

The Finnish word talkoot means that you help each other. Today, you're building your house. Okay, I help you. There's no financial compensation, but there's an implicit expectation that when I build my house, you help me.

Dups: You played many roles in the MySQL organization as it grew. What are some of the things that you did?

Kaj: I started by doing training because we realized at MySQL that you need people who know the product. Some users learn by themselves, but not everybody does. The organization at MySQL was, of course, an ad hoc one at first, where people would fulfill many roles. An engineer could sometimes answer support calls and sometimes develop the software. We didn't differentiate in the beginning between support engineers and developers, which is the most basic division of roles in any organization. Over the years, those roles became much more specific. My role was in the transitioning of an ad hoc organization to a mature one. I was VP of Engineering, I was VP of Services. I said jokingly that except for CEO, the only roles I did not have were being in charge of sales or finance.

Interviewer: Then MySQL was sold to Sun Microsystems in 2008 for an astronomical number at the time: a billion dollars.

Kaj: That was astronomical at that point.

Interviewer: From there, the founders started a second open-source database called MariaDB.

Kaj: It's actually more the founder, Monty. David has been with us in a certain way also, but it's mostly Monty who realized this is not the end of the journey for creating databases. And the starting point of that was more Oracle buying Sun than Sun buying MySQL.

Dups: For those who don't understand how open source works, you can take any project and "fork" it to continue development on it. That's how MariaDB came about. But of course, MariaDB is very different from MySQL these days.

Kaj: Let me first protest against the comment that MariaDB is very different from MySQL. Of course, it is not MySQL; for the last 15 years, it has been something different. And if you think about development in 15 years, lots of things happen, so in that sense, you're completely correct.

But in another way, it is super similar. You can take an old version of MySQL and upgrade it to MariaDB with nearly no effort. And for those listeners who don't know what database upgrades are, I can tell you it's one of the most painful things you can do in IT. That is not the case between MariaDB and MySQL. One of the ways to profile MariaDB these days is to say that it is the future of MySQL. That is because the love needed to sustain an open-source project doesn't really seem to be there at Oracle any longer. The generations of people who originally developed MySQL are long since gone, and many are with MariaDB.

Dups: Once MySQL was sold and MariaDB was born, you had a new role. Several new roles, if I remember correctly. Where are you now, and what were those roles?

Kaj: I'm one of the founders of MariaDB Corporation. After that, I moved to be the CEO of the MariaDB Foundation, and now I'm the executive chairman of the MariaDB Foundation. Since about 2013, we have had a division in MariaDB between church and state. The foundation is about making sure that MariaDB is available for everybody—it's open, and we want it to be adopted by everybody. MariaDB Corporation is, in a sense, like any other startup built around developing MariaDB Server.

Dups: So, the most important question of our times: as we witness this revolution in software, what does having MariaDB, whose lineage dates back to the foundation of the modern commercial internet, mean for the future with the advent of AI?

Kaj: I would say first of all that the AI trend—or bubble or hype or thing—is bigger than the cloud. Yes, the cloud has a certain meaning, but if you look back at my professional life, having AI is about as big and exciting as it was to have your own computer and to have the internet at all. It is an order of magnitude bigger than most other innovations. It is fundamental.

And then your question, what does that mean for the database? One of the things I've learned, having worked in IT since the very early '80s, is that databases change very slowly. What that means in the era of AI is that I believe you shouldn't ask what AI can do for databases, but ask what databases can do for AI. The need for persistence, the need for storing data in a structured form, will always be there. It's a question of how you serve that need best for AI.

The original MySQL database grew together with a development environment, which was usually PHP. Now, I think the connection to AI is the crucial part. It's the thing we really need to make work well. The integration between the database and facilitating the easy use of that database when you're developing an AI tool—that is the key. And I think a relational database will remain at the core of storing user data for the foreseeable future, also in AI.

Dups: You have watched one more turn of the technology wheel than I have. I didn't get to witness the rise of the personal computer; I saw the rise of the internet, the cloud, and now AI. What does this moment mean for you as someone still involved in all of this?

Kaj: It involves excitement and joy. It's energizing. It's so cool to do "vibe coding," to see the new things you can do. It's like playing around with a new toy. Monty and I once traveled by boat from Finland to Sweden to buy 16 kilobytes of extra memory for our Z80 computers. And now my camera has 512 gigabytes on a tiny card. The world has changed completely, but what hasn't changed is the joy and excitement of getting new toys.

Dups: The reality is that the AI versions we have today suffer from some fairly big problems. Hallucinations, for one. Non-determinism that can be abused. How does that square with the joy and excitement?

Kaj: In that sense, it's no different from earlier. You could misuse stuff before as well. I remember a Finnish newspaper article about computer viruses, where a fairly senior IT expert said, "What kind of garbage is that? No viruses will ever influence computers. That's just bogus." And it wasn't bogus.

I think the adverse effects you mentioned, like hallucinations, are in a way nothing new under the sun. I'm not a naive technology enthusiast who thinks that everything is great for its own sake. But AI is different, and it brings back that excitement. I realize it's going to take jobs away, but I think it will create other jobs. I am also of the opinion that regardless of what I think or do, these things will happen, and I had better make something good out of it.

Dups: Thank you very much, Kaj, for coming on Tales Under the Cat Tree. It's been lovely visiting you here in Nagu and experiencing this place, as well as talking to you about our shared history and the history of MySQL and MariaDB.

Kaj: Thanks for having me.

Listen to Part 2 of this conversation.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

Please read the original short story by Erwin J. Warkentin featured and discussed on this podcast

Interview with Dr. Erwin J. Warkentin

Dups: You just heard me read out a story called “No Trial for Papa” by Dr. Erwin J. Warkentin, who is here with me today. And welcome back to Tales Under the Cat Tree.

Erwin: Well, you know that I always enjoy talking to you. This is just a little bit of a different forum.

Dups: It’s the second show, so part number two of Erwin and Dups Do a Podcast. Erwin, that was a very hard read for me. It’s quite an emotional story from start to finish. I first want to ask you the very simple question: Is this fact or is this fiction?

Erwin: In German, you would say jein. That is a combination of yes (ja) and no (nein). In other words, yes, there’s a lot of truth to it. It’s based on truth. But it’s fictional in the sense that it’s a very generic story, that it’s made up of different bits and pieces. And then, of course, my own imagination filling in blanks. So, yes, it’s true. And no, it isn’t.

Dups: You and I, of course, had a chat about this story before I read it out. I have a picture that you gave me that I have published with the story. So you can go have a look at it. This picture revolves around the people about whom part of the story is about.

Erwin: On the left, there’s a young boy. He’s about eight years old. That’s my father. This is 1929 or so. And next to him, that’s his sister, and the lady in the middle, that’s my grandmother. At this point, she’s all of about 32, and she looks considerably older than 32. And then, of course, next to her is my grandfather. These are the people about whom the story is about. They’re the characters in the story.

Their name, of course, is Warkentin and not Classen, as I indicated in the story. And so this is a little bit of that alienating effect that’s taking place for me, where I’m taking some distance from it. It takes place in the Ukraine at the time of the Soviet Union. They are the drivers behind the story. And for me, each of them kind of holds a very special place.

Dups: So in the story then, if I’m understanding it correctly, the young boy is your father. The mother is, of course, your grandmother. And David Classen, who gets shot, is your grandfather.

Erwin: Exactly

Dups: First of all, what is the year that you’ve set this story in? So when did this happen?

Erwin: This story actually takes place in 1937. So the people in the story, in the picture, are actually a lot older. My father is about 16 at this point. His sister is about 14. And then, of course, my grandfather and my grandmother are older as well. This was the time of the great purges in the Soviet Union. Stalin decided it was a good idea to kind of get rid of all of what he called the kulaks.

These people, these undesirables, people that he considered to be parasites on society. And oddly enough, in this part of the Soviet Union, it was mostly the Germans and particularly the Mennonites that made up this class of people that he wanted to get rid of. Essentially, he wanted to take all of their stuff. He wanted to take their land from them, which they had already effectively done, but he needed them out of the way. And so that’s kind of the historical background of what was going on at the time.

Now, specific to this, my grandfather and my grandmother and my father were actually taken prisoner in 1937. They were grabbed by the local powers that be. And my grandfather, I found recently, was executed on October 31st, 1937. The Soviets were actually very efficient. It was just a single bullet to the back of the head. And so there were thousands upon thousands of people that died in this way.

My father, for the longest time, assumed that he had died of starvation. He had been sent to Siberia. That was the typical story. He disappeared to Siberia. That didn’t happen. He was killed before he actually had the opportunity to die in Siberia.

My father was saved by his age. He didn’t like left-wing politics at all, and that’s really putting it mildly. But he did say there was one communist in there that came into the prison where they were being held, took one look at him and his documentation, and said, he’s not of age of majority. He’s not old enough. He’s not 17. It was 17 at that time in the Soviet Union. So he has to go home. And since he’s not of the age of majority, his mother has to accompany him home. And so they were sent back to their village. In the meantime, his brother and two sisters had been put into an orphanage. They then had to go and collect them and try to put the family back together. So he then survived that part of what was really a horrible beginning to life. It was not a pleasant time to be alive. Not for many people.

Dups: And then from there, somehow your family managed to make it to Canada and to Manitoba.

Erwin: My father did. My grandmother was eventually… She had actually made it as far as Berlin in 1944. And then she was grabbed by the Russians once they took over Berlin. And they sent her to Kazakhstan along with her other three children. My father had been in the German army and he’d been taken prisoner at the end of hostilities. And so he was safe as it were, although the Russians did come for him too.

There was an American officer, again, there’s this strange thing about kindness of strangers along the way who told him that they were coming for him and that he should under no circumstances leave his barracks on a particular day, no matter what. And so he didn’t. This American officer simply told the Russians that this guy had been a problem since day one, and they’d eventually shot him. And his body had kind of gone down the river. He was trying to escape or some story like that. And I always kind of took that with a grain of salt, my father’s story, until I met the American who came and visited him. This was years and years and years later. I was already married at this point. And it turned out the whole story was true. So there’s this whole idea of sometimes truth can be fiction and sometimes fiction can be truth. And, you know, we simply don’t know.

Dups: Well, I think this then comes to the very important question that I have for you, which is, why did you not write the absolute truth here? And why did you make it into a story with some truth and some fiction?

Erwin: Yeah. Honestly, my first thought was to spare myself. It’s an incredibly emotional story for me because of who’s involved with it. If you think of it, that night in many respects determined who my father was going to be for the rest of time, for his time anyway, and what kind of a father he was going to be to me and all the rest of it. It also determined that I would essentially grow up without a grandparent. My grandmother did live until 1964, and I do have letters and postcards from her, but that’s it. And some pictures. And so for me, it was to kind of step back from it, but also make it relatable to other people.

This was not an isolated incident. This repeated itself over a period of two years or so, in countless different homes. In each and every case, it was a little bit different. And so what I wanted to do was borrow from these other stories so that others could kind of latch onto a part of the story and say, this is part of who I am, or I can relate to this because. And so it becomes an amalgam of truths that in and of themselves are fiction once they’re all put together.

Dups: And why do you think this kind of story is important today?

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Erwin: It’s a warning in some respects of things that can happen if you allow authoritarian-type governments and people to have too much power in the world. It also passes my story on, hopefully, to another generation so that they know who I am, but even more importantly, that they know who my father was and who my grandparents were and my aunt was, you know, the young girl in the picture. I mean, they don’t figure prominently in the story, but that’s by design. It’s important for the reason of keeping their memories alive and allowing for some sort of emotional connection between the present and the past. In some ways saying, well, you know, we aren’t that different.

Sometimes people of today consider themselves perhaps a little superior to the people of the past because we know so much more. And the thing is, this notion of my grandfather reaching out and kind of comforting my father, you know, that’s something that we would expect today. But somehow we have this notion of the fathers and grandfathers of previous generations being so stoic and distant that they didn’t do this. The fathers have always done this and they will always continue to do this. So it’s those sorts of things to kind of break down some of these historical stereotypes that we might have.

Dups: This goes back to the idea of the role of creative writing. And for me, one of the problems that I have is when we write anything about history, we tend to put what is happening today into the past, even though we have absolutely no idea how the past was. Because we really weren’t alive then. And a lot of things actually were different then. A lot of expressions were different then. Even the way that they...]]>No Trial for Papa

Please read the original short story by Erwin J. Warkentin featured and discussed on this podcast

Interview with Dr. Erwin J. Warkentin

Dups: You just heard me read out a story called “No Trial for Papa” by Dr. Erwin J. Warkentin, who is here with me today. And welcome back to Tales Under the Cat Tree.

Erwin: Well, you know that I always enjoy talking to you. This is just a little bit of a different forum.

Dups: It’s the second show, so part number two of Erwin and Dups Do a Podcast. Erwin, that was a very hard read for me. It’s quite an emotional story from start to finish. I first want to ask you the very simple question: Is this fact or is this fiction?

Erwin: In German, you would say jein. That is a combination of yes (ja) and no (nein). In other words, yes, there’s a lot of truth to it. It’s based on truth. But it’s fictional in the sense that it’s a very generic story, that it’s made up of different bits and pieces. And then, of course, my own imagination filling in blanks. So, yes, it’s true. And no, it isn’t.

Dups: You and I, of course, had a chat about this story before I read it out. I have a picture that you gave me that I have published with the story. So you can go have a look at it. This picture revolves around the people about whom part of the story is about.

Erwin: On the left, there’s a young boy. He’s about eight years old. That’s my father. This is 1929 or so. And next to him, that’s his sister, and the lady in the middle, that’s my grandmother. At this point, she’s all of about 32, and she looks considerably older than 32. And then, of course, next to her is my grandfather. These are the people about whom the story is about. They’re the characters in the story.

Their name, of course, is Warkentin and not Classen, as I indicated in the story. And so this is a little bit of that alienating effect that’s taking place for me, where I’m taking some distance from it. It takes place in the Ukraine at the time of the Soviet Union. They are the drivers behind the story. And for me, each of them kind of holds a very special place.

Dups: So in the story then, if I’m understanding it correctly, the young boy is your father. The mother is, of course, your grandmother. And David Classen, who gets shot, is your grandfather.

Erwin: Exactly

Dups: First of all, what is the year that you’ve set this story in? So when did this happen?

Erwin: This story actually takes place in 1937. So the people in the story, in the picture, are actually a lot older. My father is about 16 at this point. His sister is about 14. And then, of course, my grandfather and my grandmother are older as well. This was the time of the great purges in the Soviet Union. Stalin decided it was a good idea to kind of get rid of all of what he called the kulaks.

These people, these undesirables, people that he considered to be parasites on society. And oddly enough, in this part of the Soviet Union, it was mostly the Germans and particularly the Mennonites that made up this class of people that he wanted to get rid of. Essentially, he wanted to take all of their stuff. He wanted to take their land from them, which they had already effectively done, but he needed them out of the way. And so that’s kind of the historical background of what was going on at the time.

Now, specific to this, my grandfather and my grandmother and my father were actually taken prisoner in 1937. They were grabbed by the local powers that be. And my grandfather, I found recently, was executed on October 31st, 1937. The Soviets were actually very efficient. It was just a single bullet to the back of the head. And so there were thousands upon thousands of people that died in this way.

My father, for the longest time, assumed that he had died of starvation. He had been sent to Siberia. That was the typical story. He disappeared to Siberia. That didn’t happen. He was killed before he actually had the opportunity to die in Siberia.

My father was saved by his age. He didn’t like left-wing politics at all, and that’s really putting it mildly. But he did say there was one communist in there that came into the prison where they were being held, took one look at him and his documentation, and said, he’s not of age of majority. He’s not old enough. He’s not 17. It was 17 at that time in the Soviet Union. So he has to go home. And since he’s not of the age of majority, his mother has to accompany him home. And so they were sent back to their village. In the meantime, his brother and two sisters had been put into an orphanage. They then had to go and collect them and try to put the family back together. So he then survived that part of what was really a horrible beginning to life. It was not a pleasant time to be alive. Not for many people.

Dups: And then from there, somehow your family managed to make it to Canada and to Manitoba.

Erwin: My father did. My grandmother was eventually… She had actually made it as far as Berlin in 1944. And then she was grabbed by the Russians once they took over Berlin. And they sent her to Kazakhstan along with her other three children. My father had been in the German army and he’d been taken prisoner at the end of hostilities. And so he was safe as it were, although the Russians did come for him too.

There was an American officer, again, there’s this strange thing about kindness of strangers along the way who told him that they were coming for him and that he should under no circumstances leave his barracks on a particular day, no matter what. And so he didn’t. This American officer simply told the Russians that this guy had been a problem since day one, and they’d eventually shot him. And his body had kind of gone down the river. He was trying to escape or some story like that. And I always kind of took that with a grain of salt, my father’s story, until I met the American who came and visited him. This was years and years and years later. I was already married at this point. And it turned out the whole story was true. So there’s this whole idea of sometimes truth can be fiction and sometimes fiction can be truth. And, you know, we simply don’t know.

Dups: Well, I think this then comes to the very important question that I have for you, which is, why did you not write the absolute truth here? And why did you make it into a story with some truth and some fiction?

Erwin: Yeah. Honestly, my first thought was to spare myself. It’s an incredibly emotional story for me because of who’s involved with it. If you think of it, that night in many respects determined who my father was going to be for the rest of time, for his time anyway, and what kind of a father he was going to be to me and all the rest of it. It also determined that I would essentially grow up without a grandparent. My grandmother did live until 1964, and I do have letters and postcards from her, but that’s it. And some pictures. And so for me, it was to kind of step back from it, but also make it relatable to other people.

This was not an isolated incident. This repeated itself over a period of two years or so, in countless different homes. In each and every case, it was a little bit different. And so what I wanted to do was borrow from these other stories so that others could kind of latch onto a part of the story and say, this is part of who I am, or I can relate to this because. And so it becomes an amalgam of truths that in and of themselves are fiction once they’re all put together.

Dups: And why do you think this kind of story is important today?

Want more interviews like this? Please do subscribe!

Erwin: It’s a warning in some respects of things that can happen if you allow authoritarian-type governments and people to have too much power in the world. It also passes my story on, hopefully, to another generation so that they know who I am, but even more importantly, that they know who my father was and who my grandparents were and my aunt was, you know, the young girl in the picture. I mean, they don’t figure prominently in the story, but that’s by design. It’s important for the reason of keeping their memories alive and allowing for some sort of emotional connection between the present and the past. In some ways saying, well, you know, we aren’t that different.

Sometimes people of today consider themselves perhaps a little superior to the people of the past because we know so much more. And the thing is, this notion of my grandfather reaching out and kind of comforting my father, you know, that’s something that we would expect today. But somehow we have this notion of the fathers and grandfathers of previous generations being so stoic and distant that they didn’t do this. The fathers have always done this and they will always continue to do this. So it’s those sorts of things to kind of break down some of these historical stereotypes that we might have.

Dups: This goes back to the idea of the role of creative writing. And for me, one of the problems that I have is when we write anything about history, we tend to put what is happening today into the past, even though we have absolutely no idea how the past was. Because we really weren’t alive then. And a lot of things actually were different then. A lot of expressions were different then. Even the way that they did treat children was different then. How does this fit? Like in terms of trying to reconcile the two things. One, the past was very different, but it is at the same time very similar.

Erwin: What we want to do is we want to also recognize and know these people as human beings. I think that’s part of it. So we try to modernize them. And in some ways, that’s what we’re doing with historical fiction today. I mean, it’s all the rage. Every which way you look, there’s historical fiction going on. And that’s because we’re trying to fill in these blanks and make this thing perhaps a little more real for ourselves. But I don’t think we can get away from the notion of we can create distance from our present situation by looking at the past.

And this is something that goes back to someone like Friedrich Schiller, the German author. And he wrote quite a few theoretical works about literature. And one of them was that a work of literature is essentially, and he didn’t have language for it at the time, but a simulation that you run. And okay, what if the person said this? What would happen? And he wrote a lot of historical fiction. And for him, it was always this experiment. What if they did this slightly differently? What would the outcome be? And so to some degree, when we do this, we’re looking at these other possibilities and possibilities perhaps missed in our past.

Dups: That’s a very good way of putting it. I mean, this is what stories are, simulations of ideas, of thoughts, of things that we want to do, that we wish we could have done, that make us want to do something, desire, hate, everything.

Erwin: Yeah. And the funny thing is that I can’t even take credit for that. I have to give credit to a man from 225 years ago who was doing exactly the same thing then that we’re doing now.

Dups: You’ve told me that there’s an aftermath to this that is quite interesting and fascinating, because your grandfather was designated as a German spy, and that’s why he was executed.

Erwin: Well, after the fact, he was considered a German spy for many, many years until about 1986. He eventually was given not a pardon, but he was declared rehabilitated. And that’s kind of the official term that was used in the USSR. My father made a number of trips to Germany, and I was always a little curious as to what he was doing there because he seemed to be meeting with different people that I knew nothing about. Normally, I would have helped him with this, but somehow he had been in communication with the Russian government at the time. Well, it still would have been the USSR. And then eventually in ‘86, somewhere ‘86 to ‘88, the documents indicate that Gorbachev actually rehabilitated him. That is my grandfather. In other words, he didn’t do it. He wasn’t a spy.

Dups: Having gone through this story and having had this discussion, for anyone who’s reading this today, listening to this podcast, listening to the story, what’s the biggest takeaway?

Erwin: The biggest takeaway is that you have to cherish and appreciate every moment that you have with those people around you because you don’t know when you’re not going to have any more moments.

Dups: And I think with that, we will say thank you very much to Erwin for coming on the show and talking about “No Trial for Papa.”

Erwin: Well, thank you very much for having me. Well, I was going to say I enjoyed this. It’s hard, but I did enjoy this.

Dups: Erwin, you’re going to be back again, right? We’re going to do another couple of episodes on different subjects.

Erwin: Exactly. And I think at some point I get to turn the tables.

Dups: Yes, yes, you will. But that’s to be coming up in the future. Again, thank you very much, Erwin.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

"You bought what?!" I spluttered into my beer, a little bit louder than the ambience of the pub. A couple of regulars glanced my way.

"A purple dune buggy—for two dollars," Aaron said, nonplussed.

"So what are you going to do with it?" That was Mike, wondering where this was actually going.

Mike's a lot more practical than the rest of us.

It was a late 1990s Friday night in St. John's, Newfoundland on the very eastern edge of Canada. As usual, our group of friends, including Aaron, Mike, and I, had gathered at our favourite watering hole, The Duke of Duckworth. As with most of our gatherings, the conversations would range from hatching plans for global conquest to medieval songs. Tonight we sat around as Aaron explained his plan for the purple dune buggy.

Aaron is a juggler, street performer, and, back then, a student doctor-in-waiting. Every Christmas, he put together a show for the children at the hospital, and this year was set to be spectacular. The rare and magnificent sight, he said, of a purple dune buggy from which he would juggle fire would naturally envelop the kids in a blanket of supreme happiness and joy.

"Of course... there is one problem..." Aaron sheepishly admitted.

There was always "one problem" in these plans.

"I need to rescue the dune buggy and take it to the farm in St. Philip's so I can get it ready."

"You have seen it, right?" Mike asked.

Mike is sometimes too smart about these stories. I could tell he was a bit more skeptical than I, who was drunkenly envisioning riding the buggy down Water Street.

"I mean, I haven't looked at it in detail. It's in the corner of the garage. We should be able to drive it back to the farm. It's only a couple of kilometres. You lads in? Tomorrow?"

Yup… there’s more stories like this, so if you like this one…

Let’s go fetch the buggy!

The next day dawned bright and clear with blue skies carrying only the hint of a breeze. It was one of those rare summer days in Newfoundland whose memories tended to last for a lifetime. I was desperately sipping water so I could see through the hangover, but Aaron was in a light and happy mood as we drove to the garage in his car, Puff the Chevette.

Puff the Chevette was one of a kind around town. It had been painted with a dragon down one side, the older Republic of Newfoundland flag on the top, several sayings from literary and musical masterpieces on the side and back, and more besides. Mike was following in his parents' station wagon.

What the garage owners thought of the three of us arriving with Puff, obviously hungover and in search of the abandoned dune buggy, I will never know. It was only then that we realized that Aaron’s estimation of the dune buggy’s abilities had been slightly overstated, to say the least.

The purple dune buggy lay before us, rusted, corroded, and half-buried in the ground. The many Newfoundland winters that it had witnessed had taken their toll. Despite all this it was indeed a brilliant purple, magnificent, and most certainly a dune buggy. After some hesitation, we set about digging it up and trying to reclaim it into some sort of working mechanical shape. Eventually, the wheels were freed, the steering wheel was unhooked from its lethargic slumber, and we started to work on the brakes.

By this point, it was obvious to all of us that the buggy would not be leaving that garage on its own steam. Aaron, of course, was not without a plan.

“I brought some rope with me, so what do you boys think of attaching it to a car, and then we can tow it to the farm? I think we can get this beast into neutral.”

“Sure. I guess that might work,” Mike grunted from the back of the buggy. “But I don’t think I’ll attach it to my parents' car.”

Mike really was wise beyond his years.

“Sure, sure, we can attach it to Puff. It’ll be no problem; it’s just a short, flat drive all the way to the farm. Dups, do you think you can drive the buggy as I tow it? It won’t be a big deal.”

I nodded enthusiastically. Driving the towed buggy didn’t require my non-existent driving license. I suppose it wasn't the time to bring up the fact that I had actually crashed my dad's car into a palm tree while trying to learn at age thirteen.

We moved the buggy into place behind Puff and attached it with a sturdy rope. Aaron reviewed the situation one last time.

“Okay, so here’s the plan. I’m going to drive Puff. Dups, you’re going to be attached; you’ve got a good bit of length in that rope. Mike, you’re going to drive behind us and make sure people don’t try to pass us. I’m going to go pretty slow, but if there’s a problem, both of you just wave your hands; I’ll be keeping an eye on you guys in the mirror. Dups, if there's a problem just slow down using the hand-brake. Remember, just wave your arms, and I’ll stop.”

With that, we set off.

What could possibly go wrong?

It really was a beautiful day in Newfoundland, one of those days that cried for music and fresh air. Aaron obliged by playing the music loud from within Puff. The steering on the buggy was stiff but workable, and after we got going, I looked back at Mike and gave him a thumbs-up, and Aaron waved back. All was good. I could even now picture the look of joy on the faces of the children when Aaron came a-juggling in this vehicle.

If you've ever been to Newfoundland, especially the Avalon Peninsula, you might note that the land is not what you would call flat. If you've ever met Newfoundlanders, you might also note that sometimes certain descriptions can be understated. For instance, small hills appear flat after a while compared to the really big ones. Also, “a couple of kilometres” is a wonderful euphemism for “it won’t be more than twenty or thirty minutes and you don’t need to keep the dinner warm; I’ll be there shortly.” Despite knowing all this, I was blissfully daydreaming behind Aaron’s car, correcting course as necessary and listening to the music streaming to me from in front.

Aaron was bopping away to the music, also lost in his thoughts, when we hit one of those “unassuming” hills that he had forgotten about.

At this rather steep hill, I realized that perhaps we had done too good a job of lubricating the wheels of the buggy. The dune buggy was gaining on Puff. This winding hill seemed to be nowhere near an end.

No matter, I thought, we had planned for this situation!

I gently pulled on the hand-brake.

No. No. That didn’t slow the dune buggy down.

I pulled harder on the hand-brake.

Crack.

The entire hand-brake broke off the buggy and now lay in my hand. The buggy gained speed.

Oops.

By now, Puff’s rear bumper was looming large, and Aaron hadn’t noticed yet. I threw up my hands in despair, one hand holding high the broken hand-brake, and started waving like a madman. Aaron, however, was lost in whatever he was listening to. Behind me, I could hear Mike speeding up and honking.

With a crash in my future and seemingly no oncoming traffic, I pulled out into the opposite lane and started to pass Puff the Chevette. Within seconds, I was side by side with Aaron, who looked over to see the car he was towing passing him with me yelling and waving. A look of incredulous panic passed across his eyes as he slammed on Puff's brakes, bringing both it and the towed buggy to a screeching halt. The dune buggy and I went in one direction, Puff and Aaron in another. Mike slammed his car to a stop and ran towards the two of us.

Seconds later, a truck rounded the corner in front, slowed down to see three cars stopped in the opposite lane, gave a friendly, if a little confused, wave and smile, and passed on by.

The three of us, Aaron, Mike, and I, looked at the scene of destruction before us. Puff the Chevette and the purple dune buggy were splayed out across the road, tied to each other, the dune buggy out front. We looked at each other and burst into fits of laughter at the catastrophe we had just avoided and the ridiculousness of the entire situation.

The story, as they say, is not much more in the telling.

We examined both vehicles and were surprised to find that the only thing that had happened was that the corroded axle of the buggy had been bent. The front wheels were now spread in opposite directions. Aaron’s farm was—for real this time—just a few more kilometres and on relatively flat ground with few turns, which was a good thing as the buggy had all the turning grace of a waddling penguin.

The purple dune buggy did indeed ride again. Aaron spent more than a year fixing it after the mishap on its maiden voyage, and it was used to please crowds at a juggling show.

So what happened to the rest of us? Aaron made it to the ranks of the medical profession and continues to bring joy to all with his juggling. Mike went on to a fine career as a chemist, a writer, and an entrepreneur, lauded by his friends and peers for his calm knowledge in the face of sheer stupidity.

And me? Well, that’s another story, but I will never quite forget that first experience driving in Newfoundland or anywhere in Canada for that matter. I will never forget Aaron’s face as an engine-less, brake-less purple dune buggy raced its master, Puff, and almost won.

Seriously, I’m never going to charge you for any content! :)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit This episode also features an original poem “When hurricanes come to die”

"You bought what?!" I spluttered into my beer, a little bit louder than the ambience of the pub. A couple of regulars glanced my way.

"A purple dune buggy—for two dollars," Aaron said, nonplussed.

"So what are you going to do with it?" That was Mike, wondering where this was actually going.

Mike's a lot more practical than the rest of us.

It was a late 1990s Friday night in St. John's, Newfoundland on the very eastern edge of Canada. As usual, our group of friends, including Aaron, Mike, and I, had gathered at our favourite watering hole, The Duke of Duckworth. As with most of our gatherings, the conversations would range from hatching plans for global conquest to medieval songs. Tonight we sat around as Aaron explained his plan for the purple dune buggy.

Aaron is a juggler, street performer, and, back then, a student doctor-in-waiting. Every Christmas, he put together a show for the children at the hospital, and this year was set to be spectacular. The rare and magnificent sight, he said, of a purple dune buggy from which he would juggle fire would naturally envelop the kids in a blanket of supreme happiness and joy.

"Of course... there is one problem..." Aaron sheepishly admitted.

There was always "one problem" in these plans.

"I need to rescue the dune buggy and take it to the farm in St. Philip's so I can get it ready."

"You have seen it, right?" Mike asked.

Mike is sometimes too smart about these stories. I could tell he was a bit more skeptical than I, who was drunkenly envisioning riding the buggy down Water Street.

"I mean, I haven't looked at it in detail. It's in the corner of the garage. We should be able to drive it back to the farm. It's only a couple of kilometres. You lads in? Tomorrow?"

Yup… there’s more stories like this, so if you like this one…

Let’s go fetch the buggy!

The next day dawned bright and clear with blue skies carrying only the hint of a breeze. It was one of those rare summer days in Newfoundland whose memories tended to last for a lifetime. I was desperately sipping water so I could see through the hangover, but Aaron was in a light and happy mood as we drove to the garage in his car, Puff the Chevette.

Puff the Chevette was one of a kind around town. It had been painted with a dragon down one side, the older Republic of Newfoundland flag on the top, several sayings from literary and musical masterpieces on the side and back, and more besides. Mike was following in his parents' station wagon.

What the garage owners thought of the three of us arriving with Puff, obviously hungover and in search of the abandoned dune buggy, I will never know. It was only then that we realized that Aaron’s estimation of the dune buggy’s abilities had been slightly overstated, to say the least.

The purple dune buggy lay before us, rusted, corroded, and half-buried in the ground. The many Newfoundland winters that it had witnessed had taken their toll. Despite all this it was indeed a brilliant purple, magnificent, and most certainly a dune buggy. After some hesitation, we set about digging it up and trying to reclaim it into some sort of working mechanical shape. Eventually, the wheels were freed, the steering wheel was unhooked from its lethargic slumber, and we started to work on the brakes.

By this point, it was obvious to all of us that the buggy would not be leaving that garage on its own steam. Aaron, of course, was not without a plan.

“I brought some rope with me, so what do you boys think of attaching it to a car, and then we can tow it to the farm? I think we can get this beast into neutral.”

“Sure. I guess that might work,” Mike grunted from the back of the buggy. “But I don’t think I’ll attach it to my parents' car.”

Mike really was wise beyond his years.

“Sure, sure, we can attach it to Puff. It’ll be no problem; it’s just a short, flat drive all the way to the farm. Dups, do you think you can drive the buggy as I tow it? It won’t be a big deal.”

I nodded enthusiastically. Driving the towed buggy didn’t require my non-existent driving license. I suppose it wasn't the time to bring up the fact that I had actually crashed my dad's car into a palm tree while trying to learn at age thirteen.

We moved the buggy into place behind Puff and attached it with a sturdy rope. Aaron reviewed the situation one last time.

“Okay, so here’s the plan. I’m going to drive Puff. Dups, you’re going to be attached; you’ve got a good bit of length in that rope. Mike, you’re going to drive behind us and make sure people don’t try to pass us. I’m going to go pretty slow, but if there’s a problem, both of you just wave your hands; I’ll be keeping an eye on you guys in the mirror. Dups, if there's a problem just slow down using the hand-brake. Remember, just wave your arms, and I’ll stop.”

With that, we set off.

What could possibly go wrong?

It really was a beautiful day in Newfoundland, one of those days that cried for music and fresh air. Aaron obliged by playing the music loud from within Puff. The steering on the buggy was stiff but workable, and after we got going, I looked back at Mike and gave him a thumbs-up, and Aaron waved back. All was good. I could even now picture the look of joy on the faces of the children when Aaron came a-juggling in this vehicle.

If you've ever been to Newfoundland, especially the Avalon Peninsula, you might note that the land is not what you would call flat. If you've ever met Newfoundlanders, you might also note that sometimes certain descriptions can be understated. For instance, small hills appear flat after a while compared to the really big ones. Also, “a couple of kilometres” is a wonderful euphemism for “it won’t be more than twenty or thirty minutes and you don’t need to keep the dinner warm; I’ll be there shortly.” Despite knowing all this, I was blissfully daydreaming behind Aaron’s car, correcting course as necessary and listening to the music streaming to me from in front.

Aaron was bopping away to the music, also lost in his thoughts, when we hit one of those “unassuming” hills that he had forgotten about.

At this rather steep hill, I realized that perhaps we had done too good a job of lubricating the wheels of the buggy. The dune buggy was gaining on Puff. This winding hill seemed to be nowhere near an end.

No matter, I thought, we had planned for this situation!

I gently pulled on the hand-brake.

No. No. That didn’t slow the dune buggy down.

I pulled harder on the hand-brake.

Crack.

The entire hand-brake broke off the buggy and now lay in my hand. The buggy gained speed.

Oops.

By now, Puff’s rear bumper was looming large, and Aaron hadn’t noticed yet. I threw up my hands in despair, one hand holding high the broken hand-brake, and started waving like a madman. Aaron, however, was lost in whatever he was listening to. Behind me, I could hear Mike speeding up and honking.

With a crash in my future and seemingly no oncoming traffic, I pulled out into the opposite lane and started to pass Puff the Chevette. Within seconds, I was side by side with Aaron, who looked over to see the car he was towing passing him with me yelling and waving. A look of incredulous panic passed across his eyes as he slammed on Puff's brakes, bringing both it and the towed buggy to a screeching halt. The dune buggy and I went in one direction, Puff and Aaron in another. Mike slammed his car to a stop and ran towards the two of us.

Seconds later, a truck rounded the corner in front, slowed down to see three cars stopped in the opposite lane, gave a friendly, if a little confused, wave and smile, and passed on by.

The three of us, Aaron, Mike, and I, looked at the scene of destruction before us. Puff the Chevette and the purple dune buggy were splayed out across the road, tied to each other, the dune buggy out front. We looked at each other and burst into fits of laughter at the catastrophe we had just avoided and the ridiculousness of the entire situation.

The story, as they say, is not much more in the telling.

We examined both vehicles and were surprised to find that the only thing that had happened was that the corroded axle of the buggy had been bent. The front wheels were now spread in opposite directions. Aaron’s farm was—for real this time—just a few more kilometres and on relatively flat ground with few turns, which was a good thing as the buggy had all the turning grace of a waddling penguin.

The purple dune buggy did indeed ride again. Aaron spent more than a year fixing it after the mishap on its maiden voyage, and it was used to please crowds at a juggling show.

So what happened to the rest of us? Aaron made it to the ranks of the medical profession and continues to bring joy to all with his juggling. Mike went on to a fine career as a chemist, a writer, and an entrepreneur, lauded by his friends and peers for his calm knowledge in the face of sheer stupidity.

And me? Well, that’s another story, but I will never quite forget that first experience driving in Newfoundland or anywhere in Canada for that matter. I will never forget Aaron’s face as an engine-less, brake-less purple dune buggy raced its master, Puff, and almost won.

Seriously, I’m never going to charge you for any content! :)

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

While I never really grew up in Sri Lanka, my late father was a born storyteller. There were few occasions when he would not hold forth with some story or other. This was especially the case when he had been drinking or if we were in the back of the 1950s Wolseley on our way somewhere during one of our many holidays in Sri Lanka.

Saving Mr. Mendis is a short story inspired by many of his tales and written in the style that he would have used to tell such a story. Sri Lanka, like the world over, is a country that has seen massive change over the twentieth century and into this one. What was once a British Colony called Ceylon in 1900 would end the century as an independent nation called Sri Lanka. Over that time it endured a civil war, many bouts of ethnic and sectarian violence, massive growth in both population and wealth inequality, as well as incredible urbanization. Aside from its politics and economics, the country brought forth writers of world-reknown including Michael Ondaatje, Romesh Gunesekera, Shyam Selvadurai, and more recently, Shehan Karunatilaka. It is a country of contrasts, with several millennia of recorded history, both written and archaeological.

I have many stories of Sri Lanka. The country might not have been my “home,” but our visits, the extended family, and the many stories have always been central to my life. The stories my father told and the experiences we lived through are deeply intertwined. To give you an idea let me take you through one of my journeys in Sri Lanka that also has a strong connection to my father: a pilgrimage in the summer of 1988 when I was 13. This is not a Sri Lanka you will find anymore, but I hope I can convey some of what I remember of the smells, sights, and sounds.

On a typically hot, sweltering Colombo day in the summer of 1988, we boarded a bus at the Colombo Fort central bus station. In those days, the Fort Central Bus Station was a hive of activity, with sellers of pineapple snacks laden with chilli, and the clinking bottles of Fanta and Elephant House Cream Soda. The bus we boarded was of a type that can still be seen in modern Sri Lanka if you keep a close lookout, a testament to its Indian engineering and Sri Lankan perseverance. These red, rectangular, aluminum-sided buses had no creature comforts and, like a metal monster come to life, rattled, growled, and whistled through every intersection.

My mother, father, and I were heading on pilgrimage to the holy city of Kataragama after having recently landed back in Sri Lanka after an absence of many years. Kataragama was my father’s favorite, most sacred place in all the world, he would say. Unlike many of the trips we undertook, we had decided to do this one by bus. I can’t remember the exact circumstances; however, this was at the very height of Sri Lanka’s troubles. In the north of the country, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were waging a guerrilla war of separation, and in the south, a Marxist insurgency was ongoing. In the end, the war in the north would take another 20 years and tens of thousands of lives before coming to an end. Checkpoints and barricades were common; scowling armed forces watched for any aberration. This was not a time to show my poor Sinhalese and bring unwarranted attention.

Thanks for reading Tales under the cat tree!

This crowded bus had little room to even stretch an arm, even if you were seated. We traveled south along the famous Galle Road out of Colombo, back then the second busiest road in the country, which meandered next to the sandy beaches and lagoon-filled coastline of western Sri Lanka. The beaches were empty of tourists for the most part, frightened by the violence. On occasion, salt-encrusted ocean humidity would waft in past the sweaty passengers.

Had we been in a car, my father would have regaled us with stories. My father had a deep fascination with histories: the history of the people, the history of the land, the history even of a specific rock or tree. Here the Portuguese would have landed and traded. Here was the town named Kaduwa (sword) that became Hikkaduwa due to hiccups–I’m sure he was joking. Here was where he stayed as a student in the 1950s, and he would ask my mum if she remembered that trip in the ’60s and wonder how there could be so many houses. Often there were exclamations at what various politicians had “done to ruin this beautiful land.” He would sigh at how people had used the limestone from coral reefs to grind into the white paint used on the mud-brick houses and allowed the angry sea to encroach, unmolested and ravenous, over the land.

This trip was quiet, marked by the ebb and flow of the growling engine, my arm getting tired from holding onto a railing to prevent being unceremoniously disembarked by the jerking movements. With a number of bus changes taking the entire day, we passed along the famous Portuguese forts of Galle and Matara and then inland into the dry-aired countryside of Tissamaharama and Kataragama. These are holy places for Buddhists and Hindus. Buddha was supposed to have visited both places after he had attained enlightenment. Kings of Sri Lanka started their wars of conquering the island several times from these southern cities. Kataragama was the home of Lord Murugan, Sri Lanka’s only resident deity of the Hindu pantheon. Sitting astride a peacock, he had given his blessing to many battles. My dad would even claim that nearby hills featured in the famous epic Ramayana.

On this trip, we eschewed the pleasures of an air-conditioned hotel for the very plain, white-walled, conspicuously clean, vegetarian, alcohol-free, and pilgrim-filled rest house at Kataragama. Under the stern gaze of my mother, there was to be no alcohol before the “pooja.” Despite this, my father, the ever extroverted doctor had already become best friends with the receptionist and ensured we had the best room there. We quickly changed into new, clean white clothes: my father in a white shirt and tan pants and my mum in her customary pilgrim sari. My father was, as always, the colonial gentleman: his nice watch on display, a sparkling fountain pen in his pocket, grey hair neatly styled with cream, his shirt neatly tucked in.

This was not a place where you appeared unkempt to divinity.

The holy city of Kataragama is reached by crossing the Menik Ganga, which literally translates as the Gem River. You can likely sift through those sands and find tiny sapphires. Ever sarcastic, my father would note that another new bridge had been built, as had been done by every leader since independence in 1948. Little had changed from the time of ancient kings, he said, when they littered the countryside with the equivalent of “I was here” monuments meant to exalt them in reincarnation.

The main area of Kataragama is a walled area with hut-like temples, the main one being dedicated to the god Kataragama (Murugan). At the appointed time, we all lined up amongst the grove of Bodhi trees—descendants, it was said, from the sapling brought to Sri Lanka after Buddha’s death. Underneath the bell-like leaves, we held our pooja offering high on our shoulders or above our heads. The bells started tolling, and we moved along, pushed and pulled by the crowd. My father would hold my hand as he prayed for good fortune for my brothers and me under his breath. We walked inside.

The ceremonies are designed to assail every sense: the colors, the sounds, the chanting, the clanging of the bells, and the clouds of incense. First came the offering of the Murathang rice, the special sweet holy rice only ever produced for the mealtimes of the gods. The rice is first served to the god and then to the waiting flock. This was the start of the...]]>Please read Saving Mr. Mendis, an original short story set in colonial Sri Lanka.

While I never really grew up in Sri Lanka, my late father was a born storyteller. There were few occasions when he would not hold forth with some story or other. This was especially the case when he had been drinking or if we were in the back of the 1950s Wolseley on our way somewhere during one of our many holidays in Sri Lanka.

Saving Mr. Mendis is a short story inspired by many of his tales and written in the style that he would have used to tell such a story. Sri Lanka, like the world over, is a country that has seen massive change over the twentieth century and into this one. What was once a British Colony called Ceylon in 1900 would end the century as an independent nation called Sri Lanka. Over that time it endured a civil war, many bouts of ethnic and sectarian violence, massive growth in both population and wealth inequality, as well as incredible urbanization. Aside from its politics and economics, the country brought forth writers of world-reknown including Michael Ondaatje, Romesh Gunesekera, Shyam Selvadurai, and more recently, Shehan Karunatilaka. It is a country of contrasts, with several millennia of recorded history, both written and archaeological.

I have many stories of Sri Lanka. The country might not have been my “home,” but our visits, the extended family, and the many stories have always been central to my life. The stories my father told and the experiences we lived through are deeply intertwined. To give you an idea let me take you through one of my journeys in Sri Lanka that also has a strong connection to my father: a pilgrimage in the summer of 1988 when I was 13. This is not a Sri Lanka you will find anymore, but I hope I can convey some of what I remember of the smells, sights, and sounds.

On a typically hot, sweltering Colombo day in the summer of 1988, we boarded a bus at the Colombo Fort central bus station. In those days, the Fort Central Bus Station was a hive of activity, with sellers of pineapple snacks laden with chilli, and the clinking bottles of Fanta and Elephant House Cream Soda. The bus we boarded was of a type that can still be seen in modern Sri Lanka if you keep a close lookout, a testament to its Indian engineering and Sri Lankan perseverance. These red, rectangular, aluminum-sided buses had no creature comforts and, like a metal monster come to life, rattled, growled, and whistled through every intersection.

My mother, father, and I were heading on pilgrimage to the holy city of Kataragama after having recently landed back in Sri Lanka after an absence of many years. Kataragama was my father’s favorite, most sacred place in all the world, he would say. Unlike many of the trips we undertook, we had decided to do this one by bus. I can’t remember the exact circumstances; however, this was at the very height of Sri Lanka’s troubles. In the north of the country, the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) were waging a guerrilla war of separation, and in the south, a Marxist insurgency was ongoing. In the end, the war in the north would take another 20 years and tens of thousands of lives before coming to an end. Checkpoints and barricades were common; scowling armed forces watched for any aberration. This was not a time to show my poor Sinhalese and bring unwarranted attention.

Thanks for reading Tales under the cat tree!

This crowded bus had little room to even stretch an arm, even if you were seated. We traveled south along the famous Galle Road out of Colombo, back then the second busiest road in the country, which meandered next to the sandy beaches and lagoon-filled coastline of western Sri Lanka. The beaches were empty of tourists for the most part, frightened by the violence. On occasion, salt-encrusted ocean humidity would waft in past the sweaty passengers.

Had we been in a car, my father would have regaled us with stories. My father had a deep fascination with histories: the history of the people, the history of the land, the history even of a specific rock or tree. Here the Portuguese would have landed and traded. Here was the town named Kaduwa (sword) that became Hikkaduwa due to hiccups–I’m sure he was joking. Here was where he stayed as a student in the 1950s, and he would ask my mum if she remembered that trip in the ’60s and wonder how there could be so many houses. Often there were exclamations at what various politicians had “done to ruin this beautiful land.” He would sigh at how people had used the limestone from coral reefs to grind into the white paint used on the mud-brick houses and allowed the angry sea to encroach, unmolested and ravenous, over the land.

This trip was quiet, marked by the ebb and flow of the growling engine, my arm getting tired from holding onto a railing to prevent being unceremoniously disembarked by the jerking movements. With a number of bus changes taking the entire day, we passed along the famous Portuguese forts of Galle and Matara and then inland into the dry-aired countryside of Tissamaharama and Kataragama. These are holy places for Buddhists and Hindus. Buddha was supposed to have visited both places after he had attained enlightenment. Kings of Sri Lanka started their wars of conquering the island several times from these southern cities. Kataragama was the home of Lord Murugan, Sri Lanka’s only resident deity of the Hindu pantheon. Sitting astride a peacock, he had given his blessing to many battles. My dad would even claim that nearby hills featured in the famous epic Ramayana.

On this trip, we eschewed the pleasures of an air-conditioned hotel for the very plain, white-walled, conspicuously clean, vegetarian, alcohol-free, and pilgrim-filled rest house at Kataragama. Under the stern gaze of my mother, there was to be no alcohol before the “pooja.” Despite this, my father, the ever extroverted doctor had already become best friends with the receptionist and ensured we had the best room there. We quickly changed into new, clean white clothes: my father in a white shirt and tan pants and my mum in her customary pilgrim sari. My father was, as always, the colonial gentleman: his nice watch on display, a sparkling fountain pen in his pocket, grey hair neatly styled with cream, his shirt neatly tucked in.

This was not a place where you appeared unkempt to divinity.

The holy city of Kataragama is reached by crossing the Menik Ganga, which literally translates as the Gem River. You can likely sift through those sands and find tiny sapphires. Ever sarcastic, my father would note that another new bridge had been built, as had been done by every leader since independence in 1948. Little had changed from the time of ancient kings, he said, when they littered the countryside with the equivalent of “I was here” monuments meant to exalt them in reincarnation.

The main area of Kataragama is a walled area with hut-like temples, the main one being dedicated to the god Kataragama (Murugan). At the appointed time, we all lined up amongst the grove of Bodhi trees—descendants, it was said, from the sapling brought to Sri Lanka after Buddha’s death. Underneath the bell-like leaves, we held our pooja offering high on our shoulders or above our heads. The bells started tolling, and we moved along, pushed and pulled by the crowd. My father would hold my hand as he prayed for good fortune for my brothers and me under his breath. We walked inside.

The ceremonies are designed to assail every sense: the colors, the sounds, the chanting, the clanging of the bells, and the clouds of incense. First came the offering of the Murathang rice, the special sweet holy rice only ever produced for the mealtimes of the gods. The rice is first served to the god and then to the waiting flock. This was the start of the thrice-daily ritual of feeding the immense appetite of the gods, with whom we now shared a meal. From here, we would hand over the pooja basket, and the priest would take it behind a shimmering curtain adorned with a giant representation of the god Kataragama. A few minutes of chanting later, the tray would be returned, fruit cut in half—a portion of what we had offered, of course, had been taken, and we now had to share. Finally, one of the priests would put the sticky dot of the third eye on our foreheads before we exited into the cooling night. We would then walk with the masses to the famous millennias old Buddhist stupa of the Kiri Vehera and sit on its still-warmed ancient flag stones as the moon rose behind it.

The next day we boarded a bus from Kataragama to Badulla in the central highlands of Sri Lanka. The road to Badulla from Kataragama marked a gray dividing line of areas of control between the Sri Lankan Army and the LTTE. To the east of this road was Yala National Park, and stories ran rampant of guerrillas hidden in the woods. Kataragama was safe; there was no way any party would ever commit a crime there. Outside, that was a different story.

This part of the trip was really for me. I had wanted to take the “Podi Menike” train from Badulla to Colombo Fort. The train leaves Badulla in the afternoon and arrives in Colombo Fort station in the nighttime. It winds through highland tea country and small villages populated by the tea plantation workers of the various major tea companies: Lipton, Cargills, Mackwoods. The train passes over old Georgian bridges, through innumerable blackened, smoky tunnels, and stops at every little, well-kept, one-room station. Smartly-dressed station masters exchange message rings with train drivers to track the flow of traffic on the remote, one-track highland line that seemed to have stepped right out of British Colonial Ceylon.

This is where the troubles of Sri Lanka come back into the story. The war rarely intruded on life in the western capital region aside from suicide bombings. That year, the LTTE were ascendant. They were making forays into the highlands, and clashes with the Sri Lankan Army had become common. The population of this area, and the occupants of this particular carriage, were descendants of the Indian Tamil laborers brought over by British tea plantation owners.

At one plantation station, several armed soldiers came on board. We were sitting by the window, my mum, my dad, and I. I had been paying little heed to the goings-on in the carriage until then; I had been staring out into the distance as I always do on train rides. These armed men with rifles, machine guns, and fatigues walked down the aisle, peering closely at each occupant. Finally, they came to my smartly-dressed father and stopped short. One of the men said something in Tamil to my father. Without too much hesitation and to my absolute surprise, my father, his hand firmly on my mum, responded in Tamil. The man stood there for a bit, gun slung across him, and after taking another long look at each of us, he motioned to the other men and left our carriage.

At the next stop, the armed men disembarked. At the stop after that, the Sri Lankan Army jumped on board and proceeded to identity-check everyone on the train. Armed to the teeth, it was obvious they were looking for someone.

The train pulled into Colombo Fort Station in the wee hours of the next morning, many hours later than expected. A day later, we heard the news. There had been a battle in a village in the highlands. A group of guerrillas had attacked a Sri Lankan army group. All this had happened not much after those first men had left our train, though I have no definitive proof of anything. I asked my father how he knew Tamil. In a carriage filled with local Tamils, we obviously stood out like a sore thumb. He said it was the right of anyone to be spoken to in the language that they wished. He had learned Tamil as a child and a student and used it when he had worked in the north while working to eradicate Tuberculosis in the 1950s. He respected the Tamil people greatly, so why should he not have answered back in Tamil?

To this day, I do not know whether anything would have happened had he answered in Sinhalese or in English. It’s a lesson I have never forgotten: Always learn the language. It is not just a courtesy; it is a solemn duty as a human to communicate with those around you in their own tongue.

Besides, you never know when armed guerrillas might board your train.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

When I was a teen on a trip to Sri Lanka, we went to visit some of the ancient cities whose ruins you find peppered throughout that island. Some of these ruins are over 2,000 years old. Walking through them with my father, I asked him the same question I have since repeated to myself in France, Spain, England, and countless other places: Where are the ruins of the ordinary people? Who tells their stories?

Unfortunately, the sands of time swirl in a way that continually obscures, removes, and changes the voices and existence of people. When you study an event or a person, you stretch your hand back into the past and derive massive conclusions from minuscule shreds of evidence. Worse, we examine and understand the past through a flawed lens of our present context. A leader considered terrible during their lifetime might now be revered as a hero due to our present beliefs of what is "good." The amount of sources available to us from the past is extremely limited and often preserves the voices of the rich, powerful, or otherwise "important."

In going through our day-to-day lives this feels like a problem that we have solved. Today, the amount of data and content will surely mean that the voices of you and me, of the random person on the street, will actually matter and survive into the future. For the first time in history, there are written records of all our venting, pictures of what we ate on any given morning, Reddit posts of the troubles we've had, along with a seemingly bottomless pit of video.

We would all be forgiven for thinking we had solved this problem, and we would all be wrong.

Already, some quarter of the original Internet has disappeared and is no longer online. I would hazard a guess that another large portion might exist but in a different form and edited from its original material. Even the Internet Archive can only keep so much. The Internet Archive now holds 835 billion web pages if we are looking at that type of content alone. A copy of the known Internet is now 145 petabytes of data and growing. Think about that: 1 petabyte is 1,000 terabytes. So if you have a 1-terabyte storage computer, you would need 145,000 of them. That's no small task. I would imagine it's not even capturing the true breadth of content on private or semi-private systems behind logins, and so on.

When I was researching my own technological journey over the past 30 years, the Internet Archive only had a fraction of the writing I put online. A fraction of the photos that I had posted. And it goes deeper. You would think I would have access to that writing on disks—probably yes—but the formats have changed; some have simply just died. Perhaps they are on some old email address—absolutely likely—but I've lost access to the passwords and ability to reset them. Then there are all the ephemeral things that mattered to me which I never bothered to digitize at all: negatives, VHS tapes of our fan fiction movie based on 1971's Shaft called "Shaft on the Rock." Yes, that was a real thing.

Even all this pales in comparison when you realize that just a few companies in the world own and store all the content we create. When you buy games digitally, you would expect them to work forever. That's simply not true. The very first game that I ever had my name attached to is Neverwinter Nights by BioWare Corp. In order to play online, the game needed to connect to something called "the master server." This was a singularly compact piece of software originally written almost entirely by an amazing programmer and friend (Andrew G.). Who keeps such a thing running in perpetuity after sales of the game have collapsed?

Luckily, in this case, a company of ex-BioWarians, Beamdog, did continue running the software needed to connect for the Enhanced Editions of the game after GameSpy ended support. But in many cases, the systems that allow other systems, creative works, etc., to even be available go away forever on the whim of economics and even the practices of companies. In this case, gamers are rising up in protest and holding some of these companies to account.

Your email, documents, and pictures are also not yours. They may be yours by copyright, but if tomorrow the servers they are hosted on were turned off, or you were blocked from access, they are gone from you forever unless you happen to have a backup. I am sure most of the world functions on mobile systems without backups and relies entirely on the various companies' cloud services. As humans, we tend to predict the future based on the present. Our present ability to provide electricity to these systems and the geopolitics that allow these pipes to work around the world, for example, just don't seem to be a problem. Will that continue? Your guess is as good as mine!

How do you feel as parts of history disappear and get changed? Wikipedia, for example, relies on online sources that are continually changing. They who control the sources control the narrative of any event that you read about. Does that mean you can change the past? Yes, we are already rewriting, without knowing it, the history of our present. If it were not for passion projects such as the invaluable Internet Archive, reality would swirl too readily into the foggy past.

The story I wrote, The Chain Letter, plays upon the trope of a forgotten type of viral email that we all received back in the 90s. I wanted to encapsulate what is happening on the Internet as content slowly disappears into the psyche of a single person. If tomorrow your digital world disappeared through no fault of your own, would anyone know who you are? In a world with so much digital content, we have come to accept and call commonplace something that is quite remarkable. Should a disaster happen today that removes our access to all that data, we would actually be not far removed from our ancestors whom we sometimes condescendingly refer to as "primitive."

I wonder if someday a child looks at the ruins of our many buildings, sees the scattered computer pieces, maybe even flickering screens in an unknowable language, and asks their parent: "Who were these people?" It may be that again, the works and voices of the ordinary, like you and me, will continue to remain silent and forgotten.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

I would like to explore this idea of autobiography with some help from my former professor, Dr. Erwin Warkentin. Erwin, as I call him these days, has been one of my dearest mentors and friends throughout the past thirty years of my life. I am proud to have been one of his first German students at Memorial University when I was a wet-behind-the-ears, snot-faced undergraduate student. He continues to impart some modicum of wisdom and put up with my questions when I call.

Erwin was my professor of German, but at various times, he has also been the head of the Memorial German and Russian Department and the creator of the communications program at the University, among many other titles and professions.

I will read a piece that he wrote–please listen to the episode–about his first and last memories of his mother, after which he and I will have a conversation about how he feels about me reading this piece online and much, much more.

Thanks for reading and listening. Erwin and I will cover many more topics in select episodes, so please subscribe if you enjoy this!

The Conversation.

Please note, this transcript has been edited so it can be read easier online.

DupsYou just heard me tell a story that was written by Dr. Warkentin. As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, Dr. Warkentin has been one of my professors and mentors throughout my life, ever since I was about 18 years old till I am whatever I am today.

Last year, when I was visiting Dr. Warkentin in Berlin, he and I were having lots of discussions about writing as I was sitting down to start writing myself. As we were talking about writing, he pulled out a book that his daughter had asked him to prepare for his grandchildren.

These were stories of his life.

Later, we discussed a lot about what these stories might mean to him and to his family down the road. So first, I would like to introduce you to Dr. Warkentin.

Hello, Dr. Warkentin, or Erwin, as I now call you.

ErwinYeah, hi.

DupsHow are you doing?

ErwinGood.

I still call you Duleepa, not Dups.

DupsOh, well, only my mother calls me that, which is an appropriate segue to what I just read. So this is a very personal piece that you wrote about your mother.

ErwinAbsolutely. It’s one of these pieces where I have difficulty controlling my emotions because there are a lot of emotions connected to it. And it’s so different from the other writing that I get to do. It’s just, it’s an interesting exercise, especially if someone reads it to me as you just did. It’s an odd sort of experience. It’s almost out of body.

DupsHow is it different? Is it because I put the intonations and the inflections in the different places that you would have seen?

ErwinYes, absolutely. There were certain passages, the passage where you named these place names.

Dups“Eaton’s, Lyceum, Kresge’s, Met Store, Arthur Murray’s, the Hudson’s Bay.”

ErwinExactly. You actually imparted some speed. You made it sound as though the vehicle was going faster. You made it sound interesting for me it was terribly uninteresting these were just places along the way and yes they’re important to me but the way you read it all of a sudden it kind of opened my eyes. Oh yeah okay the these are maybe important things to talk about in terms of making the mundane interesting. I don’t know if that’s how it works but perhaps…

DupsSo when I was reading it, I get the emotion and the feeling of that last time you saw your mother and the first time. Those are clear to me. But obviously, I have no connection to your mother. And I only have a connection to you. So I’m imagining the child, Erwin, and the adult Erwin giving the story. How do you feel when you hear my words?

ErwinI’m a little bit distant from it when I hear it coming from you because when I read this story to myself you know it clearly. Sometimes you read it out loud but most of the time it’s simply quiet reading to yourself as you’re looking at the text. When I read this to myself I see my mother, I’m just an observer in the story as it were.

However, when you read it to me, all of a sudden I have this out-of-body experience where I’m looking at myself. I’m looking at this little boy that I did not really seem that aware of. You know, the little boy was a narrator, if anything.

In some ways I thought, well, maybe completely unimportant because I was focused on my mother. By having you read this to me in this way and give these different interpretations of the text, in the way you read it, all of a sudden I’m focusing on the little boy, on myself.

And so that I find incredibly interesting.

DupsI think one of the really interesting things for me is when I write something autobiographical, I do get lost in the emotion of my memory. Now that you’re just imagining the child and seeing it through my reading, do you have that same feeling of the emotion or is it different?

ErwinNo, the emotion is still there.

It may actually be more profound because when I’m reading it to myself, I have control over the text, as it were, and I know absolutely what’s coming in the text. However, when you read it, the fact that you’ll put a different intonation on a different word or emphasize something that kind of alienates the piece from me. That is, it creates this distance that doesn’t normally exist. The emotion may actually be even more intense in that I don’t have absolute control over what’s being read, in particular in how it’s being read.

DupsWell, yeah, exactly. You know the words, you know where the story is going, but it’s the, how am I going to say the words that are coming up.

So how does this feel now that you’ve written this? And of course, this is going into that book that you’re going to give your grandchildren. So what does this mean to you? To have them read it, knowing that, they might be much older when they read it?

ErwinThe interesting thing is that I experience them now as a five-year-old and a three-year-old. They’re actually about the age that I was in this story (at least) the older one–the five-year-old, the three-year-old, he’ll get there too.

For me to know that they will read this, the important thing is that they’ll know something about the essence of their grandfather beyond me being playful with them, me bringing them toys or gifts or things like that, me allowing them to get away with stuff that I would have never allowed my son to get away with.

It will hopefully give them a broader view of who their grandfather is and was. So in other words, I’m passing something on to another generation so that they can perhaps understand me. Now, there’s another aspect to this, and that is perhaps I’m creating my own defense.

DupsDefense in what way?

ErwinThey may hear certain things about their grandfather that aren’t particularly positive. I’m not saying nasty things or anything like that. But, my son may remember certain events in certain ways, and he may inadvertently have dropped them at some point on them. In this way, I can kind of defend myself before the fact.

DupsThat’s a good point. It’s very interesting because I guess in some ways. When you have children and the human race continues on generation through generation, we pass on our genes. What we hope to do is to teach the children. We stuff them with all sorts of stuff, whether it’s ethics, values, or German history. Then we send them out into the world, they collect all sorts of other experiences, and they become fully formed individuals.

I guess in some ways, this, what you’re doing is kind of affecting that what is carried on to the next generation. It’s almost like a genome in some ways, except you get to control it, you get to control exactly what happens there.

ErwinExactly. It’s a genome that I’m passing on, but one that I have gone in and manufactured or I’ve altered in some way. It should be known that I also include unflattering things in my stories about myself. Not just the positive. I want them to get the idea that there’s more to their grandfather than just kind of this statue or idol that’s been created. Rather, he was a fully formed human being with all the foibles.

Hopefully they can then also learn something from the negative aspects of who their grandfather was and some of the things that he may have done. Not all of them were positive. Some of them were laughable. Others, well, they were perhaps a little more serious.

DupsWell, isn’t that what they call a human life? That is the human experience.

ErwinExactly. And I’m hoping to pass that on.

DupsSo going back to the story, one of the interesting things for me reading it, of course, is that I know you as my professor, and as a friend. And this is a very personal piece, right? It’s not as if when you were teaching me about the letters of Werther]]>Writing about experiences centered around specific pivotal moments in my life is not easy for me. I easily get wrapped up in my own emotions. I find that autobiography does not come naturally to me. I think some of the closest autobiographical-style writing I have done was included in Episode 6 when I talked about my own immigrant story.

I would like to explore this idea of autobiography with some help from my former professor, Dr. Erwin Warkentin. Erwin, as I call him these days, has been one of my dearest mentors and friends throughout the past thirty years of my life. I am proud to have been one of his first German students at Memorial University when I was a wet-behind-the-ears, snot-faced undergraduate student. He continues to impart some modicum of wisdom and put up with my questions when I call.

Erwin was my professor of German, but at various times, he has also been the head of the Memorial German and Russian Department and the creator of the communications program at the University, among many other titles and professions.

I will read a piece that he wrote–please listen to the episode–about his first and last memories of his mother, after which he and I will have a conversation about how he feels about me reading this piece online and much, much more.

Thanks for reading and listening. Erwin and I will cover many more topics in select episodes, so please subscribe if you enjoy this!

The Conversation.

Please note, this transcript has been edited so it can be read easier online.

DupsYou just heard me tell a story that was written by Dr. Warkentin. As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, Dr. Warkentin has been one of my professors and mentors throughout my life, ever since I was about 18 years old till I am whatever I am today.

Last year, when I was visiting Dr. Warkentin in Berlin, he and I were having lots of discussions about writing as I was sitting down to start writing myself. As we were talking about writing, he pulled out a book that his daughter had asked him to prepare for his grandchildren.

These were stories of his life.

Later, we discussed a lot about what these stories might mean to him and to his family down the road. So first, I would like to introduce you to Dr. Warkentin.

Hello, Dr. Warkentin, or Erwin, as I now call you.

ErwinYeah, hi.

DupsHow are you doing?

ErwinGood.

I still call you Duleepa, not Dups.

DupsOh, well, only my mother calls me that, which is an appropriate segue to what I just read. So this is a very personal piece that you wrote about your mother.

ErwinAbsolutely. It’s one of these pieces where I have difficulty controlling my emotions because there are a lot of emotions connected to it. And it’s so different from the other writing that I get to do. It’s just, it’s an interesting exercise, especially if someone reads it to me as you just did. It’s an odd sort of experience. It’s almost out of body.

DupsHow is it different? Is it because I put the intonations and the inflections in the different places that you would have seen?

ErwinYes, absolutely. There were certain passages, the passage where you named these place names.

Dups“Eaton’s, Lyceum, Kresge’s, Met Store, Arthur Murray’s, the Hudson’s Bay.”

ErwinExactly. You actually imparted some speed. You made it sound as though the vehicle was going faster. You made it sound interesting for me it was terribly uninteresting these were just places along the way and yes they’re important to me but the way you read it all of a sudden it kind of opened my eyes. Oh yeah okay the these are maybe important things to talk about in terms of making the mundane interesting. I don’t know if that’s how it works but perhaps…

DupsSo when I was reading it, I get the emotion and the feeling of that last time you saw your mother and the first time. Those are clear to me. But obviously, I have no connection to your mother. And I only have a connection to you. So I’m imagining the child, Erwin, and the adult Erwin giving the story. How do you feel when you hear my words?

ErwinI’m a little bit distant from it when I hear it coming from you because when I read this story to myself you know it clearly. Sometimes you read it out loud but most of the time it’s simply quiet reading to yourself as you’re looking at the text. When I read this to myself I see my mother, I’m just an observer in the story as it were.

However, when you read it to me, all of a sudden I have this out-of-body experience where I’m looking at myself. I’m looking at this little boy that I did not really seem that aware of. You know, the little boy was a narrator, if anything.

In some ways I thought, well, maybe completely unimportant because I was focused on my mother. By having you read this to me in this way and give these different interpretations of the text, in the way you read it, all of a sudden I’m focusing on the little boy, on myself.

And so that I find incredibly interesting.

DupsI think one of the really interesting things for me is when I write something autobiographical, I do get lost in the emotion of my memory. Now that you’re just imagining the child and seeing it through my reading, do you have that same feeling of the emotion or is it different?

ErwinNo, the emotion is still there.

It may actually be more profound because when I’m reading it to myself, I have control over the text, as it were, and I know absolutely what’s coming in the text. However, when you read it, the fact that you’ll put a different intonation on a different word or emphasize something that kind of alienates the piece from me. That is, it creates this distance that doesn’t normally exist. The emotion may actually be even more intense in that I don’t have absolute control over what’s being read, in particular in how it’s being read.

DupsWell, yeah, exactly. You know the words, you know where the story is going, but it’s the, how am I going to say the words that are coming up.

So how does this feel now that you’ve written this? And of course, this is going into that book that you’re going to give your grandchildren. So what does this mean to you? To have them read it, knowing that, they might be much older when they read it?

ErwinThe interesting thing is that I experience them now as a five-year-old and a three-year-old. They’re actually about the age that I was in this story (at least) the older one–the five-year-old, the three-year-old, he’ll get there too.

For me to know that they will read this, the important thing is that they’ll know something about the essence of their grandfather beyond me being playful with them, me bringing them toys or gifts or things like that, me allowing them to get away with stuff that I would have never allowed my son to get away with.

It will hopefully give them a broader view of who their grandfather is and was. So in other words, I’m passing something on to another generation so that they can perhaps understand me. Now, there’s another aspect to this, and that is perhaps I’m creating my own defense.

DupsDefense in what way?

ErwinThey may hear certain things about their grandfather that aren’t particularly positive. I’m not saying nasty things or anything like that. But, my son may remember certain events in certain ways, and he may inadvertently have dropped them at some point on them. In this way, I can kind of defend myself before the fact.

DupsThat’s a good point. It’s very interesting because I guess in some ways. When you have children and the human race continues on generation through generation, we pass on our genes. What we hope to do is to teach the children. We stuff them with all sorts of stuff, whether it’s ethics, values, or German history. Then we send them out into the world, they collect all sorts of other experiences, and they become fully formed individuals.

I guess in some ways, this, what you’re doing is kind of affecting that what is carried on to the next generation. It’s almost like a genome in some ways, except you get to control it, you get to control exactly what happens there.

ErwinExactly. It’s a genome that I’m passing on, but one that I have gone in and manufactured or I’ve altered in some way. It should be known that I also include unflattering things in my stories about myself. Not just the positive. I want them to get the idea that there’s more to their grandfather than just kind of this statue or idol that’s been created. Rather, he was a fully formed human being with all the foibles.

Hopefully they can then also learn something from the negative aspects of who their grandfather was and some of the things that he may have done. Not all of them were positive. Some of them were laughable. Others, well, they were perhaps a little more serious.

DupsWell, isn’t that what they call a human life? That is the human experience.

ErwinExactly. And I’m hoping to pass that on.

DupsSo going back to the story, one of the interesting things for me reading it, of course, is that I know you as my professor, and as a friend. And this is a very personal piece, right? It’s not as if when you were teaching me about the letters of Werther or Goethe, we were talking about your mother or your past.

What’s really interesting to me is that this gives me an insight that I didn’t have on you, which if I were to read someone’s autobiography of a movie star or something like it doesn’t really affect me. But this I can actually talk to you about it.

One of the interesting things I find is what you do put in and what you don’t put in. What didn’t you put in here? Because there’s a lot here that I can actually pick out and talk about, for example: “she has a glowing smile and waves goodbye as the elevator doors closed.” But you don’t talk about what she was wearing. You don’t think about any of her pain or anything else that might be happening. You’re thinking about the positive things.

ErwinAnd for me at that time, that was important because we all knew that she was going to die. She knew that she would die and that it would not take very long for her to pass on. My two sisters are both nurses. Both of them have worked, and one of them still does work on a palliative care unit. We’d already been through the drill once with my father, so we knew what was going to happen. So we thought it would be kind of useless to focus on the negative thing.

Yeah, there’s negative things that are associated with memories of my mother. And yes, we are selective in the memories that we pass on. You have to remember that the last bit of my career I spent talking about and writing about propaganda. Essentially, this also works like a propaganda piece of sorts. If you were to look at it through the lens of a propaganda expert, they’d be able to pick this apart and say, this is what he’s doing.

He’s emphasizing this, he’s downplaying that. That incident when he was 16 years old and his mother really got ticked off at him; or, the first time she caught him swearing: all of that is gone. It’s not there.

Because when it comes to saying goodbye to someone for the life, that stuff is unimportant. It’s the positive stuff that, in my view at least, is important when you’re talking about a personal relationship with someone that is that close to you.

In particular, the location for me, that was the thing that struck me. I remember when I left the hospital, I drove to my sister’s and she was actually, she was a nurse on that particular ward. She kind of kept mother close, as it were. She says, “you do know that used to be the maternity ward?” All these conversations over the years clicked together that, yes, I was saying goodbye to her in the same place I said hello. It’s one of these things that is a profoundly emotional thing that we try to articulate in some sort of way.

I think this is my attempt to being someone who is also emotionally articulate. I don’t know if that’s a thing or not, to be emotionally articulate And as we get older, it becomes more and more important, I think. I’m sure that you’re going to start experiencing some of that, too, as you get older. You’re still that young man that I met in the second class that I ever taught at Memorial. I say the second class because there was someone missing the first class.

Dups(Laughs). Fair enough. I think what I find quite fascinating is that we spend a lot of time thinking about the mundane in the people we remember when I read through this, it’s really interesting to me, this is not just you, as I realize I do it as well. I think about the mundane.

I think about my dad and how he would always have to have his pen in the right place. I don’t think about the extraordinary thing he did or whatever the case may be. So when I remember people, I remember the mundane.

Why do you think that is?

ErwinThose are the personal moments. Those are the moments we don’t share with anyone else. If you think about that event with my mother and what kind of surrounds it is, going to Woolworths, having lunch with her. This was just the two of us. Yeah, there were other people around. Yes, my father knew that she was going to go out that morning and afternoon, but it was just the two of us that experienced that.

So for me, it’s one of these things I can hold on to and say, this is mine.

This is all mine.

You know, nobody else can have that. And it’s those mundane moments that give that to us. You talked about your father having the pen in just the right place. Well, has anyone else noticed that? It’s a very special thing that you noticed about your father and something that kind of binds the two of you together.

I think we have that with any number of different people. Those are the things that make these people precious to us because we get an insight int their very private sphere, which they don’t allow too terribly many other people to have access to.

DupsYou have spent your life writing. You have spent the last 30 years putting together books, papers, lectures. They’re very different, though. We are taught never to write with “I” when we’re doing academic papers.

How does it feel to use “I”?

How does it feel to put yourself down on paper and actually have an opinion?

ErwinIt feels good. It really does.

I don’t think I realized how much I resented that practice of never using “I” in a paper unless someone else was using the word “I” and I had to record that, in a document somewhere.

it’s important to be able to tell people, this is what I think, not, this is what the evidence points towards and blah, blah, blah, on and on it goes. Rather saying, here’s something we’re not too sure about, why we think this way, but this is the way I think.

Another one of these words that is banished from academic writing: “This is how I feel.” When I’m writing about Wolfgang Borchert or Goethe or Schiller or one of these guys, I can never say “I feel this way” in an academic piece. I can certainly talk to individuals that may have seen a play together with me, and we can talk about how it made us feel and things like that. But in an academic world, you don’t talk about how you feel about a piece.

That may be changing to some degree, but there’s still a lot of this, “oh, no, we don’t want to talk about feelings.” We only want to talk about provable concepts that can be proven through logical means.

DupsIsn’t there a world where you have both? You can have the proven logic but still have the writer’s feeling? Because if you don’t know the writer’s feeling, the biases creep in just by the things you don’t say, the words you use. This is what I’ve always felt about writing and bias and issues.

ErwinIt all depends on whether Plato or Aristotle is on top at any particular time in your mind. If you kind of go along with Plato, feelings can figure into things, If you’re a strict Aristotelian, well, feelings have to kind of be left to the side. They’re not that significant. They’re not that important.

It all depends. And it is a struggle.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Yes, emotions are part of even academic writing. I was told by my supervisor, Dr. Holger Pausch at the University of Alberta, he said “you’re far more interesting when you’re engaged; when you’re pissed off about something.” And that’s the way he wanted me to write.

He did say within reason.

There’s that word again, reason.

But there can be and there should be a place for both. I think perhaps we’ve kind of gone there and we’ve passed that point. If you look at things transpiring in the world today, for example, and if you listen to any of the commentators it has very little to do with logic and has a lot to do with how they feel about something.

So maybe we’ve gone too far in certain ways.

DupsWhat’s funny is, and the reason why I brought it up is, because 30 years ago, you and I sat in the university quadrangle outside the arts building, and we were talking about Werther. I was, of course, writing at The Muse, and we were talking about journalism, about authenticity and non-bias in journalism. You actually did use the expression, if I remember correctly, you need to be engaged if you’re going to be listening and writing.

ErwinSo there you can see how this gets passed on from one to the other. I was told that by my supervisor, and I’m sorry, it’s not exclusive to you, I’ve tried to pass that on to others.

You have to be engaged.

Otherwise, why bother?

DupsWell, I have to say that I was engaged reading the story out and watching your face as I read it out, 0which was entertaining in and of itself.

Thank you so much, Dr. Warkentin.

Now, before we, we say goodbye, we are going to do more episodes together because we have a whole set, right?

ErwinYep. I’m looking forward to it.

DupsIt’s going to be a lot of fun. There’s going to be a time at least when you’re going to read one of my stories out, so it’s going to be entertaining for me to hear.

ErwinThen I don’t get to be so much the sidekick. The funny thing in all of this is that we’ve kind of come full circle in many ways. It’s me now submitting something to you to have it read and me sitting there wondering, does he like it? Is it any good?

DupsWell, I haven’t given you your mark back.

ErwinI know, I know, and I’m waiting.

DupsAnd maybe you’ll find out next week when I give you your mark. So again, thank you very much, Dr. Warkentin. It’s been a pleasure as always.

ErwinYou’re more than welcome.

If you enjoyed this podcast, please help it reach a wider audience!

About my guest, Dr. Erwin J. Warkentin

Erwin J. Warkentin received his PhD in German...]]>substack:post:168198463Mon, 14 Jul 2025 05:00:00 +030027:02falsefull111111Ep. 10: Are you a manager or a leader? / To the lands of milk and honeyHave you noticed that the market for self-help and how to succeed at business is so incredibly massive? According to a piece in the Washington Post from January 2025, I kid you not, 15000 self-help books are published each year. Some thousands likely have the terms “manager” or “leader” in the title. I'm only talking about the English language. Maybe even just North America.

Why so many?

Well, fundamentally, management and leadership do not come naturally to most of us. But if you get a bunch of people together to accomplish a task, and if you don't want to have a Tower of Babel scenario, and have the whole thing collapse under you, you need to work out how to get to the end successfully.

At one time or another, people who I have worked with in companies of various sizes have made the statement: "I want to advance in my career, I need to become a manager." In today's world where we are struggling with understanding how AI will impact our individual contributor roles in companies, I can understand that more than ever before are thinking "I guess I need to figure out this management thing."

Today, I would like to talk about the perils of management vs leadership. Remember in Episode 8, I said, don't take my advice. Now, I want to repeat that mantra, don't take my advice. Instead I will tell you some stories along with context and reasoning behind them so you can decide for yourself how my experiences and observations could impact you.

But first, I want to spin you a short fiction story. The wonder of the human imagination is to be able to inhabit and walk in the skin of anyone and anything. With this unique and otherworldly ability we are able to examine problems in ways we might not have otherwise.

The story I wrote for today is called "To the lands of milk and honey".

Read: To the lands of milk and honey

Read: On the perils of management vs. leadership – which are you?

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

This is my 24th Canada Day as a Canadian citizen, 33rd since I came to the rocky shores of Newfoundland, and the 8th since I moved to Finland for work.

People often ask me where "home" is. As I have expressed elsewhere, I tend to respond that home and I have a complicated relationship. But in truth, where home is can be explained simply if I look at it purely from a country and geography perspective. If places were women, then Newfoundland would be my first true love, and with it, the country of Canada.

33 years later, I have a semblance of an answer as to why I chose Newfoundland and Canada became home so easily. When I came to Newfoundland, I was desperate for a home and a place of peace from an unsettled childhood. And despite finding that peace, my unsettled need to explore everything around me matches the very nature of Canada and Newfoundland. It is no wonder then that I feel most at home when I am staring through the churning, ice-laden seas of Newfoundland to lands I long to still explore.

Canada, for me, as it does for many people, brings to mind vistas of natural grandeur: the towering guardians of rock, windswept landscapes through which wide, untamed rivers tumble, or the sun-drenched plains of natural antiquity. It is not a peaceful vastness that lies before me. It is an enormity of sight, sound, smell, and touch, with a sense of grumbling awe, a wildness stirring underneath.

As a late 20th-century immigrant to this land, I suspect that it is no different than what our First Nations people felt when they wandered through the inhospitable tundras to find places of respite. It is a thread that connects them to all of us more recent explorers, though now we are all protected by modern conveniences.

As a country and a political entity, we are by no means perfect. Human selfishness and greed have sidelined and in many cases destroyed the lives of many of our First Nations. The same negative forces threaten how we treat a diverse nation now and into the future.

But despite all this, Newfoundland and Canada have given me both the sense of peace and the hunger to explore. Every Canada Day I wrestle with where we could be, but acknowledge the greatness that we are. I understand today, in order for us to be a true North strong and free, we must stand together, all of us, whether new or ancient. We are the guardians of that beautiful and awesome slumbering giant beneath our feet.

Our Canada, you are my home and native land.

For this Canada Day episode of 2025, I would like to take you on a journey exploring that vastness on a road that takes us through French and English history and through to the rich history of our native First Nations peoples. Indeed, this journey encompasses all of the goodness and the beauty of Canada, as well as the harms we have done and continue to do as a nation.

It is a journey that my friends and I undertook in 2008 based on journals I was keeping at the time. We drove from Montreal, where we were living, to James Bay in Northern Quebec. It is a road far less traveled.

The photos I took are available on my photo galleries and others on my Substack.

You may read these written travel journals as well on my Substack under Life and Travels.

Read Part 1: To James Bay and the Arctic Ocean

Read Part 2: Canoeing with elders under the grand dams of Hydro-Quebec

Thanks this week to my colleague Bartosz who introduced me to Whisper.cpp. For various reasons, typing has been difficult for me, and being able to transcribe these journals which have been hidden in a box would have been a challenge without this software.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

This week, I'd like to come back to entrepreneurship. Building teams, ideas, and organizations is near and dear to me. There is something that draws me to these tasks like a worker ant to sugar. In all this, I've met with both success and failure. I've read books and blogs and listened to podcasts. I've talked to mentors who have reached elusive 10x exits, and to those who have failed far worse than I have.

Over the years, I've realized two things.

The first: I have created my own mental models around how I believe things should be done. This, I believe, is absolutely normal. We all do this. These are what people call the "playbooks" that they bring to any work they do, especially at the executive level. When we get hired at companies, our calling cards are our past success and our playbooks.

The second thing I have learned is that my mental models are, pardon my language, pure s**t. My mental models continually get challenged, and if I am being honest with myself rather than believing my own hype, each of my mental models or playbooks has a large number of flaws.

I do want to explore more of these models, playbooks, and flaws, as I see them, and hopefully even discuss them with friends and mentors on this podcast or in articles in the future.

For this episode I have to thank Viktor Djupsjöbacka for silly photos of me. He's been compiling blackmail material at Supermetrics for years and was quite happy to share the milder and less incriminating photos and videos.

Read: Three reasons to never take my advice. Ever.

Read: Only stupid people start companies…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

At the end of this week, there is a special three-day event when you can see the Finnish national flag across every town, city, and hamlet, and most importantly, the summer cottage, or mökki, as they are known in Finnish. It is Midsummer, otherwise known as Juhannus in Finnish and Midsommar in Swedish.

Midsummer in Finland is truly a day of white nights. Across the Arctic Circle, past Rovaniemi to the Arctic Ocean, the sun is at its highest, the day at its longest. If you have never witnessed the quality of that light, I hope everyone listening will one day. Purely and simply, it is otherworldly.

Another thing that happens in this Finnish start to the summer is the opening of the summer cottage season. From the very tip to the southern archipelago, summer cottages are occupied. As generations change, remote summer cottages are handed down within a family; however, they can be quite expensive and hard to maintain. Despite being at the heart of Finnish culture, not all cottages continue their existence, and you can see that more with changing times, changing cultures, and changing climates.

This episode is in two parts. The first part is the story "The Cottage on the Shores of Yli-Kitka," a story I wrote, read in both Finnish and English. In the second part, there is a piece about my experiences from Midsummer in the west coast Finnish Archipelago some years ago.

But first, I want to bring you a piece of poetic prose that I wrote about the mökki season. I will give more detail after the piece. Crazy as this may sound, even though my Finnish is terrible, I imagined this piece in Finnish. So I want you to hear the Finnish version first, as read by Kaj Mäkelä, translated by Suvi Salmilampi and Kaj Mäkelä.

Read the short story: The cottage on the shores of Yli-Kitka (English) / Mökki Yli-Kitkan rannalla (Finnish)

Read: Midsummer in Finland’s Archipelago

Unlike many of my pieces this was written on a Friday evening, fixed up within a week and published here within 10 days. I was extremely lucky that my insanely talented writing group happened to be meeting in that time and were able to give solid and creative feedback. So this week I would like to give thanks to Liz, Paul, Julius, Baiba and Viktor for the feedback and for driving me to better myself. Much of their suggestions made it in just in time. Some of the suggestions will have to wait for a future version!

The sounds of the Kuikka: Kuikka / Black-Throated Loon / Arctic Diver by YleArkisto -- https://freesound.org/s/242110/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

That being said, I feel, and I certainly hope people who know me would agree, that I have been a positive force in any society I have lived in. Immigration is a very loaded topic these days. My own country of Canada and the country I live in, Finland, are grappling with different aspects of immigration. Either not having enough, having too much, not having the resources to have more or arguing about what kind of immigrant or foreign worker you need to make your society strong.

I think it's a fairly well understood example that Canada has been for the most part successful in how much immigrants such as myself have contributed to the economy. Finland is smaller, aging and more homogenous. Recently I became a board member of The Shortcut, an organization tackling the integration of foreign talent into Finland and creating the space for foreign entrepreneurship to blossom as part of the Finnish Startup Community.

Part 1: Interview with Riikka Loisamo, CEO, The Shortcut

Hear about the mission and the programs for The Shortcut in Finland and how organizations like The Shortcut are changing the mentality that Finland can be a place where foreign-born talent can thrive as entrepreneurs.

Part 2: The three stages of enlightened migration

Taking the winding path to the summit of Sri Lanka's Adam's Peak and reaching a peace between my numerous cultures along the way.

Read the article: The three stages of enlightened migration

Bonus: Sri Pada Samanale Kande, sung by the Wijayawardhana family

Recorded in 2010/2011, a small cut of a very long recording with my father, my eldest brother, Harsha, and his daughter, Panchali.

Thanks

This episode is possible only because of the generousity of Riikka Loisamo and my friends Liisa and Niall.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

When I was in highschool I was always writing, both in school and outside school. Sadly, in my family's many moves, most of that writing has been lost. When I was 8 and living in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, I distinctly remember writing a 20-chapter Famous Five novel of my own. I was very much into Enid Blyton and especially the Famous Five.

During a visit to my now 85-year-old mother last year, she handed me several file folders. They contained, to my horror, all of my report cards from every class along with some other curiousities. In 1989, when I was 14, the South China Morning Post in Hongkong where we were then living, ran a Short Story Competition. I sincerely have no recollection of entering it, but somehow my entry came third and was published.

I had forgotten this until I saw the printed entry tucked into the file folders. Today, I'm actually going to read that out in this podcast. I can absolutely understand how cringy this will be. There's nothing like reading teenage fiction.

But before making your ears bleed I want to delve into the topic of fiction in the age of generative AI. In Episodes 2 and 3 I discussed how AI was changing the face of coding and technology creation, but what about the other creative arts?

Fiction in the age of AI

Read the written version of “Fiction in the age of AI”

The Nervous Nineties: Voyage through darkness into the black whirlpool

Read the written version of my short story: “The Nervous Nineties: Voyage through darkness into the black whirlpool”

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The "hazards" of driving in Chile

Every country has its driving norms and after driving 2,500 kilometres in Chile, I think I've figured out at least one that you might want to have in the back of your mind before visiting! Read the full piece.

Photos: Scenes from the Atacama, Chile, Carnival in Arica, Chile

The Colombo Traffic Symphonic Orchestra

What was it like to drive through the busy congested streets of Colombo, Sri Lanka? Let me take you on a "musical" journey. In some parts and times in the city, this is not yet ancient history. Read the full piece

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

So I'd like to consider the question of how deeply engineers are actually adopting AI, especially Agentic AI in larger software teams. My gut says that it's a lot less than what tech leaders, including me, are hoping for even while we buy expensive tools. Please read the full notes and links available at https://tales.dups.ca/p/how-deeply-are-engineers-adopting

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit tales.dups.ca