I swear the best ideas are developed on buses, trains, and planes. Mine came to me on an overnight Mana bus trip, from Wellington to Hamilton.
It was February 2019 — I was a new grad, excited to escape small-town New Zealand for the capital. I had already secured a job at Salient, the Victoria University of Wellington student magazine, and “just” needed a flat… Except the world had changed since I had last flatted in Wellington in 2014, when you could simply pick one you liked the look of on TradeMe, meet the flatties via Skype over a dodgy internet connection, and show up with your mattress and your mum on move-in day.
This time, I spent weeks sending off carefully curated ‘About Me’ messages to dozens of flats on TradeMe and Facebook, with barely a ‘hello’ back. From the few that did respond, it was clear I wouldn’t secure anything unless I showed up to in-person viewings. So I made a snap decision to go down for a weekend — 11 hours there, 11 hours back — to smash out three flat viewings.
One was horrible. Your classic dark-and-damp™ Newtown flat. I ruled them out immediately but stuck around long enough to make a good impression, apparently. (They rang me the next day to explain, super apologetic, that I’d lost a coinflip to a dude with curly hair.)
One was fine. It was in the old Hannah’s shoe factory building on Leeds Street.
The last one, I vibed with. It was a cute little apartment in Mount Vic and they called to offer me the room that same night, a few hours before I settled into the red leather seats that would take me home to Cambridge.
The air was musty on the bus. The seat-divider panes were rattling so hard no-one could sleep. But inside, I was sparkling with excitement for a future in Pо̄neke, and letting my mind race through possibilities.
The entry in my Notes app from that night reads:
February 24, 2019 1:15AM Blog like German Is Easy
With embedded audio files
Subscription based
초급영어
워홀영어
English for students
NZ slang/culture
생활영어
EmailsI’ve spent the last three years fluffing and plumping the idea in my head, but the core of it has remained consistent. C’est à dire, I want to create a subscription-based website that teaches New Zealand English (specifically) to speakers of Korean, in the style of German Is Easy.
There you have it. The idea that will hopefully fuel a profitable small business — and, as a happy byproduct, many more entries on this blog as I document the process throughout 2022 and beyond.
🚌💭