At the "World of Coffee 2019 Show" in Berlin, someone pulled me aside... worriedly. He told me he'd had been comparing my current Youtube videos, could see burnout, and wanted to warn me that I wouldn't last long. He said "I don't think you're having fun anymore" (his words).

At that time, it was sleeping pills at night and painkillers during the day, just to keep going.  So, that was a wakeup call.  Coming off Ambien was not fun, and took a month of no sleep.  With Scott Rao's help, we learned that Bugs' shoulder problem were a biome reaction to alcohol.

In some ways, COVID has been well timed for Bugs and I. It forced us to live in California for 6 months, in the middle of a forest, and just have a very simple life.  A BIG reset, and a tan.

COVID has also caused a big increase in people wanting to take up espresso-making at home, which for us is a silver lining to an otherwise sad situation, since we happened to have an appropriate product for that very need.

So....

16 days ago Bugs and I flew back to Hong Kong, to get "back in the game".

I've set my desk up with the other engineers working on making machines.  This is the new factory, which moved production into just 10 days before our arrival.

Both bugs and I were bit shellshocked and emotional by what we saw on arriving. We'd seen the CAD files of the factory, and interviewed everyone via video chat, but it really didn't hit us, until we were here, this is our company, and our employees, and this is what we're building.

Whoa.

-john

Interested? Find our espresso machines here.

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