Signal & Sidewalk

Dispatches from the road, the work, and the long way round

The Education

My Time at the University of Toronto: An Alum's Honest Reflection

The good, the bad, and everything in between at a university in a world-class city. Five years in and fresh off graduation, here is what I would tell someone about to sign up.

By Khang Nguyen | Toronto, Canada | 7 min read

uoft

University of Toronto Front Campus: A spring day with my design team in front campus.

When I started at the University of Toronto, I had no idea what was in store for me. It gave me lifelong friends, the chance to try new things, to fail, and to get lost along the way. In the end, I'm incredibly fortunate and proud to have been part of it.

To be clear, ask ten students or alumni and you'll get ten different answers about what this place is really like. I wasn't the best student in my class (some might say I was one of the worst), but I tried to experience everything the university had to offer: working on a student team, doing research, taking too many internships, and pulling more late nights studying than I can count. So take this as my personal take, though I think most of my friends here would agree.

If you're a high school student researching universities, I hope this gives you some clarity. And if you've just been accepted or just started your own journey here, congratulations: the next few years are going to be exciting.

Read the full story

Latest Dispatches

Filter by tag in the clip-out box — or tap any tag on a story

Weekend Rituals

My Weekend Ritual: Local Coffee Shops and Non-Fiction Reads

How a cappuccino and a good non-fiction book turn down the noise of a busy week.

Kenny Nguyen | 19 Sep | 4 min

By the end of the week, I’m usually completely exhausted. I’ve tried meditation, movies, even drinks with friends — but my favourite way to de-stress is a good non-fiction book at a local coffee shop.

Going Back

A Small Journey to a Forgotten Place, A Lesson That Stayed

Some of the best lessons don't come from moving forward — they come from going back.

Kenny Nguyen | 9 Sep | 3 min

A decade away, and I assumed the connection was gone. Then I stepped into the old house and the memories came back. What has changed in Vietnam, what stubbornly has not, and the 6 a.m. habit I brought home.

On the Road

Ninety kilometres of red dirt, and not one sign in English

The route from Kon Tum to Măng Đen is technically a road. Technically.

Mai Trần | 4 Aug | 9 min

I lost the GPS signal about forty minutes in and did not get it back for two hours. What I got instead was a man on a Honda Cub who decided, without being asked, to lead me the whole way — and who refused money, twice, before accepting a bag of mangosteens.

The Foundation

We built a school library out of shipping pallets. Here is the bill.

Every line item, including the two we got wrong and had to pay for twice.

Mai Trần | 28 Jul | 6 min

Total cost: 41,200,000 đồng. Books accounted for less than a fifth of it. The single largest expense was not construction, not shelving, and not transport — it was the one thing nobody putting together a donation page ever seems to budget for.

Kit

Packing for monsoon season: six things I got wrong the first year

Dry bags are not the answer. Or rather, they are not the whole answer.

Mai Trần | 21 Jul | 5 min

Rain here does not fall so much as arrive. It comes sideways for ninety minutes at four in the afternoon, and then the sun returns and everything you own begins to steam. The gear that survives is rarely the gear that was marketed to survive.

People

The grandmother who feeds every driver on the Pleiku road

Bà Sáu has run the same bún stall for thirty-one years and has never once raised the price for a stranger.

Mai Trần | 12 Jul | 8 min

Long-haul drivers have a mental map of the country built entirely out of places like this one. Ask any of them where to stop between Pleiku and Quy Nhơn and you will get the same answer, given with the confidence of a man reciting his own address.

How We Work

Why we stopped taking bookings for groups larger than twelve

It cost us about a third of our revenue. It was still the right call.

Mai Trần | 30 Jun | 4 min

A group of twenty does not visit a village. It occupies one. There is a threshold somewhere around fourteen or fifteen people where you stop being guests and start being an event, and everything honest about the day disappears behind the logistics of feeding you.

The Coffee Beat

A farmer explained robusta to me for three hours and I understood maybe half

Anh Dũng farms 1.8 hectares outside Buôn Ma Thuột and has strong opinions about everyone in the supply chain above him.

Mai Trần | 18 Jun | 11 min

He talks about cherries the way a vintner talks about grapes, which would be unremarkable except that almost nobody buying his crop is willing to pay a price that reflects it. The gap between what he knows and what the market rewards is the whole story of Vietnamese coffee.

The Foundation

Twenty-four students, one spreadsheet, and the question we get asked most

“What happens when they finish?” is the right question, and for two years we did not have a good answer.

Mai Trần | 9 Jun | 7 min

Paying school fees is the easy part. It is legible, it photographs well, and it fits on a donation page. The part nobody funds is what happens in the eighteen months after a scholarship ends, which is precisely when most of them fall over.

Food

Salt, chilli, and lime: the highland dipping sauce that ruined me for everywhere else

Muối ớt xanh takes four ingredients and about ninety seconds. Getting it right took me a year.

Mai Trần | 2 Jun | 5 min

The ratio is not written down anywhere, which is a problem when every household insists theirs is the correct one. I asked eleven people and got eleven answers, and the only thing they agreed on was that the chillies must be green and the lime must go in last.

Read more

Every dispatch we have published, newest first — with the same tag filter.

Keep reading