Pinay Sa Alaska

I have mentioned my daughter-in-law's online activities only occasionally.  I should do it more. Pinay means "Filipina," and is one of those self-referential terms that used to be an insult but has now been adopted proudly. YouTube account is the small one, with only 13K subscribers. TikTok is the big one with 1.3M subscribers. I would not have predicted ten years ago that we had a Filipina influencer in the family who makes significant money on top of her regular job in Nome. Then again, I would have not predicted 30 years ago that we would have Romanian sons either. Life changes. Adapt.

Notice in the first video from four years ago that she has not yet learned that the first rule of performance is "get the pretty girls out front and center." That would be herself and the three granddaughters. She is quite natural in front of the camera.

No, I have little idea what she is saying in Tagalog save for the occasional English word that falls in.  Two of the three girls used to be camera shy on family Zoom calls. Now they are comfortable having their everyday activities filmed. John-Adrian (JA to his brothers and John to his wife and friends) has always been a bit of a showman. Among his many side hustles - king crab, salmon, finding gold, fleecing people at poker on Las Vegas vacations when they have had too many drinks - he has added a TikTok account of his own.  I have no idea why people would watch him, but he has started to make money as well.  Maybe I should have an "Old guy taking walks and talking to himself" TikTok account and become an Old Guy influencer or something.

Sure you could just look up the exchange rate at XE.com.  But wouldn't you rather have Jocie explain it to you?

They were very proud when Outdoor Boys came up a second time and had John-Adrian on their weekly video, which has about 13M subscribers.

People always ask about darkness in Nome and say "Oh, I couldn't handle that." They are down to about five hours of daylight now, with another hour of half-light on each end. His brother Chris, halfway around the world in Tromso is actually above the Arctic Circle and is down to about 50 minutes of daylight now.  Both will tell you that it is the summer which is harder in the long run, because you get poor sleep many nights and it adds up.  With dark, you can turn on lights after all.