Welcome to the Virtual Expats Podcast, which is part of the Virtual Expats PodTube Experience, which, as you may guess, is part podcast, part YouTube channel. In the podcast, we chat with people who are living outside their passport countries and how their geographical movement affects what they do online and their online presence. On the YouTube channel, I go into more of the personal aspect of my own expat experience and how it affects what I do online. Who am I? My name is Stephanie, and I have been an expat for the vast majority of the past 15 years, and I'm currently living in Shanghai, China. I'm very excited today to have you listen to a conversation that I had with Eva Yu. Eva is a journalist who's from South Korea. She has lived in the US, the UK, Ecuador, and China. Last year she did an eight-month cycling trip from Shanghai to London. You heard me right, an eight-month cycling trip. I do have to give a special shout out and thank you to the folks involved with the Podcast Brunch Club. That's where I met Eva last year when she was living in Shanghai, and we were both involved in the Podcast Brunch Club. It is an international group that has 60 branches all over the world. Thank you to Adela who created the Podcast Brunch Club, and thank you to our local host, Shannon Martin. Let's have a listen to what Eva said about her online presence as she maneuvered all of these places. Well, thank you so much, Eva, for joining us on Virtual Expats today. Ah, it's my pleasure.
SPEAKER_03Thank you so much for inviting me.
SPEAKER_02Great. Well, let's dive in. What now you have the advantage of being from South Korea, which has, if I remember correctly, the fastest internet in the world, right? That's right, yeah. I'm probably going to be very jealous of all of your answers of your early internet experiences. So just know that now. When I make the faces, I know that the listeners, listeners are not gonna see my faces, but Eva will see my jealousy coming through. When was the first time that you were really online in um everyday kind of I need this kind of way?
SPEAKER_03My cousin, he had uh he had his computer when I was like six or seven. That's like 1997 or something. And I was staying in my grandma's house where he had his computer. At that time, we didn't even have Windows, you know. You we had to get into the the black screen titles, and he had to type in some English coding to get into to use like to play games and everything. And so that was the first time I kind of uh observed someone using computer and like playing games and all that. And then when I was uh when it was like t 1998, I was in uh after school because my mom and dad both goes to work and they come back at 10 p.m. They sent me to this uh after after school, and then there I saw my uh homeroom teacher using Windows, and it was like it was so easy and it was like so straightforward, and I quickly kind of knew what I wanted to do. So I started playing car games using internet since I was like nine or nine or eight, nineteen uh nineteen ninety eight or something. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02What kind of games were you playing?
SPEAKER_03Uh how should I say? It's like drag and drop like car games that you kind of the cars like like this, and then you have to flip them over.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, solitaire.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that was my first experience.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, so addictive, yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then uh I started using internet uh when our family moved to US, Arizona. So we brought the the Korean computer to US, so my internet life was all Korean, and I started writing uh emails to my friends, putting some decorative cards, and I started like playing with the internet. Like there was um really like child use internet, like we had our own Google at that time, like uh that was like year 2000, and we had like internet for children, and there they had a lot of games for girls to play with dolls and everything, and then yeah, I played with it.
SPEAKER_02So, were you about 11 years old then?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, 10 years old, three in US. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, that's really young. Did you notice at that time the speed difference in the internet when I know it's just playing cards and games and stuff, but did you notice the speed difference from when you moved to Korea from when you moved to the US?
SPEAKER_03You know, I really realized the speed of internet like when I moved to UK in 2011. Before then, I took it for like granted. I didn't know I didn't even know like Korea had like fast internet and all that. Like and Korea really didn't have like that presence until like 2008 or something. So I didn't realize South Korea is a special country until then, like until uh when I really like uh visited other countries, I started to realize that oh Korea has like big companies. Like seriously, it was really after 2010 I realized that difference. Before then, yeah, Koreans didn't really know, yeah. Right, right, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I uh I moved from just to a little bit of context why I keep harping on the speed, is I moved from San Francisco to Taiwan in 2003, and I had traveled outside the US before, but I had never been to Asia. And I was I'm I was even back then the type of person that had about 10 different windows open because I was there were so many things I was trying to do at the same time. And the internet was so fast in Taiwan at that point, and I'm sure it's even more so now, that I could only have two screens open at one time. Like that's how things were being processed. And so I thought and I thought that was it, that was the fastest. So I looked up the internet speeds and saw that Korea Korea was even above Taiwan, and I just went, I can't even go there. Oh my god. I couldn't even handle it. But yeah, because I was quite happy with the speed in the US until I knew better.
SPEAKER_03Got it. Because uh Korea has a lot of population and people don't like waiting, and so we have that culture of being like really fast and quick. People cannot stand the like really late process.
SPEAKER_02So it's it's a beautiful thing. It is a beautiful thing. Okay, so you were playing games, and in Arizona it was still games as well. And when did you start doing things other than games online?
SPEAKER_03I started reading web novels from age 11. You know, K-pop is like really famous. I mean, K-pop was not famous like before like 2010, but inside Korea there was a huge fandom for those idle and like good-looking singers. And so Koreans are very imaginative, like when it comes to novels and cartoons, and even at uh age 10, girls were reading web novels. Those novels were like, say like three to five minutes read, and it keeps pops up like day by day. And so in the classroom, I I came back to Korea in 2001, and I even had like some classmates at age 10 already writing web novels, which was really impressive. And we both uh followed the same singer, the same idol, and so it kind of it was all that culture. Like growing up as a student in Korea, you like naturally get access to all those web novels and cartoons and all that, and so that that became like 70 or 8%, 80% of all my internet usage, and the other 20 to 30 percent is doing homework. Yeah. Well, doing homework online. Yeah, in in classroom, they give you a lot of homework, and you can only do it using internet, and they ask you to use PowerPoint at yeah, age like 11.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so or use Now you said your friends were also writing these novels at the age of 10. Were you writing about these idols as well?
SPEAKER_03No, I could only like read. I didn't have that imagination. Our homeroom teacher asked us to, yeah, it was it was when I was uh grade six, like age 11, they asked us to upload your diary online, and uh you have to watch uh news on TV and then brief like briefly summarize and write your comment online. So there's a like every class has a website where all those classmates have to contribute and write comments down below, so it's like it's really all culture.
SPEAKER_02Okay, we're the US was so far behind you guys because we were doing that like 10 years later in 2001. I remember this specifically because I graduated from university in 2001 at a tech technological school, actually, like a polytechnic in California, and we the main things we had online were two things. One, hot mail was very popular, and two, we could go into like list servers, but you had to go like you were talking at the beginning, you had to go into the prompt and like type in the code to get into the groups for like study groups or like some for sale groups, apartments for rent, those kinds of things, but it was all on the orange screen with code, and those only two things we were doing online at that at two in 2001. Oh and you guys already had course management systems for oh wow, huge difference, yeah.
SPEAKER_03There was a lot of really exciting communities, like uh when I came back to Korea in 2011, I found uh uh online community called Hogwarts, like really like Harry Potter life. Yeah, so they when I register, they put me into the four different groups, you know, and I was Gryffindor, and they give you homework. There were like professors who give you magical homework, and like I don't know, they talk about one day talk about oh, this is uh a medicine lesson, and they give you homework, and then I do digital homework, and and the the all the Gryffindors lettering, they all get points and oh my god, it was already really huge in 2011 for age 10 year old girl, and wow, wow, that was amazing.
SPEAKER_02Oh my god, yeah. Well, outside of school, did you have time to do anything for fun on the internet? Because it sounds like you were very busy with the different the homework and different your school after school classes, okay. Bushi Bon Hagwan. Is it Bushiban? Yeah, yeah, Hogwan. Okay, yeah. So were you doing were you still playing the games in your free time on the internet as well?
SPEAKER_03Uh actually I didn't when once I started reading web novels and I got into the the fandom of uh idols, I didn't play games at all. And I yeah, I didn't, yes, holy like my my time was all contributed to like watching the my favorite singer-related content and all that, and so it totally moved into that, and so I naturally moved out of games, and yeah, apart from formwork, it was all that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Can I ask who the favorite singer was that that you and your friend were really into?
SPEAKER_03Oh, it was like in the elementary school, it was Xinhua. Uh they're they're not really famous now, but but they were, and then in middle school I got into TVFSQ. T V T V F XQ. XQXQ, okay. They are also quite famous in China and Japan still now. So they're quite handsome. Nice. Okay. And then from high school, I didn't I didn't follow all that. Like it was all before, yeah, high school.
SPEAKER_02So we've got games, then we've got the web novels, then we've got lots of homework on really cool course management systems. So, what did you want do online after all of that?
SPEAKER_03From high school, we had our own Facebook. Like it was called SciWorlds, and it was popular since 2005. And everyone, like middle school students, like even elementary school students, they all had their own kind of page on SciWorld. And uh it it was very commercial. I mean, like you could you could put on like music on your it's like a website, it's like a mini website, and uh you could turn on music, you could put on fancy like backgrounds, uh, and you had to pay pay for them like online, not online, but you had to yeah, you have to transact online and uh it has a like the company earned a lot of money until 2011 when Facebook like usage like went like upsurge in Korea. So it was back then wow, really popular.
SPEAKER_02Was this uh a Korean company or it was part of the school?
SPEAKER_03It was uh online, it was it was born out in Korea. It was whole company and I actually I just met the uh company who owned it like 30 minutes ago. He told me they sold it to China in 2011 or 12, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah, so social media. I never heard about that before. Wow, they sold it to China, and yes, did they repurpose it as something? That's interesting. What? What? Oh my gosh. Okay, this is all very new information. This is cool.
SPEAKER_03No, Korea also has their own thing, and uh now they're and some of them we still keep it, just like by do. Like we have like Korean Google neighbor, and 70% of Koreans still use it for search engine and for emails, and uh and I think other services now we all substituted to the American ones like Facebook or Twitter.
SPEAKER_02With neighbor, have you ever done any searches of like the same information to see what comes up different between neighbor and uh and Google?
SPEAKER_03What neighbor is uh criticized for is that they kind of um allow the advertisers like they get money from the companies and they put the results up front. And so say Google is much more kind of equal to the like good quality information or uh reputation, but uh for a neighbor they were criticized because they put uh ones that are paying more money like up front and the the ones they didn't pay, they put it down. So uh they were yeah, criticized, but I think it's getting better. They they realize this problem and it it has been issue in Korean, so I think they're uh fixing that problem. But I do have similar problems.
SPEAKER_02So okay, so that sounds like the beginning of your social social media experience. What kinds of things did you do the most on SciWorld?
SPEAKER_03Writing diary and putting up pictures. There's like two two different categories. There's one called because like you know, the PsyWorld itself, they copied the copied your ah, it's not in US, so it's really hard to explain. But you know, in Korea, every year with in New Year, we buy a diary. And in the diary, you have place you have like you have calendar, do you have weekly calendars, you have where you put like your friends' contacts, and the sci-world is an online version of that, so it has diary, it has album, and it has uh where friends write uh like posts for you, and so it's either like putting up photos or writing diary, like really sincere one. And yeah, I spent a lot of time on that and visiting my friends' sideworlds. And you know, in Asian countries, it it really matters like how people look at you and uh how people think about you. So it's like as a friend, you must visit your friend's um sideworld and keep like putting con comments and uh writing, oh I miss you, and I think we can meet up like next week. It was a big deal back then.
SPEAKER_02So if you were were not on SciWorld for a few days, your friends were like seriously pressuring you. Hey, what's happening? What's going on?
SPEAKER_03I don't have not getting maybe yeah, something like that. Back then it was a serious thing.
SPEAKER_02Sorry, did you say SciWorld's still up now, or it got that's the one that got sold?
SPEAKER_03Well, in 2011, SciWorld lost all the users to Facebook. People no longer visited SciWorld, and now the company knows that, and so they they allow the people to make uh like real diary out of their all contents on SciWorld. So I did that actually. So I brought out like all my content that I loaded on SciWorld, and I just like had them, I have it in a PDF. Yeah, and it's like so many pages because I for like eight years, and wow, it's like it's so huge.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Was there once you actually got the PDF, was there anything surprising that you forgot about that was in there?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's all my childhood memories, and so it's so surprising, like what I wrote back then, like wow, when I was like 10 years old, 15 years old, I have it all, and it it feels really weird. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Does it feel like a different person? Like it wasn't even you? Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Oh, oh childish, like yeah.
SPEAKER_02I don't I don't have a lot from my childhood because it was all paper forms, and I tend to like write a lot and then I would like throw it away and forget about it. But I have some digital stuff from my early 20s, and I do not know who that person was. Every time I was like, How did I think this? What is happening here? How am I the same person?
SPEAKER_03Exactly.
SPEAKER_02So that was 2005.
SPEAKER_03What happened after that? So the neighbor, the search engine, the biggest search engine in Korea, they started the blogging service, and as time goes by, it was better than SciWorlds. So people moved on to neighbor blogs, and um I also did that. So in in 2012, I was volunteering in Ecuador for one year, and I didn't bring phone there. So like my social media was wholly on Facebook and and neighbor blog. So since then I I really started writing like serious like uh blog posts with all my pictures and diary combined, and it was so comfortable. I just had to uh manage uh neighbor and I just linked it to uh Facebook and still and it's still valid. I still do that, the same thing.
SPEAKER_02Is that is that uh is that blog still online?
SPEAKER_03I have like 600 visits every day. Wow!
SPEAKER_02What what's the name of the site?
SPEAKER_03Oh, I I can link you. Um and I write about everything, like uh doing business in China and my life in Korea, China, and uh yeah, it's it's everything. Like I sometimes write poetry.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so you started it in 2012 and you've you've kept it going this whole time. Let well let's backtrack. You said you were doing volunteer work in Ecuador. What were you doing?
SPEAKER_03I was teaching Korean to the young students in uh Ecuador, and I in it it was a lot of like cultural exchange. And so yeah, I had to teach Korean in Spanish. So I learned uh Spanish there and I lived with uh local people. It was a life-changing experience because I think I was kind of born as a privileged in family family, yeah, because it's like it's really hard to find uh Koreans who lived overseas in young age than I did. So when I went to Ecuador, it was a kind of culture shock because yeah, it was a very poor church, and I lived there like one year, uh not having any money and uh having always like cold showers. I didn't use like washing machine, I always washed with hands, but I also uh learned a lot of things there, and yeah, I think yeah, I I really remember all those things with uh like really deep emotions because yeah, also because I didn't have phone, I didn't have like other life. I only like only focused in the moment and like only like use internet in free times, which was like one hour and two days. It was like so precious. Right, right and so yeah.
SPEAKER_02That sounds like an amazing experience. How did you end up in Ecuador?
SPEAKER_03In Korea, there's a lot of uh overseas volunteering program, and it's like Korea sends like six hundred Students to 80 countries through this organization. It's a Christian organization. Well, I'm I'm born as a Catholic, but I just wanted to uh live in overseas, so I I just uh went there and nobody wanted to go to Ecuador. Like there are popular countries such as US or Mexico or Peru or yeah, there are popular countries, but I wanted to go to a country where they really need hand and where they have a really traditional culture, like Indiana culture. That's why I chose Ecuador. And yeah, it was really tough, but yeah, it was really worthwhile. I I wanted to go somewhere that is the mo the farthest from South Korea, and it was it was South America, and so that's why I chose there. And wow, I never regret it. It's I think if I fail really hard in life, I think I'll uh visit Ecuador because they r still remember me as uh like um how should I say me without any like performance, you know, like um job performance, they just remember me as uh Eva, like um me and myself and like as a happy child working and soccer, and so yeah, I feel comfortable.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's amazing. Now we are focused on the virtual, so I have to ask this. Going from Korea where you were massively online to Ecuador where you were spending, like you said, an hour a day, an hour maybe every other day. Did you go through any sort of internet withdrawals or did you miss it at all?
SPEAKER_03Actually, I wanted to get out of that. That's because my friends they took their phones and I saw them like whenever they had free time, they were chatting with uh friends in Korea. And you know, Korea has their own WhatsApp or rechat called Cacao Talk, and they were always talking to their friends on cacao talk. So this this is the backstory. So when I was in the US, I really loved the US and they also loved me. I really like loved living in the US, and then I had to come back to Korea, and I had a kind of reverse culture shock from Korea, and I always wanted to go overseas, and so yeah, from age 20, I sought for all any ways to go overseas, and that that's why I went to Ecuador. So I wanted to get out of all that Korea life when I was in Ecuador, that's why I didn't bring my phone, and um it was really helpful because it allows you to focus because like when they complain about their life in Ecuador, their friends always tell them to come back to Korea, and they did. So one of the girls, she spent nine months and went back, and the other guy he spent like 11 months and went back, and I was the only one who spent the whole year there, and it was uh yeah, it was really worthwhile. Like once you focus on something and like don't think about other options, it gives you a lot of lessons.
SPEAKER_02Well, I've noticed some people, oh, what do they call it? Like a social media fast where they'll like not be online for a few days, like intentionally, or they'll they'll turn their phone off for the weekend, that kind of thing. But you did it for a year before it was even a thing. That's amazing. When you returned to Korea, did you find yourself getting back to in your old digital habits?
SPEAKER_03Well, I had to because like being in Korea means you need to come back to all that. And because after I came back to Korea, I got my first job as a marketing manager at a startup. And so with that came all the loads of work uh that I had to do online, and I as a marketing manager, I had to use social media like Facebook and Twitter and blog, like it was a huge workload, and I had to live online, and I it was like totally backwards, like I had to spend 12 hours or more time online, and so I had a huge stress because this Korean company sent me to Israel for seven months, and I had to like bring up the kind of traffic from Israel side, and I had to edit video, which took me like 10 hours, so like once a week I had to like stay up all night to match the time I have to send that video back to Korea, and so it was totally backwards. I was only like say only like 10 hours away from the computer, and always I had to be online, and I was like it was too much, and my friends worried a lot, yeah, because I was always worried. I had that pressure that I had to make performance in Israel, both the Korea working time and Israel working time, and so yeah.
SPEAKER_02You were just working all the time. Yes, that's right. And that was for seven wait, how long did you have that marketing job? I know you were in Israel for seven months, but you were in Korea doing it part of the time too.
SPEAKER_03No, I was uh wholly in Israel for seven months, and I didn't go back to Korea back then. And for three months I did that, and I couldn't live with that anymore. And so it was then I at the time I worked as a freelance journalist, should I say? Yeah, and then I interviewed 75 startups in Israel. Like I visited their office and did face-to-face interview and uploaded it on YouTube, and that kind of created some traffic. And that's was that was all start off my journalist job as well.
SPEAKER_02Oh wow. Okay, so the the interviews that you were doing, that was part of the marketing job, or that was just your way of getting out of the marketing, like doing something else?
SPEAKER_03Oh, actually, it was part of the marketing job. So the CEO asked me to set up the strategy to get into Israel market. At the time, I was really curious about startups, so I told him that oh, I want to go interview all the startups there. Yeah, and so along with uh managing all the social networks, I had to interview like three to four companies every week. So it was a huge workload. Yeah, along with the articles and doing the social networks.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh, so you were just working all the time. Yeah, even the weekends, yeah.
SPEAKER_03So it was it was crazy.
SPEAKER_02Okay, so Eva's a workaholic. I'm a workaholic. Are you awesome? I need your help, dear workaholics, in spreading any information about the Virtual Expats podcast. Can you please take just a moment out of your time? You could even pause right now and just take a quick screenshot of the podcast information and post it anywhere online. You could just post the picture with a thumbs up or a smiley face, and that would get the message across too. I'd like word of mouth to lead us to a place of digital happiness where many, many people are contributing information, questions, feedback, and interviews to this podcast and the research that we're doing by chatting with people living outside their home or passport countries about what their geographic movement does to their online presence. Thank you for everything and anything that you do to help spread the word about virtual expans. Thank you. You may commence working now. Okay, but you were in Israel for seven months, and after Israel, did you go back to Korea or did you go to another country?
SPEAKER_03Oh, I came back to Korea, and that was my last semester in my university. And so I did my last semester in Korea, and then uh the same Korea company sent me to Silicon Valley as a business development. Well, he had a really big dream. I mean, he wanted to establish partnership with Facebook, Twitter, and Evernote, and I visited all those companies.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh. So wait, wait, wait, backtrack a second here. When you were in Israel, that was before you finished university. Yeah, that's right. Was that an internship or something, or that was just a full-time job that you did in the middle of university?
SPEAKER_03Basically, Korean university allows you to rest like five years, and Korean students uh rest uh university about like 2.5 years before graduation. So it's very natural thing, and it was uh internship, it was uh internship and uh it was a Korean government supported, and so Korean government pays for my stay every month, and I think they spent ten thousand dollars uh for my my whole stay. So so it's like basically they chose 15 young Koreans who will learn the Israel startup ecosystem and I don't know, contribute to contribute back to Korea, and I was accepted. And so yeah, I was pretty lucky and it was yeah, it was really good. I mean, they they allowed me to study in uh Israeli university for two months to learn the entrepreneurship and do the internship for with the Israeli company for four months, and wow, it was really valuable experience. Okay, let's talk about the Israeli internet.
SPEAKER_02When you were there, were you on I keep talking about different like countries' internets, which do exist, right? I mean, you've got the different apps and websites you were talking about in Korea, you've got the American ones, which are in a lot of ways international ones that a lot of people use, you've got ones that are just used in China. It's so confusing. Um Were there any Israeli websites or apps that you use there that you didn't know of beforehand?
SPEAKER_03Actually, when you go to Israel, you're surprised by how much English friendly the environment really is. Yeah. And uh and it was all like in accord with US, and like I would say like 80%, it's all same with all US. Because like many of them are immigrants, either from overseas countries or from many of them were brought up in New York and then they came to Israel. And so I I think it was I was wholly using like Facebook, Gmail, and all that, and it was all the same. It was only like tech uh tech websites, those were different, and like some localized services, such as doing the paym online payments and building websites, like those services were like really niche. And so I would say, yeah, 80% it was like all accord with all US. Okay, okay.
SPEAKER_02Wow, okay, so from Israel back to Korea and then over to Silicon Valley. Yep. Wow. I forgot to ask you before. When you lived in Arizona as a child, what city were you in? Arizona, Phoenix. Nice. Yes, I lived in um I lived in Tucson for graduate school. Not as not as exciting as Phoenix. All right, so let's go to Silicon Valley then. So how long were you there for that project?
SPEAKER_03It was only three months, and it was also government supported. You know, Korean governments, it's it's over. It's gone. Are you serious? Yes, there is. Like, I'm pretty sure once uh foreign startups want to go to Korea, like government will give you like free office space and give you investment, and oh my god, they're gonna support you a lot.
SPEAKER_02So you went to Ecuador and Israel and and and the US all through funding from your government. That's right. What were you doing online when you were in California?
SPEAKER_03I was business development, so I cut down all my like social media life. Like I didn't do any blogging because I felt like once I have free time, I have to make some productive uh work, like um writing articles, or you know, like being a business development, you have to show some performance, like achieving partnership with people, or or get some like sales, or yeah, it was like wholly different from like writing article and like writing content. And actually, I was kind of introvert, like about getting in reaching out to people and uh actually visit them face to face. And as an Asian girl, it was different from who they imagine as a business development. So it was really tough, and I ended up not having any partnership with those companies, and they were actually like it was a lot of layers to get up to that executive level. I could only talk to like really low person, and it didn't work out as I thought, and the company intended, and also, yeah, it was also very hard to get sales, and I was I think I was not like an adequate person to be in business development, but uh I ended up getting the first prize in uh demo day when startups all have to present, and so wow, it was a good ending because otherwise I would have felt really sorry for my CEO sending me to Silicon Valley and not having any achievement. Yeah, that's that's what I come came back to Korea with. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So Eva, I'm drawing a little timeline as you're speaking, and all I can see is workaholic, workaholic, workaholic girl. And I can only say that because I understand I work too much too. I'm just like, my goodness, girl, what are you doing online for fun? Okay, at what point in your life did you do a little less work for work and a little more online stuff for you? When did that shift happen?
SPEAKER_03It was when I started living in China.
SPEAKER_02Okay, let's put a year on it. What what year were we talking here?
SPEAKER_03I interviewed a Chinese CEO in when I was in Korea, and that was my that was the first Chinese CEO I ever met in life. And I always wanted to go to China since I since age 10. So I told him that I want to live in China and I wanted to know some opportunities in China. He allowed me to work for his company, which is ThickNote. Oh my god, yeah, biggest media in China, and so that's when I became full-time journalist, and I was really comfortable. Like, you know, writing articles is so stress-relieving compared to like this being business development or social media person. Oh my god, I was like super happy, and I was the first foreigner in my company, and it was like it was so exciting with all that, like surrounded by Chinese people learning Chinese. It was so it was so good experience. Everybody like liked me, and um, I you know, I always felt like one of them, you know, in Israel, US, Korea. Since there's always like huge competition and there's a huge like cultural barrier, like okay, for example, Israel, you have to speak Hebrew and you have to go to military to get into their culture. Right. Silicon Valley, maybe blonde, maybe from the one of the top university in the US, and then you get to get into the society. And Korea, you have to get into the top university to get into their their society. So I felt like I'm always one of them, and like I have to catch up with the competition from others, but um in China I felt like I'm the only one. Like I speak Korean, Chinese, English. I sp I talk to like Chinese people as if I'm Chinese and Korean group and English-speaking group, and I felt so free. And now I could play on social media as I wanted to, because now my boss is Chinese and he doesn't understand Korean, and so I will I was so free. Oh my god, I was so free, and I started writing all the observations in Korean, and I was it was so fun because nobody could like track me. What what am I doing in Korean? So oh my god, I was I was so happy. I started to find myself like, oh well, what do I like? What do I wanted to do? From 2015, it was like all good, yeah.
SPEAKER_02So was it mostly writing that you were doing online or were there other projects as well?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it was mostly blogging, and then I started going out to communities. You know, Technode was like it was so free working culture. They from 2016 they allowed me to work at home. So I was going to office only once a week, and then otherwise I would like always be at home or uh cafes or co-working space, writing articles, and I wanted like human contact, but apart from like business. That's why I went to all the discussion groups, like podcast discussion. Yeah, there were so many good discussion groups, like reading books, listening to podcasts, watching YouTube videos. Wow. And I really loved all that, and I felt I felt found a like true connection with all that discussions, and um also yeah, I think it was mostly like discussions and meetups.
SPEAKER_02Did you say there was a meetup for people talking about YouTube channels? Uh yeah, it's called uh Meaningful Discussion. Oh I didn't realize what they talked about. I I saw I saw their topics before, but I didn't realize they talked about YouTube. Okay, I have to revisit them because I I consume a lot of content and a great deal of it is off of YouTube.
SPEAKER_03Ah, it's really amazing because they allow they uh as a homework, you have to watch 12 YouTube videos that are maybe uh one minute long to like maybe 15 minutes long, and it's all very like content focused, it's really good contest, it's really rich, high quality 12 YouTube videos, and I really enjoyed watching it. It really like makes my brain like really creative and aware of all that happening in the world, and so wow, that's my favorite actually discussion group.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. Oh, that's amazing. Okay, one second, Ava. Uh, for the listeners, if you are coming through Shanghai or moving to Shanghai, there are a ton of discussion groups, like Eva's saying, and a lot of them are listed. They're on WeChat, but they're also on meetup.com. That's where I found the podcast Brunch Club. And I think Meaningful Discussions is on there too, right?
SPEAKER_04Eva?
SPEAKER_02That's okay. Yeah, meetup.com, which I think is a US-based company, but it was never this popular in the US when I was there. It's from Canada. I just realized yes. It's a North American company. It's from Canada. But I've I've never seen it this popular anywhere in the world, but in Shanghai, it's got so many groups on there, and they're good. Oh my god. I know it's really fun. Okay, so what kinds of things were you writing about online?
SPEAKER_03I think it's all in two layers. So, firstly, because I write articles in English, I translate it into Korean and I posted on blog because yeah, Koreans are usually not good at English, and so yeah, I translate it. And um, secondly, it's all my life in China as a journalist and as a 20 20-something year old, and my observations on that. So I would write about, say, for example, let's say I went on a business trip to Shenzhen, and there's like two types of content. It's all either like startup interviews that I do have to do in my professional life, and then I in my free time I always meet locals, either using using couch surfing or uh Tan Tan, the dating app from China. I always try to meet locals and I try to um have a meal with them. It's really valuable because you know, sometimes when you visit like different cities in China, it seems like well, I cannot say it's a different country, but it's a total new thing. And uh learn a lot of things from the locals, and I just love meeting locals, and so it's like the conversation I had with the locals, it's the food culture, it's the history I realized, and and I also always write a post after discussion.
SPEAKER_02So when you started to blog, who did you think you were writing to? Who did you think your audience was going to be?
SPEAKER_03Firstly, I write everything. I think I write it for myself. You know, the reason why I started writing online was back when I was in UK as an exchange student. And English dating culture is so different from Korea, you know? I was living in dorms and it was a total cultural shock when they had pandom covers and toilets, and it was like because in Korea you start with like eating meals with them, and maybe it's like so many years later you talk about sex and all that, and it was like UK, it's like right straightforward, and I don't have any Korean friends with me in UK, yeah. And I and I have to talk to myself. I had my first boyfriend in UK, and wow, things were going so quick, and I needed to discuss this with someone, you know, talking about the time difference and all that. I couldn't talk. For anyone because they cannot understand me, anyways, if they're in not in this situation. That's when I write started writing like really detailed diaries about justifying why I did this and what do I think about it. Um, am I happy with myself going with this situation? And it kind of made myself like strong. I started building up like self-confidence and I started realizing who I am and how I'm different from others, and it was really important process for me. For me, writing something down is like how I see myself in this so many like fast-changing worlds. And so yeah, it's like sort of like communication with myself.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I I have a very similar experience with writing. Uh when I moved to Taiwan in 2003, I it was a very isolating experience. I wasn't in the Capitol and I didn't know any of the language, and the majority of the signs around me were in the characters, which I had only really seen on restaurant menus before then in the in different countries. And so I ended up online just like coming home every night from work and just like pounding on the keyboard just to process what I was doing, what I was thinking, what I was and honestly, when I wrote at when I would stop at the end, I'd be like exhausted and go, wait a minute, I said that? Like I just I didn't realize I was think I needed like I was thinking that I was processing that. Like I was it was kind of unveiling what was going on in here in my brain. Yeah, oh, it was amazing. I was just like, okay, I guess I need to write to discover what I'm feeling. It was, yeah, so I I relate completely to that. Did you write about your dating experiences on this blog? I'm kind of careful with that, you know?
SPEAKER_03Like because can be really conservative. So for example, I never put on like selfies of me and uh guy on my blog because like they can like judge me. I don't I don't know, like I don't feel comfortable. So sometimes I would only like write down the conversation we had and uh take a picture of the food we ate together, something like that. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02No, that's why I accidentally did, and it was a very big mistake, and I ended up taking them down afterwards. So that's very, very, very wise. But okay, wait, we skipped the UK. I I fast forward to you a little bit. So let's go back to Silicon Valley geographically after Silicon Valley for three months. Where where were you?
SPEAKER_03I came back to Korea and I had kind of three months of free time and I moved to Shanghai in January 2015.
SPEAKER_02Holy cow, you've lived in so many places. Have you lived in a lot of places? I have, Eva has. Have you? If so, and you're interested in this topic of our virtual lives and our geographic lives and how they affect each other, please do contact me. I'm all over social media with the same name, Steph Fuccio, S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and for now, Facebook. That's also my Gmail address. So however you'd like to contact me, do so and we'll get you on Virtual Expats. Thank you so much. Well, since you've been writing the blog for a number of years now, do you ever feel pressure when you don't feel like writing that you have to because there are people reading it?
SPEAKER_03I really feel the pressure when it comes to the language because I have uh audience of like three language groups, Korean, English, and Chinese. And for Koreans, it's like oversupply thinking about the demand. It's like I post like sometimes I post daily, and uh for Chinese group, there's a huge demand, but I supply so little because once I posted um my diary and there were like 2,200 views on that post, and I was so surprised. And for English groups, I think, yeah, I think it's a little low than what is needed, and so uh there's kind of like yeah, pressure for me to keep up with all of them, otherwise, because they come they come to me and ask like what's going on, why are why don't you post like your your things? What's going on there? And so yeah, I don't want to make them worried, and so I try to keep to all the audience.
SPEAKER_02Because it's a personal blog, I feel the need to ask you if you're ever going to turn it into a podcast.
SPEAKER_03Uh-huh. Well, that's a really good idea, and I considered it. And I was actually a podcast host for one year and a half in Shanghai. Oh and uh but uh what podcast were you? I was a co-host and it was it was totally like China business related. And I was always having like journalistic views on what's happening in China, and so I thought it really there needs to be like really clear purpose, and you know, um at the moment I'm keeping my blog and I have a lot of videos I have to unload on YouTube, yeah. And so I think I will yeah, do videos later, and I'll I think I'll consider podcasts, but it's that I really like human connection talking to face to face, yeah, and then I might consider doing YouTube or maybe podcast, but but I'll have to think about that.
SPEAKER_02A lot of people now actually do a lot of podcasters now actually record on YouTube and then take the audio and put that in a podcast so that people can you can consume it in whichever way they want. Uh-huh. I think we can consider that. Yeah, that would just be really cool. Because your your your voice is so interesting and your your personality is so wonderful that I think people would really like to hear your stories, not just on the screen, but from you. I think that would be really interesting. Thank you. You're welcome. No, thank you. This has been really fun. Okay, so let's let's get to it now. So you've you've done something very interesting rather recently, haven't you? Well, it was uh quite an adventure. Holy cow! Can you give us a quick summary of your adventure? You started last year on the trip, right?
SPEAKER_03It was that's right. So I made up my mind in February and I kicked it off like I seriously like started preparing for it from first week of March. So it's actually like exactly one year before I started this trip. At this time, I was making the PowerPoints for like project introduction for all the companies, and so I started putting out the project summary to all the big companies in China, all the Korean companies, and um I kicked off. Oh, yeah, yeah. So so um it was a cycling trip from Shanghai to London following the Silk Road and interviewing the startup entrepreneurs from all those countries on the way, 15 countries, and also holding a seminar in each country. And so it was a three year layers of work cycling, interviewing, and holding seminars. And I started with my Chinese friend, and he dropped off the project on the fourth month in October, and then I I finished the trip alone and came back to Korea on February 2nd. So it was all exactly eight months' trip.
SPEAKER_02And so not only did you bike from Shanghai to London, but you interviewed people along the way and had seminars as well. That's right. Oh my god. How in the world did you do all of that?
SPEAKER_03Uh well, it's it's kind of it's kind of simple. Like, well, you just cycle until you get to the capital city or the biggest city out of Capitol. And yeah, I first I'll search for the company that I want to interview on LinkedIn or through the introduction, and then I do the interview, and then I hold a seminar, I promote the seminar in culturing or uh through the local kind of community, and then I hold a seminar there and share my experience. And so, yeah, easy, like cycling on the roads, and once I'm in the big city, I do the interview and seminar. Yeah, it was kind of yeah.
SPEAKER_02Did it feel easy as you were doing all of this?
SPEAKER_03You know, when you have a very clear goal, like you know your destination is London, and you know you have to do it because you promised. You know, I have uh 14 sponsors behind, so I always had a kind of motivation. I I knew what I was doing and I knew I can do it because compared to like what I did in the past, like interviewing the 75 companies in Israel, and um I was like, how should I say? I was like giving out papers in Ecuadorian uh university like two hours like every day. So it was like it was I knew I could do it, and uh sometimes it was really tough in terms of cycling, but um interview-wise or doing the seminar-wise, it was I was comfortable with it. And you said there's a book coming out of it, right?
SPEAKER_02You're writing a book right now?
SPEAKER_03When is that when is that? When can we see that? Um I think I'll publish it in Korean first and then I'll publish it in English, and hopefully I'll it'll be published this year, hopefully um before September.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And where online can the listeners see? I know on WeChat I was following you in in one of the groups that you created, but for people that aren't on WeChat, where can they see bits of the trip that because I know you blogged and you took pictures and you did all kinds of things. Where can they see that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I have a website called uh seekroads.co. And so so it's instead of Silkroads, you put seek like S-E-E-K road. Not C O. Not dot com, but dot C O and okay, cool.
SPEAKER_02Now let's focus on the virtual part of that experience because you're going through 15 different countries. How did you navigate how to be online in all of those different places?
SPEAKER_03I was kind of disappointed to see that all countries had Wi-Fi connection four or five days that I had have internet, and I was on a ferry, that's why. Like there, I I was on a 36 hour ferry and a 48 hour train um in Kazakhstan and uh crossing the Caspian Sea from Kazakhstan to Azerbaijan. That was the longest time I didn't have internet, otherwise, I was always with internet, surprisingly. In some houses that I visited, like locals houses, they didn't have internet, but it didn't bother me because well I can go to cafes and like internet cafes, anyways, and so it wasn't a big deal. And when I was in Croatia, uh my phone totally broke down, like and I went to the two repair shop, but they they told me to buy a new one, and so for one week I didn't have a phone, so I totally relied on like road signs and went to the destination I wanted to go. And I think that was the longest time, and I kind of why do you say you you're disappointed that you had so much uh internet?
SPEAKER_02Were you hoping to take a break from it then?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, because it was almost the same reason for Ecuador. I wanted to get out of my current life. I was like so well connected on internet and on phone to all the people, and as a journalist, you lead a really smooth, comfortable life. Like, say for example, like Ten Cent has a conference, they book me like airplane, like five-star hotel, and as a journalist working in China, you take it for granted. And I thought, oh, if I move to another country to start a new job, it would be almost the same. Like I would go there with airplane, I'll be online as I did in China, and things wouldn't change so much. But I wanted something wholly different, I wanted kind of like change in myself, and that's why I chose cycling. I wanted kind of give myself a self-discipline. Um, and I thought I would get that if I start cycling, but in the contrary, um, since I promised my sponsors that I'll be posting on social media all the time, and I had to always like post things on social media, and so I found myself I'm either cycling or I was online. And even though I had a like really good time with local people, I always had to write it down. So I I'll be ultimately on online anyways. And how should I say? I I really realized this is um kind of extension of what I was doing in Shanghai. I had like a professional life, and I was like writing like other parts that I wouldn't write on article on my blog, and it was kind of the same. And yeah, that's why I kind of put yeah, disappointed.
SPEAKER_02You were biking for a long time, obviously. Were you listening to anything while you were biking?
SPEAKER_03Ah, my friend had uh Bluetooth uh speaker, and so we would listen to songs as we go, uh both pop songs and Chinese songs, but uh it was only one month that we cycled together, and then uh from then on I cycled alone because like he liked to sleep in the morning, and I couldn't stand the sun the sun, and so I had to like get up early and get to the destination by noon, and so we were cycling at different times um from July, and so yeah, it kind of changed. So I didn't listen to anything, yeah, as I was going. You were biking for hours a day without listening to anything at all. That's right. Uh so for I think in average I cycled like eight hours every day, and I wasn't listening to anything.
SPEAKER_02What okay, I'm I I have to ask because my my I I think you might be similar to this. Like my brain's always kind of either consuming something or thinking about something.
SPEAKER_03Were you thinking of anything or planning anything or I'm the person who has a lot of thoughts always, and so I was like always talking, thinking about things, and I I was like, I was talking to myself, I was singing, and I was thinking about like what I'm going to do next. Yeah. Like I was talking about this kind of podcast. Like, what am I going to say after this? And um, yeah, I was like, wow, it was really random thoughts.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04But um, yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's kind of fun. So you had a playlist in your head. I was I was doing like self-interview. Oh, Eva, like, how do you feel like after all this? And I'm like, um that's awesome. You know, and it's funny because we have so much content available to us now, and I think that's a wonderful thing. I'm not someone who says, no, we have too much, we need to pull back. I'm not. But I do remember as a kid before all of this, because I was I was alive before the internet was used by regular people. So I did use to like take my tape recorder and like make up T like radio shows and like make you know, you made up stuff as a kid. I know, I know, I know. Yeah, so I mean, I get that. I get what what was happening in your head. That's kind of fun. Have you said anything today that you rehearsed on your bicycle trip?
SPEAKER_03I was getting ready for a Chinese interview, and so I was like talking to myself in Chinese, not to forget also uh language, and so uh yeah. I guess I guess you know, once you're in a podcast interview, like things just come out before you think, and so I think it's kind of yeah, different. Uh situation was very different.
SPEAKER_02Okay, okay. Well that brings up a good point. You you write in three languages. Are you doing have you been doing publicity for not just publicity, but have you been interviewing and stuff about the trip in Korean, Chinese and English? Ah, you mean like when I do that interview or yeah, when you when you interview or when you email people or talk to people about the the trip that you did, are you doing it in all three of those languages?
SPEAKER_03Yes. So in China, yeah, holy Chinese interviews. Yeah. And from up out of China it was all English. And I still need to do a Korean startup interview and the seminar, and yeah, it will be in Korean. Just wow.
SPEAKER_02When you talk about this trip in those three different languages, does it feel the same? Do you describe it the same, or are there any differences in how you Wow, there is a difference because you know the language carries the culture you're in, right?
SPEAKER_03So um, for example, speaking Korean is being polite, and you have to be Koreans like people who are humble, and so I think I'm viewed as a that kind of can be a little bit shy and in introverts in Korean and being polite, but uh but yeah, in in English I'm very straightforward and I and I like myself talking in English because it's like it carries my professional life, and so I'm kind of straight to the point, and I like that about English. I think about Chinese it's uh also catching up my English level, but I still have to work on it. But yeah, I think uh China also carries kind of like ethnic and comp being humble culture, and I'm I always try to like remind myself like yeah, I have to follow kind of their kind of role. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What are you doing next? Actually, I'm applying for the master's degree in UK, and I plan to move to Europe this year, and I'll be out I'll be working in uh France, uh learning French because I'm I like starting from scratch and I like a really big change in life to I think yeah, it's my it's my passion, like learning new language, culture, and going through a challenge is my passion, and I and I feel alive when I do that. And so I see Korea as a like a gas station, like charge myself, and like once more like challenge in other country, and so I know I'm having I'm charging myself right now, and I know I'll I'll um be challenging once more.
SPEAKER_02I think that is the best description of uh being an expat that I have ever heard. When people say, Why don't you want to be home more? I'm gonna use that phrase that you just said right there, and I'll give you credit for it, but my gosh, that's perfect.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah, it's very straightforward.
SPEAKER_02No, that is awesome. For a lot of people, I've noticed, Eva, that when they change countries, they massage what they do online with what they need in that place and to keep in touch with people back home. But it seems like you also have this third space where, and I could be completely wrong, so please correct me if I am, but you seem to have this third space where you pull back from the internet regardless of geography and do what you need to do offline. Is that at all true or am I making stuff up?
SPEAKER_03Yeah, you have a point there. So say I'm in a random place, I'm in a new place, then I really rely on locals. Like, um I'm I think I'm always with local, either using uh cloud surfing or using meetup, I'm always with local, and I I always ask for their help when I have a problem. And I like on online, I only talk to one person. I only focus on one person. I just talk to my mom. I just like tell her what happened, and then it's not that not that often, it's like once a week or one month. It's just to keep up uh and to let her relax, and and otherwise I would write down all my kind of observations in in my blog, and that's how I kind of process what happens to me. And then I think I really kind of take a rest from my online rife by interacting with locals. So I see myself either being online by myself or being with locals outside, and I think I wouldn't like spend time alone otherwise, like offline. Say I always like meditate in the morning, and I think that that's already good enough to give myself energy.
SPEAKER_02So when you first get to a new place, do you stop doing a lot online and talk to locals more? That's right. That's really, really cool. And it seems like you learn languages pretty quickly, so you can kind of you can use that.
SPEAKER_03to help you talk to them is that right yeah and because I I have I think I have a good stamina like I don't have to sleep that much so I always find myself waking up earlier than other people and so I anyways I always have a good of good amount of free time for myself to write down things. Right and so it's like people look at me like a spy when I'm with when I'm with locals I I totally focus on them. I have a good time with them and once they're asleep or doing their stuff I'm like writing like wholly focused and something like that.
SPEAKER_02That is so insanely inspiring. Okay two more questions two more questions what do you thank you what do you think you might do online differently in the future than you have done in the past and it doesn't have to be something that exists now just something either futuristically cool 10 20 years from now or something that you've just wanted to do for a while could be anything.
SPEAKER_03As I'm doing masters in UK I really want to be like away from my current hobby like not blogging all the stuff that goes around. And I want I don't want to make uh like tiny tiny bits of like my life into a blog but rather like say I devote I don't know six months into a research and I come out with a meaningful result or yeah I want to I said to myself because in Korean age I'm 30 this year and I'm 28 in an international age and it's like it gives me a lot of like responsibility I told myself that now I want to be like a doing person rather than like writing down what others did as a journalist. And so now I know it's really important that I kind of give myself responsibility for the for the things I did in the past and like being a inspiring other people. So in that ways I think I'll focus on maybe talking maybe doing videos or giving more lectures but but rather than writing like really making meaningful actions that that can really create change and because during during this cycling trip I met so many people who inspired me who were like entrepreneurs but they went to the small village to open their little school or to become a farmer and it was like wow it was so different and I learned a lot from them and they are actually the ones I want you to interview for the next podcast and yeah I think in the future I'll be more like um action person. What are you gonna study in the master's program? I think it'll be sociology which includes a media and culture study and I think I'll enjoy a lot because I was always into it.
SPEAKER_02Yes yes yes and yes that sounds really fascinating. So keeping in mind in this podcast we're trying to figure out when expats move around if that affects what they do online. What questions are missing from this this this this podcast what should I ask future guests?
SPEAKER_03I think because I'm the person who think the offline is actually what really matters then online or or offline should like keep up with like what you're doing on online. So I think being aware of sustainability is really important. So I think I would ask like I know it's really like off from the your maybe off from your topic but what if we don't have all this like with electricity what if you cannot use internet anymore and I met people who live on this question. Yeah like trying to cut down all the electricity they use and all that and I think I'll that's the reason why I'm moving to Europe because I'm I've seen people in Europe who are actually like really kind of attacking that question. And so you know in China they manufacture all that but who's gonna do with that electronic waste and what what are we going to do if we don't have like electricity and internet anymore and I think I need to like put myself more on that side to be more wise in online so I think it's a kind of important question.
SPEAKER_02Wow okay so is the question about the internet or just about electricity in general?
SPEAKER_03In first step it's about internet and secondly it's about it's about like ourselves seeing ourselves being consumers and consuming a lot of electricity and resources. Yeah and yeah I think it's an important question.
SPEAKER_02Yeah somebody mentioned yesterday to me that they are now developing technology in China to extract the coal from the air yeah and part of me is like well let's just not put it there wait why are we using electricity to take coal from the air when we could just use cleaner technologies to not put it there in the first place. It seemed like a vicious circle that I know I was supposed to be impressed by it but I was more like eh I don't know but I think it it's similar to what you're saying like we have to be conscious of what we're choosing with our our resources. And that's a beautiful question. Okay let's let's hone it just for your answer because you have to answer your own question now.
SPEAKER_03Let's focus just on the internet what would you do if you didn't have the internet anymore I kind of uh found question in one small village in France I was so surprised because they were not paying money but uh they were having kind of like community folk dance party and like seriously nobody nobody like paid money to enjoy themselves and like playing the instrument dancing and uh like enjoying that delicious food. Everybody brought their own food they brought the instrument and then they played music everybody danced the uh folk dance and it was all different age groups from like 20 something year old to 60 something year old and I felt like this village doesn't need electricity to enjoy themselves they don't need corporates to host events and no advertising reserves needed once people bring up what they have and they just connect just like that. And wow it was all really yeah it was kind of culture shock. I was amazed by how tradition carries on through generation and they they were like in that way they were fighting like what we're promoting. We promote like consumption we promote like I mean content some consumption and goods consumption but what I learned from the strip is that you don't really need money or or you don't need what you need in online life to live.
SPEAKER_02Maybe learn to produce my food and uh I don't know write a paper kind of stories and pains and live a offline life and find ways to like inspire others in a kind of human face-to-face connection but I I I yeah I hear this this this kind of question come up a lot and I do hear a lot of people take one of two routes one is kind of where I am of I will cry for days and the second one is more of where you are which is it'd be fine I would just live an offline life the whole time but honestly it feels like there's got to be some sort of in between where we can spend some time online and have that online existence feed into our offline existence.
SPEAKER_03Yeah you need you need both you need both but you need a really good balance and sometimes I've I see myself oh there's too much online or there was too much offline I didn't like really write anything about it and so I also try to keep balance yeah but I was skeptical seeing all the like especially in China like all people watching phones uh screen in trains and subways and like promoting all the like entrepreneurial actions by like working on your computer all the time I felt like it's that's not the way to go like I thought thinking about the future I think people kind of see like uh the one the ones working with the computers oh they're doing like entrepreneurial stuff but I think going on learn long journeys on on cycling not using any resources like cars or trains or whatever just using your energy to reach the goal kind of give gave me kind of valuable lesson along the way and I and I want young people to learn that and yeah there's a beauty of like once you're offline and putting your energy to do something.
SPEAKER_02I hear rather than I hear what you're saying. I guess part of what I'm trying to tease out is I feel like we've kind of fallen into the internet and everybody's just doing a lot all the time and we're not really thinking about it that much and this kind of excess of being online is that a stage in our like online development and we'll grow out of it or are we literally just going to become like computer heads or something like I don't know. What do you think? Are we are we going to like ourselves pull back and have that balance that you were talking about do you think we can do that?
SPEAKER_03I think kind of all being satisfied with what you have and not being greedy and being in China and Korea it's really difficult because it's really overpopulated societies and also US also has kind of that kind of um we're greedy it's fine you can say it I think humans by nature are pretty greedy they want everything that they can get. Yeah I think um people need to kind of balance with uh life in the nature and offline and more human connections there is a really good YouTube video that I want you to watch it's a history of things I really realized that all our life is uh promoting the consumption the this video talks about how a product is made from manufacturing process to people wasting stuff and you kind of realize that you're you're creating a vicious circle of like creating wasting and you're just making this world like not really sustainable. And it's the the thing is that a lot of a lot of us just don't realize that that we're we're so much exposed to all the consumption in whatever like content or products and you don't really realize the back side of it and yeah I think we need a balance on that.
SPEAKER_02I think we do. And it sounds like you're gonna be one of those people to help us realize what that balance is we need to work on that. Yeah that's pretty awesome yeah Eva this has been wonderful I thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I think the listeners are gonna love you and they're gonna want to hear you more so seriously I know you're gonna start a mouse disgray but think about the podcast the video podcast thingy.
SPEAKER_03So thank you thank you thank you thank you uh lovely I also came back to kind of oh my mission and my first uh kind of like uh statement what I want it to be so I was really happy talking to you.
SPEAKER_02Well thank you very much I will see you online and thank you so much to Ibuyu for joining us on Virtual X Pass. I wish her all of the best of luck in moving countries one more time when she goes to the UK for grad school. And while I'm giving out thank yous I do need to mention that the music you hear in this podcast is from Damon Castillo brilliant musician based in San Luis Obispo, California. Can find him at Damoncastillo.com the music you're hearing is from the Mess of Me album once again if you'd like to reach me for any questions, feedback or to volunteer to be a guest, my social media handle is Stefio S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O. That is also my Gmail account and it's it's everywhere. I'm just everywhere. Thank you very much to the listeners of this podcast. It is because of you listening that I continue to have these conversations with these amazing amazing people who dare to live elsewhere on and offline.
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