Welcome to the Virtual Expat podcast. Part of the Virtual Expat podcast experience, which is part podcast, part of itself. In the podcast, we interview expats about how their geographical movement around the world affects their own. Alexandra is from the US. Without further ado, let's have a listen to what Alexandra said about her online and geographic connections. Thank you so much, Alexandra, for joining us today on Virtual Expat. Thank you so much for having me, Stephanie. When would you say you started putting a lot of stuff online? How far back do you think that goes? And it doesn't have to be just overseas, just in general. When did you start to put stuff online?
SPEAKER_04Or the first time I moved abroad, like not as a part of a study abroad program, like an actual taking all my things and moving for a job was when I was 24. And I had been working in PR and I wanted to become a journalist. So I decided to move to Lebanon. And at that time, I interviewed, I was working at a magazine, and I interviewed my favorite journalist there, and I said, What would your biggest piece of advice be to me as someone who's transitioning from communications into journalism? And one of the reporters, Zach Greenberg, told me that I should start a blog. And that was kind of the first time that I started putting my thoughts up online. And it was actually the same time that Instagram kind of started. So I while I was using my blog, I also was using Instagram to kind of post photos and keep in touch with people from home. It was very different than it was now. That's six years ago. It's changed so much. It really has. And I have to say, for the travel expat space, I guess I should have realized how big it would become. So it's been such a great tool for me personally, beyond just keeping in touch, but just to learn about other people. I mean, I think we might have actually become connected through Instagram.
SPEAKER_02I think so, yeah. Really, it's changed so much. And I actually was on Instagram and then I went off and I came back a few months ago because I live in China and the firewall kind of fights technology sometimes. And I got kept getting quick kicked out of Twitter. So I'm like, well, I need something. I can't just completely disconnect. I'm not that kind of person. So Instagram has that thing where when you post, you can post it on a few different places at once. And one of them was Twitter, and I said, okay, that's what I'm doing. And I ended up falling in love with it because you can do videos and live streams and all kinds of stuff now.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, it's really great. And I have to say, I feel like it's hard to, if you want to search something like using your own kind of words, but following the hashtags is it can be such a great resource for people interested in becoming an expat or who are living as expats. Like I've connected to a lot of other people just in Lebanon through it. What are your favorite expat hashtags? I don't know if this counts as an expat hashtag, but to me it's a nomad girls. I really like that one. I tend to like the nomad ones more than expat ones. I don't know why. What are your some of your favorites?
SPEAKER_02I am more on the expat pegs and people on Twitter. On Instagram, I found like the hashtags for like study gram, and I'm studying Chinese, and so I found like Chinese gram and and and different things like that. So I'm I'm definitely more of the language person, and I think because it's such a visual thing, I'm more on Instagram for that. I do agree with that.
SPEAKER_04Like I feel like also like travel girls on Instagram. I feel like you kind of the expat thing might be bigger on Twitter just because it's more of a literary website, but I have found connected with a lot of expats through Instagram.
SPEAKER_02Sure. Oh, sure. Yeah, I I have been too actually. It's funny, I think through the study stuff and the the street art. I noticed you had some stuff on on street art in Beirut, and I love that stuff. And so I'll follow anybody who that's doing pictures on street art and stuff like that. And I I end up following a lot of folks from different places. We're going off the chronology a little bit here.
SPEAKER_04So that was about 2012, you said? Yeah, January 2013, actually. Oh, okay. So I I might have started it like in the end of 2012, but I moved to Lebanon in 2013, the beginning.
SPEAKER_02For 2013, were you on any other social media? Did you do a lot of emailing? Did you read a lot of websites? I have always been a huge Twitter person.
SPEAKER_04So I was definitely there, although I would say I used it more for kind of literary things. I studied creative writing in college. Oh, okay. As well as Middle Eastern studies. But in terms of travel, I really got into this website, which it's actually not super visual, but I recommend it to every person who wants to be an ex-pat. Numio, where you can basically look up like what prices of different things in cities around the world. N-U-M-B-E-O. I have so many vivid memories of being in my office in New York City and having this like dream board of Lebanon. And before like I had a few different places, but eventually it became Lebanon. And look using this website to constantly be like, okay, well, an apartment in this place is this much, but food is this much. I found it to be a really great resource. It's very straightforward, but I sometimes think that that's the kind of information you need if you're gonna make this kind of a jump.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh, this is right on. I just went to the Shanghai one just to see how the prices were, and this is so spot on.
unknownOh my god.
SPEAKER_04It is. At which time you can see how, like, sometimes apartments will be a huge part of the cost of living, which if you're moving abroad with an organization that's gonna pay your apartment, that doesn't matter as much. But like if your food is really expensive, then that's something to take into consideration. I think that's what I like about it. And then it even goes down to like how much a pair of jeans is, how much a fancy restaurant would be, how much a cheap restaurant.
SPEAKER_02Other than travel site, before you left for Lebanon, what would you say you mostly did online?
SPEAKER_04Facebook and Twitter would and then I was working in PR and managed all of the communications for Forbes.com. So I was very involved in the media and reading a ton of news as part of my daily job. One kind of aspirational website that I did like a lot was Matador Network. Yes. And then also Nomadic Matt. And your blog is still running, correct? So it ended up the blog was hosted on WordPress. And now what I was writing there, I now end up pitching to other places or I write for Forbes directly. Because I cover travel for them and I have a lot of independence. I'm a senior contributor, which means I can write pretty much whatever as long as it falls in what they call swim lanes. So a lot of my content that I would have been posting on the blog, I now write for Forbes.
SPEAKER_02So after you moved to Lebanon, did you find that there were any websites, social media sites, or anything like that that were local-based that you started to use?
SPEAKER_04Well, there were actually two groups, and they were both on Facebook because Facebook is really big in Lebanon and I would say the Middle East in general. Okay. Especially nowadays, like much more I find than in America. But there was this Beirut apartment group that literally post apartments, but also ended up being a really great resource. And then there was this couch surfing group that would meet every Monday. And it was a really I actually made all of my friends my first batch of friends when I first moved here through it. It's now defunct, which is kind of sad. But it was great because it would be like people that were traveling through, people that were interested in couch surfing, a lot of expats, obviously, but also like Lebanese people that wanted to meet foreigners. So it was a cool kind of mixing pot, and we would switch which bar we met at. I found that to be great. And then oh, there's also this expat women in Beirut group that was great, also on Facebook.
SPEAKER_02Why did the apartment one go under?
SPEAKER_04Oh, the couch surfing one?
SPEAKER_02Oh, the couch surfing one, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_04Uh I don't know. I think it probably suffered from, you know, when one there was one guy who was kind of in charge of it, and I think that he ended up opening a hostel and probably maybe lost esteem for it. Okay. You know, when when you don't have that one organizer. Sure. Um, and in the meantime, I'd moved to a different country and then come back. And so now I'm I'm I'm actually I started a group with a friend of mine, a travel massive meetup, and we host those like every couple months in Beirut, which is cool. I'm trying to get the same kind of travel thing going because I found it to be a really nice way for expats to mingle also with locals.
SPEAKER_02Now, did you say meetups like the meetups.com website?
SPEAKER_04No, so this is travel massive. It's basically a 34,000 member group of people that are either in the travel industry or some are travelers. Most people are kind of travel professionals. Sure, sure. And they're headquartered in New York, but we just opened a chapter in Beirut. They post amazing travel jobs like all over the world. Like they'll have things from anything from like working in a hostel to doing the communications for Expedia. I always recommend their job board for people that are interested in kind of working in the travel industry.
SPEAKER_02That's so cool. Oh my gosh. Yeah. I first, when I first started living overseas, I wasn't sure how visa-oriented I wanted to be. I wasn't sure how long I wanted to live overseas, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I did work in hostels quite a bit. I think it was Hostel World or Hostels. Yeah. There were a bunch of like hostel websites that also had like workboards on there. So I just found a bunch of them on there. It's cool that this exists. Oh my god.
SPEAKER_04Oh, cool. Is that a fun? I've always wanted to do that.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it was fantastic. I mean, let's face it, it's cleaning and it's cleaning a lot of toilets of people who probably drink the night before. But honestly, you get your bed for free. And I was working in in like Western Europe with my housing free. So, you know, it's so awesome. Yeah. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do, how long I wanted to stay. So it was it was absolutely perfect. So that's so cool. My gosh. You definitely have your finger on the pulse of like travel communities globally. Thank you. You mentioned before that you also lived in Italy and the Dominican Republic. Was that before or after Lebanon?
SPEAKER_04So I studied abroad for a year in Italy when I was 18. It was this program with it was a hundred of us, and we most of the kids were international students. We were something like 50 nationalities. So because of that, I've realized I've always had this fascination of like third culture kids and living abroad. And and now I realize I think it's from that experience. But as for the Dominican Republic, I moved there after living in Lebanon, kind of in between. And now I'm back in Lebanon. So it's it's funny because I feel like a lot of people don't go from the Middle East to the Caribbean. It made sense to me. And then I actually had a roommate in the Dominican who had lived in Morocco. We always kind of bonded about this.
SPEAKER_02I hear you. I went from Taiwan to Argentina and then over to Vietnam. So yeah, it confused some folks, but I was like, well, I want to experience different things before I pick a certain place to live, you know?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, in some ways, I found like I I felt that after living in Lebanon, where maybe the culture is a bit more conservative than the Dominican, and definitely, you know, the kind of lifestyle is very different. Yeah. That I I kind of wanted an antidote to that. So I I I kind of I feel like that's where it comes from, you know.
SPEAKER_02I could not agree with you more. You've traveled in Asia, right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So some not China, but like Hong Kong and Okay.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Hong Kong's a little more colorful, but Taiwan definitely had, at least in the south where I was, it had a very gray feel to it. The buildings may have been pretty on the inside, but they definitely weren't something you'd walk down the street and go, wow, that's beautiful. And I found myself really craving external prettiness. And so I was like, what is the uh downright, what is the most beautiful place I can afford to move to for a few months? And I was like, Oh, Guardos Edis, that worked. Oh, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_02And I know the the internet and social media were all kind of forming during this time period. When you were in Italy or the Dominican Republic, was there anything online you were doing that was local specific in those areas?
SPEAKER_04In the Dominican Republic, I was in a small beach town called Las Cavenas, and there was like one Facebook group where people would sell things, like anything from like a truck to like baby clothes. Right. And that was kind of the the extent of the online community. Yeah, yeah. It was great for learning Spanish because I remember my first night when I got there, there were some Argentinians who'd moved to the town, and I was kind of friends with this one person through another friend, and so we went for empanadas, and I just had this realization like I am gonna have to learn Spanish, otherwise, I will not have any friends. It was the kind of town where when you made friends with people, they would just drop by your house instead of calling you or something. It was very off the grid. Yeah, and I really enjoyed that, partly maybe because so much of my long life is online for work. So sometimes I feel like I like to live in a place where it's much more in person. And Italy, I would say it was that was 2006. The internet, it just wasn't what it is today.
SPEAKER_02So it sounds like you know quite a number of languages. You went to Lebanon to study Arabic, right? And you know some Spanish, it sounds like. How many languages do you have under your belt?
SPEAKER_04I like to learn a language until I can be conversational in it, and then I kind of feel like so far it hasn't pushed past that. I mean, I'm still studying Arabic and I still study Spanish. I can read French pretty well and understand. And when I go to Italy, they think I'm from Spain and I can communicate, but it's it wouldn't be the best. I do love learning languages, maybe because I'm a writer. And so whenever I live in a country, I very much enjoy learning the language, and even with a language like Arabic, which I've been studying now for wow, almost six years and done it intensively. I've done it in classes, private teachers, like all different ways. And it is a really difficult language, which I'm sure you relate to. Yes, the study in Chinese. But it just kind of I kind of think of it as like my meditation or something. Do you practice writing the script as or are you mostly Taish? I do. Yeah. I do. And actually, I don't know. This might be the same for Chinese. So one thing that I love about Arabic, and when I when I moved to the Dominican, I wasn't studying it as much. I kind of missed it. When I am writing or reading Arabic or speaking it, speaking a little bit less so, but when I'm writing or reading it, there's like a different part of my brain that it taps into that's really different than when I'm writing in English or like most of my other activities. And I can almost feel it. I is that similar to Chinese when you're writing or reading it.
SPEAKER_02I don't write as much because I've learned how to type and I find it a lot easier and a lot more practical because that's where I think I'm going to be once I'm fluent. It's like a year and a half in, but I'm very low level because it's just such a freaking giant mountain. But I do find that when I'm first reading it, or when I'm especially first making flashcards on paper, that's the one time I really do write things. And I find myself giggling too many of the times when I can see a picture in there, even though they're not all pictogrammed, most of them aren't anymore. I'm like, oh my god, like last night there was one for bath for like taking a bath. And it literally looked like a person diving into bubbles, and I just lost it in the cafe. I was like, this is awesome. This looks like someone taking a bath. And my husband's looking at me going, that looks nothing like that, but I'm glad you think so. So I kind of have those moments, and I never have that with English. It's letters, these are letters, these letters make these words. That's it, done.
SPEAKER_04And I also feel like Arabic is a really beautiful Arabic is a really long tradition with poetry and spoken, kind of spoken poetry and now rap music, which I've actually done a lot of reporting on as well. But I find it so interesting to learn all of these Arabic expressions, like it's so flowery, and it kind of gives you this insight into the culture that I feel if you don't study the language, you wouldn't know about. Do you read anything in Arabic online? For me personally, this is gonna be my biggest hurdle with Arabic because basically it's kind of I don't know how much you know about it, but it's almost as if it's two languages. So there's modern standard or futhar, and then there's colloquial or ammiyah. And the best way to explain it is kind of futhar or modern standard is what the Quran is written in, and that's what the newspapers are, TV, news programs on TV, and you know, if you're going to university, your lectures would theoretically be in that, and that's kind of like Latin. And then each region in the Middle East has their own dialect. But the dialects are very different. If you're from Morocco and you're speaking to someone from Kuwait, you guys would both have to be speaking in modern standard. You could not be speaking in your colloquial dialect. That sounds like so much like Chinese. Oh, really?
SPEAKER_02I didn't realize Chinese was like that as well. And it's basically based on the Beijing dialect, which most of the country does not speak. It's sort of like newscaster English, is how I try to explain it to locals in China. It's like barely anybody in the US really sounds like newscasters, at least newscasters when I was growing up. So it's very, very flat, very on access, you can't tell where they're from, that kind of thing. And then there's so many dialects. Even just getting in a taxi in Shanghai, you'll say something that you think is correct, and it probably is. But this area, they're probably coming in from a neighboring area or from halfway across the country, which is super far, and it just the thing with Chinese though is that the the written form is identical. And so people will end up, even locals will end up writing things down to show each other to clarify what they're trying to say. Oh.
SPEAKER_04And they do can yeah, the written form is yeah, the grammar, the written form, all of that is different in the global version.
SPEAKER_02Never mind, then that's worse, that's uh more challenging than Chinese, then.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, like they they say the the difference is like it's literally as if like in Morocco they speak Italian and in Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria they would speak Spanish and another region. Like it's as broad as a difference as the romance languages are between each other.
SPEAKER_02If you were to to read Arabic online, which dialect would you go with?
SPEAKER_04Shammi, which is the Lebanese, Syrian, Palestinian, Iraqi. Gotcha. Um, but the problem, the difficulty is there's not that many printed things in Shami dialect. So a lot of my friends will like buy like kids books because that is what will be printed in it. Yeah. Or up, or one of my friends in Amman, Jordan, she has Humans of New York, did like Humans of Amman, and that's written all in colloquial. So that's a book I definitely need to get. But eventually, my goal is to be able to read in the modern standard, to read the newspaper in it.
SPEAKER_02I mean, people talk about how because English is a global language, it's so complicated from variety to variety, but it's nothing compared to some of these languages. It's nothing compared to the complexity.
SPEAKER_03No.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Obviously, it has a lot to do with colonialism and Hollywood and all those kinds of things. But if you learning other languages, English is in some ways grammatically very easy. And we have a lot less words. I don't know if you've noticed in Chinese if that's the same, but like Arabic, there are verbs for so many things we don't even have a word for in English.
SPEAKER_02I don't know if that I've hit that, but that definitely the tones of the language and the the script and thought I would be in favor of a language that didn't have inflected verbs. And now that I'm experiencing one, I want the the inflections back and to get rid of the tones. Because it's just searching for the time in a sentence grammatically is a little exhausting right now. I'm sure I'll get used to it with time, but it's just like, ah, I just want ending. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, it's super, super, super challenging. Hey there, this is Stephanie. I'm really excited that you're listening to this interview. I really would love to go to the city. I'd really like to get more stories about their experts. If you're in China, you can read anywhere if you'd like to send me information directly about what you think about this project. Thank you. Three people. Three people. Thank you. Okay, so you spend a lot of time online for work. What do you generally do not for work online now? Like where do you find yourself online for fun?
SPEAKER_04I do enjoy kind of reading in blogs and stuff like that. Although Most of them are travel blogs, so I I guess it's a hard um it's a blurry line if it's fun. I also you know, one thing I've gotten really into that is kind of tangential to work as well is YouTube. It's really awesome seeing how these content creators all over the world are making really cool videos and kind of showing you, especially I think if you're the kind of person that is interested in different cultures, you can kind of get this like little slice of a place or a person that isn't filtered the same way, you know, if you watch a TV show or read a news article.
SPEAKER_02I have found so many people accidentally because I've went on YouTube a year and a half ago looking for like Chinese learn language learning videos, like little grammar videos, and I ended up stumbling that were vlogging about China from different areas of the country, and then I found people vlogging from different countries, and so now I'm just following all of these expats and travelers all over the place, and I'm like, I had no idea this was going on on YouTube, and it's really thoughtful, really interesting stuff.
SPEAKER_04Personally, like when I've learned languages, when I've studied them in the US, I find it to be much more difficult if I'm not hearing it and being kind of immersed in it. But nowadays, I think it must be a lot easier if you're learning a language in America because there's so many native speakers on YouTube that you can use to kind of practice dialect, especially for conversational things. You know, I think you can study a language in a classroom and not at the same time. I studied French in high school and then I was an au pair one summer when I was 16. And I remember meeting all these kids in Fonjon Blue and like realizing my high school French was not at all gonna help me have a conversation with other 16-year-olds.
SPEAKER_02It's so true. There's something in the language classroom that's uh broken. I don't know. But yeah, I don't know if they're using these resources. I've actually heard that a lot of language programs in the US are closing down, even at the university level. And I hope they're being replaced with these other resources, but I don't know. I'm I'm kind of unplugged. Wow, that's so sad. Right? Yeah, it is, it is. But who who do you follow on YouTube?
SPEAKER_04Who are your favorite folks? So the one woman that I love is Flywith Haifa. She's um Palestinian Jordanian and lives in Dubai. And one thing that I really like about her videos is that they're in Arabic and English. So when she speaks in Arabic, she puts English subtitles, and when she speaks in um English, she puts Arabic, and they um and it's a similar dialect to what I'm learning. And I actually ended up writing about her at this series on Forbes called Adventure Hacking Women, so I ended up writing about her as well, but she's one that I really like, and then I really like Nadine Saikora, Tay Nadine. Tay Nadine, she's Canadian, okay, um, and she does cool like travel videos, and she's been in the space actually for a while. And then actually another Canadian who I really love is Onika. I think her handle is Onika the Traveler. Well, I guess she's actually still an ex-pat because she lives in New York now. She lived in Hong Kong for a while, and she does a lot of cool videos about being a black traveler or and a woman traveler.
SPEAKER_02I'm realizing as you're saying these folks that there's a a huge area that I'm geographically not even paying attention to. I I'm guessing my algorithm comes up with a lot of stuff in Northeast Asia because I follow so many people who are like in Japan and China and Hong Kong and stuff.
SPEAKER_04And I do think that's one thing that can be difficult about the internet though. I would a hundred percent agree with you about that. I went on a trip to Sri Lanka last spring for a surf trip. And when I was there, I realized I was like, I am so not connected to this whole Southeast Asia travel. Because a lot of people there are like, like they're either traveling around India for a really long time or they're living in Southeast Asia. And I just realized I was really out of touch with that whole kind of travel community. Like, as open as the internet makes us feel, sometimes these algorithms can really narrow your viewpoint and what kind of input you're getting.
SPEAKER_02It's so true. It's so true. It's it's honestly one of the reasons why I'm doing stuff like this is because when I hit someone who's outside my region, I'm like, oh yes, they're gonna help me explode outside of that area and show me things that I haven't seen yet. And hopefully I can share that with others too, and we can all kind of get out of that. Well, the algorithms are great. I've stumbled upon so many things that have been wonderful. We felt we did this amazing Japanese hot spring uh vacation earlier this year based on this random video that came up with one of the biggest expats in Japan vloggers randomly in my feed, and it was possibly one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in in my life. And I was like, oh, well, thank you, YouTube.
SPEAKER_04But um Oh, that sounds amazing. That is definitely something I have always wanting to do.
SPEAKER_02Oh, it's it's seriously crazy. It was April and it was still snowing, and we didn't realize that. Like I was not short sleeves, but just a deck, and it was still snowing. The day we came in, you have to go to the local bus area, and then the bus picks you up, and you drive through the mountains to the whole compound with these 200-year-old buildings, and then you go into the little rooms, and then we went into the hot spring, it was this giant shared outdoor sulfur one, so it's completely white water, you can't see anything, so you're all in there with strangers, but it's no big deal, and then snow started. So it's this beautiful outdoor area and wow snowing, it was amazing, amazing. All because of a YouTube algorithm. How about podcasts? Do you listen to any podcasts in other languages?
SPEAKER_04Radio ambulance, I like it's kind of people describe it as this American life, but in Spanish. Oh, sweet. Which um, yeah, so they kind of do these like long stories. I've used that one to kind of keep up on Spanish because I feel, especially when you're like living in Lebanon, obviously most of my effort is to continue with my Arabic and take classes and do exchanges and all of that. But one thing that I really like about learning Spanish because there's so many native Spanish speakers in the world, there's a lot of Spanish TV shows, things like radio ambulances or music that I can passively keep up. So it's not as if I'm gonna like learn more, but it's that I won't lose it.
SPEAKER_02How do you feel when you use social media? Yeah. Like, do you walk away like I just learned something, I just connected with someone, or oh man, my life sucks compared to these people. How would you gauge your emotional reaction to your social media experience?
SPEAKER_04For me personally, I think it depends what mood I'm in at that time. If I'm kind of feeling down about myself, I will see other people on social media, especially in the travel space, because you know, some of it can be so unrealistic. And you know, you feel jealous or you kind of hate them a little bit. Um, but then you know, if I'm feeling positive, I will see someone and I'll think, oh my gosh, wow, so cool. That's amazing. I find that it helps me to kind of try to limit it in some ways. And on one hand, I have to be on social media for my job just to promote myself and then also to kind of find out what's happening with other people in the industry because it's been this way that we all kind of communicate. And the best way for me personally to mitigate that is I try to not do it when I first wake up. I try to not do it also when I'm going to sleep. And then I will also take kind of social media fast, where like when I went to Sri Lanka on my surf trip, I like I left my laptop, I unplugged, I didn't go on the internet at all for like 10 days. This summer I went off social media for a month and a half, which isn't maybe the best for my career as a journalist, but it's really important for me as a person and then also me as a writer. Because I think sometimes always getting these inputs, you don't have the deeper kind of look into yourself, which I believe to be important for me long term.
SPEAKER_02What do you think is the longest you would go without being in touch with anything online?
SPEAKER_04I've gone three weeks before in El Salvador because I was writing a book at the time or starting the first draft of a book. So I went three weeks, but I was in one place and it was again a small kind of surf beach town. So it wasn't that difficult to be honest. And the funny thing is, whenever I do it, always the first couple days you feel like you've left something or you're like should be checking something, and then it always goes away. Like, and it it it definitely is something that I I know I am addicted to. I would say maybe six weeks or something like that, like total cutoff. But when I went to Sri Lanka though, I had a friend, I had thought I had told people. I told my parents and my sister, and I thought I told a few friends in Lebanon, but it like when I came back, I didn't, I was really loving it. So I I actually kept my phone off, like even when I was flying back. I think back in Lebanon, like on the way to my house, I turned my phone back on, and I had had so many messages from people. Like I had one friend who was one friend in Lebanon who was about to call the Sri Lankan like national police choice. Then my mom freaked out, had my sister call the hostel owner where I was. And it was a good lesson in like how if you do this, you need to communicate because and then even the summer when I did another kind of social media fast, a lot of my followers were like really concerned about me. I don't like it when people are like, I'm taking a break, but I do think there's something to that because people kind of are invested in you, and even people that I'm not like personally connected to, you know, maybe friends online, they got really nervous.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so maybe on the social media area, like put a like pin something that says, Hey, I'll be offline intentionally for this amount of time. Yeah, people thought I was like kidnapped or something. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh, that's a really good lesson to learn. You mentioned writing a book. I know that's not online, but what was that about?
SPEAKER_04So I finished the first draft and now I'm in the process of finding an agent. But the book is it's based on two years of reporting that I did in my hometown, Southampton, New York. And I was I was writing an agricultural column for my local paper. And while I was writing it, a publisher approached me and said there was a book there. And it's now it's because these 12th and 13th generation farmers in Southampton or the Hamptons that are fighting protect their land against development. And then it's being told through the lens of me coming to my hometown and thinking about what is home and is the place that I love, does it still exist, and what does that mean for me?
SPEAKER_02And you started to write that after you lived overseas for the f for a while, right?
SPEAKER_04Yes, yeah. So I lived over I lived in Lebanon, and then from Lebanon I moved back to Southampton. Gotcha. And I was only supposed to stay for like the summer, and then I really started reporting on the agricultural community there, and like I grew up with farmers, so I always knew that they were there, but it was one of the most gratifying things reporting on that community, and I ended up staying to kind of get all the research for the book.
SPEAKER_02Cool. You have such a variety of things that you write on, report on, that kind of thing. Is there anything that you're not interested in covering?
SPEAKER_04I cannot pick up another hobby or interest. I don't see things I'm like, oh, that would be so cool. And I just tell myself, Alexandra, no, you've been nothing on your plate.
SPEAKER_02I'm just curious. I don't know. What what is a topic for you that you're not interested in? Generally, sports, except for World Cup, because I find the cultural aspect of that pretty interesting. But in general, sports is an easy one for me to say. It's just not anything I've really ever gotten into, especially as a spectator.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I would agree with that, except for surfing or the World Cup for the same like reasons as you. I would say sports. Like I I don't mind watching them, but it really people will explain things to me, and I'm just the information does not stick in my group.
SPEAKER_02I've I've had American football explained to me growing up, I think a billion times, and I just stare at the screen and I'm like, I'm so bored I can't concentrate. I it just doesn't resonate with me. Like football slash soccer, I really like. I can watch that. I'd much rather play it or I'd much rather watch it in person, but I can watch it, especially again with the World Cup. But American football, just I don't get it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I would agree. Oh, I guess also fashion is something that I'm not like artistically, I like I'm always impressed by people that are in fashion, and I really like the idea of kind of expressing yourself daily through what you wear. But personally, for me, like shopping or following things like that is really, I don't get it.
SPEAKER_02I hate shopping so much. It's ironic because of the the pollution and the the heat. Like Shanghai literally never has a good season. It's always too hot, too wet, or too polluted. And it kind of rotates between the three. Oh wow. So I've I but I love to walk. And the first year I was like, I'm so cluster-fit, like I'm just I'm I'm dying. I need to walk somewhere, I need to walk somewhere, but it's clearly not going to be outside. So I finally resigned myself to mall walking. I'm now one of those people that puts headphones at like an audiobook in, and I'll go to the biggest five-star mall because those exist now, and I'll just walk around. I'll not buy anything, I'll not wow, I'll just literally walk around these giant floors because nobody's there. I'll just walk around and around and around. Do a lot of people do that or no? No. There's a lot of parks in Shanghai, and so people will go to the park, they'll dance, they'll do exercise, they'll do badminton. Like there's a lot of activity in the parks. But I'm not used to the pollution, and it doesn't take much for me to get a headache from it. And so, and that and the heat and the rain, and I just there's so many things that I'm just like, look, I don't need to adjust to the point where I'm gonna live here forever because I won't. So I'll do kind of a thing where I'll still be out in public because I like being around people and things, but I just can't deal with all of that outside.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, like whenever people living in like China or India or something talk about it, it's just something I like don't really have. I mean, obviously Lebanon has pollution problems as well. And I mean parts of America definitely, without a doubt, but it's something that my brain just doesn't. I feel like it's something you don't really get until you're actually living in a place where you deal with it the same way you deal with weather.
SPEAKER_02For sure. And it's never as bad as the media makes it sound, and it's never as good as I want it to be. It's somewhere in between. And it really is like the worst part of it's winter. So it's maybe four or five months a year, where some days slash most days might be kind of bad, but not really awful. The worst is up north, and we're not there, and we have a nice breeze. And it is getting better year to year. And I don't want to justify it because it does damage people's health, and there's a lot of kids growing up in it, and they develop lung problems and asthma and that kind of thing, but it is progressively getting better. You do have to alter your day. I do have like two or three AQI apps that measure the pollution on a daily basis that'll kind of look at and go, do I want to go, you know, walk to the metro or do I want to take the bus to the metro? That kind of thing. Interesting.
SPEAKER_04No, and I do think it's one of those things that unless the whole world is better about how we think about the environment. It's definitely a reality that we will all face.
SPEAKER_02Speaking of apps, are there any specific apps that you used in any of these places that you don't use outside of them?
SPEAKER_04Oh, so I actually wrote a story about this when I first moved to Lebanon. There's it's called the Beirut Electricity App because in Beirut you have three hours of electric cuts every day. If you're wealthy, you have a generator, and and outside of Beirut it's actually worse. When I was living in the north, it's like six hours, and then like in the Palestinian camp, it's 12 hours a day. So by no means am I complaining about three hours, and you kind of get used to it. And where I'm living now, we have a generator, but it's it's a very simple app, but this kid developed it. He must have been like 19 or something because the hours they shift every day and it goes backwards. It'll be from 3 p.m. to six p.m. and then from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m. and then from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. So if you don't keep track of it, it's really annoying. But if you know, it's just three hours, right? So you can have things charged. And it just was super simple, and I use that app all the time. Yeah. Oh, I do also use Kareem, which is like Uber in the Middle East. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, and they actually have this new thing in Lebanon. I think they've had it maybe in other countries before, but they have this new thing in Lebanon where they have like Kareem scooters, and I haven't used it yet, but some of my friends have. Yeah. And if you can like get a scooter Uber, which is really cool. And they bring a helmet for you. What? I want that so badly. Are you serious? The thing is, because they just rolled it out, like I've noticed whenever I want to use the scooter, there's none available. So I think it really is like in the kind of rush hour hours, but it's a great idea because a lot of times Bayernus has really bad traffic during rush hours, so you could actually get around much faster and it's cheaper too.
SPEAKER_02Oh yeah. Okay, so I rode a scooter legally in the US, but not so legally in Vietnam and Thailand. Do you need to have a local license to do that in Lebanon?
SPEAKER_04Technically, you don't in Lebanon there's rules and then there's like what you can do. Yep. Technically, I think you need to have an international driving license, but unofficially, as long as your scooter is registered to a Lebanese person, yeah, then it's fine. It doesn't matter. If a scooter is hit, even if it's the scooter's fault, the vehicle is responsible. So because of that, it doesn't really matter so much about your own licensing or insurance.
SPEAKER_02I think that that's why it's the case. I'm very impressed that there's insurance. I don't know if there is in China. I know there's a ton of accidents. It's a fairly new place for cars, and that's really evident in the driving.
SPEAKER_03Oh, really?
SPEAKER_02It's something. Like every time we leave, go to another country and come back, we're like, huh. Yeah, it was like this the whole time we were here. We just got used to it. And there's a lot of electric scooters, and they can ride on the sidewalks, and you can't hear them because they're quiet. Yeah. So I actually got hit by one of those. Thank God it wasn't very fast. He wasn't going very fast, but I actually got hit one of those on the sidewalk. Oh no, I'm sorry. Again, like everything else, it's getting better and better. And there's a lot of times where they'll like make a new law and they'll enforce it like you've never seen anything enforced, and things change overnight. They're starting to do that with like crosswalks, like they're starting to really crack down on people that go through red lights and turn when they're not supposed to, and things like that. So it's it's progressively getting better, but it's sort of a work in progress.
SPEAKER_04I feel like that's part of the fun now of kind of living abroad in a way.
SPEAKER_02Oh, for sure, for sure. Like we were just in Japan for a week, and even if there was nobody there in the small town we were in, I was terrified if there was a red light because I'm like, I think they follow rules here. I think we're supposed to actually stop for the entire red light. Like consciously holding myself back, going, I know I could run across nobody would see me, but I feel like I want to be someone that like reinforces these are good to like adhere to.
SPEAKER_04When I go back to America and I drive, when it's a two-lane road, I will drive like I'm in Lebanon and it is not good. Like it is not legal. Yeah, and I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, Alexandra, like you know this system theoretically better than the Lebanese. This is not okay.
SPEAKER_02This is this is the very reason I cannot ride a scooter anymore in the US. It's just not happening because after Vietnam, I just I can't. Well, Vietnam and Taiwan, I had to adjust to everybody around me, and so I basically am just this massive defensive no-rules driver. And I I know I would slip into that.
SPEAKER_04I do think you kind of have to drive or act as if you're in that system, otherwise, you will get hurt. I find it to be hard to kind of switch your brain between like what you maybe grew up with to where you live now.
SPEAKER_02Have you ever seen the series uh Long Way Down or Long Way Around with Ewan McGregor? No. Oh my god. Ewan McGregor and his friend Charlie Gorman. I don't remember what he's famous for. Well, long way down, they do a long motorcycle trip down, I don't remember the exact countries, but down the globe lengthwise. And the long way around, they go around and they go to different countries and the situation and they have a camera crew and all that kind of stuff, and the stuff they film, the stuff that happens to their bikes, the people they meet, the countries, the customs, the food. Oh, it's so much fun to watch. And I was a huge fan of Iwan McGregor before this, but this just was like, okay, you can't be acting your way through this. You genuinely he genuinely seems like a nice person. It's really funny. Oh, that yeah, he does seem like a nice actor. When you're online and social media and whatnot, who do you primarily see yourself talking to?
SPEAKER_04That's something I'm always having an internal debate about. So when I write for a publication, I always write for an American audience. Or I was the editor in chief of a pan Arab website. And so for that, I was writing for people in the Middle East. But almost all of my writing is for an American audience, and so in that sense, I always am very Conscious of that, but in social media, I struggle with it because according to analytics, most of my readers are in the US. But then, in terms of what I see on Twitter or on Instagram with my engagement, like the users that are talking to me or speaking with me, a lot of them are Lebanese or Arab. So maybe because I'm an American, I feel that I should be writing for an American audience, but I find much more levels of engagement with Lebanese or Arab. The constantly evolving question, I feel.
SPEAKER_02For my podcast, so far, it looks like about half of the listeners are in the US. Or since I'm uh VPN heavy in China, or they're from the US overseas in some place that they need a VPN. Oh. So and I'm not sure which it is, but so there's that. And that is my viewpoint, no matter how many places I live, anyway. So I kind of lean in that direction. But I agree with you. I need a lot more feedback from people who are American expats, or just expats in general, or people that live locally in the places that I'm in. It's interesting. It's hard to leave your initial audience, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04Like on one hand, I think analytics and data is really important. And having worked for magazines and websites and been very involved in kind of developing online presence for both, I do think there's obviously a huge benefit to looking at those kind of numbers. Especially I think as a person, you don't want to chase those numbers. Right. I think. I and I think maybe a brand has more of an ability to do that. But if you are a person and that is what you are online, then I I feel that there can be a danger, you know, if all of a sudden I was like, I want to be known to these people, and so I'm gonna tailor all my content to them. I feel like it can be disingenuous.
SPEAKER_02Is there anything that you would never post online?
SPEAKER_04I find it on social media I write kind of more personal things and increasingly more personal things about how I feel about living abroad or relationships or you know, doing podcasts about stuff like that. And then at the same time, because I am a journalist, I find myself kind of investigating topics that I maybe wouldn't talk about personally as a journalist. For example, I write for Playboy and I've done a lot of things for them on kind of sex culture around the world. I did a whole magazine feature for them about um favorite pride being canceled. But then I also wrote about legal prostitution in the Dominican Republic. And that was something that when I lived there very much influenced my experience, but I never knew the right way to talk about it. First of all, as like a white girl, also just as an expat, you know, you don't want to be judgmental. But then when I wrote about it for a magazine, I it was really interesting because I found out that because of its legal status, women there since the 1980s they were able to like advocate for themselves, you know, the Dominican Republic. After Thailand, it's the second highest sex tourism destination in the world, but they have some of the lowest HIV and FTV rates, and that's purely because of the advocacy of these sex workers. So that was a topic that I would have felt uncomfortable blogging about, but that when I took it from this journalistic perspective, A, I learned something, and B, I thought it was maybe more interesting or provided more value for other people.
SPEAKER_02So basically, like having that experience and doing the research kind of gave you a broader view of the issue of I would say that.
SPEAKER_04And I would say in general, like I probably wouldn't write personal things about like my dating life or stuff like that. But I seem to then when I think about those things, then I seem to kind of find an outlet for it with journalism.
SPEAKER_02You mentioned feedback before. Have there been any surprises in how people have feedbacked on anything you've put online, either professionally or personally?
SPEAKER_04Well, when I first moved to Lebanon, it's actually the first ever article I had published, like by a place. I became a little bit of a celebrity in Lebanon. In Beirut, for my postcards from Beirut, I was known as the Postcards Girl, and it was like a very negative online backlash. Kind of a trial by fire, which is what my editor actually called it, verbatim. The idea was she was an editor I had put on TV, Deborah Jacobs, and radio. And when I was moving, she said, Do you want to write postcards for my Forbes page? I will edit you. We can come up with topics. And you know, I never went to journalism school. I didn't have a mentor in that way, and I was like, sure, that's great. So we came up with this idea that I would like to write every month these postcards. And my first postcard was literally my impressions of the 24-year-old having just moved to Lebanon like three days before. And I still stand by my article a hundred percent, but I did not realize that when I published it, that the kind of Lebanese community here would be really upset because they felt that, like they felt that if Forbes was gonna write something about Lebanon, why would Forbes write something that talked about the Civil War or electricity outages or getting lost or how maps don't work? Now I very much understand that because there is kind of this thing where you know these foreign journalists come, they drop in, they write these kind of really cliche things about Lebanon, and then they leave. Now, I think it was unfair for my post to have gone viral for that because it was very clear like I moved to this country three days ago, these are my first impressions. Continue to read my impressions as I live here.
SPEAKER_02Right. Um, but it was very much so a sensory experience, too. I I read it and it was like, this is what I'm seeing, this is what I'm spelling, this is what I'm hearing. Like it was very, very everything is new kind of experience.
SPEAKER_04It was. I mean, I studied Middle Eastern studies in university for four years. It wasn't unknowledgeable. Like I studied about Lebanon, I studied Islam, I had taken some Arabic classes, like it wasn't a completely um non-nuanced view. But I guess in the wider context, which I didn't realize that that was a thing that was happening. And you know, honestly, nowadays I don't even think it would be as much because at that time people weren't traveling to Lebanon, there wasn't that big of an expac community as much as there is now. It was still considered really dangerous. So I think in that sense, I understand why it happened. I remember thinking, well, at least get attention with my article. Like that was like the way that I was like, this is how I'm gonna get through this. You know, it's like at least it wasn't boring.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh. Have you ever done a follow-up to that? Or would you be tempted to do a follow-up to that and maybe do something that they used?
SPEAKER_04I did actually. My editor had me write a follow-up, but now I think it's funny. At the time it was pretty traumatic, especially because I was trying to find a job, and sure. I would go on these job interviews and they would be like, Wait, you look familiar. Or like at the bar, people would be like, You look familiar. Are you the postcard scroll?
unknownOh no.
SPEAKER_02Has that experience changed how you write about places anyway?
SPEAKER_04Definitely. Given the fact that I continued writing and didn't quit journalism right there, yeah. I would say that it was a really good experience because I do think now I always try to think about, hey, like, what is my position? Am I coming at this from a so-called privileged position? What kind of sensitivities do I need to be aware about? Who am I writing for? What have they written before about this place? You know, and I think a lot of times, especially in the American travel media, I can be really disappointed. And I do think that people might not be asking those questions. So the fact that it has made me a better journalist is something that is really positive. I will say though, that I think this is something that happens to women much more than men, where you really have to know, especially living online. I did this whole series on Trump and how his policies and the so-called Muslim ban was affecting tourism dollars coming to America. And, you know, people just tore me apart for things that they were true, like based on data and was very clearly true and very well researched. And this was an article that went through a ton of edits and had a lot of feedback. And again, I worked with tons of different organizations, but people wrote these comments like tearing my appearance down, things that had nothing at all to do with the article or me as a writer. So I do think it's something that as a woman you have to be much more thoughtful about, which is unfortunate. But if anything, I like to think that it makes me a better writer in the long run. So that's a positive. What do you think it would take for that to change?
SPEAKER_02Or can it change?
SPEAKER_04I don't know. I think it is kind of this uh institutional sexism that a lot of people I think when a woman writes about something or does anything in the public sphere, people are much more likely to look at them and their personality and who they are than they are for a man. And that I think is something that exists all over the world and that everyone needs to work on. And even women, you know, I don't think it's just men that do that. I think it's just the way that we're raised that we kind of accept men as authoritative figures and don't question where their authority comes from. Whereas with women, we do that.
SPEAKER_02Are you enjoying this conversation about our virtualness and our geographicness colliding? Me too. Hi, I would love to interview you. Do you live in a country that is not your home country? Let's talk about your experience. Let's do it. Contact me at F F I L F M. Twitter, Instagram, Templar, that's line of I would love to get your apparently 70% of YouTube viewers are men. Oh wow. So bizarre to me. I think a lot of people are visual people, and I think there's so many different pictures on YouTube now that I think for shorter and longer term videos, there's kind of like a channel for everybody kind of thing. But like I think we're really, really cute. But I think part of it is I think there's more men putting stuff on YouTube so they're kind of watching each other and women doing stuff on YouTube. Like there's a lot of language bloggers that I watch, and one of them is this woman who's a TCK now, she's an adult, and she knows all of these languages, and she's she used to have long hair, she cut her hair one day. Not part of the video, it's not important. And one of one of her viewers actually just said, You've cut your hair short, I can't watch your videos anymore. And she's like, How is that related to language? Wow, yeah, exactly. Lindy Botas and it's wonderful to watch. She's really, really interesting. And I was like, you go for just putting that out there. Like, guess what? I'm still gonna keep my hair short and I'm not gonna give you the time of day. I mean, she mentioned it because it's part of the ridiculous uhness of the medium or people's reaction to the medium or to women in general. But it's just like, oh my gosh, she's so good at language learning and explaining things, is it just talking about differences between like she's just a really clear, interesting person and a decent person to to listen to. And here you go, just completely cutting her off from your existence because she cut her friggin' hair.
SPEAKER_04Like, really? Exactly. And that's the kind of thing that or you can get really frustrated about it because whether or not you want to listen to it, it you know that it's there in a way. You know, and I feel like the important thing is to not let it get you down. But obviously, sometimes you do have like an emotional reaction or you feel bad. You feel like, how am I ever gonna be able to do what I want to do if there's still this kind of judgment on me as a person or my appearance, or I'm supposed to be in a certain box.
SPEAKER_02I'm generally a fan of technology and how it can bring people together, but I do think we've all kind of stumbled onto this messily, and I really wonder if there's something we can do to teach the next generations to be decent digital citizens to each other and not do crazy stuff like that and the online bullying and and and then what's the darker side of the stuff that can happen online? What do you think? Is there any sort of like social media training that we can do for the younger generation so they don't turn out like us online?
SPEAKER_04The thing that I think will be interesting to see this generation that has grown up with social media like as a part of their lives instead of you know, I remember when it became a part of my life, is that it seems like they because I have little cousins and it seems like they use social media like pretty much the same way that we would have used it in high school, but to the same way that we would have hated someone in high school, they do, but now online. Right. So on one hand, it seems like this accepting place, and you can connect with people who have similar interests. It seems like it can also play to our worst kind of instincts. And maybe given that they grow up with it, they'll learn a better protocol than we have. But I think we have to wait to see when they're out of high school.
SPEAKER_02It almost seems like it could last longer than the hazing that was done in person because it's like one minute this is happening and the next minute somebody else is a target in person, but online it seems to have a longer shelf life, and that's just from a viewpoint of someone looking in. I I haven't experienced that. I got social media and the internet in general very late in my life, so I don't know, but it it feels like it's existing longer.
SPEAKER_04Definitely. I hope that maybe eventually things like nude picture scandals or like bullying will have less of an effect long term, but it does seem like the fact that you can access this information forever, like it's very kind of scary. Because like if you were bullied online when you're in ninth grade or something, and then you go to university, like theoretically they could see that, right? Whereas when I went to college, I could have become a new person. That is kind of like a nice part about it. You know, whether or not you had a good or bad experience in high school, you there it's this opportunity, and now maybe people don't want to have that as much.
SPEAKER_02Well, for someone who has written a book, is there a big difference between somebody that writes like an autobiographical text and somebody that posts stuff about their life online?
SPEAKER_04Oh, this is actually something that I think about a lot as well. I think that if you're good at communicating information, you can do it just as well in a book as you can online. And I I see this with like a lot of my favorite authors, or I see it with like some of my favorite people on social media who then write. I think the problem with online is that it's kind of just like shallow take. So that maybe some people who are really good at kind of capitalizing on trends or writing things online, that maybe they wouldn't be able to do as much of a deep dive into themselves and get the kind of insight or information that I personally turn to for books.
SPEAKER_02Oh, that's a really good point. That shallowness, do you think that's like a developmental stage of our social media-ness, or do you think we'll grow out of it, or do you think that's just what the medium kind of rewards?
SPEAKER_04I think that's what the medium rewards because when I think of some of my favorite writers on Twitter and stuff, you know, they're not writing books on it. They're writing things like that are responsive to what's happening in the daily political climate, or they're saying good morning, or they're talking about, you know, their struggles with writing that day. One of my fears or worries is that maybe this like impetus to post and to do those things takes away from that deeper dive that we get with kind of more long-form things. That latter question, I don't know if there if I have an answer to that.
SPEAKER_02Is there anything that you'd want to do online that you can't do at the moment?
SPEAKER_04I would like it if more of my American friends used WhatsApp. I find it so frustrating.
SPEAKER_02China WhatsApp isn't blocked, is it? I don't know, honestly, because WeChat is so omnipresent. And I have one person in the world that I know that uses WhatsApp, so I don't even have to decide it's not generally an issue for me.
SPEAKER_04I read this article two days ago that via Google was Eric Schmidt was saying that in 10 years he thought that China and the rest of the world would have separate internets. You think that's true?
SPEAKER_02I think it's already somewhat true, and China's not the only country that does this. They're just a very obvious one and a gigantic country. So it's the scale of this place is really hard to explain. Everything is just magnified to X, Y, and Z. But without a VPN, you are limited to many things, and it changes all the time. But they also have an equivalent to everything. Like for Google, there's Binance, for Amazon, there's Taobao. And the things that have been created in that parallel Chinese universe actually have more options and more functionality than the originals that they copied. So it's like restricted, especially like before you can read Chinese. You're restricted in a way if you only know English or language outside of Chinese. But then once you get access to that, you have access to a lot more than if you were in countries that used other languages. It's very bizarre. There's there's this equal parallel universe that almost has more available to it once you access it. But then it's only what is approved. So if you want to learn about the outside world in any way that is not approved, you do need your VPN. And if it works that day, which generally right now it doesn't, but that could change at any moment, then you are cut off. Got it. It is cut off, but it's not as restrictive as it seems. It's like if you're used to having global access to everything, you're missing some of that, but then there's stuff to put in its place, and some of it's in English and some of it isn't. Got it.
SPEAKER_04I find that even living in Lebanon, not so much online, but that you know, I think when I first moved here, I would think, oh, there's no Amazon or there is no whatever American thing that I was used to, or no Netflix. But you know, like here, instead of that, you call up like a illegal DVD service and they deliver a TV series to your house in like 10 minutes. So it's kind of like if you want to have your paradigm here, then it won't work. But there are actually just as many things that you would use those for in a way.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. And the the digital payment services available within WeChat and another service, uh Ali Pay, like those two digital services. We can literally pay for anything. I can be without cash or an ATM card for days and weeks on end and just pay with those. At farmers markets, we pay wow with that, we pay electricity with that. There are coffee shops that don't take cash, they'll just take that. Like there's so much, there's so much we can do. We can order stuff and get like anything from around the world because of the export taxes. People literally go overseas with luggage, come back, and then sell the stuff within China. So there's so much access to stuff that isn't generally sold here, but it's soldier. That must be so fun or end drafting to navigate. It's really bizarre. And the longer you're here, the more you get access to it because you start to understand how to work within the system. Reading the international media, I get why they don't report on this stuff, because you really have to be here to experience it. You have to experience a daily life here for a set amount of time to understand that you do have access to things, but just not in that super direct way that you might be used to in this place or that place. So if we look at your complete geographical chronology outside of the US and we look at your online chronology, do you see your changing places affecting or not affecting what you were doing online?
SPEAKER_04Oh, I definitely think where I live affects how I live online. First off, because Lebanon has now the internet is better, but it's still like ranked 120th in the world. And when I first moved here, my friends that were Syrian would go back to Damascus and download videos and stuff in Damascus because it was faster there than in Lebanon. So even 3G, the internet here just it's how slow it is really affects how I use the internet. I guess outside of that, I think definitely different places in the Dominican music videos are like very, very big. And when a new song comes out, like everyone will learn the dance from the music video. So I got really into watching music videos on YouTube, which is something that I definitely didn't do before. In different places, I also feel like use social media very differently as well. How so? Facebook is really big in the Middle East, for sure. And I've even noticed I had a friend, we were both living in Lebanon at the same time, and then we both moved back to New York at the same time. We're both journalists as well, and we were lamenting how now that we were in New York that our Facebook likes and stuff when we posted our articles were so much less than when we were in Lebanon. So, you know, that's like a very simple example.
SPEAKER_02Wow, that's really funny. I was just looking up global internet speeds, and it looks like Lebanon is above China. Well, I don't know. This is speed test according to them. You guys are number 27 and China is number 39. And I have a very false view of that because I live in a tier one city, and my husband and I both use a lot of internet. So we have like a super hyped up what the heck is that thing called? Router with the built in VPN that pretends we're in Hong Kong. So we've we've got an artificially fast advantage. So although Hong Kong supposedly us at number 40, so that makes no sense because it feels pretty fast. Taiwan's at number 18 now. Fallen behind. I'm usually a person that has multiple tabs open at the same time. I got used to kind of slow internet speeds in the US. And when I moved to Taiwan, I couldn't keep up because it was so fast. I had like two open time. When I moved back to San Francisco, I looked it up and I compared the internet speeds, and Taiwan was literally 10 times faster than San Francisco. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it was very interesting. I was like, oh my gosh, you know, right next to Silicon Valley. Oops.
SPEAKER_04I mean, Lebanon, I don't know how it is number 20, like on Instagram and stuff like that, like you have to wait for videos to load. And that's everywhere.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, depending on the day and how the VPN's working and all kinds of things. It's it's either very normally fast here or it just doesn't work. And I just turn off my computer. Oh, really? Yeah, when there's like big conferences or events happening in the country, they tend to um make it hard to use the VPNs that they know that exist and that a lot of people, including a a ton of locals, actually use. Yeah, I've I've had a lot of local friends in like book groups and stuff ask me, oh, so what VPN do you use? And I'm and at first I was kind of hesitant because I'm like, well, technically I shouldn't be using any, so I don't know if you're gonna, you know, snitch on me or report me. Um, I don't know. What one do you use? I'm still exploring them. Oh, lying. Uh yeah, whatever. Now I just don't care. I'm with whatever. So on future interviews for this podcast, the intersection of you know, geographical switches and the online switches, what questions are missing? What should I ask people in the future?
SPEAKER_04Maybe one thing that I've been asked that is kind of can be interesting is about you know local dating culture and how like if people use dating apps or online dating and stuff like that can sometimes be interesting.
SPEAKER_02Oh my gosh. Depending where yeah, that's a really good question. Holy cow, I've completely probably because you're married. I know you know you've been married too long when you said that the internet is used for dating.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I I was gonna say I feel like it's probably like a it's a positive thing for you that you didn't think of that. Oh, that's so for your personal life.
SPEAKER_02I did although no, have I no the app well I didn't have apps prior to uh didn't have a smartphone or anything like that prior to being married, but I did use Craigslist a lot in the US to meet folks. Um really? Yeah, yeah. Sometimes general interest and sometimes actually dating like specific sites. But I found the general interest stuff like going by a hobby or topic or event was much more interesting than just random describing yourself and then trying to match that way with I could imagine that. Yeah, oh especially in big cities, people think they're invisible, so they can do and say anything, and I'm like, nah, it's not that big of a city. Well, I I partially want to ask you your own question, but that you already mentioned that you don't you generally share that stuff online, so Oh, I don't mind on podcasts and stuff, I just don't like to write about it.
SPEAKER_04Oh, okay, fair enough. So, have you used any dating apps in any of these countries? They have existed everywhere that I've lived. In the Dominican, when I first moved there, Tinder wasn't around, but then when I moved back, or I spent like a winter there, one of my friends was using it, and she said it was really funny because it's like this really small town, and so everyone kind of knows each other. So you would like obviously swipe, like you wouldn't be looking for any of the people that you've seen a million times, right? But that you could she was like, It's great because I can just meet all these people that are coming for vacation, and like we just go, we get a drink, we chat, like maybe we cuddle, and then they go in like two days. I was like, That is like you are on it. It let it on. I've used Tinder for like one day, but it kind of it's it was very intense. And I was actually living in this small beach town in the north, and I kind of got I was living alone, and I was a little bit like people were like, Oh, you are this many miles away from me, you must be in this town, and it kind of creeped me out a bit just because I was like the only foreigner in the town, or I mean, I'm sure I wasn't really, but it felt like I was, and I was pretty sure that if they like wanted to find me, they could. Yeah. So that was a lot. I I do I've had friends that have used Tinder here, and like I think in general the dating culture is different though in Lebanon than in America. And people tend to seem to use like online as a way to court each other way more than they do in the states, which I actually in some ways like, but at first can be kind of creepy. Like if you're dating someone, they're like, What's your Instagram? And we would never do that in America, but it's kind of just like a way to vet the person, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Kind of like a pre-screening kind of thing, yeah.
SPEAKER_04And like if they like you, they'll go through and like all your photos, like going years back. Yeah, yeah, and like honest, I mean, obviously, everyone, I assume everyone does that. Like, if you get if you find someone online, or if you find the person that you're dating online, like that is why you would find them, but you would never like them, like you would never like a post that was like three years old from someone, but and even like friends will do it, or guys if they're interested in you, they'll like to show their interest, that's what they do.
SPEAKER_02That's so funny. For those listeners that don't know a lot about Beirut or don't know a lot about Lebanon. Are there any uh traveler expat sites that give them a glimpse beyond the facts? Kind of like what it's like to live there, kind of thing.
SPEAKER_00Hmm.
SPEAKER_04You know, like a an actual web, like a web page kind of or like a blog.
SPEAKER_02I'm being really old-fashioned with that. Sorry, any social media, any YouTube, anything online that can give them a flavor for what it's like to be there.
SPEAKER_04I would say a lot of the forums are good places, and people kind of are very generous with their information. I also I wrote this article for Afar magazine, and it's about this walking tour in Beirut, and it kind of the idea was to kind of like reintroduce readers to Lebanon and look at like what the city looks like, but then also kind of talk about these like customs in it. So that could be a good one to kind of get a snapshot of it.
SPEAKER_02Oh, is that just earlier this year? August of this year?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Okay. Yeah, or maybe it might have been April, I think. But I would say that would be a good just to kind of get a taste for it. And then definitely there's a lot of like Facebook groups that if you have specific questions or even just like going through and looking at the old ones. Obviously, the problem with those kind of places I find is that like you'll get the whole host of people. So some people are like, absolutely not, don't do this, or other well, others will be like, definitely yes. You kind of have to look at all the opinions and then like merge them into one.
SPEAKER_02Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Sure. Oh my god, it looks beautiful there. Yeah, I've been watching on Instagram. I've been watching, I've been looking at um your your feeds since June, apparently, and a few other folks in Beirut, and I gotta tell you, the architecture looks freaking amazing. Is it as beautiful as it comes across in these pictures?
SPEAKER_04It is. I mean, and one thing that I think I didn't realize before I moved is how much how Mediterranean Lebanon looks. Like there are sometimes that if you're familiar with like southern France or Italy or even Greece, like it looked the way that you you'd imagine those places. Lebanon is like really well known for its architecture and kind of design. So there's a lot of really cool modern um buildings going in right now. There's now not as much as when I first moved here, but there are also still like definitely some remnants of the civil war. So sometimes like the pictures will look really nice, and then if you live here, you're like that is next to a building that has been bombed out and hasn't been rebuilt in 30 years. But that I would say is not as much of the case now. Like a lot of there's been a lot of investment and development in the city in the past five years. So I wouldn't I would say that the pictures are kind of more of an accurate reflection now.
SPEAKER_02Right, right, right. Wow. Do you see yourself staying there long term? That is always a question.
SPEAKER_04I love Lebanon, and I you know, I've now spent a good portion of my 20s here. It's kind of where I grew up in a way, like as an adult. Um, I'm theoretically planning to move back to the States in June, but now that I'm here, I don't know what that will be. So CVD.
SPEAKER_02I totally get that. We went back for our master's degree in wow, when was that? 2012, and then tried to redo Turkey, and that didn't work very well. And then we ended up back in the US trying to trying to settle down in California, and that did not work well at all. So we went to a started a PhD program because that's that made sense. And um and it did, and there's a lot that we actually got out of the first two years, but it just reached a point where we were like, this isn't the direction that we're going in. It was much too much too much to get people to be professors than it was to get uh expertise in an area to go in a different direction in industry, and that's what we both wanted. So we ended up parting ways with the program and coming back to China. And there's just so much opportunity here right now, and it's it's hard to to resist taking advantage of that. And now I've started to study the language, so I don't want to leave before I can function, before I can learn within the language. So I think we've got at least another year or two, and then beyond that, I have no idea.
SPEAKER_04I find it becomes this weird thing the more that you move and change your life, the easier it becomes. And so at the same time, though, you kind of lose the ability to kind of like think of things long term as other people do. Like, I seem to move apartments every three months, and like or like and people are like, How do you do that? And it doesn't even seem like that big of a deal to me. Like, I don't even realize that that is what I'm doing anymore. And then I kind of worry that that with this kind of ability to be so flexible and to to in some ways, yeah, like honor what's important, like following a language or following a passion, that then you lose these roots, you know, and and it it goes back and forth. And whenever I've but whenever I've tried to like settle or make myself settle, it just gets worse. So yeah, I feel like it's important to kind of follow what it is that you are looking for rather than this like idea of what you should be doing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, oh yeah, no, for sure. When I lived in Vietnam like nine years ago, I first moved there for a one-month teacher training course, and I moved into a monthly hotel that was like $200, and it was lovely. It was furnished, it had a mini bathtub. I it was right downtown, and I was it was just fantastic. And I was like, okay, this is great, this is great. And after the month, I was like, okay, I'm gonna stay and teach here, so I need to get another place. And I was like, Well, there's a hotel right down the street that looks really nice. So I ended up bumping, uh doing what what you kind of said, uh, only I did it in hotels uh because they did a lot of monthly rates for the backpackers and different people that were coming in on business and different kinds of things, and so I move hotel like every month, and I loved it because I could look at a different part of town and all this kind of stuff, and it was I really, really I think I spent the first year in hotels and then I finally moved into an apartment.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and you you it's crazy how adaptable you are once you kind of let go of the idea of being stable.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. And in a way, it kind of felt stable because once I got into an apartment, then I had like two or three months of rent in my landlord's hands, and I have no legal rights there. I had a work visa, I was allowed to work, but honestly, if he wanted to take my money and run, I had no real you know, that that part was pretty unstable. So the hotel felt easier and cleaner for me. But the apartments did actually have more room and better internet, so I eventually moved over. And now I'm just I'm approaching 50 and I'm really I'm going slower. So like we thought we'd stay in China two years, but it'll probably turn into three or four, and that feels like a good amount of time, but it's been a long time since we've done that.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, and I do think I call it like situational whiplash, where I've noticed if I'm moving too much or switching where I am too much, I kind of if I can kind of like um lose touch with my like uh my grounding in a way. Like I I think you do kind of need a stability that maybe isn't the way that other people would define stability. Like maybe it is like living in China for longer, which to most people doesn't seem stable at all, but you kind of figure out your own way to define it, and I find that it's like important to stick to that, like whatever it is for you, you know.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Seriously, thank you so much for doing this. This has been really, really cool. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Thank you so much for having me. I'm so glad we got to connect, and I love learning about your life in China.
SPEAKER_02All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Virtual Expat. And a special thank you again to Democrat for the music and to our special guest at this time. If you'd like to be interviewed for this podcast, just send me an email or contact me on social media in the phone notes. You can find on my information or f I smail Instagram, Twitter, and contact me. Thank you so much for this. And I look forward to questions, comments, feedback, any information. Thank you so much.
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