SPEAKER_02 0:01

And with any, I mean you know this, you're a performer. I can delete anything afterwards. So if there's anything that strikes you afterwards that you go, I really don't want that to be in the world, then just let me know and I'll I'll edit it from the final before it reaches the final version.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

Sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Alright, so we're recording there. I double record because I am a paranoid person.

SPEAKER_03 0:27

Cool.

SPEAKER_02 0:28

Well, thank you, Creatures Creatrix Tiara, for joining us on the Virtual Expat today. Hello.

unknown 0:34

Hi.

SPEAKER_01 0:35

Can you please you can hear a bowl in the distance? It is my brunch.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Uh, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 0:45

Um, I'm a writer, performance artist, also an emerging producer, an activist. A lot of my work, especially in the arts, has to do with being queer, person of color, an immigrant uh living with mental health issues. It's sort of how that intersects in both political and personal terms. Whether it's true, like, oh, this is like my direct experience with immigration, which I've done like a bunch of things, but I made a couple of games, I think you reviewed one of them. And I talk about it a lot to no end because it's the pain of my existence. And like all of these other things that are like of my current interest, like my big project right now, is looking at all of the queer possibilities of stage magic, which is fun. Um, and there's uh I'm rambling. I'm on a wake. I also have a staff writer for Autostradle, which is an international woman's queer web magazine. Uh sign up for anything that looks interesting, which is my life motto.

SPEAKER_02 1:49

Wow. So you've got a lot going on, basically.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

Yeah, you might need to edit a bit of that because, like, I don't know what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_02 1:57

That's fine. I I I didn't even think I was an um and all person until I started to record the podcast, and then I was just terrified by some of the shit I said, and I was like, oh my god, what? Yeah, so don't even worry about that. I do edit. I do, I do. All right, so let's start with your your online ness. Uh, when did you first start using the internet in mass? And by the internet, I include everything email, websites, social media, just everything.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

So the internet came to my town in Johobaru, Malaysia, around 1995. And I was about 10 years old, and I have been online pretty much since. One year I took off because we had like like every so often in the Malaysian school system, there's like big national exams. Yeah. And there was one year when I was 12 that my parents were like, get off the internet, you have to study. And like they allowed me on one day to write on like Princess Diana's online condolence book because she had died that year.

SPEAKER_02 2:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:59

But other than that, I was like, they were not allowing me back on, and then I've got back on and the next the year after I just never.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Oh my gosh. I'm so jealous because I uh I'm I'm older than you, and I didn't get access to the internet until oh gosh, what was I like 28, 27, 28 years old? And I always thought, oh my gosh, if I had this growing up, because I was like a library freak and I read a lot and that kind of thing. So I'm like, if I had the internet when I was younger, I would never ever left my room. I'd be like, I'm sorry, everything I need is right here. I'll be here. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_01 3:36

Pretty much, yeah. And I grew up sort of isolated from people, especially as a teenager, because we moved out of the city, and not like there's anything to do with my city, really, but like we moved even further. And so I was isolated a lot. The internet was my real only social creative anything outlet. So and you know, my family would like make fun of me for being addicted to the internet, but I'm like, there's nothing else for me to do. I have read every book in the house twice. Everyone lives far away and does not really want to hang out with me because we live too far away from everything, and there's nothing to do in this town except shop, and who wants to go shopping all the time? And I'm getting every uh all my all my needs met online, and it's interesting too because like you know, people talk about oh, those millennials are on their phones since they were like two. And on the one hand, you know, when I talk about stuff like, oh yeah, I've been on the internet, and I mean, you know, my I was on a computer when I was since I was two years old, even before I could talk really. And there's a like a late picture of me and like as a four-year-old, like a very old desktop, which is adorable. But um But also it's like it wasn't that common when I were when I was growing up, like they didn't know super new. And like people are familiar with computers, but nowhere near the extent that I was, like my school's IT department was me.

SPEAKER_02 5:04

When you were when you were in like primary school?

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Well, not so much primary school, but like secondary school, we had like a little computer room. Yeah, you could be like a sort of prefect for that room, so you had shifts and man in the room. But it was basically like who was the person in the school that knew computers best? So on the one hand, I didn't have that kind of like oh millennials in the computer slif style. Like this was very unusual. I stood out, you know, for spending some time online. I if I was born like a decade later, then it would be super common, but back then it was just me, this weirdo. You started a trend. Sort of. I uh yeah, I hope so. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 5:48

So let's let's dig into it. Do you remember what you were doing online at 10? Was it like communication games, website?

SPEAKER_01 5:55

There was a I wish I didn't remember the name, but there was this one website that was for kids and basically was getting kids to write. You could get like you could ask for books to review, which was very exciting. So I always pick like the laziest books, I was also a bit of a lazy bastard. But you could like write stories on there. Geo CDs had just begun as a thing. Yeah. So I was on the chat rooms a lot. Yeah. And it was back when GeoCds had like the sort of neighborhood things going on, so you weren't just like geoc.com slash your username, but geocties.com slash area 51 slash 50212, you know, and like then it stuck to this neighborhood system. Yeah, yeah. Um so so that's what I did. It's like it was a lot of writing. Oh wow. Blogging before blogging was a thing.

SPEAKER_02 6:46

Right, right, right. But that's like an insanely useful thing to be doing. Why would people be complaining that you're spending too much time online if you're learning, like honing in on that skill? And right, I don't get it. What's the complaint?

SPEAKER_01 7:01

Well, my parents were just like, go do something. I was like, what else do you want me to do? Like you I grow up watching stuff about you know, like American media is like, oh, you're grounded, blah blah blah. And I'm like, I would I don't see why this is a problem.

SPEAKER_02 7:17

No, but I have the internet, and I have an unreal amount of television experiences under my belt for that very reason. And I'm like, if I was online, I would have had so much more like interesting, relevant, like worldly kind of stuff as opposed to bad sitcoms.

SPEAKER_03 7:35

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:36

Wow, wow, wow. It's so interesting because it seems like it sounds like people were like demonizing the electronics instead of the actual like what were you doing with it?

SPEAKER_01 7:45

I mean, I don't know they're necessarily demonizing, I just they just couldn't quite get the appeals necessarily. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know, I grew up as a minority kid, and I was the only one of my racial background in school, and I that was the cause of a lot of pain, you know. I dealt with racism from teachers and students since I was a very young child.

SPEAKER_03 8:06

Right.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

And living sort of further away as a teenager when my family moved didn't quite help that. And that I was feeling very lonely. I was feeling very isolated, very lonely. I felt like I didn't belong sort of both in a literal sense and in the figurative sense. Yeah. And especially as someone who ended up like I struggled with dealing with being queer, like I couldn't accept it for myself.

SPEAKER_03 8:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:31

And just like I sort of knew that I was different in a way that I couldn't quite articulate. And whereas like a lot of people who like they weren't necessarily demonizing the internet as oh my god, this is the worst thing ever, but more like why when you have go outside and play soccer, you know. Like, why spend all your time on a computer, basically? Right. And for me, it's not just like, oh, I'm mindlessly on a computer this entire time. It's not this is I'm engaging with people who get me for who I am, right? Understand me, who tell me something about the world that I would not have gotten otherwise with the very restrictive media education system we have. And in a way, it's in many, many ways, it's changed my life. Like I've had incredible experiences that were only really made possible through the internet. Right. Even from very early on. Like I've met some very interesting people. I've got friends that I met when I was 16. I'm still close friends with now, because of the internet, you know? And I think people like even now, when people are like, oh, people on their phones, they've forgotten to communicate, blah blah blah. No, it's a tool. And it's especially a good tool when the people you're communicating with aren't physically next to you, but you still connect. And actually, this is slightly besides the point, but might be interesting. Um, the ABC, which is like this Australian media competition, uh uh the government-owned media system in Australia, they just published this thing yesterday, which was basically like this online photo essay where they went to people in the city and asked them what's on your phone. Okay. And so it was basically like this bunch of random snapshots in downtown, and they're asked, like, hey, show me your phone. And someone was like, Oh, I'm telling, I'm sending a message to my husband telling him to put tights on our six-year-old because it's cold outside, and she sometimes forgets to wear them. Someone's like, I am on Tinder telling this guy, I've been seeing that I don't think I want to see him again because I don't think we click. Yeah, or uh someone was like, I'm here visiting from overseas, and my friend has asked me to look for this particular landmark, and so I'm on a treasure hunt.

unknown 10:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

And so I was like, I'm watching Lucifer and I'm addicted to the TV show. It's like you have to I've watched it before work, I have a meeting at 8 a.m. So it was like, you know, all of these people, like if you look from the outside, they're just on their phone. Right. But when like you hear about what they're doing on their phone and you can see the screen, and they're like, no, there's an actual creative, communicative, bonding thing happening. Right. It's not just the phone, it's so many things. It's really not, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:08

No, no, I I agree. I agree. I I thought at universities in the US for a bit, and I'm I've always been pro-technology, but a lot of the teachers were struggling with the students on their phones. And I was like, Well, what are they doing? Because I I looked, I kind of look over and I'm like, oh, you're you have a dictionary out, or oh, you're taking notes. That's fine. You're using it in the moment, that's cool. Now, if you're playing a game or you're on social media and you're being loud and distracting other people, then we need to talk. But they just automatically assume because it was the phone, they were just goofing off. And I'm like, well, there's a really big difference there on Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, because it it is a tool, it depends on what's happening with it. Yeah. So, okay, so even what did you say even at 10 years old you were in chat rooms talking to people and getting to know people from different parts of the world? Or was that later?

SPEAKER_01 12:04

Yeah, like GeoCities had like you know, because of the whole neighborhood thing, they had like sort of neighborhood-specific chat rooms.

SPEAKER_02 12:09

Oh, wow, okay.

SPEAKER_01 12:12

I remember like holding a wedding ceremony on there once. It's like my one memory of this chat room. Whoa! And like you know, like this kids' writing website also had spaces and like forums. Yeah. And this was like just before instant messaging systems were a thing. So it was all mostly like web-based, but yeah, yeah, they were just like connecting to people a lot from around the world. And oh, you know, like email groups were a thing. Yeah. Newsletters, sort of like what before Yahoo groups were like that kind of idea. That would that was like yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

Do you do you remember zines?

SPEAKER_01 12:51

You know, it's interesting because zines weren't really much of a thing in Malaysia. I think uh partly because our mail system is not the greatest, and also uh our media is very restrictive. Like even now you have a new government for the first time ever, and even then it's not super clear if they're gonna like make it less restrictive. So, like the idea of you being able to publish something without getting this very complicated government license, right?

SPEAKER_02 13:23

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 13:24

Was hard to fathom. And I think maybe if I was in certain other cities, maybe I would have been near more of a zine culture because I know there's definitely a zine culture in Malaysia now, but I know people are involved in it. But I think that's where the internet actually flourished for a lot of us, especially those of us who are counterculture or diff or different in some way, because the internet wasn't as controlled. Yeah. So, like if you look at a lot of uh Malaysian political organizing, a lot of Malaysian activism, even now, but especially back then where like blogs became like a super big thing, that's where people published stuff. Yeah. So online, like we had there's people in parliament right now who first got known because of their blog, you know? Wow, yeah. So I think like when it came to independent publishing, the internet really was that for a lot of Malaysians because that was the one thing we had like more free access to compared to everything else.

SPEAKER_02 14:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What were people using when they first started to do blogs? Were they on a computer?

SPEAKER_01 14:28

Were they on a tablet or a phone or oh this would have been like way back in like 2004 was where like blogging really hit as a thing in Malaysia?

SPEAKER_03 14:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:39

So like I don't even know if iPhones were a thing yet, but so it would have been on people's computers, and people would just make their host a website on I don't know, somewhere, whatever domain name and web host they wanted, and there were like various uh websites and web rings that would like link people together so you can find each other that way. Yeah, yeah, it was just a pretty active scene, but like even before that, I think that's sort of the Malaysia specific one where it was a of also like there was a couple of very prominent news bloggers, for example, or like people who were very special interested so people talking to each other. Um, and I think around by that point, stuff like ICQ and MSN Messenger were also a thing that existed. So you know, we would chat that way, but mostly it was through sort of self-hosted blogs. Um I miss Gray Matter. Grave Matter was great. It was like a proto WordPress, but I prefer Gray Matter, it was so easy. Uh but yeah, uh the reason I bring that up was like a few years before that when I was around 16, so 2000, 2000, 2001, that kind of yeah. Um I was part of this like really big thing online of teen girls making their own personal websites with like an online diary, which was basically a blog, but no one used the word blog at the time. But yeah, people we had like this personal diaries, and we'd change our layouts and aesthetics every six months or so because that's what you did. And people were like, Oh, you must have content, because none of us really understood what content was, so just basically have a bunch of tutorials on how to make stuff, and you have like all of this this like fan listings for a thing where it's basically like a mini fan site, and you joined it by like taking a badge that people design and putting it on your website, like I'm a fan of so-and-so, and oh my god, fandom, online fandom, use this mainly what I did with my time on the internet. I made the biggest Savage Garden fanfic archive. I'm still a Savage Garden fan. I love Darren Hazes. Nice. Well, with good. But yeah, that was sort of my main thing. I'm I'm sort of bouncing around because I'm not remembering things. But yeah, online fandom is the thing.

unknown 16:54

That's what I've had.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

Most of my friends, I made fan websites, and we had like little forums and we'll like link to each other, and people will do like online projects. Like the Savage Garden fandom was super creative. We had multiple attempts at like here, sending a page for a scrapbook I'm sending to Darren and Daniel, or um, there's a song they did called Crash and Burn, where the music video for that song had Darren doing the song in I think Ausland's Australian Sign Language. And so what this one person did was that let's trans, let's try a Google, not Google, let's try a Guinness World Record and translate this song into as many languages as possible. And so we got like, I don't know, I don't know what happened to the project. But we got like about 50 languages, or maybe more of everyone that's like translating the lyrics. That's amazing, sort of like a kind of very creative people working with each other and making all this stuff because we love this one band.

SPEAKER_02 17:51

And is it is it still online? Which one? The the one where you translated the song into I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

I remember looking for it a little while ago, but I couldn't find it. I don't know if it's it was this was like ages ago, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it was like such a fun project. Like I got my family involved. I was like, oh, who vaguely like my dad vaguely knows some Turkish because he did his master's in Turkey. I was like, hey, can you help like figure out a Turkish present? And like, I don't know if I can proofread it. But yeah, you know, design of like very like, and that was just my particular fandom, but across the board, yeah, you know, so many people made like so much fanfic and fan art and music and just like this so and people were like making theories about things like the Harry Potter fandom had a bunch of very big websites and it probably discussed stuff in the books, like, oh, what do you think happened with this happened? Or what would have happened in this other time, you know? Yeah, or and then you have like websites that would report on what was happening on the fandom, including any drama that came up. Just like, why are people like this? Oh my gosh. Okay, so yeah, it was just that so many people connecting and making things and responding to things, and yeah. So whoever was like, Oh, the kids are passive, but you know, oh no, not to be passive about this. Just creating it.

SPEAKER_02 19:17

So it sounds like most of the thing you were doing online early on were very community-based, very communicate, like you were talking to groups of people, you were being very creative. Oh, yeah, yeah, totally, yeah. Yeah. But that's so I'm so jealous that you grew up with the internet. You have no idea.

SPEAKER_01 19:34

See, I grew up sort of slightly before people grew up with the internet. I was lucky that I got in kind of early. But I feel like, like, you know, YouTube came a little too late for me. Podcasty came a little too late for me. Just because I didn't I wasn't around like good technology when it became more of a thing. And like I remember I was in uni in Australia when YouTube started becoming a thing. But we had very slow internet, so it's not like I could really upload anything reliably. You know, I feel like oh just uh just like quotas, you can only use so many megabytes and then you have to like pay or get spent.

SPEAKER_02 20:14

Oh, I hate that kind of system. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Why Australia? I feel like if stuff like YouTube or podcasting was more of a thing like half a decade earlier, I would be so into that. But it also just showed up and I was like busy with university and still busy writing and didn't quite have because I always used like the oldest computer ever because I always used my stuff until it broke and then kept going. Yeah, and I was like, no, it still works, we don't have to be spending money to upgrade it, and then just like are you kidding?

SPEAKER_02 20:44

The computer I'm going right now. I bought at a secondhand used computer shop in Iowa, smack dab in the middle of the US, super small town. It was like $250, and it barely functions, but it still turns on, so I'm going forward.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Yeah, right. Yeah, like the one that one I'm using right now is like a friend who worked at this like refurbished laptop place and had this sitting around, gave it for me for free.

SPEAKER_03 21:10

That's awesome. Yeah, this function, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:20

I would be on it so fast.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

So wait, you're saying podcasting came too late, so you're not a fan of podcasts?

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Is that what you're saying? Well, no, I'm so much fan of podcasts, but more like how am I making so many? Oh, right, yeah. You know, because I was writing like a demon online. I didn't necessarily like you know, you could like record stuff, like you could record videos and upload them, you could record audio and upload them. Yeah, but it wasn't necessarily super streamlined, and your file sizes were like massive, so you'd be waiting two days for a file to download and freaking dial up internet, yeah. Yeah, so there's only so like It wasn't writing, it's just text, you know. Right. So it's it's not like you have to wait like a hundred years for something to upload or download or whatever. It's very easy to access, you know. So but if if sort of the if I was around, if I sort of started sort of half a decade later, it's like all the things, but now by the time I'm like in uh a space where like the technology and the bandwidth has meshed up with my ability to engage. I was like, oh, everyone's makes us polish stuff on YouTube now. My stuff's gonna look really janky.

SPEAKER_02 22:31

There's there's still some less polished stuff, but yeah, the the market's getting absolutely inundated with stuff. And even podcasting, people are still saying we're still in the early stages of it, but there's so many podcasts already out there.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

See, I remember when podcasting first became a thing. Yeah. Like 2004. Yes. And it was like a thing for like a couple of years and it kind of faded out. And it was nowhere near as big as it is now. And so it's sort of surprising to me that it sort of came back. Like, oh, this is a ton.

SPEAKER_02 23:04

Yeah, that's a good point. I wonder what brought it back. Because I was even listening to short clips that were very podcast-esque on websites before podcasting on like apparently I didn't realize this, but podcasting called podcasting because of the iPod. Oh, yeah, yeah. I don't like attributing things to Apple. So when I read that, I was like, oh shit, I should probably give them credit to some degree because it made it easier for people to carry it around and listen to them.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

But right, yeah, that's another thing, like the technology matching up, you know, when I was much more super creative, like when I was around 16 or so, you had Walkman's. Yeah, maybe players, but like distribution was a bit of a problem.

SPEAKER_02 23:44

Oh, it was an amassive problem. Whereas we can't just like print. I hated C did with you. Even the non-skip CD players skipped, and I I walk a sh a ton, a ton, a ton, a ton. I always have. And so I'm like, okay, I have a portable device, I'm going to go walk with my portable device, and no matter which one I bought, they would always skip. And I'm like, uh no. Yeah, yeah. It's awful. Awful, awful, awful. So wait, so what how long were you in Australia for? That was just university?

SPEAKER_01 24:15

I was in Brisbane from 2000. I moved to Brisbane in 2006, and I went to San Francisco in 2012, partly because of my master's, but really because I just needed a sea change. Yeah. It was the best time of my life. And I was back in Malaysia for about nine months between 2015 and 2016. And now I'm in Melbourne and I have been since 2016.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. Wow, I can't write that fast. All right, so you bounce around the blazes. You're in Brisbane for si I know so little about Brisbane. It I know it's a city, I know people live there, but it's not hopping with a lot of different kinds of art stuff and and food culture and all that, like Sydney and Melbourne is, right?

SPEAKER_01 24:59

So here's the thing about Brisbane There's a movie out there called All My Friends Are Living Leaving Brisbane. Okay. And it's such a trope. Yeah. And it has basis in reality because a lot of the artists you'd see that are in Sydney or Melbourne, even like New York, San Francisco, wherever, Brisbane. A lot of them started in Brisbane or had spent some time in Brisbane, and then I was like, I'm done, I'm moving on. And then go go somewhere else. Like, even when I was in San Francisco for about um three months, and then I lived there for three years, I ran into people from Brisbane. A lot of Melbourne artsy people are people I've known from Brisbane, and just basically started there, hit a wall, left. So, what was the you might know about Brisbane people than you realize?

SPEAKER_02 25:52

Because you I've met them other places, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

Right, exactly, yeah. And they're like, oh, where do you come from? Brisbane? Wait, hang on, which neighborhood? We're like, oh, across the river. Great.

SPEAKER_02 26:03

So it's a good place to have met people and then left. Yeah, we will start there and it's like, okay, I'm done.

SPEAKER_01 26:11

Moving on.

SPEAKER_02 26:13

So what what's the wall? What what makes people leave Brisbane?

SPEAKER_01 26:18

Well, I can't speak for so everybody, obviously. But in my case, it was just I was like, well, there's not very many people of color in the various scenes I was in, and so I felt very lonely again, which is where the internet came in handy. Yeah. But um I just and I oh I saw almost lost a burlesque career there because I was very outspoken about the racism in the scene. And that just got me blacklisted a lot from places no one really wanted to hire me or let me perform with them anymore or whatever. So I lost that. And just like you know, I was also struggling a lot with job hunting because of visa reasons and that the sort of putting a a damper, what sort of things I could apply for. And it just could apply it's like I can't, I'm stagnated, I'm I'm spending so many days in bed at home depressed because nothing is happening for me.

SPEAKER_03 27:14

Right, right.

SPEAKER_01 27:14

It's like I need a change. I like it's ill it was literally life or death. It's like I need a change. So I went to San Francisco and found my people and had a great time. But yeah, that I feel like a lot of people also kind of felt very similarly. It's just not necessarily to kind of the dire emergency extent that I had. Sure, sure. So maybe not one as bad. But like, you know, other opportunities come. Like a lot of the if you want to do media stuff, Sydney is where a lot of them are. If you want to do art stuff, a lot of the stuff that's happening is in Melbourne. Yeah, or you go overseas, you know, especially if you are a minority in some fashion, because Australia, just even in cities like Sydney or Melbourne, can be very white-centric sometimes.

SPEAKER_03 27:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

And so you somewhere else where you don't necessarily have to do the one on race 101 thing over and over again. And yeah, so and but you know, Brisbane just happened also, you know, it's it's getting a little better in some respects, but it's very slow going, and it's just like a lot of people just go, I've I've done all I can in the city. Yeah. As we have to move on.

SPEAKER_02 28:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you were there for six years, so it it it sounds like you dove back into the internet again. And did you find communities online or reconnect with folks while you were in Brisbane online?

SPEAKER_01 28:32

I never left. Okay. It was just that I mean I found my first so we have this thing called in Australia called colleges, which are not what the American concept of the word is. It's basically sort of a cross between a dorm and a fat house, in that you it's where you live. Okay, and and it's sort of like different some universities have like different residential colleges, so you live there, and there's sort of an on-college culture, like different colleges have different fields around them and kind of thing. Okay, and you're usually a student of the university that runs a college, but not necessarily like I wasn't because the university I went to didn't have on-campus housing, basically. So yeah, but it was sort of like in the city, so it's like you live wherever, and so I went to this other one. But I found this other one because I followed someone on Live Journal who lives there. I remember Live Journal, yeah. Yeah, live journal. Yeah, and and like I followed someone LJ who like uh lived in college. I'm like, hey, I'm moving to Brisbane, tell me about it. And so I found out and I applied, got into college, and that's how I that's how I found like my first living space in Brisbane was through the internet. Yeah. Yeah, and then you know, I just continued that. Like on the one hand, there's a lot more to do in Brisbane than there was in Malaysia, right? So it I didn't necessarily feel like I it was my only outlet, I had things to do, but also I found out about things to do because of the internet. Like I think Facebook just started becoming a thing when I was in Brisbane.

SPEAKER_03 30:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 30:10

Like it had just started opening it to like outside America. Right. Um But uh, I think they might have still had the you had to have a dot edu email address to go on at the time. Yeah, um, so we a bunch of us started getting on there a around the same time. And you start meeting people that way, and people like come to my event, or like I'm doing a thing, it's my birthday, whatever. And that's how you found out what was happening. Yeah. And you like between the colleges, we had kind of this intranet system that was also like how people shared files for music and TV, kind of little pirate network. Like a chat roomy thing almost. Like you'd be like downloading whatever TV series you were binging on, and in the meantime having this chat room with people in the different colleges about whatever. Also, I'd be like, hey, food is the the kitchen is open now. Whoever's on direct connect, calm down. Like, okay. It's kind of like this another communication outlet where you reach like everyone in the all the colleges sort of all at once.

SPEAKER_02 31:13

Oh yeah, oh yeah. No, you're bringing back massive memories for me. When I first got the internet at my um the university, I got my undergraduate degree, and we still had the the orange screen, the the black screen with the orange print, sort of like a DOS prompt-ish kind of experience. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and so we had like listservs on there for like one for like study groups, one for like buying and selling things, and those kinds of things, but you had to, you know, know the the different codes to get into the groups and all that kind of stuff. I remember those.

SPEAKER_03 31:44

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 31:45

Yeah. Old. But then it got much friendlier pretty quick. I mean, hotmail came out, and then things started to look nice online compared to compared to that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 32:00

I still have a soft spot for like Netscape Navigator. Oh my god, yes. Like it's you know because sometimes I look into websites, like I think in the other day I was looking for a particular thing. And all the website, oh yeah, I was trying to look for web uh tools to make crosswords with. And all the websites that was like selling crossword making tools, like the web, it's like, oh my god, this is like 1995 web design. I don't even know if this is valid anymore, like this thing works anymore or whatever. It's like it hasn't left, like this very specific table and background color and like wow.

SPEAKER_02 32:40

Oh, I need to send you some websites because I'm I live in Shanghai, China, and I don't, I'm not fluent enough in the language yet to use websites, but occasionally people recommend websites and I go to them and I go, oh my god, because it's it's the design from early websites from the rest of the world, but with tiny, tiny, tiny Chinese characters and a ton of them, and then about 50 pop-ups per second. Oh my god. It's just a massive amount of information and in it's in non-navigable, innavigable, whatever the hell the word is. It's just crazy. And so, like every time somebody gives me a link that's like a Chinese website, I kind of hold my breath and I hit click and I just wait to be overwhelmed.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

Oh I mean the US government website, like whenever I apply for a US visa, they kind of send you to this other page to pay your visa fee. And that page just looks so sauce. It looks like again, they're like it hasn't been updated since 1995. And I'm like, are you even legitimate? You look like a scam right now.

SPEAKER_03 33:45

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:46

This is how old-fashioned you look. Like, are you sure? Are you sure? Really?

SPEAKER_02 33:51

Oh, oh, oh, it's so bad. It's so bad. Bad front-end design is just a nightmare. It's just, yeah, it's bad. There's uh, oh it's not Coursera. There's a an education platform that I cannot remember for the life of me the name of right now, but they basically they let the educators create their they do, they have the technology, but you're supposed to create your course and including the the visual part of it. Blackboard? Uh what's that? It was Blackboard. It's one similar to Blackboard. Blackboard says, this is what it looks like. You can pick what's in it, but we have the structure down, which is smart when you're dealing with people in education. But when you give, for example, the edge English department that I was in, where people were terrified of technology. When you give them the ability to create something visual to inspire people to learn, it was it was worse than early websites. It was inevitable. And it turned some of my students' grades from A's to D's because they did the coding so wrong. I mean, it was so bad. And like, well, just tell them it's really not a D. I'm like, what are you talking about? No, it was bad. It was really, really bad. Okay, so you were in Australia for six years, you found a lot of stuff that you could do offline from the online experience, and you kept that online experience going. Was there any big shift from what you were doing online in Malaysia and what you were doing online in Australia?

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Um, well, the the fact that the it connected to more real-world things I could do pretty much immediately was a good one. Um, around that time when I was in when I moved to Brisbane, I started on this blog sort of just before I moved to Brisbane properly, of about alternative education. Because I'd just been on like an in a round-the-world trip with a group of upwards people in 2005, and I loved it. It was like this kind of cross between like a youth tour and volunteering, and you did like a variety show every night. Uh not every night, but like once a week. Yeah. Every week. Went to a different city every week. It was fun, I loved it. And I was like, I want to do I want to talk about this more. So I did a blog about it, and it's about hey, education shouldn't be just like test course and stuff, it should be all sorts of different things. Yeah, that blew up. That really blew up. Like, I got a lot of attention, a big following. And when I moved to Brisbane, like my blog was sort of more targeted towards Malaysia because the Malaysian education system was what I knew, but so I got a lot of attention that way. And so I actually became kind of an influencer, really, in that space. It's it's very wild to think about that. Um but yeah, in Australia, like you know, I could go to like no so many like conferences and youth events and stuff. And my blog was like a good way for me to get in. Like the blog gave me some leverage, like, oh yeah, you're doing like stuff around youth empowerment and education. Like, I got nominated for university award for it for that work, and I got to like access a lot of spaces because of it. Yeah. And then from there, take whatever networks or knowledge or whatever I got from those spaces, put it up online back on my blog. So kind of fed it fed each other, really. Yeah. So yeah, it it's uh so it it the timing just worked out that like this blog that was running called Educate DV8 became like I was in Brisbane and so I managed to make the best of all the opportunities that I had. It's really useful because I was getting really burnt out by university. And so for various reasons, I thought like the blog and the stuff I was doing sort of for the blog or as a result of the blog, yeah helped help me get through very burnt-out university student life.

SPEAKER_02 37:35

Oh, it it it makes me damn near tearful that university has uh can be so just even just the classroom experience anywhere, and it's not country specific. It just seems to be something gets removed when we walk into that room. Oh, yeah. Those rows of chairs. I don't know what it is. I've tried so many things is that I don't teach anymore, but I did. For a while, I tried so many things to get it to be better, but there's something that happens in that room that doesn't happen in alternative education environments. Like people can be excited about what they're doing in different contexts, but for some reason that freaking room does something to all of us. Yeah, yeah, right. It's crazy. Hey, is that blog? Are you still going with that blog now?

SPEAKER_01 38:19

No, so the blog kind of went on highest in 2009 because I think like a sort of all bunch of things kind of happened at once in my life, and I got very tired and burnt out basically. Sure, sure. Um but so it's like I again I felt like I just need to move on. And that's how I go into performance art, was really just trying to move on from this. So the blog is still up as a resource, and every so like I still sort of talk about alternative education stuff, so it's still an interest of mine, but mostly in terms of like on social media, talking about hey, the hyper focus on grades is not useful. Well, like I still find interesting opportunities, even though I've aged out from a lot of it too, because a lot of them have a cap of around 30. And I'm gonna turn 33 in a couple of weeks, so it's like you know, I'm a little too old to be a youth. I am no longer a youth, I am ancient. I can't even do the stuff I would promote about. Now you know if I find stuff that's school, like I see young people are really taking there. It's like, yeah, go young people, do things. And it's interesting because when I started, and like even before the blog started, I after I finished high school, I was so burned. And I just like dealing with like a mental health diagnosis. I was like, I can't continue after high school. So I took a year off. And back then it was unheard of in Malaysia to take a year off. People are like, no, go to university immediately, yeah. Study medicine, always medicine, and like then go straight to I was like, I can't, my brain is cannot. So I took a year off. My parents were like, okay, cool, that's fine. And so I did, I had no plans, I just did whatever. Like I went to the US for a few weeks to follow a band I liked. It was like, but my family had family there, so like, hey, let's go visit them while we're up there. Um, you know, I took a dance class because it was fair. Um I took a break. I just took a break. I started like doing a bit of writing because there was some opportunity sort of freelancing stuff and got connected with the Malaysian freelance writers community, so that was good. But it it became like uh such an unusual thing, and so I took a break and then I went to uni in Malaysia for a bit, which was a bad idea because the university I went to turned out to be a um hot mess. I met a lot of good people there, but you don't go there to study. Oh, and that's why I went to the Upland people trip was sort of kind of me dropping out of uni and then I went for this trip for six months for about like eight somewhere between 12 weeks, I think. And I wrote an article, I sent a letter to the editor in a Malaysian newspaper about it. Oh yeah, because in the year I took off, I also like uh the Malaysian I'm sorry, I'm jumping around my timeline, so I realized. But when I took the year off from high school, um I joined uh the STAR, which is a Malaysian national English language newspaper, they have a program called Bratz, which is like the youth journalism program. Oh, okay. And so I signed I joined Bratz as a youth journalist, and that's how I started actually doing professional writing. Like my first gig was through there. Yeah, you know, I got like I I got to be part of this group that interviewed the prime minister and the leader of the opposition for a national day special, you know, got to do so it was a really good opportunity, really. And so, like, you know, I I joined Bratz, did a bunch of things with them, um, did in Malaysia, which again failed terribly. Not on my fight, it's just like it was just not a great good place. But I met a lot of good people there. Um, but like went on to trip and up to people, and then after my trip with up to people, I wrote about hey, so I do I took a break from university. How weird is that? It's like, but you know, I think it should be more of a thing because I think it really helped me. Like, I felt a lot better and got all this good experience, and I felt stronger now, and now I think I might have already had just moved to Brisbane, or I was about to, but I wrote that letter. And and then at some point now every so often the same newspaper would email me wanting to do an essay on gap years. And things sort of after it became it's become more of a thing to do in the last decade or so, but not definitely not when I was doing it. Like I was unusual. And so it's like every every three years or so, someone from the star would be like, Hey, we're doing an article about gap years, and we want to interview you. And I'm like gradually like the oldest person in this essay. Like you went from like Tiara's now doing her bachelor's in Brisbane, or like Tiara is now um doing is now working as an artist in Brisbane, Tiara is now doing her master's in San Francisco, and it'd be like all of this like 18-year-olds talking about having just come back from a year in the UK. I was like, am I the grandmother of granny uh of gap years in Malaysia? But you started the trend, so they keep coming back. I started the trend, Sama. Oh, like I started writing about it, and that's and now I'm like some sort of thought leader. But yeah, like the educated year blog kind of became like that a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I became this kind of thought leader for educate alternative education in Malaysia. Like a lot of people like looked up to work that I was doing because I was the only person talking about it at the time. Wow. And now now there's like a lot more activity around it, like there's not mar now a lot of opportunity and there's like more options. But I think a lot of it was probably because of my blog starting things, and it was just me going, I what I think my things change, I think things can change. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:50

No, but that's the beauty of the internet that that can go out to many, many, many people with that trend. Right.

SPEAKER_03 43:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 43:58

Yeah. My gosh. They're taking it on. I was like, yeah, my children. So okay, at this point, I just want to ask: is there anything you haven't done online?

SPEAKER_01 44:12

Make a ton of money. Oh, yeah, that part. Yeah. I've gone viral a few times for different reasons, but going viral has not like translated into like a lot of money. Why the hell not?

SPEAKER_02 44:26

What have you gone viral for?

SPEAKER_01 44:29

So in 2004, there was a social media network called LO that was starting up. And it was like, oh, it's gonna be like better than Facebook because it was during the time where Facebook was like enforcing the real name policy. Right. Whereas LO was like marketing in his side. It's like, oh yeah, they have this manifesto, oh my god, about like being private. It's like private, as in, hey, we don't have advertisers, but then also advertisers could just make their free profile, so I don't see how private that would be. And so they're like this big deal, but over better than Facebook, because you can use your uh whatever name you want, and I'll give you some privacy, blah blah. And I went on, and I was like, there's no way you can block people, and your content is either public to the world or public to LO. There's no friends only option. That's okay. Basically, this is and me good using a pseudonym is not gonna help me. Um, but so I wrote this essay basically saying there are no privacy measures, there is no way I can block people. I am not joining you. Goodbye. Yeah, too bad. And I was mostly directed towards all my friends who were like jumping shit, and it's like, um I am not gonna join you because this seems like a hot mess. And then kind of 24 hours later, and on my birthday even, which was the weirdest birthday of my life, the essay went viral. The Washington Post linked to it. Wow. And like then everyone else followed on. Yeah. The one halfmo called me Tiara the Anonymous Drag Queen. Which I kind of regret not actually using as my username at one point.

SPEAKER_02 46:11

Oh, that was it. Wait, the anonymous drag queen was your username?

SPEAKER_01 46:15

No, someone on Halfmo, like in linking that article, cited me as Tiara the Anonymous Drag Queen. Um I had to like add the writers like, hey, hey, Tiara the Anonymous Drag Queen is a bit of a misnomer because Tiara doesn't make me not anonymous. Also, I'm not a drag queen. Yeah, yeah, no, there's But also I was like, also, that is like the best drag name I could ever have, and I haven't. I was like, that's just amazing. Too many letters for Twitter, but amazing. I mean, and then I got a call. The freaking New Yorker had an interview with me because of it. I was getting all this attention, and it's kind of we start being like, hello, I will hire you, which hasn't happened. But it was like the weirdest birthday of my life. There's like all of this, and I had a job interview that day, too. And like I had the job interview, they're like, Oh, by the way, we saw your article being linked around. It's like, oh my god. What am I done?

SPEAKER_02 47:08

Wait, did you get that job?

SPEAKER_01 47:10

I got the job, but it was like a tutoring job, and like unrelated to anything. But it was just like, oh, what has happened? Why? What is viral? It was the weirdest. It was fun, but like super weird. Like freaking vogue linked to it and engad and like fast comp like how why? Oh my god, why is this my claim to fame?

SPEAKER_02 47:35

That's so crazy, and that's happened a few times in your life already. Already.

SPEAKER_01 47:44

Like, you know, it's not like the New Yorkers banging on my door every five seconds, but like on fandom, there's like a Harry Potter thing I posted that's become super viral, even eight, not eight, four years on, it's still being spread around. I'm like, how? And I think I wrote it like slot walk. So slot walks a movement against slot shaming and victim blaming, basically saying like someone deserves to be assaulted regardless of what they're wearing. And I spoke at the first slot walk in Brisbane in 2011. I'm very like, I've been involved in the movement from the very beginning, even here in Melbourne. And um, I made a speech and I made a comment about I don't care if you are the bastard child of Paris Hilton and Lord Voldemort, and you work as a stripper in the middle of nowhere in the art bag, you still don't listen to your salton. And that that went viral. People made a fan page for the bastard child of Paris Hilton and Lord Voldemort. I'm sorry, it's all like these weird things that happen. Why is this what I'm famous for? Because you've Paris Hilton, Voldemort jokes, and social network takeouts. I want to see the visuals that people came up with with that idea. I don't know that people if people made art, I haven't seen art, but people just like commented on it a lot and shame. No, I want somebody to create that visual. Like, what is that? I know. I think someone needs a thing when they're like Photoshop Voldemort's face on Paris Sultan's body. It's like I think I see why why people like say say Sherry's kind of like this big feminist statement of like, hi, I came up with this on the fly, and you don't even plan it. Just like, oh god.

SPEAKER_02 49:30

Well, okay, no, that begs the question though, because you were talking about like viral versus making money off of it. Do you would you be comfortable making money off of one of these moments?

SPEAKER_01 49:41

Um I would like to. That would be nice. I mean, making money in terms of not necessarily in terms of oh, I put that slogan on a t-shirt and now people give me cash. Okay. But more like if it led to an opportunity, like a job, or like a game that led to sort of some sort of sustainable income. That would have been good. Gotcha. Like, I don't know what the parasol that volleyball thing could have led to, even though it's hilarious. But the LO thing, like, you know, all the tech companies at SF would have been like, I'm gonna hire you. That would have been nice. Yeah, that would be nice, yeah. I just think I have this problem, and it's it's sort of a pervasive problem I have where I get a lot of attention, but it doesn't necessarily translate into something tangible. Like I'm finding this with my show right now, my Career Lady Magician show, where we have very good brand recognition. Like we have a lot of media attention. Yeah, we have a lot like like people know about us. We have like very strong aesthetic, you know, the graphic design's amazing, our our photography is amazing. So people know and love the concept, but it hasn't exactly translated into ticket sales.

unknown 50:49

Huh?

SPEAKER_01 50:50

It's like a lot of people going, oh, but if you were in New York, I would buy front home. Like, can you just help us make it this one show? So that's the thing, like we have a lot of attention and a lot of interest, but the convert the element where people convert that attention into sales or into like like we hit a we did a crowdfunding campaign and that worked out, but that was also like because a lot of times there's a couple of people who were able to give more money in a step day, but that was still very tenuous, like, oh my god, it could have gone very, very wrong. Right, right. So so it's like if I still haven't figured out what that conversion is, I haven't figured out how to convert all the people going, Oh my god, I love your social media feed. You get you put out such good content, and oh you know, if you look at my website, my my portfolio is like a hundred pages long. Um and but getting off from thank you for the compliment and thank you for the retweet. Now, actually, just give me money. And I kinda like I know it's petty to whine about this. No, it's like, oh, we don't have your problem. But like sometimes when people talk about like, oh, make sure you retweet your friends out because that's how you know they'll get exposure, you support your friends, and like I kind of want to yell, stop retweeting, start paying me. Yeah, because I will get less attention if it if it meant like I was not precarious with my finances all the time. Yeah, yeah. Like, even if it was like one, but that one led to like a regular gig where I didn't have to worry about making rent. That would be better than like 30,000 retweets and nothing, you know.

SPEAKER_02 52:36

Right. No, there that is the reality of it, is that you can be a creative person and put a lot of stuff online, but how does that equate into sustaining your life? I have no idea.

SPEAKER_01 52:46

Yeah, and I think people assume fame equals fortune. Yeah, no, yeah. And I'm not even that famous in comparison, but I know, like, you know, Gabby Dunn wrote this essay years ago about how despite being a YouTuber and a fairly well-known one, uh, she still had to get extra jobs to afford rent. And it's like all that likes, all that views don't translate as much as people think it translates. Yeah, because I think people think like, oh, if you're famous in a way that I know what your name is, yeah, that means you're just as famous as a Hollywood celebrity, and therefore you have that same amount of money. It's like, no, not anymore. Fame and fortune have really disconnected.

SPEAKER_02 53:27

And especially when you're doing like self-produced projects, like if you have like a it's like for for movie stars, they have like a production company behind them and they have agents, they have all these people, and they pay them when they do the movies. If you're producing stuff and putting it online or doing it in person, you're the one doing it. So unless somebody gives you money for the project, you can't pay yourself for those things that you're doing.

SPEAKER_01 53:52

Right. And like people generally, you don't get paid to do media stuff because that's against ethics. So just because I have a ton of articles to my name, I haven't been paid for any of them. Yeah. So just because I'm known doesn't mean I'm you know, I'm stable.

SPEAKER_02 54:09

Right. What are your thoughts on things like Patreon when you do when people do ask their viewers and followers to give them some money every month?

SPEAKER_01 54:17

I have a Patreon. But again, it's been it's been a little slow going. Like I have 35 subscribers and I make about $150 a month. Which sounds ridiculous given that I have 6,000 followers on Twitter, and I have like 2,000 on Tumblr and blah de blind, and you know, and all I got all this media attention and so on. But again, the conversion from I love your work to and here's some money. And some of it is because a lot of my work tends to resonate with people from communities that are already underprivileged and don't have a lot of money to spare, and it's often like we're just paying each other the same hundred dollars in a circle. But like also there's like a lot of other people who definitely have more funds than I do, but the I some I don't know what in their brain doesn't translate to, and therefore, maybe if I hope even contribute a dollar, it would help you be able to afford things that let you continue making that content. Right. And like a lot of people keep when I talked about my difficulties, we say job hunting or fundraising or whatever, they're like, Oh, well, just make stuff. I'm like, I've made buckets of stuff, my resume unedited, goes on for about 10 pages. I'm making more stuff, not my problem.

SPEAKER_02 55:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's crazy. No, it's it's totally crazy. Uh yeah, I don't I don't know. I don't know. Like when I started the podcast, a lot of my coworkers, because I still have my day job because I there's no the path towards making money in podcasts is like insane. And so my coworkers were like, Oh what's up?

SPEAKER_01 56:01

Sponsored by Squarespace.

SPEAKER_02 56:03

Oh, it's yeah, it's just nuts. And my coworkers were like, Oh, you're doing this for a business. And at first I was just like, I need a platform. I used to write a lot, and my eyes kind of went wonky, and this is now easy to do online, so I'm gonna go vocal with it. I'm gonna do, I'm gonna have that outlet. And so I wasn't even thinking that for the first year, year and a half, and I was just like, no, I just want to create something, and now I'm finally like, okay, I have put a ton of work into this. I would like to get sponsors or do something like that, but it's just oh, it's like where do you put your energy? It's like the creative make the thing, the and then the energy to collect people to fund the thing is just like Yes.

SPEAKER_01 56:40

The admin takes so much work, and people don't appreciate that enough, I think.

SPEAKER_02 56:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:45

But like just apply, like, oh my god, how many you know how long an application takes?

SPEAKER_02 56:50

Like grants and stuff. I've heard they're just nightmares. And somebody told me about a grant for podcast the other day, and I was I'm terrified to look at the website because I know it's gonna be like this ridiculous amount of stuff to fill out.

SPEAKER_03 57:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:04

Yeah, no, it's it's definitely the the crappy side of all of this. But let's talk about social media. What do you is there anything have you ever decided I'm not going to put this on social media? Like any kind of thing in your life that you're not gonna ever post online.

SPEAKER_01 57:24

Well, I'm I'm sometimes an oversharer on online because I feel like I feel fairly comfortable with it, and that's also sometimes been very useful, especially when I've had like really, really bad days. Like I've had a really rough weekend this past weekend for like various reasons, and I was like to the point, like, oh my god, someone please help me. Because it's it was just like a pile of bad things kind of happen all at once. And but the times if I I put it out there, I f I found hope. Like once like this past this can't this past weekend, I've had like a lot of things happen all at once that were not good, and I was already like in a bad spot mentally. And I got a uh notification from my real estate, it's like, oh, we're doing our biannual house inspection, and so we're coming on the 11th, and we need and which means I have to like get my house super tip top clean. I'm like, on top of everything, I have a show to do. I am dealing with a really bad mental health spiral at the moment because bad things happen to me all in one day. Like, I can't, I can't make what and so but then my friend saw that my Facebook was, and they're now chipping in to get me a cleaner, which is very low. It's you know, so so stuff like that helps. And when people are like, Oh, why you overshare? Like, because that's how I get help sometimes. Um, but if it's stuff that might implicate another person in a way where the blowback would be more than if it's worth I don't put it on.

SPEAKER_03 58:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 58:58

Um, if it's like if I can't vague book about it enough. Like I'm like the most I might be like, oh, I'm in a frustrating situation right now, but if it's like something that where the other person might read it, or someone who knows the other person might read it, and it'll be like a huge drama then I reconsider. I've become like a little less into online debates about things. Like especially on Tumblr, where there's so much like social justice discourse, and I used to be like much more like I still sort of SJW to some degree, this was with my activism and my work and stuff. But Sarah does like sort of this debates on stuff from like on online was like we've talked about this in 2009, and it's like I'm too old for this. Yeah, it's like huh, it's just like the same old, I'm just like this again, and just like moving on. Like I might have an opinion on it, but like an opinion I stated five times already. Right. I'm tired, I am a tired older, so leave me alone.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:01

How many times are we gonna talk about this and still nothing is changing?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:05

Yeah, right, exactly. They're like, I am moving, like I am just gonna let this be. They can be wrong on the internet, whatever, they don't need I hadn't thought about that.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:16

I used to be on a lot more forums and things for different interests, and I've I've really fallen off a lot of those. I think for that very reason. I feel like the information in the converse like the conversations were nice, but now people are in different social media parts too, so I can find them there. But the the conversations and the debates and the trying to fix things within whatever area, whether it be travel, living overseas, or or uh writing or any kind of issues, I feel like those just kind of people just wanted to argue. And I'm like, no, I don't want to argue, I want to make change. There's a really big thing. Right, exactly, yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:50

So it's like you know, the sort of this pressure that comes on is like, oh, if you don't correct this at that moment, yeah, then you're complicit in whatever harm that results because you didn't correct it that one time. And I'm like, look, I am but one person. Yeah. And sometimes it's just not worth it. Like you just like if people are gonna argue and it's not gonna listen anyway, then why like get your heads are gonna walk?

SPEAKER_02 1:01:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:15

When there's so many other things you could do with that energy, it's like, okay, so that one person does not get educated by you. It's like, well, whatever. There's yeah, there's only so much six billion people in the world.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:27

Seriously. So I I actually missed a really good part of okay. What you started writing very early on, and you've written and made an impact in your writing, even if not financially, you've made an impact in your writing. Was there anybody that inspired you to write on or offline when you first started?

SPEAKER_01 1:01:46

Ooh. I don't know. Like, I don't know if it's a case of like, oh, this one particular person in my life was what got me writing, you know. Like, I don't know that I have someone I can pinpoint to for that specifically. I think it was just something that came very naturally to me. Like, I'd been writing even before the internet was a thing and been writing a lot, and I guess it just kind of made sense. And you know, from writing, I met community and met all these people, and just kind of spurred me to keep going. And like my first fandom, my big fandom was Savage Garden. So I guess you could say they inspired me in that they sort of inspired me to write a lot about them. But like, but you know, I think it's just something that came very naturally, and it was something I was getting a good feedback on. Yeah. And so I it it that it didn't feel like I was yelling through the void. It was like, oh, people are responding, and that's how I meet people, and so yeah, just like I guess I guess each other, yeah. The whatever community I was in inspired me. Do you keep going? That's powerful. It's powerful. And also sometimes it's like I have a lot of feelings and thoughts about this. We haven't quite figured out how to upload video or audio yet without it taking 10 years, but I can type now.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:07

So I'm guessing your typing speed is rather fast. Is that a safe assumption?

SPEAKER_01 1:03:11

Pretty fast, yeah. Although I make much more typos now than I used to, and it makes me cringe a little bit. Because I used to be the top speller at my school, and now that's all gone downhill.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:22

Yeah. Yeah. I'm okay on a typewriter still, but my thumb typing I don't think is ever gonna be great. Oh yeah. It's it's horrible. I don't know if it's just the size of my thumbs or what the hell's happening, but I look like I'm I'm doing touch typing and I'm looking somewhere else, and then I look at it and I'm like, that is not any language I know. Then an autocorrect comes in. Oh, I hate autocorrect. I hate it. That is not what I meant. No, I actually have mine permanently turned off because I can't stand the the suggestions that it gives me throws me off in what I'm trying to type, and then I forget the whole message and I yeah, so I just turn it off.

unknown 1:04:01

Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:03

All right, so you've got a lot of social media presence. Do you feel any pressure to keep putting stuff in those areas to keep to feed those folks?

SPEAKER_01 1:04:14

Um, there was sort of a point in time where there was a pressure of why aren't you commenting about this social justice issue that should be up your wheelhouse? Like I've had like people sort of specifically ask me, Well, what do you think about this? Or like they'll tag me in things, like expecting me to comment on them. And got to the point where I'm like, no, just don't. If I want to say something about it, let me say something about it. But like don't force me to say something about it. Yeah. But yeah, it has happened. And and like with external pressure, like I think it's more like you know, like this show I'm trying to do, this sort of you have to promote it every day or else people won't find your link or whatever. So it's more pressure along the lines, but also like, oh, but how do I not saturate oversaturate people with it? Exactly. Yeah, but in terms of like, oh, I have like a reputation to keep up, again, I've I've gotten old enough. I stopped caring. Alright, whatever. I'll be grumpy, brown chick, whatever. I'm just tired. Or I'm not grumpy enough for people, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:25

Do you ever feel any like after like streaming through social media and looking at other people's posts and stuff, do you ever feel a negative side to that experience?

SPEAKER_01 1:05:35

Um, sometimes when there's been like sort of a big event that involves in people talking about very traumatic experiences, it can be like a bit much, like when Me kind of whenever Me Too stop spikes in the news and they just have like a lot of people talking about their experiences. Um that can be very overwhelming. Or like when there's like a big news event and the consequences would affect someone. Like me, if you're on immigration, then I can't be like, I uh god, after a while, I get very upset just because of this. So there's a lot of upsetting news. You know, um, there has been the occasional time where some sort of online interpersonal thing has gone awry and I feel negatively about it. So that does happen, but that would also be the same if the interaction happened in person. You know, that's more like the fallout is it was a negative interaction.

unknown 1:06:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:30

Whether it was online or not, it's less of the issue. Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:34

No, that's a really, really good point. Do you do you feel like you talk to people differently online than you do offline?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:43

I find that I'm a lot more articulate when I'm typing than I'm when I'm talking. I guess you might not tell from this interview, but what I've told because I keep rambling a lot. But no, like I've actually discovered like there's been a few times where people are doing interviews with me over text or like over email. And I can form my sentences really well, my thoughts are down, and then when they do like the in-person interview, I'm just like words, thoughts, ideas, things, what I was getting somewhere with this, and now I can't edit what I'm saying. And oh my god, I'm rambling. What? And I sort of like trying to talk like I'm writing an essay, so I end up trying to do a beginning, middle, conclusion as well. I'm like, you don't have to do that when you're talking, but just like my instinct is to do that. I'm like, why am I summing up my entire statement again? Um Elizabeth writing, you can edit things or you can reword while you're writing it when you are talking. Not so hard.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:49

No, no, this it's already out there.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:53

It's already out there, and I'm just kind of finding that as well with you know this show. It's playwriting, so it's gonna be written, it's not like a ton that's improv. Like it's gonna be improv, it's gonna be stuff with this audience participation, so you just have to roll what the audience gives you. But I have done like some monologue writing, but this is the first time I've written like a full script to perform. And like my first the comments I got from my dramaturg and my director were like, it is very clear that you are a very good essayist because this is a very strong piece of writing. However, we need to make it work for the stage, which means changing a bit of how things are being said, so and then you know, there's one section where I was repeating a plot point like three times. Like, is this really necessary? No, or like you know, you want to make the story make some sense, so you don't want to cover you wanna cover any plot holes, but like it's theater. If there's some plot hole, it's fine, you know. You don't have to like, oh god, I I I but how would this person know about this thing if they weren't in the room as it happened? Like it's it's theater, you can fudge it, you don't have to have the character re-explain what happened to the person out of the room, you know, like it's all of the stuff, yeah. So it's like kind of like changing between like writing on paper or on screen, which I don't necessarily think of like, oh, I have to write this as a paper, it's just how I write normally. And then writing for the stage, which is a whole other beast than just oh my god.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:26

Oh my gosh, oh my god. Oh, we completely skipped over San Francisco, which is crazy. So were you in San Francisco for three months or three years or I was there for three months at the start.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:37

I did a summer residency, yeah. And then I fell in love with the place and went back there to do my MFA.

SPEAKER_03 1:09:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:43

And so I was there for three years. Nice. It was three months at first, then back in Brisbane. I was like, I wanna go back, I miss it.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:50

Wow, wow, wow. So what um it's interesting because you did a lot of stuff with alternative education, but then you did the formal bachelor's and masters anyway.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:01

Why, why? Um, the bachelor's was because my parents were like, please get a degree. Fair enough. I didn't want to. But I was like, okay, fine, but I get to choose where and I go choose what I'm doing. And I was like, I wanna leave the country, and they were like, oh no, but what if you get murdered? Blah blah blah. I'm like, let me fight. And so that was mainly just so they so to make them happy, really, was really why I got the bachelor's. Sure. I would have necessarily done it otherwise. It would have just been like traveling or something or doing more random stuff. Um The Masters is more because that was the easiest we way for me to be in the US more than three months. Fair enough. Yeah. And I paid the MFA specifically because it was low residency and it was very flexible and you could do whatever you wanted. And so I'm like, cool! So that was more like my vehicle to get in the country and you know have like enough space to do all the artsy activity queer stuff that I was actually in the C for.

unknown 1:11:11

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:11

It wasn't the most rigorous program, but it was fine. That's fine.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:17

Um, but okay, so when you moved from us from Brisbane to San Francisco, did what you do online change at all?

SPEAKER_01 1:11:26

So I hadn't met a lot of connections in San Francisco online even before I left. Okay. And so especially when I was in this there for the summer, it was like I could put all faces to names now. And you know, I I got to connect with the community I was building online because I was feeling so isolated in Brisbane, especially with the performance art community. Yeah, you know, all of the people I was really interested in were in the Bay Area, and so it was really good to be part of those connections and spaces that I could only see online previously. Yeah, and you know, and I guess in some ways, like, yeah, there's like a lot more stuff online. And again, that's how I found out what was happening. There was people posted all of the events online, or like you hear from people's friends, be like, Oh, we're looking for blah blah blah, and they'll share their post and whatever. And by that point, you know, compared to when I was in Brisbane, stuff like Facebook and Twitter became more of a thing. So just more of a more of that happening, really. Okay. Um so it sounds like sort of not super dissimilar, but there was more to do with it.

unknown 1:12:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:37

Than I was with.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:39

Yeah. So it sounds like no matter where you were geographically, your your online life was was very was steady and uh kind of like a I don't want to say a grounding force. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but it sounds like it didn't change much no matter where you were geographically.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:56

Um I get it adapted to whatever local thing was happening at the time, and like especially my final year in the US, I was on a bunch of Slack chats. Um that's when Slack became really a thing, and it's like an LGBT in Tech Slack and a woman in Tech Slack. Instead of like I was exploring tech and games at the time. Okay. A lot of them had their own like special interest Slack chats.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:20

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:20

So that way, you know, like I found a lot of people that way, and yeah. You'll find the occasional like part-time gig or whatever through there.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:29

Um so but yeah, there was always a presence, and also the internet was very useful for research. Yeah, yeah. Artistic input, you know. So yeah, so it in some ways, yes, it is mean steady, but like the way I would use it really depended on what people in the locality were using at the time.

SPEAKER_02 1:13:46

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. When when you share stuff on social media, do you tend to share stuff that as it's happening, or do you do it like after the fact, looking back, kind of reflecting on things?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:58

Both? I think it depends on what it is. Okay. Um, I did I have noticed that in lately that I have become sometimes a little too busy to be live tweeting. Like, oh man! I've been so caught up in this thing that even given get the opportunity to be like, look what's happening. Um like I just got caught up getting ready to perform. I even like post about a novice. I was like I'll post about the day before, maybe. But like, yeah, a bit of both. Sometimes I get nostalgic about something, or like I'll read something that reminds me of a thing from the past, and then I'll talk about it. Sometimes I'll have to do things where I can't really announce what it is due to embargoes or whatever. So I have to wait. And like, oh now I can tell you what I was happy.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:48

Yeah. So it's a bit of both. Too funny, too funny. Um is is okay. I have two kind of weird media questions that may not make it into the final one. I'm still playing with some of these questions. So this one, okay. So, like a lot of people say that what we post online is is unimportant, which I think is kind of bullshit. But what's what's the difference between somebody writing like an autobiographical book versus what we put out about ourselves online?

SPEAKER_01 1:15:22

Ooh, I guess it sort of depends on what you how you portray yourself online to. Like you might approach your online life like an autobiographical book. Okay. So it really depends. But I feel like with autobiography, a lot of it is looking back at stuff that's happened. Sometimes with you've had enough distance, both in time and in space, to be able to provide a perspective on it that you won't necessarily have gotten at the moment. And if your online presence is very in the moment, you're gonna have a very different idea of what that moment looks like while you're in it versus when time has passed. Or when you knew might you might have had some information come up to you later that gives context to what happened before, but you won't have known that at the time, you know?

unknown 1:16:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:19

So I think p people put different aspects of themselves in online that they may or may not put in an autobiography book. Like, you know, if your autobiography is mostly chronological, this is stuff that happened, but your online life is more what you're thinking at the time. Or vice versa. Or like you know, sometimes people write biographies of themselves that are about a very specific event.

SPEAKER_02 1:16:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:48

Whereas online, you know, depending your your online presence might be about all sorts of manners of things, not just this one particular thing you'd have a book about.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:56

And also, like with the book, um, you have an editor, you have publishing considerations. Yeah. You have like and yeah, yeah, I show you it like depending on your online presence, you may also have to consider an audience if that's the sort of way you function. But it's a very different kind of audience consideration than a book would be because you get immediate feedback.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:19

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:21

And immediate engagement versus the book in maybe a while from when you've written the book to when people will read it, and in between things might have changed because of an editor or publisher or something.

SPEAKER_02 1:17:32

Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Well, I okay, that does bring up the question of audience for for people that see all of your stuff online. What do you want them to do with it? Ooh. Do anything with it. Do you want to inspire them? Do you want them to do something else? Do you want to I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:52

Do you it kind of depends on what it is I'm doing at the time. I mean, there have been times where I've specifically written something so with the intent and the hope for people to follow through with it. Like with stuff around immigration, for example, or some sort of other relevant political issue.

SPEAKER_03 1:18:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:16

Often I will also end with like, if you are in a position to do something about it, please do. Or like, it's like, you know, there's this thing going on in Australia right now around immigration in particular, because we've just had a change in Prime Minister, and this Prime Minister is well, they've all have been, to be fair, but like he's especially been very hostile to immigrants. Yeah. And there's been like some things that happen in pro in politics in the last few months where like the rights of immigrants have especially been in under scrutiny. And you know, as I'm an immigrant, but um I don't have the right to vote just yet, and I don't know if I ever will because of the way laws work and how long it takes for everything. And so it'd be like, hey, this is how this is gonna impact me. Also, I can't vote, and so anything, any opportunity for me personally to change this, I can't take out. Well, because I can't vote, so I don't have that power. Um, I can write to my local whoever, but because I can't vote, yeah, less likely to be able to want to listen to me. But those of you who can vote who have more of a say, please think about people like me when you make your decision, you know? So, like, sort of like specifically asking for that, if it's something I need people to do. I you know, only other hands will start like come to my show or tell people my show, I'll like tell them, you know, sort of like stuff that's less serious, but still involves people. Please do the thing. Yeah, yeah. Um, so it's so specifically stuff like that. If I have like a uh thing I want people to do with, then I'll say it. But sometimes it'd be like, hey, I need help with the thing. It's like, oh, I'm feeling crappy, please. Like, you know, the other day I just had it was 2 30 a.m. It's like I am having the worst time. Please, if you please be nice to me. Also, if you were thinking of treating me for my birthday front loaded now, because I could really use it right now because I'm in a really bad state. So it's being explicit. Yeah. It's helpful. But other than that, like if I'm not like explicitly stating what I want from it, because like here, here's a thing that's cool or I think that's useful for you to read, sure, please check it out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's like, hey, thing that is cool, thing that I thought would be worthwhile.

SPEAKER_02 1:20:39

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you having grown up in that environment where you didn't feel like you had a lot to do in real life, but you had a strong online life, do you ever see yourself as possibly a role model for people for kids that are in that situation now?

SPEAKER_01 1:20:56

Ooh. I think there was more of that when I was doing my alternative education stuff because that was directly speaking towards young people. Yeah. And like I had like a lot of Malaysian young Malaysians like write to me about how they were feeling and sort of appreciating my presence as a different voice to all the other ones that we inundated with from school and from the government and from media and stuff about how they should live life. So that was sort of a more deliberate kind of role modeling presence. Um, now it's interesting because I don't know that any of my stuff right now is particularly like youth friendly, you know. So I'd be like very surprised if there's like any young people keeping an eye on me. So it's like, you're probably not old enough, go away. But like no, like, you know, I I get sometimes like sort of older teenagers, for example, might find my presence, especially on stay places like Tumblr, where there's more of a teen presence on there.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:57

And kids are these days.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:00

Yeah, yeah, which is sort of very strange because they're like, oh, what are you doing on Tumblr? You're like past 30. Like, I'm not that old. Also, I've been on Tumblr since 2007, so go away. But like, you know I mean before you, before you were strong, but like uh I don't deliberately seek out to be a role model for kids because I think that's a lot of pressure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But if any young person, or even anyone, if it doesn't be a young person, yeah, finds some sort of inspiration from me or from my work, or from like it's like, oh, you posted this thing the other day and that helped me a lot, for example. That that's very gratifying. It's like, oh hey, I've I've done something good.

unknown 1:22:46

Yay.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:46

I connected with someone, and usually because of something that mattered to me, and now like we have this shared experience, and that's great.

SPEAKER_02 1:22:53

Yeah. All right, two more quick questions. Um, some folks complain that the stuff we put on social media is too happy focused and it's not a full picture of what most people are. Happy folks that have they seen my post lately. But this is why I like following you, is because yours is more real. So I in some ways I agree with these people that there are a lot of people that just prost the good stuff, the pretty stuff, the happy stuff, and they don't have a full rainbow of emotions in their profiles or in what they're putting online. Do you think that happiness obsession exists? Do you think it's a stage in the internet maturity, or do you think that's just what we do online?

SPEAKER_01 1:23:38

What we will do online. I mean, I don't I don't see a problem with like people only posting happy stuff online. Like, I don't think that if what if it's an addiction or obsession or whatever, I don't think that's really an issue. Like you putting your life online is a very vulnerable position to be in. And if you don't necessarily trust that whoever has access to your online profiles can really hold your dark, difficult, sad parts online, then why put it out there? Like, you know, maybe you want to just keep that to people you specifically know can hold that space. Yeah. And if you feel like the only things you are comfortable putting out in the world are happy things, then that's fine. No one is entitled to every part of you. Of course.

SPEAKER_02 1:24:24

No, that's a good point.

SPEAKER_01 1:24:25

And I think like when people talk about like, oh, you only post up the positive things, I'm like, why? Because do you feel like you are entitled to every last bit of this person? And then, like, you know, on the conversely, when people do talk about like stuff that's more dark or hard, then you get complaints of, oh, this is so depressing, like, no one wants to hear that, or you're just bringing us down. Like, why do people care? So it's been like, well, okay, you so you you complain no matter what. That's that is true. Yeah, the it yeah, we do complain a lot. Yeah, it's like nothing, nothing anyone can really do is gonna make everyone happy, you know. Like, either it's not either it seems too polished or it's too raw. Or something, like people talk about, oh I don't want to know about what you had for lunch, whatever. But like, oh, but your posters you only ever talk about your promotional, you know, it it's like I'm gonna have a problem with it no matter what. Yeah, so I feel like so. If people like want, and especially with the world right now, just being so full of bad news every so often. If somebody decides that they just want to keep the Instagram feed full of happy smiles, let them. Yeah, like great, you know that that's how you feel like you want to interact with the world, and it's only fine. You want to keep like all the other stuff private, that's totally your call. Yeah, and alternately, if you feel like there's some value in you in being more openly vulnerable, or like you know, if talking about your the dark parts openly helps you, like it does for me, because that's how I often manage to get people to fight support or assistance or whatever. Great, you know, that that's that's something that works for you. Everyone has their own way they negotiate with the internet and they negotiate with the world at large. And however they want to curate that spaces, totally happy. None of us have any entitlement to any other person's part of their life. It's all up to the other person's side.

SPEAKER_02 1:26:25

No, that's a really, really good point. There there is a sense of in that in that complaint of everything being too happy online, there is that sense that they do have some sort of right to ourselves online. I hadn't thought about that. Man oh man oh man. Okay, what do you think we're gonna do differently online in the future that we don't do now?

SPEAKER_01 1:26:44

Ooh, I think some of it depends on what sort of technology will come up. So if there's some sort of new media ability to create something, yeah, we'll see where that goes. Oh, well, digit online can't do now. Why smell vision on the thing? I just want smell, I just want perfumes.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:03

I really want that. I really want that. People are working on the touch stuff, and I don't care about that as much as the smell.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:10

I mean, I tried to touch stuff too, but like, oh like yeah, smell. That's an untapped territory rather. Yeah. Uh, what would people do differently online? Oh god. It's hard to predict because yeah, you know, you could say so much and then but the thing that always happens is like the one thing no one ever saw coming.

SPEAKER_02 1:27:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. And it changed, it seems to change really fast. Like things will stay uh the same for a little while, and then there'll be like a burst of, oh, I didn't even know that could happen. Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:38

Right, exactly. Or like things come back, like podcasting came back, you know. So it might we might find a return of something. I wanna, you know, I kind of wonder if it's gonna be a resurgent in like old school programming languages because I learned how to use Pascal and no one uses Pascal anymore. Pascal, really? I took competing lessons as a kid. That's what they taught us to program it.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:02

Oh god, my first language I think was I think was base visual basic and oh yeah that kept basic coding for a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then Python a couple of years ago, which is like night and day from any of it.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:17

Oh yeah. I feel uh yeah, I can't keep up with how to code websites online anymore. Like I used to hand code mine, and now I'm just like, what is happening right now? What happened to good old HTML head blah?

SPEAKER_02 1:28:30

Oh, you can't do body. It's gotta have CSS in it now. It has to look natural.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:36

I mean CSS is the easy part, but now it's a bit like freaking Ajax and everything. Like, oh my god. Oh yeah. My God, I'm old. I am an old fogie, what I don't understand.

SPEAKER_02 1:28:46

Oh no, it's great. I mean, visually, what websites look like is fantastic, but the number of languages you need to know to build them is just insane.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:55

Yeah, I can't just fire up notepad like I used to and type everything in and be like done with it.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:01

You you can, but I don't think it would get a lot of attention nowadays. Or maybe it would, because maybe maybe it would be. Maybe that's something people can do in the future.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:10

Yeah, it's just a return to like slow blogging or like slow interneting. Exactly. Like striped out, ring back gray matter. I love gray matter, but it's like bring back um all of that old school hand-typed rustic video.

SPEAKER_02 1:29:28

He really wanted to start a blog, uh, to I think it was a language learning type thing, and he's like, but I I like writing by hand, and I'm like, oh my god, why don't you write it by hand and then take a picture and that's your blog entry? Like, why don't you do that? But I think there's so much pressure to do like what's happening now, as opposed to what just what you're comfortable with on some level. I don't know. I think I would probably read that if he did it, as long as it was dark enough that I could see it on the screen. I think that would be really cool. Because that's right more personal than just the type letters, as long as the handwriting was readable. Um, but yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe a retro thing would be the next the next wave before the.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:11

Oh my god, retro websites. Oh man, we go back to like that'd be awesome. Early 2000s Steet and Girl blogging, because that was a whole scene. That was a whole thing. Tables and iframes. Oh my god, eye frames. Oh great, I loved it. There you go, slow blogging. This sort of thing. There you go. That's the next big thing. Why can do in the future? Just things you used to do before it all got complicated.

SPEAKER_02 1:30:37

Right? Yes, yes, yes, yes, and yes. All right, last, last, last, last, last question. What else should I ask people in these interviews in the future? What's missing?

SPEAKER_01 1:30:49

What's missing? Um, maybe like what is the thing they wish they could do online that they can't at the moment? Oh, either because the technology isn't there yet, or for some reason they can't access the thing because it's like US only. I like it. Uh, I can't like for me, my answer to that question is I wish Australia had a lot more options to send money to each other online. Oh we Venmo does not work in Australia. Cash does not, well, I mean, not cash as in paper money, but like the cash square cash does not work in Australia. Sure, sure, sure. If you want to send money to people digitally, you have to use your bank app and get people's banking details. There's some banks do a pay ID thing, which is like an email address and a phone number, but that's like not implemented across the board so neatly. Or you have PayPal. Oh and so, but you know, people like uh people like, oh, can I Venmo use some money? I'm like, no, because Venmo doesn't work in this country. So, like, hey, banking systems of the world, please stop being country specific and let me just Square Cash. Like, oh like a lot of my friends online, I want to support their work, but they only do Square Cash, and I'm like, I can't. Square Cash does not let me send you money, right? Because Australia, right? Even though we have like credit cards that work in any website, it's just like the banking system is not compatible. So that's that that is a thing. Uh to answer you the question I just asked myself. Yeah, no, that's money much easier ways.

SPEAKER_02 1:32:33

Wow, yeah, for sure, for sure. Well, I'm spoiled in China. I don't know if you're have you heard of WeChat? Yes. Okay, yeah. So we're we're like digital currency is one apart, it's mostly like a messaging platform, but there's a like a ton of other services on it. It's it's compared to Facebook, but honestly, it's got about a trillion other functions, and it's used all over China, and it's just a mobile phone. You can use it on a computer too, but it's a mobile phone app primarily. And our digital currency ability, like I'll go to farmers markets and I'll buy like a head of broccoli and pay with my WeChat money. Oh wow. Like everything. There are some stores, like there's a coffee shop that's really popular in one of the older parts of the city in Shanghai, and they have a sign outside, no cash. Like, and they have the QR codes for like the two biggest digital currency sites. Like Wow! Yeah, it's like it's skipped over.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:27

I would love that here because I hardly ever remember to bring cashed around with me. Yeah, it'll be like, oh, we can you need a minimum transaction of this much. I'm like, oh my gosh. Oh, what a pain.

SPEAKER_02 1:33:40

Yeah, yeah. And when I go to other countries, and especially when I go back to the US, I'm like, what? I use my ATM card to buy things. I use cash to buy what it's like it feels like going backwards in a way because this is such a cool system. Such a cool system. So hopefully it will spread.

SPEAKER_01 1:33:58

Yeah, I mean, the problem is that if your phone breaks or you can't access a phone for any reason, then you're kind of screwed. So having cash options is useful, but like also let me pay my card or let me pay my technology. I went to New Zealand for a conference last year. And since you could default to card there, like cash, like you can pay cash, but it's less common. So it was like, oh my god, this is very what? I'm very unprepared for this. I got all of this cash out, and like, oh, okay. I have to pay foreign transaction fees on things because it was an Aussie card, but like card for everything?

SPEAKER_02 1:34:38

Which is the total opposite of Japan. I don't know if you've been to Japan, but every time, like yeah, yeah, there's still very much so a cash society. Every time I touch down, I have to just hit the ATM and just get a stack out because I'm like, okay, here we go, cash time, which I hate because then I have to decide every day do I want to carry everything I just took out of the ATM or do I want to carry this certain amount around with me? Because I'm paranoid when I'm traveling about being pickpocketed or losing things or whatever, you know, things happen. Yeah, but yeah, no, it's such a cash. They're starting to take some credit cards in bigger stores, and uh like the the bullet train and those kinds of things are starting to take credit cards, but it's a very slow switch to other currencies. Yeah, yeah. I like having choices. You can do cash, you can do an AT. Exactly. Yeah, what do I have with what do I want to do today? Which balance do I want to deplete? That kind of thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, for sure. My goodness. Well, thank you so much. This has been such an interesting conversation. Oh, that's good. Thank you. So I will definitely let you know a little bit before it comes out, but I'm I'm thinking it's early December-ish. Okay, yeah. And um, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and and happy pre-birthday.

SPEAKER_01 1:35:56

Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:35:57

Yeah, you're welcome.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:00

I'm like, how? I don't even feel 30. How about 33? What is what is this life?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:07

I still feel 19. I'm turning 47 in December, and I'm like, I'm sorry, I don't understand these two numbers together. It doesn't make sense to me.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:14

You're the same age as one of my best friends, but yeah, so it's like it what do you what do you mean I'm almost 50?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:21

That's ancient. How what? No, my mother had two kids at my age. Oh my god. How oh gosh, no, at 46, I remember my mother by the time she was 46. So she had three kids. I'm the youngest. She had three kids, and and they were very well grown by that age. Yeah, so no.

SPEAKER_01 1:36:46

I don't even imagine being like a half parrot. How about how did my mom do it?

SPEAKER_02 1:36:50

What yeah, no, age is crazy, but you know what? It's how we feel inside that matters. I have to believe that. Because the other stuff is nuts. So, yes, yes, yes. So, thank you very much for joining me today for this.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:05

Well, thanks for having me. Yes. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:07

And I will see you online.

SPEAKER_01 1:37:10

Yes. Yeah. Yeah, all right. I was gonna make a clever joke, and I was like, I my brain doesn't know.

SPEAKER_02 1:37:17

Don't even worry about it. All right. Thank you. Bye. Okay, bye-bye. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_00 1:37:24

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