SPEAKER_08 0:36

Welcome to Virtual Expat, where we investigate the interplay between living overseas and living online. What happens to our online presence, our online persona when we change countries? Does anything happen? Does one support the other? Does one conflict with the other? I don't know, but I wanted to find out. So I'm going to interview a lot of expats in order to get to the heart of this question. Is there interplay between our online selves and our geographically varied selves? This interview that you're going to hear with Steve was very weird for me to edit. And I'll tell you why. Because we did this interview a few months ago, but that's not the only reason. As you'll hear in this conversation, Steve and I go back and forth kind of bringing up different uh issues with our online presence uh uh with social media, with our relationship with technology, specifically honing in on uh the expats that we know and ourselves, of course, as prime examples. But what happened is after this conversation, Steve and I have been in pretty frequent contact when some something that we talked about in this episode, or something that wasn't even in this episode that probably needs to be in the follow-up one, hint, hint, hint, hey Steve, come back. Um something, you know, that could also be included in this conversation happened in our lives or that we saw online, not so ironically. And so we've been having long WeChat conversations about different things that we've experienced since this episode. Almost immediately after this episode, all the way up until I think we had another conversation last week about something that uh that one of us noticed. And it it's pretty much a back and forth of of really trying to figure this out. What are we doing online? What are we doing? And why are we doing it so wrong in so many ways? And then why is it so helpful in so many ways? It's such a bitter, bitter experience. And I say that because some of the most amazing moments I've had in my life have been because of a what I think were serendipitous virtual moment that turned into a real life moment. And one of those moments happened tonight. I'm in a podcast creators group on WeChat for folks who are in China and making podcasts. And I'm a huge fan of Mama Hoohoo. I actually I did an entire segment back on the Over There podcast, which is the former name of the Virtual Expat podcast. He is one of the vile members of that group. I did not even realize he was a part of this WeChat group, and we were just talking, uh, a few of us were talking about different tools that we found recently, different uh physical tools, different software, that kind of thing, and he chimed in with some really, really cool information. And I just kind of thought for a minute, I went, wait, wait, I know who this is. Oh my gosh! I'm just having this random conversation with him and a couple of other people, and I've never met him in real life. But in VRL, my virtual reality life, here I am having this this conversation with him about this podcasting stuff. Those are the kinds of things that are really cool about the internet and are really cool about social media. And those keep happening to me again and again and again. It's back and forth, isn't it? It's a massive back and forth. And this is the kind of thought process that has been going on for me since I've refocused the podcast to be the virtual aspect only of expats lives is these questions of what are we doing with social media, how's it connected to our geography, and how does it change when we change countries? How does it change as we grow up is probably another question. And grow up and grow older. Because as much as I refuse to grow up, I am inevitably growing older. So there you go. So, needless to say, I think Steve and I had a very interesting conversation about all of this, and he brought up things that I didn't even begin to think about, and you'll hear about them in here. But it's interesting because he went from a vacation in Spain to living in Greece for a year to moving to China six years ago. He just had his sixth year anniversary. And I also need to mention that Steve had his birthday last week. Happy birthday! Anyway, I had to do it. I had to do it! As you'll hear, we talk a lot about what people do with social media in this conversation. We'll talk about going on and off Facebook, consciously curating our online lives, and what Stevie did when he started an online business, how he needed to go in and professionalize one of his social media feeds. That's a thing. It's a thing I've heard people do, but I've never actually talked to someone that did it. So that was a really interesting part of the conversation. There's so much more. There's so much more. The the body of this podcast itself, the conversation itself, is about two hours. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this. All of Steve's information is going to be down in the show notes. So feel free to contact him, feel free to contact me. Let either or both of us know what you think of this conversation, and feel free to add to the questions and add to the answers and add to the experience. Thank you so much. Let's get started. Thank you, Stevie, for joining me today on Virtual X Pat. I'm really excited to have you here. I have everybody normally do a self-introduction, as awkward as it may be. I think people know themselves way better than I could ever sum them up. So can you please tell our audience who you are?

SPEAKER_06 6:02

Yeah, of course. So my name is Steve. Stevie is mine. Um I'm originally from Scotland. I've been living and well, I've been living abroad as an expat, not just a channel for about 10 years almost.

unknown 6:16

So I first left Britain in about 2000 and what would that be about 2008? 2008, just after I turned 30.

SPEAKER_06 6:27

I kind of had a bit of a let's get out of here kind of thing. I did a uh I did a couple of summers in Spain and then I moved to Greece for a year to teach. And I was kind of living with these, well, not living with them, but I'm spending all of my quality time with these expats. You know, kind of moved to Greece like in the 60s or something, and I'm like 30-year-old. But it was it was great fun. It was like the best thing I've ever done. And then after that, I moved to China, mostly because my head mistress in Greece had said that I would never be successful. She was a horrible woman. She was a horrible moment.

SPEAKER_02 7:12

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_06 7:14

And so I moved to Guangzhou for a year, and then it was two years, and then three years, and then four, and five, and yeah, I've been a teacher, a teacher trainer, and uh coaching.

SPEAKER_08 7:29

Yeah, yeah. Wow, wow, wow, wow. Okay, so you left in 2008, you said, right? I'm drawing a timeline as we speak. If you see me look down, it's because I keep notes because I have no memory on anything. Yeah. Okay, so Spain to Spain to China. Okay, how did you make that leap?

SPEAKER_06 7:45

Right. So I was in Spain doing summer courses. What it was was um I I I previously was a bank manager. It was very bored of my job, and uh, an old friend of mine said, Why don't you teach? You you know, you love being in the classroom, you love helping people go and teach. I did, and I I went to Spain to think, okay, I'll give it a go, see if I like it. Did a couple of um kind of adult summer camps, some learning for people. Oh, and it was great. Yeah, they you know, they gave you free accommodation, free food, and all you needed to do was be on the camp and teach kind of non-stop all day. It was fantastic, it was amazing. And I was with all of these foreigners doing exactly the same thing from all around the world. I've met people from Australia, from Britain, from America, from Canada, that were just like, I don't want to work anymore, I want to go and see if there's more to life.

SPEAKER_09 8:49

Right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_06 8:50

So that's what got me started. And after that, I came home and said to my folks, okay, I want to do this seriously, I want to be a teacher. Yeah, and um, I really loved uh kind of Greek history as when I was at school. I thought let's let's go let's go to Greece. Yeah, yeah, it was definitely different from being there for a summer, you know, because you knew you were always gonna go home.

SPEAKER_12 9:14

Sure.

SPEAKER_06 9:14

When you were there for the full year, that there's always a winter, it's always gonna be rainy, yeah, it's not all fun and games every day. There's homework to mark, there's bills to pay, wasn't always as nice as I wanted it to be.

SPEAKER_12 9:35

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 9:36

But on the flip side, I've met lifelong friends, you know. I helped out in ice cream shops, I learned how to make Greek coffee and food and beautiful. Visited the island with the with the expats there, we went bus trips and you know, everything, everything and everything that could have been done.

SPEAKER_08 9:59

So in the chronology, it was like Spain, Greece, then China?

SPEAKER_06 10:03

Then China, yeah. Okay, yeah. Okay. So China came about because um as I was leaving Greece, I I'd put a complaint in about the headmistress to the organization and they stupidly forwarded it to her before I left.

SPEAKER_03 10:23

Oh no.

SPEAKER_06 10:25

Really not very nice, really not very nice. No, and she kind of put me, took me aside into the building with her husband kind of standing there, yeah, a bit threatened. Like, and I said, You know what? I'm gonna be fine, I'm gonna be able to do this. And I said, I'm already looking places up, I'm probably gonna go to China, it'll be great. Yeah, and she kind of took this as uh you're never gonna cope. China will never accept you, your work ethic, blah blah blah blah blah, everything that she must have been mulling over. Right, and I just no, I'm gonna do it. Yeah, and I got back to Britain and it was the middle of the night. I honestly woke up about four or five in the morning and just got on a TEFL website, found a couple of companies and emailed them straight away.

SPEAKER_03 11:15

Wow in the middle of the night.

SPEAKER_06 11:16

Yeah, so I this is what I'm going to do.

SPEAKER_08 11:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 11:20

Something woke me up and said, do it.

SPEAKER_08 11:22

Wow. And what TEFL website did you use then?

SPEAKER_06 11:26

Yeah, I think it was TEFL.com.

SPEAKER_08 11:28

Gotcha, yeah, yeah, yeah.

unknown 11:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 11:29

You know it?

SPEAKER_08 11:30

I do. Oh yeah, yeah. I was I was a teacher for I want to say about on and off for 15 years. More on and off at the beginning, but then hardcore, and then escaping into academia and then trying to get away from it. And I haven't taught for a few years, but yeah, I spent a lot of time looking for jobs.

SPEAKER_06 11:49

Yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 11:50

Dave's ESL Cafe, I remember being big and TEFLDOS. Yes, yes, yes, I had that one. A friend of mine actually interviewed Dave Sterling.

SPEAKER_06 11:58

What's that? It's much easier, I think, when you're in China. I still get emails because they find you. I don't know how they find you recruiters.

SPEAKER_08 12:05

Yeah, no, it's the same thing. And I'm on all of these like interest boards, and people, but like recruiters will creep in and like leave their posts there, and I'm like, no, no, no, no, no, go away. This is my fun space. Stop doing that. I'll go to you know, job places when I want to look for something if I want to do that. But it's just ah yeah.

SPEAKER_06 12:25

I think that's the reply back to the email saying I'm no longer interested, but you still get them, they just don't listen.

SPEAKER_08 12:30

Yeah, any sign of life, and they'll keep they'll keep bugging you. So I just tend to delete and block or whatever I can do. Um yeah, yeah, yeah. But I spent a lot of time on those websites looking for jobs for years, for years. Because I mean when you get one, you realize how bad it is, you're like, ah, I have to start looking and make sure the next one's better. But there's no real way to tell until you're in it. Let's hop online because I have this theory that may very well be wrong. But I think there's some sort of relationship between our online selves and our geographical selves. Like when we move around, I think there's something that happens with our online selves. And I'm not sure if that one supports the other, one kind of deteriorates the other. I'm not sure what the relationship is, but I think there's something happening there. So if we start at the beginning in Scotland in 2008, what were you doing online? And by online, I mean anything connected to the internet, including email, social media, and websites.

SPEAKER_06 13:31

Right. Okay. So um I can remember that my first ever email would have been hotmail, MSN.

SPEAKER_12 13:39

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 13:40

When I was at university, so that would have been like back in 2002 or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 13:45

Sure, sure, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 13:46

And I still I still have the account.

SPEAKER_03 13:48

Wow.

SPEAKER_06 13:49

But I don't have the password. Ah so I know that there are things in there that I would love to see, like old emails, but I cannot for the life of me get in. And I've tried and tried and tried. And it's linked to my iTunes. So it's it I can I I can't really seem to change it, which is annoying. So it's it's one of those things that if you have forgotten stuff, you can't do it.

SPEAKER_12 14:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 14:15

But um, let's say before I was before I left um Britain, I've been a really heavy Facebook user.

SPEAKER_07 14:25

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 14:25

Mega, mega heavy Facebook user.

SPEAKER_07 14:28

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 14:28

Um I remember people poking and then no longer poking and then sort of bringing the poke back, you know? It was a big deal. It was a big deal, you know, and only having those first couple of friends and it being very new.

SPEAKER_09 14:42

Right, right.

SPEAKER_06 14:43

And then people complaining every time they changed your timeline kind of thing. Yeah, so I remember I remember that a long time ago. So I never had MySpace, I definitely had uh Facebook. Yeah, I had LinkedIn but didn't really use it very much because I'm I'm terrible at networking, which is bad. You know, I see some people at parties and things they oh let me get your LinkedIn straight away, and I'm like, uh, LinkedIn was a very silent, silent creature for a really long time.

SPEAKER_08 15:16

It's only in the past like year or so that I've noticed it actually being active, and it's continuing because I've been signed up for it. We had to sign up for a business class I took years and years and years and years and years ago, and it would just like nothing happened, nothing happened, and now all of a sudden I'm getting notifications and people are posting stuff and connecting, and it's like happened.

SPEAKER_06 15:36

So I use it now to post things, but only because I'm starting a business. So you you think let's use everything.

SPEAKER_10 15:42

Sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_06 15:44

But anyway, yeah, so back. So I would definitely have used Facebook. Email, email would have been, I think, through like a BT internet email address. Okay.

SPEAKER_08 15:55

Like an British Telecom.

SPEAKER_06 15:58

British Telecom.

SPEAKER_08 15:59

Okay, gotcha.

SPEAKER_06 16:00

Yes, yes. So it would have been one of those packages you would have bought with your TV and everything, and you've got the email address.

SPEAKER_12 16:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 16:07

Um and I was using that until it got blocked in China and it got attacked and hacked and everything's china.

SPEAKER_02 16:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 16:14

So that was a bit of a disaster.

SPEAKER_02 16:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 16:17

I used to read a lot of blogs, but I didn't at the time contribute.

SPEAKER_08 16:22

Okay. Can I ask what kind of topics the the blogs covered?

SPEAKER_06 16:27

Some cooking ones, which was really interesting. Yeah. I read a lot of kind of gay, like queer tea. You know, kind of kind of LGBT kind of based ones as well.

SPEAKER_10 16:40

Yep.

SPEAKER_06 16:41

Um If I'm totally honest, probably the internet would have been bored.

SPEAKER_08 16:49

Fair enough. There's a large part of the internet that is made up of that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 16:54

You know. Um what else? What else? Uh social media, uh well, like my mobile phone kind of thing. I would have used a lot of apps in London. Um kind of maybe some easy travel ones, some definitely some dating ones at the time. I was horribly desperate. So I would I would use a lot of uh dating apps.

SPEAKER_09 17:17

Sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_06 17:19

Which, yeah, yeah. I had quite a lot of friends using plenty of fish all the time.

SPEAKER_08 17:23

Plenty of fish. That's an app.

SPEAKER_06 17:25

Yeah, it uh as an app or a website, yeah. You know, like plenty of fish in the sea.

SPEAKER_09 17:31

Right.

SPEAKER_06 17:31

Oh me, my friends would use that quite a bit. Uh straight friends as well, not just straight friends.

SPEAKER_08 17:37

We uh I was so excited that you're you were a heavy tech user early or heavy internet user early on. This is gonna be an interesting comparison. So you used it pretty much. It sounds like you you for what you did in real life, it sounds like you had like a virtual component of all a lot of those facts.

SPEAKER_06 17:55

I would think so. Yes, yes. And also because I used to live by myself. So of an evening, it would be my escape into kind of speaking to other people.

SPEAKER_08 18:05

Me too. I didn't live with anyone for a long-term basis or get married or any of that until my late 30s. So I had a lot of time after work at night where I was like, no, I don't just want to talk to anyone, I want to talk to people who want to talk about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I would do a lot online. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 18:20

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we'd do that, and then I would do maybe some superhero kind of like Marvel comic kind of websites and things like that as well. Yeah. But I mean, so yes, it would be a combination of chatting and then um maybe helpful things. So yeah, cooking websites to to cook, travel websites to place wherever I needed to be.

SPEAKER_08 18:43

Okay, so let's fast forward to Spain. How long did you live in Spain for?

SPEAKER_06 18:47

Yeah, it was only probably about two months.

SPEAKER_08 18:50

Oh, okay. Sorry, we're not gonna we're not gonna count Spain then, because that sounds more like more of a trip than a live in expensive.

SPEAKER_06 18:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 18:56

Okay, so Greece, how long was that for?

SPEAKER_06 18:59

A full year.

SPEAKER_08 19:00

Okay, we're gonna do that one. So and I'm not judging your life. I'm just it it's very different when you be in when you're in a place for a couple of months versus you have like a daily existence for a year.

SPEAKER_12 19:10

Yeah, for sure. Definitely, definitely.

SPEAKER_08 19:12

So when you were in Greece, how many of these online things carried over and did you use there?

SPEAKER_06 19:19

Yeah, probably um so I would have said that I probably became more of a heavy Skype user because I was abroad. So I would Skype friends and family quite a lot.

SPEAKER_12 19:29

Sure, sure.

SPEAKER_06 19:30

Um I became a heavier kind of free internet call person, so WhatsApp a lot more. Yeah. Um there was another one, I can't remember Viber or something was like um yeah, internet phone things. I would maybe try and use that. Anything and anything that would cost me less money. Sure. Facebook continued really heavily, yeah. Really heavily. I would use Facebook notes to blog my kind of Greek life, and I try to make it like a interest page on Facebook about kind of hot Greek men at the beach kind of thing as well. Yeah, it it didn't work really, but um I've always had an interest in that, so it definitely died.

SPEAKER_08 20:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 20:20

So definitely those things.

SPEAKER_08 20:22

Yeah, with the with the Facebook posts about your your life in Greece, who were you were you talking to friends back home? Were you trying to connect with new folks that were interested in Greece and all the things you were seeing in Greece? Or who was your who was your audience?

SPEAKER_06 20:37

My audience would be mostly be my friends and family back home so that they got a more detailed description of what was going on with my apartments that I was being given had no internet access.

SPEAKER_08 20:49

I'm sorry, what?

SPEAKER_06 20:51

I had no internet access for a year, and she told me like almost every week, I'm I'll get you the internet, I'll get you the internet, and it never came, it never came. So when I was in this apartment, I was back on like text messaging and things. You're like, who does this? Who does this? You know, and so I I had to go to this really nice cafe, and they became my my close friends. It was an ice cream shop, and I would just sit there every morning and call or write, check my emails, do everything. But it was this this horrible. I my computer was about this size, you know. I just bought one of those little silly ones so that I could go with.

SPEAKER_03 21:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 21:38

Um thinking oh it'll do me for a little while.

SPEAKER_03 21:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 21:42

But it was horrible.

SPEAKER_08 21:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 21:45

It was horrible.

SPEAKER_08 21:47

Yeah. I hadn't very similar experience when I lived in Bogota, Colombia. Is it in Colombia? No, I'm so sorry. It was in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I actually hired a local college student because I thought it was a language barrier, because my Spanish is pretty awful. So I thought me calling the phone company trying to get my internet, I thought it was a language barrier. So I got a local college student, I hired her to be not just to be the interpreter, but to pretend she was me. So they would think it was this person in the apartment that was a local that was trying to get internet. And we tried for three months and I could not get internet in the apartment.

SPEAKER_06 22:22

I ended up doing one of those horribly stupid things, putting my data roaming on all the time when I was young.

SPEAKER_07 22:28

Oh no.

SPEAKER_06 22:30

Yes, yes, yes. Now, because at the time I'd uh taken voluntary redundancy from work, I had a bit of cash in the bank, I probably wasted that year so much money on because every time I was lonely, every time I was feeling a bit down, or I wanted to meet someone or whatever it would be, my data roaming had to go on to use it.

SPEAKER_12 22:53

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 22:54

Because um, once all those coffee shops and places closed down for the night, so did the internet.

SPEAKER_02 23:01

Yeah. Oh gosh.

SPEAKER_06 23:03

Like at 10:30, going, what to do?

SPEAKER_08 23:08

Yeah, yeah, you know. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_06 23:11

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 23:13

And yeah, you were in Greece one year, and so it it takes up a while to build a local community and stuff. So it's like, okay, once you start to meet people and have that real life community, then you can kind of go offline a little bit. But that first year is super hard to do that.

SPEAKER_06 23:30

So really, really difficult, really difficult. And I mean, again, they knew I was only going to be a year.

SPEAKER_02 23:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_06 23:36

So then using them for their internet, you know, if you're at these places, it it it it didn't feel nice at the same time.

SPEAKER_02 23:43

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_06 23:44

So one of the things that I would do uh in reply is that I would use TripAdvisor to leave positive comments wherever I was given free Wi-Fi.

SPEAKER_08 23:55

That's nice, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 23:56

Um people would see, okay, so the hotel that I was sitting in, the coffee shop, the bar, whatever, yeah, is nice enough to allow me to sit there for a couple of hours with a couple of drinks or the pool or whatever, and and use their internet.

SPEAKER_09 24:10

Right, right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_06 24:11

So the trip advice was the only bonus I could kind of give them.

SPEAKER_08 24:15

Yeah. Which is really helpful for them.

SPEAKER_06 24:19

Like yeah, I hope well, yeah, because it was helpful for me as well.

SPEAKER_08 24:22

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay, so I'm guessing even with the roaming and all of that, you were probably spending less time online than you did before you went there.

SPEAKER_06 24:32

Yeah, I would have done completely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 24:34

So what stuff got truncated or just completely that you you stopped using?

SPEAKER_06 24:40

So what I would say is probably when I was able to get on, rather than sitting, you know, as you do for a morning, maybe, everything was just compacted.

SPEAKER_12 24:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 24:50

So it would be it wouldn't be maybe so much that things were left aside, but I would be much choosier on I don't need to read that article. Let me read the ones that I'm really interested. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, done. Switch that one off, on to the next one. Okay, uh, next one, something like that.

SPEAKER_03 25:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 25:11

So you're just trying to pack your time because also some of those places, you know, it's maybe like a three hours internet.

SPEAKER_03 25:18

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 25:19

So you want to use it the best way you can.

SPEAKER_08 25:22

Yeah. That's when I started making like post-it lists that I would put like on near the keyboard, and I'm like, I have to do this stuff first, and then if I have time, I can do anything else. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 25:34

I would say that probably one of the bigger things that's had then gone would be my Facebook posts.

SPEAKER_03 25:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 25:41

So I hardly ever, um okay. I would say until I moved to Hong Kong, I have hardly ever posted my own personal, you know, Steve is doing blah de blah.

SPEAKER_03 25:54

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 25:55

Since I moved moved to Greece. Um what happened was that I was changing my kind of daily three or four, you know, Steve's cooking his dinner, Steve's going out with a guy, Steve's blah blah blah blah, down to more interesting things like here are the photographs I want to show you from the last week. Or here's the note of everything that's gone on. So it was much more, I suppose, like news rather than daily crap.

SPEAKER_08 26:26

And you made that switch because of the time that you had online, or because yeah, because because of the time that I had online. Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_06 26:34

Because I wanted people to see something better than just you know, Steve sitting at the pool.

SPEAKER_02 26:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 26:45

Good. Because I didn't want it to be a holiday. I didn't want people to think, oh, he's left and he's just on holiday, he's not doing anything.

SPEAKER_09 26:54

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_06 26:56

I wanted people, excuse me, to see that there was a job and a life and that I was content, you know. And so I've kind of stopped reading people's statuses as well.

SPEAKER_08 27:11

Okay. Why were you so concerned with them knowing that you had like a daily work life and you weren't just having fun all the time? Why was that important?

SPEAKER_06 27:21

Um because quite a few people didn't know why I was leaving. Ah they they couldn't see why I was leaving. And I still have friends that say every time I call them, or whenever they're a bit sad, or whenever we have a chat, when are you coming home? When are you coming home? Because to them, home is the only place that you can be to have a successful life. And so I needed people to see that I was doing something. Yeah, it I wasn't showing off. It was I've got a life. I'm trying to make myself be happy and have something.

SPEAKER_08 28:04

Do you when you visit, do you have people say, Oh, thank goodness you're home now? Don't you feel better? Do you they say, Yeah. Yeah, I never know what to do with that. Because I don't want to insult the place that they consider my home, that they consider their home, but I don't really breathe a sigh of relief when I go home. I'm slightly stressed out because I I left because I didn't fit in there. I don't know about you, but I left because I did I couldn't find my niche, my place, my comfort zone, my job, that kind of thing. So I'm like, it's nice to visit people, but I'm not severely connected to to my passport country in and of itself. So I just I just kind of smile because I don't know what else to say. What do you say?

SPEAKER_06 28:45

Yeah, well, I'm I I'm I'm I do fit in there. I do I do like being there. Um I have an apartment in London that I rent out, I had a nice house, I used to have good hobbies, great friends, but uh I made quite a few stupid young person mistakes. I was overly excited with boys, I was yeah, I I didn't I didn't have a great sense of self and um uh distance between people and things. I I didn't do good stuff sometimes. Okay. And that's one of the reasons that I thought it was time for a change.

SPEAKER_12 29:27

Ah, okay.

SPEAKER_06 29:29

The years that I would go back, so it's a bit different now because I do have a partner, we've been together for six years. We have been together almost as long as I've been in China.

SPEAKER_03 29:38

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 29:39

We met in China within my first three months of being there.

SPEAKER_03 29:43

Wow, okay.

SPEAKER_06 29:44

I know. So we have been together for six years.

SPEAKER_03 29:47

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 29:48

And he's been home with me twice.

SPEAKER_02 29:51

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 29:52

But prior to that, I would go home myself, and that allowed people to see that I had no connection to China, and therefore they would say, When are you coming back? When are you coming back?

SPEAKER_02 30:07

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 30:07

Don't you think I'm gonna come back now? And um, what was very interesting was we went home this summer and we we had a we had a wedding blessing together, and one of my oldest, bestest friends broke down in tears when she was leaving us because she was so happy to say, every year you've been back, I've been worried about you and wanting you to come back because I thought you were alone, and now I know you're not alone. Oh I'm so happy that you're going back to lit, you know. And quite strange that people needed to see that I was with someone else to know that I fitted in somewhere.

SPEAKER_08 30:51

Yeah, I can relate so much. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, because I what did I start backpacking in when I was 30 and then teaching when I was 35, 34, 32? And I didn't get married till I was 37. So for those years that I was living alone, people are like, oh, I don't know, I don't know. But once I got married, a lot of the questions went away. And I'm like, that's it. That makes you okay that I live. I mean, I've lived in slightly places, and I'm like, that makes it okay.

SPEAKER_06 31:27

But I think it's because it's normal to them. You're back into a normal life, you're just not in the country, you're in a normal life. You must be okay if you've gotten married.

SPEAKER_08 31:36

Right? I guess so. I guess so. But I I keep trying to relate to them. I still go to work, I still go not so much to the post office anymore, but I still go actually I don't go to the grocery store anymore either. Okay, I get groceries delivered, but I do kind of regular daily life stuff, and I try to instill that in them, but it's just it's so hard geographically for them to understand sometimes.

SPEAKER_06 31:57

I think also because China is so foreign, and also you know, the social media you you can't really, if you're outside China, integrate in and China integrate out. Now that I'm in Hong Kong, people are I've had people going, I might come this Christmas. Are you doing anything? So I've been waiting for years for people to say, Shall I come visit you? And they've never but oh now it's China, it's Hong Kong. Oh, we might come.

SPEAKER_02 32:25

Yeah, you know, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 32:27

Because it's relatable.

SPEAKER_08 32:30

Right, right. Yeah, China gets a really bad rap in the foreign press. Yes, really, if they only knew what big cities in Chinas were like. Oh, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 32:40

It's quite interesting because on Facebook now, one of one of the favorite things that I like to watch is a follow-up person um today in Guangzhou or something like that. And it's videos of Chinese people behaving like Chinese people, but in a manner that quite a lot of people go, You do so I should I you're not you're not can't record that, can you?

SPEAKER_08 33:05

You don't need to send it. Is it like the one like there was one last week, I don't even remember where I saw it on social media, but the woman like tried to throw her like seven-year-old son in front of a car and go through herself, like that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_06 33:16

And then we tended to have a fit.

SPEAKER_08 33:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 33:20

That's that's been viewed as soon as as soon as you change from Xinjiang into Hong Kong, you can see stuff like that. Yeah, no, you know, and quite a lot of people, especially in Hong Kong, are responding going, oh my, you know, these people are savages, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

SPEAKER_12 33:37

And you're like, uh yeah.

SPEAKER_06 33:41

No, but you can imagine that this country has been locked off from the world forever.

SPEAKER_08 33:49

Forever. And when you have 1.4 billion people, you're going to have idiots. We have idiots, and we're not that big.

SPEAKER_12 33:55

Of course.

SPEAKER_08 33:56

I mean, yeah. And and similar to China, well, see, but the Chinese stuff that's that's ridiculous like that is is really, like you said, in in Chinese social media, whereas the American stuff, everybody sees.

SPEAKER_12 34:09

Yes.

SPEAKER_08 34:10

So in a way, they're slightly protected.

SPEAKER_12 34:13

Whereas ours is quite true, isn't it?

SPEAKER_08 34:16

Yes. Some people think that's the only part of America, and I'm like, please no, come on.

SPEAKER_06 34:21

Um, yeah, so well, if we're to it's one of the other things that I follow a lot. Well, I don't follow a lot, but I follow my friends who comment and post about Trump online. It is one of my secret things just to watch and just go, what is happening to the world? It's um and re-exit is another one because people have such polarizing views.

SPEAKER_09 34:45

Sure, sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_06 34:47

And to some people, you know, as soon as you can get online, you become a different idiotic person.

SPEAKER_08 34:53

Right, right. Yeah, no, it's it's amazing. And what people say to each other online is amazing too. Like one of my favorite new podcasts, because I listen to way too many of these, is one that calls uh conversations with people who hate me. And it's this gentleman who um is in the in the LBGT community and he did a TED talk uh because he got he was very vocal. I I don't remember what his medium was, if he was a blogger or a video person or what have you, but he kept getting negative comments that were really cruel, and then he'd contact the people and they'd say, Oh, I didn't mean it like that, and they'd pretend to be nice. And so what he did is he made this podcast where he literally gets sometimes it's people who comment meanly towards him, and sometimes it's towards somebody else. So if there's if there's somebody that left like a really cruel comment towards somebody else's creature, he'll get both person, the creator of the thing that was commented on and the person who made the mean comment, and he'll talk to the two people separately and then he'll have them talk to each other. Oh wow, yeah, and his main thing is remember there's somebody on the other side of that screen. Because he's like, just think before you hit enter, which I think is such a really powerful lesson because we just yeah, we forget how we yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 36:07

I mean that's that's why I started my social media challenge. You know, the one yes, yes, that was one of the things people are so horrible to each other, yeah. And but I I don't honestly know where it comes from. I am a good guy, but I see quite a lot of comments and quite a lot of posts that I automatically want to negatively comment about.

SPEAKER_08 36:32

What do you think it is? What makes us do that?

SPEAKER_06 36:35

So one of one of the things is uh is a teaching thing, yeah. So I do become this grammar Nazi that I've never I've never been before, and I have friends that do it to me and I hate them for it.

SPEAKER_03 36:49

Right, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 36:51

Automatically I want to do it, and then there's other things that I I think it's because if they were your real life friends and you could see them face to face, you would say to that, don't do that. It's stupid, you know. But they would see the reaction, they would see the tone in your voice, they would know that you're your friend, you're not being horrible. But we cannot type it right the way we would actually want to say it.

SPEAKER_03 37:19

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 37:20

And so people just see words.

SPEAKER_03 37:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 37:24

It's horrible. You know, your negative brain, your negative space in your brain takes it into that place immediately. It does. Even if it hadn't been said, oh, I didn't mean it like that, and maybe she didn't.

SPEAKER_08 37:35

I have a new YouTube channel called Tube to Pod, and what I want to do in this channel is have micro videos of people answering three questions about podcasts. My goal for this channel is to bridge people from YouTube over to podcasts. Not to replace their YouTube viewing, but to supplement it with podcasts. A lot of people apparently still are not listening to podcasts, still are unaware of what they are, what they can do with them, what they can learn from them, that kind of thing. So the three questions are one, where do you listen to podcasts? Two, why do you listen to podcasts? And three, what is your favorite podcast at the moment? Now, if you're interested in participating in this, you can either post a video under two minutes on Instagram with the hashtag tube to pod. Or you can email me your video and I'll post it on the YouTube channel. If you put it on Instagram, I'll record it, copy it over onto the channel. If you send it to me via email, I'll post it over onto the channel. And if you are more tech-savvy than clearly I am, and you know a better way how to get other people's videos onto YouTube, please let me know. Because right now I'm doing a copy and paste kind of thing. So I really look forward to your participation in that. Again, it's under two minutes, it's three questions, it's super easy. I want to expose people on YouTube to another audio experience that I think they would really, really enjoy to spread the joy of podcasts. I think there's a lot of specific niche content out there that can teach us a lot about the world and a lot about the things we're already interested in in moments of the day when we're not doing anything else with our brain. So yeah, it's a push to people to learn more about the things that they are already interested in or learn about things that they don't even know exist yet. Anyway, tube to pod. I'll also put the link to the new channel in the show notes. No, it's crazy. It's crazy because I'll find myself kind of latching on to something that I disagree with, and I'll start to write a comment. And then I'll notice by the end of it, I'll start to backtrack a little bit and then say something nice. And sometimes I'll even just delete the first part. Like the whole reason why I started to write it, because I'm like, that's not important. Why is this happening? Yeah. What the hell is that?

SPEAKER_06 39:44

I think it's quite interesting that we do that with email.

SPEAKER_03 39:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 39:49

Especially if you've, you know, I I I learned at a very sort of early age in my business career that if you've if you're having a bad day and there's a horrible shitty email there, you can type the response, but you walk away and you come back to it five minutes later to review it and delete it and start again. You know, but I think maybe on social media it is so easy, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. You don't think about it until the minute afterwards going, oh, that wasn't nice.

SPEAKER_08 40:16

Yeah. So you think emails are a little more we're a little more reserved with emails, but with social media, it's that it's just so much quicker.

SPEAKER_06 40:25

I think it's that instant. I mean, emails are quick, but you have to sit there behind a desk. Sure. I I mean I don't I don't generally type very much emails on my phone unless it's uh yes, no, thank you done. But when it is uh when it is a professional email, you sit behind a computer and you type it. And think about how you word it.

SPEAKER_08 40:48

You're bringing up an idea. Like there would be an interesting study if if they would take like the mean comments online, if they were able to track if they came from a cell phone, a tablet, a computer.

SPEAKER_06 40:59

Yes.

SPEAKER_08 40:59

Wow, that would be amazing.

SPEAKER_06 41:02

Yeah, and I'm sure that probably uh you the cell phone would be the answer.

SPEAKER_07 41:07

I think it would be yeah.

SPEAKER_06 41:08

Yeah, what happens now is I mean, this is the thing. Nowadays, I cannot do anything if my TV's not on and my phone's not in my hand. I ignore them both, but I use them both. But it's so easy for me to bum bum bum bum off a couple of lines.

SPEAKER_03 41:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 41:23

Whereas this is this kind of generation where you you don't have a computer kind of to sit there and oh, let me type a full email reply to your picture, Kim Kardashian. You know.

SPEAKER_08 41:36

So true. It's uh no, you're really, really bringing out a point I hadn't thought about before. Because I'm I'm I keep trying to buy and use tablets and I hate them. And I needed a new editing software for my podcast. So I thought, let me try tablets. Maybe that will be the way. And I hated it. It didn't work out well this time, again, again. So I'm selling it. And so people are reaching me in different ways via text, via WeChat, in a text, via email, blah, blah, blah. And I'm much nicer to the people that ask me ridiculous questions when it's an email, because I can just open up another window, copy the information, and send it. But when they say what what's the model number or how much memory is it? I'm like, I literally posted the uh all of the stats in the ad. So I'm like, why are you asking me this? I'm like, I'm I'm sorry, I'm not a salesperson, I'm not gonna convince you to buy it. All the information's in the ad. Please look at the ad. I'm on my phone, I'm going to someplace, I don't have time. But I notice I'm much snippier on my phone than when I answer it with an email. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 42:34

And I I wonder whether that's got a thing to do about with rushing around. We still see mobile phone as a convenience, whereas I sit down to answer my emails.

SPEAKER_03 42:45

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 42:46

I don't do it often now because uh we do spend so much time communicating over our phone, but when I sit down behind my emails, I will read them properly, I will respond to them properly.

SPEAKER_12 42:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 42:57

You know, my mum will even email me some lengthy email, but if she WhatsApps me, I'll I'll probably ignore it for a little while, read it, unread it, think, oh, I'll get back to it later, whatever.

SPEAKER_12 43:08

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 43:09

But if it was an email and I had email time, then I would do it.

SPEAKER_08 43:14

That's a really, really good point. Having said all of this though, I really do like the convenience of knowing when stuff comes in when I'm out away from my computer.

SPEAKER_06 43:24

Oh, of course, yes. I mean, that's like I I um I don't know how I would live without WeChat or WhatsApp. Mostly WeChat, you know, but now I have to get back into the swing of other places using other things.

SPEAKER_09 43:37

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_06 43:38

I I remember so if we go back to the timeline kind of thing, China once. I remember arriving in China, what would it be, 2012 kind of November time.

SPEAKER_12 43:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 43:51

And I remember WeChat must have just started because I remember telling expats to put it on their phone. They didn't have it yet. And we were sitting around a bar table, it was Happy Monk, it was Happy Monk in Guangzhou, um, just sitting and then kind of messaging each other to try out the system while sitting beside each other.

SPEAKER_03 44:14

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 44:15

You know, and then suddenly people were just it was non stop using it all the time, and it's it's so good, it's so good as a tool.

SPEAKER_12 44:29

It is too.

SPEAKER_06 44:30

And I believe that the rest of the world is missing out on not having WeChat.

SPEAKER_08 44:36

It's it's truly amazing. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's hard to describe it to like I have some friends who have gotten on it just because the video calls are so much more stable than Skype and stuff. But they only literally just only call me and sometimes they'll play with the stickers because I'm a sticker person. But just the function, and I I barely have scratched the surface because my language level is still really low, and I know there's a lot of services and things that I could even tap into.

SPEAKER_12 44:59

Yeah, similar.

SPEAKER_08 45:01

But just the groups, like I got off of Facebook a long time ago for various reasons. But the groups and the communication aspect and the text versus voice aspect, like there's so many different parts of it that are so convenient.

SPEAKER_06 45:13

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 45:14

Yeah, no, it's amazing. But okay, we touched. Oh, sorry.

SPEAKER_06 45:18

No, no, I was just I remember trying to similarly say to my friends, get WeChat, get WeChat, get WeChat. It's much easier to communicate with me. And they did, but they deleted it probably about five minutes later because they needed the space for something else on their phone.

SPEAKER_08 45:32

Sure.

SPEAKER_06 45:33

I'm the only one using it.

SPEAKER_08 45:35

And understandably, I've had friends outside of China who were worried about security issues. So I can I get that to a degree, but honestly, I don't think any place online is safe. I don't think it has been. I think just think we think we thought it was because we didn't know better.

SPEAKER_06 45:50

And honestly, if you're only messaging someone back and forth or having a video call, I don't what are you so worried about? I mean, yeah. That kind of idea. People put everything online, people put everything online, and you're worried about the Chinese government reading a message.

SPEAKER_08 46:05

Right, right. I think they think it's going to they're gonna get something on their phone that's gonna go into their other apps and do all this other stuff, but I think that's an old wives tale kind of thing, urban myth myth.

SPEAKER_06 46:17

I've never heard anyone come up to you and say it happened.

SPEAKER_03 46:21

Yeah, that's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 46:24

No, it's not the bloody Russian government hacking elections. No one has done it.

SPEAKER_08 46:29

And generally speaking, the folks that are very scared of it don't really have anything hackable that's that anybody would be after. It's just like, sorry guys, no, it's not gonna happen. But it's it's fear of the unknown, is what it is, and that that exists in a lot of places. Can you briefly describe your life coaching and the the project that you just did?

SPEAKER_06 46:49

Yeah, yes. So um up until maybe what was it, May last year, I was uh headmaster uh service manager at Wall Street English.

SPEAKER_12 46:57

Ah, okay.

SPEAKER_06 46:59

I'd got myself into a bit of a rut, I was a bit bored, and again, taking advice from other people, kind of someone had said, why don't you try coaching? You love training, it's it's something a little bit different. And what I did is I'd done an online course from the UK, so again, another online kind of use. I had a social media based uh tutor in the UK. I made sure that our times matched when we needed to speak and some coursework, etc. So that was really handy. It didn't need a VPN in in China, which was also cool.

SPEAKER_02 47:32

Wow, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 47:33

Um I don't know how it maybe because it was an education site, you know, rather than a social media Facebook sites, but that was really helpful. And you know, that is one of the reasons why I got off Facebook just because I could not be bothered switching it on all the time.

SPEAKER_02 47:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 47:49

And so I qualified as a life coach.

SPEAKER_02 47:52

Nice.

SPEAKER_06 47:53

And so my friend at home, a wonderful friend of mine, her name's Rachel. She has gone through some difficult times with her marriage, which is now dissolved. And we spoke at length about her needing some assistance. Uh, nothing like she was not psychological assistance or anything like that. She just needed a bit of help. And I said, you know, as a coach, I am suggesting that you speak to someone in your area in Scotland, and she did, and she loved it, she really, really enjoyed it. And that coach in Scotland found her some of these online Facebook challenges. So I don't know, you probably will have seen. Oh, I of course you've seen. Um, it was a couple of years ago when Facebook and Instagram and changed, you know, at the top they have the your story.

SPEAKER_08 48:47

I haven't been on Facebook in years.

SPEAKER_06 48:49

Oh, right, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_08 48:50

So Instagram, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 48:52

Yeah. They've got this your story part where you can live stream or record the little video part.

SPEAKER_07 49:00

Yes, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 49:03

Yeah, it was suggested to my friend you should join one of these challenges where in groups you live stream to your group and they will give you comments, criticism, motivation to continue. Um for her, it was a little bit more I'm I'm worried about my marriage and I'm needing some confidence boosts and things like that. And that this summer we had a longer chat about it, and she said it had done her wonders, and that it was such a positive, positive experience to put herself out there on social media where people could comment and that they could give her such positivity back rather than this kind of negative type comment, you know.

SPEAKER_09 49:51

Right.

SPEAKER_06 49:51

And so we talked about it a bit. She um gave me some links to a couple of people that are coaches in the UK that do it regularly.

SPEAKER_09 49:59

Right.

SPEAKER_06 50:00

And so uh I I used my knowledge management tools to steal you know the idea and thought, well, let's let's give it a try. Let's give it a try.

SPEAKER_12 50:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 50:13

Now, if I'd been at home, I would have done it on Facebook because the idea is that you do it live.

SPEAKER_07 50:18

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_06 50:19

But we can't do that in China. WeChat doesn't have the kind of you know, group live kind of function.

SPEAKER_08 50:25

Yeah, I haven't, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's one thing it's missing, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 50:28

Roll out whatever, you know, 35.6 or whatever, we'll probably have something because the others have it. So what I did was I thought, well, why don't we do it as a video diary? And comment live as you're speaking, but we can use our own time to think, okay, I'll I'll watch them tonight at 10 o'clock and and then and positively comment.

SPEAKER_03 50:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 50:52

So I I think I ended up with about 16 people.

SPEAKER_03 50:55

Nice.

SPEAKER_06 50:56

Which is great.

SPEAKER_03 50:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 50:57

Uh you know, as a first time. Almost everyone has stuck with the program. I think about four or five got halfway. Yes. Yeah, yes, yes, yes. Um my friend Rachel joined us from the UK. She got WeChat and joined us and loved it. But she did say if 80% of them have stayed, that's good.

SPEAKER_02 51:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 51:17

Yeah. And so what I do is in the main group is I set them a challenge and I do my video to them in the main group. And then I have three other groups where they can only see four other videos, mostly due to time. You don't waste your whole day watching 16 videos.

SPEAKER_12 51:36

Sure.

SPEAKER_06 51:36

And I'd ask people to keep to two minutes. Some of them have been short, some of them been a bit longer.

SPEAKER_08 51:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 51:44

But people have loved it. They've really enjoyed it.

SPEAKER_08 51:49

Amazing. Because I don't know, I like I come from not from the traditional like K through 12 or primary-secondary school education, but I I've done more of the perimeter of education. The private language schools, like like Wall Street would be, and uh some universities in the US while I was in grad school, and the MOOCs, the massive online open courses. If there isn't an in-person class either at the beginning or middle, their success rate in keeping students is really low. So it's really impressive that you've uh created the environment where the majority, if not all of the people, are still participating. That's that's seriously something they could learn about, they could learn from in those courses.

SPEAKER_06 52:34

I well, um I I'm not really good with sometimes personal feedback and positivity, but they've been really keep saying, we've really enjoyed it. You're really good at this. This is great. You've been such a great coach and we've loved doing it. Yeah. And um we're almost up. It's uh day 19 of 21 because hopefully after 21 days, yeah, you know, this positive habit will have up with them. And what I did was I broke down the weeks into kind of uh kind of a bit about you, a bit about your social media use and plan. So most people on on there want to use social media and live video, but were too scared to really get going.

SPEAKER_12 53:15

Sure.

SPEAKER_06 53:16

So this is giving them a safe space with 16 people, yeah, you know, before they put themselves out there to the mass market.

SPEAKER_03 53:23

Cool, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 53:24

And then the last week we've been doing kind of goal setting, uh motivation, little bits like that. And then in between the weekends, we've done silly things, you know, because it's not all you know marketing and sales. They've left thinked, they've done their squats, they've done their exercises, they've done dancing in the kitchen, you know.

SPEAKER_12 53:47

Yay!

SPEAKER_06 53:49

Because if you can't do that as well, why should I believe you when you're trying to sell something to me online?

SPEAKER_12 53:55

Yep.

SPEAKER_06 53:57

You know, have fun with it as well.

SPEAKER_12 53:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 53:59

And not everyone danced, not everyone lip synced, but the people that did, you know, they were like, This was great. This was really good.

SPEAKER_12 54:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 54:11

Um, and we've got two of my old Chinese students, and one of them's kind of went away because she was worried about her English. The other one was like, I don't care, I'm just going to do this. Good.

SPEAKER_08 54:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's really, really good. Oh my gosh, this sounds wonderful. And are you gonna do more workshops like this in the future?

SPEAKER_06 54:33

Yeah, I'd love to. Yeah, I think this was really good. And I only charge about a hundred per person. So I made about a hand, I was quite happy.

SPEAKER_08 54:41

Um, but it's a hundred in what currency?

SPEAKER_06 54:44

Oh, sorry, uh hundred RB. Gotcha.

SPEAKER_08 54:47

Oh my god, that's it. Yeah, that's a good one.

SPEAKER_06 54:49

So I should have uh yes, yes, yes. But I um maybe next time I will be a little less you're not the only person to say this is a bit cheap.

SPEAKER_08 54:59

But it's good because you're you're learning from it and you'll you'll mold it into yeah, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_06 55:04

So um what I've done as we've as we've gone is I've I've sent out some coaching articles to them that I've researched and written about goals and about themselves and about motivation so that they can get something from me.

SPEAKER_09 55:17

Right, right, right.

SPEAKER_06 55:19

So maybe next time I'll maybe have something more, you know, uh how to put social media in place in your business or you know, how to how to use the camera, you know, anything and everything like that. You know, which microphones might, you know, people might want that.

SPEAKER_08 55:32

Yeah, no, they definitely would. Wow. Yeah, no, that's that's very, very true. Okay, I have a a very basic question. What is the difference between a career coach and a life coach?

SPEAKER_06 55:43

Um, yeah, that's a really good question. And I would probably say not a lot, to be honest.

SPEAKER_08 55:48

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 55:49

Um, mostly because if you take the term coaching, I would say that the skills and the job description is the same, whatever it might be.

SPEAKER_12 55:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 56:00

So when I when when someone asks me a similar style of question, I say that it is my job to sit with you, to let you discuss your your worries, your concerns. So say our session is about an hour. I will give you five minutes to complain because that's not what we go for. So get your complaints over. I will give you about 40 minutes so that we can talk and listen. And what I what I will do is I will drill down some good questions for you, and then we'll spend the last 10 minutes in sort of getting a plan together. What are you going to do between now and our next session so that you can achieve? And then in between the sessions, I will reinforce and motivate a little bit of both. So it's been you know three days since we met. How are you getting on? Are you on track? If you're not, why not? What's stopping you? And uh for me, I don't like the word busy. I think busy is a dirty word because you have 24 hours in a day. And if you keep telling me that you're busy, but you came to me looking for help. So I'm here to help you.

SPEAKER_09 57:20

Right, right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_06 57:21

If it means a kick up the bum, it means a kick up the bum. If it means celebrating with a beer at the end of the month because you've done your stuff, then we do that as well.

SPEAKER_02 57:29

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 57:30

So, in terms of the topic, if you want to talk about your career, no problems. Let's do that. I've had people do that. If you want to talk about your marriage and your relationship and maybe bringing a bit of spark back into that, let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_07 57:45

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 57:46

If you want to talk about your health and it's affecting your maybe your social life or your work, let's talk about that.

SPEAKER_07 57:53

Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

SPEAKER_08 57:54

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 57:55

Ultimately, I am here to listen, ask questions, set you a plan.

SPEAKER_08 57:58

Right, right, right. So, since you started the life coaching, do you find that what you do online has changed a lot?

SPEAKER_06 58:06

Oh, totally and utterly. Yes, totally and utterly. When I started, almost a year ago, probably to the day, I met with a coach in Guangzhou.

SPEAKER_03 58:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 58:18

And interestingly, she went through my WeChat moments prior to meeting me. And one of her pieces of advice, which I was really upset with at the time, but now I tell you why, is that she basically said, Your WeChat moments are unprofessional and you need to delete some of that content.

SPEAKER_03 58:41

Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 58:45

Now, that's not to say that my WeChat moments were full of you know, 18 plus or derogatory or racism, none of the sort.

SPEAKER_08 58:55

Sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_06 58:55

But I can see why someone going back to say, okay, I don't know who this guy is, let me have a little look, could maybe see some of it might not be great.

SPEAKER_09 59:09

Right.

SPEAKER_06 59:10

So it definitely has turned more professional. And what's what I need to do is strike a balance between being boring and being professional.

SPEAKER_02 59:22

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 59:23

Because I'm not a boring person. So if someone came to me and read my moments and be like, oh, this is a bit dull, they also not take me on as a coach.

SPEAKER_08 59:32

Right, right, right, right, right. Yeah. It is a tricky balance. And you want to be you want to be personable, but you don't want to share too much. So there's this, yeah. It is a very, very tricky balance. And did you did you fine-tune your other social media like you did your reach out moments?

SPEAKER_06 59:50

Uh a little bit. So, for example, uh on Facebook, I made myself have a company, company page. So that anything that I wrote and recorded that was coaching based goes on there. And I have about 80-90 followers on that. That's fine. Yeah, it's slow, but okay. And then everything else that is me goes on my page.

SPEAKER_12 1:00:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:15

So our wedding photos, uh, life, what I'm doing, if I'm out drinking with my mum and my sister, it goes on there. But that does not equal my professional life as well.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:25

Right, right.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:26

So I can keep them separate.

SPEAKER_09 1:00:28

Sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:29

Um, I I do share my content from my company page on my own page so that people can still see it if they want to. I built myself a Twitter account for my company.

SPEAKER_12 1:00:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:40

And so basically what goes on my Facebook goes on my Twitter, goes on my WeChat. The the pretty same thing.

SPEAKER_12 1:00:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:47

I don't really use Twitter for anything else.

SPEAKER_12 1:00:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:00:51

I don't know that I enjoy it. I don't know that I find a benefit from it.

SPEAKER_08 1:00:55

Twitter is like uh I don't know, I think Twitter's like durian. You either love it or you don't. Yeah, and I'm I'm really not Yeah, I was a huge Twitter fan, but it took me years to kind of refine the people that I followed, and I got a lot of my news and sort of my more serious topics because a lot of people posted articles of things. So that was kind of my my serious interest space. And yeah, and so like the Instagram and the YouTube was like kind of like my end-of-day kind of brain dump kind of fun space.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:28

But I've yeah, I use Instagram purely for fun.

SPEAKER_08 1:01:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Now they've just kind of all morphed into I don't know, everything. Everything just kind of meshed together. I probably need to do a scan. Is there a term for when you clean up your social media? I feel like there needs to be a term for that.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:44

Yeah, there should be, shouldn't there? Um that is one thing that I probably need to do is I do occasionally go through and block people's movies. Um as soon as they start selling on weekends.

SPEAKER_12 1:01:57

Yeah.

unknown 1:01:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:01:59

You know, I don't need nine pictures of a pair of shoes.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:05

Instagram! People sell lots of t-shirts on Instagram and they keep following me, and I'm like, nobody needs this mud new t-shirts. I'm not on Instagram to buy clothes, let alone ugly t-shirts that just what? No, I live in China. I have clothes, lots of clothes available to me.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:21

Yeah. I get lots of travel people following me on in China. Huh. Which I think that's probably because because when I do post, I sometimes post hashtag Hong Kong, hashtag Guangzhou.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:35

So maybe you know it's my hashtag use. But um I get that. And I but if you actually saw what I'm posting on Instagram, you would not follow me.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:44

I post about podcasts and languages, and I get a lot of t-shirts and shoes. I post about drag queens.

SPEAKER_06 1:02:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:02:58

It's bizarre.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:00

I I post about drag queens. There's no need for travel and tourism in China linking to drag queen. You don't need it. It's really strange.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:08

It's really strange. It's so weird. Are they literally just clicking on everybody in a certain location? Like, is it the China part of it that they're clicking on, clicking on click? I don't know. I don't get it. It's very weird. Because if they're Chinese people, because they look like they're Chinese people, they have Hanza characters, so they have the language in there, right? And so I'm like, okay, if you're selling to Chinese people in China, why are you on Instagram going after people that are posting in English? Like it doesn't everybody use Tao Bao.

SPEAKER_06 1:03:36

Yes, yes. And also why are you on and how are you on? Because you obviously have a VPN and you shouldn't be on.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:42

So, okay, so that's what your social media is like now. Oh, we skipped a bunch, didn't we? When you first moved to Guangzhou in 2012, um had time how what was your internet situation like at that point?

SPEAKER_06 1:03:56

Um I was still data roaming stupidly.

SPEAKER_08 1:03:59

What? Why?

SPEAKER_06 1:04:01

I know because I was lonely. I was I was lonesome. I was at home. I yeah, I didn't I didn't enjoy it.

SPEAKER_08 1:04:06

But they didn't have the internet or what was it called back then, broadband or anything?

SPEAKER_06 1:04:11

Yeah, um I I think it was a combination of things. Like I I I used to find myself kind of walking home and being a bit lonesome and thought I'll just phone my aunt, and then suddenly a phone call would be like 300 quid or something, and I'd be like, ah that was not useful. Um so that wasn't good. But yeah, no, I mean I got I got internet in in my apartment, it wasn't a problem. I did get a lot of problems to begin with. Yeah, like I said, my my email account got hacked and blocked, so I kind of got lost a bit there. Yeah, I could get on Facebook sometimes and sometimes not. VPNs were a completely new thing to me.

SPEAKER_12 1:04:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:04:57

Um and they get blocked and stopped, and you never know which ones to use.

SPEAKER_12 1:05:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:02

Um but what happened was you slowly just completely migrate. So my Facebook usage would have gone down from daily down to probably once or twice a month, if even that. And again, scanning, adding some photos, end of story.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:21

My We chat, my WeChat usage would have gone up to like it's never out of my hand.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:28

Never out of my hand.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:31

And it's it's um it's contacting people, it's checking groups, it's all of the new subscriptions that are in there, uh, looking at people's moments, which I now believe are not as interesting as they used to be.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:48

Because before people used to post about their lives, now people post about selling something, work, blah, blah, blah. It's just a marketing tool, people's moments.

SPEAKER_03 1:05:58

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:05:59

So I don't use it as much. So I use it, but I I wouldn't view it as much.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:06

So the stuff you do on your phone, is it is there any like online, offline conne or how much online offline connection is there with the people that you communicate with?

SPEAKER_06 1:06:16

Like a hundred percent. I mean, it's exactly yeah. My partner and I will we chat about a billion times a day.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:25

I I have n I have never deleted our conversation.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:29

In six years? No.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:32

Six years. I've never deleted.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:34

How much room do you have on your phone? Wow.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:37

Yeah, I don't know. I've backed it up once, I think.

SPEAKER_08 1:06:40

Oh my goodness.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:42

He did delete it by accident once and he was miserable.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:47

And at the beginning we talked a lot.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:50

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:06:52

Now it's silly things like I'm going for a poo. I'm going to the supermarket. Do we need anything? When are you coming home?

SPEAKER_12 1:07:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:01

You know, download me this movie. Love you. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_12 1:07:04

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:05

But it's, you know, he would be my number one person that I message at all times. But from then on.

SPEAKER_08 1:07:12

Oh, sorry. People that you meet on WeChat or like friends introduce you or they've or they come into groups that you might be in. Do you end up generally meeting them in in real life as well?

SPEAKER_06 1:07:23

Um yes and no, I would say. Yes and no. So I would say that the big community groups that are based in Guangzhou, we probably knew each other anyway.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:33

Gotcha. And we're in there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:36

Or then, for example, you suddenly meet someone like, oh my god, I've been messaging you for a year. It's we finally had a chance to meet.

SPEAKER_12 1:07:45

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:47

I do have people that are on my WeChat that I will never meet. And I know I'm never going to meet them.

SPEAKER_10 1:07:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:54

And I message them because that they're, you know, they're they they're there.

SPEAKER_10 1:07:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:07:59

But I don't know you.

SPEAKER_10 1:08:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:01

And even though we say we must meet one day for a drink or a coffee, I'm not, I'm not going to do that. I don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:09

I don't I don't know what I would want to say to you.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:13

But I but I'll chit chat with you on fate on WeChat.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:16

Sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:16

But I don't want to speak to you because no, not interested.

SPEAKER_03 1:08:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:21

I have about over a thousand contacts on my WeChat.

SPEAKER_12 1:08:26

Wow. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:27

Quite a lot of them are students. Now I was a teacher for five years, so at Wall Street it's different. They're not primary school students, you don't add them, but they're all adults.

SPEAKER_12 1:08:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:38

And finding an excuse to say no is really difficult.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:44

And and and I did for a while. I did. I did sort of say, I'm the headmaster, it's not appropriate, I shouldn't have your WeChat. And then after a while, I was like, actually, I quite like you, you're quite a nice person.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:08:58

And then you you don't really see them again. Or they leave the school.

SPEAKER_12 1:09:04

Sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:05

And so we say hello sometimes.

SPEAKER_12 1:09:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:08

Or if I post some stuff of my life coaching or just photos, they'll message or I'll message them and say, oh my God, you know, you're doing this, this is so great. Or oh my god, you're suddenly married. I haven't seen you in a oh, it's been a year.

SPEAKER_08 1:09:21

Oh yeah. Wow. So it really there's a wide variety of the context that you have of how often you see them, if you see them in person, that kind of thing. Is that true for the social media that's more online or more like for your international contacts?

SPEAKER_06 1:09:37

No, I think probably my international contacts. So say for example, I use WhatsApp. I purely use WhatsApp for the people that I really want to speak to.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:51

You know, that for my friends. Sure. So if they're not on my WhatsApp list, I don't I'm not going to add anyone else if I don't need you.

SPEAKER_08 1:09:57

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:09:58

You know?

SPEAKER_08 1:09:59

Hex Pats and Geopads, what do you do with the annoying paper mail that you get to your old addresses in your home country? For a few years, I'd have all of my mail forwarded to one friend, and then I'd feel guilty for bothering them so much. So then I'd have a family member deal with my mail and so on and so forth. And I did this for about like what, 12, 13 years. And it got annoying, and let's face it, I miss some mail because people have better things to do than look after my paper correspondence. So I finally broke down and got a service from traveling mailboxes. They will literally receive your mail, you get a US address, you get to pick the city that it's in, and you receive mail, and they'll let you know when mail comes in. They'll open it, scan it for you so you can read it. If you really need to, they'll forward it to you for a fee. You can also get packages delivered as well. And so there's like a variety of different services that you can have where you don't have to keep bugging your friends and family to deal with your paper mail. So if you go to stefffuccio.weebly.com, it's S T E P H F U C C I O dot Weebly, W-E-E-B-L-Y.com. If you go to the bottom, you'll see the blue ad on the right, traveling mailbox. Click on that. I am now an affiliate program with them, so if you join their services, we both end up very, very happy campers, and you never have to ask your friends or family to receive your mail again. It's truly a beautiful thing. I'm so not an expert. No, I'm an inquisitive person. I am far from an expert. You can pin up the information.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:40

So if, for example, I I choose your contact and you press the three dots at the top.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:44

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:45

And press sticky on top.

SPEAKER_07 1:11:48

Oh, that would that's what that means?

SPEAKER_06 1:11:50

It will keep you at the top of all of my chats.

SPEAKER_08 1:11:53

No way! Oh my god, and there it is.

SPEAKER_06 1:11:57

Yeah, so at the minute, that's awesome. I'm gonna have one, two, three, four, five, six, eight chats. Yeah. So one of them is my partner, one of them is because what I do is I send content from my my you know to myself. So I just leave it there.

SPEAKER_10 1:12:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:14

I have my challenge, which is four groups in the minute, because I'm speaking to them every day.

SPEAKER_10 1:12:19

Sure, sure, sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:21

And then everything else goes underneath. And if it gets past Yeah, if it gets past a couple of months, I just delete it.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:31

Yeah. No, I do too. Unless I'm waiting for some reason to talk to them again in a few months, or there's some reason why I need to contact them in the future. I definitely delete them. The only one I've kept is my like consciously kept for a very long time, is my husband's. Just because I did delete it once, similar to what you're saying. I did delete it once and then went, Oh, there's actually information in there I still need. Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:12:53

So I um I wonder when I'm going to delete that.

SPEAKER_08 1:12:56

That's amazing. Oh my god, you could do something crazy fun for an anniversary too, just kind of playing with the information that's on there. That's brilliant.

SPEAKER_12 1:13:05

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_08 1:13:07

A long ass time is the answer, but you could do it.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:12

I do favorite quite a lot of messages.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:15

Oh. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:17

I keep them. I do keep some uh photographs or some messages that we've sent to each other, yeah, or from students that have just been lovely and just think, oh, I I I quite wanted to keep that. What was interesting, I don't know if you've heard of a woman called Joanna Lumley.

SPEAKER_08 1:13:32

Gosh, that name sounds familiar. Tell me more.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:35

TV actress isn't absolutely fabulous.

SPEAKER_12 1:13:38

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:40

So she's the blonde one, you know, the tall one. Gotcha. I I read her autobiography years ago.

unknown 1:13:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:13:47

And there's something that's always stuck with me. She talks about her father who used who used to be in India and him and his mother having all of these letters that they had kept forever.

SPEAKER_12 1:14:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:02

And she writes and complains about, you know, what are young people going to do when they're old?

SPEAKER_12 1:14:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:11

They will not have these letters of messages that they have sent to each other. And if you think about social media has replaced the letter.

SPEAKER_03 1:14:21

Of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:14:22

So what will we do when we're 18? We want to show someone, you know, here's the love letter that my partner sent me when I was 20.

SPEAKER_08 1:14:32

I I don't know. It's like on some level I get that, and on some level, I think we'll have more. Like, because we'll have more photos, more audio, more text, and shorter messages. But yeah, that long, super thought-out methodic letter, not so much. My husband and I change uh cards for for special occasions, and we'll intentionally spend a long time picking out the right card and writing something in there. But letter, I don't think we've ever been on a letter on a letter. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:04

But I do think kind of the short message. I mean, we tell each other we love each other all the time, and it gets to the point where like, yeah, I know, I know. But I can imagine one of the messages I have, two messages I have today for my partner is one when I threw him a surprise birthday party. And the next day when he was at work, he sent me this really long, heartfelt message about what a nice time he'd had. Yeah. And the second one was Valentine's Day, I think last year, after we I think after we'd kind of got engaged, kind of thing. And again, it was this huge heartfelt message. Now to me, that means a lot more than love you, love you, love you, love you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I get it.

SPEAKER_08 1:15:48

Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure. So see, I was thinking of like the audio stuff would replace the letters as you were saying that, and that reconfirms that. So I guess what we need is some sort of software to start transcribing some of those really memorable conversations, and that's what we keep. So there's a business opportunity for you. Run with it, please.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:09

Okay, I'll let you know. Um, yeah, but it that would be true because, like you're saying about you, you know, I could do something fun with all those messages. The concept of sitting there and going through it all is awful.

SPEAKER_08 1:16:23

It's awful.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:24

It's awful.

SPEAKER_08 1:16:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:16:25

I I I couldn't do it.

SPEAKER_08 1:16:27

Yeah, no. And I've recorded for podcast purposes, I have I have like uh an app to record stuff on my phone. So I'll record, I'll take like a WeChat message and record it with that app and then save it so I can use it in the podcast. And I can do that, but there isn't anything in WeChat that makes it easy to do that. Like you can't just record and save or do things like that. So within social media apps, they don't really make it easy to save and organize things that happen like that. So again, another business opportunity for you, Steve, or for anybody who's listening. Um yeah, we do need a better way to to categorize our stuff and to save our stuff.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:06

Yeah, even photo. It's the same with the voice messages. You know, you can't actually forward a voice message.

SPEAKER_09 1:17:13

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:13

So I I um I hate voice messages. I only use them no, well, not not completely hate, not completely hate. I have maybe two or three friends that I know only deal in voice messages, so I accustom myself to do that. Yeah, my partner and I never voice message each other.

SPEAKER_12 1:17:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:32

And now it'd be like, why are you doing it? It'd be quite sure because we would call each other.

SPEAKER_12 1:17:36

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:36

You know, we would call.

SPEAKER_12 1:17:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:38

Um if it was work, I would never voice message because I would want to make sure someone was reading the full text.

SPEAKER_07 1:17:45

Sure, sure, sure. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:17:47

So I mean if someone's even at a professional level sending me a voice message, I'm like, oh god, I didn't get that. I have to go back and read it again or listen to it again. It's yeah, I think I think those are a waste of time.

SPEAKER_08 1:18:02

Yeah, I I have love-hate relationships with the voice messages myself, but I have wrist issues, part of what this ridiculous tape is. I have like medical issues, so sometimes I'm just like, I have to make that choice. Where do I use my arms today? Versus just pressing a button versus actually physically doing this or doing this. So yeah, and it's it's just awkward when you first when I first meet someone to go, hey, I have a medical issue, so I really would prefer to do an audio, so I just kind of wing it sometimes and just not say anything. Yeah, but and then there are some times when I feel like I can't express a positive emotion strongly enough with words, and I feel like there needs to be a voice to come across to let the person know how amazing what they just did was, and so I'll kind of slip into it then. But for work purposes, I don't touch it.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:50

It's no, no, I I I would uh I would get upset with something like that. Yes.

SPEAKER_08 1:18:55

Yeah, oh no, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_06 1:18:57

Because there, I mean you I I've had that like as a phobia ever since I was in the bank. If I came back to my desk and there was a red light sitting on my phone, I'd start to ignore it, and then suddenly one day pick it up and be like, oh, there's 80 messages, like, oh, can you not just email me? Please just email me.

SPEAKER_08 1:19:15

Yeah, yeah. It sounds like most of your online stuff was to keep in touch with people, and then now with the business side. So, what would you say is the biggest change over the years and through the locations that you've been through?

SPEAKER_06 1:19:29

Um, I think probably the biggest change would be dropping Facebook.

SPEAKER_12 1:19:36

Are you completely off of it?

SPEAKER_06 1:19:38

Um I'm not completely off of it. I am getting back into it because I'm in Hong Kong. But I I've I'm trying to keep the Steve is doing whatever off.

SPEAKER_09 1:19:48

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:50

I don't I don't like that very much.

SPEAKER_09 1:19:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:19:53

I don't think it's great. And I see people back home making the same sort of benile crap posts as they would have done 10 years ago. Yeah. And so I kind of think to myself, you're better than this. You don't need you don't need that reinforcement.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:12

So trying to use it at a more professional level, I think, is much better. I use it a little bit more if there's events, things like that, to kind of see what's going on in in Hong Kong or in the world or wherever.

SPEAKER_12 1:20:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:26

I use it to try and read some nice articles that are coming through. So it's maybe more of a gateway to like some blogs that I would have read before.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:37

Or might not have, you know, something brand new, which is great.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:41

So that's good. I'll tell you one thing that I'm getting into, which I want to start. I will show you. Oh my partner just found me. Well, got me.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:52

No.

SPEAKER_06 1:20:54

It's a blue microphone to do ASMR videos.

SPEAKER_03 1:20:59

What's ASMR?

SPEAKER_06 1:21:01

Oh my god! It's brilliant! It's audio sensory motor something, motor reaction or something, AMS R.

SPEAKER_08 1:21:11

AMR. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:13

Yeah. Yeah, ASMR. And it's all about getting these this sensation from people talking, whispering.

SPEAKER_08 1:21:27

Oh no, yeah, there are people on YouTube doing language learning with that right now.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_08 1:21:33

Does that work?

SPEAKER_06 1:21:35

It does, yes. There are millions of people around the world that need this. Need maybe is a strong word. Like this, enjoy this, and use it to relax.

SPEAKER_03 1:21:50

No way. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:21:52

I'm going to start recording some nice life coaching things that way. So the people are getting life coaching with ASMR.

SPEAKER_08 1:22:03

Yeah. So where are you going to put that? Because it you're made you're sounding an awful lot like a podcast right now.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:12

I I I've to be honest with you, I've podcasted something that's kind of passed me by a little bit.

SPEAKER_12 1:22:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:17

I used to download them a little bit, but purely music ones. Sure. I've never really sat down and listened kind of intently in podcasts. So this would be more on YouTube to use YouTube to do that. So again, YouTube, I've only been a viewer.

SPEAKER_08 1:22:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:32

But I've now used it.

SPEAKER_08 1:22:35

If if you end up wanting to multi-platform the sucker, there's a lot of connections between podcast platforms and YouTube. Like a lot of podcast hosting platforms will just have a little box and they'll create a YouTube channel. And so you'll be able to do to reach more people doing that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:22:53

That would be great. Because for me, it's social media is a marketing tool to try and gain more clients.

SPEAKER_08 1:23:01

Sure, sure, sure. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:03

A little I want a little workroom, a little studio, and people come to me and things like that. I'd love it.

SPEAKER_12 1:23:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:09

So try and use social media media in any way, shape, or form is the the only way forward, I think.

SPEAKER_12 1:23:17

Totally.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:17

You know. And if there's a client in I don't know where, you know, Andrew Mongolia. Well, you can't really say I'm Mongolia because we're in Asia. It's not, you know, so someone on the California is looking for a coach that will happily call me or zoom me now that I've learned how to do this.

unknown 1:23:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:23:35

You know, we don't need to be in a coffee shop beside each other.

SPEAKER_08 1:23:38

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, I feel the same exact way. Um, and yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I I'm meeting some pretty critic, because I've I've I'm kind of, I don't know if multi-platform's a way to go, but I've got stuff all over the place right now, just out of experimental mode, because my learning Chinese stuff needed a video. I'm more of an audio person, but it needed a video, so I've got a YouTube channel for that because the look of the characters is what brought me into the language, so I have to show people what I'm doing and where it is outside and all this kind of stuff. So that's a video, at least until I can get to the point where I can just read it myself and have people understand me, which is gonna take a long time. But once it gets better, it'll just go straight audio. But the the interest stuff is in podcast forum, and as long as people can understand English, then anywhere in the world they can download a very light file in the and and listen to it anywhere, even if they don't have internet right then. And that's so appealing to reach so many people. If you can get to them, and that's where that social media comes in.

SPEAKER_06 1:24:39

Yes, yes. It's quite interesting that you know, the kind of get them, you know, listen to it, download it. When I was at Wall Street for a long, long time, they were trying to build build online tools, and there was such resistance, such resistance by the student. Yeah, but then yet if you say to them, Well, watch Yoku or Billy Billy and you know, listen to whatever and stream this while you're no problem.

SPEAKER_09 1:25:03

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:04

But watch uh a learning video that replaces a book. Yeah, I don't want to do that.

SPEAKER_09 1:25:11

It was so crazy. It's so crazy.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:13

Yeah, you know, download the ebook, you know, if you want. Here's the video that goes with it. There's the podcast. Yeah, great. Thank you very much.

SPEAKER_08 1:25:21

I would have students ask me all the time, teacher, what else can I use outside of class in addition to our course book? And I would try to get to their kind of kind of do like a quick media profile. What do you want? Do you want audio? Do you want video? How much time do you have? What kind of devices do you have? And I kind of like streamline and and suggest things that they could fit into their life, not that they'd have to consciously go somewhere to do. And a lot of times they just be like, Well, can't you just recommend me a book? And I'm like, You have a book. I thought you wanted something else that had like real sounds to it, not just the graded reader kind of stuff. And so, yeah, no, the resistance.

SPEAKER_06 1:25:57

It's crazy, isn't it?

SPEAKER_08 1:25:58

It's so easy. No, mm-mm.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:04

It's it's one of those WeChat subscription-y kind of things.

SPEAKER_08 1:26:07

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:08

So Chinese people are really getting into that at the minute called mint reading. And it's giving them free books online. So quite a lot of people are reading, but they're reading on their phone like that.

SPEAKER_09 1:26:19

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:20

You should check that out. It's quite quite good as well.

SPEAKER_08 1:26:23

That's really cool.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:26:25

When I ask people how much they read, they say, Oh, I don't read. And then they'll like start talking about all of these different websites and different things that they read and articles. And I'm like, you are reading. Just because it's not in an old-fashioned, like 300-year-old white man book doesn't mean you're not reading. It's like the concept of reading is attached to the physical book for some reason.

SPEAKER_06 1:26:45

Yes. I do miss it though. I do miss it because I used to read quite a lot. Yeah. But no, I was going to ask about the multi-channel thing. Like, what if my annoyances is I have to kind of copy and paste, upload there, upload there, upload there. If there is a way to get it all as connected as much as I could with the same introduction, the same hashtags, the same picture, whatever, I'd be so happy.

SPEAKER_08 1:27:14

Well, there are a lot of services that you can buy, social media manager kind of things that you can pay for, and they can do that. The easiest one I found is within Instagram, when you do a post, it literally asks you where do you want to post it? And I don't have Facebook, but they have three listed right now: Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. And so you can literally put that post in all four places.

SPEAKER_12 1:27:37

Yes. Yes, that's what I want. So that's what I'm saying that's an easy one.

SPEAKER_08 1:27:40

But it's within Instagram. You have to do a post in Instagram and then just check those boxes and it goes to all those places. It has the Instagram tag on it when you see it in Twitter and Facebook. So they have to go back. It sends them back to Instagram, but it's the easiest one I found.

SPEAKER_06 1:27:56

Yeah, yeah. Um when I when when I was setting up this YouTube channel this week, I haven't I only done my practice videos kind of thing. I haven't posted anything yet.

SPEAKER_12 1:28:05

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:06

I will send you the link.

SPEAKER_12 1:28:07

Yes, please.

SPEAKER_06 1:28:09

But um it it was saying, Do you want us to post this on Twitter at the same time? You know, tick the tick box. And I was like, Yes, please, that will help, you know, one thing at least. Um I haven't seen so I've got LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and then would have YouTube. I mean, if it could do all of them. That would be great.

SPEAKER_08 1:28:31

I don't have one that goes straight to YouTube. But like I said, there's there's all kinds I've I've been ignoring the services because with podcasts, there's all these little fees that I keep hitting, so I don't want to pay anything extra right now. Um, and I've got the time to put stuff on social media, so I'm just absorbing the time cost right now. But I know there are services out there that will like you create a post on their website, you pay them a certain amount per month, and they'll post, they'll put it all over to those places. But I don't have recs for them because I don't use them yet.

SPEAKER_06 1:29:01

Yeah, yeah, no problems. That's something I think my my my husband is very technical actually. So I I just need to sit him down and ask him. But he's um he's so technical it annoys me.

SPEAKER_08 1:29:12

So I'm well, but there's a difference between technical and social media, Savvy. And I've I've noticed those are definitely oftentimes because they those people deep dive in both directions, that it could be very two different people. And I've met some social media folks that like I'll see them on Instagram and I'll be like, How did you even know you could do stuff like that? Or how did you know that hashtag existed, or just different things? So yeah, finding someone who's doing something similar and watching how they do it has been the biggest picture for me right now. And somebody recommended a social media guy. I'll send you his link, but they I was asking this other podcaster how he found all the hashtags that he did, because it seemed to really, really get to what he was doing. I was like, How the hell did you get to all of this? I'm still struggling with that. And so he sent me this guy who's all over different kinds of social media, who's like this social media genius. And um, and so I'm trying to, but he has so many videos and so many posts that I'm trying to kind of sift through everything everything to get to the stuff that I need, because I don't want to just randomly see everything he's done because there's some things I'm already that are already easy for me and there are things that aren't. So I'll send you um yeah, I'll send you him also. But it's it's such a mess. Like I I look forward to the day that I can pay someone to edit my podcast and where I can pay someone to do my social media. I hate those things, they're such a pain in my ass.

SPEAKER_06 1:30:35

Um I don't know if I'm there with hate, but I know I I know what you mean. I mean the the joy of then being able to sit back and say, my business is now so good, and I can have someone do some of these jobs for me, yeah, and they already are an expert and will be able to do it better than I am. That's my wonderment. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_08 1:30:58

Instead of learning all of that, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:00

Yeah, yeah, because I feel like I'm doing the right things, and then when the followers don't go up and your post never gets, and you're like, you know, some people become Instagram famous in a day. How do they do this?

SPEAKER_08 1:31:15

Um, and it's nowhere about porn, it's usually like photographs that people really like to look at. That's what those people get favored. Yeah, I know it's yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:25

That's that's one of the things that I was a bit worried about, the ASMR stuff because quite a lot of girls in China do it, but they sit there in their bedrooms, hardly wearing a thing, you know, and they're like licking the microphone.

SPEAKER_08 1:31:37

You can't control that. You can't control that. There's a there's the vast majority of YouTube is men, like 70% is men. So when I started filming, I was like, okay, I'm in my 40s. I should be past the point of creeps, and yet some of it has has come through. And I'm like, ah, come on.

SPEAKER_06 1:31:53

They're always there.

SPEAKER_08 1:31:54

They're always there. So you really can't control what happens to it once it's out there. But they've gotten better at being able to flag stuff and block stuff. So that that part is definitely there.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:04

But yeah, there's I mean that's that's another reason why I wanted the safe community for my challenge.

SPEAKER_12 1:32:09

Sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:09

There was no one out there gonna be saying to because I think there's only there's three guys, the others are girls, yeah, and they're they're all lovely people, yeah, and a couple of them are very beautiful, yeah. And you just think if you were posting that video online, telling someone, you know, this is me, this is the exercise I do, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, there's going to be someone sitting there having a good time and sending a dirty message.

SPEAKER_08 1:32:38

Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But but don't don't worry about that while you're creating it. You can't you can't control what people do with your content.

SPEAKER_06 1:32:47

Yeah, yes. I know what you mean, I know what you mean. I mean, there will be hundreds and thousands of people that will be looking at a gym picture of someone in the gym going, wow, I want to be like that, or that's wonderful, or it's motivating me, and the other people will be like, whoo, great.

SPEAKER_08 1:33:02

Excuse me, I'm gonna go alone over here for a while, and yeah, I know. Well, it's it's interesting because we're I think you brought up an interesting point that before you put professional content online, you're very, very introspective and careful. But I think for a lot of us, when we put social stuff online, we don't have as much of that filter at first.

SPEAKER_12 1:33:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:33:23

How do we get to the point where we think more about what we're posting personally online than we do now? What do we need to do to retrain ourselves for that?

SPEAKER_06 1:33:34

Yeah, I think what you just said is a retraining. I think that's retraining. And I think it's got a lot to do with how what how you care and how you want to be perceived. So, for example, when I was working in a bank, I didn't care about my work, I didn't care about that side of my life. So, to me, using social media in a more outrageous fashion didn't matter. Who was going to see it? And if you fired me, I don't care.

SPEAKER_09 1:34:01

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:01

That's then. Whereas now I'm actively having an online persona that I need to match in some degree my personal persona.

SPEAKER_09 1:34:13

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:14

So that if you want to work with me, if you want to do business with me, I don't want someone posting, you know, uh, you know, seeing a picture of me online that would go, oh, who's that? No, I don't want to work for him.

SPEAKER_02 1:34:28

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:34:29

I don't want to speak to him, I don't feel comfortable or whatever. So I think it's that professional level. And what's interesting is um last week I did uh I did a talk. So as well as my life coaching, I I'm I'm uh a face of uh proving English is the term the name of the company, and online. And uh these Chinese guys have taken it over. And I was doing a talk, and I felt very professional, I felt very good, I was kind of giving the lecture, etc. And this guy, young guy, I've known him for a long time, stood there and said, Steve, tell us about a time that you've been really drunk and what did you do and what happened? And I was like, Oh, that's you don't ask that.

SPEAKER_07 1:35:16

Oh, that's so uncomfortable. What did you do?

SPEAKER_06 1:35:19

Well, I first said that's got nothing to do with our topic. Thank you for that. Yeah, um, and then proceeded to tell a very watered down answer that made them laugh. So I was keeping a nice level of professionalism and a quite joy factor in my class, but never just you just didn't you don't answer it properly. You just you would never answer that.

SPEAKER_08 1:35:46

Yeah. Does that happen?

SPEAKER_06 1:35:48

With Chinese students, yes. I think with with Chinese students that are trying to really understand foreigners and understand life outside China, yeah. Um yeah, I think it does. I think it does happen a lot. And you know the guy is lovely, and the thing is that I'm almost 40 and he's not even yet 30. And my market, my professionalism is completely different from him. And when I was maybe 20 or younger, I might have asked the same thing, or I might have posted the picture of when I was out when I was, you know, yeah, because the maturity and the the level of training your brain to be professional online and off is not there yet.

SPEAKER_08 1:36:42

No, no. That's true. It could just be an extension of his personality right now, not even just it could be anybody, not just you standing there, but it could have been anybody that he's asked this question to. Although, do you think he could have asked a Chinese person that question, or do you think the foreigner effect was is there?

SPEAKER_06 1:36:58

I think it was the foreigner effect.

SPEAKER_08 1:36:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:00

I think it was the foreign effect. He might have asked his similar friends, but I don't think he would have asked uh an older person in China that question.

SPEAKER_08 1:37:08

Right, right, right. Well, there is there is a sense of we're more casual and that it it kind of goes too far sometimes. But um when I first moved to Asia, I lived in Taiwan first, and every single woman close to my age that I met asked me if my sex life was the same as sex in the city. And I'm like, I literally met you five minutes ago. I'm a very open person, but what the hell did you just ask me? I was like, wow.

SPEAKER_06 1:37:38

You could have said, you know, which character?

SPEAKER_08 1:37:40

Because I'm all different. You're asking me about this. Of all the cultural things that are different, that'd be very interesting to talk about. This is where we're and I and it was a very person, it's a private topic to ask a a stranger about their sex life at the first five minutes. It's just yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:02

I don't think I've had anyone ask me that. But what I what I would say is that I I've kept my relationship very much off social media, both in terms of the type of relationship it is and living in China, yeah.

SPEAKER_12 1:38:17

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:17

So it it would be online on Facebook because it's I it's it's accepted and it's it's okay and people know it. But I don't put that on WeChat.

SPEAKER_09 1:38:28

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:29

I don't think a picture of me and my partner on on my moments.

SPEAKER_02 1:38:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:34

And I would never in fact, actually, I was quite surprised that some of the students who knew me who I've never spoken to about, yeah, knew about my relationship.

SPEAKER_12 1:38:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:38:43

But through gossip, you know, rather than actually coming from me. Sure, sure. So I keep that completely separate. But again, I think that's an age thing, and I think that's a maturity thing, and I don't I don't know whether it's got something, something slightly to do with the fact that we were out there living a little bit more than people at home. You know, um we know different boundaries, we know different cultures, we know how things work on different styles of media.

SPEAKER_08 1:39:14

Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Listen, also I didn't grow up with social media. I didn't have my first computer until my twenties. I did I had a beeper and then a pager, and then you know, I went through the whole line of electronic devices and things. So I there was always uh a kind of although I did post some ridiculous stuff in my blog years and years ago, generally speaking, I never really posted anything that I thought, oh my god, I'm gonna die. Why did I do that? That was the worst mistake of my life. Like I never really hit that wall. But I really wonder for folks that grow up with it, how much of an introspective moment do they have if it's just like water for you from the moment?

SPEAKER_06 1:39:55

I don't think they have any idea I don't think there's anything that they could post that they would then suddenly be worried about. I don't think it clicks.

SPEAKER_08 1:40:05

And that's slightly terrifying. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:40:07

It does, it does. And I think that's um a shame. I think it's very sad. And I wonder what might happen in the next 10, 15, not maybe not even that.

SPEAKER_08 1:40:18

Right. We have a few different ways that you can feedback. So if you go to stepfuccio.weebly.com forward slash contact. Let me do that a little slower. S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O. W-e-e-b-l- dot com forward slash contact. You'll see all kinds of ways you can contact me and let me know what you think of this podcast. I have email, we chat if you're in China, Twitter, LinkedIn, and my new favorite thing is SpeakPipe. Over on the right hand side of that page, you'll be able to leave a sound recording, basically a voice message. You just hit the start recording button that's in bright orange. I can also respond in a voice message there as well. It's a really, really cool feature. I can't believe they have this available for free, but until they get smarter about that, I'm gonna take advantage of it because it is such a cool feature. Thank you so much. I appreciate all of your input.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:17

Do you remember when mobile phones could only keep 10 text messages at a time?

SPEAKER_03 1:41:22

No. No.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:23

Oh, yeah, my first couple of mobile phones. Like if you if you had more than like 10 messages, no one for more room. Yeah, it was a demon's phone that I had. And I'm like, oh, which one do I delete? You know?

SPEAKER_08 1:41:38

I think I moved very slowly up the scale. I think I had my my pager for a long, ridiculous long period of time. And I didn't even have my first smartphone until 2012.

SPEAKER_06 1:41:49

So wow. I think I would have had my first mobile about two, no, probably about 1999. I remember asking my mum and dad for permission for that as well. And I was I I wasn't living at home. I was in university. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:42:07

Why would you why did you ask them permission for that?

SPEAKER_06 1:42:10

Well, I think it I think it's kind of maybe kind of the person I am, you know. Maybe it wouldn't have been so much from permission, but kind of like, I'm going to have to get this. I'm just checking that you know this is what's happening.

SPEAKER_12 1:42:21

And you know, I'm spending a bit of money on it.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:24

Is it okay? You know, uh, because they were they were kind of uh yeah. I think I had to spell it out kind of this will make it for you to contact me, I'll have my phone on me at all times, you know, much easier. Um I remember my mum getting her first mobile and it being in a box for months.

SPEAKER_04 1:42:45

What?

SPEAKER_06 1:42:46

Yeah, she was she was a district nurse, so she had a pager for a long, long, long time.

SPEAKER_03 1:42:51

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:42:52

And she would always have it, and she would, you know. The thing was that they'd given these nurses pagers but never gave them a mobile phone. So you had to then rush to a phone to do it. Now, if this was an emergency, it's a bit silly, isn't it? So I remember her rushing home to make a phone call and like be leaving again to go and do whatever. My mum now still will well, she hasn't for years, would have the phone but turn it off and then only turn it on to make the phone call.

SPEAKER_08 1:43:19

Yeah. And and I've done that more so lately because of battery powers, and no matter how many battery packs I carry around, crap happens. And I did, I think I turned it off not for battery reasons, but I turned off like my pagers and stuff because I wanted to be in control of when I responded to stuff. But with phones, you can silence it so much better than than my uh pagers and things. So that would it's not so much an issue now. I do not I do keep it in my bag sometimes, I'll keep it in a different room sometimes. Like I'll have ways that I try not to distract myself, but a lot of times I'll just have it near me and I'll just check it when I want to, as opposed to every time it goes off.

SPEAKER_06 1:43:59

I I don't have any notifications on my phone. Ah, no, I like all I've switched them all off and it doesn't ring. It's always on silent, 100%.

SPEAKER_08 1:44:10

I have mine I go from silent to vibrate. I I don't like the ringer. It I you I would forget and have it go off in public places. I do a lot of work in coffee shops and I hate people where their ringtones audible. I can't see.

SPEAKER_06 1:44:24

I I have a strong, yeah, negative association with a ringtone.

SPEAKER_08 1:44:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:44:28

And if you're putting off, there is no need for your ring to be on or that loud.

SPEAKER_08 1:44:35

And the vibrate function is so strong that I can hear it. So I don't I don't need I don't even know what my ringtone sounds like, to be honest with you.

SPEAKER_06 1:44:42

I no, neither I don't know what it's said as well.

SPEAKER_08 1:44:45

Yeah, no, I would I would really, really not know it was mine.

SPEAKER_06 1:44:47

The other thing that I get annoyed about in China wise is the volume of people speaking on their phones.

SPEAKER_08 1:44:53

It's so bad. And I get the elderly population because like hearing loss, what they've been through in their lifetimes, they probably aren't physically as fit as the youngins, but when I see a 20-year-old on the metro blasting on their cell phone, I'm like, what is your reason?

SPEAKER_06 1:45:14

Well, also not even speaking, it's like voice messaging on WeChat, they're screaming down the phone at all, and then they have them on like 100% volume to listen to them. You're like, please, please.

SPEAKER_08 1:45:27

Although I traveled a lot by train last year for my work and the iPads with children and the videos and games they would play, that was slightly more annoying to me because at least the phone conversations would peter out, but for a two-hour train ride, the kids would would have the volume up and be playing, and their parents wouldn't care.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:45

No, no. Well, to them and probably us, it's better than the the child screaming.

SPEAKER_08 1:45:53

I really wonder. Because I don't think we could have screamed as long as that video was on for.

SPEAKER_06 1:45:59

No. But I mean, I would have had books.

unknown 1:46:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:46:02

I mean, we're back to books. You know, I remember going on holiday four-hour car journeys sitting in the back. Yeah, we just sat there.

unknown 1:46:09

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:09

Oh yeah. Or we napped, or we played game like car games and things. If we were in a car, we played with license. I mean, we did rent. But worst case scenario, if you've got a kid with an electronic, if you must do that, I'm sorry, but give them some headphones.

SPEAKER_06 1:46:23

Yes. You know, I I do feel that headphones have been invented for a reason. And if you are even young young people, especially, there is no need for me to be listening to your video. You should have headphones.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:35

Exactly, exactly, exactly. All right, so how are we doing for questions?

SPEAKER_06 1:46:42

We've rambled on a bit there.

SPEAKER_08 1:46:44

Let's do two more, two more. No, it's not rambling. I think we've hit on some really, really important bits. Two more questions. One came from a really interesting woman named Jo that I interviewed a few weeks ago. Questions Do you share more stuff in real time or in retrospect?

SPEAKER_06 1:46:59

On social media.

SPEAKER_08 1:47:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:47:00

Yeah, that's a good question, isn't it? Oh, I think probably in retrospect. Oh. Okay, so if it was on Facebook in retrospect, for sure.

SPEAKER_12 1:47:11

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:47:12

Because um, I I would never, yeah, I wouldn't kind of sit there and be like, oh, let me quickly post this on Facebook. I think probably because it feels like it takes longer to do that on Facebook than it would on WeChat. WeChat is so quick. You know, you you put the nine pictures on, you make make the post, gone. Whereas in WeChat, they're gonna ask me, do I need to tag someone? Where am I? It's taking a long time to load, blah blah de blah. So I wouldn't I would probably do that in retrospect on Facebook. Um on WeChat, if it's something that's work, it's real time. It's kind of I've made this, let's post it. Okay. Um, I maybe would be quite aware of peak WeChat reading times.

SPEAKER_03 1:48:02

Oh.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:03

You know, like sort of around 11 o'clock in the morning or after seven at night.

SPEAKER_08 1:48:09

Good to know, good to know, thank you.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:11

Are quite good for posting.

SPEAKER_08 1:48:13

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:13

Um so I would maybe do that. I got if it's photos of like a holiday and stuff, I might be I I might post in real time, kind of like here I am by the beach. But later on that day, if I'm going to post nine photos or more, I probably would choose the best ones and put them online.

SPEAKER_12 1:48:33

Sure.

SPEAKER_06 1:48:34

My partner will edit and edit and edit and edit like all night until the perfect post. I do not care about that. Just here's my photograph.

SPEAKER_08 1:48:48

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. So okay, so what do you what do you think about this this thing, this theory? Is do you think that your social your not just your social media, but your online presence and online life, do you think it has changed specifically because of places that you've been in? Or am I just really is my theory completely bogus?

SPEAKER_06 1:49:12

Okay, so it's I think you're probably a bit right. Okay. Um so I would definitely say that in terms of tools, it's completely changed because of where we are.

SPEAKER_11 1:49:25

That's right.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:26

And you know, if I was in if I was in India, like I used to work in India occasionally with with the bank, I would go, they use WhatsApp very heavily, people in the UK wouldn't, you know. So there would be a the tool I think is very important.

SPEAKER_12 1:49:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:43

In in the c in the country that you're in.

SPEAKER_12 1:49:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:49:46

In terms of content. Yeah, I think probably a little bit, yeah. I'm very aware that in China I don't give everything away. I'm also very aware that uh my style of say a photograph, if I'm with Chinese people, I have to use the correct pose because that's what they want me to do, because that's what will get the correct likes, and I'm the white guy in the middle.

SPEAKER_10 1:50:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:50:18

But if I did the exact same photo and put it on Facebook, people at home would be like, What the hell are you doing? You look like an idiot.

SPEAKER_07 1:50:25

Right.

SPEAKER_06 1:50:26

So definitely I think a culture. A cultural aspect is very strong in Asia for your type of social media posting.

SPEAKER_10 1:50:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:50:36

I don't know if well, you wouldn't have seen it today. It was on Facebook again. It was on one of those, it's the South Morning China Post. They posted a place, I think it was Beijing, it might have been Shanghai, that is a photo selfie museum where people can go to take the perfect pictures to get the most likes.

SPEAKER_08 1:50:58

Oh, sure, sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I wish I was more surprised by that. I have actually been to like restaurants and things, not just in Asia, but in the US as well, where a store will have like a bench and a beautiful picture, and it'll even say, like in parts, selfie area. And so I've seen like things like that where people are like, this is a good spot, come over here. This will get not so much like this will get you as many likes as you can, but this is a nice pretty area that you can take your selfie, then you can go do something real.

SPEAKER_06 1:51:29

Yeah, yeah. And go do something real. I mean, I think the problem is that they think people in China think that that is real.

SPEAKER_08 1:51:37

It is big when it's happening, but is it still real when it's online? Like they're they're in a real place doing a real activity, they're taking a picture.

SPEAKER_06 1:51:45

It's not real life, it's not it it in terms of it doesn't mean anything.

SPEAKER_08 1:51:54

Because there isn't the story behind it doesn't exist. Like there's not really happening. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:00

If if I see a picture of someone's uh christening or their wedding or their life or their family, what you know that looks great. Kachang, if I see you in a selfie place to take selfies, yeah, I probably will not like it.

SPEAKER_08 1:52:19

Yeah. No, I I I agree with you. I agree with you. But I didn't grow up over here, so I don't I don't even know how to give that viewpoint.

SPEAKER_06 1:52:29

I don't think it's growing up. This is new. This is new.

SPEAKER_08 1:52:33

But there must have been something in the culture to make way for that to be so popular. Do you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_06 1:52:39

Like it Yeah, but I don't know what that could be because you know, in terms of something like the cultural revolution and things like that, it's not it's not been there.

SPEAKER_08 1:52:47

It's it's as soon as as soon as China invented the selfie stick, and as soon as you know there is a selfie culture globally, and well not everywhere, I'm sure, but in a lot of places globally.

SPEAKER_06 1:53:01

Oh yes, I'm sure. I mean, you just look at the Kardashians to know that. I would never look at them.

SPEAKER_03 1:53:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:53:08

I would never look at them because again, I don't believe it's a hundred percent real. It's real to them, yeah, of course, yeah, but it's not realistic. It's just a different type of fake.

SPEAKER_08 1:53:19

Well, is it is it a generational thing then? I wonder. I wonder, I wonder. Because there are a lot of people looking at these all over the world, they're looking at different their friends, their family, celebrities, they're looking at all of these moments that don't have a backstory, and they're liking them and they're aspiring to have those empty moments. Uh but yeah, there it is.

SPEAKER_07 1:53:42

Yeah, no, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:53:43

I mean, maybe it is, maybe it is. Um, I know that my aunt will look at them, she will send me selfies every so often. I don't generally care. Um on Facebook, they'll look for them. But I know that in terms of those people, they will want to keep the real photos. You know, remember when you took photographs at an event and you did it because it was special?

SPEAKER_08 1:54:09

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_06 1:54:10

I will keep them. Yeah, I will want them. Yeah, I will want my house covered in them. I will not want a million selfies of whoever. It doesn't, I don't think it means as much. I do take them because we do.

SPEAKER_03 1:54:29

Yeah. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:54:31

And I send them to some people, and I probably send them to the people that are gonna go, Yay! I'm not gonna send the people that are not gonna do that. What's the point in that?

SPEAKER_08 1:54:41

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. It's tricky, it's tricky. Real life, not real life. Like I we were debating this the other night in an interview. There's IRL in real life, right? But there's no three-letter acronym for online.

SPEAKER_10 1:54:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 1:54:55

We're like, so why doesn't that exist? We have a strong online life now, for a lot of people do, but we don't have a three-letter acronym for that, damn it. So we were playing with VRL, like virtual reality life, but that feels that feels too clunky to me. So I'm like trying to think of what's an acronym we can get going to compare IRL with this other creature.

SPEAKER_06 1:55:16

That kind of sounds like you know, that whole big second life phenomenon that never I don't think it even still exists, does it?

SPEAKER_08 1:55:23

I I there is a virtual reality world, but it's a really small percentage of people that are into it, I think, at this point.

SPEAKER_06 1:55:28

Yes.

SPEAKER_08 1:55:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:55:29

Well, probably because what's actually happened is that second life it is now is now social media.

SPEAKER_08 1:55:39

Yeah. But do we acknowledge, like I feel like not having a three-letter or not having any acronym or any nickname for it is kind of part of the problem because we're not identifying that we do have this online presence. And you can't really make decisions if you don't acknowledge that something doesn't exist.

SPEAKER_06 1:55:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think you've hit on the head. There's no no one is going to own up and say, my life there is completely different what my life here is not. Look like a beauty model there that I'm having in that time, but in real life, actually, I'm not a beauty model and I'm not happy.

SPEAKER_08 1:56:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:56:16

That's a whole question about are you happy?

SPEAKER_08 1:56:18

But that that brings in this analogy that also came up recently of like if you're reading somebody's autobiography, like that's a two-dimensional time kind of snapshot of different things that happen in their life. Is that different than the life that we're showing people online?

SPEAKER_06 1:56:33

I think it's definitely different. Yes. Well, because I think people have to show online what they think is making others happy and in turn making me happy. And people then I mean, can you imagine if you really wrote online how you felt? Can you really imagine? You know, let me take a selfie of me slitting my wrists because that's how I feel today.

SPEAKER_03 1:57:03

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:05

People wouldn't know how to react to it. And if they like it, what are they saying? You know, that I like you slitting your wrists, great.

SPEAKER_07 1:57:16

God, you just brought up a really good tweet. Yeah, oh go ahead, go ahead.

SPEAKER_06 1:57:20

Because on the vast majority of all apps, apart from Facebook now, you can only like something. And liking is linked to happiness, and therefore you have to be happy on social media to get a like. But if you actually told people I'm unhappy, and they like that, what are they telling you?

SPEAKER_08 1:57:44

Right? Yeah, that is confusing. Because I have done on the on language of learning blogging, I have done some uh posts about the difficulties and when I hit walls and when I want to just throw my flashcards across a room and different things where I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna get there. I don't think I'm gonna learn this language. And people have liked it, and I've thought, are you liking that I'm struggling, or are you liking that I put a different side to it on there? And I'll never know because they don't actually leave a comment.

SPEAKER_06 1:58:09

You know, no, and that's yeah, you're not leaving a comment. I think the other thing is then real friends, real acquaintances, not your social online people, would phone you up and be like, Are you okay? Do you need a hand? Blah de blah de blah, you know, and give you options and help.

SPEAKER_08 1:58:26

Oh my god, you you've hit on something really, really big here. Okay, so if our online uh lifespan is going through different stages, because we're still the internet's still really messy, social media is still kind of messy, we're we're nothing's really organized or really clear, we don't really fess up till we have this online presence. So remember, like when TVs, I mean I wasn't alive, but I've heard stories of when TV first started, there were really cheesy, cheesy TV programs that were just showing showing very happy moments in family life and all that kind of crap. But we eventually moved to, and there's still that stuff on TV, but now there's a lot more of like realistic stuff. There's documentaries, there's more realistic sitcoms and TV shows and those kinds of things, and so we've kind of gone away from just being happy all the time. Do you think that our online happiness obsession is a stage in our internet maturity and that we'll get past it?

SPEAKER_06 1:59:21

Um it could be. I cannot see currently how. Because the internet is not allowing you. Well, if you take WeChat solely or Instagram, they're not allowing you to do that because you can only like it. Um I did quite like that Facebook allowed you different emotions. You've not for a while. So if someone comments, you can heart it, if you love it, like it, angry, or you know, drive you crazy. So at least there is a variety.

SPEAKER_07 1:59:52

They do have those. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 1:59:53

Well, that could be if I'm on Facebook, I'm saying to someone, and actually, I probably would put it on Facebook. I'm upset, something's annoying me. And everyone who agrees with me can be like, yes, angry, angry, angry, angry, angry. It's showing us a range.

SPEAKER_09 2:00:12

Right, right.

SPEAKER_06 2:00:13

Whereas on WeChat and in Asia, in China, maybe specifically, you can only like something, which means what you're doing is you're only saying it's good.

SPEAKER_07 2:00:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:00:30

And I I would say that currently at the moment, uh, WeChat as a tool, and um Chinese people that are on there who are mostly mostly youngsters posting these kind of things, yeah, and these kind of places that you can go for real selfie pictures are only providing you with um happiness.

SPEAKER_08 2:00:49

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Interesting. Well, only time will tell.

SPEAKER_06 2:00:53

Um, I think so. I think so. But I think it needs a dra it probably would need a drastic shift.

SPEAKER_08 2:00:59

Yeah, for sure. For sure. I was doing an interview with this book group in Shanghai, and they uh they were interviewing me because they interview readers. It's a really interesting series that they do where they interview interview readers and just ask them what they're reading, best book, like the book that affected them the most in their lives, blah, blah, blah, blah. The last question they asked, and thank you, Waymy. She's the woman that was interviewing me, was brilliant. So I've stolen it. Um, what question do you think is missing from these questions? What should I be asking people about this online presence, geographical, everywhere presence? What's what's missing? What should I ask people?

SPEAKER_06 2:01:36

Yeah, that's very good. So I would maybe say something similar to what we've touched upon there. It's probably quite quite interesting to sort of ask people about are they happy on social media?

SPEAKER_07 2:01:51

Oh, that's a good one. That's an early one. Let me go back and put that early, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:01:57

Because the vast majority, I think, of people would probably say if you're comparing, because what you're doing currently is comparing your persona, what what are you doing? What tools are you using?

SPEAKER_12 2:02:08

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:02:09

But what you probably would be good to be asking is are you are you happy when you use social media? Because is there a euphoric I'm getting likes back?

SPEAKER_02 2:02:22

No, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:02:23

And then in turn, are you happy, IRL, in real life? And does that equate to your online happiness on social media?

SPEAKER_08 2:02:36

Oh, like if they're not happy, are they posting more or do they post more when they're happy? So the IRL and possibly VRL posting effect or something. Yeah, okay, I'm gonna need to work with this one. But that's that's a really good question. Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:02:55

Definitely something around that because I bet you quite a lot of people are unhappy in real life, but post online to prove or to show people that they are happy.

SPEAKER_12 2:03:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:03:06

But but they're not.

SPEAKER_08 2:03:08

Huh. I think I feel like I post for me, I post when I'm either really annoyed or when I'm really happy, and anywhere in between, unless it's for like if there's something coming out in the podcast or YouTube channel, like if there's a promotional thing, fine. But personally, it's the two extremes.

SPEAKER_06 2:03:27

Yeah, I think it probably is. Because why would you post online, I'm fine?

SPEAKER_08 2:03:32

Yeah, everything's going fine. There's nothing to report today. Let me do a post.

SPEAKER_06 2:03:37

Yeah, today I'm okay. That's a really you could do that as an experiment. You could do that as an experiment. You know, give it a week to say, I'm fine, guys. Don't worry about me today, I'm okay. I don't have anything good or anything bad.

SPEAKER_08 2:03:51

Yeah, yeah. And how many likes or how many times it's retweeted or reposted, or that's interesting, and just have like a picture of a non-smiley, non-sad face and have that and just still fine. Everything's fine.

SPEAKER_06 2:04:06

Yeah, I'm at the supermarket.

SPEAKER_08 2:04:09

Oh my god. So what you're saying is that the internet kind of forces us, or we feel like it forces us to be very emotional.

SPEAKER_06 2:04:19

Yeah, but only two emotions.

SPEAKER_08 2:04:21

Only one?

SPEAKER_06 2:04:23

Only two emotions, angry or happy.

SPEAKER_08 2:04:25

Oh my god, that's a really good point.

SPEAKER_06 2:04:28

Ah well, that's that's probably why those people are posting, you know, like you were saying about uh posting to to content makers angry, angry, angry.

SPEAKER_12 2:04:38

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:04:39

Because I'm not happy and I don't want to say it's just fine, so angry, angry, angry, you know. You know, maybe that's it. Maybe that's it. We can only be two emotions on the internet.

SPEAKER_08 2:04:49

So sad because I am a really big cheerleader for for the internet, social media, technology, and that kind of thing. But every time I'm having these conversations, all of these things that I didn't realize could be like negative effects of our online presence keep coming up. And I find myself going down a rabbit hole of why this sucks. And I don't want to go down the rabbit hole.

SPEAKER_06 2:05:11

It it doesn't suck. It doesn't suck. When you when you look at the internet in terms of marketing, selling, information gathering, information sharing, um, building awareness of things, it's wonderful. But when when humans interact with it, it starts to get a little bit more uh negative or extremely positive or fake or real. But in terms of you know, looking up a bus timetable or where can I go on holiday or what you know, it's it's great.

SPEAKER_12 2:05:46

Yeah, it's a thing.

SPEAKER_06 2:05:47

You have to remember that as well.

SPEAKER_08 2:05:49

It's it's uh what was that that piece of art that pretty much when you look something test, Roshack, something test where you look at it and what you think it looks like tells people something about yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:06:01

The Roshak test or something like that.

SPEAKER_08 2:06:04

Yeah, it feels like the internet is kind of that, it can be as good or as bad as whatever we bring to it, maybe.

unknown 2:06:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:06:13

No, I don't know. I don't think it's as innocent as that test. I think it definitely swings us in different directions.

SPEAKER_06 2:06:20

Yeah. And it would be interesting to have these conversations again in let's say maybe five years, because it would be a drastic change in five years. It might not be a drastic change in a year.

SPEAKER_12 2:06:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 2:06:32

But have these similar conversations in five, ten, fifteen years.

SPEAKER_08 2:06:35

Yeah, yeah. Well, what I'd love to do is I'd love to get people like all around the world, English being the the boundary to that, uh, because that's my only functional language, but I'd love to interview people about their geographical trajectory and their internet trajectory and kind of uh what because I think from place to place it could vary. Even, you know, expats moving around within Asia, but what about over there and there and there and there and there and there? And what similarities are there there? I don't know. But yeah, my gosh. I have so much to think about now.

SPEAKER_06 2:07:07

Ah Well, that's good, that's good. I mean, that's what that's what these things are for, isn't it? Yeah.

SPEAKER_08 2:07:12

They certainly are. My God, you really I I I was excited enough to talk to you beforehand, and now I'm just like, thank you. This has been pleasure.

SPEAKER_06 2:07:22

That was great. Yeah, really good.

SPEAKER_08 2:07:24

So thank you very much, Steve, for coming on at Virtual Expat today. Your imprint on the podcast will forever be known. You are question five right now, the happy question. All right. Well, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of Virtual Expat. And special thank you again to Damon Castillo for the music and to our special guest this time. If you'd like to be interviewed for this podcast, just send me an email or contact me on social media in the show notes. You can find all my information, or you can just jot it down right now. Are you ready? You ready? Here we go. Death Ucio, S-T-E-P-H-F-U-C-C-I-O, Gmail, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr. There you go. Contact me. Oh, also LinkedIn too. You know what? I keep forgetting about that one. Hey, thank you so much for listening, and I look forward to your questions, comments, feedback, any information, and volunteering to be on the podcast as well. Thank you so much and have a wonderful, wonderful day.

SPEAKER_05 2:08:29

On or offline. When I clock out of the hospital at 6 p.m., I'm not done for the night. That's when gamer nurse 40 clocks in and she's organs like sure I'm playing a 13-year-old Mr. Britain, but he's a level 53 mage with a filthy mouth. So I need to stand up in my game. What you call me? That's when I crack open a Heineken Zero Zero, zero alcohol, but just as refreshing. So I can focus on stealing his gold before his move.

SPEAKER_01 2:08:54

Take that kids. Heineken Zero Zero, 0.0% alcohol. Now you can. Must be 21 plus to purchase. Enjoy responsibly.

SPEAKER_00 2:09:02

If you send money to your loved ones internationally, do it with the Western Union app. Once you've downloaded it, you can send money around the world or back home in just a few taps. So family and friends can pick up cash fast. Download the Western Union app and send money today. Western Union. Fast, easy, reliable. Offered by Western Union Financial Services Inc., NMLS 906983, or Western Union International Services, LLC NMLS 906985. Terms apply.