[00:00:00] Jesse Lin: Hi everyone. My name is Jesse Lin
[00:00:01] Angela Lin: And I’m Angela Lin. Welcome back to another episode of, but Where Are You Really from? Today we have our resident person who follows things in the economy to join us, my husband Ramon. Welcome back on the show.
[00:00:17] Jesse Lin: Thank you . Hi Dan. Hi. I follow general things in the economy, so
[00:00:22] Angela Lin: if you haven’t guessed it by the title of this episode, the gas is too damn high.
We are talking about. Things related to inflation recession, all those scary economic things you keep hearing in the news. What does it mean and what’s kind of the difference between what the government is telling us about what’s happening and how people may be actually feeling it themselves? Before we get started, I just wanted to make sure everyone’s like on the same page about what all these things even mean.
Because personally as someone who does not like to follow the news that often, like even though I went to business school and I learned all these things, they all get conflated, I think especially whether depending on like what context people are talking about stuff. So, Just so we’re on the same page, I investopedia all these for this episode.
Starting with inflation, it’s when there’s more demand than there is supply generally, so then prices of things go up accordingly, and the money is worthless than
[00:01:27] Ramon: it used to be. One way of seeing it is like when you have more paper claims, more bills, more dollars, chasing fewer. . That’s one of the definitions and it’s important I think, to differentiate between currency evaluation, what has been happening since the seventies, since the US.
Left the gold standard at the cost of houses, the cost of education, the cost of healthcare has increased like 300, 400%. But that’s different. That, uh, pure academic inflation where it’s actually part of what has been happening during C O V. that is when you have, for example, supply problems. For example, everyone wants to buy coconuts.
Um, yesterday all the coconut trees burned down and there’s, there’s only one coconut left, so the price of that coconut is gonna increase a lot. So you have like two different reasons of inflation. And during covid, both were happening at the same time, you have a lot of currency evaluation because there were a lot of stimulus checks, a lot of expansionary programs from the government.
And there were also some supply shocks, mostly in energy and mostly in goods producing. That because of the zero covid policy has have gotten worse. So that’s are the reasons why inflation has gotten worse in the last two years.
[00:02:37] Angela Lin: And then related to inflation is the interest rate. So a lot of headlines in the last several months around the Fed.
Raising interest rates or stopping, raising interest rates, blah, blah, blah. Interest rates, TLDR interest rate is kind of the cost of borrowing
[00:02:55] Ramon: money. The, the best way to think about it is the price of money. The Fed funds rate is basically the, the base for the price of money. And if you 0% basically means you can borrow for free, or even if it’s a negative interest rate, they will pay you to borrow money.
Interest rates are important because what the banks. Because the mortgage industry does is based on that rate. So for example, if the Fed fund rate is at 2%, Then they will charge three or 4% at least, because they also earn the spread and the banks earn a spread on top.
[00:03:26] Angela Lin: Whatever the Fed sets it at cascades into all the borrowing rates.
So like you mentioned, mortgages, that’s a, one of the biggest one is, is anyone considering buying a house. If the Fed raises the interest rate, it means that it’s more expensive for you to borrow to buy that house. So whenever they raise interest rates, they’re trying to discourage. People from spending, right?
Because a lot of times it’s related to inflation that like inflation comes from people trying to spend too much money or like the money is worth less. So if you discourage spending, it can hopefully curb a little bit of the inflation. I’m sure there are other reasons they raise the rate, but like that’s a.
Big one and relevant for
[00:04:08] Ramon: now. Uh, it also affects the stocks because the way stocks are valued is using the discounted cash flow model. You use the discount rate that is necessarily the fed fund rate because you take, okay, what are the profits of this company gonna have in the next 10 years? The future profits of future years.
You discount it using the same percentage rate. That’s why when the percentage is zero, To say, oh, this company is just gonna have explosive growth. And it’s, it’s infinite basically. And that’s why stocks like tech stocks do really well when the interest rate is at zero. But the more you increase the rate, the more discount you need to apply to evaluate the stocks.
The Fed hopes that what crashing the value they have of their house, the value they have of their stocks, they will consume less. They will also. Go back to work more because they’re great resignation. A lot of people left their jobs, although the number of jobs has almost recovered that we’re still way below the pandemic level and a lot of people have retired.
And also because of covid and health issues, there are less people working, although the number of jobs. Canda is almost the same because some people are taking two or three part-time jobs. And then
[00:05:06] Angela Lin: the last one that I think is relevant is what does it really mean to be in a recession? And I think this one has made headlines recently because there have been back and forths of like, is the government changing the definition of what a recession means?
Based on what I’ve been reading, there’s no universally defined. Way of talking about their recession, but a common way that economists have defined a recession in the past is two consecutive quarters of declining GDP versus domestic product. It used to be about production, but it’s not just production anymore because it includes like how much money people put into the stock market and like buying houses and all that.
So if people are putting more money into the economy, it’s like a growing GDP essentially. So two declining quarters means that it’s like people have been spending less money or investing less money into the economy. So technically we’ve had two declining quarters. So like in that traditional sense, We’re like in a recession, but I guess that’s what we wanna talk about today is kind of like the difference between these like technical terms of when we say that we’re in a recession versus like what the government’s saying.
Because a lot of the positioning that headlines have been putting out is that no, the economy’s like. Super strong right now. Jobs have been growing, actually. That’s the main one that they keep pointing to, right? Is like employment’s up. So like we can’t possibly be in a
[00:06:33] Jesse Lin: recession. Okay, so I have a bunch of questions off the bat.
Ramon, you mentioned there were two main sources of inflation, which is the devaluation of the currency and then goods becoming more scarce. Right? If I were to go to the grocery store and I previously purchased almond butter for $8 and now it is $16, this is most likely attributable. Currency devaluation.
Right? Because that’s not a good that I normally would get from China, and I haven’t heard anything about all means becoming more scarce versus like if I went to h and m and the cost of a t-shirt was like $10, now it’s like 15. That would be because of supply chain issues. Exactly. And so my question actually, when it’s connected with inflation and recession, isn’t recession like a mechanism to control inflation?
Because it’s like if you are trying to tank the economy specifically to control inflation, that would. GDP over a certain amount of time, like however long you’re trying to
[00:07:27] Ramon: take it for? Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s a really blunt tool, and that’s what the Fed is trying to do because they cannot solve the supply issues.
So that’s the only thing they can do that’s basically use this hammer to kill an end. They’re gonna kill growth, they’re gonna kill value, they’re gonna destroy a lot of growth that was created in the, in the last few years. But regarding the recession, market practitioners and people that are in the market know that two consecutive quarters of negative vdp in the last 40.
It always was a recession, but what they say is like, oh, the economists don’t say it’s a recession, because usually one year later, this academic institution said, oh, this was a recession. So it hasn’t been called officially a recession because they always do it a year later. Also for political reasons, because they don’t wanna say right now they’re in recession until later, just in case that has the incumbent party or whatever.
But so far, the trial record of two consecutive quarters of GDP has worked every single time since the, since the sixties, as
[00:08:20] Jesse Lin: defining a recess. Yeah, I think it’s also interesting because I think that sometimes saying there’s a recession can cause a recession even. There’s no really like recessionary things happening.
Like I just remember I was reading this thing about Twitter recently because of the whole like Elon Musk and Twitter saying like bots, whatever. And there was this really great example of someone hacking the A Associated Press Twitter account saying there was an attack on the White House and that like tanked the market.
Like, oh my God. A couple hundred points and it didn’t come back. Even though it was fake news, like the, the market did not really bounce back really that quickly. From that, I think it’s like really interesting to see all of these things like interplay because it’s really based built off of people’s like confidence as to what’s gonna happen.
Mm-hmm. rather than necessarily any realities.
[00:09:05] Angela Lin: Probably important to re highlight is when it comes to like, quote unquote the markets, right? Like, When it goes up and down, it largely is tied to people’s sentiment of what is going to happen more than what is actually happening. So to, to your point, if the headlines are scary and making people feel a certain way, it will reflect even if it’s not actually as bad as it’s supposedly is.
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And if you feel so inclined, we’re also accepting donations at buy me a coffee.com/where are you from? Thanks y’all. I think the places where people are feeling it the most is buying houses has been really difficult. For the last long time. Prices were really bloated for a long time, so like it was just like way too expensive for people to buy houses because during Covid especially people were just like, it’s not worth it to live in these tiny apartments anymore.
I can like have land. Were, so then houses were getting expensive. But then recently, in the past few months, then the Fed raised the rates. So then now to get a mortgage, it’s like very expensive to borrow, to get a house. So I think housing people are feeling the crunch there. And then gas is like, what is most making headlines because the.
So dependent on, on car culture, unless you live in New York like Jesse, but like most people have to depend on a car to get to work, to do anything. And so the pump is largely where people are feeling it. What’s interesting is just seeing like the press. parroting what Biden’s administration is saying about like the economy’s so strong because like we have the lowest unemployment and like a long time, but people like every day are feeling that crunch in terms of what they are paying for their groceries, for the gas, for trying to buy a house and all these things.
And to me it just feels like it’s largely just because the election’s coming up and they’re trying to like hang onto anything shining that they have, which is the implement rate is like one of the only things that they have going for them. Right.
[00:11:28] Jesse Lin: Feels like
[00:11:29] Ramon: important things to say there. One about the housing and one about energy housing.
I mean, what caused the problem was also the Fed because they took interest rates to zero when the covid crisis happened, and then that’s why everyone after a few months is like, let’s get a house. Because basically the mortgage rates were like the lowest ever in 40 years. So that’s why also more people, more demand, their monthly payment decreases, even if the house increases in price, 300,000 because the rate is.
So that’s why the house is increasing price so much because the monthly payment was still going down because of the cutting. So the Fed caused the problem and now they need to try to revert it, but it’s gonna be hard. It’s gonna take a long time because most people lock this rate for 30 years and they’re not gonna move.
They’re not gonna switch houses regarding energy and oil. The important thing to notice is like the US has this strategic reserve of oil. It has been. Building for 50 years or 60 years. In the last six months, they have been releasing huge quantities every month. And curiously, they’re gonna do that until November.
That is the same time as the election. And right now that reserve is at the lowest point in the last 40 or 50 years, and they will need to rebuild that reserve at some point because if something work happens or anything, they need to rebuild the petroleum that the US has a store. So it looks like they’re trying to compress prices.
but they will need to buy back all the oil that they are releasing later in November. Another thing that is hurting oil president, there has been a lot of mal-investment in the last 10, 20 years and this investment both in nuclear and oil in Europe especially, and in the us and they have wanted to make a transition that makes no sense from zero to a hundred.
It’s like, oh, let’s go all solar. Electrical and then without having a plan. Europe was fully dependent on, on Russian gas and the renewables are not enough and they also close all the nuclear plants, and now they are, they’re basically beholden to, to Russian gas and it’s gonna take them two or three years to.
to go back to a reasonable
[00:13:28] Angela Lin: level. Wait, going back to what you said about the US holding a special reserve of gas and having been releasing it into the market, so are you saying even though prices seem really high to us now, they would actually be astronomically higher if the US hadn’t been kind of like faking?
Yes. It with supply. Gas. Interesting.
[00:13:50] Ramon: Yeah. And also China has helped because China is still in zero lockdown policy and China usually has this demand for borrow. And right now it’s still like a 30% of the usual demand for borrow. That has also, I think, for political reasons, but once they see election also is over, I think they will open again and then China will go back to, uh, normal demand of borrows.
[00:14:10] Angela Lin: which will drive up the
[00:14:11] Jesse Lin: price of, so possibly aside from gas and houses. I just think generally things have gone more expensive, but I personally haven’t really noticed it because as a person of a certain income, there’s like a little bit of buffer before I’m like, that’s expensive, . But I did go to the grocery store the other day and this is where I was, this is where I was like shocked.
I bought a jar of almond butter. and like a package of like frozen, uh, fruits. Cause I wanna make a smoothie. Guess how much it cost? $40. Close. 30. Oh my god. $30 for frozen fruit. Wow. And a, a thing, the cheapest thing of almond butter. It was insane. I was like, this is crazy. Produce and stuff has been like, more or less the same.
But yeah, there, that was like the first time where I was like, is this thing coming for. ,
[00:14:59] Angela Lin: you’ve been escaping it thus far and now it’s coming for you. Yeah. I think for us, we have a different experience because we had just lived in Korea for the last three months, and so we were like benefiting from all this economic mayhem happening because.
in the global sphere, the dollar has been stronger than all the other currencies. So we’ve been ha, we had like a discount on everything essentially in Korea on top of the fact that things are cheaper already. So then I think the sticker shock for us was like knowing that, for example, um, a like. Freshly cooked meal for lunch in Korea would cost us like $15 between the two of us after the currency.
That’s very, yeah. And then here, like at least 40 plus dollars for two people. Right. With tax tip. But I think for. , you know, normal people being in the US the whole time. The, the place I noticed it is that first time we came back here and I bought groceries. I remember actually getting the receipt and being like, I don’t really see the difference.
And then I realized like, oh no, these are like San Francisco prices, but we are in Orange County, where it’s always been like a step lower in cost than San Francisco. So I was like, okay, that is a side, because I only think it’s normal because we lived in the most, the second most expensive city in the us.
Yeah. And now, Up to that level down here, which is crazy. One
[00:16:19] Ramon: thing that is gonna confuse people a lot now is inflation and how it’s measured because it’s a percentage. Now you will hear not in November, December, in January, February, next year it’s gonna be, inflation is gonna be 0%. But that doesn’t mean that the prices have gone down.
Because the way they measure inflation is they measure against the same month last year. So for example, February, 2022 versus February, 2021. And then February, 2023 will be measuring against February, 2022. Prices have increased like 10%, but next year, uh, it can be 0%, but that still means that prices are still 10% higher than it was before the inflation started.
Politicians are gonna say, oh, so your percent inflation is a lot better, but you will still see the prices have not come down, and the prices are probably not gonna come. .
[00:17:04] Angela Lin: Yeah. They actually did that already. They did that like a few weeks ago when they announced the most recent inflation numbers and they were celebrating like zero inflation.
And it’s like, that is really confusing for people who like don’t know how they know that, how the, yeah, how the numbers are like calculated because it sounds like, oh, so things are getting better. It’s like not expensive anymore, but then you go to the supermarket you’re like, no, this shit still costs like way more than it used to.
It’s just a, feels like it’s just a toying with like the terms.
[00:17:30] Jesse Lin: It’s always, for me, felt a little abstract because it’s like, it’s not like a flat thing across everything. So like some things cost more, some things are the same, some things are less. So in reality, your experience of inflation, as it’s saying, it’s different person to person, depending on like what you’re consuming.
And some people are gonna feel the pain more than others. Yeah. Unless
[00:17:48] Ramon: you’re in Europe, as European, you know, everyone is gonna fill it. I’m sorry, energy prices a lot. Germany and France and the uk, their bill is, is right now like 150, 200%. What it used to be a year before. So inflation, that’s a lot of money.
No energy. The energy price. Oh, electricity bill. Their electricity bill. So it’s gonna be pretty, pretty hard for them. Well
[00:18:10] Jesse Lin: rooting for negative 15 Inflation next January.
[00:18:15] Angela Lin: Excess. Well, on that note, uh, all right, well, since this is a mini, we wanna hear from you guys, do you feel the squeeze? And if so, where are you feeling the squeeze?
Cuz I, as you mentioned, it’s not everywhere. So like where’s the place where you’re like, what the heck? This suddenly got like way too expensive or you can’t afford it anymore. Also, how confused are you by like the headlines and what people are saying? Cuz it’s a lot of complicated stuff and it’s all kind of like intermingling together.
And as we mentioned, there’s kind of like political factors for kind of toying with the way things are represented. So how confusing is this all for you guys? Let us know on the comments wherever you’re watching. Ramon, thanks for joining us again. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. And, uh, come back next week because we’ll have another fresh episode for you then.
[00:00:01] Jesse Lin: And I’m Jesse Lin. And welcome back to another episode of, but where Are You really from this week we’re turning a 100 baby. It is the centennial. Episode of
[00:00:15] Angela Lin: our podcast. You’re like, it’s been 100 years of this podcast. It’s been 84 years .
[00:00:24] Jesse Lin: So as you guys know, I don’t think we expected that this podcast, hobby Baby, would.
lead all the way here to 100 episodes. And I think Angela, even when we started, I, you had some ambitions for like what we were gonna do, but I don’t even think that you were thinking that you were gonna make this like your full-time shebang. Definitely not at the start. Yeah. So now that we’re here, we’ve discussed like so many different topics.
I think there’s still stuff that we can learn about each other cuz we constantly are learning more about each other as we do the podcast, you guys are learning more about us, we’re learning more. Some of you through the comments, so we wanna continue the dialogue and so we thought it would be really fun for our hundredth episode to do the 36 questions to fall in love by New York Times, because love doesn’t have to be romantic.
It can be platonic. Mm-hmm. . And it can be a very fun exercise. I think I’ve done this with a few friends. We did this with, um, Karen. Yeah. Actually some we did. some of these and then like some other questions. And it’s just fun to hear what your friends will answer for some of these things. Cause I just think a, like, it’s not something you ever think about for your friends.
You’re not like, oh, like what does, you know Amber think about like her favorite dinner guest. You, you would never think about these things. But it’s actually, I think it sparks like really interesting conversations from almost like icebreaker type. Without further ado, , we will hop right into the questions, expect that there will be some meandering conversation around them, possibly as their icebreaker type questions, but here we go.
Angela, if you could invite anyone in the world to dinner, who would it be?
[00:02:06] Angela Lin: I think my answers have changed throughout. Like, I’ve, I’ve definitely done this exercise many times. The, or like parts of it. Um, I used to say like Mindy Kaling. Mm-hmm. and like Jennifer Lawrence had her heyday where she was kind of like everyone’s favorite.
What happened though? I have no idea. Um, but those aren’t my answers anymore for sure. . So let’s see. Maybe Lady Gaga, cuz she’s a fucking like, force of nature. She’s amazing. Yeah. And I’m. . Yeah, I think I’d love to just like hear her life story a bit of like that explosion into fame and more like, I’m really curious, kind of her transition from her, like really over the top crazy like meat dress wearing days to like mm-hmm.
now where she still is like very much her own person that doesn’t fit in any box necessarily, but she doesn’t, it feels like less. Like she’s just doing really outlandish things to get attention and more that she’s kinda like settled into her own. Like, this is who I am and this is the art I want to make and like take it or leave it.
And also I’m super successful. So , I’d be curious to hear it kind of like her evolution.
[00:03:24] Jesse Lin: Yeah. Well, I told you I saw her at Chromatica Ball. Oh, yeah. Amazing. Mm-hmm. , I think she’s still doing a lot of that stuff. Like in her tour, like the first, her opening thing in the tour is basically like her in like a coffin, just spinning and like, it’s like an upright, like cylindrical thing.
It’s amazing and like, no. You’d be crazy to find anyone else who could open like that, where everyone is just like, yes, yes, you,
[00:03:54] Jesse Lin: Beautiful like it was. Yeah. So, yeah, I do agree with you. I feel like in the original, like the Lady Gaga hole, like the idea of Lady Gaga was such a character.
Mm-hmm. , and now it feels more true to like who she’s trying to represen.
[00:04:10] Angela Lin: Yeah, and I also, I really like, like I’d be curious to also get to know who she really is, like to kind of see where that line is between like who she puts on as the, like in front of cameras version and who she kind of really is off, off cam.
I’m sure there’s a little bit of a gemina. Exactly. Get me some time with Stephanie. . So yeah, that’s my answer, . Perfect. Okay. Excellent answer. Now you are in the hot seat. Next question. Ha. We’ve talked about this actually. Yeah. Would you like to be famous and in what way?
[00:04:46] Jesse Lin: I think I would like to be mid-tier famous, meaning that like people, some people will recognize me and it’ll be like chill and fun, but not like crazy and outrageous.
So I’m thinking like, Bo and Yang level success, where I think like most people will recognize him, but he’s not like so famous that people are immediately swarming him and it’s, I think it’s already really uncomfortable for him because we like. He was at chromatic of all, and my friends tried to like steal him for a selfie and he was like, he was there for it for maybe like three seconds and he was like, no, I’m going.
I’m leaving . So, and I was like, I’m really sorry. This is awkward. Bye.
[00:05:27] Angela Lin: Maybe you want even less fame than him then, .
[00:05:31] Jesse Lin: Yeah, I think I could. I think I could theoretically do that for like you. a minute, like hang out with random people that I don’t know, but then I would be like, I’m leaving. Like there’s gonna be terrible traffic and I wanna get out here in this situation.
So yeah, like mid-level famous where I can make like, you know, low to high, millions of dollars without like serious invasion of my privacy and like personal. Respect. Okay. Question number three, before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
[00:06:08] Angela Lin: Um, I think it depends on which phone call, what kind of phone call it is.
But I, I can’t say I’ve never done this. I have rehearsed. Slightly what I’m gonna say, but I will say it’s also because like how many times are you using the phone nowadays? Like if I can handle it over online forums, like I’m gonna do that. So a lot of times the phone calls are for like serious things, like a job interview or like, , you’re breaking up with someone, I don’t know, like something like a serious situation.
And so yeah, I do kind of rehearse or I don’t rehearse in terms of like I have a script and I’m reading off the script, but I kind of like go over in my head like, these are the main things I wanna make sure we talk about. Um, . So yeah, I’ve done that. But those are for like important things. So no, when I called the, um, sliding door repair people from my parents, I did not rehearse what I was gonna say
[00:07:05] Jesse Lin: to them.
You were not prepared to do, uh, Asian Satya negotiation with them? No.
[00:07:11] Angela Lin: I was like, just tell me how much it is . Fix this shit.
[00:07:15] Jesse Lin: Don’t let your mom hear you
[00:07:17] Angela Lin: next. , what would constitute a quote unquote perfect day for you?
[00:07:24] Jesse Lin: Do you remember that song that that was in? That was in, yes. . They legally what? Every time someone says that, I’m like,
[00:07:34] Angela Lin: That’s
[00:07:36] Jesse Lin: so good. Mm-hmm. , um, . Honestly, I think a perfect day would just be a regular day that I have where I am consistently in a good mood and like most things are going my way because I’ve had days like that where I’m like, this has been a great day. Like, Hmm, I woke up, I was, you know, my energy level was okay.
Went to work, had a bunch of like satisfying things that were resolved. Went to the gym, did my thing, like, came back, watched a t, watched tv. My partner, like, I think like a regular day that just everything is very nice, is kind of a perfect day for me because the reality is that you’re never gonna, like, I feel like most people be like, oh, I won the lottery and then like, uh, stumbled on the pot of gold, and you know, like that’s like an impossible day, right?
I’m talking about like what could be realistic and I think what’s realistic is a really. Normal day where everything kind of like goes my way. I
[00:08:34] Angela Lin: love that answer because it makes it so that you can have perfect days. Not all the time, but like much more frequently than some made up. Yeah, yeah. Fantastic old day.
Yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:45] Jesse Lin: And, and honestly, I prefer to have stuff like, not, not that at winning the lottery would not be amazing, but I. In the long run, it’s like the small things for me that make me happy and like small things, simple things make me happy, and so having just a nice day would be relatively perfect for me.
Okay. Numero cinco, when did you last sing to yourself, to someone else?
[00:09:13] Angela Lin: What does it mean to sing to myself? Well, because I literally dress. Singing in the car today. But I wasn’t by myself like Ramon was in the car, my mom was in the car, but I was singing along to the song that was on the, on
[00:09:26] Jesse Lin: my Spotify. I think that counts because you’re doing it for yourself and it’s not
[00:09:30] Angela Lin: performative.
Yeah, yeah. Oh, I see. Okay. So yeah, so literally a few hours ago for the singing to myself, it was Justin Bieber, cuz he has so many bots. Who was Justin Bieber? Um, it was. Uh, is a song called Off My Face or whatever, the Off My Face? I think that’s what it’s called. Like, uh, um, of My Face in Love With You. You don’t know that song,
You gotta
[00:09:58] Jesse Lin: get on TikTok. I probably do. I just don’t. Is it new? Is it recent? No. Oh, .
[00:10:05] Angela Lin: I mean, it’s, uh, music is like that, right? Like technically it came out two or three years ago already. I think TikTok and other places that like recycle music. Yeah. Kind of re popularize older. It’s not even an old song, but like, not like super fresh songs.
Last time I sang for someone else,
[00:10:29] Jesse Lin: work.
[00:10:30] Angela Lin: Uh, for you right now when I was trying to recreate That’s true. That song for you. That’s true. And the gotta say, it was not my best. So
[00:10:38] Jesse Lin: here we are. Well, you know, like we try every day to have a perfect day and sometimes it’s just, it’s just not there. And that’s okay.
That’s true.
[00:10:47] Angela Lin: It’s true. That’s okay. Whatevs. Okay. Wow. This is a long question. Okay. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30 year old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you, oh, I see. Okay. That was confusing. I was like, you’re gonna live to 150 or No, it’s saying that when you hit 30, you will either for the next 60 years till you die at 90.
Um, retain the mind or body of your current 30 year old state? I
[00:11:25] Jesse Lin: think I would pick the body and hear me out. This is because I feel like a lot of the old fuddy-duddy has to do with your body aging and so your, you know, like, and you can’t experience as much, but I feel like a lot of old people are still quite, they’re still quite lucid.
Like there’s nothing wrong with. Mental capabilities, but your physical capabilities are not there. So I think I would take the physical part of it because I think that at that particular age, I would still have enough mental, mental faculty to do all of the things that I need to do, but I would prefer to be able to do all the things that I need to do with third year old body.
[00:12:09] Angela Lin: Interesting. Yes. Okay. I, I know we’re not doing, everyone answers every question, but I would actually do the opposite because I think I’ve seen enough people, not at 90, but like to, like well past my parents’ age, for example, that are actually like fairly ripped. It’s like if you wanna keep your body and like tip top shapes, sure it will never be a 30 year old’s body, but it can be like decades younger than what the average.
age person for like an alter person would be if you’re like actually eating really healthy and like hitting the gym all the time versus like for example, you can’t prevent dementia or like ulcer that’s true. Tumors and that kind of stuff. If your mind is going
[00:12:51] Jesse Lin: well, I’m hedging a bet about this whole like whole body health situation.
Mm-hmm. Where it’s like if you have a healthy body, then you have a healthy mind and da, da da da da. So that’s. . That’s where I stand with that particular question. , do you have ? Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die? ?
[00:13:14] Angela Lin: Uh, no, I don’t, I think we have done this question before. No, I don’t have any secret hunch.
Mm-hmm. . And I feel like when people say they do, it’s not that they have a hunch, they just have like an extreme fear about like a certain way of dying. So then they’re like, I don’t know, I think I’m just gonna get hit by a car or something like that. Um, no, I don’t have a secret hunch. Like, obviously my hope is that I just like fall asleep and I die of old age, you know?
Um, so no. Okay, next. Um, name three things you and your partner appear to have in common. That is a weirdly, oh
[00:13:50] Jesse Lin: my God. Phrased sentence. Um, we’re both men . We both have hair .
[00:13:57] Angela Lin: Yeah. What the hell is it?
[00:13:59] Jesse Lin: And we’re both somewhere around five seven.
[00:14:02] Angela Lin: Okay. How about name three things
[00:14:04] Jesse Lin: you and your partner have in common?
No, I know, I know what this, it’s more. I think it’s, the question is kind of like if people knew you as a couple, what would they say? Like you guys are Oh, I see. Similar, I see similar qualities. I think we both enjoy meeting and socializing with new people. We both have introvert, like energy recharging needs.
Okay. They’re a little bit different. I think all of our friends would say like, yeah, you guys both sometimes just are like, Nope, not gonna be there. We need to like recharge. And I think that we both care about each other a lot. Number nine, for what in your life do you feel most grateful? There’s a lot of things
[00:14:47] Angela Lin: to be grateful for, I think, but I’ll go warm and squishy too, and I’ll say Ramon because Oh, of all the.
I think a lot of like my push towards self growth and like being more open-minded towards trying different things and like exploring the world and like doing a lot of that stuff came from meeting him. So, so yeah, I’ll say having him in my life, which is warm and squishy. That’s very nice. Yes. Okay. , if you could change anything about the way you were raised.
Wow, this is a loaded question. What would it be?
[00:15:30] Jesse Lin: Oh, money. Even the money. No, no, no. I, I honestly, like, it’s hard to say cuz I think hindsight is 2020 and I’m very satisfied, more or less with where I am. So to go back and say I wanna change something means that that might move my life path away from where I am.
But I would say probably the thing that I was most lacking as a kid, I’d probably like say I would love, I would have loved it if my dad was more involved in my life and just like more forward with the relationship he wanted to pursue with me. And I think that that’s just. You know, it’s a function of how he was raised, where my grandfather was not necessarily like the most connected.
So I think that he had a lot of trouble fostering that relationship. Cause he had no model, right? Like we, we, we talk a lot about like, you can’t be what you can’t see. And so I think for him there’s a big challenge where he doesn’t. He may not necessarily know how to build a relationship with me. And actually last time my mom or my parents were just here like a week or so ago, and my mom was like, you should call your dad more.
Like he asked about you a lot, but then he just asked me to call you in . Oh. And talk to you about it. And I was like, he, he could call me like, so I am trying to be more. , I’m trying to be more active in, in calling them like at least both of them like once a week and like ask ’em how they’re doing and like what’s new with their lives.
Cuz I think that it’s a little bit of a struggle for him to kind of like, Do that, and I’m more or less shameless now, so I can do that. .
[00:17:08] Angela Lin: Aw. Oh, so much warm and squishy going on, right?
[00:17:11] Jesse Lin: Hmm. Who knew? 11 . Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible. Well, you’re not my partner, so can I, but you can tell me your life
[00:17:21] Angela Lin: story.
Can I just tell you that this question gives me so much PTSD because, In business school, the elevator pitch number of times you have to essentially say your entire fucking life story, but like mostly career related, but essentially your life story in various versions of time limits is so traumatizing.
To me, it was like you need to have a. S uh, I think the longest they gave you was like a two minute version. So you need to have a two minute version, a one minute version, a 32nd version, and a like tldr essentially like, because a lot of times people ask like, is there anything else I should know about you?
Or like, what makes you different as like the last question in an interview or whatever. And it needs to be just kinda like a one liner. So there’s like so many versions of this and it. Gave me so much stress because I was like, so my, I’m supposed to distill my entire, like being, and my entire sense of value as a human into two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, and one sentence essentially.
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And if you feel so inclined, we’re also accepting donations at buy me a coffee.com/where are you from? Thanks y’all. Um, okay. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
[00:19:12] Jesse Lin: Oh my God. Oh, maybe I’ll do, I’ll do something that’s like sexual. So I am not a versatile pers uh, I do not play the versatile.
Not really. I’m mostly a top, but I think bottoms have a lot of fun and I wish I was more versatile, so that would be my thing. Mm-hmm. , it’s
[00:19:32] Angela Lin: a, what would that entail? Flexibility or,
[00:19:35] Jesse Lin: I just feel like a, a verse person, like really enjoys being the top and also really enjoys being the bottom. Oh, I like they have, they gain equal pleasure from doing both things.
Got it. Got it, got it. Okay. That’s how me . Sorry. Sorry. Tmi. Tmmi. TMI warning. We’ve talked
[00:19:51] Angela Lin: a lot about That’s true. Everything on this show.
[00:19:54] Jesse Lin: Um, if a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your, oh, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?
[00:20:03] Angela Lin: See, that’s funny because I literally already do all these, I do many things to divine these things.
yes. For myself. So I’m good. I will say I’m good because also I don’t want to, I think I’ve figured out a lot of things recently with. . You know, we’ve had, like, I’ve done like psychedelic journeys. I, I meditate now. I did the hypnosis regression stuff. Mm-hmm. and I do have another, um, psychedelic journey coming up in the next like month and a half.
So I will not divulge, but also I, I also don’t think it’s anything like huge. I think I just want like a little bit more clarity on like my life and like, Any big signs I’m missing, but I feel like I’m good on the whole crystal ball, magic crystal ball thing because I’ve already done a lot of that figuring out shit for myself through all these other methods.
And I also think it’s more worth it to do it that way because than like a crystal ball as the example because you work to get the answers. Yeah. Like you’re like doing self work essentially to figure it out so it, it feels more, you know, meaningful.
[00:21:19] Jesse Lin: Well, I think this, this question is also kinda open ended because I read it like it could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, some random thing in the future or anything else.
I
[00:21:30] Angela Lin: don’t wanna know anything about like the future in that sense, because like what you said about the past, I don’t wanna know anything like definitive about the future cuz you can fuck it up and then it won’t be your future anywhere. Yeah.
[00:21:40] Jesse Lin: And honestly, to your point, Towards working towards something. I feel like if you just saw it in a crystal ball, you probably wouldn’t even know what it means anyways.
Like if the, if I shook the crystal ball, I’m like, let’s assume that I was bored in like 1960 or something. If I shook the crystal ball in 1980 and said nine 11, I’ll be like, what’s this? I don’t know what this is. So like for the most part, it probably wouldn’t mean that much to you. Yeah.
[00:22:05] Angela Lin: Yeah. So don’t go wishing for crystal balls,
All right. Next. Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven’t
[00:22:16] Jesse Lin: you done it? Hmm. Okay. Dreamed of doing for a long time. I, I really wanna work abroad somewhere like not in the US cuz I just think it will be so interesting to. See what that experience is like. And I’ve had it secondhand from other people who’ve worked in different areas and like, oh, it’s like this and the culture’s like this.
But I think it’s just like a separate thing to experience it overall and just be really integrated into like wherever you’re working. Because let’s face it, we spend like a, a lot of our working time or a lot of our waking hours working. So I think it would be really cool to have that kind of experience.
Why haven’t I done it? Laziness and opportunity. I think that I, oh, I also just bought this apartment, so I’m, I don’t know. I’m at this place, I’m at this place in my life where I’m starting to feel a little bit more settled and this is the kind of thing that I is more difficult to do when you’re settled.
But I would still say like if the opportunity called, I would try to figure out how to make it work. You know, like if there was like an opening somewhere and there’s like an open. Casting call for this position, I would be like, yeah, I’ll, I’ll go for it. And then like, I’ll figure everything out, you know, once I hear back on how that goes.
But yeah, I think it would be really cool to work abroad somewhere.
[00:23:39] Angela Lin: Yeah. You’ve actually mentioned this a couple times in the past,
[00:23:42] Jesse Lin: and I seriously was doing it. Like I, there was a, I was interviewing for this German company. I didn’t get it, but like, I was like, I’m gonna leave if I get this.
What is the greatest achievement of your life?
[00:23:58] Angela Lin: You know, I feel like a lot of these, I’m kind of like, nah, , like, I don’t like them as much as I thought I was gonna like them. What is the greatest accomplishment of my life? This is a big question because I think I’ve always attached it to. Traditional concepts of achievements.
Like for example, in the past I said things like getting into Chicago Booth for my MBA because it’s the number one business school in America and everyone thought I couldn’t do it. Or then like recently wrapping up my corporate career, it was like launching Far Cry six, the video game, because I fucking did that shit.
Like the, the like actual launch campaign, the marketing part of it. I was responsible for like a lot, a lot of it . Um, so that, but I think. Greatest accomplishment of my life. It’s as I get like more woowoo and like spiritual and shit. and I’m learning more about kind of myself and like my relation to people and my impact with people.
I think my greatest accomplishment is continually kind of like connecting with people and hopefully leaving like a positive impact one way or another because I can like name, for example, like several people in my life that I know that I’ve. had a really strong, positive influence on, thank you. Jesse’s pointing at himself.
Um, or like, you know, they come to me for advice frequently and like stuff like that. And it, that stuff makes me feel really good because it’s, it’s intangible, right? And it’s like, , and I’m not doing it as a job. It’s just like, it just feels good to like help people. Mm-hmm. . And to know that that’s kind of like in me, that it’s, it, it’s like a continuing thing that like more people I meet, there’s always like new people that I have those kinds of relationships with.
So not a traditional answer, I would say, but I think it’s also a reflection of my changing belief and what matters in life. so,
[00:26:20] Jesse Lin: I know we’re not, again, we’re not doing this double question answer thing, but I was gonna say it’s me. I’m the greatest achievement in my life. . Like, honestly, like look at where I was.
Look at where I am now. Yeah, that’s true. And it’s kind of what you’re saying, like you’re, you’re constantly working towards better bettering yourself. You are the greatest achievement of your life. That’s
[00:26:39] Angela Lin: true. That’s true. And we are the protagonist of our own lives. So if that’s true, you can’t be proud of being your greatest achievement.
Who will be, maybe
[00:26:47] Jesse Lin: I want to be the antagonist.
[00:26:49] Angela Lin: You. We are both. Let’s be real. We are our own biggest antagonists. Always . Okay. That’s very fair. Okay. Um, what do you value most in a friendship? I have a vested interest in this . Hmm,
[00:27:05] Jesse Lin: sir. I’m trying to think of, you know what it is so funny is that sometimes I think of it backwards.
So I think about the people that I met recently and why I don’t want to be friends with them. . I personally feel like the thing that I value most about friendship is like a general openness because I’m thinking about the last few people where I like have kind of rided them off. And the reason is because it feels like a lot of the energy that I’m giving out is not coming back.
So they’re like not open to receiving this energy. And of course there are like other important things like. Trust, honesty, but those are like things that are like deep into your friendship. And I’m thinking about like what are the things that will drive you to a friendship? And I think openness is like really important because if you’re not, and this is, I, I feel, feel like this is some kind sometimes a way in, in the gay community because everything is so like body conscious and like sexually driven, that some people are iced out because they don’t.
Like they have muscles in a six pack or they don’t look a certain clothing fashiony sense and stuff like that. But I think for me, what’s most important is that someone is like really open because all those things are superficial to having your energy reflected back at you. And there’s like nothing better than.
That because it’s like that, like instant connection that you have with a person. Love it. Thank you.
[00:28:36] Angela Lin: May you find more open people and keep only open people in your
[00:28:40] Jesse Lin: life. I’m trying. They’re honest. They’re the most fun anyways, so why don’t they want anyone else? True. , what is your most treasured memory?
That’s us playing in the back of an empty
[00:28:53] Angela Lin: picture. Dude, I will always remember that we were fucking hooligans, and so Jessie and I met. DOIs Temple, if you guys don’t know our whole backstory. Yeah. But we always played hooky at night. Like the adults had like class, we actually had nothing to do. Well, they started doing those classes and we were like, oh, I help them.
Like sometimes they started doing that, but anyways, the adults would be like reading from like dais texts, that’s class. And then the kids would just like dick around and we were so bad, we would like hide and like there’s like a massive warehouse. It was weird. Or temple was like inside. functioning office slash warehouse situation.
Yes. So we’d like run around there, hide around there, and then there was a parking lot with like employees of this businesses like trucks and stuff. And we would like crawl into the back trunks of these cars that we don’t know the owners of. And just like loiter there all night, we were weird. I don’t know.
No, that’s, I, those are fond memories, but those, it’s not my most treasured memory bear. I don’t know. It’s kind of, uh, is it too, oh wow. I didn’t know I was gonna go so woowoo on like all these answers, but it’s not a singular one. But I will say, I think every time I come out of a psychedelic journey or, or some other, like self in.
Introspection journey because like the hypnosis for example, there were no drugs involved. Um, that feeling I get when I come out is so special and kind of like indescribable because it is, it’s weird because you’re kind of bridging two worlds. You’re kind of coming out of this like otherworldly experience back into like your normal physical life.
And then also coming back though kind of. stronger in a way like spiritually, emotionally, and mentally because you like know more about yourself or like your situation or have more guidance. So that kind of mental and emotional state that I have right after coming out of one of these like introspective journeys, but not a specific one, I’d say like all of them kind of equally have those
[00:31:05] Jesse Lin: feelings.
Nice. Nice. I think those are, that’s a fair answer. Yeah.
[00:31:12] Angela Lin: Going full. Woo. Okay. Oh haha. Well, you get the fun opposite. What is your most terrible memory? What
[00:31:19] Jesse Lin: is my most terrible memory? I feel like I have this like eternal sunshine of the Spotless Mind thing where I like delete bad memories cuz they’re. Bad.
And I’m like, I don’t really wanna do this. . Oh my God, I should have said this to be, oh my gosh. So I, I already told you this story and like most of my friends, but when I was at Eed C this past year, I did like too much acid and I just ha, I was like stuck in like the dark place and. I don’t know what happened.
Like I don’t know if it was like the music that led me there or just like I was already kind of like in a bad head space, but I ended up like confronting this like manifestation of my sadness or like my depression and it was just this like enormous like wall of like emanating sadness and I was like, oh my God, this is like.
So much. I was like, I didn’t know that this was like sitting inside of me, like freaked me out. I was like, oh my God, am I like really fucking like depressed? And I just had this like, and then PA after that I had this like vision of just like me being alone, really sad. And it was like so vivid that I was like in a funk for like the rest of the night.
Honestly, like the rest of the week. I was like, I think I’m. , my brain has broken . Like it was, it was dark. I cuz I, cuz it, I knew, I, I’ve, I’ve been going through, you know, I’ve been going through stuff with Covid and just like relationship troubles and. . It’s stuff that I’ve been working on and I knew that I had been feeling really sad about certain things, but I never like confronted it in such like a visceral manner where I was like, oh my God.
It’s like enormous. Like, what do I do with all this? And it was just like overwhelming. So that was like the most terrible memory that I , I think. Oh,
[00:33:11] Angela Lin: you definitely didn’t tell me
[00:33:12] Jesse Lin: that. . Oh. Well, now I did. Sorry.
[00:33:16] Angela Lin: Okay. Yeah. Well, day You learned something else here at the same time.
[00:33:19] Jesse Lin: Well, they were, they were there.
They saw me like crying at Esso. Like, I was like, like it was, it was not, it was not the, not the night. Yeah.
[00:33:31] Angela Lin: Might I suggest that you change your setting, Henry Reattempt, to confront that same thing again?
[00:33:41] Jesse Lin: I, yeah. I think I need. . Honestly, like going into in going into it, the Headspace was not great and then when I got there I was just kind of like, well, fuck it, I’m already here.
And I was just like, I’m just gonna do this. Like one thing that I know is probably too much, but I’m already here so I’ll make better choices next year. ,
[00:34:02] Angela Lin: no, I did it. Well, I also just literally mean like, because we’ve talked about that we use psychedelics differently. Yeah. But. What you described sounds horrifying, but also sounds pretty common in terms of like something you might encounter when you do it for like a therapeutic purpose.
Mm-hmm. . And in that setting you would just embrace it and kind of like kind of try to push through and be like, what am I trying to learn here? And like what you got while, like what, what, you know?
[00:34:33] Jesse Lin: Yeah. I don’t, yeah, I think that definitely would’ve helped. I did push through, but it was just kind of like, , I, I’m just gonna like live outside of this kind of situation to make myself like functional
[00:34:48] Angela Lin: Oh boy. Well, okay. Anyways, I’m sorry you went through
[00:34:53] Jesse Lin: that. It’s okay. It was my, it was, it was me being dumb anyways, so I was like, of course. Like, and it’s stupid too cuz I tell everyone like, if you’re not a good place, don’t do it. And I’m like, guess who did that? Me. It happens. . All right. Almost at number numero 20, numero 19.
If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living and why?
[00:35:20] Angela Lin: I mean so many woo woo things. I think it’s just all the things that we know we’re supposed to do, actually do them. And then by that I mean. Specifically, especially like spending time with and expressing love towards your loved ones as much as possible.
Because if you really only have one, you’re left. That’s like all you got. So what’s more important than like spending it with those people? Um, it sounds kind of silly cuz my mind immediately went to like, oh, actually like get into. Uh, fitness routine. And it’s like ironic because it’d be like, well, you know, you’re dying in one year.
Because some, some other people would say like, I’d eat like whatever the fuck I want because I know that I’m gonna die either way. Yeah. But for me, I think I’d rather try to optimize like the time I have left to feel as good as possible. Yeah. Um, so yeah, those two things. Yeah. Spend as much time as hustle with loved ones.
Stay
[00:36:18] Jesse Lin: in shape. I think that’s, that makes sense. You know, making use of your time by staying healthy. Yeah.
[00:36:24] Angela Lin: Yeah. Until I reincarnate again. ,
[00:36:28] Jesse Lin: what’ll it be this time?
[00:36:31] Angela Lin: I dunno. All right, last question. We’re only going through 20 because it was too many. 36 total. We don’t have time for that. Yeah. But also 20 feels like the right place to end because it’s a hundred.
So, you know, it’s like even numbers, data.
[00:36:44] Jesse Lin: Yeah. Yeah. Blah blahs. Okay. Just scale. As they say, , scale
[00:36:48] Angela Lin: it up. Okay, Jesse, no pressure. Last question. What roles do love and affection play in your
[00:36:55] Jesse Lin: life? Ooh, this is a good one. I think it’s, I pretty big. I want to say I, over the last few years have been. Thinking about more intentionally like relationships, particularly my primary relationship, but also like how other relationships can play out.
And it’s always been a little bit difficult for me to navigate this whole like friends than like friends with benefits, than your like primary relationship and then like potentially like other, Relationship type things between that and like friends with benefits. And so I think love and affection are quite important because I seek, I seek all of these thi, I seek these things in all of the people that I know.
And I think that people will say like, oh well, like you’re not looking for love from like your friends per se. And I’m like, of course I am. Like. Of course I’m looking for love for my friends. Like it’s not romantic love necessarily, but I’m looking for like that kind of de yeah, that kind of like rooted connection where you like, you know, you got each other’s backs and there’s this like connection and you can have like your inside jokes and you just feel really good with this person.
These are all like facets of what I think people think love are and of obviously, I also seek affection from my friends. And I think it’s funny because we also do it really differently where I have a group of friends where I just like shit on them all the time, and that’s like the way that we do it, and we love it.
So yeah, I think it’s huge because all of the relationships I cultivate, like I, that’s what I’m looking for. I’m looking for love and I’m looking for affection. .
[00:38:34] Angela Lin: Hmm. Okay. And yeah, I like that you kind of delineated the affection can come in many different forms, including shitting on people. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You know, we talked
[00:38:44] Jesse Lin: about, yeah. Asian, Asian dad cutting you fruit. That’s love. Asian
[00:38:48] Angela Lin: mom too. Asian parents in general. Yeah. Yeah. Fruit. You’ll never get that apology, but you will get some, you’ll get the cut fruit. Mm-hmm. . Okay. Well we learned a lot about each other, I think. And although I think a lot of it we, we knew a good question.
The
[00:39:04] Jesse Lin: answers have have changed, I think, which is interesting to see. Yeah,
[00:39:07] Angela Lin: that’s true. That’s true. Um, well, yeah, so happy 100 episodes to us and to all you who’ve been listening throughout this with us. Let’s see. How did we wanna close this? It was, are we in love yet, ?
[00:39:23] Jesse Lin: Oh yeah. Are we in love? I think we’ve been in love with a lot.
[00:39:25] Angela Lin: We’ve been in love with each other For, love You.
[00:39:28] Jesse Lin: 30. Oh, don’t say it girls. 20, 20, 26, 30 something years. I, oh, 31.
[00:39:36] Angela Lin: Are we like 50 years old now? Yeah, 20. 26 years. Yeah. 26 years. Yeah. Oh my God. That’s correct. We’re a whole millennial’s worth of love, because that’s even older than Gen Z. Duration of our friendship.
26 is a millennial still.
[00:39:52] Jesse Lin: Oh, okay, okay, okay. I see. Yeah. Not Gen Z . Well, looking forward to another 26 years. God. Oh my God. Weird .
[00:40:04] Angela Lin: Yeah. We will live that long and hopefully more more than that. We’ll live. We lived in six years. That’s like nothing, girl. I know, right. Okay. Well anyways, um, let’s see. How about you guys either let us know what was the most surprising answer that one of us gave, or maybe drop a question you wanna know about.
Maybe we’ll decide whether or not we want to answer you, but we can go with that too, because these are just prompts that we got from the New York Times thing, but we’re, as you know, we’re relatively open or else we wouldn’t have a whole podcast about our lives and identities and blah, blah, blah. Yeah. So
[00:40:44] Jesse Lin: well thank you for tuning in and as always, join us next week for a fresh, new episode.
[00:00:01] Angela Lin: And I’m Angela Lin. Welcome back to another episode of, but Where are You really from? And today we have another mini for you. Mini. Uh, Yeah, we are discussing, is it homage or appropriation? We’re talking about movie adaptations, y’all. Um, and this is an interesting topic because the reason why it’s kind of top of mind for me at least, is uh, I don’t know if y’all have been watching The Money Heist Show that was recently redone.
For Korean audiences, but it was adapted from the like extremely popular Spanish show money heist. Uh, to be fair, Netflix owns the rights to both, so it’s like their decision if they wanted to do it, but part of me just like did not feel good seeing the trailer for the show because I. Loved the original money heist.
I’m obviously biased because Ramona’s Spanish, so he would like hype in, you know, he was like getting some pride from this Spanish show being like fucking huge. Like that thing won like Emmy’s and it was like, it was like huge. Yeah, it did. Um, And so when I watched the trailer for the Korean one, I think it just rubbed me the wrong way that it almost appeared like a mirror image copy of the show.
Mm. I know it’s not because I read up. I haven’t watched it to be fair. Um, but I read up on kind of like what the key differences are, and obviously it’s said in Korea, it’s not said in Spain. Wow. It’s actually a bunch of Koreans who fly to Spain and take over . No, it’s set in Korea and it, they obviously implement.
Korean specific things like there’s a North Korean versus South Korean history and dynamic. That’s like one of the main kind of underlying plots. in the trailer at least. I was like, okay, these characters are exactly the same thing. Like they’re the same names, which if anyone has watched Money Heist, you know, like, um, instead of using their real names, they all choose like city names, like Berlin and like Tokyo and whatever.
And part of me was like, couldn’t you have chosen other cities if you were really gonna do this? Like, why’d you have to like choose exactly the same names? And then they were like the same personal. . So it’s not, you know, it’s like, so it is exactly like a copy of the Spanish character. But Korean and I, I, again, I don’t know exactly if like everything was the same, but I remember seeing in the trailer you do see the encounter between the professor and Tokyo, like how he recruited her and it looked exactly the same as a Spanish scene.
Mm-hmm. . And I was like, I just don’t like this. So that’s why it’s top of mind for me. But we wanted to talk about in general, kind of movie, Adapta movie or show adaptations, where traditionally, a lot of times the way we’ve seen it is almost, it’s usually the other way around, right? It’s like a lot of Asian.
Films, it’s copied and TV shows are copied by Western media. Yeah. And, and kind of made into their thing. And is this homage or appropriation? That’s what we
[00:02:58] Jesse Lin: wanna talk. Good question. So, I mean, as you mentioned, there’s been like a huge history of Western cinema, basically just copying the exact film. So if you think about, I mean, Japanese horror has historically been like the place where people just copy.
The source material and like change it a little bit for the local audiences. I think there are like other films that people will take from as well. Um, a lot of the like or like kung fu stuff has been in certain TV shows and films has been poured over where it’s very clearly not a Eastern story necessarily.
It just has those particular elements. And I think for me, The difference between homage and appropriation is how original the new material is. So for example, when I think of the ring or the grudge, I really think that that’s appropriation because it’s not really that different from the source material.
It’s not better, it doesn’t introduce any originality into the original concept. It really just replaces the actors with like big box actors and maybe like better special effects and. Filming, framing, cinematography, whatever. But at the core of it, it’s essentially the same story with just like more bells and whistles and it’s not always better either.
Like I feel like the American version of the ring and the grudge was not really that much better than the Japanese version. I do like it when elements are used in original stories, so you have something that respects the history of. certain, um, filming elements came from, but incorporates it in a new, exciting way.
And I know we’ve talked everything everywhere, all once to death. But this, this is like a really great example of it because I think that Daniels really made use of Michelle Yo’s, like martial arts experience, built it into the film where it’s like really cool, somewhat referential. But it’s an interesting new story that’s not like a copy of anything.
It’s not stealing, it’s not like taking someone else’s original story and just like adding more lights and cameras and flashy effects. It’s something completely new. And I think for me, that’s the difference between homage, which pays, respects to certain elements that have been seen in film and TV prior versus appropriation, which is just like, it just a.
[00:05:31] Angela Lin: So based on the way you are discussing it, then it doesn’t really matter if it’s a Western film that’s, uh, copying an Asian film or the other way around. If it’s almost like the exact same story, then that’s
[00:05:44] Jesse Lin: appropriation. I think so, because like what value do you add to that story, that thought process?
That, that the cinema universe of whatever it is that you’re looking at, if.
[00:05:58] Angela Lin: Copying it to be totally fair. We just talked about largely like Asian films Sure. And TV shows that are appropriated by Western media. Uh, Asian people do the same thing because I like this up. Oh sure. And they’re like so many like Chinese and Korean shows and movies that are straight ripoffs of like American or other Western mm-hmm.
content. Mm-hmm. . So it’s not by any means us saying like, white people always taken that shit. It’s like, no, everyone to be taken, everyone’s shit. Hello. Hey listeners, wondering how you can support us? The biggest way is by increasing our visibility by following us on Instagram at Where are you from, pod on TikTok at, but where are you really from?
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Thanks y’all. Um, I think that largely historically, . The reason why this was done a lot and like okay, or like slid under the radar is that before our content wasn’t that globalized. I think it was a pre Netflix thing and a post Netflix thing of like when content wasn’t so easily accessible from all other regions, and people weren’t used to listening to dubs or reading subtitles.
They largely only watched their. Stuff. So like, especially Western audiences are so unused to watching like non-English speaking things that unless it was remade into English. And then of course, because it’s, if it’s into English, Hollywood has certain history of casting just white people. So then that, that goes into, into the mix.
Then like other, Western audiences may not watch it. Mm-hmm. versus now post parasite, post Netflix, introducing like content from literally everywhere and kind of forcing people to start getting used to dubs and subtitles. People are now open to watching stuff from everywhere and so my hope. Crystal balling in a little bit, is that moving forward this will happen less because you’ll be able to, um, convince people to watch like the original thing.
That’s a big thing. Yeah, but I guess I’m kind of like saying opposite things from what’s really happening because Money heist just happened. Like they literally released Morning High Korea one year after the end. The original muddy heist from Spain and both are from Netflix. So I guess it’s not always gonna go away, but like I’m hopeful that it’ll start kind of like screaming into like the original creators because people are used to global content.
[00:08:49] Jesse Lin: Yeah, I think it’ll be really great if you viewed the remake to view the original, and I think the word appropriation is kind of. Funny because for me it’s a little tricky to explain how I feel about it. Cuz I feel like the, the Ring movies, it’s definitely appropriation because I think they took the material and like I think the original writers, some of them might have been paid, but basically they kind of like ripped it off.
And like they changed some elements of the story where the horror is not explained quite the same way as the original film. And so you like lose some of the origin of that story in service of making it palatable for a lot of people. So you’re kind of like, There’s like some cultural elements of Japanese horror, right?
You’re taking that and you’re watering it down so that more people can understand it. But in doing so, you remove some of the original meaning in a sense or some of the elements of horror, and I think that that’s appropriation because you’re not capturing that the same way. You’re just trying to get it to as many people as possible to profit off.
which is, you know, like for a lot of stuff that’s, that’s completely fine if you want to do that. But, um, I think if you’re talking about like really great cinema, it’s always for me been like, not a copy. It’s like you have some reference material origination material and you incorporate that into something that’s, um, newly creative rather than stealing.
[00:10:22] Angela Lin: I think this is all subjective though, in a way though, because, um, creative liberty can be interpreted in many different ways, right? Like you’re saying, and I agree with you that there’s like very specific things to Japanese culture that can’t translate. So then they kind of just cut it out. Um, similarly, because Money Heights is what I started talking about, it’s like, Yeah.
Well, you can argue that a lot of the Spanish context is gone because it’s literally not in Spain anymore. Mm-hmm. , it’s not Spanish people. Mm-hmm. , now it’s Korean. So it’s, it’s like, well, why is one scene as like, okay, and one’s not okay. Mm-hmm. . And then the other thing I, I just remembered is I looked this up before and I think.
Part of the reason why these adaptations have been like pretty common in the last several decades is because there is no real international copyright law . Oh. Like there supposedly is, but not really. Like, it’s really hard to enforce. So it’s kind of like within your country that you produce the thing, there’s definite copyright protection, and then once you like ex, you know, once you’re outside that country, it’s too gray.
I see. All right. Moving into close. We wanna hear from you guys, so drop us a comment and tell us what is your either favorite or like most horrible adaptation in your mind. It can either be Western copying Asian shit, or the other way around, or whatever thing we’ve left off. Let us know what is the worst offender or your favorite.
Think it’s actually better than the original hot
[00:11:52] Jesse Lin: tea. We wanna see fights in the comments section. ?
[00:11:56] Angela Lin: Yes. And let us know what you think of, like what exactly is the difference between ho, homage, homage and appropriation?
[00:12:02] Jesse Lin: Appropriation. Oh,
[00:12:03] Angela Lin: appropriation. Yeah. Whoops. Um, yeah. Homage or appropriation because I think it’s a fun line.
Creative subjectivity, blah, blah, blah. There’s definitely blah, blah. Yeah. Maybe you have a strong opinion. So let us know in the comments.
[00:12:16] Jesse Lin: As always, come back next week for a. Hop in hippity. Hop in episode from us.
[00:00:02] Angela Lin: And I’m Angela Lin. Welcome back to another episode of, but Where Are You Really from? Today we have a special guest that is a friend of the pod with that we’ve had on before. Keith coo. Welcome back to the show.
[00:00:16] Keith Koo: Hey, Angela. Hey, Jesse. Thanks for having me. Great to
[00:00:19] Angela Lin: see you.
Course, of course. So we were catching up a little bit before we hit record, but it’s been, it’s been like two years since we’ve talked to you or like a little under, um, I think you were one of our first external guests, cuz in the beginning we had like friends that were relevant for topics and I think you were one of the first like legitimate.
Guess we met through the podcast. Um, so it’s, it’s been a hot second, but it’s nice to have you back.
[00:00:44] Keith Koo: Great to see that you’re still going with the show. I think it’s super relevant, especially in what’s happened the last couple of years, uh, since pandemic and then the post pandemic and how people are trying to get reintegrated into society, so to speak.
So congratulations on keeping it.
[00:01:01] Angela Lin: Thank you. Um, well, since it has been quite a while since we’ve had you on, and the topic that we covered with you last time is quite different from what we’re gonna be talking about today. For those who did not listen to Keith’s original episode, that one was called Adulting 2.0, and we covered things like personal finance, estate planning, um, and kind of your experience because you did a lot of mentoring with youth, especially around these topics.
So, Very educational, I would say. Uh, if you are interested in those topics, definitely hop back to that episode, but today we’re talking about something completely different. So for those who don’t know, Keith, I wanna give you the chance to reintroduce yourself to our audience and then we can talk about, uh, the hot topic
[00:01:46] Keith Koo: for today.
So I grew up in Silicon Valley, San Francisco. I did the corporate thing, so did the whole go off the college, get a job, uh, stayed in corporate America, worked for companies like Wells Fargo, Cisco Systems, uh, doing m and a integration technology deals. And finished my career, uh, as an executive at the Bank of Tokyo or Mitsubishi Financial Group.
Uh, decided to ditch all. Kind of consider myself a corporate refugee. And about seven years ago I started mentoring large companies. And in that process, uh, many startups started coming to me and organically and I mentor startups and so help them scale. Um, there’s one right now that is, uh, also has a Asian c e o.
His wife is Mexican and it’s going great. Um, valued at a hundred million. So spend most of my time mentoring startups. I am a full-blown investment banker by more like a part-time status. And I’ve been, um, doing professional moderation at investor and enterprise events. I have a radio show, Silicon Valley Insider been on just finishing up five seasons on business and tech.
And I’m about to start a second radio show, which is the integration of faith and your life, and I’m pretty excited about that, but we can talk about that later. So that’s it. That’s about what I’m up.
[00:03:01] Angela Lin: Well, actually the topic of your second radio show is very relevant for today’s conversation because I actually don’t remember how much we talked about this in our last episode with you, or if it was only in our, kind of like off the record chit chat when we got to know you, but another big part of who you are and what you.
Do with your time is, um, with your community within your faith community. And so today’s topic is super interesting. I won’t try to encapsulate what’s happening, but, uh, if y’all are listening now, you saw that the title of this episode is When Church Meets State. So we are talking about some interesting topics here that have to do with faith, the church cultural racial identity.
Freedom of speech, a lot of different things. So Keith has been kind of, uh, in this whirlwind of, uh, things going on with his church related to all this stuff. So Keith, if you could give us a little bit of background on what’s happening, we can kind of dig into all these different pieces around
[00:04:06] Keith Koo: it. , and it’s funny that you mentioned whirlwind.
I think, uh, probably to external folks listening, uh, both people of color, non people of color, it’s more like they’ll think of it as a tempest and a teapot. But I think really the key is for those who, um, have followed me or hear my show, uh, whether it’s faith or not faith, they know that, um, my faith is very integrated into my life.
So although my wife and kids, we do attend a church and I’ve attend. Churches my entire life. Uh, for me, faith isn’t religion. It’s actually integrated into who I am. And so what we’re gonna talk about today is something that doesn’t get enough coverage in people of color overall, and especially in the Asian community.
And that is that. Racism is alive and well in churches. And when confronted with that, they have a really hard time dealing with it. And that’s something that I’ve been going through for about the last year and a half. So in the context is my wife and I have been attending a church for 16 years, since my daughter was one years old.
And we’ve been in ministry, we’ve been teachers. . And so what happened? Uh, we know that a few years ago, the George Floyd incident happened and Black Lives Matter happened, and our church happens to brand itself as a multicultural church. Uh, about two thirds of the congregants are people of color, but at the same time, it’s not one integrated service.
We have a Mandarin service. We have a tele, which is an Indian language service. We have a Cantonese service. We have one of the most significant deaf services in America. We have a Filipino service, and then we have a main. So, no doubt it’s a diverse community. I happened to co-teach high school, so the church had a very, very, uh, strong response to George Floyd incident embracing the black community.
And our church actually has a very small black community, so it’s just great to see them do that. So about a year later, what happened to the Asian American community? Uh, we had the Atlanta shootings, and for those who remember the Atlanta shootings, there were eight victims of senseless murder, and six of them happened to.
Women of color Asians, and I was giving a lesson BA one or two weeks later to a high school group that I’ve been teaching for six years that happened to be 80% female and 80% people of color. And during my talk, integrating the story of the Atlanta shootings, the main leader, um, tried to cut me off several times saying that the discussion.
Of the Atlanta shootings was inappropriate in a church setting and was irrelevant. And, uh, shouldn’t be brought up. And you know, for those who follow me on Clubhouse, I lead an Asian professional group, which is 10,700 people. I lead a Christian professional group of 6,300 people, which both groups are global.
Both groups are not solely for Asians. And there’s an aside here. There’s over 48 countries on the continent of Asian. And people are shocked that there are people who are not ethnically considered Asian. That are Asian. I can talk. Lebanon, I can talk about Russia, I can talk about Eastern Europeans, . And this concept like Asians are only those that have yellow skin, um, that is wrong.
Or that in Christian professionals you only have to have, follow the same faith to have any relevance to talking about that. So here we are teaching on the Atlantic shootings, and this leader says it’s irrelevant. You can’t talk about it. And so my daughter’s in this class as well, and in the, we’re doing it on Zoom, we’re still in lockdown, so we’re not meeting in person and in the chat function of Zoom, the.
Young women want to talk about it and they want to expand on it and wanna bring it up. So the meeting ended, uh, a week later. It was a conflict management model that Jesus gave in the Bible that the, uh, disciples, the apostles followed. So I reached out to this other leader on Zoom. Um, we had a discussion about what happened the week before.
That individual said they underst. As the leader of the organization. This is a parachurch, so it’s not like it’s a children’s ministry that he leads, that is not part of the church that’s associated with international kids ministry. Um, he said two things and I actually wrote a Facebook post on it. He said, I’ve always wondered why you’re more loyal to China, the United States.
And if you remember for the listeners before, actually I can’t speak Chinese. I was born in the United States. Um, I can understand Chinese dialects, but I’m not a fluent speaker of Chinese. And he said, um, as the leader of this organization, I never want you to teach on being Asian again. Said it with a straight face, said it without any thoughts.
I’m really close to our senior pastor. I told him about. He’s like, you know, you need to have grace on this individual. He struggles with this area and just move on. So this was like spring of 2021 now. So the night I talked to my pastor, I actually wrote a Facebook post about what just happened with no attribution, no gender, no ethnicity, just that a friend had questioned these things about my identity, which was shocking.
We teach every year, we rotate the subjects, um, on a cycle. So as I asked what the schedule was to the leadership team, um, this leader said I was, I was fired. I was out. And, uh, it was a contrived way of saying that he didn’t want me back. Um, I had escalated to the pastoral team saying that this is not the correct way of terminating a volunteer.
Uh, we met with another family pastor. , and I mean back to triggering for people of color, especially Asians. This is a conflict management exercise on trying to restore relationships. And he basically came in guns blazing, yelling at me for about an hour, pointing at me and standing over me, like full on screaming and yelling and um, I just stayed silent, which is pretty much no point in engaging.
And, uh, two weeks later we did it again for two and a half hours with two pastors, including the original. And at the two hour mark, what he said was, now that you know, How hurtful your Facebook post, I guess he read it. Um, you know why he pushed you out? So he said, sorry for that, but he never, ever apologized for any of his racist actions or beliefs.
And we had come to an agreement that within two weeks there would be just a very simple message to the students and the parents about why it was no longer teaching. And that never happened. And in fact, A month went on, more months, went on. The pastor of the church said that he needed to come clean or he would not be, be able to return to teach again.
Never happened. And uh, February came around and we escalated to the elder board, which there are people of color on the elder board and they buried it. In the meantime, there was another leader who started sending me text message. About how my lessons to these high school students who are predominantly people of color and predominantly female were off topic, not relevant to the Bible, and that, uh, this individual blamed Asians for breaking the relationship with their middle child.
When I escalated this to the elders in February of 2022, this past year, uh, the same person and their spouse, who was a former elder of the church, sent a message to their best friends on the elder. Making some very strong allegations against me. Where we’re at now as the elders think I’ve taken this way too seriously.
The only interaction I’ve had with them is they’ve told me that I don’t know what racism is. That this indivi, these individuals don’t hate Asians. That’s their only definition of racism. I’ve sent them copious external writings, both from a biblical perspective, historical perspective. I’ve spoken to over 35 leaders, um, all across the country.
Black, brown, Asian, white theologians, professors of ethnic studies, some very prominent Christians who happen to also be professor of ethnic studies. I spoken to the attorney General’s office of the state of California. The Deputy Attorney General of the state of the Sacramento County is 10 ho and he’s a devout Catholic and.
All of these leaders has said, I can’t drop this because it’s so important to the people of color community. Um, I’ve actually become friends with a civil rights attorney who happens to be Taiwanese American, married to an Indian, happens to be a Christian who’s been a civil rights attorney for 25 years.
I know exactly what laws have been broken. I’ve actually told the church exactly what laws have been broken. I don’t personally plan to take formal legal action, but they’re not taking it seriously.
[00:12:21] Angela Lin: Well,
there’s just so much to unpack with all of this. It’s so much to unpack. I think the first thing that stuck out to me is that you mentioned how on the surface it, your church is incredibly diverse and seemingly supportive of the diverse community with all these languages and even accessibility avenues and the George Floyd thing, I.
Look, I don’t know. I don’t know these people. I don’t know which congregation you’re talking about, and we probably should have started this, but Jesse and I, just for context, we are, we’re not Christian. We lie on different ends of the spirituality spectrum. So we are coming more from a secular background when we are talking about all this, but to me it feels like a lot of what’s going on, it’s like all the diversity support that they portray is more.
Surface level and to kind of like win brownie points to be seen as supportive. But when it comes down to the way it’s being taught, they actually prefer any cultural differences to be removed altogether from the way that the teachings are discussed. Is that fair? Uh,
[00:13:40] Keith Koo: I actually have a different perspective on that.
I, I can. coming from a secular background, um, that was how it would look I think in my wife and my assessment. And again, my wife led a children’s ministry under this group as well. We live in a city that has probably at this point exceeded two thirds people of color in Silicon Valley. Over 50% of the professional population do happen to be people of color specifically.
So South Asians, like Indians or Pakistanis and East Asians and other Asians. Um, so I can see where if you’re not educated in de and I, And I’ve been at it since I was 16 years old. You would assume that minority only means in terms of population and numbers, and so therefore when it comes to Asians, you can’t possibly be racist because they’re the majority not understanding that true power is in who’s in control, not in that.
So did the church invest in being branded as a multicultural church? Absolutely. Do they think that they’re a multicultural. Absolutely. Do they understand what racism is? No. I give them that maybe they didn’t even people of color may not be aware or there’s that whole term of being majority adjacent. In this role, I am both a Christ follower, but I’ve been a corporate executive.
I’m also very active in. Communities, people of color, and I do a lot of education when I start to send them articles, faith-based and non-faith based about racism in the church, when I actually bring materials from the affiliation and their stance on racism, which actually stated that as the church continues to grow in America, The church, big C, it’s like you have to recognize that the black, Latinx, and Asian communities, while minorities as individual groups, Will actually be cumulatively greater than the majority in that the majority needs to go out of their way to make efforts to understand where they’re coming from.
One thing I wanna make sure, because people are hearing about my faith, is that from people who are Christ’s followers, we’re all flawed human beings. We all have things we need to work on. None of us are perfect and none of us are better than anybody else. And I think there’s a big distinction between what is done between you and God and what’s.
The open. And so the biggest part, um, thinking about what the church is doing is that the leader, forget about the private conversation you had with me or pushing me out in front of a group of students and parents on Zoom specifically said that speaking on Reese is irrelevant. That there was no room for that, um, to be even talked about.
And the other leader who was writing notes to me, um, saying that they and this leader felt that, um, I was always off topic, that actually they had accused me of holding private sessions. On being Asian American. Now, first of all, that never happened. There’s no evidence of that. And second of all, um, all the meetings I had were with invitations to all the parents, pastors wives, students.
And so there’s no foundational evidence of that. But even if I did do that back to church and the state, that’s a protection of my First Amendment rights. And that’s one thing that they continue to downplay is that forget me and these leaders individually. Out in the open, they’ve stated these things and so back to the Civil Rights attorney, um, clearly delineating what were violations of First Amendment rights, and so you don’t get to hide behind your faith.
Or a church organization to say that it’s okay. And you also don’t get to say that myself as a person of color, that I don’t know what racism is. I think that this
[00:17:23] Jesse Lin: is like a really great example of how pernicious racism really is, because I feel like if you asked a lot of Asian individuals, like the majority, what was gonna happen to the Asian community during covid,
I don’t think a lot of people would’ve said violent attacks. I think it’s really easy for people to forget that they do feed into racism. Like everybody’s a little bit racist according to the Avenue Q off Broadway play. It’s true. Everyone is, there’s even inter racism between people of color, like it’s very well established that there’s racism playing on everybody in all different settings, and so it’s like really easy to.
What part that we all contribute to that, and this is just a really great example because people will defer that responsibility. They’ll say like, oh, I’m not racist. Like I have Asian friends, I have black friends. I contribute to this thing. But it’s not about those things. It’s like, what are you doing?
Like actively every day? to question yourself and say like, Hey, did, did I do something wrong here? Like, did I say something offensive here? And I think that a lot of people don’t want to do that cuz it confronts a really ugly reality about themselves and about the people that they associate with. So I just think that it’s a really great example of how really, like racism can seep into the best of intentions and really just cloud something.
Even though you, you, you think you’re doing something, something.
[00:18:48] Keith Koo: Yeah, there’s a few anecdotes to that. So one, back to we all have biases and that was one of the responses the elders gave to me. And like, yeah, we do all have biases. Um, some people control it better than others and some people don’t let it out in the open.
Uh, these individuals have had biases for over, you know, many years that I’ve been working with them. Uh, the one who has a strained relationship with their. when I first met them, they’re like, we love Asians. And not that I asked for, it’s like my child is socially awkward, but when they went to university, Asians, the only person that were kind to them as the daughter’s relationship got strained.
Now the family’s blaming Asians for their straight relationship with their child. And so my pastor was like, have Grace on them. You know what they’re going through. So that’s one, two. Uh, you know, we are ethically Chinese. We know there’s even regional variances between how different parts of China view other people from China.
And I was on a short term, uh, mission to India and there’s southern states in those northern states, and I was with friends from southern states who could actually speak languages from northern states. And they’re like, Keith, you probably have more in common with the northern state people than we. Even though we’re all Indian.
So I think there’s a point that biases exist because we’re humans. But on the other hand, how do you manage that? How do. Control those feelings. And how do you work on that internally? And do you accept that you have these biases and you acknowledge them, you try to work on them? Or how do you actually then kind of spew things like, and these are all real statements.
Um, the individual who, you know, said they apologized. His final words to me after he apologize for pushing me out was, you said you grew up in a white neighborhood. How come you’ve never done a lesson for white people? And my church didn’t think that was racist. I’m like, that is inherently racist. Your show Angela and JC are called, where you really from the number one racist incident.
Against Asians as people of color is not a violent attack, although violence is certainly in the news today. It is that we are automatically assumed as not belonging here in the United States. And when I say this directly, they think it’s not a big deal, even with the people of color down on the elder board.
It’s crazy. And that’s another thing that my daughter was in the. Three students quit the program and all of that just goes on deaf ears. They don’t think that as a big deal. And earlier, probably five minutes ago, Angela, you were asking about, you know, what was the church’s motivation? I think cuz I’m an organizational behavior major, right?
I didn’t study stem. So again, breaking a stereotype organizationally, doesn’t matter what organization it is, you come out with your own culture and your own ways of handling things. I don’t think that they’re consciously understanding that they’re promot. Or propagating racist attitudes. Belief they’re in protection mode because even though my wife and I have been there 16 years, these other people who’ve been there just as long have closer ties in relationships.
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[00:22:22] Keith Koo: I wanted everyone to know that. I actually reached out to Angela and Jesse about this cuz it’s the perfect platform and it’s a really important topic for people of color because it’s called othering.
And it was one of those things where people was like, it’s not racist, Keith. I’m like, yeah, it’s a form of racism. You can Wikipedia this and there’s like 10 different variations of racism in Wikipedia. What you
[00:22:39] Jesse Lin: were just saying about the PY dynamics, I mean it really speaks to what you were saying earlier about the differences between the definition of minority and a majority not, it’s not just even really.
About the actual amount of people, and that’s actually not how I’ve referred to it. You know, speaking in that manner for quite some time. It’s always been about the power. It’s about who has. The in who never has to question where their place is in society. That is the majority. It’s not really like just because they’re more of a certain type of people.
They are the majority. That’s not really the case, and I think that’s really well exemplified in the situation that you’re going through of like who has the power. I mean, you, you mentioned there are some people, people of color on the elder board and people of color in positions of power. So it’s just like it, it shows that you can be a minority.
In a majority. Acting against the interests of a minority. It’s quite, I think it’s very convoluted, mental gymnastics, but I, I thought that was like quite a good
[00:23:39] Angela Lin: example. Okay. So the authority is a big thing that comes to mind here because it kind of interplays with the minority subject because the thing that stood out to me a lot in what you were describing is that they kept coming to you to say, You should show Grace.
Yep. You should be the one to accept this and move past. It’s never. The other person should also show Grace and see where they have potentially, you know, been unkind and try to work through their things. It’s by default they’re asking you to be the one to do that. And you mentioned also you were just gonna yell that for several hours.
It’s kind of like, Exact personification of the model, minority stereotype that they’re trying to place onto you because they’re like, Hey, don’t rock the boat. You know, even if they did something wrong, like you should be the bigger person, so just stay quiet and don’t make it a big thing.
[00:24:37] Jesse Lin: Or like blame the victim kind of situation.
[00:24:39] Keith Koo: Yeah. Oh, it’s, it’s definitely blame shifting. I’ve told them that. So here, here’s the deal. I, I know churches get a lot of flack with how they handle. Or crimes. And let me be clear about this because what’s lost on this is that there, these are crimes. They might not be considered sex crimes or, uh, physical violence or theft.
But these are crimes. The biblical model for conflict resolution is you go to your brother or sister in Christ, you tell them what issue you have and you work it out. If it doesn’t get worked out, you escalate it to other leaders and if it doesn’t get worked out, you then bring it to the entire church board.
So I did all that. What happened was back to a verbal contract between me and two pastors and this individual leader, that at a minimum they’re gonna clear up what happened to why it was no longer teaching. That was the only thing I asked for. I didn’t ask about discipline. I didn’t ask about what they were gonna do.
I needed closure, but I needed to be transparent and we agreed to that. So the where churches get in trouble is when they do things in private versus doing things out in the open. If I told you that I had 900 pages of emails, cuz remember in my executive life I was in charge of technology risk, so I know how to document.
So I have 900 pages of emails where the only summary was that I don’t know what racism. That I needed to forgive and move on, and that I needed to reconcile with my attackers. So blame shifting. I’m like, what about them? Like, no, no. We believe them. They’re, they’re totally. Repent. They’re totally sorry for what they did.
I’m like, how come I don’t know that? How come? I say, how come I don’t see that? How come there’s no showings of that? There is a story in the Bible about a tax collector named the Kius. Back then, tax collectors were criminals. You, they would force you to sell your children to pay your taxes. This is not hyperbole.
[00:26:25] Angela Lin: Aren’t they still just kidding? .
[00:26:28] Keith Koo: So Zakia meets Jesus. Feels really sorry. And he says, I’m going to restore the people that I’ve defrauded by four x if I ever see them, if I ever come across somebody I’ve defrauded, I’ll pay them back four times how much I’ve, uh, defrauded them. Now, the co thing is the night that my wife and I escalated to our church and nothing happened was the day after one of the pastors taught on this story zaki.
So what has happened? In terms of blame shifting is they did finally issue a letter about me and my situation. What they said was, it’s a personal dispute and that this leader felt it was unwise to bring me back. So that’s a wrongful termination and that’s a total lie cuz they don’t talk about, he didn’t want me back cuz he’s a racist and they get freaked out when I say it.
I mean like, he might not be a mean racist, but yeah, he’s got racist tendencies. So what happened was that before they sent the letter to the public, , they sent a letter to me, my wife, that they saw no racism. So I actually have in black and white that there’s absolutely no racism. So here’s the funny story.
However, many months later, the church is accusing us of causing disunity in the church. And I said, if you’re causing, accusing us, causing disunity, I’m accusing you of slander for the letter. But before we get there, uh, so they sent three people of color elders to me. One is my age, one’s Indian, one’s Chinese, and one’s black.
Before we started anything, I talked to the black elder. I. , it’s relevant. Why I say this is like you are black and publicly. You’ve stated that as a group, not one individual. I don’t know what racism is, but I’ve sent you the Wikipedia articles, I’ve sent you definitions of it. Othering is an example. I’m like, explain to me what racism is.
And he had rehearsed this. He’s like, Hey, there’s Malcolm X, there’s Martin Luther King. Um, I know racism. I’m black. I’m like, okay. He goes there. Racism. There’s prejudice and then there’s belief. I’m like, whoa, whoa, whoa. What’s belief? He’s like, well, we don’t think this individual knows that he’s a racist.
He doesn’t believe he’s a racist. I’m like, whoa. You have a person leading an entire children’s ministry who doesn’t believe that he’s a racist, and that’s what you wrote to me. That because he doesn’t hate Asians, that he’s not a. I’m like, look, Archie Bunker, the Nazis and the kkk, who probably identified being a Christian, whether they’re truly Christians or not, I don’t know.
God knows. Like I’m sure they didn’t think they’re a racist either. The moment I said that, the Chinese elder says, do you wanna ruins reputation? I’m like, what does this have to do with reputation? Like, if you don’t believe you’re a racist, then why wouldn’t you be defending what you said? The Indian leader says, you know, Keith, there’s no such thing as restitution.
There’s no mandating the Bible. I’m like, whoa, I’m not asking for restitution. and back to the point of being a person of color, if they weren’t back to leading a group of kids, I probably would’ve dropped it. It’s the fact that they’re still a year and a half later still leading a group of kids that are predominantly people of color.
They don’t seem to steal an issue when it comes to other crimes in the church. Sex crimes, child abuse, physical assault. Church has already had a hard. Dealing with this, right? And, and they’re trying to get better about that. The Catholic church, for instance, is trying to figure out a way to be more transparent about it.
Not that they’ve figured that out yet in the minds of some of these church leaders, racism just isn’t that bad compared to these other crimes. But they have the same behaviors in dealing with it. There is a study recently that was published that when you bring up racism to the majority, they shut. In order to deal with racism to the majority in the United States, you have to not use the term racist because the moment you use the term racist shields go up.
And I just read a number of articles on that and um, some researcher just came out to study that. It’s unfortunate that you cannot use the terminology in order for them to kind of accept that they might
[00:30:17] Jesse Lin: be based off of how things were handled. It sounds like there’s this very big bent. Forgiveness and grace, and that’s kind of like the end of it.
How do you reconcile that with like your personal connection to that person? You could say like, I forgive you. Let’s say for example, the person killed somebody in your family, but it was an accident. You’re like, I forgive you, but I still want you to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. You killed somebody.
Like where does that kind of sit for you between. Your personal faith and your relationships with a person and like your legal obligation to do something for a person. Because I feel like that ties back to a lot of the problems that the church has been seeing because it seems like a very like internal like situation versus reconciling it with the reality, the legal realities of, of what you
[00:31:04] Keith Koo: have to do it.
It’s funny, Jesse, cuz you and Angela say you don’t have a faith background, you hit the nail in the. So the concept forgiveness, God commands us to forgive, but the forgiveness isn’t for the attacker. The forgiveness is for us as the individual, as the victim because of bitterness and because of not being able to fulfill our life’s work or being stuck.
And I know to the church, that’s what they feel like the, the center that I’m coming from, even though when I’m telling them it’s not, I have no issue with forgiveness. You have leaders over a children’s group. It’s no different than if a pastor was having an affair with a congregant at their church. If he repents and comes back to the congregation, you don’t let him be a pastor right away.
You may never let him be a pastor again. One of the key things about dealing with church matters for anybody who, who wants to actually know how to deal with it. You should never go alone. So I always was in the presence of at least two pastors, or my wife and my senior pastor who’s now moved on to another church.
Um, he probably won’t be too happy about me disclosing it, but he actually did say that if this happened to a black, brown person or was a sexual or physical assault, he would’ve treated differently. Now, he’s never told me that I interpreted that wrong, and my wife interpreted that wrong, but he’s told other people the church, that I didn’t get that right.
But yet in all of this that we’re talking about, these 900 pages that I’ve had with emails and these convers. They’ve never explained themselves. They’ve only said that I need to have forgiveness and I need to move on, and that they believe these individuals repented about restitution is and repentance.
That’s for the, that’s for the individual. That is not for me. That is back to, again, their personal relationship. Um, by themselves. Forgiveness is extremely important. I wanna make that clear that God commands us to forgive, but it’s really meant for our own psyche. Uh, repentance is important for the attack.
For the, for the person who’s created the crime. If somebody committed a crime against, If the individual’s repentant, they’re supposed to offer restitution, that’s not me. For me to ask, that’s for them to give, for me to expect. Justice and righteousness is completely compatible and consistent with the Bible.
So, um, there’s nothing mutually exclusive and anything we just said. It’s just that to organizations, um, to forgive is kind like the get outta free jail card. They just. , everything goes away. Christ commands us to teach under identity every single one of the leaders originally, when just hearing the story from the first, like we all teach under identity.
[00:33:24] Angela Lin: Another theme that keeps coming to mind in everything you’re saying is kind of faultiness of man. The way that I identify my spirituality is not associated with any like organized religion. I’m kind of defining it for myself. I think this is like, it just reinforces my kind. Personal beliefs around that, that a big reason I don’t like to associate with an organized religion is that you are dependent on flawed human beings who are interpreting what these spiritual lessons.
Or actually supposed to be teaching you. I think regardless of whatever, like religious or spiritual background you have, I think the kind of commonality across a lot of them is that one of your end goals is to try to kind of perfect yourself in terms of like how, how good, quote unquote good of a person you are, like morally and all that.
And so you’re always trying. Better become better. Right. And so I just like it does not sit well with me to hear the story that you’re sharing because a lot of it is completely contrasting the lessons that supposedly people of faith or any. Really religious background are supposed to have in trying to learn things like how am I being as kind as possible to other people?
Being understanding, being forgiving, like all these things, owning up to things myself, right? Like holding myself accountable to be better. And contrasting that with essentially people who have power in an organized structure who are kind. Negating those like universal lessons that we’re all trying to strive for to hold onto their own power that they’ve grasped.
Right. That’s kind of what I keep seeing in all the stories and it just pisses me off because it’s like, it feels counter the whole like reason. Religion and spirituality, you know, supposedly exists.
[00:35:23] Keith Koo: Beautifully stated, and I totally get where you’re coming from, goes back to my work in organizational behavior.
But I, I don’t often say I’m a Christian. I say I’m a Christ follower. Cause that shows the identify with Christ. And that, uh, when Jesus was on earth and his idea of creating community churches were meant for community not to replace the relationship. So, again, I, I don’t wanna get too into dogma. , but like for me, I don’t believe I need to go through a priest to talk to God.
I can talk to God anytime I want to, and I don’t need a church because conceptually for Christians, we believe Jesus is in us. And so therefore, in essence, we are a church. And so when we think about. The construct of a church, it gets convoluted. So we think about other countries where you cannot be a Christian or you cannot have a church, yet they still meet as a community setting.
Um, they are still honoring God, but they’re not calling it a church. So the structure of church is what we have a problem with. So there are 18,000 denominations of Christianity. I don’t have an issue with that because back to individual understanding of my relationship with Christ, what gets in the way is when.
Are protecting a structure, you’re protecting a systematic thing, and so racism can be systematic or systemic. What was so important for the church we attend is that you took the time, effort, you brought in consultants to be branded as a multicultural, multiracial church, and yet here’s a perfect teachable moment.
Like I never asked for the leaders to be kicked out. I never asked the leaders to be fired. I asked for them to come clean so that people would know. That these behaviors exist and how they could defend themselves from it. Because back to microaggressions, which we didn’t talk too much about, but microaggressions are also very common against people of color.
When you say things like, oh, race is irrelevant to God. When you say things like, English is the most important language, or I want my city back the way it was before, or when, you know, the person gets laid off by people of color as managers and they’re like, Asian always laid me off. These statements are inherently racially biased.
Now, whether they said it to a public audience or not doesn’t change that fact. So to bury it, in order to make things look like it. Um, either the system’s Okay. Or to protect the individuals or both. I wasn’t trying to cause shame, I was trying to address a systemic issue.
[00:37:50] Angela Lin: I don’t know what the like PC terms to use around all this, because I did note that you separated the term Christian from Fall of Christ.
Right? So I use Christian in the kind of, The main way people are talking about it. So the elephant in the room for me is kind of like, we all know that the, like people in power historically and I think continued into today largely around the Christian complex, like including of through Pope, the Pope, right?
Which encapsulates Catholicism as well are historically old white men. And when you think about how Christianity. Spread around the world. It started with white missionaries, right? That were like sent across to many different countries. So I think there’s inherently. Like built in, uh, prejudiced towards the white interpretation of the faith.
It’s because of that, that it’s like they don’t even notice when there is prejudice because it’s been the way that it’s been talked about forever. And unless you are in a church that is. Fully because there are churches where it’s, for example, like predominantly black churches or whatnot, right? Like I’m sure that they tailor the way that these lessons are discussed to integrate their own actual, personal and community-based experiences.
But otherwise, it feels like kind of the default interpretation of a lot of these lessons is in a white-based lens. So then especially even if like the people in power, for example, you talked about these three. Leaders that approached you and they were all people of color because they have power held within a traditionally white led, I assume, on kind of authority structure.
It’s still the lens that they’re taking. I’m not saying like it’s not their fault, uh, it’s more just like there is this kind of like built in kind of way of thinking. Based on the history and context of like how the Christian complex as almost like an industry has been built. You
[00:40:00] Keith Koo: know, when we talk about history in context of faith, there is of course what’s written the Bible, but there’s secular history too.
So for example, the Apostle Thomas, who probably had olive skin as a. Was martyred outside of Goa in India. And so Kerala is like one of the most Christian provinces or states of India. And so there wasn’t really that white interpretation until the Portuguese came later for Catholicism. So certainly there’s Western influence, even pre like written history, uh, Judaism, Christianity entered all parts of the world, uh, without necessarily Western missionaries.
Um, there’s a whole enclave. Orthodox Jews in a remote part of China that have been untouched for thousands and thousands of
[00:40:48] Angela Lin: years, just for my secular p o v .
[00:40:53] Keith Koo: No, no, it’s great. I have these, uh, like we were mentioning, um, during Pandemic. We had a community on clubhouse and, uh, these topics and questions came up all the time.
It was awesome. We’re gonna move on
[00:41:03] Jesse Lin: to our closing section, the Fortune cookie, because we always like to end on a sweet treat. What are kind of the next steps happening on this issue? Are there next steps happening or is it kind of tabled for the time?
[00:41:16] Keith Koo: Oh, uh, next SY steps is I’ve accused our elders of slander.
They’ve not responded. They said they’d respond. This is all The funny thing is they responded very late. So they responded five weeks ago. They responded two weeks, then they wanted another two weeks, and they’re just not responding. I think they’re just ignoring us, which is human nature. Um, next steps. I mean, we have very adamant that people need to know how to address racist incidents and racist acts inside and outside of their places of worship, inside and outside the places of.
And so we are committed to teaching anybody who asks us how to identify a race incident, a hate incident, or a hate crime, how to file it. Mm-hmm. . And so anybody, any of your listeners can ask me, uh, what the proper procedure is to identify a hate incident and how to
[00:41:59] Jesse Lin: report it. I think that’s great.
Something positive coming out of
[00:42:02] Keith Koo: something not so great. We’re not silent victims. We have, we are empowered. We can use the law. What’s really clear, if you’re listening in California volunteers in an unpaid position. So that’d be a Bible teacher, a church teacher. You are protected by the same laws against wrongful termination as if you were a paid employee.
Now, there might not be necessarily any financial penalties, but it is a crime, and so when you file your hate incident about being wrongfully terminated, it is also qualifies as a hate crime. Now, the authorities might not take it seriously, but it’s important to report it so that it can. Counted. And the positivity in that is Asians don’t have to be silent.
They don’t, I mean, we’re all talking people of color, but Asians in particular do not have to be silent, do not have to follow the model minority. You can rock the boat. It is legal and it is not a moral wrong. To call it racism anywhere, including your church. Well,
[00:42:58] Angela Lin: that is a really positive spin on something that’s very negative, has been difficult to discuss on this episode.
I think the other fortune cookie we wanted to talk about is on the kind of like, Other end of this because this was all like, this is hopeful and good, positive changes towards negating something bad. We wanna ask your opinion on if you’re hopeful that things will start to become more inclusive and actual like cultural understanding and.
Diverse understanding will actually start making its way kind of proactively or, you know, nor quote unquote normally into the church setting as opposed to from this more like dispute oriented angle.
[00:43:43] Keith Koo: Oh, there’s, there is always hope Angelas, there’s a story that I forgot to mention in the Bible. The Apostle Paul and the apostle Peter fought openly in Galatians two, where Peter was being, in essence, a racist.
Peter would not associate with Gentiles when Jews were around. They’re Jewish by ethnicity. Jesus said, you can preach the gospel to anybody, Asians, blacks, right? Peter would not talk to non-Jews. Of Jews were around and. Called him out publicly, posted it on the doors of the church, and the church eventually split apart.
And so people are like, that’s horrible. That’s terrible. Like, no, actually it spread the message even further. And so it’s okay to have disagreements, schisms, it’s okay to separate, but back to the positivity is to understand that disruption is not a bad. MLK was a disruptor. Disruption is not bad, and I think that’s where people are hiding.
And so back to having an organizational behavior bent, nothing changes unless you disrupt. And so if you see something wrong, you have the power to change it.
[00:44:49] Angela Lin: Great. Well, here’s two ongoing change in the the near future. Keith, thank you so much for joining us on this episode. We really enjoyed having you and wow, this is a lot that you were going through by more power to you, that you are kind of leading the way on something that is difficult to create change and to help people hold themselves accountable
[00:45:13] Keith Koo: as well.
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Jesse. Always great to see you. Likewise.
[00:45:18] Angela Lin: Um, you mentioned that you have a second radio show coming out. Is there more information on that that you wanna share with the listeners on where they can find it or more about what it’s gonna be about? All that good stuff?
[00:45:30] Keith Koo: Yeah, so, uh, you know, I’m working on it conceptually.
Uh, I’m on the radio here in Silicon Valley, so my regular show is Silicon Valley Insider Business Technology Innovation. You can go to S v I n.biz and find out more information there. My second show is called 10 Talents and it’s on spirituality and every aspect of your life. So we’ll be talking about business and tech, health and wellness, relationships, and dating.
We’ll be talking about conflict management, art, entertainment, and you’re gonna find out a bunch of people who are entertainers happen to have a strong faith background. And, uh, we’ll also be talking about how to raise your family. So looking forward to having you check it out for now. Come find me at Keith at SVI and Biz.
But this new show will launch in about a month.
[00:46:19] Angela Lin: Well, we wish you all the success with that new show and your current show, and of course with everything you’re doing with, with, uh, the current scuffle that you’re in. And, uh, listeners, if you have any questions for. Drop as a comment wherever you’re watching this currently, and we’ll funnel any questions to Keith or we can just have a lively discussion continued there.
And as
[00:46:47] Jesse Lin: always, come back for a fresh new episode next week.
[00:00:02] Jesse Lin: And I’m Jesse Lin. And welcome back to another episode of, but Where Are You really from this week, we are bringing you a. Live unscripted discussion on our episode, and what we’re gonna be talking about is student loans. So we originally already had this as a topic, but given the new news around the federal forgiveness of student loans up to a certain amount, , we thought it’d be really interesting discussion just to kinda like ping pong back and forth how we each feel about it.
Is it too generous? Is it not generous enough? Do we have objections to certain ways that it’s being fulfilled? So that’s what we wanted to discuss this
[00:00:41] Angela Lin: week. We’re gonna keep this to a mini because we did talk about like higher education in a long form discussion in a previous episode. So if very interested in those thoughts, go back to that episode.
But this is just a quickie based on. The new news that just came out. Justine, what are your thoughts? I think I have different thoughts
[00:00:59] Jesse Lin: from you, so yeah, I mean, okay. So I think on the surface level, for anyone that has C paid off their student loans, I have paid off my student loans. It kind of stings a little bit because you’re kind of like, well that sucks.
Like why didn’t I just be like, you know, paying off the loans like slowly and then just having it forgiven and it kind of feels a little bit, kind of like a slap in the face for the people who are able to pay off the. , but were not particularly financially like well off. Like I, I wasn’t making a lot of money after college, and I know my parents pay for some of it, but I still had a good amount of loans.
You know, out of graduation I was making like 40,000 the first year, 45, the next, and maybe like 50, the third. So it wasn’t like I had a ton of money and I was living in New York. So that out of the way, because of course everyone has nasty feelings about something like this. Like I have a lot of friends who are still struggling with stuff like that.
And from that perspective, I’m happy for them because I, I know how difficult it was because I was trying to make all of them off in a success we did. So, but like I, I can see the struggle for a lot of people and it feels good. that people I know don’t have to, to go through that. So it’s like, from a, from a feelings perspective, there’s like two balances where it’s like kinda like, oh, well that kind of sucks cuz like I put myself through a little bit more than I had to to pay them off.
It almost feels kind of like, oh, like why did I, you know, try so hard to pay them off. It was gonna be forgiven like later on. But on the other hand, like I do see some of my friends who struggle with student loans and like paying off their education and I’m kind of like, that’s really good for you. Like I, I feel.
like it’s a nice thing that you’re getting, um, and something to take like more worries off of your plate.
[00:02:37] Angela Lin: Yeah. Actually I don’t think we have as Differents. . I thought you were gonna be like, yay. Like
[00:02:43] Jesse Lin: I am. I’m happy for my friends. I’m also, but like, if you paid off your loans and you’re like, I’m only happy, I think you’re lying.
Like nobody is happy to pay something off that they might have gone for free, like Agreed.
[00:02:56] Angela Lin: Well, yeah, I have a lot of mixed. Mostly mixed into negative Felix, towards this announcement like you, I, it feels like a slap in the face because like you said, we both struggled pretty hard to be able to pay off our student loans.
It was not a quick like snap of the finger Trust fund paid it off, kind of bullshit. Love. You had a trust fund, you didn’t have to take out loans to begin with. Right. But like there was nobody. Paying off our debt for us. And so I and I made around the same money as you coming outta college too, like those low, low forties, which in New York means paycheck to paycheck.
It was not easy to pay off that loan. And then I took a second loan, which was substantially higher than my undergrad loan to do my master’s. And I only paid that off like a few years ago. So, and. Scraped and scripted. Even though I was making a much higher salary out of business school, I took on a much higher debt to go back to school
So it is like a slap in the face. They’re also just like a lot of technicalities that I don’t know that everyone who like hears us announcement is really paying attention to. So like first of all, you mention. In how you described it, which I thought was important. You said federal loans because anyone who hears, like the government’s gonna pay off everyone’s student loans, just like at face value sounds like, oh my God, wow.
Like, you’re gonna be helping so many people. But realistically, the federal government is a, a big loan provider, but is not the only loan provider out there. And if you really needed loans, like a lot of loans, Probably couldn’t get by just borrowing from the government because there are caps for how much money that they lent out.
And then especially if you took like Masters and Beyond education, the government gave zero shits about you. Like my interest rates were incredibly high to borrow from the federal government as a a master’s student. So I ended up refinancing. So if anyone refinanced their loans, even if you took out initially a government loan and you decide to go to like SoFi, You know, all those other, um, private lenders to refinance to get a better, lower interest rate, you wouldn’t qualify cuz you’re no longer a federal loan borrower.
So it, it was like a double slap in my face to hear that cuz it was like, okay. So I was trying to get myself into a better position to not pay 10% interest to the government for no reason when I could pay three and a half interest to a private lender. But because of that qualification, I wouldn’t have qualified anyway, even if I, you know, had gone slower with my repayment and in fact, I paid off my loan so I don’t qualify at all.
So there’s like all these things. So n number one, if you didn’t borrow from the government or you ended up borrowing mixed with private lenders, or you refinanced, you wouldn’t even necessarily qualify for this amount of money. So it doesn’t matter. Other things is, like I read, So, to be fair, this is like hot, right?
Like we’ve literally, we, we had a guest kind of cancel slash reschedule last minute. So we’re literally just like talk, talking about this right now. But I off plug off script totally, but I saw a headline this morning that says something about like, I think it was cn B, C, and it said that on average, All taxpayers are going to be foot with a $2,000 extra bill essentially to pay for these, uh, loan forgiveness program thingies that they’re doing right now.
And that pisses me off because I’m like, you know how much money they already extract from us in taxes and like misuse in so many ways. I’m like, even if you felt like this was like a super worthy cause to spend money towards, can you not carve. Like some money that you would’ve otherwise given to, I don’t know, the military or like somewhere else that you’re just like bloated instead of making us pay even more money, especially the people like us who already paid off our own debt and now we’re going to be slapped with essentially more debt, other people’s debt, like I just, it that like pissed me off to see that it wasn’t even like we carved out existing budget to go here.
It’s like we’re gonna raise more money from. To pay
[00:07:11] Jesse Lin: for it. No, I agree with you in that perspective, and I think a lot of people have been pointing at the general budgetary splitting in the government and being like, why are we spend, like, your example is great. Why are we spending so much on our military?
Like, I understand we have to like maintain a certain show of force, but like the budget for the military goes up every year. I don’t think our military increases that much by every year and like we’ve wound down operations in a lot of places. Had a lot of troops, so like we shouldn’t be increasing the budget there.
It’s definitely this tension because like I said, I’m really happy for everyone who, who is struggling that I know is getting student loan forgiveness and like that for me is actually a good use of my taxpayer money, but, It’s kind of the point you’re saying like why is it extra money that is being paid into this as opposed to like money coming from other parts of the government that like, do not directly benefit anyone I know or a cause I’m interested in.
[00:08:10] Angela Lin: Hey listeners, wondering how you can support us. The biggest way is by increasing our visibility by following us on Instagram at where are you from? Pod on TikTok at, but where are you really from? Subscribing to our YouTube channel Under, but where are you really? From podcast rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts and telling your friends, the more people we can get to listen to the show, the more we can continue spotlighting different perspectives and.
And if you feel so inclined, we’re also accepting donations@buymeiacoffee.com slash Where are you from? Thanks y’all.
[00:08:41] Jesse Lin: And I also feel like it’s just so one off, you know, like it’s kind of like a bandaid on top of a problem and it doesn’t really address the problem. And so like, really there’s only a, a small set of one time beneficiaries from this.
And so it’s kind of like, well, that’s great, but like we don’t wanna forget the problem that. Originally, which is like predatory student loans, shitty colleges that didn’t produce graduates that could find jobs. Colleges that are just way too expensive to begin with, with no limitations to how much they could charge for each student.
So like none of these problems are being addressed, which does not fix like the issue of student loans. It’s just kind of like this, like one time bandaid that helps a select swath of a population. But anyone else going to college now is not gonna. benefiting from this and like, it’s still gonna be, it’s gonna be worse for them.
Like, I feel like we did this analysis, analysis in college. That’s basically like how, how, how much has college increased like every single year for a four year college. And it’s always increased every single year. So it’s like, it’s just like these select people who are in debt right now that are helped, but then kind of.
Everyone else is still long-term screwed. I think it’s a, it’s a nice thing for everyone who’s getting it, but almost like, what are you doing to fix the problem? Because like this bandaid costs everybody money and it doesn’t put. The people who are responsible for creating this debt, which like in part is like people taking on the debt.
But it’s also like a lot of these situations where like if it was predatory lending and like schools misrepresenting what they could give to the student, so like, , why aren’t those people in trouble? Like, why aren’t they paying for it like they caused the problem? So that’s the part where I’m also kind of like, you’re not fully putting people who are accountable, accountable for the issue.
And it’s kind of like, well, it’s up to the tax paying public to cover the issue of like for-profit education and like even non-for-profit education, uh, providers like taking advantage. Loans and stuff like that, and like inflating their costs and things like that. So it’s just like, I, I like this, but like, can we fix like the real problem
[00:10:49] Angela Lin: here?
I could not agree more with everything you that you just said. That was like the other main qualm I had with all of this was just like, this is literally just so that you guys look good before the election because this is not help anyone in the long run. First, I’m gonna put aside what you said about the like, Colleges and the broken system to begin with.
The other piece is like $10,000 is not that much money, honestly, in the grand scheme of like how much debt most people have to take on. I think the last time I saw any, like average number of student loan debt, um, was a hot second ago, but I believe it was around 40,000 was kinda like average. Right? But like if you went to a.
College or master’s program and you had to take out like fully loans, you would have a six figure debt. A hundred thousand dollars plus. Yeah. Of debt. Getting $10,000 off is nothing because you’ve accrued interest during all this time. And if you really are not making a good salary, then you’ve barely tripped away at any of that.
You probably have even. Owed right now than like you took out. You know what I mean? Even with paying back gradually over time. So it’s just kind of like, number one, this doesn’t even mean anything because $10,000 is not gonna make a significant difference for people who are really, really struggling with their student loan repayment.
And then number two, to your point, it’s just like literally, this is nothing for like, Fixing the actual problem. And Ramon made a good point when he first read these headlines. He was like, you know what this is gonna do? Guess what? All those colleges are just gonna raise their tuition by $10,000 to like match what was given.
Because now it’s like, oh, well we’ll just make it up because it’s free money. Yeah,
[00:12:30] Jesse Lin: for sure. They have to like reign in that piece of it and they, and they can because they offer loans to the. . Like that’s, that’s not an insignificant part of the money that the school is getting. Like the money is coming from the government.
They should be able to use that money to be like, you cannot raise the price in this manner unless you can justify why you’re raising the price in this manner. So that is definitely one of the things where I’m kind of like, that’s student debt is a huge amount of money, which is means it’s a huge amount of leverage that the government can be like, no, no.
no money for you unless you can prove to us like why your educational costs are going up every year. So that’s one of the things I’m, again, I’m happy this is happening for everyone, but I also don’t want it to become like, oh, we like gave you this forgiveness and now we’re not gonna do anything else about what is happening.
I will say like, I think there are a few other things that they’re doing. I think they’re delaying repayment for the last time on student debt until the end of the year and they’re doing some, um, I believe there’s like an income based repay. Max now it’s like 5% of your discretionary income. So there are some like additional guardrails in place to try to like help people manage their debt a little bit better.
So it’s like not such a crushing thing for them. $10,000 is not a lot in the grand scheme of things. It’s not nothing though. So I’m like, it’s like you, it’s. You know, it’s something, but I also just like, same thing as you were saying, like I just don’t think that we wanna like do this and then forget that there’s still this like huge educational like complex thing that is like eating people’s money and let’s face it, at this point, it’s almost kind of just like a mandatory thing as opposed to like, Added value, like you’re just kind of going to school because you have to at this point, because everybody has a bachelor’s degree.
And so when that becomes like the baseline, you have no choice. You have to get it somehow. I, I think it is, it is predatory in a sense because you’re forced to participate in this thing in order to find a job in certain industries.
[00:14:23] Angela Lin: So T L D R, happy. The few, select few people who actually benefit
[00:14:30] Jesse Lin: from this ver very truly, like I am, I’m very happy for my friends.
I’m, I’m not, and, and I’m not in any way saying that. Like, they should not benefit from this or like, this is not good for them. Like, I’m very happy for all the people who are benefiting. It’s happening
[00:14:44] Angela Lin: either way. So I’m not unhappy for those people. So I’m happy that’s the select few. I’m choosing those words carefully.
It is a select few. It just really is not representative of like a large number of people in the grand scheme of people who’ve taken out debt. So that’s really what I mean is like happy for y’all, but you aren’t even that many people. So if this was gonna be this big gesture, it just like isn’t even that big of a gesture to bh.
But let’s focus on fixing the actual problem, which. The crazy system we have set up for just milking young people for Alder worth to get baseline education to be taken seriously for
[00:15:20] Jesse Lin: employment. Yeah, and honestly, I’ve, I’ve said this before, but I think. That, at least for me, I think it just really starts with like showing people the options that they have when they’re in that age range where they’re deciding on what they want to do.
Because there have been a lot of times where I’m like, why didn’t I do a trade? Like, I don’t think it would’ve been as expensive. And to be honest, like trade stuff is always like, you’re always gonna need like electrician, plumber, you know, like electrical engineers like these. People who are always also have jobs, but you don’t necessarily have to go through like a four year liberal arts school to learn all of those skills.
So like it, I think it also is just about emphasizing that education is much more than this four year liberal arts program. It’s like, it could be a trade, it could be anything else that’s like adding value. And I think that overall everyone needs to do like a much better job of being like, you have all these different options as opposed to like, you must go to this and you must do.
[00:16:12] Angela Lin: Well, those were our thoughts, so let us know what you guys think. Let us know in the comments wherever you’re watching this, we wanna hear what your hot takes are, because this is pretty fresh and I think people are surprisingly more split on it than than you’d think they’d be given that it. Spun
[00:16:30] Jesse Lin: is something, it’s a gamut.
Some people are like, it’s not enough. Yeah. Other people are like, this is great. It’s like a big rage.
[00:16:37] Angela Lin: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So let us know what you think and uh, come back next week cuz we’ll have another fresh episode for you then.
[00:00:00] Angela Lin: Hey everyone. My name is Angela Lin.
[00:00:02] Jesse Lin: And I’m Jesse Lin. And welcome back to another episode of, but Where Are You really from? As you guys may have seen in the news, there is definitely more talk of Taiwan, Taiwan, Taiwan, especially when it comes to China. Taiwan’s Independence, military defensive positions.
So we thought we would take an episode to really explore if we think Taiwan will meet, remain an independent entity. For much longer. And if so, why?
[00:00:35] Angela Lin: And for any new listeners who may be joining us for the first time, we have a vested interest in particular because we are Taiwanese America. So this is top of
[00:00:46] Jesse Lin: mind for us.
Yes, so historical background. I think if we wanted to do like a Cliff Notes version of it, Taiwan was never really populated by Han Chinese people until, I don’t know, like the 15 hundreds. I think when people started, like percolating over there were already kind of like aboriginal indigenous islander folk who were living there.
And actually there’s. Pockets of, um, those populations there. And there’s a kind of tumultuous history. I think the Dutch were there for a while, then the Japanese were there for a while. And to be honest, China’s claim on Taiwan has always been really, really nebulous until the Civil War in China drove the nationalist out of mainland China and over to Taiwan.
And that was kind of. A split in China, but also technically like the full takeover of China because Taiwan still officially recognizes itself as the Republic of China . So that’s kind of like in a cliff notes. I think the background history, and of course like now communist China is saying that Taiwan has always belonged to China, and that’s kind of where it stands.
So like a lot of world power. Acknowledge that Taiwan exists, but it has no political independence. Like if you go to any large city around the world, for the most part, you’re not gonna find a Taiwanese embassy or consulate or anything like that. And that’s because China enforces kind of this hard line rule that’s like, Taiwan belongs to us.
And like politically, you have to acknowledge that it belongs to us.
[00:02:24] Angela Lin: Yeah, I mean, kind of yes and no on the embassy thing, because you’re right, there’s no like official embassy or consulate anywhere really. But there are all these like essentially embassies and consulates around the world because they just call them something else.
Like I think the US one is like the American I. for Taiwan or some shit like that. Um, and they do basically the same thing. They just like can’t call it that for official reasons so that they don’t get in trouble with China. I think you did a great cliff notes of like, this is the, like, if you only need to color the.
That’s right. Um, so just a little more meat on those bones. So, um, for those that are kind of like confused about why Taiwan is officially called Republic of China, still, if they’re like trying to be their own thing, which we’ve like a little bit talked about in the past, it’s because they’re kind of two factions within Taiwan.
So they’re two main political parties. There’s the KMT Ming Bang, which. The original political party that came from China, like before Civil War. The nationalists, basically the nationalists, they were actually the ruling party of China, like mainland China right after the fall of the Ching Dynasty. So they were like the first post empire, no, you know, like Imperial Empire type China, um, political.
And then they, as Jesse mentioned, got pushed out by the Communists into Taiwan. There was never a treaty signed or anything that like claimed the end of the war between, uh, these two factions of communist China and Guang. So technically, like we’re still in a civil war kind of ceasefire kinda thing. . Um, but the people who are claiming Taiwan is independent, is actually a newer faction.
So the other opposing political party within Taiwan is the Democratic progressive Party, which is the current administration’s political party. So it’s Tua, the current president is part of that, and they’re the group that are more kind. , um, on the side of, we don’t, we’re not trying to claim we are China KMT is actually like Taiwan’s, like the OG China or like the real, um, legitimate China and cultural China, and we want to be recognized as China.
On, in addition to mainland versus D P P is like not Taiwan’s kind of its own thing, like leave us alone. So that’s kind of where those two factions like differentiate. But the official name of Taiwan is still Republic of China because the K M T established it as such in 1949 when they. We’re pushed out into Taiwan and we’re still claiming like we’re the real China, they just failed to actually take back mainland China, which was their original goal,
Um, so, so
[00:05:20] Jesse Lin: yeah. Maybe if you haven’t been super paying attention to throw even more complexity into the situation is there are. Global geopolitics involving China and the Western countries. And Taiwan, although it is quite a small country, I think it’s a strategic military importance because of how close it is to China and like how we have troops staged there.
So, There’s a lot of that kind of political maneuvering as well. I think that a lot of that acts actually blown up the importance of Taiwan and like the tensions there, rather than I think the inherent tensions between the people who live there and. In China cuz for it’s been like that for a while where they just kind of like coexist in a, in a fashion.
I definitely think that being part of like the chess game of global geopolitics has made it a little bit more like stressed.
[00:06:13] Angela Lin: Taiwan is kind of like the last stop gap between like the free world version, like the Democratic societies versus communist China within the Indo-Pacific. region is kind of like how they, because every time you read some like official statement from any of the countries, it’s like we want to maintain peace and stability within the Indo-Pacific region.
Um, and to your point though, to like make sure we fill in all these gaps. Yeah. The one China policy for anyone, it’s, it’s like a little bit self-explanatory, but not really because it is ambiguous af in terms of like how people adhere to it or don’t. So the one China policy as CH mainland China, communist China sees.
Is that there’s literally only one China. So like they don’t recognize, you know, Republic of China, AK Taiwan as like a separate China. There’s only one China, the People’s Republic of China and Taiwan is a province of China. So like inherently part of this one China. , that’s how they see it. Technically, all the other nations in the world really, or the world powers acknowledge the one China policy.
Yes. So no one’s gonna come out and be like, Taiwan is its own independent country, um, separate from China. Nobody says that including the us. However, most countries have this like weird. Dancing around the subject version of acknowledging it, where like most of the world powers do some sort of separate like economic relationship and like unofficial political relationship.
What’s Taiwan? They just can’t formally call it a country, but like the US for example. I think it was 79 19 79, established the Taiwan Relations Act, which like simultaneously says, we recognize Taiwan is not its own country, but also we’re gonna like, do business with Taiwan and like, um, we can supply military aid to Taiwan.
Um, and all these like separate things as if it’s a separate country. It’s not a country y’all, so it’s this like very weird thing. And after Pelosi’s visit, which we’re gonna get into, like all these countries also came out to like say exactly the same like confusing things where they’re like one China policy, foho, but also like Taiwan should maintain its own
Like should be able to like, yeah. Left alone and like let’s maintain stability. Y’all status quo.
[00:08:45] Jesse Lin: I feel like sometimes when we look at this fight for country hood, it seems like a very silly thing cuz it’s just like, is it a country or is it not? But I think that being a country affords its specific standings where.
Not being a country doesn’t, for example, Taiwan cannot participate officially in the World Health Organization because China has blocked them. They cannot be part of the UN because China has blocked them. And I think even if you look at like the consulate examples, they, I don’t think you have like the full range of safety services that you would find at a consulate or an embassy.
Like if you go to American Embassy anywhere. Basically safe. Like there are like armed guards there and you have like the political weight of the US being like, no, no, no, like you cannot violate our consulate embassy. But I don’t think that same st like the same rules apply to whatever. consulate, embassy backup, things that they have for Taiwan.
So I think there are like a lot of material differences as a citizen of Taiwan and a lot of us I think don’t appreciate that because we all have citizenships and countries that have pretty legitimate standing where you can like go anywhere and feel really safe that you can go. The consulate or embassy, if anything happens to you while you’re traveling.
Yeah.
[00:10:04] Angela Lin: It is stuck in this kind of like weird place of kind of being a country, but not having the full protections or recognition for sure. Um, and I, I forget what the like official term is, but there, I kept reading in all the articles that I was reading up on that like, most countries recognize it as like a, what do they call it?
Like a stateless government or some shit, like, it was like a self-sustaining government without. A country’s borders is like, interesting. It’s in a different wording than that. I think it was something like a stateless self-governing body body or something like that. Like the, the most roundabout way of saying like a country without
[00:10:43] Jesse Lin: saying it’s country, the mental gymnastics mm-hmm.
That people are going through to like, make this work. I wanna like, come on please. Yeah.
[00:10:49] Angela Lin: Surfs. Okay. So that’s kind of the, the historical background. We wanted to talk about this because it is, Well recently was flooding the headlines because of Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Uh, that became like a shit storm.
[00:11:07] Jesse Lin: There were subsequent visits by, um, some other Congressmen as well. Yes,
[00:11:10] Angela Lin: Congress people as well. Two weeks later there were several other Congress people. So, I mean, first of all, I just, I’m very confused, like when it first made the headlines. Pelosi’s gonna visit Taiwan. I was like, who cares? Like, I didn’t understand why that mattered, because I follow Tangui on Twitter, the president of Taiwan on Twitter, just, just to see.
And like, sh all she ever does is pose pictures of when like, uh, another country’s like, people come to visit Taiwan and be like, this country in Taiwan, Taiwan. You know, reaffirm their friendship. That’s like all she does on Twitter and us people are always there. So I just like, I didn’t understand, first of all, like why Pelosi mattered in, you know, in contrast to all these other official US people that have been visiting Taiwan since forever.
[00:12:01] Jesse Lin: I think it’s cuz she’s so close to the presidency. Like she’s technically like third or fourth in succession, if anything. Ooh.
[00:12:08] Angela Lin: Like designated survivor style. She’s like
[00:12:10] Jesse Lin: very, yeah, no, she’s like close to the top. She’s very, she’s very close to being the president. If anything happened to like. Biden, Kamala, then it’s like her.
So I see. I think also like because of her standing in Congress and like how long she’s been there, it’s again, it’s like this whole geopolitical like show thing where it, she going there somehow implies that the United States somehow supports Taiwan and like legitimizes it somehow by sending basically something to the effect of a head of state to.
that nation. I don’t, I don’t think any president has ever, or vice president has ever visited Taiwan. I, it might be even part of the like, agreement that they have in place that they would like never do that. I don’t, I also think it’s because her schedule got leaked. So usually with these trips like the uh, succeeding Congre Congress people trip, you didn’t really know until they were there.
And I think because her schedule got leaked, it got blown up really quickly where everyone could be like, oh my God, she’s going. Versus like, if she had just gone there. Quietly, no one would’ve really known until she was there. Right. And then it would’ve been like, she’s there, she’s gone. That’s kind of what’s happening with the Congress people now.
But because her travel schedule got , it kind of got like exploded into this thing that it was like, I don’t even think it was supposed to be anything super significant.
[00:13:30] Angela Lin: Yeah. I feel like it’s a classic case of people blowing up shit. That’s not a thing, because her visit was. Such a like symbolic thing on both sides, right?
Like people would be like, yeah, it’s free Taiwan. Absolutely. And then the other side like, fuck you guys going against China, blah, blah. For those who didn’t know the full context, this is one stop on her. Like multi-stop Asian tour, essentially. It was not like, she was like, I’m going to Taiwan as the only des.
Nation as a like symbolic representation of us is blah, blah, blah. For Taiwan, it was like, I’m gonna like 12 different countries in Asia, and Taiwan is just a stopover because it is like it. It was made into such a thing. I was so confused when it was like, oh, Pelosi’s going and it’s like being blown up as a thing.
I was like, I really, I don’t understand. . Yeah. And also like, I’m sorry, I, I got, I get what you’re saying about like she’s technically if like all these commanders, she’s technical. Yeah, yeah. If she’s really that high up of like, if all these people died, she’d become president. You know, it’s just like comical to me.
She’s so old. She’s just like, every time I look at the politicians running our government, I’m like, So you’re saying if Biden’s out, kamala’s out, like maybe one or two other people are out, we have this like 86 year old woman who then becomes our president. And this is like a thing I, it just like blows my mind again about like how ancient our government is.
Everyone is old.
[00:14:53] Jesse Lin: Yeah. Yeah. I do think that from the Chinese side, it was probably like a really good excuse to do more like inflammatory politics in a sense, to say like, you know, like pushing the buttons and like testing the waters. I feel like there’s been a lot of that where it’s kind of like everyone’s trying to be like, how far can I get?
Without people getting like really mad and like being seriously like slapped for something. This is like another one of those things that I think was a testing ground for that almost.
[00:15:22] Angela Lin: I think it was more just. an excuse for them to try to up the ante a little bit more because they were already doing, like, for those who don’t know, China’s constantly running like random military, quote unquote non-military operations or whatever, like a near Taiwan.
Like they, they’ve been sending aircraft and like naval related things over and near Taiwan. Um, for a long time. Like I remember, we. Interview Savannah, who was in Taiwan. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. When we talked about like the Taiwanese election two, one or two years ago, and she was like, yeah, literally yesterday there were like 10 Chinese military aircraft that were like flying over Taiwan just as a show of force.
It’s like this is an ongoing thing. It was just that like when Pelosi said that she was going to go, then they were like, okay, we’re gonna send like all of these, you know, we’re gonna like double the number of aircraft we’re sending or whatever. And there were all these threats made. People were saying like maybe they’re gonna like shoot Pelosi’s plane out of the air before she can land and like all this shit.
And I don’t know if you saw, but there’s actually like either NBC or Associated Press. Um, Print this article. It was actually kind of funny, it backfired on China. Um, in that they’re always really aggressive, right. With their kind of like threats Yes. Of like, okay, if you push our buttons, we’re gonna like come back harder on you.
And so they were making all this like huff and puff about Pelosi and then. When she actually went, they didn’t do all that much. Like, yes, they like upped the amount of like planes that are flying over the street and blah, blah, blah. But like I said, they already did that kind of stuff before. It was just more of it.
And actually the Chinese nationalists on social media, the ones that are always like trolling, Us when we talk about Taiwan and like blah, blah, blah. Uh, just like normal people on the internet talking about China, Taiwan things, they actually got mad at the Chinese government for once because they were like, what the hell?
Y’all made such a big show of like you said you were going to do all this. Stuff if like Pelosi landed and then you did nothing and they actually, it was like the one time ever that the fan, boys of Chinese nationalism actually turned on the government.
[00:17:36] Jesse Lin: That’s kind of what I was saying. It’s just like another thing that they’re using to like inflame the situation and also kind of like justify the things that they’re doing and they’re just kind of like tiptoeing to see where the line.
And they’re trying to get as close to line as possible and like get people to move the line. That’s how I feel because like as you’ve mentioned, the aggressiveness of what is happening is not new, but I definitely feel like it’s intensified recently.
[00:18:04] Angela Lin: Hey listeners, wondering how you can support us. The biggest way is by increasing our visibility by following us on Instagram at where are you from?
Pod on TikTok at, but where are you really from? Subscribing to our YouTube channel Under, but where are you really? From podcast rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts and telling your friends, the more people we can get to listen to the show, the more we can continue spotlighting different perspectives and stories.
And if you feel so inclined, we’re also accepting donations at buy me a coffee.com/where are you from? Thanks y’all. Yes. And also for those who may have missed it even before Pelosi visited, because she visited in August, like first week of August on June 15th, so like a month and a half before that, Xi Jinping randomly signed this order that allows him to conduct.
N quote unquote non-war special military operations outside of China. Does that phrase sound familiar to anyone? Um, yeah. So he took inspiration from what’s going on with Ukraine and he announced that that was gonna be like a thing that they’re allowed to do now. Um, so given all of. What is your, let’s go into speculation mode.
How, what do you think is the likelihood of this actually creeping over the, like tiptoeing towards the line thing you’re talking about and actually creeping into potential takeover of Taiwan soon? Given that Xi Jinping’s whole legacy is like largely grounded on fulfilling. Chinese reunification.
[00:19:48] Jesse Lin: I, I want to be more optimistic about it and say that he won’t, because there are very many deterrents, I think, to doing so and very little to gain.
I’m not saying that, you know, to shit on Taiwan, but it is a very small land mass. It does not have particularly any special. Like resources.
[00:20:12] Angela Lin: That’s not true. The semiconductor industry is dominated
[00:20:15] Jesse Lin: by Taiwan. Yes. Like they have lots of semi, but that, that can be produced in China too. Like they also have a lot of rare earth in China.
As
[00:20:24] Angela Lin: far as I understand it, Taiwan is like the number one semiconductor producer producing supplier of the world. So like all the like computer chips and shit are like reliant
[00:20:36] Jesse Lin: on Taiwan. Yes, but I’m, I’m, I’m thinking more from like a, a raw. Resources standpoint. Like it doesn’t have any like coal, it doesn’t have any iron, it doesn’t have any gold, it doesn’t have any, like anything special like that.
I, I see your point on the semiconductor, but you can always build that capability elsewhere. It’s just like people and factories that could be built potentially elsewhere. There are not any like resources there that are finite, that are like really worth going after in, in, in my understanding of the situation.
So I just don’t think that there’s a huge upside for China to take over. Taiwan, especially since, as Savannah mentioned, they don’t even need to really do that to strangle Taiwan. They just can cut Taiwan’s economy. In half by not doing any business with them. So a straight up invasion just seems really, really unnecessary to me with a lot of risks on she’s behalf because he risks antagonizing all the other Asian countries or some of the more Western aligned Asian countries, like South Korea and Japan, and he risk antagonizing like the larger western group of countries.
What’s he gonna get from. Like 30 million people. Pride.
[00:21:46] Angela Lin: I think a lot of it comes down to intangible things. Why does Putin care so much about Ukraine? Ukraine, relatively speaking as like a small land mass compared to Russia and to all these other like territories they claim are part of Russia or they wanna re reclaim as part of former Soviet Union Glory.
And related to that, I will add that. The other piece, why. Bringing this up is that, yes, I agree with you. It’s highly risky for seemingly a small reward, right? On she’s account. However, um, you could argue that like, because he’s viewing what is happening with Putin and Ukraine kind of backfiring on all the other nations.
Like we all were like, we’re gonna. Crush Russia with the sanctions. Yeah. Yeah. And they’re gonna stop the war immediately and it backfired on us. The rubal is actually doing better than it was before the Ukraine invasion because we impose all these sanctions, but it backfired on us because the whole world si is reliant on Russian oil.
Yeah. Um, and. because they blockade so much of Ukraine’s territory. Also all the grain, lots of things going on, right? Yeah. So like it’s not going well for all these countries that we’re trying to like stop Russia. So similarly, I guess I’m. More concerned than I used to be about. She getting funny ideas about this being like a better time to strike for Taiwan because before Russia invaded Ukraine, all the world powers are like, you better not do it.
Like you’re gonna regret it. And then like lo and behold, they don’t really regret it and they’re doing a lot better than we all thought they were going to be doing. So she might be kind of hedging his beds and thinking. It might be worth it to like ruffle a few feathers because tbh, like the US in particular didn’t do that much to help Ukraine.
So like will they really do that much to help Taiwan that they claim they care so much about? Yeah,
[00:23:58] Jesse Lin: you know, I’m more conservative person in that aspect. I could be wrong. I’m not an economist. I don’t know the inputs, outputs of the GDP of the Russian economy and the Chinese economy, but. . Anecdotally speaking, I feel like the Russian economy was much more insulated because they don’t really, they already weren’t exporting that much.
Like they exported oil largely, but they don’t have like goods. When’s the last time you bought something that was like made in Russia? Like never. But I think China depends so much on foreign people buying their goods. That being said, it’s like, You know, dictatorship. So in theory, she could just like crush the economy into buying internally and make that work.
So I don’t really
[00:24:37] Angela Lin: know. Well, and also I guess the, the word invasion is kind of loose, right? Because it doesn’t have to be military based in terms of like the way that China. tries to take over. Taiwan. Make it. Could be a could also. Yeah. Yeah. Economic. It could be hacking. I don’t know. It could be a lot of things.
Yeah. Like it doesn’t have to be what we consider to be like, um, a takeover. A traditional takeover. Yeah. I’m just a little bit more concerned than I used to be. One I goes like, shining light, not really, but like a little hint that might precede anything happening. My dad. Has like we’ve talked about, but he has kind of like a mixed notion of the reunification thing because.
He’s from Taiwan. His family’s from Taiwan, but he had a business in China. He sees the, like economic, especially right potential of China. So he’s, he’s very pro China tbh, but he says that he doesn’t think the Chinese invasion of Taiwan will happen anytime soon. But if it does happen, the telltale sign of when it’s gonna happen is when China tries to like, woo, all of the.
Um, highly skilled people from Taiwan to set up business in China. So he’s like, yeah. So once you see China saying like, Hey, lawyers and doctors and like all these skilled professionals from Taiwan wanna like set up business over in China, that’s a sign, aren’t they doing that? I think he means like by making it like insanely easy to set up or like lucrative or some, some other incentive to like get all these people over because that’s a sign that they’re trying to extract all the valuable.
You said there’s nothing valuable in Taiwan. The people are, what’s human capital is valuable. Yeah, human capital. So they’re gonna try to extract all of that first before they do anything that could like crush what is valuable in Taiwan. He said it’s complicated because technically China doesn’t see Taiwan as like an enemy.
It is. A rebellious province that refuses to like listen to its mommy and daddy. Right. That’s kind of how they see Taiwan. So it’s not in their interest to try to like kill everyone. That’s
[00:26:49] Jesse Lin: like spilling family
[00:26:50] Angela Lin: blood. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. Like you’re all Chinese, so we’re just trying to like get you back in the fam is how he sees it.
So he was like, that’ll be the sign at the time of she is saying this like military operation thing. My parents were still in Taiwan, and so I was concerned. I was like, um, how are you gonna know? Like, do you have a way out? Like if they just randomly decide to invade Taiwan? Finally I was concerned for them and he reassured me with his notion.
Of like there will be signs first and as soon he was like, as soon as I see those signs of like, Hey, y’all like all you skilled people come on over. Or he is like, I’ll get the fuck out. Like , I’ll be long gone before that. I’m like, okay.
[00:27:31] Jesse Lin: I mean, also on the other side, I feel like that kind of migration just happens naturally, like.
As things get more serious, that kind of human capital will just leave and their money will leave too. Like I feel like, you know, like before the invasion of Ukraine, there are a lot of people who are like, it’s not gonna happen. But then like slowly as it got more real, more and more people were fleeing.
Even though Russia had not actually pressed into Ukraine yet. I
[00:27:56] Angela Lin: guess you mean out of Taiwan in general, but not that they would go into China.
[00:28:00] Jesse Lin: Exactly, yes. Yeah. Other places.
[00:28:02] Angela Lin: Yeah. Got it. Okay. Well, I think the last thing we wanted to discuss in relation to this is if. This were to happen, the reunification that China wants so badly, what would it feel like to us to lose a quote unquote homeland with this being a complicated issue since neither of us actually was born or raised in Taiwan, but our kind of like concept of cultural heritage is very deeply tied to that.
Quote unquote country because ,
[00:28:36] Jesse Lin: well, it’s even more confusing because technically China will still exist. Where all of that cultural heritage originated from . I don’t know. I mean, like Covid really threw a fucking monkey wrench into the whole thing. But I always had this idea that I would be going back more frequently and trying to like reconnect with my family and like get to know Taiwan better, even though I know I’m never gonna be.
You know, people are always gonna clock me as like, not a Taiwanese person, but I dunno, it feels weird to know that there’s a place where lots of happy things and memories are because I do, I, I haven’t visited a lot, but I have like lots of good memories of time with my family there. It’s weird to know that that might be, Violated in a way, if that makes sense.
And it feels really unsafe. You know, living in the United States, you’ve never had to face the fear that like anything would happen. It’s always been so secure. So then to suddenly confront the fact that a place where your family lives and has built lots of memories and has experienced lots of love is suddenly going to.
Attacked. You don’t necessarily know how, as we’ve discussed, it can be economic. They could actually be marching troops in. So I think it’s really, really scary and it’s really, really sad. It’s
[00:29:54] Angela Lin: a really complicated issue, right? Because when we talk about heritage, something that we can’t deny, and we talked about in the whole like T L D R of the history of.
Chinese Taiwanese tension is that Taiwan as we know it, right? Current modern day at Taiwan. It started from China. Like the people are literally like, they were a Chinese political party that like fled. And then all these people that now consider themselves Taiwanese at some point came from China. And so a lot of that cultural heritage, at least the like older heritage or Chinese traditions and food and like all these, you know, things that built.
What Taiwan is today, but you cannot possibly deny that Taiwan has developed its own kind of thing since becoming its own nation. It’s similar to our kind of previous debate about like, is the US more of a thing or is like the statehood identity more of a thing, right? Like. Even if you are super Chinese nationalist and you wanna claim Taiwan is just a province, this province’s culture is its own thing.
So I think that is like a standalone differentiator from Taiwan versus China. Right. But the main thing is that if Taiwan were to actually be taken over. The government changes. So like as it stands today, even though even if you try to say Taiwan’s not a country, it is run by a democratic process. It’s not run by communist regime.
And so people are used to certain freedoms and privacy rights and other rights that people in mainland China do not currently have. So if Taiwan is taken over fundamentally, It will be quite different because the government will change hands. So it’s different from us saying like, you know, moving from California to New York or to Florida or whatever, because we’re all still under the same president, we’re still under the same government.
It would be more like, , um, moving from Florida to Cuba, you know, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it, that’s what scares me is like, I think the flavor of Taiwan in terms of like the, the way people act and like the modern culture that’s been built up about, uh, around Taiwan won’t necessarily change because that’s what’s been built up in the last, uh, 80 years or whatever.
But with the government changing, it just cannot run the same way. So that’s where I’m fearful. Is like I, for example, I don’t wanna go to Hong Kong anytime soon since they got taken over by China. Even though I used to visit it and it felt like its own thing. I’m, I’m kind of scared to visit Hong Kong now and I feel like that’s how I would feel towards Taiwan.
The
[00:32:37] Jesse Lin: idea of losing the homeland is much more than just like the whole thing being torn apart by war stripe, but actually like the cultural identity of it is lost. And I think kind of taking over Taiwan will do exactly that. I mean, you just look at Hong Kong. Crushed like the vibrancy of what Hong Kong is because we’ve seen there’s this kind of homogeneousness that they want to implement everywhere.
So everyone is very similar and I really, really don’t think that they would just allow Taiwan to maintain those, the separation and the culture that it has because that’s not the approach that they’ve taken. In China.
[00:33:15] Angela Lin: Yeah, so we don’t feel great about the idea of potentially losing a homeland even if we were not born and raised there.
It is still a big part of kind of like certainly our families and our families’ histories, but also. , what we grew up with, we visited many times. It kind of shaped our identity crises that we constantly talk about, but our kind of foot in both worlds is shaped by that experience we have with Taiwan as well.
[00:33:45] Jesse Lin: Yeah, I think it’s just kind of like, it’s something that you don’t really think about, but like once you lose it, I think it, it can become like a really big hole for you. Should I move on to the Fortune cookie clothes? Because we always like to end on a sweet treat, so we’re gonna do some more speculation and crystal ball.
Do you wanna just crystal ball the best scenario? I feel like we’ve talked about a lot of poo poo stuff. Yeah.
[00:34:07] Angela Lin: I mean, Boring answer, but best case scenario is that status quo is maintained, which is, if you’ve been reading any of these, any of the articles, that’s the phrases that keeps coming up is status quo.
It’s like weird, ambiguous state that Taiwan is in, where no one, no one acknowledges it as a country, but still essentially does all the things that you would do with , with a different country that you respect. So status quo maintained, and China can keep doing its whole, you know, threats and whatever, but not actually.
It’s carrying out a full on takeover.
[00:34:41] Jesse Lin: Okay, well, I will take it to the WOOWOO level. , I think that XII Ping will pass away. The communist party will fall into disarray and Taiwan will be elevated to a real country.
[00:34:52] Angela Lin: That is indeed best case scenario. Damson. All right, well, uh, fingers crossed. We’ll see that’s
[00:35:00] Jesse Lin: a long term best case scenario.
It is.
[00:35:03] Angela Lin: I mean, going back to the whole thing about like wire polishing. So old that run our countries, she’s 70, right? Yeah. But fucking Nancy Pelosi is like 86 or whatever’s, and she’s. Kick in, like on paper you’re like, yeah, 70 something years old. You should be like ready to , ready to wind it up. But no,
[00:35:22] Jesse Lin: I don’t know.
Maybe someone from within the Polar bureau will just be like, it’s time for you to go .
[00:35:28] Angela Lin: Well, the reality is that they have an election coming up and previously what? If, if y’all have been listening for a while, we did a previous episode about China and I think we misspoke about something. So several years ago, Xi Jinping did change the law that gave him the right to be president forever, essentially.
But what we misspoke about is it was not saying he will be president forever, it’s that they got rid of the term limits for a president. Mm-hmm. , it doesn’t mean he will be the president forever. So it’s not like Putin, where it’s like Putin is kind of like the, the only important person technically there.
If there’s enough infighting within the Communist party and people are sick of Xi Jinping, he could be ousted in the, in the next election, which is coming up ish. So, The theoretically they could change leadership and the next person could not be as crazy about the whole reunification thing. At least not imminently.
Alright, well this was a lot, um, listeners, I, I don’t know how much y’all are invest. In this, or if you have just been keeping over the headlines and have, uh, a hot take or anything else you wanna share with us. But feel free to interact with us on social media, on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, wherever you’re watching this, and let us know your thoughts about everything that’s been going on.
If all this recent tension was Pelosi and the Ukraine invasion kind of influencing she, if you think it’s gonna tip the scales one way or another, let us know what you. And
[00:37:03] Jesse Lin: come back next week for a fresh, new episode
[00:00:00] Jesse Lin: Hi everyone. My name is Jesse Lin.
[00:00:02] Angela Lin: And I’m Angela Lin. Welcome back to another episode of, but Where Are You really from? Welcome back for our next batch of episodes. Something new that we’re introducing. In addition to kind of the way we’ve been running things thus far is we are now introducing a new format for the show called Mini.
Um, the kind of like idea behind this is that we know not all of you have that much time to listen to our full episodes all the time. We hope you still come back for those and we’ll still be doing full episode. Mm-hmm. Deep dive topics, but there are also topics sometimes that we wanna cover, but we know cannot fill like 40 plus.
Worth of talking, um, that we still wanna give attention to. So these minis, you’re gonna see them. Uh, we’re gonna try out kind of alternating between minis and full lengths every other episode, and they should be hopefully between like f. Anywhere between 10 to 20 minutes. Right. That’s kind of what we’re shooting for.
Yeah. Yeah. The little snack bites for you.
[00:01:04] Jesse Lin: One of the things we wanted to talk about is what is a Jimbo, and so if you’re familiar with the word bimbo, actually I think not a lot of people are, because I recently had this conversation with people, they’re like, what’s a bimbo? Right? For those of you who don’t know what a bimbo.
A bimbo is basically the female version of like a dumb blonde slut kind of thing, person who gets around, but you know, they’re not super intelligent. I would say like Anna Anna Nicole Smith is the personification of a bimbo. We really want to talk about this idea of a Jimbo, which is the male version of this, so a dumb slut.
Male version of a bimbo because we think it’s been really interesting that there has been this like, rise of Asian representation for guys in the form of a Jimbo. Mm-hmm. . We actually got this, I I, I saw this thing, I think it was on npr and they just, it was
[00:02:04] Angela Lin: pbs cuz I
[00:02:04] Jesse Lin: rewatched it. So they were doing this like summation of like representation of Asian male characters throughout the history of cinema.
And of course like at the very. Time periods, you had basically not even Asian people playing these Asian people, and it’s always in the form of like very like neutered villain kind of format. And now you have kind of what you see in Crazy Rich Asians or the Good place where you have this very.
masculine slash slutty representation of Asian men. And so we really wanted to talk about that. Cause I think it’s super interesting to see that evolution over the past few years, especially the last, I wanna say like five years. Mm-hmm. , it’s gotten a really quickly. Bringing that kind of character to life in different film and tv.
[00:02:58] Angela Lin: Yeah. I’m kind of curious how it first came about because it does feel like a bunch of Asian jimbos just like appeared on the Hollywood market like around the same time. Yeah. Um, like. , I never watched this show, but I think the first, first, like main one was, um, crazy. Ex-girlfriend had a, a hot Asian dude as like the main crush or a love interest for her.
Mm-hmm. and I, I never watched that show, but I just remember from like all the commercials, he was featured a lot and he was definitely like, Super dumb, but like portrayed as like highly desirable. And then, I don’t know in reference to that, how many years apart or whatever, but the Good Place ca has had been on air for like Jason Mendoza final time.
And yeah, Jason Mendoza, um, appeared around the same time. And then it was just kind of like this, like snowball effect because crazier Asians we’ve talked about with that like really intense shower scene. I’ll always remember that. So hot. Um, so yeah, I don’t know. It, it’s almost like Hollywood kind of like secretly whispered to each other that now’s the turning tide for, for Asian men to like start portraying them this way.
[00:04:05] Jesse Lin: Well, I think it’s a money thing, right? Like once they sh once they had like a cast of characters that were not traditionally portrayed in that fashion and it like, worked out. Then they were like, oh, this is like, maybe this is a winning formula. Like let’s try this again. And I think that it’s gone to the point where, , it’s proven to be successful in money making and that’s why they have these characters in place.
And personally, I like to think that audiences are bored of seeing the same trope of like masculine. White guy with like unattainable body like Chris Hemsworth and Thor, not that in saying that all of these Asian jimbos have attainable bodies, it’s like also like, no, like most people don’t look like that.
But I, I feel like there’s a certain level of like boredom with this, like same look and people are interested in seeing different kinds of hot. Portrayed.
[00:05:01] Angela Lin: Yeah. I think it’s a similar conversation that we’ve had before about media representation in general, that it’s all kind of like baby steps because it’s nice now that we get to see, yes, Asian men who have been traditionally like DMAs.
Masculinized, how do you say whatever that word is. You can say like, feminized. Feminized. But it’s not fre. It’s, yeah. Neutered, neutered, um, portrayed as like totally unattractive, sexless and like nerdy and blah, blah, blah. And now being seen as like super hot, but they’re all super dumb, is like mostly how they’re portrayed and that that’s why the Jimbo term came around.
So it’s like it’s baby steps. Cause I don’t think this is the end goal at all. Like for now, it’s fun. No to like drool over Jason Mendoza type characters. But the hope is that in the future it can evolve so that they can be both seen as attractive and intelligent or complex, you know, like not one dimensional.
Buts .
[00:06:03] Jesse Lin: My feeling is that they’re like really dialing into this like hotness aspect of it, because I think in the portrayal of Asian men, even though in the past they were portrayed as sexless or neutered, there was still this element of either villain, which with within that villain there was cunning or some level of inte.
And so it is always kind of like, given that the Asian character has intelligence, but never given that they had like anything else, it was like a Ken Doll. That’s smart. So I think they’re really dialing into this hotness aspect of it because it, it kind of flips your idea of what that character would be at first glance.
You know, like when you first see Jason Mendoza in the Good Place, you’re like, oh, a Buddhist monk. Like, you’re sold, right? You’re like, okay. Like I believe that because that kind of fits within that archetype. And then they flip it where like they’re like, oh, actually he’s a moron. Like a really hot moron.
Yeah. And you’re like, oh, like I’m very interested now it’s different from what I’ve seen before and I think that characterization is like what’s drawing people in. But I also agree with you like that’s definitely not where we. Stay. Like we want the character to be multi-dimensional, right? They can be intelligent, they can be stupid as well.
Uh, they can be hot, they can be ugly, like, but all of these things play into, I think, how likable a character is. So I think that it’s definitely not where we wanna stop and it’s like where we wanna continue forward.
[00:07:38] Angela Lin: Hey listeners, wondering how you can support us. The biggest way is by increasing our visibility by following us on Instagram at where are you from?
Pod on TikTok at, but where are you really from? Subscribing to our YouTube channel Under, but where are you really? From podcast rating and reviewing us on Apple Podcasts and telling your friends, the more people we can get to listen to the show, the more we can continue spotlighting different perspectives and.
And if you feel so inclined, we’re also accepting donations at buy me a coffee.com/where are you from? Thanks. If anyone actually watches the p b s thing that we were talking about, the, like, what is an Asian Jimbo, uh, little video. It’s like 10 minutes-ish. It’s, it’s worth watching, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Um, one thing I felt like they really left out was the influence of K-pop and Korean dramas and why Asian men are seen as desirable right now, because mm-hmm.
I noticed this huge gap in their analysis. I was like, uh, the guys. People who are attracted to Asian men right now think are most attractive are like BTS and like Korean drama leads. Because if you watch any social media of people like drooling over Asian men, it’s usually those guys and not. . Mm-hmm. , not just the Jason Mendozas, because that’s still relying on kind of like mainstream western media featuring those people.
Yeah. Versus like, Korea really exported this like huge, you know, wave of like potential people to love. And that’s interesting because, um, even though we talked about this Jimbo being kind of like, or the Asian Jimbo being leaning into like highly masculine. We’ve talked about before that like Korean representation of men is often a little bit more fluid.
Like yes, they have beautiful skin cuz they, they know how to do their skincare. They like, they wear makeup. They wear makeup. Yeah. And they, they can look, they can be attractive not being like highly masculine, but actually having a little bit of like, feminine, um, charisma. And it’s been interesting to see, like whenever I’m watching.
Tos or whatever, and people are like, um, over romanticizing Krama leads where they’re like, basically they’re like watching Krama and having unrealistic, uh, expectations of men to come into their lives based on the way that the Krama men are behaving. I’m like, how is this being completely ignored as to like, there has to obviously be an influence of like that huge kind of like, Getting used to seeing Asian men and finding them attractive and kind of influencing why Western media might start portraying Asian men.
You know this
[00:10:24] Jesse Lin: way. Yeah. I think the PBS thing is like really focused around like film and tv, but I totally agree with you that like what’s represented in film and TV may not be necessarily what the general public is interested in. And that totally backs your point of like a lot of people are interested.
Different look that Korea exports and it’s not this like westernized Americanized like mask dumb Jimbo thing that is in film and film and tv.
[00:10:56] Angela Lin: I think another like interesting direction that things are going in is like, um, yes we have the Jason Mendozas and the crazy ex-girlfriend and whatever portrayals of like, that’s kind of token Asian Jimbo, right?
Because the rest of the past is usually white. Yeah. Um, Something I wanna point out is that usually those shows are not run by Asian people. Right? And so one kind of, um, nod in that, or two nods in that direction. Uh, we talked all about everything ever all at once. And you talked specifically about how you loved wan’s character when they did the kind of like, , one of the multiverse options where they were kind of in like glam, like tuxedo and like, yes, yes.
And, um, evening gown dress. And he was really hot. So that’s one portrayal. And at the same time, turning Red came out that, uh, Disney, the Pixar movie. Yes. At The Red Panda, which I freaking loved. Um, and that boy band that they were all obsessed with, one of the characters was like, K-Pop boy band type.
Um-huh . And so, and everyone was like fawning over all of them, but like, they, you know, he’s one of them. And so both those were created by Asian people. Well, at least half the Daniels are Asian in, uh, everything Everywhere. Yes. And Turning Red was, was created by an Asian Canadian filmmaker. So I think also like as Asian people become more integrated into the, And the like.
Content ideas behind movies and TV shows will also start to see a more diverse portrayal of attractive male Asian characters, whether they be stupid or s smart, but like I, I like that we’re starting to see kind of this like evolution of different ways that they can be attractive. I just think, yeah, again, still baby.
Okay, so the way that we wanna close these minis is we want to hear from you guys. So why don’t you drop in the comments your favorite Asian Jimbo that you have seen across anything. One thing we didn’t mention is also, um, Fuck, what’s a bling empire, right? Like Kevin is obviously, oh my godly an Asian hio.
He like milks a shit out of his gosh. Sex factor. My gosh. So there’s a whole range, right? There’s like reality tv, there’s fiction tv, film, krama K-Pop. Who’s your F favorite Asian hio? Drop ’em in the comments. We wanna see who’s everyone’s favorite.
[00:13:26] Jesse Lin: All right. Well thanks for joining us. Listeners, come back next week for another fresh new episode
[00:00:02] Angela: And I’m Angela Lin. Welcome back to another episode of, but where are you really from today is our last episode of this. Batch before we take another break and we are ending on July 4th weekend. So obviously we are revisiting our old topic from season one. When we still had seasons called red, white, and you revamped for 2022.
[00:00:30] Angela: Um, and this is actually an interesting topic because I’m in Asia right now. Um, we prerecord, but I will still be in Asia. the time of this publishing anyway. So it is an interesting kind of like position to be in, to be revisiting the topic of like, what does being American mean to us. Um, but before we go into all of that, I think for our open, we just wanna do a little mathy math.
[00:00:54] Angela: Um, how old is America nowadays?
[00:00:59] Jesse: I’m gonna guess 235, no final answer. 230 a oh, it’s 2038. I
[00:01:09] Angela: don’t know. I didn’t actually do the math. I thought you were Googling in the background. I mean, I can just do the calculator.
[00:01:17] Jesse: How
[00:01:19] Angela: 70. 246. What’d you
[00:01:21] Jesse: say? Okay. I was close 238 or something like
[00:01:24] Angela: that. Oh, whatever, 246.
[00:01:26] Angela: Isn’t it bizarre. Isn’t it like crazy town that we are only 246 years old as a country. Like, it sounds ancient to us like 1776 sounds like an an ancient year, but because we talk about being Asian all the time and like the new things we learn from our parents and stuff about our, our own history from, you know, China days, it’s like that shit, thousands of years old, I’m like 246.
[00:01:52] Angela: That’s like one barely one dynasty or whatever within China’s history. So it’s kind of wild.
[00:02:00] Jesse: it’s really interesting because like, it’s not even that the country has been around for so long, but it’s like the actual history, as you mentioned, for example, when we were doing the Ukraine episodes, Ukraine’s only been a country since the nineties, but Ukraine has had history back.
[00:02:16] Jesse: Into like ages and ages ago. So not only are we a new comp uh, company, a new country. We got stock. We are, we are, we are, we are just a company now. It’s just a capitalist company, all the United. Um, no, not only are we a new country, but the culture of our country is very, very fresh, new, always evolving
[00:02:40] Angela: as well.
[00:02:41] Angela: I think that’s honestly the difference. The, and we’ve discussed this in our past episode. And I think the reason why we renamed this episode, the same episode name essentially as what we did two years ago is because we wanted to see how our own reflections of what being American means to us has changed even just within these two years.
[00:03:02] Angela: And I think that is kind of the main thing that makes the. Very different from other countries, most other countries, which is just that, because our whole sh stick is being this melting pot. It is not, our history is not really about like, oh, well, we just got colonized by these people. So we became those.
[00:03:23] Angela: That was the culture then. And then we got colonized by those people. And then we became that, yes, fo show colonization happened and we did, you know, different civilizations did come to try to like, Try to take over things, but the kind of spirit of, you know, 1776 onwards America, is that it was all the kind of.
[00:03:47] Angela: people who left other countries who tried to create something new that like didn’t exist before. And honestly, the big break was to say, like, we don’t want Kings anymore. Like that, that shit’s done. like, we just wanna like figure out our own way of
[00:04:01] Jesse: like living well and religious freedom. Let’s not forget
[00:04:04] Angela: about religious.
[00:04:04] Angela: That’s true. God has always part of the story. Isn’t
[00:04:08] Jesse: he um, Speaking of pre-recording, I’m not sure if you saw the news yet, but there was that leak draft of the Supreme court, Roe V. Wade overturning. So you do wanna like encapsulate that here, because I do think that it’ll be an interesting discussion point as to, I think just generally like how America works and how passionate people about how passionate people are about.
[00:04:37] Jesse: American politics, including stuff that’s like usually pretty dry, boring, like the courts, right? Like. Records. Yeah.
[00:04:45] Angela: Well, let’s, I, I, we don’t need to get into like the actual abortion topic at least right now, but I do think one of the, like another key difference of like what makes America, America compared to a lot of other countries is this whole like federal versus.
[00:04:59] Angela: State BS, not BS. I just mean like, there was a very strong distinction and the like weird kind of like they work together, but not really, like the states are kind of independent, but not really, because honestly, when I first read that, that headline about the Roe persuade potential overturn, I was freaking out cuz I was like, wait, that’s a federal decision.
[00:05:22] Angela: So at first I thought like, oh, so does that mean like all across the nation? Abortion would be illegal. Exactly. That I saw. Then I like clicked a few more links and I was like, okay, so it’s state by state. It’s more that like, it’s more that the current states that have it as legalized because it’s.
[00:05:40] Angela: Federally officially a right. W would have the right to overturn their state laws to say like, oh, we never wanted this anyway. So now it’s illegal again for y’all as opposed to like states like California that are super liberal would never. Overturn it.
[00:05:58] Jesse: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s really about, I mean, if you wanna look at it without the human perspective, returning the right to the state to make that decision, as opposed to the federal government, um, obviously like.
[00:06:11] Jesse: All the states that didn’t want it had been kind of limiting the avail accessibility of sure. Abortion anyway. So it was like really curtailed, but federally, it meant that every state had to kind of like follow the federal guidance of like what you have to do. But now it’s kind of like, well, each state has the decision, um, in deciding those rights as part of its like statehood or something like that.
[00:06:33] Jesse: Right?
[00:06:34] Angela: Yeah. And actually, I mean, to be fair, I don’t know shit. Governments in general, even our own. But even when I was saying all this, I was like, actually, I feel like COVID really highlighted that the us is not the only place for like little regions also make like completely different decisions.
[00:06:51] Angela: Because for example, like when we were in Spain for a wedding, . I mean, it was like county by county. They were changing like what was okay. And what wasn’t considering the exact same COVID circumstances. So, so yeah, maybe we’re not that special. I don’t know.
[00:07:10] Jesse: uh, yeah, I don’t think so either. I think we just have a distinct flavor of like, of that.
[00:07:16] Jesse: I, I mean, if we’re looking at Spain for comparison, I just think that their government is much more of a coalition than ours is cuz they. They don’t have that many parties, but they have at least three major parties that share the power somewhat equally versus here. It’s a two party system. So if you’re like, you’re either one or the other, or you can’t really do much versus like, there is at least some coalition anyways, we can get into it.
[00:07:41] Jesse: I’m very interested in this topic. Okay. In my, in my perspective, I could be wrong. Sorry, Spanish.
[00:07:47] Angela: sorry, Ramon left. He’s not here to defend his own people next time. Um, Loles okay. Let’s, let’s wrap back to the like original kind of topic area. Um, so what does being American mean to you and how has that changed in the last two years?
[00:08:08] Angela: Since we asked ourselves these questions, ,
[00:08:11] Jesse: it’s such a hard thing to reflect on because it’s not something you think about every day, because it’s not connected to like thousands of years of history, like your heritage. And even if it were we’re born of immigrant families. Right. So it’s not our heritage anyways.
[00:08:29] Jesse: So it’s just something that I don’t think about a lot. Um, I think that the last time we discussed it, we were very closely connecting how, like your pride in living here with the current situation in the government. And if you were to ask the question to me like that, I would still say, um, the needle hasn’t moved much.
[00:08:55] Jesse: Like I think from the optics perspective, some sanity has been restored in terms of just like. The general blah, blah, blah, around the presidency has returned to like its boring status. As, as we, I guess most people are kind of like prefer it to be, but the reality of the situation for a lot of people and the reality of what the political engine, if you will, has produced since Joe Biden was elected into, as the president has.
[00:09:28] Jesse: really changed a lot. And so from my perspective, like I don’t feel net positive about the situation. I don’t feel net negative either. Cause I don’t think anything has like really slid off the table. But overall I would say like expectations are not being met because there were a lot of things that I think people myself included were looking for the new administration, which house control of all, all of.
[00:09:57] Jesse: And the executive branch waiting for them to kind of like make the moves on all of these legislative promises that they had stated that they would deliver on and still have not. And that’s where I’m at. I think like, I just, I know you, I know in like talking with you, like you shut out a lot of, um, just there’s been so much like negative news and stuff, and I just feel like.
[00:10:25] Jesse: more and more, it’s hard to determine how much of that is representative of what’s actually happened. Right? Cuz you see like Asian women attacked Asian women shot, then you have like school shoot, like, and it’s it’s, it’s so much that it’s hard for you to determine like, oh shit. Like is the core fabric of society really like warping into.
[00:10:45] Jesse: You know the toilet or is it just like, there’s more reporting because that’s kind of what reporting does now to like get eyeballs and clicks and whatever. Um, so from that perspective, like how I feel about, if you wanna say the moral fabric of the country, like my pride there, I don’t know. I’m not sure, like I’m always glass half full.
[00:11:04] Jesse: I feel like in these situations, I’d like to believe that people are more like, you know, like as we discussed, I like to believe that people have more in common than they do different, but it’s hard to. . What about you?
[00:11:18] Angela: there’s a lot to unpack from what you just said. Um, I wanna. Uh, offer a resource, which is one of my friends gave me this resource recently.
[00:11:26] Angela: Okay. And I was like, oh, this is wonderful, which is, um, you mentioned the thing about like, it’s really difficult now to tell, like, if things are really as bad as they are given, the way news is reporting, whatever. Um, on Instagram, there’s an account called ground news and they basically highlight different headlines and show underneath the breakdown of the percentage of either.
[00:11:49] Angela: Um, left wing sources, centrist sources, or right wing sources that reported on that headline so that you can tell how biased that is. And it also shows like, Basically it, it gives you a chance to see, like, if I’m always following these types of news sources, I, would’ve never even known that this thing happened because it’s not being reported on by my like typical go-tos versus like, when I see the breakdown of this is like, oh, well centrist and right wing or whatever, or reporting this thing.
[00:12:21] Angela: And I would’ve wanted to know that, but the, you know, left sources, aren’t reporting that anyways. I, I really like it because it, it kind of shows you a more representative. View of like what’s actually happening and also like which ones are really skewed based on who’s reporting. What, um, yeah. I’m like, where do I go from where you, where you left it?
[00:12:43] Angela: Um, so I, I think for me, I will never let go of my core pride in being American, no matter where our country has gone in the last. Let’s call it the last eight years or so. Right. Um, how much it has gone kind of up and down in that timeframe. And for me, it still goes back to what I said in like our first episode of this it’s that I.
[00:13:15] Angela: do Biden very strongly into the whole American dream thing. Is it perfect? No, but are we in one of the few countries where you do have the opportunity to, like, if you work really fucking hard, if you get a little bit of luck because you always need a little bit of luck as well, but are you at a much higher.
[00:13:40] Angela: possibility of achieving what you wanna do than in a different country that doesn’t offer you as much of this opportunity. I think the answer’s still, yes. And I’m biased because I literally just spent the last few days, um, editing our mother’s day episode that we’ve released by now. and especially coming from the real immigrant perspective because you and I are not immigrants.
[00:14:03] Angela: We are, we were born in the us. So I will kind of, um, devil’s advocate at different point. You said earlier as well, but we’re not the immigrants. Our parents were the immigrants. And when we asked both our parents. Do you, is there anything you regret about immigrating even after they mentioned all the hardships that they went through during that transition, especially your mom talking about feeling like so lonely and isolated and like having to start over and all that stuff, even reflecting on all that, both of them said, no, there’s nothing I regret about coming here.
[00:14:34] Angela: And my mom specifically said something like. The opportunities that you get by coming to this country are like unparalleled. And most people don’t have that opportunity to come here. So like, I always, whenever I need kind of a reality check of like, how lucky are we to be American? I always kind of look back to what.
[00:14:55] Angela: Actual immigrants. Think, especially if you talk to like fresh immigrants, our parents have been in the us for decades by now, and they still think that way. But if you talk to like fresh immigrants, like I’m sure if you talk to some recent war refugees, for example, that they would have a completely different perspective than we do on like what, what it means to be in this country and like the levels of freedom and like opportunity that they have just by not being in the situation they were in.
[00:15:24] Angela: so part of me will always be prideful of being American, just because it just symbolized as kind of like land of the free thing. Right? Like of course we have flaws. Of course we have a bunch of shit that’s wrong with our country as well, but it is always. That symbol, I think in the global sphere of like, we stand for freedom, we’re still kind of fucking fucking it up in a lot of ways, but like, that’s our kind of core belief of like our founding mantra for this country.
[00:15:49] Angela: And we still try to move that forward and we are still one of the biggest opportunity. Givers in the need in the world right now. So for that, I’m always very proud. Um, going back to what you said of like, it’s not our heritage because our families are not from the us. I fundamentally disagree with you because there is no American heritage in that sense, like.
[00:16:16] Angela: America, as we know it from 1776 onwards is what everyone made of it, of all the immigrants that came to the us. So there’s no, we are not native American. So if you’re saying like, we’re not from here, cuz we’re not native American. Sure. Yeah. But like no one is really we’ve wiped most of them out, unfortunately.
[00:16:36] Angela: So. you and I having been born in the us, we are American. Like, I don’t identify as strongly with Taiwan as I do with the us. So if you wanna say like, which heritage are you like really? You know, are you closest to, for me as American, I, I’m trying really hard to kind of like climb back to the Taiwanese part because I know it’s really important to be close to the, the mother culture.
[00:17:01] Angela: Right. But. Which one do I associate myself more to? It’s definitely the American culture and I. We are both deeply American. Like it’s a really hard concept to grasp. Like, how would you describe being American and blah, blah, blah. But because I’m abroad right now, especially my perspective is very different because I think when you leave the country is when you most recognize that you are American as fuck.
[00:17:27] Angela: Like you land somewhere else in there. Everyone is like, oh my God, So American, you know what I mean? Like, it’s very easy for them to describe you like that versus like, when you try to describe yourself, like, what does American mean? You’re like, I don’t know, but like you land anywhere else and you’re like, Ugh, these fucking Americans, right?
[00:17:42] Angela: Like they like can pick you out everywhere. And even we’ll talk about this more. Or maybe we, we already have, because by the time we publish this episode, that episode will have been live already. But we reflect on my experience of being in Asian and Asia, but. The type of Asian in the country I’m at.
[00:18:02] Angela: Right. And I’ll give you a preview right now when I’m in a different Asian country. I honestly, the, the thing I think I am the most is American. Like I don’t. And when people ask, like, where are you from? Whatever. I say America, because it’s not true to say I’m from Taiwan. I’m not from Taiwan. Like, I, I can say like my family is from Taiwan or whatever, and then make that makes ’em feel a little, you know, closer to me in a sense, because they’re like, oh, so you are like Asian kind of, but like, I don’t know if I told the story in that previous episode or not, but a perfect example is that three years ago, when I lived in Japan for a few months, um, and I was working at Adobe still at that time, I had lunch with my coworkers who were Japanese.
[00:18:51] Angela: and we were in a Chinese restaurant that they chose. I was like, I definitely don’t wanna eat a Chinese restaurant, but they chose it. They wanted it. And I, I made some comment about like, oh yeah, I’ve, I’ve eaten this a lot because my, my family’s Chinese. And they were like, wait, you’re Chinese. And I was like, my last name’s Lin, like, what did you?
[00:19:10] Angela: And they, like, they genuinely were just like, I don’t know. You’re just so American. I just, I don’t know. I just knew you were American. So they didn’t even think about my ethnicity. They just were like, you’re so American, like the way I talk, the way I act, the blah, blah, blah. So I think it’s always good to kind of zoom out from our general, our like day to day perspectives, especially we’ve had our reality check by many of our guests that are not American.
[00:19:36] Angela: That we’re very, self-centered in the way that we think about the world. But when you zoom out from just like being in our day to day shoes of like in, in the us, we. Are deeply American, no matter how much this stop, Asian ha blah, blah, you know, things that are going on that are dividing us. I think at our core, you and I are way more American than we are.
[00:19:57] Angela: Anything else. Just by the fact of having been born there, raised there, like kind of shaped our whole lives there. Hey listeners, wondering how you can support us. The biggest way is by increasing our visibility by following us on Instagram at where are you from pod on TikTok at, but where are you really from subscribing to our YouTube channel under, but where are you really from podcast?
[00:20:19] Angela: Rating and reviewing us on apple podcasts and telling your friends the more people we can get to listen to the show, the more we can continue spotlighting different perspectives and stories. And if you feel so inclined, we’re also accepting donations@buymeiacoffee.com slash where are you from? Thanks.
[00:20:35] Angela: Y’all
[00:20:37] Jesse: I think I, I hear what you’re saying and I, I mean that, like, that heritage doesn’t belong to us because I kind of feel like. The wave of Asian immigration that kind of transformed the culture that we are a part of now didn’t exist necessarily before our parents immigrated there. So I kind of just feel like that heritage was a mix of all the people that were already there, but it didn’t necessarily like that’s not something that I feel like I inherited.
[00:21:11] Jesse: Um, but I think we also defer in the sense that like, I don’t necessarily think a lot about being American and, and you have like much more, I think you have a much more fleshed out idea of what that means to you and even, um, like something like, and something that I’ve noticed when I travel abroad is when people ask me where I’m from.
[00:21:33] Jesse: I tell them like where I live community wise. So like the most. Region or whatever, I’ll be like, I live in New York. I, or, you know, when I was, when I lived in California, like I’m, you know, originally from California, I don’t necessarily tell people like, Hey, I’m American. Um, and I think there’s a, a, a difference there because I don’t, I don’t identify very strongly with the idea of being American.
[00:22:00] Jesse: If that makes sense, even though it’s like hard to, I like say like, what is that picture? Cuz it’s different for everybody. Right? If you ask you, you have a very clear picture. Someone else from the south might have a very different picture. But for me, I don’t really have much of a picture of what that.
[00:22:16] Jesse: Looks
[00:22:16] Angela: like so, well, I think that also kind of goes along with what we already mentioned at the top. It’s kind of like federal versus state level, because one of the reasons, I guess, that we think there’s such a difference between us and other countries from that standpoint is that each state has such a strong identity.
[00:22:34] Angela: And you could just identify with the state’s culture and vibe as opposed to like the whole nation. So I I’d guess that’s probably what your, you know, Saying and what you just, um, laid out for me. I understand why you do that. I, I used to do that too, or I still do that sometimes, but I think, um, That’s because we are lucky enough to be from states that on a global scale, people know like if you were from like, even states that we know, you know, like that aren’t like, BU fuck nowhere.
[00:23:05] Angela: But like, if you’re like I’m from Connecticut or whatever, you know, like a, nor an average like global citizen does not know what Connecticut is, is you’d have to say the us. Or like close to New York, right? Like you’d have to like anchor it on something. So I just went tri-state area, New York, nobody. The fuck knows what tri-state area is and you’re not in the tri-state area.
[00:23:25] Angela: I didn’t, I’d never heard that phrase before going to NYU. Um, so yeah, I, I think I just try to make it easier for people. So I start with like America, the biggest thing they definitely know. And then if they know anything about the us, then, you know, I can zoom in a little bit more. Um, but yeah. I think it’s because we’re already coastal people.
[00:23:46] Angela: So you’re lucky enough to be able to say somewhere that you do identify with more, that someone actually would know what it is, um, on like a global scale.
[00:23:55] Jesse: Yeah. I, and I also, I just feel like, yeah, I think what you’re identifying is correct. Like I feel more strongly. My life and my community in New York than I do more strongly about my life and my community as an American.
[00:24:14] Jesse: And so I think when people ask me that that’s usually what I default to. It’s not to say that, like, I don’t recognize that there are tons of benefits in growing up in the us. And there are still many ongoing benefits that, um, I think a lot of. Reap. It’s just that I don’t, I don’t know. I’m not proud of it.
[00:24:38] Jesse: Cause I feel like I haven’t contributed anything to it. If that makes sense. Does that make sense? Like, I feel like here, I can say like I’ve contributed something to being a new Yorker because I volunteer, um, I pay taxes here. I vote for like very specifically public officials here. Like I feel like I’m much more invested in where I am than I am.
[00:25:01] Jesse: necessarily overall as the country. Right. And so, like, I don’t feel a ton of ownership over that, but
[00:25:09] Angela: I guess. that’s where it’s kind of like, it depends on how you see it, which is like, we don’t live in the whole country. We live in like one specific place. So you can’t POS unless you are a federal government official, you can hardly have an impact on like a national scale of anything, really.
[00:25:32] Angela: Like, you can only do what you can in your local community, and that doesn’t make. Not American. I think it’s just that everyone’s kind of idea of what America means is based on where they grew up. So like mm-hmm, , it, it is, the state has like a very strong influence on what you deem as American. I guess it’s just interesting to me that you abstract.
[00:25:58] Angela: You say like, oh, I’m very involved in like the New York community, but not American. It’s like New York is America. It’s like part of America. Yeah. So you’re like, but it’s your version of your American community? You know? Yeah.
[00:26:12] Jesse: It’s what I can see and what I can touch and what I can feel and what I experienced.
[00:26:17] Jesse: I can’t say that I’ve experienced the rest of what America is. And so for me, this part of where I am. The majority of my American experience, if that makes sense. And because it is, and because I recognize that it’s not the America thing, like the full thing I say, it’s the New York experience. And that’s why, yeah.
[00:26:40] Angela: I don’t think it’s true. I wonder, I wonder also if it’s because you haven’t traveled to that money states, cuz I think I’ve traveled to a lot more states than you have maybe. So I have like a bigger view of what America. Means in a lot of different states be not that I’ve spent like months in every state, but like I’ve visited a lot of states and ones that are kind of like random as well.
[00:27:06] Angela: Like, like during business, when we went to like the Kentucky Derby, you know what I mean? Like, you know, and like, because we were in Illinois, we also went to Wisconsin, like random. And I went on the Chinese bus store with my parents, like Wyoming and like Montana and like random places. So. Seen a lot of different reflections in new Orleans, Louisiana, South Carolina, mm-hmm, all those Florida, like I’ve seen what it can be in all those different places.
[00:27:34] Angela: So for me, I can kind of like patch work together that there’s like so many different reflections of America, but there is just this like kind of underlying thing that I still feel. So maybe that’s part of it as well that like you’re mostly California New York experiences. So it’s harder to. Piece together like the rest of the country in your
[00:27:55] Jesse: head, maybe I think it’s like about it.
[00:27:58] Jesse: The camaraderie and relationship aspect of it, I think is actually very, it’s a very good point because I don’t think it’s even, I don’t think it’s necessarily just about visiting for me because I mean, I haven’t visited for a very long periods of time either, but I’ve been to a few states. I think it’s just that, like, I couldn’t tell you that I have like a friend in Montana.
[00:28:22] Jesse: Or like, I know somebody who lives in Utah necessarily, and because I don’t have relationships to people who live in those areas, I don’t necessarily have that experience that you’re talking about of like, feeling this underlying, like, Hey, we’re kind of the same. It’s more kind of just like, it’s a little bit of a blank for me.
[00:28:43] Jesse: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:28:44] Angela: Makes sense. I think that is something that’s kind of interesting to me is that. when we talk about tourism too. Like for some reason, a lot of Americans never tour our own country. Like the first ideas. Like, let me get the fuck outta here. Yeah. I, I know the us so well, meanwhile, like a fucking massive country with so many different land, like differences, culture, differences, and stuff.
[00:29:10] Angela: And if you never like check it out, even. The national parks, right. Are like, so fucking beautiful, magical, beautiful. And people really don’t go to them as much as like, they’d rather go to like Italy and like, blah, blah, blah. Because it sounds more like, blah, blah, you know, hoorah than
[00:29:26] Jesse: staying. Yeah. It’s a full shebang than, than being at home.
[00:29:30] Angela: Yeah. Yeah. I think we’re underrated from a tourism standpoint. No,
[00:29:34] Jesse: no, I, I totally agree with you. I, there are tons of states and parks and places in the us that I would really like to go. Uh, and they just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Yeah. Maybe this year,
[00:29:45] Angela: maybe year. Yes. Um, well, I wanna wrap back to something you mentioned, because like I said, you said so many things in your thing.
[00:29:54] Angela: Go, I wanna, like, I wanna like talk about it. Um, so I won’t comment on the political situation, because as you said, it’s just kind of like, bla we’re still bla, like, it we’re less like embarrassing, but still bla. Um, but. the something that has it hasn’t like taken a, it didn’t chip at my pride of being American.
[00:30:20] Angela: I guess it just made me kind of like sad is that I do feel like there, our country is dividing a lot more than it did than it was before. Like I think the left right division has always been there and like, I don’t actually know if it’s stronger of a divide than it was before. Or if it’s just that now again, we’re being bombarded by news and like, it’s just like news cycle is really feeding into it.
[00:30:49] Angela: So who knows, but what has happened in the last two years? It is George Floyd happened all the Asian violence happen. Like a lot of other things have happened socially that have like split our country a lot more. and it is also, I can’t abstract the like digital social news nature of all of that happening at the same time.
[00:31:15] Angela: But for me, the feeling is like, we’ve never been this fragile in, in like a societal standpoint as we are kind of now, because we’re in this weird place, right? Like all the like social stuff that happened, the racial stuff that happened. It. Difficult to kind of grasp, right? Because you’re like, theoretically, we’re trying to highlight the, and celebrate the differences in all of us and to kind of like help everyone educate each other on like, why these differences are awesome.
[00:31:52] Angela: Right. As opposed to things that should be torn down or like looked down on and all that stuff. But there’s this fine line that I think we have not grasped, which is. By highlighting all these differences. We’re also, there’s this other wave where it’s like, people are kind of trying to highlight the differences in a way of saying like you and I are different.
[00:32:13] Angela: We’re not the same. You will never understand. You will never be blah, blah, blah. So it’s like the, if the goal was like mutual understanding and mutual kind of shared everything. I think what’s really happening is that there’s a lot of, kind of like now you versus me and like, you’ll never get it. So now I hate you.
[00:32:33] Angela: Like, there’s a lot of this kind of like crack that I see happening in our societal fabric. That is like, I don’t know how we’re really gonna overcome that in the near future and it’s society. Yeah. It kind of scares me, honestly, because I’m like our whole. and like I said, the whole shtick of the us originally was like melting pot and like, yeah, we’re stronger together because we’re merging all these different things.
[00:32:59] Angela: Mm-hmm and now I think it’s saying like, almost like, oh, we shouldn’t merge. We should just like recognize separate things and like somehow still be together, even though we’re like kind of separating things.
[00:33:12] Jesse: I don’t know. I, I agree with you and I really don’t see. I mean, it’s, it’s really hard to find. a common ground in those situations where, where you no longer feel people are hearing you necessarily.
[00:33:33] Jesse: And I think that, like, I think that where I would’ve loved to see it is like, we recognize we’re different. We want to celebrate your differences. I recognize that I’m never gonna have the lived experience. Um, an African American, that individual is never gonna have the lived experience of me. That doesn’t mean that we don’t necessarily want certain things that kind of overlap.
[00:33:58] Jesse: But I think what you’re pointing towards is that like, when those differences exist and people are like, you can’t possibly understand me, they also think that the underlying needs are so fundamentally different that there can’t. Like a commonality there. Um, and I think that that’s fundamentally, the problem is that like, people are so absorbed in their own.
[00:34:22] Jesse: I don’t know. I don’t know what you wanna call it, their own like group hood. I don’t wanna call it community because that’s not what a community about. It’s not supposed to be exclusionary. People are so absorbing their own like group hood that sometimes it’s hard to soften up and hear from other people.
[00:34:40] Jesse: Um, and recognize that like fundamentally what you want is the same. Um, but I, I do feel like because of how incendiary, um, politics are and like speech has been it. Is also really hard to reconcile certain things. Right? Like, I feel like we’ve done this, this before, like the government in the past, although there were divisions on social issues, like generally it felt like there was still kind of like an error of respectability for your colleagues working in the government, regardless of like, which side of the aisle that they’re on.
[00:35:17] Jesse: And I feel like that has kind of disappeared, um, for better or for worse, like, and that. Makes, it just creates an environment where nothing gets done and like nobody wins. So, yeah. Yeah. And I think it’s, it’s really hard as a citizen when you see that kind of like divisiveness on like the highest levels of the government to be like, Oh, now I’m personally gonna set a good example or like I’m personally gonna be invested in this thing, because what you see is just kind of like a mess.
[00:35:55] Jesse: So like, why what’s your incentive to like rise above it or care about something when you’re like, this is just like a dumpster fire a little bit. Um, let me think that that’s.
[00:36:06] Angela: Yeah, it’s interesting because obviously Trump changed. The way that the us was seen both outside of our country and within our country, just from like a kind of symbology standpoint of like what our country stands for and the way we should act with each other and whatever I, because.
[00:36:32] Angela: whether you supported him or not the way that he acted was a lot more, as you said, kind of incendiary, right? Like he kind of just like said whatever he wanted to say and in a non polished, like way, which is what we’re used to from government officials, which is like, even if they were thinking similar things, like you’re an idiot, they would say it in a more kind of like contained and like PC way to their opponents versus he’s gone now.
[00:36:59] Angela: Right? Like I think there’s. that a lot of things like, especially when we were talking about this topic two years ago, when he was still president, it was really easy to kind of say like, oh, it’s all Trump’s fault. Like everything’s Trump’s fault. It was very easy. Everyone was just kind of saying like, blah, blah, blah, Trump, Trump, Trump.
[00:37:16] Angela: He’s gone now. I think whether you wanna like attribute it to like that kind of. Extreme personality, having a ripple effect into how a government is run today, or if it’s it would’ve been like this. Anyway, I do agree with you that there is this just like lower level of decorum that exists now in terms of the way that like government officials that are like the leaders of our nation act now.
[00:37:43] Angela: And it’s difficult because I think for me, it’s almost. pre-Trump times, as you said, government was just kind of boring, right? It was just kind of like, whatever, this is the thing we need it. Like, technically this is the thing in control, but like, it doesn’t have like a daily impact on my life because it doesn’t, it’s not even reported on as often.
[00:38:03] Angela: And I just like. Barely keep up with it. And now it’s almost like you’re so wrapped up in these personalities of the government officials and what they represent from like a human level that you get really attached to like, oh, well, like his personality is something I gravitate towards or is something like I hate.
[00:38:22] Angela: So now I like feel really strongly one way or another about this issue. Of the, like personality of this person, as opposed to the actual issue at hand and whatever, it’s just like, it’s all become a lot more theatrical, I think. And I, I don’t like that well,
[00:38:41] Jesse: no, I think that, like, it serves a purpose, right.
[00:38:44] Jesse: Because what I think, what both parties saw, what with Trump is that, that kind of dialogue really motivated. A certain, a certain kinds of people to go do stuff. And so they’ve taken that on because they’re like, oh, this is a really effective way to drive people to certain actions, but it’s kind of like, you know, parts of what he started.
[00:39:09] Jesse: He kind of lost control of, and that’s. A little bit, I think what’s also happening with, with many of the party leaders and you’re talking about fragmentation. I agree that there’s a huge divide between what you wanna consider this left and what you wanna consider this a right. But even within each sect, there’s a huge divide.
[00:39:28] Jesse: So like the Republican party, the majority of those people that are in Congress, I don’t think that they reflect the overall Republican voter. Anymore, whatever that looks like, like they reflect, I think like you’re, those people reflect kind of this for me, this like old money wall street, conservative kind of person and a large majority of the bases, like poor white trailer trash.
[00:39:57] Jesse: It’s not the same anymore. Um, and
[00:39:59] Angela: I mean, and similarly on the democratic side, on the democratic side side, I would say, yeah, I would say the loudest voices, for example, like AOC. Don’t represent like a huge portion of the democratic party. Yeah. But because she’s such a cult of personality, it’s easy to assume that the entire like Democrat party is similar to that, but it’s even, even within the elected officials, there’s like, most of them are not like as extreme as she is in terms of the way that she kind of positions herself.
[00:40:30] Angela: But she’s just like so emblematic because. Young and she knows how to use social and she’s
[00:40:36] Jesse: like she’s terms. Yeah. All that stuff. Yeah. But, but like, yeah, I agree with you. I think there is also significant fragmentation within. The democratic party, right? Cause there’s people who are, I think still very much aligned to what the core values of the party were.
[00:40:53] Jesse: I’d say like the nineties early two thousands. And then there are like many other groups who are like maybe more right. Leaning, maybe looking for like even more progressive or radical ideas to be established in the government. So I’m not, I’m not saying in any way, shape or form that this is only happen.
[00:41:12] Jesse: On the Republican side is very much happening on the democratic party side as well.
[00:41:19] Angela: Wow. I didn’t think, honestly, even though this topic is about America, I didn’t think we were gonna talk about politics this much.
[00:41:28] Jesse: well, I will say that, like, I don’t know about other countries, but I do feel. One of the main things that is interesting about America is the significant Naval gazing.
[00:41:40] Jesse: We love to talk about America and we love, and we are concerned with all things American. And that is part of why I think like people love being here. The participation in what America is or could be, I think is. like for those people who care is like on another level. I don’t know if everybody cares, you know, like the whole voting rate is like necessarily compared to like other countries.
[00:42:07] Jesse: But I think the people who care care very strongly. And I don’t know if you necessarily find that in other countries.
[00:42:14] Angela: Do you think there’s a level of imposter syndrome in why we act like this? Because I, part of me feels like we’re not a real country. We’re not a real country. Yeah, no, because other countries get to just fall on the fact that they were just like born as that country, largely mm-hmm of like, you know, whatever history is very long.
[00:42:31] Angela: There have been many different like takeovers, but I just mean like the modern day countries that exist right now have at least been in exist. Of a certain culture. Yeah. Like way longer than the us has existed. Yeah. And they were just kind of like, it, it, it was just like, that was just what it was, as opposed to, like, we had to like, make a thing and we’re trying to like, prove to ourselves that the thing is working
[00:42:55] Angela: So we’re like constantly trying to like, grasp onto the thing we thought we made. Yeah.
[00:42:59] Jesse: You know what I mean? No, I, I, I totally hear you. I mean, it’s kind of like the same way that we’re, you know, we’re talking about our identities. Like, I feel like if we had been born into. You if we were in Taiwan, we wouldn’t question it so much, but because our identities are in effect new and kind of like in a state of flux being built by us, it’s something that we talk about a lot and we navel gates about.
[00:43:24] Jesse: And I think I definitely agree with you. Like that’s part of why there’s so much conscientiousness about what America is, because it’s not rooted in. thousands of years of history. It’s very like in two more of our lifetimes, that could, that’s like 50 per that. Oh, that’s like, we’re, we’re at what? 200 something years.
[00:43:47] Jesse: So yeah, in the lifetimes of two, two more people let’s say, assume each person lives to a hundred, it’ll be doubled age of our country. And it’s only like two more generations passed very easy. So it’s very malleable, I think. And that’s why people are so obsessed with. Controlling what that, what the narrative America looks like.
[00:44:10] Angela: Yeah. Wow. Alright. Shall we switch on to the fortune cookie clothes? Yes. Um, okay. So we wanted to share one thing that made us why didn’t we write this? Something that made us proud. I’m proud. Proud to be an American.
[00:44:34] Angela: there you go. What made us proud to be American this year?
[00:44:38] Jesse: This year 2022. I mean, oh gosh, I wanna get first
[00:44:44] Angela: let’s let’s not do, let’s not do calendar year because we’re still like early in the, for those listening. We, we we’re recording currently May 4th. So like we’re barely, we’re like, not even halfway through the year, so let’s, let’s make it like, um, you know, roll the last rolling 12 months as opposed to.
[00:45:01] Jesse: I was like really confused at first, cuz I was like, May 4th. It’s May 3rd.
[00:45:05] Angela: Oh, sorry. Y I’m in the future cuz I’m in the fucking Asian side of the world, buddy in Korea right now.
[00:45:15] Jesse: so I am, I think I mentioned this before, but I think during the pandemic, there were a lot of situations where. Better angels of people came out to play as opposed to the devils.
[00:45:29] Jesse: And we saw a lot of, we saw a lot of, I think, really uplifting news about like people helping out, other people without asking for anything in return. We saw a lot of kind of self forming community groups that would help out people who like elderly people or people who otherwise couldn’t help themselves out.
[00:45:47] Jesse: Um, and we just saw a lot of like, I. Individual citizens organizing to fill in gaps where the government or elected, or like whatever was just not providing what was needed for the community. And I think that’s like a really, uh, maybe it’s not uniquely American, but I do think that that’s one of the great things about living in America is that people will come and, um, really pitch in and show their better selves in a pinch.
[00:46:17] Jesse: um, on the other side, on the more per no, no personal, more selfish side. I mean, at the end of the day, like we’re all capitalists, regardless of like, you know, like I don’t, I have more like socialist leaning, social concepts, but at the end of the day, like I wanna make money on, I get paid. I wanna like live my fancy ass lifestyle.
[00:46:39] Jesse: And so being here. Is obviously a boon to me because I can basically set my own pace on like how fast I can grow or how slow I can grow it because it’s more, less ish. A meritocracy. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you, capitalism for my lifestyle.
[00:46:58] Angela: Thanks, Jeff Bezos. Just kidding. Um, he’s not capable though. Mean
[00:47:04] Jesse: he could be, he could be like the don’t you think Amazon
[00:47:06] Angela: is the, a fabric
[00:47:08] Jesse: of capitalism.
[00:47:09] Jesse: That’s true. Like extreme capitalism. I think it’s
[00:47:13] Angela: like 60% of the economy. No. Oh God. It, um, yeah. Um, yeah, I don’t know. I guess mine are kind of selfish and weird as well. Uh, not as well. Mine are selfish and weird. The first one is similar to yours about like the opportunities. So I guess being American, as I said, is like one of the ways that you have the most freedom to kind of like do whatever the fuck you.
[00:47:40] Angela: And so I’ve already mentioned this many times, but like the fact that I could just like, say, like, I’m gonna quit my job. And I’m just gonna like do this podcast full time and like travel and like make my own schedule and like make content and shit. And that’s like a job to be seen if I make money. But like, I have the freedom to make that choice and like to live that kind of a life.
[00:47:59] Angela: I don’t think it would’ve been as easy to. do that as a different kind of like as a non-American like, yes, there are content creators in other parts of the world, but I think it’s, there’s a much higher societal, like. Um, tide going against you in terms of like disapproval and like, it just not being the norm versus like, when I tell people now it’s still not like, they’re like, oh, I know like a million people that are doing similar things, but they’re like, oh, that’s cool.
[00:48:30] Angela: And like, you know, it’s generally a more kind of encouraging attitude towards it, as opposed to like, why the fuck would you do that as, which is more of what my parents are saying. Um, because they’re from the other generation older generation, the other side, World, um, is where they grew up. Yeah. Um, so that’s one, the other, which is like weird because I was like, is this, does this count as like the being American thing?
[00:48:52] Angela: But I think it does because it’s, again, showing that America is a reflection of a lot of different things and a lot of different cultures and a lot of different types of people. Everything everywhere all at once has not dropped a single, like dollar in box office revenue from a weekly standpoint in the last, like several weeks.
[00:49:15] Angela: And it’s still like topped in the box office. Amazing. And yes, incredible, totally deserved. But what I, why I am so proud of that and why I like attribute that to like America and like being proud of America is. We are finally progressing as a country to be more reflective of all different types of people that make up this country that we don’t have to all look a certain way.
[00:49:42] Angela: We don’t have to all act a certain way. And I don’t need to recap our entire episode about that movie, but just the fact that like they were Asian, but it wasn’t about being Asian, but they weaved in. Things about their Asian lives, just cuz they were Asian and that it did not deter anyone. If anything, it kind of like made people more interested and more invested in the plot because there were complex characters.
[00:50:09] Angela: That is what makes me really happy and hopeful for being American. Moving forward is the. I saw a demographic breakdown that, um, Asian people, like Asian Americans only made up 20% of the viewership of that movie, which means that 80% of the viewers are non-Asian. So it’s not about being Asian. It means that people can be attracted to.
[00:50:35] Angela: Really good content about human stories and humans are made up of all different people who look all different ways. So that made me really proud to see that of like, okay, we are, we are slowly advancing as a society to be like more, truly more kind of like open-minded inclusive and willing to connect at that human level, which is what I really hope for, for our country.
[00:51:01] Angela: Moving forward is like figuring out how to get back to. Human connection, no matter how many things on the outside make us different.
[00:51:10] Jesse: Yes. And thanks to capitalism. Maybe studios ex execs will see what you see too. Then the money’s there,
[00:51:17] Angela: girl. It’s true. Ain’t no indie, you know, corner movie that no one’s going to watch it’s.
[00:51:23] Angela: Yeah. Doing good. Yeah. All right,
[00:51:26] Jesse: listeners. Well, we hope you enjoyed another. addition of red, white, and you, we would love to hear from you, if you have any thoughts, comments, questions. If you’d like to share a story with us about your own American experience and how you do see yourself, or you don’t see yourself as American, or what have you feel free to write us in at tell us where you’re from@gmail.com or reach out to us on any of the social.
[00:52:00] Angela: Yes. Um, and as I mentioned, we are taking a break for a few weeks so that we can recharge and come up with. Awesome new topics to discuss on this show. We’ll let you know when we are coming back, but in the meantime, I’m still in Asia. I’m still traveling around. I’ll be making lots of social content. So follow us on our socials to keep up with us there.
[00:00:02] Jesse: And I’m Jesse Lin. And welcome back to another episode of, but where are you really from this week? Angela is joining us again from somewhere outside of the. Is it still Korea at this point in time? Or did you actually make it to Japan?
[00:00:19] Angela: I am still in Korea. Japan is still closed to tourists that are not on tour groups.
[00:00:26] Angela: That is the latest. As of today, June 9th. They’re letting people on like highly chaperoned, basically. Big brother style tour groups are the only ones allowed in right now.
[00:00:40] Jesse: Like the Fukushima radiation zone. You must say in this van, we just drive you around. . Yeah.
[00:00:45] Angela: Um, I mean, maybe ,
[00:00:49] Jesse: so if you guys haven’t into this episode, we’re just gonna be talking to Angela about her travels, how she’s enjoyed it so far, what she’s learned, highlights and all of that.
[00:01:00] Jesse: And again, I’m going to be your interviewer out of sunny, California. So you are still in Korea currently. You’ve been there for two months, two, three months.
[00:01:13] Angela: Um, so actually it’s probably been like a month and a half. Okay. I landed April 27th. It
[00:01:20] Jesse: just seems like a time war, but I feel like you’ve been there forever.
[00:01:24] Angela: yes, I do feel like I’ve been here forever as well. And because I’ve been to many cities since I’ve been here in the month and a half, so it’s not just like, I haven’t just been in Seoul
[00:01:34] Jesse: this whole time. Yeah. Nice. Have you picked up any Korean?
[00:01:39] Angela: Um, it’s actually just like a little disgraceful. How little Korean.
[00:01:43] Angela: I know, I tried really hard guys. It was. Before I got here, I was like, oh, it’d be really helpful to know some Korean or at the very least to learn the alphabet, because I’d heard that the Korean alphabet is like relatively easy to learn. Um, cuz it’s, it’s not that many characters. So I did do that on Duolingo and I’m not perfect.
[00:02:04] Angela: With it, because frankly their like pronunciation is really difficult. it’s like there are a lot of like, really minor differences in how some things are pronounced. That like sound the same in my head, but to them are not the same. Um, but yes, I did learn the alphabet. So at least I can like read, um, names of things, but I don’t know what they say.
[00:02:28] Angela: Um, so no, I don’t speak any Korean. I feel really bad. All I really know is hello. Thank you please. This please, which I don’t think is the same as just saying, please in general. um, and that’s about it. I just say thank you like a million times a day and that’s, that’s kind of all I got. Um, and then I use Google translate app, which is for the camera it’s actually been working.
[00:02:56] Angela: Oh yeah. The like, that’s like really helpful. . Yes. Yes. So like for menus and stuff, a lot of menus here are like only in Korean. So then I’ll use the camera to translate it and then. Either we’ll just point to it and be like this thing, or I I’ll read it in Korean because I can read the characters. Um, but yeah, without the camera app, I’d be screwed, I think.
[00:03:22] Angela: Wait,
[00:03:22] Jesse: so you can pronounce the
[00:03:23] Angela: characters. Yeah. I mean, I don’t think I’m pronouncing them like totally. Right. But like, if there’s a menu with the words and I’m just trying to say it, they like get it, you know what I mean?
[00:03:33] Jesse: Okay. I mean, better than not,
[00:03:35] Angela: they, I learned the alphabet. Yeah. Okay. Sweet. Exactly it.
[00:03:39] Angela: Nice. Yeah. Yeah. That’s all I got. Um,
[00:03:41] Jesse: you were the last time we talked. I think you said you were going to judge you island. How was that?
[00:03:48] Angela: J U’s awesome. TVH we just got, so I’m in Busan right now where everyone did not get turned into zombies. Um, I was in JSU island up until a week ago though. So I got here last Friday to Busan and we were in JSU for two weeks and we were there.
[00:04:07] Angela: Uh, one of the two weeks with my friend Lindsay from high school, she came to visit us for like the last days of soul and then for a week in Jiu. Um, Ji’s awesome. It’s basically like, it’s like the Hawaii of Korea, so it’s like an island off of Korea and it’s like more rural. They have. You can find, you know, like luxury hotels and stuff, just like you can in Honolulu, for example, in Hawaii, but you can also find more just like, kind of back country things.
[00:04:41] Angela: So there’s just. It’s really laid back and there there’s, it’s like Hawaii. There’s like we hiked a volcano, like a dormant volcano, and there’s like, yeah, they have these, um, they have these statues on the island that they’re known for that are kind of everywhere. It’s almost, it’s like the Easter island statues, but of Jew
[00:05:03] Angela: Um, so there’s just like, there’s just like that island vibe. and there’s a lot of really cute cafes, but that’s kind of everywhere in Korea. Um, but I guess the difference being that in soul, one of the reasons why I still know no Korean really is because compared to Japan, um, or like no one tries to speak English with you, even if they know some English in soul, because there’s so many young Korean people, they all know English.
[00:05:35] Angela: Some extent. So they, even if it’s like really bad English, they are more willing to like, try to communicate with you with their broken English. So it’s like enough for us to get by. But then in JSU it was like, yes, there’s some young people working these places, but it’s a lot of old grandmas and grandpas essentially.
[00:05:57] Angela: And so they don’t know any English. So it was definitely like a lot more like. Uh, yeah, pointing at stuff and like, hoping it works out because it, yeah, there was, it was not very English friendly. It was still like really cool, but not very English friendly there, you know,
[00:06:15] Jesse: sometimes pointing is sufficient.
[00:06:19] Jesse: what were these? Wait, what are these like rural activities that you were talking about in judge island? You’re like not luxury hotels, but more rural. Just like the
[00:06:31] Angela: adminis. Oh, no, I’m not, I’m not saying that it’s like rural activities. I’m saying that like, environment is more rural. Oh, okay. Got it. It was, yeah.
[00:06:41] Angela: It’s like, we, we stayed in a pretty quiet neighborhood cuz we were in an Airbnb. Um, and it was like, it’s kind of like Taiwan, you know, like especially Taiwan outside Taipei. Um, so like a little bit more kind of just. ramshackle is like, not the exact word I wanna say, but like, you know, it’s kind of like more rundown pastor pastoral
[00:07:03] Jesse: is the nice word for it.
[00:07:06] Angela: pastoral. I’m imagining like green Meadows. Exactly.
[00:07:09] Jesse: That’s not so nicer word.
[00:07:13] Angela: That’s not really it. Um, it’s no, it’s just, it’s just. I don’t know if anyone’s been to the countryside in Asia. It’s what that is. It’s just like, people live in more humble, you know, settings and that’s totally fine. But then you can also find the like more gentrified shit is just like where people are spending high money count and stuff.
[00:07:37] Angela: Um, but no, the activities were like, yeah, their, their biggest thing is, um, Mount Hosan, which is like, Largest, uh, dormant volcano. That’s part of there and it’s like, you hike it and it takes all day to hike. It’s like a, I mean, I think we did it faster than most blogs say it’s supposed to take, but if you go at like a leisurely pace, I guess it’s supposed to take like 10 to 12 hours, um, to go up and down.
[00:08:07] Angela: So we did it in like, I think, um, but yeah, we did that and then you can like go through like lava tubes, you know, it’s all like the, you know, what do you do in Hawaii? It’s like stuff that’s. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
[00:08:24] Jesse: Nice. So before we get into the travel questions, I think specifically when you started telling the listeners of the, I was gonna say the block, the podcast.
[00:08:38] Jesse: Sorry. okay. I’m just used to saying certain things. Okay. The podcast that you were going traveling, I think there was a lot of curiosity from a lot of the listeners, like financially, logistically, emotionally, philosophically, how you were gonna handle all of the, the work around traveling. So do you want to, I guess, just give us a rundown of like, how you’ve kind of arranged everything, maybe like the ins and outs and.
[00:09:07] Jesse: Made it work from, with the planning and like probably the money perspective is like where most people will have their heads at.
[00:09:14] Angela: Yeah. Um, well we wanted to live abroad in Asia for a while now. Like we, I. We had planned to do this year abroad, like pre pandemic, like that’s that’s as early as when we were talking about it, we had always said like, um, basically from the time we get married, it would just be like, we wouldn’t have a honeymoon.
[00:09:37] Angela: We would just go to this year in Asia and then come back to the us and. Final place to settle down, blah, blah, blah. So that was always the plan. And it was only because of COVID that it got pushed out because obviously our wedding got pushed out and then like actual travel capabilities got pushed out because all the borders everywhere were closed.
[00:09:58] Angela: Um, so we had just been kind of waiting like indefinitely for borders to open. and we had always wanted to actually spend most of the year in Japan because Ramon loves Japan. I, I like Japan a lot and we had lived there, um, for a few months previously. So that was the original plan was like, Japan will be the, the main place.
[00:10:21] Angela: And then we also wanted to spend some time in Korea sometime in Taiwan. We’re open to hopping around to different parts of Asia, but it was gonna be like largely Japan. So basically, as I already mentioned, Japan is still closed. Um, they’re like open. I think if you Google headlines right now, they’re very generous.
[00:10:43] Angela: In describing the situation where they’re like, Japan’s opened a tourist again, and it’s just not true. It’s like, it’s really only open to people that are signed up for these like very distinct tours that they can track exactly where you are. And they’re being super strict. Like. I think locals don’t necessarily have to wear masks, but they’re saying foreigners like have to wear masks 24 hours a day, essentially.
[00:11:09] Angela: And if you are caught not wearing a mask or not following like hand sanitizing or whatever other procedures, they have the right to like deport you essentially. So they’re being like very strict. Yeah. Super strict on that. Um, and they have not yet opened to just like general tourism. so we can’t be in Japan.
[00:11:28] Angela: Uh, so we’ve definitely been in Korea longer than we anticipated to be staying here. I think in our heads, we’d always said like, oh one month in Korea would be like pretty dope because we watch a lot of Korean content now. So we were both like more hyped to go anyway, but I don’t think we thought we’d be here more than a month.
[00:11:48] Angela: Um, it just kind of worked out that way because Korea was the first. Major Asian country to like totally open its borders. And by Asia, I mean, east Asia, Southeast Asia has been open. I think for some, some time, like you can go to Thailand or Vietnam and whatnot. Um, but I guess our proximities were like as close to Japan as possible was what we were thinking.
[00:12:12] Angela: Um, and Korea opened on April 1st. So we got in the end of April. Um, so that’s kind of how, like the thought process. Was working out and we were like, oh, we’ll just like, wait in Korea until Japan opens, because then it’s only a two hour flight to get into Japan, as opposed to waiting in the us where it’s gonna be a 13 hour flight to get to Japan.
[00:12:33] Angela: You know? So, um, that was the thinking around this year. Um, financially, honestly. So the thing is I quit my job, right. Like a while ago now I quit in. I think my last week was like, no, November last year. Um, and so it’s not like it’s not necessarily that I’ve been like saving up for this year abroad. I think I had been like saving up to quit my job in general.
[00:13:07] Angela: Um, so I, I didn’t necessarily say, like, I would only take this trip if I’ve hit like this milestone from dollar standpoint. I think it was more just like, I. Comfortable enough with what I have banked in savings and investments that I’m willing to already leave my job. So if I’m then spending a year abroad in a place with a standard of living, that’s a lot lower than what we were.
[00:13:35] Angela: Spending in the us then I don’t really need to worry that much about if I’m going to be okay in Asia. So that’s kind of my rationale. I don’t, we don’t necessarily have like a budget. Per day, but we were just for shits and giggles, like thinking about how much money we’ve been spending every day. And honestly, I think people have this MIS per misconception about how expensive it is to be in Asia.
[00:14:05] Angela: Like especially Japan, people have. Thoughts of like, oh, Japan’s so expensive and we’re not in Japan right now. But like I said, we did live in Japan previously for a few months. Um, and I would say it’s similar to Korea in terms of like daily spend, um, in Korea here, honestly on a, on a daily average between Ramon and I, as two people, we send like a hundred dollars a day, which is nothing, you know, like a hundred dollars a day.
[00:14:34] Angela: Would get you like a brunch and like an Uber in San Francisco. You know what I mean? It was just like, compared to that, it’s, it’s just like, I don’t have to worry about the money necessarily because we were just spending an astronomical amount of money to just exist in the states, especially in San Francisco.
[00:14:56] Angela: So it’s not like a huge concern for us because. Airbnb wise also like you can, you know, it’s all up to you. Like you can spend $10,000 a month if you want on your Airbnb, but you can also do that with your rent if you’re really that ball in, but you don’t have to. Um, most Airbnbs that we’re finding are way cheaper than what our rent was in San Francisco.
[00:15:21] Angela: So again, it’s like we’re saving thousands of dollars on living and then we’re saving a ton of money on. Daily expenditure. So I really, I don’t have this like tight budget that I’m going after. I’m just like, let’s just be reasonable with what we spend. And like, things are honestly cheap enough here that if you’re not going to like fancy restaurants every day, you’re gonna be fine.
[00:15:46] Angela: Like. Uh, really practical example is we, we went to this ramen restaurant. That’s like two door sound from our Airbnb, um, this week. And it’s like really good, like really high quality, but it’s not like a fancy place, just like, you know, it’s a nice, it’s a nice casual kind of like sit down. Um, it was 9,001, which right now with the like us conversion rate, it’s like $7.
[00:16:14] Angela: For bowl of ramen. So like, if you can eat meals for under $10, like, what do you have to worry about? You know what I mean? So that, that’s kind of where the financial, um, aspect is coming from. It’s not a tight budget that I’m keeping to is more just like realistically, once you fly over here, cuz the flight is obviously expensive to like fly to Asia, but once you actually get here, Your Airbnbs and your daily expenditure compared to if you are living in somewhere very expensive, like San Francisco or New York, you don’t have to worry about your budget because you know, you’re gonna be spending a lot
[00:16:49] Jesse: less.
[00:16:51] Jesse: Nice. So, I mean, it sounds like you had like a rough idea of where you wanted to go and not like a very strict schedule. So understanding. The cost of living is much lower than where you were. You just felt really comfortable making, making the jump for it with the both of you. I think that totally makes sense.
[00:17:09] Jesse: And I also, um, at the risk of sounding semi-tone death, because I know that we are making a certain level, well, we are in a certain income level bracket, but my friends and I have been making this joke. That’s. When we make bad decisions with money, as in like just excessively go to events or drinking or whatever, the joke is always that, you know, money will always come back around again.
[00:17:35] Jesse: And it’s kind of true. Like, you can always make more money later on, but you can’t really buy the time back that you didn’t use to do something that you really wanted to do.
[00:17:46] Angela: Yeah. A hundred percent. And I will add a, a few more things. One is like, obviously great point, like our. Income bracket or whatever.
[00:17:56] Angela: Our, our nor baseline standard of living is at a certain place. So we are, that’s kind of like where I’m speaking from, but I I’ve lived that life too, where like, uh, I was really poor, you know, like, uh, when we were doing study abroad, I did study abroad Trice. In college. So like, I was really poor back then, you know, it was like, oh, let’s take this $10 Ryan air flight, where I can only have like a backpack and then stay at this janky hostel where there might be bed bugs, you know, I’ve, I’ve done all of that.
[00:18:26] Angela: So I like, I know what that life is like too. And I will say, I think there’s a balance. So. honestly, if you wanna come here and you just wanna like maximize your dollars and you wanna do things, but not spend money on like food or whatever, if you really wanted to, you could buy 80 cent only gear and eat that for every meal.
[00:18:50] Angela: You know what I mean? Those little rice balls, the Japanese rice balls, they sell them in the convenience stores that are made like fresh daily for what. 1001, which has like 80 cents and it’s is the same in Japan. They were sold for like, you know, a thousand yen or whatever, which is like the dollar or 90 cents or whatever.
[00:19:11] Angela: So like, if you really wanted to, you could spend like less than $5 on food every day, if that’s not your priority so that you have more money to like go see sites or whatever that costs money with tickets and whatnot. So there are definitely like different things you can do to like maximize whatever is important to you.
[00:19:31] Angela: Um, it’s just like what we are in this place where I could eat, not convenience store food, but still have it be like cheap enough. Like honestly, I think most places, if you are just having a norm normal meal, not a like super touristy, you know, beachfront type place you can get between between seven to $12 for a.
[00:19:54] Angela: it’s it’s so cheap.
[00:19:55] Jesse: That’s pretty good, honestly. Yeah. Yeah. All right.
[00:19:58] Angela: Well, oh, and sorry. One more thing I will say, um, is, is just like, Another like O obvious, given that I’m kind of overlooking here is that we have the flexibility to do this because we are both remote work, friendly people. Um, I understand that it’s like a lot harder for people who have stricter jobs in terms of like geography.
[00:20:22] Angela: Like they demand that you’re in the office, you know, couple days a week or all the time or whatever. um, so that’s, that’s definitely like a context that I can’t overlook. If you don’t have that flexibility, it’s definitely gonna be a lot harder. Um, but I will say if you like really wanna do something, I think you can make it happen because especially now with the world, having changed with COVID in terms of like remote work, if your current job doesn’t let you do that, get a new job.
[00:20:52] Angela: I mean, easier said than done, but like, there are so many jobs now that are remote friendly. If your priority is to live abroad for a year, I am sure that you could find a job that would allow you to do that, whether it’s actually based in Asia or like allows you to work from anywhere, as long as you are willing to work weird hours, it really just depends on like what your priorities are.
[00:21:15] Angela: And, um, how much of a fire you have within you to make that happen? Uh, because I keep alluding to like this time that we lived in Asia, in Japan previously, I made that happen. It was not given to me as an opportunity. I was working at a tech company that did not allow remote work. And I positioned myself in a way where I convinced them to let me work from Japan for two years.
[00:21:40] Angela: Uh, sorry, not two years, two months.
[00:21:43] Jesse: I was like, you should still be there then.
[00:21:45] Angela: You be stuck there? I ain’t no. Um, God, no, uh, for two months. And it was, it was not easy to convince them, but if you’re, if you’re looking for like a short term thing and there is like, I don’t know, you have like, A a local team that you sometimes work with, or you have like clients there, or I don’t know what there are many different ways, but like, if you can position why you would bring value to that situation to be there, there are ways that you could like convince your current situ your current boss to like, let you be there for a short stint.
[00:22:23] Angela: If you’re not looking for like a big leap of. Changing jobs or whatever, I’m just saying it’s not impossible. It just obviously like depends on how much you are going to put into it, to like, make that happen. If you’re not currently in a situation where you could just live and work anywhere.
[00:22:43] Jesse: Yeah. I will second that I I’ve gotten lucky a few times, but also like I pushed for certain things certain times and like, Work, like it’s not gonna fall into your lap.
[00:22:53] Jesse: So like the times that generally I’ve traveled for work, like I pitched my boss that idea using like my own time, because I really wanted to do that. Um, so trade offs, right? Like sometimes it’s juice is worth the squeeze. If you really want to do it, if you want to do it another route just by taking vacation.
[00:23:11] Jesse: That’s also cool. Um, but yeah. All right. Was that all of your travel? okay. Sweet. Um, I guess, I guess, I guess since you, well, I’m sure you have like, way more, but we’ll save it for the socials for the clips, packing tips, beauty tips, K beauty. Um, so now that you’ve been traveling for like a month and a half or even longer, I guess since you’ve been basically digitally abroad for like the better half of the year, do you still have the travel.
[00:23:45] Angela: lost. Um, I wouldn’t say I have the travel. Bug it’s different. I think once you’re in a place where you’re constantly traveling, so I have only been in Asia for a month and a half, but I have been homeless. I mean, if you wanna put it the most like crude way, I’ve been homeless in terms of like, I don’t have a permanent residence, um, since last may.
[00:24:10] Angela: So for over a year. So I’ve been living, you know, a place to place like Airbnb to Airbnb, different cities for over a year. Um, I think when you’re in that kind of state, It’s not necessarily the same thing as saying you have the travel bug, because I remember that feeling where it’s like, oh, I haven’t been traveling in like a long time.
[00:24:28] Angela: I’m like dying to go to my friend’s wedding in Thailand, or like, to this, you know, vacation I’ve been saving up for, for like a year or whatever. It’s not the same as that. It’s more just like, you’re trying to maximize what you’re getting out of your every day, knowing that you’re getting to like see different things every day.
[00:24:49] Angela: So, and. Yes, we are and still waiting for and anticipating Japan opening up. So from that respect, we both are still like really excited for, and like anticipating the Japan experience. But, uh, no, I wouldn’t say I have the travel bug in terms of like, oh, I can’t, I can’t wait. It’s more just like, I’m here.
[00:25:12] Angela: Like let, let’s like do the thing, you know? Hey listeners, wondering how you can support us. The biggest way is by increasing our visibility by following us on Instagram at where are you from pod on TikTok at, but where are you really from subscribing to our YouTube channel under, but where are you really from podcast rating and reviewing us on apple podcasts and telling your friends.
[00:25:35] Angela: The more people we can get to listen to the show, the more we can continue spotlighting different perspectives and stories. And if you feel so inclined, we’re also accepting donations@buymeiacoffee.com slash where are you from? Thanks. Y’all
[00:25:50] Jesse: got it. Well, you haven’t made it to Japan yet, but I wanted to ask you, like, if you got kind of a certain feeling being in Korea versus Japan and I mean, not.
[00:26:02] Jesse: Like usually once I, for example, when I go back to Taiwan the first few days, I’m like, Ooh, I feel so like outsider. Right? Like you’re like acclimating to the surroundings. And then like about like day three or day four, I’m like, okay. I’m like, I feel at home now. And it’s a really nice feeling. So like, and your travel so far, have you reached that anywhere?
[00:26:24] Angela: Yeah. Um, well your question started with Korea versus Japan. So I’ll try to hit on that too, but yes, I did have a, a very distinct kind of like transition. Um, so the first. You’re right. Three days. It was three days for me. Um, the first three days in Korea were pretty rough for me to be honest. Um, I do think there’s a difference when you are coming to a place for vacation as like a short stint versus like knowing that you’re gonna be living there.
[00:26:57] Angela: Um, for like a longer period of time, I think when it’s vacation, it’s really easy to come to a place. And just especially Americans we’re so like obnoxious, right? Like just be the obnoxious Americans stereotype. And just like, I don’t speak the language. I’m just gonna speak English and like be obnoxious.
[00:27:15] Angela: And I don’t care about like the local manners and rules or whatever. I’m just here for like 10 days. I’m just gonna maximize my fun. Um, I think it’s really easy to be in that mindset when you are just on vacation. , but when you know, you’re gonna be there for like an extended period of time, I think it’s not uncommon.
[00:27:35] Angela: And it’s definitely common for me to feel like I have some sort of, to feel like people have expectations of me to like, Be a little bit more chill, you know, and integrated and like try to fit in as much as possible, given your capability with language barriers and whatnot. Um, so the first three days I was pretty shook.
[00:27:56] Angela: I? Um, well, number one, I had like really bad jet lag. I think age really. Changed things because I don’t remember ever having jet lag more than one day where it was like, I remember I would be like, okay, if I just power through the first day and like force myself to sleep at the normal local time, I’ll be fine the next day.
[00:28:16] Angela: And this was the first time where it was like, it took three days. Like I was wrecked those three days where I just could not like be awake at the proper times. And I was just like, so cranky and like stressed out because I. Sleep properly. Um, and then. all these things were stressing me out because I had this experience in Japan right.
[00:28:41] Angela: Where I felt a stronger pull to like conform. Um, I think Japan is known for that, right? Like society is very much about like, Conform a tea. Yeah. Don’t stand out and like, just like do what everyone else is doing. Um, so I felt, I remembered that from Japan and I kind of assumed that Korea would be the same.
[00:29:03] Angela: So I think I felt really pressured to like, try to like, not stand out and like to fit in. And, um, I felt really embarrassed that I couldn’t speak any Korean because. Especially, we, you have to wear masks everywhere still, like not outdoor, but indoor. Um, but at the time when we got there, it was everywhere, even outdoor.
[00:29:23] Angela: You still had to wear mask. Um, so like walking around me and Ramon with a mask, especially, you can’t really tell what kind of Asian I am. Right. You’re like, oh, she’s Asian. So she must be Korean. So they would start talking to me in Korean and I’d feel really like embarrassed because we like, fuck, I don’t know.
[00:29:39] Angela: Sorry. Like no English. Um, . And so I felt like a lot of shame for that. And then there were things like, you know, how we were taught, like you don’t leave food on a plate, right? Like, so just fucking finish it because it’s like ungrateful or it’s a bad look or it’s like a waste of money or whatever. So I was also like forcing myself to like, finish all the food that we’re ordering because.
[00:30:05] Angela: The portions in Korea are a lot bigger than I expected them to be like, they’re honestly, Western portions. Um, so like we over ordered a few times at a couple places because based on the prices, we thought it was like a lot less food. Uh, we were sorely mistaken, so I felt all this like pressure to like, not, uh, not embarra, I guess.
[00:30:29] Angela: Ourselves. And, and the chef at the restaurant by like not finishing the food, there were just all these things I was doing in my own head. And then also there were things like, um, you know, in Asia, the motorcycles and cars just like, come ride up to you. Like while they’re driving, like basically as long as they don’t hit you, that is the way they drive.
[00:30:52] Angela: And I was not used to that. I’ve experienced it in Taiwan and, and stuff previously, but it’s been a long time. So I was getting really stressed out because I was like, oh my God, this car is about to hit me or like this motorcycle’s about to hit me. And so I was just like, yeah, there was a lot of like stress factors.
[00:31:10] Angela: And then I think it took, yeah, the first, like half a week or whatever. And then after that I started acclimating and then I realized, especially all those like pressure. Um, don’t really exist and I’m just like inventing them, um, because Korea and Japan are actually quite different from that respect.
[00:31:29] Angela: Korea actually is not that much about conformity. Like, yes, there is a, a certain level of that still, but there’s a lot more like leeway, I think in terms of like you just being a, your own person. other little things is like, Japan is a very like quiet. Country. I feel like, like people don’t like talk loudly or whatever, and Koreans are a lot more like boisterous.
[00:31:57] Angela: So even when they’re not drunk. So like, you hear like girls like loudly laughing and like CA you know, talking and gossiping and whatever. And it was just like, oh, this is, this is different. Like, it’s less like stuffy, formal, I would say, which is a lot of times what it can feel like in Japan. Um, so, so, yeah, anyways, uh, Yeah.
[00:32:20] Angela: I put a lot on myself. I think those first few days that were not necessary.
[00:32:26] Jesse: No, I’m sorry. It’s anxiety girl. Just get some Xanax.
[00:32:32] Angela: Loles I, well, I, I think a lot of it comes from like what we talked about with, um, with a couple of guests about kind of the like frozen culture, like the idea of a culture, your concept of it.
[00:32:49] Angela: Yeah. Yeah. I, I had all these like concepts of what Asia in general and Korea, because I’m here was going to be like, in terms of what people would expect from me. And then I got here and I was like, no one expects that from me. This is just me, like with a really outdated version of what this culture is supposed to be like.
[00:33:10] Angela: So, yeah.
[00:33:11] Jesse: So you mentioned like when you were wearing mask people couldn. If you were a Korean or not. So how good were the Koreans at clocking a, whether you were a Korean or not, and B if they clocked that you weren’t Korean, were they good at figuring out like what kind of Asian you were?
[00:33:31] Angela: Um, okay. So I think there’s kind of two things.
[00:33:35] Angela: I think that in Asia, in general, um, it’s not necessarily that they think you are. their nationality. It’s that they assume you can at least speak the language if you’re Asian and in their country. So I don’t actually think everyone who saw me thought I was Korean. Um, especially cuz I’m really dark and like everyone’s really pale here.
[00:34:03] Angela: So like, Naturally. There’s probably a little bit of like, I’m confused by her. Um, but the default is to assume, even if you’re not, they are Asian. If you are in their country, you probably are like, I don’t know, working here or studying here or whatever, and like, no, their language more so than like, they have no expectations of Ramon, right?
[00:34:25] Angela: Like, because visually he is not Asian. Um, so it’s. Yeah. I, I don’t know that. They’re always assuming I’m Korean. I think maybe with the mask now more, they, they are doing that because they really can’t see any of my other features besides my eyes. But I think it’s more just like an assumption of the language, at least.
[00:34:47] Angela: Um, and this is something I think we talked about in the 4th of July episode, which is going to be the one right after this, uh, next week, but we prerecorded it and I kind of gave a preview, which is like, I don’t think Asians and Asia think necessarily about what kind of Asian you are necessarily like it’s, if you speak English, like if you are obviously American, for example, I think that is actually what they think of you more as, than whatever your ethnicity is.
[00:35:25] Angela: So like, I, you. They they’d always like, try to talk to me in Korean and then I’d be like, oh, sorry, English. You know, I tried to like pass by as much as possible because sometimes they say very similar things where I’m just like, I can just pretend we can just pretend like I know what you’re saying to make everyone feel more comfortable.
[00:35:43] Angela: Like, you know, we’ll come in. yeah, well coming to a restaurant and, uh, you know, they’ll say like welcome in Korean. And then I’ll flash like two for like two people and then, or no, they’ll say something which I assume is how many people and then I’ll flash a two, and then they’ll say like, oh, sit wherever you want.
[00:36:01] Angela: Or like, sit here, you know, they’ll gesture. And then I’ll just like nod and then we’ll just walk over and I’ll just pretend right. Because like, it makes everyone feel more comfortable if it’s just. Seamless thing. And then I only break it when it has to be broken, which is then if they like start asking me actual things, when we sit down and then I’ll be like, oh, sorry, English.
[00:36:22] Angela: Um, yeah, but, oh shit. What was the question? like a
[00:36:27] Jesse: lot. It was whether or not people could clock if you were Asian at all. Oh. And if they were, uh, sorry. Yeah. And if they were able to like, what kind of.
[00:36:38] Angela: were you accurately? I think once I said English, like, they’re just like, oh, okay. And then, um, they just assume I’m American.
[00:36:47] Angela: And then, um, randomly Korea and Japan really love Spain. Like we don’t know why. So then Ramon will say like I’m from Spain and then everyone will be like, I love Spain. And then it’s a whole thing. So we just, because they
[00:37:02] Jesse: were part of the access of evil from the us in world war II. .
[00:37:07] Angela: Oh, oh, no, I’m
[00:37:08] Jesse: kidding. I don’t know.
[00:37:10] Jesse: I mean, technically they were was Franco Hitler, Japan,
[00:37:16] Angela: you know, I don’t know sorted. Yeah. But Korea is not part of that. And Korea loved. Spain too. I don’t know. Anyways, so they’re just like, they love Spain. And then I say from I’m I’m from the us and they just leave it at that. They’re not like, no, but like, why are you, you know, they don’t care about that kind of shit.
[00:37:33] Angela: Mm. Um, or like sometimes Ramon will offer it because I think he thinks they’re asking that. And I don’t really think they’re asking that. Um, so like sometimes in Japan, for example, back then he would say like, oh, she’s, she’s from Taiwan of. I’m not from Taiwan. I’d be like, yeah, my family is from Taiwan. I am from the us and they’d be like, oh, okay.
[00:37:56] Angela: so it it’s less of a thing I think because, and we can get into this if you want it to become a whole thing. But like, I think there is a very big difference when you are visibly the majority. and not a minority. Like there’s like, even if I’m not actually Korean or actually Japanese, because I’m Asian visually, I don’t stand out as much.
[00:38:20] Angela: So they care less, I guess, about the like difference that I bring with my actual ethnicity, as opposed to like Ramon or something. And I’d be like, oh, spare. And
[00:38:31] Jesse: it’s like, . Yeah. I mean, I guess that makes sense because they’re all closer. So the likelihood that they’ve. A Taiwanese person or like a Japanese or whatever is much higher than they would have met like a Spanish person or something like that.
[00:38:46] Jesse: But you preempted one of my questions because I was like, did you get seen as American? And I think it’s really interesting cuz you’re like, in my mind, when you were saying that, I was like, oh, there’s like a taxonomy now where it’s like, it’s not just like, it’s not by how you appear, but rather. Do you live in the west?
[00:39:01] Jesse: Do you live in the east? Okay, cool. Now you’re like this beneath that. Now I’m gonna like break out that hierarchy in, in that manner. That’s really, I, I guess I never thought about it that way, but that is also very congruent with my experience.
[00:39:16] Angela: I also think, um, Koreans, as opposed to Japanese, there’s a lot more, um, There are a lot more Korean Americans who moved back to Korea than I think Japanese Americans who moved back to Japan.
[00:39:31] Angela: So there’s actually a lot of Americans here. Like there are so unassuming, but like for example, we just like, we were in Seoul and there’s like a coffee shop that we went into and we were trying to find somewhere with plugs so that we could work. And this one young woman, like our age type of woman. Like on the phone or whatever.
[00:39:51] Angela: And then she saw us kind of struggling and then she spoke in like perfect American English and was like, oh, this is the only plug here. Sorry. Like, and so we’re like, oh, okay. But she was like on the phone in Korean, you know, it was like, there’s so many of those types of people here that I think. Um, the concept of being American, but Asian appearing is so normal for them that it’s not like, they’d be like, oh, you’re not really American because you’re not white.
[00:40:20] Angela: Like they, they know enough people that are like living in America that are American, but are Korean that it’s understandable that a different Asian could be American.
[00:40:31] Jesse: Yeah. Like your friend, uh, Sund. I, I, if I was in Korea, I would nev I mean, I. , I don’t know enough to clock her and be like, she’s not natively Korean, you know, so, but, um, it sounds like you didn’t get, uh, any trouble.
[00:40:44] Jesse: You don’t have any trouble to get people to talk to you. Was that your experience? Um, in Korea and how does that in Japan?
[00:40:53] Angela: What do you mean by get people to talk to me? Because I guess
[00:40:56] Jesse: that’s different. Well, so like, you know, like how certain cities have like a reputation where people like don’t want to speak to you unless you can speak the language.
[00:41:04] Jesse: So for example, like, I think Paris is always like top of mind, when you think about people who are like, not willing to engage, if you don’t know, like at least a smidge of the language and. I think New York also has that reputation where it’s like, people don’t want to talk to you. Did you get that feeling or do you, did you get that feeling where it’s like people were really open to like helping you, uh, helping you out having conversation?
[00:41:30] Angela: Um, well, okay. So I think I will separate like, I haven’t just made like random friends, for example, in Korea. So I wouldn’t go as far as to say, like, people are like, so open that they’re like, let’s become friends. I can tell you’re American and I wanna be your friend. Right. Um, I wouldn’t say that, but I would say in Korea, there is definitely a more willingness to engage with you, even if there’s a language barrier than in Japan, for example.
[00:42:01] Angela: Um, I think. it’s not okay. How do I explain this? Okay. With young people, I don’t sense any judgment when I can’t speak Korean, they it’s more just like, oh, okay. Like, let me just like reframe. Right. And like, I’ll talk to you again in like, whatever way we’re able to communicate. Um, with older people, like the AJU like they’re the like older ladies who are working in restaurants or like at a.
[00:42:32] Angela: Food market or whatever. I think there is a, a tinge of disappointment because like, I’ve, I’ve heard it a few times where they’re like, I, I, and I should know what this phrase is by now, but I know Korean is. Hang at least like he, right. Um, so they, they ask like, hung, blah, blah, blah. Basically, do you speak Korean?
[00:42:55] Angela: And then I’ll be like, no. And then they’ll be like, oh, you know, like a little bit of like, disappointment about it, but then we’ll like, figure, we’ll stumble our way through it because their English is usually not as good as like the young people, but it’s not like, they’re like, okay, now I’m gonna be like an asshole to.
[00:43:12] Angela: um, I think it’s slightly different than like Paris is a really good example, sorry for all the French stereotypes. But I did work for a French company and I did go to Paris for a week for work. So like, I, I did experience some of this, um, Yeah, their stereotype. Is that in, in France, there’s more of a looking down at you, right?
[00:43:29] Angela: If you can’t speak the language, I don’t think there’s a looking down at you here. I think it’s like, if anything, a slight disappointment of like, oh, like, I wish you did. Um, but there’s not like I’m not gonna talk to you anymore. I think sometimes though, if they really don’t speak any English, it can come off cold, but it’s not that they’re trying to be rude.
[00:43:50] Angela: They just like, don’t really know how to. Engage with you. So like I’ve noticed, for example, like they will barely say anything to us and just like throw topstick on the table and like, whatever, versus like, I see them talking to like Korean people in like a very gregarious, friendly manner. And I think if we weren’t Asian, , you know, I would take that a different way.
[00:44:12] Angela: Um, for example, like in Chinese restaurants, in the us, right? Like a lot of non-Chinese and non-Asian people can say, oh, those people are so rude. Right. The people who work in those restaurants they’re so like, CRAs and they don’t, there’s no like small talk and blah, blah, blah. Right. Versus like, we, we understand what that is.
[00:44:31] Angela: It’s like, they’re trying to be efficient. And like, they probably also a lot of them probably don’t know that much English yet. Anyway. So they’re just trying to like, you know, serve you in as efficient of a manner as possible. So that’s kind of how I see it with like some of these older Korean women that like, don’t speak any English and they’re.
[00:44:47] Angela: Being like, they’re not trying that hard with us. I think it’s more just that they, you know, they’re just trying to like, do what they can. Um, and I can tell because then when we are paying and we like, say goodbye, they’re like really gracious, then they’re like, oh, thank you know, thank you so much. And like, what, so it’s, it’s obvious that it’s more just like they’re we have a language barrier, so they’re just like doing what they can, you know?
[00:45:09] Jesse: Okay. So I guess we’ve learned a. A bit, a lot, a bit, a bit, a lot about Asia and Korea. Well, you haven’t done the whole thing yet, so we’ll have to check back with you when you made Japan. Um, but maybe just a few, just kind of like general travel questions about like maintaining your existing social life and stuff like that.
[00:45:30] Jesse: So how did you stay in touch with people? Like what are like the winning methods that you had to, to make yourself still, still feel connected to. Your friends at home? Uh,
[00:45:41] Angela: good question. I don’t think I’m like that. Good about that, frankly. Um, but I think just taking advantage of like the few hours that you do have an overlap with people is really important because the time zone is going to really mess with you once you are living on the other side of the world.
[00:46:01] Angela: So like, I am lucky in that. Asia is not as bad as like, I think it’s pretty bad when you’re trying to work. Like I remember working with Japan and India, um, when I was in San Francisco and that was like almost impossible because from my work day perspective, there’s very few hours of overlap. But when it’s just your like friends, you can text them at like 9:00 PM their time.
[00:46:27] Angela: It’s totally fine. Right. So like, I just try to maximize the amount of time. That exists in overlap to like send a text or sometimes I have been FaceTiming people or like quick call or whatever. Um, and just keeping them, I think. Up to date as much as possible so that it doesn’t seem like I just like blip off the the side of the earth.
[00:46:52] Angela: Um, but I, I don’t think I’ve been like that good about that, but honestly, I’m thinking back and I’m like, was I ever that good about that? I don’t know. It’s not like I was like calling my friends every day when I was in San Francisco either. So it’s just kind of like doing what I can when like something reminds me of them or like, I have a question for them or.
[00:47:09] Angela: Whatever, but like being mindful of the times and difference, because I have noticed that if you just text them at like a random time, that’s like 3:00 AM their time. A lot of times they don’t get a text back because then they’re like, they probably saw it at a weird time. And then they’re like, oh, now they’re asleep.
[00:47:24] Angela: And then they don’t text you back. And whatever, just make sure you text and called during like normal human hours for them work
[00:47:33] Jesse: or weird, weird hours for me because I keep weird. Um, yes,
[00:47:39] Angela: I will say the only thing that has been like hard is, um, therapy is difficult because they, they do work on like work hours.
[00:47:49] Angela: Right? So like, my therapist is like doing me a favor to take my calls as late as she does. She takes it at like 4:00 PM her time. I think she usually would not wanna take that late of a session. Um, but it’s like 8:00 AM for me. So I’m kind of. that’s kind of the earliest. I would want to be taking therapy because I don’t think I would be like in a good mindset if I like just wake up and blah, blah.
[00:48:12] Angela: So I, I think there are challenges with things where you have to work around like an actual, like work schedule. So other people’s work schedules. So just be mindful of that, but you can always make anything work. I think.
[00:48:28] Jesse: And final question before the close, they say that you don’t really ever truly know your partner until you travel with them.
[00:48:34] Jesse: Do you feel like you truly know your partner now?
[00:48:39] Angela: yes, but I think I’ve known him for a long time because we, we have been traveled. That’s true. That’s true. Yeah. That initial Japan two monther was our first like crash course. Oh yeah, because it was also, before we moved in together, it was such a thing. It was such a thing, cuz we were like, if we can’t live two months in Japan together, we cannot live together.
[00:49:03] Angela: Like in general so I would say that was the biggest like clash time where it was like I’m learning everything that annoys me about you and vice versa. Um, so yeah, I think I know everything about him by now.
[00:49:20] Jesse: I mean, you know. you have the, you, you know, the person with all the disclosures now. That sounds very great.
[00:49:28] Jesse: All right. Well, um, shall we move over to the fortune cookie clothes? Yeah, because we always like to end on a sweet treat. That last question I feel like was maybe a little difficult. So I am going to end on the very simple question, um, for the close, do you have a favorite moment from your time in Korea so far?
[00:49:50] Jesse: Huh? this wasn’t supposed to be a
[00:49:54] Angela: stuper yeah, it was not supposed to be, but, well, because we’ve done so many things, I feel like mm-hmm so I’m kind of like, what has been my favorite thing? I don’t know that I have like one favorite thing, because I think that moments that stand out are like food, food moments that of course stand out because that’s a lot of what we do is just eat really good food.
[00:50:17] Angela: Um, So I have a couple of those in my head, but I would say, uh, having Lindsay with us for a week was probably like one of my highlights so far, because it was just really, really nice to have one of my best friends with us and in a different country. Right. Because then it’s like an adventure that you guys are on and, um, I think it also like speaks to what we’ve talked about with like mental health, which is like, I love Ramon obviously, but we have only been spending time with each other for the last year, um, year plus.
[00:50:58] Angela: Because of COVID right. Um, with like stints with hanging out with people. But especially when we live on the road, we don’t see our friends that frequently. Um, so it was just really nice to have like a third energy come into our dynamic and like bring a lot of levity and stuff into situations and like a totally different perspective and like ideas to do things and like willingness to help and stuff like that.
[00:51:25] Angela: So, , it was just such a joy to have her with us, I think for that, that week and a half. Um, and I also think it helped in like, it helped kind of rejuvenate us too, in terms of like, by the end of it, I was like, oh, I’m really happy she came, but I’m ready for some like privacy again, in terms of like, just us two again, which is like a rare feeling when you are just always with only one person, you never feel like, oh, I just wanna be with you again.
[00:51:55] Angela: It’s like, I can’t stand being with you anymore. So it was, it was nice that like a week and a half could, could do all of. With, with our friend
[00:52:04] Jesse: work, shout out Bethy Lindsay . Yeah. all right. Well, thank you for sharing your travel adventures with us so far. I hope that Japan open Japan, anti one opens soon so that you guys can get in there and complete that the two and the three legs of your Asia trip.
[00:52:23] Jesse: Oh, thanks listeners. If you have any questions for Angela regarding her. Maybe you have recommendations, maybe you have other logistical, budgetary philosoph, philosophical questions for her about traveling. Feel free to write us in at tell us where you’re from@gmail.com or also DMS on any of the social.
[00:52:47] Angela: And, uh, come back next week because we’ll have our final episode of this batch, um, before we take a little break. Um, and yeah. And so then,
[00:00:02] Angela: And I’m Angela Lin. Welcome back to another episode of, but where are you really? From today? We have a very special guest. My husband Ramon. Welcome.
[00:00:13] Ramon: thank you. It’s an honor to be finally invited.
[00:00:16] Angela: Yeah. Okay. You hear that little jab at us? That is, uh, Ramon has wanted to be on the show for quite some time and we’ve just tried to figure out kind of like where it made sense.
[00:00:27] Angela: and now that we are in Asia and we’re like the most kind of like out of normal environments, it kind of felt like this could be a good time, especially to ask like the, oh, we’re really from question when it’s like max identity, crisis potential. Um, so we’ll be talking about a lot of things today, but we definitely think Ramon has an interesting kind of.
[00:00:51] Angela: Backstory and lots of different cultural influences throughout where he’s lived. So I wanna give you the opportunity to first answer how you would answer, but where are you really from?
[00:01:06] Ramon: Yeah. I always get that question, especially in the us, no matter how long I’m in the us, I’m always gonna get asked that question.
[00:01:13] Ramon: Um, I always say that I’m I’m from Europe then if. Think that it’s gonna be a longer relationship. Maybe I go deeper and say, okay, I’m from Spain. And then, oh everyone. I, I love Spain. I’ve been to Barcelona and it’s like, of course, but I’m from Madrid. Um, so, um, that’s usually how I answer it, but how I feel is totally different.
[00:01:37] Ramon: I mean, there are lot of things I love about Spain and Europe that feel like home to me, there are also a lot of things that. Feel not right. Uh, like for example, I always tell this to Angela, but in, in Europe it’s a great place to live great quality of life, but there is no distraction. There is no growth.
[00:01:55] Ramon: There is no entrepreneurship. So it’s really hard to change the status school. The companies that are the biggest in Europe are the companies that were the biggest in Europe, 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. And the people that have the money in Europe are mostly the people that have the money in Europe 100 years ago.
[00:02:09] Ramon: So, so there is no. well in the us, for example, there’s a lot more opportunity, even if the quality of life I think is a lot lower and Asia is SIM is more similar to Europe than to the us. And I love Asia and I love Japan, for example, for many different reasons. So I would answer that. I feel. I feel like I’m a citizen of the world.
[00:02:30] Ramon: I love traveling. I’ve been to 50 countries. I can’t feel at home pretty much anywhere. And home is where my friends or where my, where my wife is. That’s basically, I don’t care so much geographically where I am. Great
[00:02:45] Jesse: answer. So basically your advice is to work in us and then retire in Asia or Europe.
[00:02:50] Jesse: yeah, exactly.
[00:02:52] Ramon: Yeah. Spain is free. The healthcare pretty much. Do you
[00:02:56] Angela: ever, I know you do, but I’m gonna ask you anybody. Do you ever get annoyed when people, because your, your default answer is like Europe and Spain, but then. Do you often kind of get like poked fun at when you are back in Spain where it’s like, I mean, to us who are not Spanish, when we hear you speak even English, but also Spanish it’s like, I mean, yeah, you’re from Spain, but oftentimes when we go back to.
[00:03:26] Angela: Spain. And you’re talking to just like, I don’t know, waiters in a restaurant or whatever. They kind of make fun of you of like, oh, are you really from Madrid? Because I don’t know. How does when, when was the first time that happened to you and how did you feel when that happened?
[00:03:41] Ramon: Yeah, first happened to me, like, I don’t know, five or six years ago because I spent the first 20 years of my life in Spain and then I’ve been in the us for 10, 11 years.
[00:03:49] Ramon: The first time it happened was probably five or six years ago. And some of my. Made fun of the way I pronounce them. Kind of like a, an American, it only happens for a week or so if I’m back in Spain and then I, I lose the, the small accent I pick up, but I mean, it makes me realize that I notice Spanish anymore, but I realize this before, even this thing with the, with the accent.
[00:04:13] Ramon: And how do you sound a bit different? It’s mostly when you go back to a place that we spent, you have spent a lot of time, you realize. how much you have changed more than how much the place has changed. And whenever I go back to Spain, it’s like most of the things remain the same, but it’s like, this is not the me of my childhood that had a lot of fun and this friends.
[00:04:35] Ramon: So the environment is totally different. So it’s like Spain for this current, for my current situation in my life, this, this period, it doesn’t feel like home. Hmm.
[00:04:48] Jesse: What’s it like to experience that like in the middle of your, well, not the middle, but like when you’re an adult, because kind of like, we didn’t really have a choice coming here.
[00:04:57] Jesse: So we were already born here, but you’re having this kind of like transitional dispossession of your origin in, in your mid twenties. What, what was that kind of like going through that?
[00:05:10] Ramon: It was liberating. I think it allowed me to fully grow into my, and even change my personality. And is it still funny enough?
[00:05:17] Ramon: I think it’s still slightly different when I’m in Spain or I speak Spanish. And when I, when I speak English, when you post yourself to the edge of your comfort zone, it’s when good things happen. So I learn a lot, but being by myself for many years, traveling a lot, you know, starting to work in a different, in a different country.
[00:05:34] Ramon: I never fully work in Spain and an internship, but that’s it. I mean, I knew it was pretty messed up the job situation there. So they didn’t even try all positives. I mean, there is a bit. having your roots taken out? Uh, definitely a small part of me feels like, oh, these people that stay in their hometown for their whole life, they get something that I’m never gonna get, but is, is a good trade.
[00:06:00] Ramon: In my opinion.
[00:06:01] Angela: Do you ever feel American?
[00:06:04] Ramon: No. and I’m never gonna feel American. Yeah. I mean, it depends if you feel because in New York or in San Francisco, there are a lot of people that are from everywhere. I feel like any other normal citizen there. Yes. But do I feel American? No, I, I can, I can feel like I, and I, I hope this is the future of where countries, some societies going in the future that is just, you just belong to a city that is where you care about.
[00:06:31] Ramon: And you care about local politics and you don’t care about, about the, the blur of the, of borders, where the borders are and so on. So it’s that you just care about your local. Government and then the rest, I don’t care. So if I’m in a city that I really like, I will care about being from there. Yeah. That’s
[00:06:46] Jesse: literally, we just had this conversation last week over recording, like July 4th.
[00:06:52] Jesse: And I was like, I, this was my position. Not exactly the city, but I was like, when I tell people where I’m from abroad, I’m like I live in New York. I don’t tell them like, I’m American kind of like what you were saying that you’re like, I’m European, but you don’t tell people that you’re Spanish and I feel much more.
[00:07:09] Jesse: Community connection to where I live locally than I do. Like this nebulous idea of what it means to be American
sidebar.
[00:07:19] Ramon: in the end, the bigger the country is just the more power for a few people. So that’s why a lot of people like to create the vision, even with Brexit or with all European countries.
[00:07:28] Ramon: Because when you divide, then there is, there is a, a vacuum for more power in, in the need, two new places. So it’s like, it creates. New leadership in both places. So there’s always gonna be demand from politicians to create the vision. And then, so there is more power for them.
[00:07:44] Jesse: All right. Well, thank you for that.
[00:07:46] Jesse: Very interesting introduction to yourself. I think we were going to pivot and kind of focus the rest of the episode on what your occupation is and what you’ve largely been working in over the past couple of years. If I understand correct. Which is cryptocurrency. So do you want to tell our listeners what exactly you do it in relation to cryptocurrency?
[00:08:06] Ramon: Sure. Yeah, for the last 10 years I’ve been mostly in tech. That’s why I came to the us and then I had my own startups in the gaming space. And then I worked for Silicon valley for a few companies like Google and other since Seattle. But then in the last few years, I could only think about crypto basically.
[00:08:22] Ramon: And then since the pandemic has started. Yeah. Uh, I created a company in GTO, a startup to help people kinda invest in, in defi together. And defy is kind decent alternative to decentralized finance where people can really take control of their funds because, uh, yeah, we have seen recently, for example, with the can Canadian think how, if you have money in a bank, you know, those numbers that appear on the screen can be taken.
[00:08:50] Ramon: Whenever they want to, this doesn’t happen in crypto. If the users are always in control of their fans. So that’s one angle. That was really interesting for me. Another angle that was really interesting for me is the, the developer developer position. For example, when you build on top of Facebook, when you build on top of apple, when you build on top of Amazon, this company is basically control what is their revenue split?
[00:09:12] Ramon: And they can push you away from the apple store if they don’t like what you’re. So you are building on a world garden. And I was working for sing that it was like back in the day, the, the top gaming Facebook of creating farm and send it, send the cards to your neighbor and things like that. Um, and then overnight Facebook changed the advertising algorithm and Canada drop singer’s revenue by 20, 30% and then sing half slowly going nowhere for the, for the last few.
[00:09:40] Ramon: So those things cannot happen on Ethereum. For example, nobody control the network, you know what, you’re building it and you’re building on a ly neutral platform. So that’s really important as a developer.
[00:09:51] Angela: It’s good. Bring people a taste of probably a lot of terms you’ve never heard of, which is kind of where we’re gonna go with the rest of the episode of like, kind of breaking down a lot more of it.
[00:10:01] Angela: So. Hey listeners, wondering how you can support us. The biggest way is by increasing our visibility by following us on Instagram at where are you from pod on TikTok at, but where are you really from subscribing to our YouTube channel under, but where are you really from podcast rating and reviewing us on apple podcasts and telling your friends the more people we can get to listen to the show, the more we can continue spotlighting different perspectives and stories.
[00:10:27] Angela: And if you feel so inclined, we’re also accepting donations@buymeacoffee.com slash where are you from? Thanks. Y’all
[00:10:36] Jesse: we we’ll explain more. yeah. So I think first off, I think it would be if you’re able to give us like a rundown of what crypto is. And I like to ask people to explain things to me in very simple terms, because I very frequently, I don’t know if you use Reddit, but my, one of my favorite sub Reddits is.
[00:10:55] Jesse: Ask ask, like, I’m, uh, explain like I’m five and it’s really, I, I, I’ve learned so many things from going on that. So if you could like explain to our listeners as if they’re five years old, what crypto is, I think I would help everyone understand generally
[00:11:12] Ramon: that’s a total order. yeah. Crypto I’ll try. I’ll try.
[00:11:16] Ramon: My best crypto is really confusing and very complicated because it’s many different things at once. Uh, And we can go over the different things that crypto is. One of them is crypto is money and we can go into why that’s it. But crypto’s a new form of money. Also. Crypto is a new asset class that people call digital gold.
[00:11:38] Ramon: So it can be like a replacement of gold. Then crypto as well is a payment network that you can compare to, to swift or what the banks used to change money to another, or the wires to send wires. So crypto’s also. And then KTA is also this new platform that you can build applications on top. So you can compare that to, to the internet that well, but another layer of the internet that was missing.
[00:12:00] Ramon: And you could never before in the internet, same value, uh, from, from one person to another. And also you could only, you could not store information on the user side until now all the information that you have on the internet, for example, belongs to, to other people. So you don’t have digital property rights without crypto, because if you own your profile on Facebook, it’s on Facebook database.
[00:12:25] Ramon: Your profile on Twitter is on Twitter database. Your store on Amazon belongs to them. So until now you didn’t have, you couldn’t really own anything on the internet. I think
[00:12:36] Jesse: maybe talking about the first part of it at its usage as money. I think a lot of people have a have trouble myself, including included understanding what drives the value of cryptocurrency.
[00:12:49] Jesse: Because I think generally, like my understanding is money is underpinned by assets and, uh, with cryptocurrency, I’m not sure exactly how that works because it isn’t or is it so maybe help us understand, like what drives the value of it?
[00:13:07] Ramon: Yeah, that’s a great topic. Um, but it goes back to was currency and was money.
[00:13:12] Ramon: You know, originally in the end money is just a way to change favors between people. It’s like, okay, I have a goat, I have milk. And then you have tomatoes. We, we want to change tomatoes for, for milk. And then we do it at the same time. So, um, and you use money as a way to kinda store this favor so you can use them later.
[00:13:32] Ramon: So you don’t need to want my milk at the same time. I want your, your tomato. and, and also to measure things okay. If we have this token or currency that we, we can say that, okay, tomato is worth. Eh, five tokens and then one liter of milk is worth 10, 10 of that unit. And at the beginning, people use like shells or things that were scarce in nature.
[00:13:57] Ramon: And then slowly went to precious methods. You know, the Roman empire used the scenarios that originally was the nominated, mostly using gold. But then as the empire started to scramble, then did where, where they were ING it with more silver. And then slowly, you know, the army wanted to, didn’t want to fight anymore because they, they were getting less and less.
[00:14:17] Ramon: And then they is one of the reasons that the Roman and the Oman empire crashed. Um, and then even the inspires empire later, the goal was from America was like a big thing. And then slowly that, that was kind of diluted. So, uh, there is an in string value that has been given. The tokens that we use as currency.
[00:14:38] Ramon: And they were basically previous methods, but for the last 200 or 300 years, most of the countries have been used Fiat money. That is basically paper. And originally they were tied back to, to the previous methods because it, and it, it was a nice innovation because you didn’t need to, to carry. This heavy metal.
[00:14:59] Ramon: It’s like, oh, I’m gonna carry these angles of gold and then give it to you. Then I need to store it in a safe place. So it’s like, basically the banks gave you an IU. That’s saying, oh, I have the goal. And it’s like, this paper proves that you have it. So you can use it to exchange and buy something else.
[00:15:13] Ramon: But since 1970, and I recommend everyone to watch this video from Nixon, um, that is like the end of bread. Good. He said that temporarily, he was gonna suspend, suspend the convertibility between gold and the, the us. Because of the Vietnam war and all that. So he suspended it on that time. He has not been restored also at some points in, in the last century or so the us confiscated goal because the politicians always want to spend more and release itself, or citizens is like, oh, you want us to.
[00:15:44] Ramon: to spend less tighten and have a crisis, and everyone is gonna go through a hard time. Or do you want us to spend more? You get a lot more staff and it’s like, so of course, politicians always choose the short term, eh, no pain, but long-term pain that, that becomes later. So right now the us door, for example, is not back by anything.
[00:16:03] Ramon: It’s just back by supply and demand and in a way also by the us army, because the us army is in the end. What gives value. If you think about it to, to the us dollar. Um, crypto Bitcoin is, for example, is backed by, by supply and demand. And also by, by the minors that secure the network that this is, this is complicated, but they basically transform energy into security by doing this math puzzles that they need to solve, to decide who is gonna put like the next block onto the chain, but we don’t need to go into those, those details.
[00:16:40] Ramon: So I will stop there because it’s quite a.
[00:16:42] Jesse: Interesting. Can I ask a follow-up question? I don’t know if that’s of course. Um, so you said like money originally is, was on the gold standard, right? The bank would give you an IOU for the goal, for the money in the crypto network minors guarantee that you will get the crypto, like it exists for you to receive, but who guarantees the transmissibility of the crypto into something tangible?
[00:17:10] Ramon: Yeah. I mean, Bitcoin, for something tangible, uh, there are different answers. One of them is okay, you can change it using Forex, like the same way you change dollar for euros. And there are like exchanges where you can do that. Or you can change it first, $2 and then to euros.
[00:17:25] Ramon: Um, but there are also. Pay this because Bitcoin, for example, is the currency and it’s also a payment network. So as a payment network, you can also buy stuff directly. For example, a strike is a company that is built on top of the Bitcoin payment network. And what they do is like you can go to a Shopify store and you can pay $5 and then automatically gets converted to Bitcoin.
[00:17:47] Ramon: Then this Bitcoin gets sent to the other place and then it gets converted back to the. To the fee at currency of the receiving merchant. And then it gets sent to their, to their, to their account. And, um, and it’s using using Bitcoin as a payment network. So I, I expect more and more things to be built on top of crypto payment networks, mostly Bitcoin, Ethereum, maybe so and others that are advance, but there are, there’s gonna be this infrastructure layer that, that is used to transfer money and the minors, what they do.
[00:18:20] Ramon: Basically, uh, okay. I’m gonna try to explain it. One problem with money from the beginning was how to, how to ensure that if, uh, you know, I, I, I work for a living and they tell me, okay, you earn 100 tokens Ram on of whatever currency. Okay. This is my 100 tokens. There was a problem saying, okay, I’m gonna buy five tokens and I’m gonna send them to Angela.
[00:18:41] Ramon: And then I’m gonna send you 100 tokens. And then it’s like, you need to know that I send. First 500 tokens to one because I run out already of my tokens. So this is called, this is called like the double spend problem that I cannot spend the same money on two different things. And that’s why we have what they’re called the ledgers.
[00:18:58] Ramon: That is basically what banks have. That is like one center, 100 pot where they put all the transactions from everyone. And then they say, okay, Ramona spend five. So now it has 95. Ramon is trying to spend 100, it doesn’t have 100, basically what the minors do. Construct this ledge, but without having that centralized party, it’s already cool because it’s a lot more, uh, robust because you have all these notes.
[00:19:21] Ramon: It’s kind like a, like a big hive and they all work together to Canada put like the net transaction. For example, I send, uh, this $5 to Angela in big, then all the Bitcoin miners are gonna kinda try to find the, the answer to this Rigo. That is gonna be like a, a. And then the one that finds it first is gonna be able to put that I paid $5 to Angela on the chain and all the other ones are gonna agree to it because, okay, it’s the, it is the one that satisfies that, that math pass.
[00:19:55] Ramon: And then it’s kind, it cannot be broken because every, every block can include all the previous blocks of the chain. So that’s why it’s called the blockchain. Uh, you have in the Bitcoin or Ethereum, you have all the transactions that happen totally in the open. You can say, see where every single unit of Bitcoin Ethereum went since, since they started.
[00:20:14] Ramon: So it’s, it’s pretty cool. Pretty powerful. You cannot see what JP Morgan or city or these people are doing with the money. And also, as you look into it every year, they are fine, like billions of dollars because they loan their money to territories and stuff. Because, but because they are friends with powerful people, they’re able to do it, but oh, God forbid, if this grandma wants to use Bitcoin to pay for this, it’s like, oh no, no, that’s bad.
[00:20:37] Ramon: Or like solve other. Oh, we see a lot of problems with the server adopting beacon for financial St. Hmm.
[00:20:45] Jesse: Okay. Um, you mentioned that, uh, this is like one of the key innovations, one of the key things that actually enables an individual to like own their data on the internet. Is there like another, do you feel like there’s another need driving this?
[00:21:01] Jesse: Like, why do you think that this innovation has come about at this particular point in time?
[00:21:07] Ramon: Hey, one of them is the creator economies first. I mean, I think they, and Angela knows about this business. A lot of. Industry, you know, it’s like artists, they give like 80% of their future revenue to, to the music labels, which is, which is insane.
[00:21:21] Ramon: You know? And one of the things that crypto, uh, will allow, especially NFTs and tokens will allow creators to directly control their audiences directly monetize from them and get most of the revenue, get most of the value and remove all the middlemen. And there is of course a creator. Boom. It has. From a, for a while, you know, web to turn everyone into a publisher where everyone could create their own blog or now more recently their own podcast or their own video, their own YouTube channel.
[00:21:51] Ramon: Now the next step is removing actually those centralized points. That kinda, because for example, right now, For you just still depend on apple for revenue or ads or YouTube. If you put to you, you depend on that. Um, but, and they get like 70, 60% or depending on how many views, how many clicks you have. But once you have crypto, you will be able to get basically all of it and be in control of your audience.
[00:22:21] Ramon: And Shopify is another example. Eh, they’re already moving in that direction, uh, slowly. So it could help a lot giving most of the money to people that are creating actual value.
[00:22:32] Angela: Let’s take a step back. So you said web two, let’s just define some basic terms for people. So what do you mean by web two? And then I’m sure a lot of people have started to hear web three.
[00:22:42] Angela: So what does that mean?
[00:22:44] Ramon: Yeah. Going back web one was like the original web where you have all these ugly gifts on the internet and it was just links and it’s like every. Mostly black with the best internet moving around. Yeah, but it was super simple in a way it was a, was a lot more, uh, free and open because everyone could create a website and upload it.
[00:23:06] Ramon: Then later with what two is, where companies are starting to store their data in their servers. and then is when the users started to lose control and you started becoming the product that is, for example, Facebook, Twitter, and all this, where users are creating a lot of value. For example, for Facebook, the first 1000 users of Facebook in, in Watson university, was it in Harvard, in Harvard, created a lot of value for their network, but they got nothing.
[00:23:30] Ramon: They got to, uh, uh, so that’s what two. And then what three basically makes every user of these platforms of these applications, an owner of the. So the same way, web two, turn everyone into a publisher. It gave everyone a voice through podcast blog. Um, then everyone in web three kind of becomes an owner or an investor by using producting web three.
[00:23:52] Ramon: You get tokens that are kinda like equity equivalent. So you get to own what you’re using. And it just gives you as a user, a lot more incentive to support the, the applications that you’re already using, because you have a stake.
[00:24:10] Angela: so web two is essentially the internet as we currently know it. Yeah. And web three is like all the stuff that’s being built on top of the various blockchain crypto platforms.
[00:24:22] Angela: Exactly. And sorry, maybe this is a stupid and derailing question, but like one question I always had in my mind that we’ve never talked about is like, if web three, if all these like crypto future platforms and applications are supposed to be kind of like independent. Web two, as it currently stands, you have to access these things through the internet, right?
[00:24:46] Angela: Like through your Chrome browser or whatever, you still have to connect all these things to that. So like, in what way is it really independent from web two? Or like, how do you know that it’s not gonna be able to be like snatched away by Google or whoever’s like, you know, on the bottom of the, the browser.
[00:25:06] Ramon: Yeah, that’s a, that’s a great question. And it’s important to say that the web one or the original internet infrastructure, that one is totally open and nobody owns it. That’s why, I mean, there are a couple, there’s only one centralized entity that kind controls who has domain names. And when you buy a domain, you need to go to that entity, but everything else is fully open and nobody else it the same with email and everyone can create their, their email client and you can access it through outlook or through, but they are all.
[00:25:35] Ramon: Neutral in a way. The thing in web two is like these companies control. So web two is built on top, on top of the internet and the IPT C IP stack. And this one is proprietary. The web two layer web three is kinda circumventing the web two and then going there back to the original and building on top. So it’s not used in any of that.
[00:25:56] Ramon: The cool thing then is like que three applications then may use que two on top to provide convenience, but it’s much better to have like an open, free layer and then add the staff on top for convenience, for example, grandmas who probably never use a active wallet and then to deal with private keys and all this complicated stuff, because they can lose money.
[00:26:17] Ramon: So probably you want to add something like a traditional bank built on top of with three. So. Every you get all the benefits of with three, but then you can have the convenience that that person has signed. One that is managing their money and watching that citizen and lose it by, by mistake. Because if it’s happening a lot of crypto, then everyone says, oh, nobody will lose crypto because any mistake and, and it’s true, but it’s really early.
[00:26:40] Ramon: It’s the same way. Uh, in the early days of the internet, it was really difficult to, to use the internet, but that doesn’t mean it, it doesn’t have any.
[00:26:49] Jesse: I’m gonna move on to the next thing that you mentioned that crypto is, which is an asset class. And I’m gonna bury this question right in the middle. Cause it’s the money question.
[00:26:57] Jesse: So like how, how should our listeners be thinking about cryptocurrency as like a financial vehicle? Cause you mentioned it’s money, it’s an asset class. So is it like more so like if you, if. are all set on your money stuff and you wanna get it on crypto. Should you think about it as like short term savings, long term investment, some like mix of the two?
[00:27:19] Jesse: Like how, how should someone be thinking about, um, entering the crypto
[00:27:23] Ramon: space? Yeah. Great question. This is way to think about it is like a replacement of go and I know people, our ages, like don’t know anything about go what’s. That is a rock. Uh, but basically goal has been used in history. Because it was difficult for governments to, to assist it and take it away from you.
[00:27:42] Ramon: I mean, you could hide it. I mean, still not so easy to hide, but you could hide it and then cross the border and you were fine. Crypto takes that a step further because you just, you can even just remember your private key, your brain and you can cross borders and no government can assist your assets. So in the times that we are living that, you know, on one side, you can see.
[00:28:03] Ramon: All the debasement that all the currencies in the war are suffering because of all the irresponsible government money printing and the central bankers that are supporting all that. And on the other side, you have all the geopolitical and stability with wars and potential for some major events happening there is, uh, currency that doesn’t depend on any specific government is really appealing.
[00:28:30] Ramon: Um, I always tell people to. To think about it long term, you, because short term become, go up the downside way doesn’t matter. Um, but long term, as a replacement to goal, you know, and traditional portfolio allocators used to say, okay, just put 5% of your money to goal in gold. And then, eh, you can use that and then slowly build confidence and slowly increased your, your allocation, but having something in, in Bitcoin and Ethereum seems sensible given.
[00:29:00] Ramon: The times that we are living and as always, this is not financial advice. This is just, uh, what I do personally. I think some
[00:29:07] Jesse: things that would be interesting to hear from you, we’ve talked a lot about some of the positive things that cryptocurrency enables, but do you have a picture of what are some of like the negative consequences that crypto all of those different functions of crypto?
[00:29:21] Jesse: Might surface.
[00:29:23] Ramon: Yep. Yeah. There, there are ones, there are some that are false. There are some that are true sample the false ones. Some of them that have been coopted by politician is like, oh, it’s bad for the environment. Well, they’re to clarify, it’s like the T industry, the dryers use more, a lot more energy than, than crypto.
[00:29:39] Ramon: And also the traditional banking system use a lot of more energy banking too. Yeah. And that’s kept the current state that for example, a theory is switching to a. Much less energy intensive. And the other false narrative is like, oh, it’s used by criminals. It’s used by PDO files. It’s used by all these people, the same thing they said about the internet.
[00:29:57] Ramon: And if you actually look at the numbers and there is a lot of reports out there, it’s like 0.0 half percent is, is used by criminals. Um, you know, again, you go, you can look at. CT, uh, JP Morgan chase bank of America and see the sanctions just in the last year. See how big is that compared to the amount that was used in crypto by mono launder?
[00:30:21] Ramon: So those are false narratives that are negatives of crypto that in, in reality, aren’t there are some growing pains in crypto. For example, one of them I mentioned before that is how likely. And easily it is to lose your money because there is no nobody to call. When something goes wrong, somebody steals your credit card, you can call the bank and they will give you a new one in crypto.
[00:30:44] Ramon: You send your money to the wrong account. That luck is gone forever. So that’s something that, of course, to scale it under rich, 1 billion billion people that kind of. Um, but this problem are being worked on. And as I said before, you know, we’re gonna build services on top that offers convenience for people that want and need it on top of this open infrastructure.
[00:31:07] Ramon: Another one is user experience. It’s really difficult right now to, to get into crypto. Even first, you need to go to coin, then you need to. Create your account and you need to send some money, then you need to transfer that money because actually Coinbase and all this has changes. They’re actually not crypto yet.
[00:31:24] Ramon: They are actually a web to company that actually hold the crypto for you. Most people are actually, I think that’s crypto, but not Coinbase is kinda at the edge. That is a gate that lets you go into crypto. Then there are like these crypto wallets that you can have on your phone or on your computer, on your browser.
[00:31:39] Ramon: That once you have it, it’s I recommend people to try because it’s really magical. You know, you. You can just switch one asset to another, with a click and then without going through the bank or you can, you can get a loan in one minute, just yes. Instantaneously. And it’s, it’s really powerful. So yeah, those are the things that I could say.
[00:32:02] Ramon: And of course there’s also another negative that is discovers because for every new technology, there is a period of adoption. I mean, it’s the same with the gold rush. This, when there is a lot of growth, there is a lot of kind of bubble like behavior. Cause a lot of people try to capitalize on that growth.
[00:32:19] Ramon: And they’re usually not the best people because they’re just trying to take advantage of you. So for example, NFTs are a real thing, but 99% of the NFD projects are scams trying to get you to part with your money. So there are a lot of these kind of characters and stuff because you regulation. Not help at all the industry, because the industry actually wants some sensible regulation to let the good projects and the price that are actually doing things right.
[00:32:48] Ramon: Have like a framework to, to safeguard the users. But actually there is no regulation at all. So it’s a free for all. And it’s Harding a lot, the projects that are trying to do the things the right way. And then it’s starting users because they don’t know who to trust and what to.
[00:33:03] Jesse: Yeah. I can’t imagine any Congressman person actually real, like understanding enough about crypto to make any kind of oversight effort.
[00:33:11] Ramon: yeah, there are a few right now at our time, but it’s definitely the minority and most of them. Yeah. I mean, there is also a lot of interest. Yeah. And, and the banking industry is one of the few industries that has not been disrupted, uh, data and healthcare. And you have to ask yourself, why is that?
[00:33:30] Ramon: Crypto’s basically going. So
[00:33:34] Jesse: one of the, kind of, one of the things I wanted to follow up on was you kind of, you mentioned that it’s like not super easy for people to get into it right now. So that is one of the questions that I kind of have on my mind, because there is this, there is this barrier to accessibility, which means that for persons like you, you can figure it out quite easily for Angela and.
[00:33:55] Jesse: We probably could figure it out. We do like a lot digging and asking a few questions, but I think for the majority of people it’s quite out of their reach because they don’t understand it. Right. And so, like, they’re not gonna have the confidence to enter this, uh, space, I think when it’s the most valuable for them to enter.
[00:34:13] Jesse: So like, what are your, what are your thoughts on that? And like, how will people. Be become educated enough about crypto, that they feel comfortable putting actual money into
[00:34:23] Ramon: that. Yeah. Is web of, of adoption. I mean, I think some people in general will never enter crypto through the money angle because they actually don’t even pay attention to their finances.
[00:34:35] Ramon: So it’s not something that they will do naturally. For example, NFTs have brought like 50 million to, to crypto that weren’t there. And they have kinda go mastering a little bit in the culture, even if a lot of people hate them, they have done well attracting lot of people into crypto the same way. I think consumer applications are gonna be like the, the thing that brings people to crypto and then it could be transparent for the user will not know that.
[00:35:03] Ramon: It’s built on Ethereum or Bitcoin behind it, the user will just know, oh, I do this, I get to own this part of the application. I can maybe vote on it and have a say on what the application does in the future. And I’m getting rewarded for, for being in this application. There is one consumer application right now called stepping that is like people work out and by working out, they get crypto and it got, I think it’s dozens of millions of users already.
[00:35:29] Ramon: Uh, it’s doing quite well. It just started two or three months. So that can be a, a good starting point for crypto. They can work out. It’s kinda like extra these applications, but they’re also earning this currency that then they can, they can use another obvious niche is gaming because in gaming, people are used to in game currencies and in tokens, you know, in world of work, people used to make a living, getting their goal and selling the source and all kind and all that.
[00:35:52] Ramon: Eh, but again, you know, if. if you play wall of Wildcraft, then the sword belonged to blizzard and then you couldn’t sell it outside of there and they take huge. So, but here you can take the sort way from you and then use it in another game or sell it to San Juan or transfer it. So a lot of the game economies will be built on top of crypto as well.
[00:36:13] Ramon: And that will be another entry point. Yeah,
[00:36:15] Jesse: that’s definitely one of the use cases I read on like, uh, I read this game website called polygon.com and they had an article about it. It was very interest. Um, I guess really the, the, the meat of the question is, do you think that consumers will care enough to understand the value exchange fully because you, what you described makes sense, but there are like multiple steps to that that technically exist in all value.
[00:36:38] Jesse: Like the whole, like read the end user license agreement. Like nobody. Most people are not cognizant enough of like everything that’s operating in the space to understand like fully the value extreme that’s happening when they use the internet or Facebook or Google or whatever. So knowing that, do you think the majority of people will be able to kind of like make that leap for that understanding?
[00:37:01] Jesse: Or are you saying it’s not necessary? Just like most people don’t really care about the value exchange right now, it
[00:37:06] Ramon: will. Both. And hopefully, because if you compare like the adoption of the internet and the adoption of crypto is actually going faster, uh, cryptocurrencies. And if it continues this space in three years, it will reach 1 billion users.
[00:37:19] Ramon: If there is enough value provided for users, they will go through the pain. Even if that pain is higher, the same way, when a stocks are going like crazy, the.com bubble, you hear your, your taxi driver talking, giving you a stock. It will be the same. And this is bubble behavior that happened with the two lips.
[00:37:34] Ramon: It will happen. And the cool thing. Well, the cool thing, there are of bad things out bubble, but the cool thing is like, they bring a lot more people into the space, then everything crashes, but it crashes to a higher point than before because then bunch of people stay and keep building. And then until the nest that, and it has happened with tech stocks and I, it has happened with them.
[00:37:52] Ramon: I mean, but not everyone needs to understand right now. our website works. You know, when you enter the URL in your browser, there are a lot of things that happen. Nobody needs to understand that anymore. Um, and it’s gonna be the same thing with crypto. You’re gonna have like a really simple app and maybe instead of, you know, your banker, uh, retirement account that automatically put 60 14 into bones that.
[00:38:13] Ramon: Scan dying, you know, automatically you can say, okay, 5% into Bitcoin and there will be enough people will know about or Ethereum or whatever, or this, or maybe even be like savings accounts that are crypto based. That gives you like 10%. I also tell this to quite a bit 30 years ago, are parents living at really different world because the, they inter rate, you put your money in your bank account, you get 15% right now you get 0.02%.
[00:38:38] Ramon: Well, a bit more now that the February rate, but nothing. Uh, but right now in crypto, there’s actually free interest rates. So you can put, you can lend your money and get six, seven, 10% in different crypto protocols. So this is a huge value add, and you need to go through the pain to get there because it’s still early.
[00:38:56] Ramon: The technology is too painful. There are hacks that are scams, but there is out of alpha and value there. Yeah,
[00:39:03] Angela: my, my like POV on this and we’ve talked about this a lot is. the, the mass adoption. I don’t think it’s gonna happen for a long time. And it is gonna be by like an unknowing audience. It’s kind of like, Ramones laid out all these like positive benefits of using crypto of like, you know, you actually own your own thing.
[00:39:23] Angela: And like there’s no middle man, and it’s essentially, you’re cutting all these fees out and blah, blah, blah. And those are all things people want, but it’s like too difficult, I think, to understand kind of how it’s happening right now and like how to get into those platforms. But when it gets to a point, like you said, when, like the user interface is so simple and like, Um, intuitive for people to get into.
[00:39:46] Angela: It’s almost like masked, like a web two thing right now. Like a Venmo, for example, like nobody knows what the fuck Venmo’s doing, but you’re like, oh, I get to like send money to my friends instantaneously. I don’t give a shit, like, let me download this and like send you $5. It’s gonna be like that. Or like, no one knows it’s built on crypto.
[00:40:03] Angela: It just like is already using that technology and giving you the benefit. And then they get to market whoever’s, you know, in the future, being able to make these really user friendly things are gonna be able to market the things that already exist today on like other Janer, crypto things. But like no one mass audience knows about it yet.
[00:40:24] Angela: So then those people are gonna probably be like dominant players in, in the beginning, because it’s just gonna be like, you’re capturing all these people that like don’t know how to get into it right now. That like wanna benefit from those things and don’t need to know how it works. Just like as long as they like get to benefit from the, the technology.
[00:40:41] Angela: It’s fine. So Venmo for me is like kind of the easiest, like comparison is just like, that thing popped up outta nowhere. Right. Everyone was just like, oh, it’s like money, money in an app. And like, uh, like, doesn’t matter what bank you are. Cuz I actually remember no one in gen Z remembers this, but like I actually remember pre Venmo.
[00:41:00] Angela: When it was like, how am I supposed to like pay you back? When I go to lunch and stuff, it was like I had to even cash. Or like, you just hope that like, you’re both chased or you’re both think of America and you can like both actually do that thing. And I remember when Venmo first came out, I was like, oh my God, this is magic.
[00:41:14] Angela: I like don’t care what your bank is. And it’s like, I don’t have to. Worry about bringing cash and stuff. It’s gonna be like that where there’s gonna be so many different use cases for it, where it’s just like, oh, this magical thing here that like makes my life easier. And like, I don’t know how it works really.
[00:41:29] Angela: And I don’t care as long as it works and people trust
[00:41:31] Jesse: it. Yeah. Well, I think that’s a really great transition into future state questions in the fortune cookie. Shall we. Okay. Awesome. Um, so listeners, we’re gonna move on over to the fortune cookie section of the podcast, because we always like to end on a sweet treat and Ramon for you.
[00:41:50] Jesse: We, we are asking you to, uh, because we very often like to pull out crystal balls and forecast the future. So we’d like you to give us what your top three predictions on. Um, the long term use of crypto are that aren’t commonly seen today. Um,
[00:42:07] Ramon: that’s hard. Um, I mean, one that I’m pretty confident right now.
[00:42:12] Ramon: The whole crypto market cap is one and a half trillion. I think by 2030 it will be 10 trillion. So it would be six, six times larger, at least another one is that some. Countries will hold crypto in their bank reserves the same way right now, they hold, they hold gold. And then the third one, probably that there will be a massive consumer application in the next three or four years that uses crypto.
[00:42:44] Ramon: And it may be, it may be Twitter. We’ll see what Elon, um, think, but they’re definitely taking it into that direction or making it decentralized, making. More, um, by the users and social persistent. Um, and one, one thought that I want to finish with is that 500 years ago, you know, the, the power of printing books was taken away from the church and the state.
[00:43:08] Ramon: And at the beginning, nobody thought that was a good idea, but then it was obvious that letting everyone publish things was a good idea for freedom of a speech and money is also in a way, freedom of a speech, freedom to T if you don’t have freedom to transact, you don’t have anything. So I think this idea.
[00:43:24] Ramon: That money only governments and the politician in terms will be able to print it whenever they want, uh, is, is gonna be an idea that hopefully 5,100 years from now it’s gonna be look like Barbara. So the money should be dependent from the state.
[00:43:39] Angela: Okay. Well, listeners, I think we covered so many topics today.
[00:43:45] Angela: Hopefully you learn something. Um, and there’s probably more question. That popped up in your head from listening to this. So if you have questions for Ramon, let’s see if he has any time to answer those. After this, we’ll let you plug if anything you want, but, um, if you have questions for Ramon, you can email at tell us where you’re from@gmail.com.
[00:44:08] Angela: We’ll pass him along and see if he has time to answer you. Um, but hopefully you learned a lot already. And if you have other thoughts on crypto, if you have delved into this space and you know, a lot or. Um, have strong opinions about something. You can also write us in with those thoughts. Um, and maybe we’ll do a follow up.
[00:44:28] Angela: We’ll see. Um, but Ramon, thank you so much for joining us on the show. Thank you. And. . Is there anything you want to plug ?
[00:44:39] Ramon: I mean, you can find me on Twitter. You can add the, the link below. Um, and then I I’ve been building this platform that is called Babylon finance, and we basically help people invest in crypto, um, through investment clubs.
[00:44:53] Ramon: So you can pull money with your friends and or with people that are Def experts. So you can just, uh, trust them. And they. I allocate the money to, to a place to give you a consistent return. And we, we have all these different investment clubs to cater to different drinks, profile and different investment time horizon.
[00:45:14] Ramon: So, if you’re interested, you can take a look at baby of finance.
[00:45:18] Jesse: All right. So as always, we will have a fresh new episode for all of you guys next week.