Vegan Anti-Minimalist Apartment Tour (Maximalist?).
30 December 2016 [link youtube]
With some remarks on my life in Dehong, Yunnan, China (my diet, job, education, exercise, etc.). 中国，云南，德宏，芒市。纯素主义。
Youtube Automatic Transcription
so the apartment is enormous and it's
gorgeous and I could have done it before and after but I don't really think the camera could pick up the nature of the of the change you know when I first arrived here it was filthy and ugly and boy what a difference you know a new coat of paint makes a little bit of renovation a little bit of effort you know and I was left wondering who were these other English teachers here because this apartment has been used exclusively for foreign English teachers like myself people who come here to be the English professor from another country plus 20 years I'm sure very often they had two or three different people doing the job in the same year people often you know quit unexpectedly that kind of post and nobody made an effort before I did to just you know make the place decent and I do mean I do mean decent Oh without that one wait wait I didn't buy that came with the apartment so I got just one eight-pound way I don't know what I'll do with it but all the rest of the weights some of you guys watch me assemble this on lodged you have feared exactly how I'm gonna set that up you can see I got some floor mats I got the bench press currently the bench press is a little bit too close to that glass table for comfort and by the way you can see I am NOT a minimalist this is an anti minimalist video because you see that on two wrenches - not just one - if I were minimal is that consistent only one owning one wrench I'll talk a little bit more of other renovations look so this apartment has known closet so in effect when you come in the door this is like an inside-out closet right there you know I don't know why more people don't do this as a big beautiful chair right by the entrance because the first thing you do when you arrive where you leave is you know mess with your shoes so you actually got a place you can sit down mess with your shoes you got you full-length mirror that's my look for the day I actually appeared in a TV commercial today the University wanted to film me so got the formal formal wear on but you know anyway I don't know again people just don't take the time to make their own lives you know a little bit more liveable and for me you know I got no hair I don't wear makeup so having a mirror like that is crucial because I look at a mirror so rarely I've got to be able to just glance myself over before I leave to go to work whatever it is and in effect this whole area is like an inside-out closet my my few jackets my so-called winter coat I guess is there and this is a tropical climate so soon enough those things will be out of out of commission anyway or you know you wear a jacket here just in a symbolic sense so by the way this is one of the few vegan foods that doe hyung has to offer me this is a variety of bread that has no eggs and no milk powder in it the 99.9% of bread in China has both of those things but you know my salary here is so low I can very easily eat two loaves of this bread in one day so yesterday I think I ate two loaves of bread like that so if I made that staple my diet I actually really couldn't afford it I earned 5,000 qui a month if you spend twenty quiet day on bread it's actually it's actually not really sustainable so I shouldn't eat much of that bread once I settle in here what is gonna be the staple of my diet so get in this kitchen I mean you know I know it doesn't look newly rennovated you guys but this place was just a disaster before I moved in here this is my bread machine fabulous bread machine I have not used even once yet here's the GL moon there's the the yeast so I could get that rolling I could make the staple of my diets ear and me aka job steers as I did whoops didn't realize was open as I did when I was living in Kunming but currently my experiment is actually to make the sleep of my diet what you guys know is that Sookie beans so here at me the protein to fat ratio is about four to one so four sorry four grams of protein to one gram of fat adzuki beans here I think are about 16 to one about 16 grams of protein to one gram of fat you guys can google that if you don't like my memory and the only other kind of beans I can get here that are worth talking about I could I could mess around with these white beans I don't know if you've got the patience for it to be honest with you and again I don't know if the protein evaporation was that great good old-fashioned soy beans - what you see here this is soy milk the protein to fat ratio is terrible compared to black beans and other other forms of beans as you can see here if you've been studying Chinese the last six months as I have but yeah I mean this sink they were they were really surprised when I showed up like first day here I was really trying to do all these renovations but they're not really optional like when I got here when you turn on this sink the the tab would fall off and there'd be a huge geyser of water gush up and not just hit you in the face it would spray around the whole room it really looked like something out of a slapstick comedy anyway I mean the other people who stayed here so I mean I immediately said look this needs to be repaired and I'm willing to pay for it and basically because they were shamed they were ashamed to admit what kind of a state the the apartment was in the university volunteered to pay instead which of course I'm very grateful for I do appreciate that but I didn't even make that argument I wasn't even trying to I wasn't trying to argue for it and with this part was absolutely enormous I mean I really could host a conference on veganism here or something and you know the stuff I've bought here the other thing to really meditate on is that every single thing I buy I'm only gonna use for one year and then it's gonna go in the garbage so I mean you know in terms of my club these these four metal bowls I bought there's one more of them I'm going to use it for one year and then it goes in the landfill or possibly the next person who lives here this if you've really lived in China you recognize this piece of equipment I just purchased this myself it's not the money it's knowing how fleeting the circumstances of your own life are you know it's knowing that you're you're buying these things with no with no long-term future oh yeah by the way I literally haven't unpacked yet those two suitcases are sitting there on the floor for a reason I still have unpacking to do I've been busy with other things anyway the apartment is enormous I could easily I could easily host a vegan conference here behind this door is another bedroom that is completely unused so now I'm going to show you that one that's the one room we didn't renovate or clean up I can show you I mean if you want to know what a difference the walls make this was completely repainted at my insistence and my urgent as soon as I showed up I said well calling the paint crew because were repainting it and now the walls look beautiful it makes such a difference every moment of every day makes a difference and you know I thought I'd have to replace the drapes the drapes were filthy they had 20 years of dirt on them you know but all we did was wash the drapes and now they look great in all every room you know wash the drapes wash the windows so I mean this this window was caked with 20 years of dirt now it's clean for the first time in 20 years and even this windowsill on the outside there were these basically there was garbage but there were big boxes of crap nobody had lifted a finger to make this place look decent and I mean now it looks like a brand-new apartment in terms of using your imagination for what it looked like when the walls were all you know filthy and covered with holes and grind what have you you know I'll just show you what the hallway looks like here it's not insult my neighbors so anyone watching this if you really have experience living in China you'll know what that's about you know again not to insult anyone but this is not a fancy apartment building that's very much the norm that kind of grimy filthy wall you know apart from the fact that there are specific markings added to it or have you so it really transformed the place having it cleaned having it repainted and then having a whole series of repairs done included as I mentioned that the kitchen tap there so this is my office which is again is enormous I've ordered two more tables so I know the furniture could be rearranged and once I get the tables arrived and this'll just all clear this out but I'm gonna have a writing desk in here also I currently have a two monitor setup there's the the famous white microphone but anyways it's an enormous office and one of the reasons I chose this to be the office room is actually that it's the most insolent in terms of sound so it's a room where I will be the least annoying my neighbors if I'm recording a video late at night or what-have-you it's also the most insulate against mosquitoes I'm gonna put you on game on that if you are gonna live in the tropics you have to really think about the architecture of the house in terms of mosquitoes how they get in and what have you that is the single most expensive piece of furniture I purchased it's an actually decent chair actually made out of wood and again for me both are ecological reasons and otherwise it will always kind of tug at me that you know you buy something like that and you know it's here for a good time it's not here for a long time you've maybe got one year of you set of a piece of furniture like that and then it is good good good gone like everything else in your life that can't fit into one or two suitcases I don't know when I go back to Canada I might only be able to take one of those suitcase with me so I'll own next to nothing once again in my life but hey I guess it's beautiful well less beautiful I mean this also kind of reflects the the Chinese logic of you know trying to make you feel welcome to make you feel comfortable it's very flattering the old bed was a bit shameful I don't even think I complained about it just commented I just commented in passing that when I moved in I would buy a new bed and without asking me they purchased a new bed so this I don't know if you can tell a sense of scale this enormous this is a full king-size bed and it looks bigger than I remember King says being in enormous room that I currently do not use at all so you can call this the guest bedroom I purchased these these red sheets for it so that is my my modest investment but this is not my bedroom currently this enormous space is completely spare again when the tables arrive I don't know I could I could set up a table in here and make this a room in which I you know read read and study language or what have you in addition to the office in addition to the main sitting room I don't know I've got to make some decisions all of these windows if you live in the tropics so here there's good old-fashioned sticky tape added as a barrier at that point where the the windows are joined you've got to go through every room and watch for where mosquitoes come in where they come out and although most of Maui is beautiful the view of this window is not particularly beautiful and that is the sort of space where mosquitoes will congregate and try to get into your home and of course the bathroom this is the main bathroom there's another room you can use in the bathroom the bathroom is where mosquitoes most like to be and when I first came here their attitude was oh no it's fun this window had no mesh on it no netting this is open for mosquitoes becoming a know constantly and I said no I'm gonna pay to have mosquito wire attached to the window that's not debatable if you in the tropics he absolutely have to do that with every single window and then afterwards you have to tape up the gap so you probably get see at the top there what the woman did leave a gap and I had to take an old-fashioned sticky tape and complete the barrier against mosquitoes because this is exactly where mosquitoes will want to come in and join your life mosquitoes are attracted to water of any kind not just for reproduction that's where they want to socialize where they want to hang out and this is my fabulous toilet or does I think it's marketing they call it a 3d flushing toilet because the flush action is so great when I showed up the toilet was a combination of broken and not working so you know episode this kind of thing like the other teachers are working we're not really talking with a luxury if you're talking with something like a toilet you use it every day without fail like you know if your motorcycle doesn't work very well that's one thing if you actually have a toilet you can't use how do you get through your daily life this makes no sense to me but for like 10 years or something one foreign teacher after another accepted the job here and just ignored the fact that there was a broken toilet I show up and immediately I say oh yeah great replace it I don't care how much it costs we want a new toilet I also said immediately replaced the showerhead that's not optional like how are you gonna live your life without a working shower and I believe I was the first person to stay in this apartment ever who got the hot water working they had a totally working hot water machine a water heater if you like but nobody you never you know taking the steps to actually get it hooked up and running how do you a people I shave my face in my head how would I do that without a working shower without hot water ridiculous but you know these people just live with their cams out here they live like they're in a den of thieves or something and then they leave tents it's totally foreign to me and I gotta say this is another thing in the tropics you know this is common Cambodia Thailand everything you notice this is a good shower now so it's now I thought was replaced at my insistence great brand new shower works wonderfully new hot water machine new mosquito net even window but it means that the floor ever like this is always gonna be wet right so if you're gonna live with it go out and spend the 600 qui and get a whole bunch of maths so you can actually walk on the floor without getting your feet wet so that when you brush your teeth your feet anyway and by the way here's another great indication that I am NOT a minimalist I believe minimalists like Ted car and Maude vegan and those people they boast they have only one towel do I buy just one towel no I bought like eight towels so come on be a mensch what are you gonna do come on you gonna have one towel then what happens you're one towel falls in the floor you have a guest come over something you know live your life with one towel because the minimalist ideologies come on guys buy six towels by eight so that that fabulous room currently that's absolutely no function with that enormous king-size bed the room I'm actually sleeping in so there are really two bedrooms here obviously if you were really living here the room that's that's my office this huge room could also be a bedroom I could have my bed in here and I could live my whole life in here instead of having poster here my voice is echoing even though the ceilings are really high by the way if you got that impression here that's part of what makes it so beautiful we don't have the lights on now but when this light is on it lights up this whole room big high ceiling beautiful space but there are two bedrooms identical to this and currently this is a sort of closet for hanging and shelving your clothes it has more than 300 parts I thought am I really gonna wait until after I've got this assembled to film this video and the answer is no uh so again sorry it's no big deal whether they're open or closed you can awfully this this room was so grotty and so filthy and so ugly when I arrived here and you know new paint on the wall and these curtains these are 20 year old curtains all you gotta do is clean em and they look beautiful it makes such a difference but I mean one generation of teachers after another lived here and nobody you don't make the effort anyway so again I bought all these you know red satin sheets for every room no I did not make my bed to show off for you guys this is how it really looks and just now this warm pink blanket this is only because this is these are the last few days of December but most of the year this is a tropical country so what the problem will be that it's too hot sorry it's a tropical area of China a tropical special zone so most times the problem is gonna be that it's too hot not that it's too cold but at a rate for right now this is this small room is the room I am using as my bedroom I could switch it up but that's totally adequate there's tons of empty space you could put in some bookshelves you could put in anything but I got other rooms to put my books in I got other rooms to sit at my writing desk on and so on so behind that door there's another bedroom that's basically identical but it's now being used for absolutely nothing and that was the only room we didn't repaint I don't think it's never been used so again whatever could have I could have more do you move in there I could have I could have any number of my non-vegan youtube move in so alright oh right I guess that's not the end of the tour we have to head down the long hallway here so by the way you may notice a lot of the light is tinted blue a lot of these windows oh yeah so there you can see some students walking down the street in between the palm trees March is an incredibly beautiful city this doesn't do it justice this view of my window again when you move into a place like this in the tropics every single window this is just sticky tape nothing special about it you've got to find the gaps in the mosquito netting you got to cover them up with tape and that's what I did there and that makes all the difference you know mosquitoes got nothing better to do people want to kit themselves and imagine that you can have holes in your mosquito netting and that that the mosquitoes will just respect the principle of the thing they don't the mosquitoes will be there for five hours trying to get through the netting and invention they're through so one of my regular viewers Emma likes to make fun of me for this she calls this you know the laundry room where you risked your life every time you you do the laundry and it is that I I'm six foot three and there's no way I can reach that one dry so you got to get up on a stool and try to hang your laundry to dry but this again so this reflects that we're really in the tropics these are all blue tinted windows they have a special layer of treatment on them to try to you know cool down the sun's rays as they come in in the heat of the summer and then you have another interior window here this is the window that separates my office room you can see the same computer there that separates the the office room from the the outside wall so even if I'm making a lot of noise in here you have two layers of window if I'm live-streaming with you guys if I'm talking to somebody on skype with a loud voice you know it's not really going to be audible these are all these are all concrete walls to the outside world so that's what I'm doing that there instead of in the room where I have my weight setup and then we got a utility room and this is a fabulous water heater normos thing enough hot water to feed an army nobody else had bothered to get it set up and running so again it's so alien to me I can't imagine right this is another one of these windows when I first moved in there was no barrier to mosquitos here whatsoever and I think that's why one person some former tenants put a piece of cardboard here trying pathetically to stop the mosquitos coming in by putting it on this door that's not what you do you go to the source you actually put a mosquito anything on that window and you get the edges of that you probably can't see at the top you take the time you get the sticky tape you actually fill every hole be a perfectionist do the work because if you don't do the work the mosquitos will and of course ultimately mosquitoes do carry disease in this in this part of the world but it's very unlikely that you're going to get malaria or a serious disease from mosquitoes it's much more likely that you'll just be deprived of the opportunity to ever have a decent night's sleep so yeah I haven't decided exactly how I'm going to lay out the the purple padding here on the floor will we'll deal with that in the days ahead I guess oh yeah I did I didn't need buy these throw pillows with the slightly kitschy Eastern European looking hours on them but that's cool yeah so you know best of times worst of times when I first moved out here I imagined I would be settling down really long-term and sometimes when my Chinese employers were expressing astonishment that I would put so much effort into redecorating the place I said to them well you know I'm 38 years old I have a three-year-old daughter I need this apartment to be beautiful enough or good enough for my daughter to visit me incidentally I do not use I do not use bottled water here I use tap water and I boil the tap water and then I put the tap water in this container for later use my little contribution to ecology I suppose I try to in small ways because I do think the at least boil this app water here is suitable for human consumption M when they asked me why would I commit so much time and effort to making this apartment into a beautiful livable place one of my reasons was well I have a daughter I want this apartment to be you know liveable enough that my daughter could come here and join me I only had to say that once I don't know I mean now for various reasons I really think I mean basically at the end of one year here my ability to speak Chinese will be very much improved obviously in the last six months my ability to speak Chinese has improved exponentially but it's very hard to see what role what positive role the Chinese language will have in my life by contrast it's very easy for me to imagine what kind of positive role YouTube veganism digital vegan networking will have in my life it's really easy to see the positive outcomes that could be attached to that but it is most likely that after one year I'll go back to Canada here and you know if you look at it it certainly would be possible for me to transition from you know public sector to private sector from teaching for the university to setting up some kind of small business setting up a vegan restaurant or what have you here in de Hong and while that might be tempting in some ways the reality is financially if you were going to do something like that you would be better off doing it in Canada and that is why every year so many entrepreneurs from China you know pack up and move to Canada if you're actually trying to earn a living and you're not just on retirements or permanent vacation it's very clear that you know you should not be trying to actually earn your shekels by starting a business here well that haven't been said you know the city of Mancha is a is a fascinating place incredibly beautiful place obviously the view of my window is not gonna do it any justice but hey I can try and you know in terms of languages and culture and history and politics this is one of the most rewarding places in the world for me to be I would love to not just be working on Chinese but to be working on other languages like at Chang and Jing pol aka catch in I'd loves me even of course you know obviously learning Burmese would be quite easy here mainstream language like Burmese or you know the local language daya do well or aka tiny akdong die with the local dialog which which of course is fairly closely related to northern Lao which I have a lot of experience learning and speaking while those things would all be fascinating rewarding for me but I also have to face up the fact that I already had the experience of returning to Canada with unique expertise in languages that nobody in Western academia values I already have the experience of becoming expert in you know pally and to some extent you know Lotion Cambodia and Southeast Asia and then you go back to Canada and you find out what doors is that open for you absolutely zero so I cannot repeat that experience now by studying the Hongdae don't you you should say or Jing PO you or even minion you or even Burmese you know I just don't have the luxury at age 38 to repeat the sort of mistakes I made in my 20s and I don't think I have the luxury of living here in Mancha for the the very long term so that's it I've made an investment in oh we can't quite see the Golden Temple out the window here not quite there you go there on the edge of the mountains when it's clear here the view of the mountains is also incredibly beautiful you can see the the Buddhist temple there just barely if I lean out the window for you so that's it I've made an investment in trying to make a beautiful apartments in a beautiful part of the world a really livable place but now I also have to turn my attention to word worrying about my own long-term future
gorgeous and I could have done it before and after but I don't really think the camera could pick up the nature of the of the change you know when I first arrived here it was filthy and ugly and boy what a difference you know a new coat of paint makes a little bit of renovation a little bit of effort you know and I was left wondering who were these other English teachers here because this apartment has been used exclusively for foreign English teachers like myself people who come here to be the English professor from another country plus 20 years I'm sure very often they had two or three different people doing the job in the same year people often you know quit unexpectedly that kind of post and nobody made an effort before I did to just you know make the place decent and I do mean I do mean decent Oh without that one wait wait I didn't buy that came with the apartment so I got just one eight-pound way I don't know what I'll do with it but all the rest of the weights some of you guys watch me assemble this on lodged you have feared exactly how I'm gonna set that up you can see I got some floor mats I got the bench press currently the bench press is a little bit too close to that glass table for comfort and by the way you can see I am NOT a minimalist this is an anti minimalist video because you see that on two wrenches - not just one - if I were minimal is that consistent only one owning one wrench I'll talk a little bit more of other renovations look so this apartment has known closet so in effect when you come in the door this is like an inside-out closet right there you know I don't know why more people don't do this as a big beautiful chair right by the entrance because the first thing you do when you arrive where you leave is you know mess with your shoes so you actually got a place you can sit down mess with your shoes you got you full-length mirror that's my look for the day I actually appeared in a TV commercial today the University wanted to film me so got the formal formal wear on but you know anyway I don't know again people just don't take the time to make their own lives you know a little bit more liveable and for me you know I got no hair I don't wear makeup so having a mirror like that is crucial because I look at a mirror so rarely I've got to be able to just glance myself over before I leave to go to work whatever it is and in effect this whole area is like an inside-out closet my my few jackets my so-called winter coat I guess is there and this is a tropical climate so soon enough those things will be out of out of commission anyway or you know you wear a jacket here just in a symbolic sense so by the way this is one of the few vegan foods that doe hyung has to offer me this is a variety of bread that has no eggs and no milk powder in it the 99.9% of bread in China has both of those things but you know my salary here is so low I can very easily eat two loaves of this bread in one day so yesterday I think I ate two loaves of bread like that so if I made that staple my diet I actually really couldn't afford it I earned 5,000 qui a month if you spend twenty quiet day on bread it's actually it's actually not really sustainable so I shouldn't eat much of that bread once I settle in here what is gonna be the staple of my diet so get in this kitchen I mean you know I know it doesn't look newly rennovated you guys but this place was just a disaster before I moved in here this is my bread machine fabulous bread machine I have not used even once yet here's the GL moon there's the the yeast so I could get that rolling I could make the staple of my diets ear and me aka job steers as I did whoops didn't realize was open as I did when I was living in Kunming but currently my experiment is actually to make the sleep of my diet what you guys know is that Sookie beans so here at me the protein to fat ratio is about four to one so four sorry four grams of protein to one gram of fat adzuki beans here I think are about 16 to one about 16 grams of protein to one gram of fat you guys can google that if you don't like my memory and the only other kind of beans I can get here that are worth talking about I could I could mess around with these white beans I don't know if you've got the patience for it to be honest with you and again I don't know if the protein evaporation was that great good old-fashioned soy beans - what you see here this is soy milk the protein to fat ratio is terrible compared to black beans and other other forms of beans as you can see here if you've been studying Chinese the last six months as I have but yeah I mean this sink they were they were really surprised when I showed up like first day here I was really trying to do all these renovations but they're not really optional like when I got here when you turn on this sink the the tab would fall off and there'd be a huge geyser of water gush up and not just hit you in the face it would spray around the whole room it really looked like something out of a slapstick comedy anyway I mean the other people who stayed here so I mean I immediately said look this needs to be repaired and I'm willing to pay for it and basically because they were shamed they were ashamed to admit what kind of a state the the apartment was in the university volunteered to pay instead which of course I'm very grateful for I do appreciate that but I didn't even make that argument I wasn't even trying to I wasn't trying to argue for it and with this part was absolutely enormous I mean I really could host a conference on veganism here or something and you know the stuff I've bought here the other thing to really meditate on is that every single thing I buy I'm only gonna use for one year and then it's gonna go in the garbage so I mean you know in terms of my club these these four metal bowls I bought there's one more of them I'm going to use it for one year and then it goes in the landfill or possibly the next person who lives here this if you've really lived in China you recognize this piece of equipment I just purchased this myself it's not the money it's knowing how fleeting the circumstances of your own life are you know it's knowing that you're you're buying these things with no with no long-term future oh yeah by the way I literally haven't unpacked yet those two suitcases are sitting there on the floor for a reason I still have unpacking to do I've been busy with other things anyway the apartment is enormous I could easily I could easily host a vegan conference here behind this door is another bedroom that is completely unused so now I'm going to show you that one that's the one room we didn't renovate or clean up I can show you I mean if you want to know what a difference the walls make this was completely repainted at my insistence and my urgent as soon as I showed up I said well calling the paint crew because were repainting it and now the walls look beautiful it makes such a difference every moment of every day makes a difference and you know I thought I'd have to replace the drapes the drapes were filthy they had 20 years of dirt on them you know but all we did was wash the drapes and now they look great in all every room you know wash the drapes wash the windows so I mean this this window was caked with 20 years of dirt now it's clean for the first time in 20 years and even this windowsill on the outside there were these basically there was garbage but there were big boxes of crap nobody had lifted a finger to make this place look decent and I mean now it looks like a brand-new apartment in terms of using your imagination for what it looked like when the walls were all you know filthy and covered with holes and grind what have you you know I'll just show you what the hallway looks like here it's not insult my neighbors so anyone watching this if you really have experience living in China you'll know what that's about you know again not to insult anyone but this is not a fancy apartment building that's very much the norm that kind of grimy filthy wall you know apart from the fact that there are specific markings added to it or have you so it really transformed the place having it cleaned having it repainted and then having a whole series of repairs done included as I mentioned that the kitchen tap there so this is my office which is again is enormous I've ordered two more tables so I know the furniture could be rearranged and once I get the tables arrived and this'll just all clear this out but I'm gonna have a writing desk in here also I currently have a two monitor setup there's the the famous white microphone but anyways it's an enormous office and one of the reasons I chose this to be the office room is actually that it's the most insolent in terms of sound so it's a room where I will be the least annoying my neighbors if I'm recording a video late at night or what-have-you it's also the most insulate against mosquitoes I'm gonna put you on game on that if you are gonna live in the tropics you have to really think about the architecture of the house in terms of mosquitoes how they get in and what have you that is the single most expensive piece of furniture I purchased it's an actually decent chair actually made out of wood and again for me both are ecological reasons and otherwise it will always kind of tug at me that you know you buy something like that and you know it's here for a good time it's not here for a long time you've maybe got one year of you set of a piece of furniture like that and then it is good good good gone like everything else in your life that can't fit into one or two suitcases I don't know when I go back to Canada I might only be able to take one of those suitcase with me so I'll own next to nothing once again in my life but hey I guess it's beautiful well less beautiful I mean this also kind of reflects the the Chinese logic of you know trying to make you feel welcome to make you feel comfortable it's very flattering the old bed was a bit shameful I don't even think I complained about it just commented I just commented in passing that when I moved in I would buy a new bed and without asking me they purchased a new bed so this I don't know if you can tell a sense of scale this enormous this is a full king-size bed and it looks bigger than I remember King says being in enormous room that I currently do not use at all so you can call this the guest bedroom I purchased these these red sheets for it so that is my my modest investment but this is not my bedroom currently this enormous space is completely spare again when the tables arrive I don't know I could I could set up a table in here and make this a room in which I you know read read and study language or what have you in addition to the office in addition to the main sitting room I don't know I've got to make some decisions all of these windows if you live in the tropics so here there's good old-fashioned sticky tape added as a barrier at that point where the the windows are joined you've got to go through every room and watch for where mosquitoes come in where they come out and although most of Maui is beautiful the view of this window is not particularly beautiful and that is the sort of space where mosquitoes will congregate and try to get into your home and of course the bathroom this is the main bathroom there's another room you can use in the bathroom the bathroom is where mosquitoes most like to be and when I first came here their attitude was oh no it's fun this window had no mesh on it no netting this is open for mosquitoes becoming a know constantly and I said no I'm gonna pay to have mosquito wire attached to the window that's not debatable if you in the tropics he absolutely have to do that with every single window and then afterwards you have to tape up the gap so you probably get see at the top there what the woman did leave a gap and I had to take an old-fashioned sticky tape and complete the barrier against mosquitoes because this is exactly where mosquitoes will want to come in and join your life mosquitoes are attracted to water of any kind not just for reproduction that's where they want to socialize where they want to hang out and this is my fabulous toilet or does I think it's marketing they call it a 3d flushing toilet because the flush action is so great when I showed up the toilet was a combination of broken and not working so you know episode this kind of thing like the other teachers are working we're not really talking with a luxury if you're talking with something like a toilet you use it every day without fail like you know if your motorcycle doesn't work very well that's one thing if you actually have a toilet you can't use how do you get through your daily life this makes no sense to me but for like 10 years or something one foreign teacher after another accepted the job here and just ignored the fact that there was a broken toilet I show up and immediately I say oh yeah great replace it I don't care how much it costs we want a new toilet I also said immediately replaced the showerhead that's not optional like how are you gonna live your life without a working shower and I believe I was the first person to stay in this apartment ever who got the hot water working they had a totally working hot water machine a water heater if you like but nobody you never you know taking the steps to actually get it hooked up and running how do you a people I shave my face in my head how would I do that without a working shower without hot water ridiculous but you know these people just live with their cams out here they live like they're in a den of thieves or something and then they leave tents it's totally foreign to me and I gotta say this is another thing in the tropics you know this is common Cambodia Thailand everything you notice this is a good shower now so it's now I thought was replaced at my insistence great brand new shower works wonderfully new hot water machine new mosquito net even window but it means that the floor ever like this is always gonna be wet right so if you're gonna live with it go out and spend the 600 qui and get a whole bunch of maths so you can actually walk on the floor without getting your feet wet so that when you brush your teeth your feet anyway and by the way here's another great indication that I am NOT a minimalist I believe minimalists like Ted car and Maude vegan and those people they boast they have only one towel do I buy just one towel no I bought like eight towels so come on be a mensch what are you gonna do come on you gonna have one towel then what happens you're one towel falls in the floor you have a guest come over something you know live your life with one towel because the minimalist ideologies come on guys buy six towels by eight so that that fabulous room currently that's absolutely no function with that enormous king-size bed the room I'm actually sleeping in so there are really two bedrooms here obviously if you were really living here the room that's that's my office this huge room could also be a bedroom I could have my bed in here and I could live my whole life in here instead of having poster here my voice is echoing even though the ceilings are really high by the way if you got that impression here that's part of what makes it so beautiful we don't have the lights on now but when this light is on it lights up this whole room big high ceiling beautiful space but there are two bedrooms identical to this and currently this is a sort of closet for hanging and shelving your clothes it has more than 300 parts I thought am I really gonna wait until after I've got this assembled to film this video and the answer is no uh so again sorry it's no big deal whether they're open or closed you can awfully this this room was so grotty and so filthy and so ugly when I arrived here and you know new paint on the wall and these curtains these are 20 year old curtains all you gotta do is clean em and they look beautiful it makes such a difference but I mean one generation of teachers after another lived here and nobody you don't make the effort anyway so again I bought all these you know red satin sheets for every room no I did not make my bed to show off for you guys this is how it really looks and just now this warm pink blanket this is only because this is these are the last few days of December but most of the year this is a tropical country so what the problem will be that it's too hot sorry it's a tropical area of China a tropical special zone so most times the problem is gonna be that it's too hot not that it's too cold but at a rate for right now this is this small room is the room I am using as my bedroom I could switch it up but that's totally adequate there's tons of empty space you could put in some bookshelves you could put in anything but I got other rooms to put my books in I got other rooms to sit at my writing desk on and so on so behind that door there's another bedroom that's basically identical but it's now being used for absolutely nothing and that was the only room we didn't repaint I don't think it's never been used so again whatever could have I could have more do you move in there I could have I could have any number of my non-vegan youtube move in so alright oh right I guess that's not the end of the tour we have to head down the long hallway here so by the way you may notice a lot of the light is tinted blue a lot of these windows oh yeah so there you can see some students walking down the street in between the palm trees March is an incredibly beautiful city this doesn't do it justice this view of my window again when you move into a place like this in the tropics every single window this is just sticky tape nothing special about it you've got to find the gaps in the mosquito netting you got to cover them up with tape and that's what I did there and that makes all the difference you know mosquitoes got nothing better to do people want to kit themselves and imagine that you can have holes in your mosquito netting and that that the mosquitoes will just respect the principle of the thing they don't the mosquitoes will be there for five hours trying to get through the netting and invention they're through so one of my regular viewers Emma likes to make fun of me for this she calls this you know the laundry room where you risked your life every time you you do the laundry and it is that I I'm six foot three and there's no way I can reach that one dry so you got to get up on a stool and try to hang your laundry to dry but this again so this reflects that we're really in the tropics these are all blue tinted windows they have a special layer of treatment on them to try to you know cool down the sun's rays as they come in in the heat of the summer and then you have another interior window here this is the window that separates my office room you can see the same computer there that separates the the office room from the the outside wall so even if I'm making a lot of noise in here you have two layers of window if I'm live-streaming with you guys if I'm talking to somebody on skype with a loud voice you know it's not really going to be audible these are all these are all concrete walls to the outside world so that's what I'm doing that there instead of in the room where I have my weight setup and then we got a utility room and this is a fabulous water heater normos thing enough hot water to feed an army nobody else had bothered to get it set up and running so again it's so alien to me I can't imagine right this is another one of these windows when I first moved in there was no barrier to mosquitos here whatsoever and I think that's why one person some former tenants put a piece of cardboard here trying pathetically to stop the mosquitos coming in by putting it on this door that's not what you do you go to the source you actually put a mosquito anything on that window and you get the edges of that you probably can't see at the top you take the time you get the sticky tape you actually fill every hole be a perfectionist do the work because if you don't do the work the mosquitos will and of course ultimately mosquitoes do carry disease in this in this part of the world but it's very unlikely that you're going to get malaria or a serious disease from mosquitoes it's much more likely that you'll just be deprived of the opportunity to ever have a decent night's sleep so yeah I haven't decided exactly how I'm going to lay out the the purple padding here on the floor will we'll deal with that in the days ahead I guess oh yeah I did I didn't need buy these throw pillows with the slightly kitschy Eastern European looking hours on them but that's cool yeah so you know best of times worst of times when I first moved out here I imagined I would be settling down really long-term and sometimes when my Chinese employers were expressing astonishment that I would put so much effort into redecorating the place I said to them well you know I'm 38 years old I have a three-year-old daughter I need this apartment to be beautiful enough or good enough for my daughter to visit me incidentally I do not use I do not use bottled water here I use tap water and I boil the tap water and then I put the tap water in this container for later use my little contribution to ecology I suppose I try to in small ways because I do think the at least boil this app water here is suitable for human consumption M when they asked me why would I commit so much time and effort to making this apartment into a beautiful livable place one of my reasons was well I have a daughter I want this apartment to be you know liveable enough that my daughter could come here and join me I only had to say that once I don't know I mean now for various reasons I really think I mean basically at the end of one year here my ability to speak Chinese will be very much improved obviously in the last six months my ability to speak Chinese has improved exponentially but it's very hard to see what role what positive role the Chinese language will have in my life by contrast it's very easy for me to imagine what kind of positive role YouTube veganism digital vegan networking will have in my life it's really easy to see the positive outcomes that could be attached to that but it is most likely that after one year I'll go back to Canada here and you know if you look at it it certainly would be possible for me to transition from you know public sector to private sector from teaching for the university to setting up some kind of small business setting up a vegan restaurant or what have you here in de Hong and while that might be tempting in some ways the reality is financially if you were going to do something like that you would be better off doing it in Canada and that is why every year so many entrepreneurs from China you know pack up and move to Canada if you're actually trying to earn a living and you're not just on retirements or permanent vacation it's very clear that you know you should not be trying to actually earn your shekels by starting a business here well that haven't been said you know the city of Mancha is a is a fascinating place incredibly beautiful place obviously the view of my window is not gonna do it any justice but hey I can try and you know in terms of languages and culture and history and politics this is one of the most rewarding places in the world for me to be I would love to not just be working on Chinese but to be working on other languages like at Chang and Jing pol aka catch in I'd loves me even of course you know obviously learning Burmese would be quite easy here mainstream language like Burmese or you know the local language daya do well or aka tiny akdong die with the local dialog which which of course is fairly closely related to northern Lao which I have a lot of experience learning and speaking while those things would all be fascinating rewarding for me but I also have to face up the fact that I already had the experience of returning to Canada with unique expertise in languages that nobody in Western academia values I already have the experience of becoming expert in you know pally and to some extent you know Lotion Cambodia and Southeast Asia and then you go back to Canada and you find out what doors is that open for you absolutely zero so I cannot repeat that experience now by studying the Hongdae don't you you should say or Jing PO you or even minion you or even Burmese you know I just don't have the luxury at age 38 to repeat the sort of mistakes I made in my 20s and I don't think I have the luxury of living here in Mancha for the the very long term so that's it I've made an investment in oh we can't quite see the Golden Temple out the window here not quite there you go there on the edge of the mountains when it's clear here the view of the mountains is also incredibly beautiful you can see the the Buddhist temple there just barely if I lean out the window for you so that's it I've made an investment in trying to make a beautiful apartments in a beautiful part of the world a really livable place but now I also have to turn my attention to word worrying about my own long-term future