Anti-Minimalist Autobiography (a Mid-Moving Memoir)
19 December 2016 [link youtube]
Youtube Automatic Transcription
hey guys i'm recording this video during
my last few hours in kunming china the poster in the background is gone i already literally took the poster off the wall we did that well live streaming rolled it up put it in my suitcase and the suitcase in turn was actually sent by a shipping company so that right now that poster is probably on a train or a truck on its way from coming out toward the border with Myanmar in dehong province till hong prefecture actually the Hong special zone is actually the correct translation makes it sound like a bonus level in an old you know Sega Master System game now entering special zone but it is it is it is a special zone we shouldn't call it a problem anyway so uh I have a couple topics are gonna pop off camera not the most serious topics and make make some videos about literally I've already packed I've already said the room is already bear in some sense and actually some of my last some of my last few jobs here I'm actually wrapping up gifts to give to some of my teachers and coworkers the biggest my main teacher here trying to already gave for my gifts I intentionally had the gifts actually in the background and one of my one of my recent videos just so that when I come back and see that video ten years from now you know it'll bring back those members alright alright I wrapped up those presents for but anyway this exercise of once again dissolving my life brings back some of the memories that well okay it brings back some of the issues raised in my discussion of minimalism I did two videos on minimalism one of them is public one of us patreon only subscribers only and of course it brings back the memories of all the other times in my life one of had to stop everything I was doing throw half of my possessions in the garbage throw all my furniture on the garbage I pack up the few things i own and move on to the next city and one of the most extreme in terms of absolutely cutting down your possessions to the bare minimum when i moved with my daughter with a medium-sized baby she was uh you know she wasn't a tiny baby that medium sized baby from france to taiwan you know the the airplane companies they give you like 20 kilograms allowance you know 20 kilogram suitcase some of that maybe you get maybe at two suitcases one's 20 kilograms ones I know 15 or something he actually does vary from what I went to the next but you know the majority of my allowance for both carry on luggage and check luggage had to be for the baby it's all BB stuff we had so much special so to give you an example this was crucial crucial to traveling with a young baby we had a um uh I was gonna say a pen for the baby what's the polite word for a pen we had this you know special safe for babies you could disassemble and reassemble I guess you can call it a playpen I guess you know she could sleep in it she could play in it but the other points you could put her in it and and just ignore her while you wash your hands and come back for 30 seconds it was a safe enclosure for a baby which is cruise ships otherwise you never take your your your eyes off the baby everything your hands out the baby for even 30 seconds and literally when you need to wash your hands need to be able to put the baby doubts of our safe watch your heads come back even if you're just in a hotel room it's crucial that you have that so remember we had this solid steel frame heavy durable rugged playpen for babies owns a travel cot yeah you're right it's a cut but you know the the reason I didn't think of the word caught is that the walls are really high and they're you know they're transparence more like a playpen because the the the kid can jump up and down and you know like you they don't have to lie down they don't sleep in it they can actually stand up and play and be happy so it's uh so UK it's halfway between a cot and a playpen whatever you want to say but with all those safety features you know this is made in Europe what have you buy this stuff for a baby you know it's got all these all this special nomenclature I to assure you that this is actually safe for a baby but as they that's why I mean probably a more stealing it the most bicycles a lot of heavy steel so if what was when i went from France to Taiwan with my daughter I had almost nothing for myself I had this I had this jacket and a few items of clothing and my computer which buddies a you know it's a tiny portable computer you had to just cut down your life to almost nothing and then of course when I later left Taiwan likewise I had almost done because everything was devoted to the baby and including by the way you know you have all these toys and blankets tough to make the baby happy but also necessities for the baby take up your whole luggage allowance uh so anyway but this is experience about again and again I've reflected videos in the past that you know in contrast to the kind of minimalist chic for me I think it's kind of damaging for me that when I left Cambodia uh everything I owned had to be thrown away when I left Saskatchewan in Canada my books that were pretty important to me and pretty important just period all had to be thrown away there's this kind of perpetual cycle of loss but doing it this time even though I'm just moving from one part of China to another part of China interestingly i have had to quantify my worldly possession so in the in the name of minimalism let's briefly reflect on how little or how much i own um the first package i sent to myself so i'm basically using a delivery service of mail service here the first package was over 20 kilograms i think it was maybe 22 kilograms we can round it off the second package i sent to myself was 25 kilograms okay uh why did they waste so much they included a rice cooker which you guys have seen in the background of the past actually a pressure cooker that I can boil beans in both are the kinds of things then they'd included um a bread machine so you guys have not seen that on camera yet but you may soon get baking with a ballast CL so bread machines I can bake my own bread because I'm vegan buying bread has been really really difficult here may actually better in indo home that's another funny long story the French bread of the home that could be its own video maybe I'll maybe I'll make a little documentary about that the legend of the the French bread of dehong China its bit strange so those are two big heavy metal objects a pressure cooker and a bread machine clothes but you guys have seen most of the clothes I camera I don't really have that extensive a collection so this is the first two big packages now i think i can add another 20 kilograms so when i'm carrying on the plane you so get it's a 20 kilogram limit for check luggage um so I think I basically got another 20 kilograms we call it that and what carrying the plane my computer uh the gifts i'm gonna give the teachers when i first arrived just a few items of clothing some food stuff because i'm vegan so you know Carrie Carrie some emergency food is a vegan all the time because you can't yeah but stuff documents you know legal documents because that kind of thing can get stolen if you ship it like condoms there's another example condoms III don't think anyone can sell them on the black market but like in terms of what tempts people to rob you like anything fun like that can get stolen i was talking to my teacher about that it was like so what kind of stuff actually gets stolen when you use these shipping services she was like um sugar like sugar or candies and she said they'll never steal the whole package like if you have sugar they'll steal some of the sugar there's still some of the candies and stuff so anything kind of eye-catching to thieves you kind of you want to carry with you so actually yes um my condoms which are four reasons I won't describe here useless to 99.999% of Chinese men some of you know I'm talking about something I don't there's a reason why I do not use condom and I condoms have to be carried on the airplane um you know but in with my computer and to get my few books so I in terms of the books I own they're incredibly few yeah yeah shut out to shout out to my viewer who sent me rules for radicals I'm probably gonna read this at the airport tomorrow you guys may have a book review of that right soon but in terms of the books I own they're incredibly few because of that passes through books of course of course way a lot so we add that to 140 kilograms of gym equipment so in contrast to the minimalist dream my possessions and I do i do think for a 38 year old man I live like a popper and I don't want to I'll clarifies it all you could say that I own 200 kilograms worth of material uh but you have the significant footnote there that over actually over 140 kilograms are just gym equipment because yeah I'm just counting the weights that doesn't count the way the the bars doesn't count the bench you know got a bench for doing bench press so actually I'm over that the amount of the amount of yeah so the gym equipment raises your toe but so yeah it's a bit of a bizarre mental exercise if you're paying for shipping by the kilogram to calculate how much all of the stuff you own in this world adds up to now I just say again and closing this video I don't glamorize it I've lived this way because I didn't have a choice I didn't have a better option and I i wish i wasn't stuck in the situation i wish i owned all the books that I so carefully collected when I lived in Cambodia when I lived in Laos when I was studying Korean a jib way in Canada a lot of those books although not intrinsically valuable maybe you can't find you can't buy on the internet books because those are in those languages books in Cambodian in lotion in poly of course in Korean a jib way and pertaining to create a jewish studies a lot some of the books i got for free or i got four five dollars some of them some of them were expensive but i can never get them again and those books don't they're not just for the sake of memory it's not just that they symbolize time my life that's gone they also have a real productive value their books i could be using and now i'm never going to have that opportunity again but we'll see i'm going out to a new frontier both literally and figuratively and i'm going to have the opportunity to study languages that extremely few white men in the history of the world had ever studied maybe i'm going to study jing pole maybe i'm going to study at Chiang maybe I'm gonna study die you we don't know uh and maybe everything will go horribly wrong but maybe also again I'm going to acquire some unique objects books that can't be bought for any price anywhere else on the planet and maybe this is going to spark a new period of some kind of really productive research interest for me maybe and the other good news is you guys if your own page you already know this it seems like a good news about my divorce proceedings maybe just a few months from now my daughter is actually going to join me in the Hong maybe I'm going to be spending quality time with my daughter in a beautiful and fascinating part of the world where mangoes literally grow on the streets durianrider eat your heart out and doing writer I'll see your ass in court
my last few hours in kunming china the poster in the background is gone i already literally took the poster off the wall we did that well live streaming rolled it up put it in my suitcase and the suitcase in turn was actually sent by a shipping company so that right now that poster is probably on a train or a truck on its way from coming out toward the border with Myanmar in dehong province till hong prefecture actually the Hong special zone is actually the correct translation makes it sound like a bonus level in an old you know Sega Master System game now entering special zone but it is it is it is a special zone we shouldn't call it a problem anyway so uh I have a couple topics are gonna pop off camera not the most serious topics and make make some videos about literally I've already packed I've already said the room is already bear in some sense and actually some of my last some of my last few jobs here I'm actually wrapping up gifts to give to some of my teachers and coworkers the biggest my main teacher here trying to already gave for my gifts I intentionally had the gifts actually in the background and one of my one of my recent videos just so that when I come back and see that video ten years from now you know it'll bring back those members alright alright I wrapped up those presents for but anyway this exercise of once again dissolving my life brings back some of the memories that well okay it brings back some of the issues raised in my discussion of minimalism I did two videos on minimalism one of them is public one of us patreon only subscribers only and of course it brings back the memories of all the other times in my life one of had to stop everything I was doing throw half of my possessions in the garbage throw all my furniture on the garbage I pack up the few things i own and move on to the next city and one of the most extreme in terms of absolutely cutting down your possessions to the bare minimum when i moved with my daughter with a medium-sized baby she was uh you know she wasn't a tiny baby that medium sized baby from france to taiwan you know the the airplane companies they give you like 20 kilograms allowance you know 20 kilogram suitcase some of that maybe you get maybe at two suitcases one's 20 kilograms ones I know 15 or something he actually does vary from what I went to the next but you know the majority of my allowance for both carry on luggage and check luggage had to be for the baby it's all BB stuff we had so much special so to give you an example this was crucial crucial to traveling with a young baby we had a um uh I was gonna say a pen for the baby what's the polite word for a pen we had this you know special safe for babies you could disassemble and reassemble I guess you can call it a playpen I guess you know she could sleep in it she could play in it but the other points you could put her in it and and just ignore her while you wash your hands and come back for 30 seconds it was a safe enclosure for a baby which is cruise ships otherwise you never take your your your eyes off the baby everything your hands out the baby for even 30 seconds and literally when you need to wash your hands need to be able to put the baby doubts of our safe watch your heads come back even if you're just in a hotel room it's crucial that you have that so remember we had this solid steel frame heavy durable rugged playpen for babies owns a travel cot yeah you're right it's a cut but you know the the reason I didn't think of the word caught is that the walls are really high and they're you know they're transparence more like a playpen because the the the kid can jump up and down and you know like you they don't have to lie down they don't sleep in it they can actually stand up and play and be happy so it's uh so UK it's halfway between a cot and a playpen whatever you want to say but with all those safety features you know this is made in Europe what have you buy this stuff for a baby you know it's got all these all this special nomenclature I to assure you that this is actually safe for a baby but as they that's why I mean probably a more stealing it the most bicycles a lot of heavy steel so if what was when i went from France to Taiwan with my daughter I had almost nothing for myself I had this I had this jacket and a few items of clothing and my computer which buddies a you know it's a tiny portable computer you had to just cut down your life to almost nothing and then of course when I later left Taiwan likewise I had almost done because everything was devoted to the baby and including by the way you know you have all these toys and blankets tough to make the baby happy but also necessities for the baby take up your whole luggage allowance uh so anyway but this is experience about again and again I've reflected videos in the past that you know in contrast to the kind of minimalist chic for me I think it's kind of damaging for me that when I left Cambodia uh everything I owned had to be thrown away when I left Saskatchewan in Canada my books that were pretty important to me and pretty important just period all had to be thrown away there's this kind of perpetual cycle of loss but doing it this time even though I'm just moving from one part of China to another part of China interestingly i have had to quantify my worldly possession so in the in the name of minimalism let's briefly reflect on how little or how much i own um the first package i sent to myself so i'm basically using a delivery service of mail service here the first package was over 20 kilograms i think it was maybe 22 kilograms we can round it off the second package i sent to myself was 25 kilograms okay uh why did they waste so much they included a rice cooker which you guys have seen in the background of the past actually a pressure cooker that I can boil beans in both are the kinds of things then they'd included um a bread machine so you guys have not seen that on camera yet but you may soon get baking with a ballast CL so bread machines I can bake my own bread because I'm vegan buying bread has been really really difficult here may actually better in indo home that's another funny long story the French bread of the home that could be its own video maybe I'll maybe I'll make a little documentary about that the legend of the the French bread of dehong China its bit strange so those are two big heavy metal objects a pressure cooker and a bread machine clothes but you guys have seen most of the clothes I camera I don't really have that extensive a collection so this is the first two big packages now i think i can add another 20 kilograms so when i'm carrying on the plane you so get it's a 20 kilogram limit for check luggage um so I think I basically got another 20 kilograms we call it that and what carrying the plane my computer uh the gifts i'm gonna give the teachers when i first arrived just a few items of clothing some food stuff because i'm vegan so you know Carrie Carrie some emergency food is a vegan all the time because you can't yeah but stuff documents you know legal documents because that kind of thing can get stolen if you ship it like condoms there's another example condoms III don't think anyone can sell them on the black market but like in terms of what tempts people to rob you like anything fun like that can get stolen i was talking to my teacher about that it was like so what kind of stuff actually gets stolen when you use these shipping services she was like um sugar like sugar or candies and she said they'll never steal the whole package like if you have sugar they'll steal some of the sugar there's still some of the candies and stuff so anything kind of eye-catching to thieves you kind of you want to carry with you so actually yes um my condoms which are four reasons I won't describe here useless to 99.999% of Chinese men some of you know I'm talking about something I don't there's a reason why I do not use condom and I condoms have to be carried on the airplane um you know but in with my computer and to get my few books so I in terms of the books I own they're incredibly few yeah yeah shut out to shout out to my viewer who sent me rules for radicals I'm probably gonna read this at the airport tomorrow you guys may have a book review of that right soon but in terms of the books I own they're incredibly few because of that passes through books of course of course way a lot so we add that to 140 kilograms of gym equipment so in contrast to the minimalist dream my possessions and I do i do think for a 38 year old man I live like a popper and I don't want to I'll clarifies it all you could say that I own 200 kilograms worth of material uh but you have the significant footnote there that over actually over 140 kilograms are just gym equipment because yeah I'm just counting the weights that doesn't count the way the the bars doesn't count the bench you know got a bench for doing bench press so actually I'm over that the amount of the amount of yeah so the gym equipment raises your toe but so yeah it's a bit of a bizarre mental exercise if you're paying for shipping by the kilogram to calculate how much all of the stuff you own in this world adds up to now I just say again and closing this video I don't glamorize it I've lived this way because I didn't have a choice I didn't have a better option and I i wish i wasn't stuck in the situation i wish i owned all the books that I so carefully collected when I lived in Cambodia when I lived in Laos when I was studying Korean a jib way in Canada a lot of those books although not intrinsically valuable maybe you can't find you can't buy on the internet books because those are in those languages books in Cambodian in lotion in poly of course in Korean a jib way and pertaining to create a jewish studies a lot some of the books i got for free or i got four five dollars some of them some of them were expensive but i can never get them again and those books don't they're not just for the sake of memory it's not just that they symbolize time my life that's gone they also have a real productive value their books i could be using and now i'm never going to have that opportunity again but we'll see i'm going out to a new frontier both literally and figuratively and i'm going to have the opportunity to study languages that extremely few white men in the history of the world had ever studied maybe i'm going to study jing pole maybe i'm going to study at Chiang maybe I'm gonna study die you we don't know uh and maybe everything will go horribly wrong but maybe also again I'm going to acquire some unique objects books that can't be bought for any price anywhere else on the planet and maybe this is going to spark a new period of some kind of really productive research interest for me maybe and the other good news is you guys if your own page you already know this it seems like a good news about my divorce proceedings maybe just a few months from now my daughter is actually going to join me in the Hong maybe I'm going to be spending quality time with my daughter in a beautiful and fascinating part of the world where mangoes literally grow on the streets durianrider eat your heart out and doing writer I'll see your ass in court