We're Moving to Taiwan. NOW.

07 February 2019 [link youtube]


Channel update / life update / etc.


Youtube Automatic Transcription

this is a quick update for supporters on
patreon not that there's anything secret about it I just assumed that nobody on the internet would care or aside from my supporters on patreon we just bought the airplane tickets and made the bookings for a first Department to relocate to the island of Taiwan just over one month from now approximately one month and ten days Melissa is smiling like a Cheshire Cat you're gonna smell so goddamn bug aren't you going Tamara I don't blame you but I don't know yes senior yeah smiling like the Joker mends my yeah my you're smiling the Joker who got Batman in a cage no okay okay oh okay so you're sitting in cool um no no it's cool good school lean in lean in um so look you know in the past I've made warnings like oh I'm gonna be so busy I'm hardly gonna make any YouTube videos and then I do like four videos a week you've been watching you watch your video long enough you you live through several peers that before you even met me was like oh look guys I'm really busy so but that was not the only that was a long time but I've been through several different transitions my life now one of the reasons for that is that when I'm exhausted and busy it's actually easy for me to make youtube videos it I did a video time with us recently you know making YouTube it was a lot easier than you think it is and when you have a lot going on your life taking 15 minutes to record a monologue of what's on your mind is easy however what I think this really does delay is the transition to the new model I already announced over my other channel AR IO so since we got to Victoria I went to the library once and the library was really disappointing but I was going to that library getting geared up for you know really digging into doing more active research and presenting in foreign opinion so I want to transition what I'm doing here to be greater in depth and to really cover more political content in a systematic way just to give you guys one example I want to start reading Times of India recently I could change mine I would like to read some of the major newspapers of India say once a week set up a schedule I can't read the newspaper from India every day but you know I make a list India Singapore you know Japan obviously Taiwan where I'm got a list of publications where every week I'm scanning and keeping a table what's going on internationally and then obviously I hope I do some more in-depth reading of some other kinds Melissa pointed out actually this t-shirt is actually a an echo of our brief period of time in Vancouver and the dream that was lost there let me step by step we've lost all the things that tied us to Canada if any of you are in Canada and want some of our secondhand goods we're gonna be throwing away or giving away or selling um you know a lot of the baking equipment we amassed here or some of the heavy cooking and baking equipment because when we moved here we had very different education and career plans that are now out the window now for you my viewers on YouTube or my supporters on patreon I do think this is all for the best I think you know the quality of content you're going to get is only gonna increase um however for the next one month I don't even think the number of videos I'm gonna upload is gonna decrease I think though it's gonna kind of be more of the same it's gonna be more like the old Abela CL and I'm not yet gonna be able to make the transition into what I want to do with active research really being a component where it's not just me talking about my opinion but it's like hey guys I did a stack of reading on this issue and guess what I found in some ways a humble enough thing but I do actually really have a sense of you know really doing a kind of community service and I really feel like sorry for me as someone who wants to watch and read politics on the internet it's really depressing what's available out there yeah go for you as a member the audience man or someone looking for political content yeah right there will like okay like there's Jimmy Dore but then for the continent of Asia like we watch one YouTube channel called Formosa English news each video is about 30 seconds long it's good but it's just little new-snippets ya-ya-ya-ya-ya there is very very little for the whole continent of Asia and even for Europe and North America the pickings are really slim so that's something that I feel is valuable to a lot of people and it's something I would value doing myself didn't want us what you do so the other thing I was gonna mention is Chinese I just wrote an email now in Chinese very casually and in two minutes and it really makes me feel oh wow you know like I still have this high level of ability in the language but as many of you will know when I think I will maybe even tomorrow do a video discussing this Taiwan uses traditional Chinese a different rating system for the language their manner of speaking is also significantly different so to give an example that word for garbage is they just have a completely different word for garbage can then the word used in Communist China that's not like because of communism the Congress probably did have a secret plan for that some other words were because of communism like the word for landlord there's so much like that that changed her slightly political reasons um but you know I made you a video time with that but in terms of what happens in the next one month I definitely am still going to be making videos on a bela CL and maybe will make some more videos talking about learning Chinese and work in the language but also I think I should suddenly now put more emphasis in priority I'm working on Chinese as a language so the other subject for me to make videos about probably in this month is also my divorce which is linked to and impacts all of my travel plans I finally got some of the key divorce documents translated from French into English how much does that cost $2,500 it was a lot of fun yeah and I don't have all of them there are some other documents I have an intern so there's some documents were in Chinese in a number trends in English there's a project for you um but you know gotta talk about that and in very broad brushstrokes I've gotten menacing emails from my ex-wife now suggesting that like I'm not gonna hear from my daughter again and legally she's not in a position to do that but we don't know what it means and you know that's linked to our travel it's linked to other things so again I think for my YouTube Ewing Rd this is all basically good news whether or not it's good news in my life is another question real briefly months has already heard me say this to a whole lot of people you see me say it in both English and in Chinese but people ask about the move I really routinely say well you know it's it's really a hundred percent positive from Melissa maybe it's only sixty percent positive for me maybe it's seventy percent positive for me it's definitely going to be very intellectually stimulating for me to be back in Taiwan but it is true at age forty preparing to turn fifty preparing to turn sixty this is not really what I wanted to be doing at this juncture my life but it is a hundred percent positive for Melissa and for me it is probably more positive than negative one thing you got to do when you hit age forty paradoxically enough is switch from having a product centered view of your life to a process centered view because you only got process left if I blow six years getting a PhD the process is the product that's six years of my life I'll never get back I'm not really gonna do very much the PhD so I've got to start living my life today the way I would if I already had a PhD anyway and that's why as I said I want to devote myself as never before to active research and a fourth opinion and maybe I'm gonna be able to bring my audience news from China you know sources written in Chinese that otherwise though the Western world and people on YouTube are not really getting access to they're always interested in controversy slipping around I hope I can reach a larger audience by taking on more political material we all know there's the danger that I'm really gonna reach a much much smaller audience but you know I'm very pleased to have played the role that I did please yeah I'm very pleased to play the role I did play within the vegan movement in the last five years and there is a vegan movement in Taiwan and maybe you know will be able to join in some positive stuff there but on the other hand you know I've never wanted to be someone who's treading water I've never want to be someone who's repeating myself and for me the way out of that kind of repetition is to get into deeper and more meaningful content of a more explicitly political kind and where I really feel I'm serving a I'm doing a public service to do something very positive for the audience directly through research and sharing my you have been well that's right this is your first time going to Taiwan and Melissa is going to be in a role as a full-time student this also relates to Melissa right Melissa just got a formal credential as an English teacher she already was an experienced and qualified English teacher but you just got another piece of paper on top of that a certificate saying I can teach English second language and you're gonna get certified to some extent as a student of Chinese and she'll be formally studying and I will not so again that's very positive for my YouTube audience that I'm I'm gonna have an open schedule and a lot of that should go into research and content creation and yeah I mean babe you know up to just a short time ago I thought you know melissa is 26 so there's a lot of talk lately about how emotionally mature and self-sufficient or that any person should be at 26 years old I thought it would actually be really positive for her to go over and attempt the trip alone just you know get set up and so on but you know I thought if she just had a couple of months until one alone and might might be a but no I'm apparently I'm I've been I've been roped into it hey so you get it easy because they're traveling with me you're travelling with someone who already speaks Chinese and already has a lot of experience it's true a lot of experience living in an exploring Taiwan logically that would make sense for me to get the experience and try to write you know right but this will maybe enable you to buckle down and focus focus and make the most out of the experience in other ways so guys that is our boring update on our lives and I think that all of it does link to what we're doing you're on patreon what we're doing on YouTube stay tuned