Recorded live in Dong Da, Hanoi, Vietnam 100000

Hello from Melbourne! I am back in Melbs and it was absolutely lovely to be home for a bit before diving into the hustle of 2020.

One of the best things about being home was reconnecting to my best mates in Hanoi. A lot of us flew home from all over the place, and we picked up right where we left off after almost 2 years. Before I begin writing about this conversation, I would just like to give a huge shoutout to all my friends, and to all the deep convos we had that really energised me. I love you all.

In this episode of The Glocals, I welcomed you to my family and shared a convo I had with my damn best cousin/best friend/neighbour: Ha (Paul). It was the first time that we could properly sit down and talk after almost 2 years apart. We talked about our quarter-life crises, anxiety, ethics and friendships. We went all over the place but the key takeaways were how the power of vulnerability and being open could really help us to overcome anxiety and also filter our circles. The funny part about all this was, I did most of the talking, but it was a really good convo to me. I did not feel weird for doing most of the talking because I was open to my best mate who happened to be a quiet person.

Being a twenty-something is always associated with figuring out where you wanna be and how to get there. And we are the same, but if there is one thing I would love to share with everyone, that is how you can SWOT yourself! Yes, that is a thing. I picked that up from a workshop I attended not long ago, and I realised that I’d been doing that all along. Maybe you have been doing that too, but I am positive that we can truly get somewhere by focusing on our Strengths and Opportunities while looking out for our Weaknesses and Threats. We’d love to hear your thoughts on this, and please shower us with tips to deal with our quarter-life crises!

Another thing that we discussed in detail was how our best mates could save us heaps of therapy money, and Ha told me that he has more girl besties than guy ones because with girls, he could express himself and be deep on a whole different level compared to that with guys. Personally, I have had the chance to talk to guys who are expressive and also listened to podcasts about/by expressive men, so I believe that by opening up, Ha could really find those guy friends to be deep with and learn from. What do you think? Should we open up more? Are guys also expressive and deep? We would love to hear your thoughts!

Thank you for listening, and thank you Ha for being a part of The Glocals.

All our love,

Ha and Lu

We hope you learn something new today!