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THIS WEEK we chat with Creatrix Tiara. Tiara started interacting with others online in chat rooms at 10 years old while IRL living in Malaysia. Over the years Tiara’s geographical path has included locations in Malaysia, Australia and the U.S. While Tiara’s geographic life shifted, Tiara’s online life seems to have had an upward trajectory in notariety and impact due to the candid and eloquent vocalization of immigrant and queer issues.

​Like many Online Content Creators, Tiara’s work going viral has not balanced notoriety with financial freedom. But perhaps that will change with the Queer Lady Magician show Tiara is currently doing (the next round of which will take place at the Melbourne LGBTQ Festival Midsumma from January 30-February 3, 2019). Judging from the voluminous body of work, Tiara will no doubt keep writing and creating for as long as possible. This passion to analyze, share and question is what first led me to Tiara’s creations and is why I love keeping up to date on what Tiara is doing. 

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This week we talk to Von, an American who grew up around Mandarin Chinese via martial arts and later intentionally slid into learning to read the language as well. Von thought the first 4 of the 5 years he studied Chinese were easy because he viewed it similar to the frequent practice of any new skill. But then the grammatical difficulty, script changes, and genre differences kicked in and the “brain burn” began.​But that has not stopped his progress at all. He studies usually in intensive two week increments of about 6 hours a day and then pauses until the desire to learn returns (usually a few weeks later). His patience, persistence and contextualization of the language are ideal characteristics for what I wish were called the “Slow Language Learning Movement.” In a world where people strive to learn a language in 30 days, his views are refreshing and his approach is inspiring. Come along and listen to how he wants to use language to “speak the story of what he wants to say."

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This week we expat chat with first time expat, Miicher, a Florida, US native who decided it was time for a change. Miicher is a teacher, an actor, a mom and a natural storyteller, which explains why her Facebook China Chronicles , where she has been sharing her experiences in Shanghai, China, have become such a hit. 

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🤸🏽 Need help with your podcast: https://www.saneandsimplepodcasting.com

Top 3 services that have help me while living in different countries: Affiliate links so I'll get a small commission.

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In this episode we talk to  沃维薇 (Wò wéi wēi), also known as Liz, about her dual Mandarin Chinese-English language experiences. Liz grew up in Shanghai, China with a passion for books and languages, which explains why and how she was reading English Sci-Fi at 14 years old. She is now a Simultaneous Interpreter, which is someone that is translating one language to another during a conversation at regular conversational speed. Yes, wow is the correct response to that.

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🤸🏽 Need help with your podcast: https://www.saneandsimplepodcasting.com

Top 3 services that have help me while living in different countries: Affiliate links so I'll get a small commission.

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Alison Maciejewski made me think long and hard about food photos in our shifting expat lives. How does our wanderlust come through online?  But the conversation is not all serious, we have some fun comparing emoji options on Line (in Thailand) and WeChat (in China), what and where “ugly delicious food” is, and how using teen dramas are a good way to learn the Thai language.

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🤸🏽Music from
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🤸🏽 Need help with your podcast: https://www.saneandsimplepodcasting.com

Top 3 services that have help me while living in different countries: Affiliate links so I'll get a small commission.

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THIS WEEK we are proud to have Anh Ta with us for a conversation about how geographic movement from Vietnam to the U.S. has affected her online experience. Anh is an Artist with a strong online presence that she carefully curated for both professional and personal usage.

She originally moved from Hanoi, Vietnam to the U.S. for her Bachelor’s Degree and has just completed her Master’s Degree in Art recently as well. Congratulations Anh! She is currently creating art and sharing it and other aspects of her life online from New York City.

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🤸🏽 Need help with your podcast: https://www.saneandsimplepodcasting.com

Top 3 services that have help me while living in different countries: Affiliate links so I'll get a small commission.

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In this episode we talk to Matthew Boyle, who started learning Mandarin Chinese thanks to an administrative error in his Arabic class registration at university. In 2011, he moved from the East Coast of the United States to Southern China and started to “play with the language” immediately.

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🤸🏽 Need help with your podcast: https://www.saneandsimplepodcasting.com

Top 3 services that have help me while living in different countries: Affiliate links so I'll get a small commission.

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This week we expat chat with Hannah Lund, who is magnetic, funny and thinky. Her geographic trajectory includes her home state of Minnesota and a quiet town in Iowa in the U.S., Paris, France and Hangzhou, China. In 2012 it was a mystical story involving a character called Madame White Snake, set in Hangzhou, which was the inspiration for this move to China but Hannah soon found out there were so many more unexpected surprises that would come from this experience. 

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🤸🏽Music from
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🤸🏽 Need help with your podcast: https://www.saneandsimplepodcasting.com

Top 3 services that have help me while living in different countries: Affiliate links so I'll get a small commission.

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Steve left the UK for a trip to Spain quite a number of years ago. After that trip he ended up living in Greece for a year and just reached his 6 year anniversary in Asia this month. After living a number of years both on and offline in mainland China, he moved to Hong Kong earlier this year, where he now works as a Life Coach.

​Like yours truly, he has been an avid user of online technologies and social media from the beginning and has a lot of stories of wonderful and not so wonderful things that have happened online. And, also like myself, he has a lot of questions about what the hell we are doing online and how sustainable our virtual selves are going forward. His expat geographic life and VRL (virtual reality life) do in fact seem to affect each other in a rather interesting way, so have a listen and let us know what you think.

Traveling Mailbox: https://travelingmailbox.com/?ref=3422

🤸🏽Music from
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🤸🏽 Need help with your podcast: https://www.saneandsimplepodcasting.com

Top 3 services that have help me while living in different countries: Affiliate links so I'll get a small commission.

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Ziwei is originally from China’s. He's hands down one of the most intelligent, motivated, and hard working people I have ever known. We met in a Natural Language Processing class (taught by Sowmya, guest on the Virtual Expat Podcast in Iowa State University’s PhD in Applied Linguistics and Technology Program.​ In this conversation we talk about his experiences learning Mandarin Chinese and English as a child.

Traveling Mailbox: https://travelingmailbox.com/?ref=3422

🤸🏽Music from
Damon Castillo: https://www.damoncastillo.com/ and Key Frame Audio , https://keyframeaudio.com/

🤸🏽 Need help with your podcast: https://www.saneandsimplepodcasting.com

Top 3 services that have help me while living in different countries: Affiliate links so I'll get a small commission.

🔥 Traveling Mailbox: scan/forward postal service for Americans. It's saved me time, money and headaches.
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🔥Chase Sapphire Credit Card: annual fee, NO currency conversion fee. Used this in many countries globally.
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