Recorded live in Epping, Sydney NSW 2121 on Thursday, 2 January 2020 at the early hours.

Greetings from The Glocals in the new Decade. All the best from ours to yours!

Welcome back Anna Banana with a new name! She finally got a Viet name after hanging out with the Viet for so long, and we both love it.

On a serious note, I reckon a lot of us have been doing our reflections and thinking about how the last decade went. Personally, this podcast series has helped me put things into perspective a lot. At first, 10 years ago seemed like a long time ago and I thought what I did back then meant little to who I am now. But I was wrong. Me at 14 was the me that made a lot of touch choices. These choices have constantly helped me to become more me everyday. This little reflection has also helped me to never underestimate the power of youth, which lives in me and people so much younger or older than me.

At 14, I couldn’t imagine celebrating 2020 in Sydney with my mom and a newly found best friend. I could never imagine having a life like the one I am leading right now, and I am so thankful for all the things that I get to learn. Somewhat foreign concepts like veganism have come into my life and opened my eyes so much thanks to my beloved friends, and that is what Anna and I discussed in this convo. It is a really good one as we got to really sit down and understand each other’s point of view and find balance in this somewhat taboo topic. Sending messages like veganism is good for the planet and us all can only work when they are delivered in a positive way, so please tune in to hear what we have to say from 2 sides of the table.

All our love,

Anna (Chui) and Lu

Recorded live in Carlton, Melbourne VIC, Australia 3010 on Thursday 5 December 2019.

As this is the last conversation to be shared by The Glocals in 2019, I hope that it leaves a strong impact on how we as a society are supporting things and people, and I hope that stuff that matters will remain/become the key of focus in our daily lives. I am so grateful to my bestie Kimmy for introducing me to her stepsister Eva, who is an absolute gem to this world. She prepared dot points for a conversation with me cause she took this really seriously, and I really appreciate how much she was for this idea of sharing knowledge and curating empathy globally. We gave a lot of shoutouts in this convo and I just love how the people in our lives help put things into perspective for us. Personally, I don't know Eva very well but I guess I know enough, and I did learn so much more about her and about Australia through this convo. Our differences in terms of speaking up and my personal reflections thanks to our discussion taught me a lot about different personas and how I need to actually woman up and just say what needs to be said. Going further from there to what has been happening here, while learning about how the Australian Government has been approaching refugees in different aspects, my heart broke a little for the people struggling with no certainty and no safety out there. Being from another country myself, I do realise how lucky I am to have a roof over my head and all I need to have a comfortable life in Australia while others out there just desperately need the basics to survive. And I just adore how Eva uses social media for both fun and good by speaking up against injustices and raise awareness about what can be done to help, so I am learning from her and I hope you are too. https://www.facebook.com/j4r.au/ is Justice for Refugees FB page, so please give it a look if you care about the struggling refugees and want to help in any way you can. At the end, we did wanna go into something fun and Eva really wanted to talk about sex, which I'm 100% down for, so Eva please come back and we'll have a whole talk on that, or if not for this poddy then just with me! On a more serious note, Eva's overall message to the world after this convo is "If we have the privilege to be able to speak up, we should step up, even in everyday conversations.", and I believe in its power simply because it actually aligns with what The Glocals is all about. I am in awe of where the podcast itself is heading and how these conversations are shaping me, so thank you so so much to everyone who has agreed to join me on this little journey of my life, and thank you to Eva for our fantastic time. You can find Eva on Facebook at Eva Jordens and Instagram @eva.jordens. Get to know her and learn more about how you can help refugees + heaps of other people in need.

May the new Decade be filled with meaningful convos like this and may The Glocals bring the world what it needs to be a better place with better humans.

All our love,

Eva and Lu

Recorded live in Melbourne CBD, VIC, Australia 3000 on Thursday 5 December 2019.

This convo was recorded the day after I turned 24th, and also the day after I officially launched this podcast, so yes, it was a very exciting time. And naturally, it got Pooja and me talking about Birthdays because of all their awesomeness, but most importantly, because of how much we both love them.

Before I keep ranting about how great our convo was, I do feel the need to introduce Pooja as the Queen of Everything. Literally. I’ve only known her for a short while but she has turned my world upside down in a magical way. She’s introduced me to all the amazing humans that I’ve got to call friends, who also threw me the best birthday party ever. Well, never in my life had I experienced a surprise pop culture themed birthday party, and yes, I loved it and I love it. Not that my other friends aren’t awesome, but this party was one of its kind, and the memories were just beautiful. So thank you heaps again guys, I feel so blessed to have you in my life!

Back to this convo, it actually helped me put things into perspective regarding how all my relationships mean and how that shows through my birthday. That is because Pooja brought up the culture of celebrating birthdays and how birthdays can act as a filter for all your relationships. To her, they help her evaluate how much the relationships, especially friendships, have progressed and whether they are actually adding values to her life. To this point, I could not agree more, and I also feel that this is a great pointer should we feel confused in a relationship, no matter what kind of relationship that is. You know how we’ve learned to Kon-Marie our stuff, and now it’s probably time to learn to Poo-Gan our relationships! Man, you gotta listen to the way Pooja talked about this, cause it was not only hilarious but also 100% applicable.

Even though we discussed our own birthdays at length, the one thing that I love the most is probably how we both talked about how much we love and appreciate the people in our lives who have constantly been there and made the ride worthwhile. And to anyone who is not celebrating their birthday yet: Please find us, we will convert you into loving your birthday and enjoying it to the fullest. Always celebrate yourselves, for you are worth it!

To my dearest DJ PJ: I love you, you have no idea! I appreciate you more than ever, and I hope to have you as a friend no matter where we are. For all your coming birthdays, I’ll be there, one way or another.

To my dear listeners: Thank you for being an amazing human, and I hope you cherish your birthdays, always. Is there anything that’s been sparked in your soul after listening to us giggling birthdays away? If yes, please feel free to share it with me!! And if you are keen to find out more about Pooja, her IG is @sucubus4eve and you can also find her on Facebook and Linkedin @Pooja Ganesh. What an amazing human!

Finally, after these 5 convos, if you feel like the show is actually adding values to your life, please help us - the humans of The Glocals share it and spread the knowledge, the love and the magic to others so everyone can gain a bit more empathy today. Thank you!

Love,

Pooja and Lu

Recorded live in Melbourne CBD, Australia 3000 on Monday 16 Dec 2019.

Recorded live in Melbourne CBD, Australia on Monday 2 Dec 2019.

Dear Noah, I love you so so much. Thank you for supporting my idea and for getting me coffee after recording this with me. And above all, thank you for being you. I learn so much from you and so grateful to have you as a friend, Lover!

Meet Noah, my baby who guarantees to bring smiles on your face even on Melbourne’s craziest day.

We became friends in the weirdest scenario, with Noah calling me LANY at first cause I was wearing their merch the day we met. I then requested to be called Taylor Swift, which was absolutely 100% loved by Noah, because turns out, he’s a Swiftie too!

Long story short, a few months later, here we are.

I just want to take a moment and acknowledge the fact that I adore Noah so much as a human who is so caring, and I also feel so grateful that he supports this podcast idea of mine so much. Doing this podcast has really allowed me to bravely ask my friends the deep questions knowing that they would talk about their desired topics with all their hearts. The same applies to Noah, and I am so grateful that we had this convo. To me personally, this convo has taken our friendship to the next level with me learning more about how my dear Noah sees Psychology beyond having it as his major at uni, and him learning more about me almost taking Psych for my undergrad.

Learning about Psych in this way is deffo more fun and applicable for me, and hopefully for everyone. What are schemas and how can they help you understand your patterns of thoughts? Are there schemas in your personal lives that you can recognise? Are you awfulising your situation?

Psychology is honestly so so fun and applicable in everyday life, but I am aware that not everyone has the privilege of learning about the basics of it despite its necessity. Even though I alone cannot better international education, perhaps my convo with Noah can help a lot of people out there struggling with their thoughts. There are certain things we can do to get ourselves out of the rut that we sometimes put ourselves in, and there are lessons we can learn from patterns of behaviour of ours, which funnily enough we can only understand years and years later.

Noah and I did joke about making the convo about Taylor, but as she’s turned 30 and made one hell of a speech accepting Woman of the Decade awards, we are deffo having one soon!

More on Noah if you are keen to get to know him:

Thank you for reading the show notes and for supporting meaningful conversations that I get to have. Please share it if you find it helpful to the world.

All our love,

Noah and Lu

Recorded live in Melbourne CBD, Australia on Friday 1 Nov 2019.

Meet my Anna Banana, or as our mate Noah calls her, Annie Bananie, my newly found bestie with an age-old kind of friendship. We hit it off so well the first time we really talked that I thought it couldn’t be real. But it is. I remember explaining my idea of The Glocals to her one day after uni and she just immediately picked it up and told me how meaningful this podcast can be to the world. I will never ever forget that moment cause I instantly knew that we are meant to be. We are both in our early 20s and figuring things out, and we don’t know where we’re heading. But we know that wherever we are, we have each other and our friendship is one to be cherished forever. Maybe that’s why she just wanted to talk to me about friendship when we recorded this episode, and maybe she wanted to talk about it because friendship plays such a huge part in her life.

We didn’t have anything scripted and sometimes we didn’t even know how to express ourselves, but we had such an awesome time reflecting on ourselves and laughing our butts off. I asked Anna if she’d like to add anything to the show notes and she just complimented on my writing. Honestly, I cannot express enough how grateful I am to have known this human. Shoutout to Pooja our queen for connecting us in the first place! One thing that I wanna point out is English serves as the second language for both of us, so the very fact that we could connect so well is a major testimonial for human connections regardless of all kinds of borders and differences.

As we are approaching the end of this decade, it is so common to see long-distance friendships like what we are experiencing and about to experience in our own. I am so glad that we had this convo given that it has enabled us to understand each other’s wishes for our own friendship and for friendships in our lives in general. Thanks to this random deep chat like all the others of ours, we have also been able to envision our future even though it’s bittersweet to think about. Agreeing that maintaining this friendship, like any others, has got to be a 2-way street, Anna and I have felt more confident in being friends, making friends and keeping friends. As much as we would like to share with the world that it takes effort to be a good friend, we would also love to acknowledge that being a good friend requires as much as a short meaningful message or a quick check-in call.

As we found each other, we’d also lost some friends and now we know that it’s actually for our sake. We got to filter our circles and reflect on our life changes, and we have found more people like us. It is such an important and beautiful thing.

We are grateful for each other and all of our amazing friends. We are so grateful to be able to share our lessons with you, and we know that more friendship lessons will come to us. But for now, we hope our convo can inspire you in some ways to be a better friend, making more meaningful friendships, and especially, making that one phone call or sending that one message you know you should have made or sent in a while.

All our love,

Anna and Lu

P/S: Hey Anna my darling, I love this convo of ours so much and I am so glad we can listen to it again whenever we miss each other, so may we keep the sparks alive, always.

Recorded live in Melbourne, Australia.

Hey there! Have we talked before? If not, then this is the perfect chance to start a conversation. I am starting The Glocals as a platform to share the real stuff through daily conversations. What we talk about matters, don't you think?

The Glocals might seem like a new term, or maybe not, but I love the fact that we are approaching the end of this decade and welcoming 2020 with a whole new world of Locals living as Global citizens, hence The Glocals! Compared to the last decade, the community that we have now is a completely different one. With this change, it is so important that we are culturally aware, socially aware, self aware, and ... everything aware! However, it does not mean that everyone gets to be places, so I thought I'd take everyone places with this podcast. I learn so much from just talking to my glocal friends and glocal people I get to meet, and I am forever grateful for what I have learned over the past 2 years in Australia.

Now, I am so excited to not only share these conversations with the world, but also have them saved forever so I can listen to these lessons over and over, whenever I want. If you feel like this is something that would add magic to your life, why don't you give it a listen and take this open conversation to the next step by letting me know your thoughts?