Had a burst of inspiration last week and reached out to a fellow Twitter-er by the name of Hikosaemon. He agreed to be on my podcast and this is the result!

Hikosaemon has been in Japan for over 22 years and hosts his own news show live on YouTube every Sunday night at 10.30 pm Japan Standard Time. Other than his news show, he hosts other videos and blogs, makes his own music, and maintains a constant presence on Twitter. Today we were able to sit down and talk about life in Japan and China, what it’s like to learn Japanese and Chinese, and a few other things about living as an expat.

This is a shorter show, clocking in at around 71 minutes so I hope you enjoy!

Full show notes at https://www.stevensirski.com/ssp15-vlogger-hikosaemon/

This week I have another guest and friend from here in Beijing. He’s a self-described rather “unremarkable man” but has done something remarkable during the COVID-19 lockdown: he’s watched a lot of movies. One a day… for the last six months.

Today we Zoom together (because we got rained out in Beijing) and talk about moving to China, life as an ESL teacher, movies and what makes them good or bad. It’s a comical conversation that I’m sure you’ll derive all sorts of pop culture factoids that you can use to impress your friends (or get out of fights) and even add to your movie watch list.

Enjoy!

Full show notes at https://www.stevensirski.com/ssp14-film-junkie-owen-johnston/

Recorded Thursday, July 16, 2020.

Journalist Chen Caiwei joins me today on the show to discuss everything from learning another language, dating and matching with people on Tinder (and how bad conversational techniques are used to learn a language), music and culture both in China and abroad, and life as a student overseas and a lot more!

I’ll let you read through the show notes to see some of the topics we cover and the conversation does get intense at times. It’s not just debate, Caiwei provides some perspectives on modern Chinese culture and good information for Chinese students who are living overseas who might be feeling a little bit alienated in their new surroundings.

This week’s guest (my second!) is a friend from my hometown, Winnipeg, Canada! Jake Sacher has over 20 years of experience in the music industry and now runs his own studio. In this episode we talk about the technology, working in the studio, the current music scene, how things have changed, how the internet changed things for everyone, and Jake’s advice for musicians who want to make a career in the music industry. Hope you enjoy!

(We had some issues with Zoom before we going going but we got it sorted and everything went well after that!)

Full show notes up on https://www.stevensirski.com/ssp12-audio-engineer-jake-sacher/

Recorded on Tuesday, June 23, 2020 at Forbidden City Studios in Beijing, China.

This week’s episode features my first guest! Former colleague and good friend Steve Blaque has been in China for nearly 20 years. A singer songwriter and recently and now retired, he agreed to sit down with me for a rather lengthy conversation about music and life in China.

This conversation went on a lot longer than both of us expected but, instead of cutting it down, I’ve left just about all of it in and made notes of key points throughout the interview so you can skip through the parts you’re not interested in. Parts of the conversation get really technical about music production so it’s understandable if some people want to skip past those parts but I leave it in because I know a few people who would’ve loved to have the opportunity to sit down and hear how this guy works as a musician.

The interview can be broken into two main parts: music and audio production and life in China.

Full show notes up on https://www.stevensirski.com/ssp11-singer-songwriter-steve-blaque/