2 Asian Dudes Talking

We continue our previous discussions about the protests currently taking place in Hong Kong, and this time we invited Kahan back for a third opinion. And we’ve essentially arrived at what we believe to be the cusp of the protests: Is Hong Kong a part of China? We three have our own opinions, and the divergence of that opinion demonstrates how this protest is likely to end on a very unhappy note. Give the episode a listen, and if you’re at ground zero, we would love to hear from you.

Although we're more than 7,000 miles away from Hong Kong, the current protest still affects us as both Derrick and I still have roots there. It's difficult to get a full and complete story so far away from the epicenter, but we do our best to bring our viewpoints to our listeners and try to limit the bias as much as possible. For those of you on the ground, please let us know your thoughts and correct us if what we believe is not true.

The last episode we started to discuss how growing up as poor affected our values, goals, and life in general. In this episode, we continue that topic and hash out all the ways we believe our lives were different due to growing up poor vs the more affluent social groups we saw around us. For better or worse, the lack of resources had a great impact on our upbringing and development.

Do we, first-generation Asian immigrants, tend to be pessimistic in our world-views? Derrick and I invited our friend, Kahan, to discuss this question with us; and it led to a very lively discussion on what pessimism actually means and whether or not the tendency can be traced back to any one factor.  

Here's a question:  how much does hard way really affect your success in life?  Is hard work an automatically equivalent of finding success in your job, school, or life in general?  Or is there perhaps a lot of other factors which can influence the outcome of your pursuits?  Derrick and I debate this question based on our experiences in grade school and at our first jobs.  Hard work definitely plays a role, but...

Andrew works in the field of Legal Technology, and Derrick works in Finance.  We both basically fell into our careers, and looking back, while there are probably things we could have done differently; we're not sure we would have chosen other career paths.  Building a career in the US, and the choices we made as we grew into that career is the topic of Episode 4.

We both immigrated to the US around the age of 9 with an almost non-existent understanding of the English Language.  Through some trials and tribulations, we managed to develop at least a working mastery of the language.  From embarrassing first-attempts at proper pronunciation to navigating the office environment; here are the lessons we garnered around learning to read and write English.

Derrick and I both turned 40 a little over a year ago, and it made us a bit retrospective.  Here's Episode 2, talking about what it means to grow "old" and whether the "mid-life crisis" is real.

This is our inaugural podcast, a little background about Derrick and myself.  Andrew is from the Refugee Camps of Hong Kong, and Derrick grew up in the fast-changing city of Guangzhou, China.  We both now live in sunny Southern California, and there have been changes during the transition.  This is who we are.  Nice to meet you :)