Pei Pals with Pei

Hi there, you are listening to pei pals and today I am interviewing someone I’ve known for 39 years, quite literally my longest lasting pal, my mom.  So welcome to a special episode of the podcast—one that’s a little different and a lot more personal. Today, I’m sitting down with my mom for our first-ever recorded conversation. We’ve never really done this before—just the two of us, talking a...

Hi there, you’re listening to Pei Pals , and today I’m interviewing my friend Davis. Davis, for lack of a better word, is an alien. And I mean that with affection—truly, in the most positive way possible. I later discovered that whatever I I was feeling is the feeling of being in the presence of a future billionaire. They're just built different. I met Davis over Korean BBQ a few years ago when I...

Kanae, or Kanae-chan as I usually refer to her, just happens to be one of Japan’s most well-known Latin dancers. But to me what stands out more is how that happened, and that's all about her mindset and approach to dance. We met at a dance festival in Tokyo - actually she had a solo performance, and I managed to work up the nuts to ask her for a dance. It turned out that we have a lot in common, w...

Take one listen to this guy’s voice. He just sounds like a singer, doesn’t he? Bondipity, or Bond as I call him, is a singer based in Bangkok. He'ss what you’d call a gigging musician, in that he performs everywhere around town, from hotels, to lounges, to clubs, to bars. But like all performers, the onstage persona and the real him have some real differences. What you see is not necessarily what...

This is a different type of episode, because even though Arie and I are friends, we wanted this conversation to be more educational. That’s because Arie just so happens to be one of the world’s best known experts on something called BDD, which stands for body dysmorphic disorder. It’s quite different from body dysmorphia, and just because you are obsessed with going to the gym or social media, doe...

I met Giang when I was in Vietnam for a friend's wedding. In fact, I ended up being this friend’s best man at his wedding, which I discovered only 1-2 days beforehand. Thank you my Finnish brother. I remember the first time I met her, she would continually ask me "why" and "tell me more" and "and then"? It made me slightly defensive. After getting to know her better, I realized that its just her i...

Darren was my Chinese tutor when I was living in Taipei. But that means that it was a bit one-sided, in that he would ask me questions, and I would do the bulk of the talking because it was about me practicing. Here I even the scales and interview him. Darren is what I would call a blue-collar auteur. Translation: he actually produces films and documentaries in Taiwan, but intentionally takes on s...

Jesse is not only my neighbor in bangkok, whenever he actually decides to live here, but he was one of the most influential people in my life last year.  The way I met him is quite unique: I got sent a youtube link to a CNBC interview he did on being an expat in Bangkok. Basically I had a weird amount of information about him, from him, but not really from him personally. It made me feel a bi...

My pal Mark returns, this time with a baby in tow! It’s pretty great to be able to have a snapshot in time of someone’s life, before and after having a baby. You're welcome, Mark. I’m realizing that is part of the appeal for recording these conversations for myself as well. They are moments and places in time that represent different phases in life, and the same exact type of intersections and rel...

Once upon a time, I went to a co-working space in Taipei called the Hive, and that's where I met Jeff. It became immediately apparent that we had a lot in common, and we quickly built a ritual of talking about our shared perspectives over cheap sushi. We talked about identity things, expat things, Taiwan things, exercise things… but in the end, we talked the most about two things: money, and life...

Jonathan is an unassuming guy, but hs is also impossible to not notice. A 6’3 handsome MFer in Bangkok tends to turn heads. But also, I noticed his shirts and hats. I figured out that they were about his own brand - and I can usually tell because I also make my own shirts!  But the thing you notice next besides Jonathan is the way he interacts, collects, and analyzes in conversation. It’s the...

Juan is one of my pals from Taiwan, and I knew of him before I met him because I had been using his website for months beforehand! He's the founder of taiwannutrition.com, and in more recent years, the founder of trueterral.com with his wife Sylvia. He’s been in Taiwan since his university days and speaks fluent Mandarin Chinese. Like most of my pals, his work is certainly the least interesting pa...

Mel is what I would call a boomerang. The way I define it is growing up somewhere, going somewhere else, and then ultimately returning to that first place for… reasons. Perhaps belonging, or a lack of belonging.  Mel is also a twinkie, which also requires a definition. A twinkie is someone who is Asian on the outside, but white on the inside. But Mel is also originally from Singapore, so hes...

The picture doesn't match the name, does it? Reina is a pal that, when we first met, we didn’t talk at all. That's because she is a dance friend from Tokyo, and we met on the dance floor at a of the Latin dance festival in Tokyo. Reina immediately stood out because of her a... rms. It sounds strange, but if I see someone that’s obviously into fitness, I can guess with a high degree of accuracy the...

In this episode, I interview my pal Lisa. I also occasionally just call her hair; just take a look at the picture. I met Lisa at a dance festival in Chiang Mai, but it wasn’t until I moved to Bangkok that we became good friends, and even dance co-teachers. Her first words to me were “I’m not a bitch, I swear!” so it was obvious that this friendship was going to blossom. When I first moved to Thail...

In this episode, I interview my pal Henry.  Henry is actually a childhood friend. There’s something about people who you have known for 30 years, give or take. I guess they become a sort of family as well. We grew up together, went to school together, became Boy Scouts and then Eagle Scouts together, and tried to figure out how to look and dress cool as as teenager together. Spoiler alert: lo...

In this episode, I interview my pal Daniel. Our friendship actually spans a few years and a few countries. I believe we were based in Budapest around the same time years ago, and then we met and became close when we were both in Taipei for the entirety of Covid. He moved to Bangkok around the same time as I did, and it was quite comforting to have a good friend already here, like a Jewish security...

In this episode, I talked with my pal Aaron. He's not only a cool guy, but he's also my Bangkok shepherd because. I'll often have the experience of telling him “so this weird thing just happened…” and he will confirm that it is indeed a thing here. We actually have quite a lot in common, starting from our corporate backgrounds, ending up in Asia to focus on lifestyle, and cutting weight while batt...

In this episode, I interviewed my pal Jaszmine. She's a new friend, but you wouldn't know it from the deep and private things that we talk about for everyone to hear. And that's because with most people, conversation is just an exchange of information. But other times, it is a sharing and discussion of beliefs, thoughts, and emotions. She’s a yoga teacher, cafe owner, meditation expert, crossfitte...

In this episode, I interview my pal Yu-Jiang. I've known him for about 10 years, back from when we were both living in SF. We've both since moved on - him to Seattle, and me abroad since 2016. What fascinates me about him is that he is the consummate tech guy, with UCLA, Apple, and Snapchat. You'd expect his life to be essentially a straight line to the purgatory of tech middle management and unre...

In this episode, I interview my friend Mark. I mentioned that when I first met him, he wore these goofy Teva sandals (which he will defend to his dying day)... and lo and behold, he brings up barefoot shoes on this episode. He may or may not have a foot fetish. Mark is CEO of Manta Sleep, an 8-figure company, which produces the world's greatest eyemask. I can vouch that it is, in fact, amazing, be...

In this episode, I interview my pal Hyunju. I affectionately call her my Korean big sister because she is someone that I can go to for about anything, including advice on girls. She's a member of my informal personal board of advisors that I seek out for feedback whenever I make big decisions. Along with this massive responsibility, she also has a much lesser job as investment manager of billions...

In this episode, I interview my pal Vicky. She is both ironically and unironically a superlative multi-hyphenate. Don't know what the hell that means? Neither does she. Vicky is one of Taiwan's most well-known and in-demand jazz/tango/wedding/background/you name it singers. She's usually booked out weeks in advance and is on the verge of releasing her EP. Her performance career began in earnest wh...

In this episode, I interview my pal Teresa. She's a youtuber/digital nomad/content creator/passive income-r. Every cool buzzword you can think of applies to her. She started by creating content that would solve her own problems with her students, and once her channel gained sufficient traction, she took off to Italy as a nomad. But despite having hundreds of thousands of fans and being recognized...

In the inaugural episode of Pei Pals, I interview my first dance teacher, Larry Shao, whom I affectionately dub the Latin Dance King of Taiwan (a name he strongly objects to). Others may only know him as the bald guy that dances fantastically, or as the boss of a dance studio, but the point is - they know him. He in some sense "Mister Miyagi'd" me because I feel that I learned a lot of life lesson...