The Woke Salaryman Podcast

A long chat with film director Cheng Chai Hong about the closure of The Projector, the loss of third spaces in Singapore, the homogenisation of experiences, cultural maturity, government intervention and support for the arts, and much more. More about his feature-length movie debut: https://www.instagram.com/wecansavetheworld.movie/Chai Hong's IG: https://www.instagram.com/chchchchaihong/0:00...

Timestamps: 1:59 World events and our reaction 9:12 Just stay calm and boring 12:23 Recent travels 19:19 Thrifting 23:01 Japanese quality as a double-edged sword 27:08 Anti-aspirational consumption 32:19 I'm glad I didn't YOLO in my 20s 37:31 Gen Zs have it hard right now

We had a chat with our friend Dan Wong. Dan is a super creative and unique visual storyteller that has somehow managed to carve out a professional career for himself whilst staying true to his wild, uncensored artistic expression. We talk about how he does this, as well as the struggles of young artists today amidst Gen AI and much more.0:00 Intro2:14 Dan Wong, A Good Citizen10:16 Has being edgy h...

Our interview with the man who is kicking up a storm in the Singapore real estate industry. Patrick Chee is a serial entrepreneur who is a straight shooter, and we had a great time chatting with him. He speaks forcefully but authentically, and what you see is what you get. We chat about HDB prices, real estate agency in Singapore, serial entrepreneurship, and finding success without a degree. Home...

Hello, this is another tea time video where we talk about something for fun. This week, we talk about why we struggle with our respective side-hustles/passion projects. Hope y'all enjoy. Let us know if you similarly find it hard to start on these things, and if you have any tips for sparking these sessions yourself. 0:00 Intro 3:25 The topic 8:50 It's hard to do things without external mot...

We recorded this chat when we visited Ruiming's house in Japan. Hope y'all enjoy. 0:00 Intro 1:20 Why are we here? 2:28 Why did RM get a house in rural Japan? 7:28 How do we like rural Japan? 12:18 The rural Japan dream 21:28 City vs village spirit 29:04 The Singapore obsession with Japan 32:21 What Singapore can learn from Japan CREDITS: Check out Ryunohara experiences: https://www.ryunohara.com/...

Hi everyone, this is a casual chat we had over tea time. We hope you will enjoy chilling with us. We talk about fresh grads feeling lost and depressed after experiencing work for the first time and discuss whether work is "supposed to suck". Then we meander all over the place. Chapters so you can decide if the meandering will be worth your time: 0:00 Which came first? Mew or Mewtwo 6:16 Young peop...

*THIS PODCAST EPISODE IS SPONSORED BY UOB* We sit down with Bernard Tay from Jinjja Chicken and Paul Kan from UOB to talk about the challenges facing SMEs and FnBs post-COVID. Specifically, about inflation, digitalization, and overseas expansion! The insights discussed in this video can be found in greatest detail in the UOB Business Outlook Study 2024, which you can check out here: https://go.uob...

We've been away for a while travelling Southeast Asia promoting our books. 0:00 Intro 3:36 Traffic in Jakarta, KL VS Singapore 8:45 City planning is tough 15:13 Vietnam's growth since the 80s 17:43 Would we migrate somewhere else in SEA? 20:14 Retirement village business overseas? 26:05 Book recommendation: Public subsidy, private accumulation 29:33 Book recommendation: Blue Period 31:55 O...

We talk about the trade-offs for the creative soul who wants to run a creative business. 0:00 Intro 0:50 More about our business and me 1:36 Creative VS Business owner 4:15 Delegate to people who like it more, or are better than you 6:42 Consider input, not just output 10:10 Being creative is good for business 11:36 Take creative risks as a part of business 13:21 Unproductivity is part of producti...

Juliana Chan is a scientist and scholar turned business owner. Today, she runs Wildtype Media Group, managing a 20-member team — based in Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines and India — with 30 to 40 regular freelancers around the world. In this episode, we talk to her about how she took her company remote, and the impact it has had on morale and productivity. 0:00 Intro: The road to 100% remote...

Is overtime ever justified? Why do good employees leave? Do you have to worry about your own job being irrelevant?  This episode, we get the whole TWS team to have an open conversation on these hard topics. We hope you enjoy it.  Also, this is our first sponsored podcast - a shoutout to Workforce Singapore for sponsoring this conversation. To find out more about what grants and tools are available...

This episode, we talk to the founders of The Black Hole Group; a collective of lifestyle and F&B concepts. They started out in 2012 with a backpacker's hostel, and now they own about 13 F&B and lifestyle concepts and are still going strong. More importantly, they are friends who started a business together, and we are super excited to talk to them because The Woke Salaryman was also st...

Jeremy Tan is a professional magician who does a lot of work on cruise ships! We talk to him about the pros and cons of working in such a unique job, what it takes to succeed as a magician, balancing artistry and corporate crowd pleaser, adapting to COVID, and more. 0:00 Intro 1:23 How he started magicking 7:19 Becoming a cruise ship magician 15:31 Adapting to COVID 22:17 Revealing magic tricks to...

We respond to some spicy comments on Reddit about the fact that we have sponsors, and talk about how we approach sponsored content, what we say no to, and whether we think we've sold out, and whether we can sleep at night. The Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/askSingapore/comments/15c2suy/is_the_wokesalaryman_just_sponsored_nonsense/ READ OUR COMICS: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com...

Watch this to understand how your financial agent is actually being paid , and what your options are. We also talk about parenthood and why Asian parents find it so hard to be emotionally vulnerable with their kids. ⁠0:00⁠ Intro ⁠1:24⁠ Convo starts ⁠12:06⁠ Flashy agents and flashy wealth ⁠20:56⁠ Chris' childhood ⁠25:39⁠ Being caught in the wealth trap ⁠30:14⁠ Working hard VS Time with family ⁠...

Meet Vivienne, she's the first person we hired since we went full-time with The Woke Salaryman. 2.5 years ago, Viv left an amazing job at a very esteemed bank to join our humble little rickety company. 2.5 years on, our company is still rickety; but she has become indispensable. We interview Viv in this podcast about what it's like to go from a huge, highly regarded MNC to a tiny SME, whet...

At The Woke Salaryman, we create content by writing and drawing. A.I. solutions for these 2 functions are getting really really good. Are we at risk? In this podcast, we discuss specific short and long-term worries we have about A.I. We also talk about what we'll do if we are fresh grads entering the market now.

Hawker culture is very important to Singapore culture. Central to the definition of HAWKER is the idea that hawker food should be CHEAP and GOOD; but are hawkers still financially sustainable in a world with aggressive inflation? Can hawker prices keep up with inflation and still satisfy customer expectations of low prices? We talk about this and more with Faye Sai, one of the three siblings that...

We talk about this infographic that compares the cost of retiring around the world. Singapore is the most expensive country apparently. We discuss why this is so and what Singaporeans can do. Source: https://theindependent.sg/singapore-allegedly-the-most-expensive-country-for-americans-to-comfortably-retire-in/ Original source: https://www.netcredit.com/blog/cost-of-retirement/ (The link to the or...

It may be hard to believe but we used to be very left-leaning when we were younger. This is us reacting to a short clip of an older fellow with a nice voice talking about how his political leanings shifted as he grew older. Original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NS4UT_t73b0 (This is purely anecdotal and qualitative of course, we know plenty of people who stayed left, or became MORE left w...

We react to a report summarizing how Singaporeans are doing when it comes to financial wellness in the past year. Read the report here: https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/close-to-half-of-singaporeans-dont-have-enough-savings-to-tide-through-an-emergency-survey

We react to a recent post that went viral, where a Singaporean plumber relocated to Australia because they would be paid far better there. We talk about the trade-offs for both Singapore and Australia; and discuss topics like arbitrage, opportunities, talent drain, and moving up the value chain.

(Sry there was an issue with the export so some parts were muted. We've fixed it) This is a bit late but we intended not to publish this for audio initially. But I think we will just drop it anyway because it's quite a good discussion. Hope y'all enjoy! The original clip can be found on YouTube if you just search for 'The Peter Principle'.

Yip Pin Xiu is a professional swimmer who has won gold at the Paralympics 5 times. She is Singapore's most decorated Paralympian. This podcast was very informal because despite her achievements, Pin Xiu is very down-to-earth and quite goofy and fun to be with. We had a blast and hope you enjoy this podcast as well. Sorry, we started eating halfway through the podcast because Pin Xiu had to go afte...