Hi guys, I've just returned from an epic 12 day long trip to three countries: Turkey, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan but I am going to focus solely on the Central Asian part of that trip in these posts since Istanbul isn't in Central Asia and I only spent 28 hours on an extended stopover there. There are several countries in Central Asia and they include Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and sometimes people also include Afghanistan in that list. It is not a region that attracts a lot of tourists and thus that's why a lot of people were somewhat puzzled when I told them that I was having a holiday there. Remember you can see all my photos and videos from this trip on my Instagram of course. This has always been a part of the world that has fascinated me and I'm really glad I finally went there. I shall be using a Q&A format to deal with this question today whilst drawing upon my experiences there to formulate the answers.
Q: Why doesn't Central Asia attract more tourists then?
A: There are some tourists who do go there but they tend to be from regional countries rather than from far away. So for example in Kazakhstan, I met tourists from India, Russia and China rather than from America or Australia. However, even getting a direct flight from Delhi to Almaty the biggest city in Kazakhstan takes 3.5 hours, that's the equivalent of flying from London to Athens. A flight from Shanghai to Almaty takes 6 hours and even from Moscow, it takes 4.5 hours to fly direct to Almaty. Central Asia is a sparsely populated area without an obvious catchment area for regional tourism, so the tourists who do go there are drawn from further away and that obviously bumps up the costs. So for a tourist from London like me, I could've easily paid under £50 for a range of destinations on a budget airline within Europe but to get to Almaty with Turkish Airlines, I paid about £470 - yes I could've gotten there with a combination of budget airlines but I wasn't prepared to do that. There was a direct flight with Air Astana from Almaty to London but their flight times were terrible (some of their inbound flights landed after midnight), so even for tourists like me who want to go there, there are very few cheap and convenient options. I nearly picked another destination given how complicated the logistics were for this trip. I also don't think that this part of the world is particularly good at marketing itself as a great tourist destination - I received a lot of help from Visit Almaty when I got to Almaty airport. The lady there helped me get all the apps I needed to navigate my way around Kazakhstan on my own and those apps even worked in Kyrgyzstan. However, when I arrived in Bishkek, there wasn't an equivalent. There was an article from 2022 of a new tourist information office in Oak Park in Central Bishkek but it wasn't there when I went there - instead, when you try to look up information for tourists in Bishkek, you would only find travel agencies who would charge you an arm and a leg for their services. Thus it is no surprise that Almaty attracts more tourists than Bishkek because there is far better infrastructure in place for tourists there - the Kyrgyz government has a lot to learn from the Kazakh government when it comes to supporting their tourism industry. Thus the kind of tourists who do go to Central Asia tend to be more adventurous folks looking for something different, but the mainstream tourists would tend to stay away in from places like Kyrgyzstan which are really quite far off the beaten path.
Q: Do people there speak English? What language(s) do they speak?
A: Unsurprisingly, very few people speak English there - English is only spoken by those who are very highly educated and those who need it for work, so for example, if they work at the airport or a hotel. The dominant language there is still Russian and it's not even Kazakh in Kazakhstan or Kyrgyz in Kyrgyzstan that dominates everyday life, it is just Russian. Let me give you a simple example: you're in Almaty, you're at a food court in the shopping mall looking for your dinner. You look at the menus, there are all in Russian and only Russian (not in English or Kazakh - only Russian), the lady behind the counter has just noticed you looking so she greets you in Russian to see if she can help you. You ask if she can speak English, she shakes her head and replies in Russian that she can't speak English. You then notice another customer at the counter ordering his meal and of course, he is speaking in Russian. You can hear Russian pop music playing from the nearby shop. Allow me to contrast that to the situation in Singapore where I grew up where English is the language of education and business but if I went to a hawker centre, I would probably switch to Mandarin, Hokkien, Malay or Cantonese depending on whom I was speaking to when ordering my food. I certainly wouldn't order my food in English as that would seem both weird and wrong. Thus I expected there to be a more diverse linguistic language in a big city like Almaty where Kazakh, Russian and English would be spoken but nope, the vast majority of such ordinary interactions were conducted in Russian and only in Russian. So on one hand, this suited me fine as I do speak some Russian and have only picked up a handful of words in Kazakh but on the other hand, given that there is still a war raging on in Ukraine, it felt like I was not just speaking the enemy's language, I was speaking it with the enemy and it felt wrong. Now before I went to Central Asia, I assumed incorrectly that the ethnic Kazakh and Kyrgyz Asian people would always choose to speak their own language amongst themselves and switch to Russian when interacting with a white Russian person but no, I observed a bunch of young school children at the bus stop in Bishkek, they all looked very Asian indeed, but they were all speaking to each other only in Russian. So Russian still dominates every single aspect of everyday life in Central Asia today, even so many years after all these countries finally achieved their independence from the Soviets.
My assumption was that these Central Asian countries were colonized by Russia and forced to learn Russian when part of the Soviet Union, so now they are free to abandon the Russian language and do everything in their own languages instead. I remembered how the East Germans were only too keen to break down the Berlin wall in 1989 and after that, the East Germans there switched from Russian to English as their default second language. But the equivalent of that never actually happened in Central Asia - a local Kyrgyz lady I spoke to told me that when she did her degree in Bishkek, she studied the course entirely in Russian because there simply weren't enough resources to do that degree in Kyrgyz, so everything was taught in Russian and she was examined in Russian. So whilst Kyrgyz was the language she would speak at home with her family and her friends, Russian was still the official language of higher education and business in Kyrgyzstan after independence. Maybe I am very superficial here, but the first thing I noticed when I got to Central Asia was that people looked a lot more like me than my Irish husband. But despite the fact that these Central Asians may look nothing like the white Russians who live in Moscow, they certainly don't feel any affinity at all towards their neighbours to the East: China. They don't share a common language, the Han Chinese have always been extremely racist towards their Muslim neighbours in Central Asia and thus the historical links to the USSR made them feel a lot more culturally Russian. Besides, if a person from Kyrgyzstan meets someone from Turkmenistan or Uzbekistan, they would just speak English to understand each other rather than try to speak each other's languages. Hence the tourists who turn up in this part of the world without even a rudimentary grasp of basic Russian are going to really struggle - there will be a massive language barrier. Don't get me wrong - the locals were very friendly and whenever I was struggling to make myself understood in Russian, they would get their phones out to use Google translate rather than make any attempt to speak English because I got the impression that they really can't speak any English at all. They simply have so little need for it as Russian would suffice for practically all their everyday needs in life and English was really only something they needed to deal with tourists. Thus unless they worked in an airport or a hotel, they would speak little or no English at all.
Q: Is it hard to get around and use public transport or do I need to join an organized tour?
A: I will be doing more specific posts about this as I did a lot of research on this topic but in short, within the cities of Almaty and Bishkek, you can use public transport with ease. Almaty's public transport system is super well organized and brilliant, whilst Bishkek is a lot more backward and chaotic but still quite doable I promise you. The key thing is to have an app that tells you exactly where to go, what to do, which bus to take, how long the journey would take etc. Actually I would do exactly the same thing when I am in London and make sure I plan my journey before setting off, the only difference is that the two apps used most in Central Asia are Yandex Maps and 2Gis - both of which are not used outside the Russian speaking world and relax, there are English versions of the apps as well. Yandex maps even worked offline (not all functions are available offline but the basic map still worked) and it made my life a lot easier on this trip. However, there are some remote locations which I visited which were simply not possible to access via public transport: a good example of that was the Charyn Canyon which was near the Kazakhstan-China border. It was a stunning canyon in the desert that totally blew my mind but it was in such an isolated location in the desert that no public transport goes anywhere near there. Hence to go there, you had to rent a car to go there on your own, join an organized tour or get a driver to take you there on a private tour. I decided to go on an organized tour and you could either go on an English speaking tour in a small group which would be hideously expensive (approximately £280 or US$355 per person) for a day trip, or you could join a Russian group where the guide(s) would speak mostly in Russian and only a little in English for more like £21 or US$26.60 per person. Given that I speak some Russian, I opted for the latter and translated for my husband. Getting from city to city, you would probably have to use a regular bus or a mini bus (otherwise known as a Marshrutka in Russian) and I would write more on those later, I am quite used to navigating my way with those and you really need to speak at least some Russian to make sure you get on the right bus as these drivers would never speak a single word of English but otherwise, these Marshrutkas are a ridiculously cheap way to get around. I paid only 3000 Kazakh Tenge (£5.25 or US$6.65) for my trip from Almaty to Bishkek, a journey of about 240 km that took 5 hours. The public bus in Bishkek cost just a flat fare of 20 som which was £0.18 or US$0.22 and that's another reason to use public transport in this part of the world - it is super cheap and the entire system works well, as many of the locals depend on it.
A: I always say that the four pillars of building a good trip are as follows: nature, culture, relaxation and fun. I would say that the main attraction for this part of Central Asia is the mountains - you have some of the most amazing landscapes from deep canyons to snow capped mountains to waterfalls. I chose to do this in winter as I wanted to experience Central Asia's nature when it was frozen and covered in very thick snow. There are some tourists who prefer to avoid the extreme cold and go in spring or autumn instead but I must warn you that it would be prudent to avoid Central Asia in summer as it gets stupidly hot. But then again, it reached -25 for me when I was there and some people might find that too cold - me, I totally loved it. If it is culture you're after, then here's a list of UNESCO world heritage sites for you to explore in central Asia but for me, it was not simply a question of of looking at some ruins from the 8th century, but it was just that unique blend of Russian/Soviet history with Islam and that unique Asian identity which made me want to experience this part of the world given that I am old enough to remember when this was once all part of the USSR. I wanted to see how much of that Soviet past still persists today and how much of that has evolved to a more Asian or Muslim identity. Thus I took much joy in simply exploring the city to try to get good feel of the cultural identity of modern Almaty and Bishkek today. I think relaxation is quite an important part of any trip as it shouldn't feel like you have to wake up at the crack of dawn to hike up a mountain everyday - you would definitely stress yourself out like that very quickly if you're too ambitious whilst on holiday and every single kind of relaxation is available in these big cities at a fraction of the cost of what you would pay in the West. I was able to get a really nice AirBNB in central Almaty and so I always had a comfortable base to return to after a long day of sightseeing. Finally, the fun element for me came in two forms: I was able to ski in both Almaty and Bishkek; one thing that people may not know about Bishkek is that they totally love their malls and if you like shopping, you could spend quite a few days just exploring the shopping malls of Bishkek. So how you wish to combine this pie with the four elements of nature, culture, relaxation and fun is entirely up to you; some people who like skiing would make an effort to spend more time in the mountains, whilst others who hate shopping may just avoid the malls altogether - I think it's bullshit for social influencers to tell you what to do on your holiday, you need to do some homework prior to your trip to plan the ideal itinerary according to your taste and preferences. After all, I don't know what you like, thus I really can only tell you what I did, but I would never tell you what you must do on your holiday.
Q: What's the food like there?
A: It was bad, but that's just my opinion. Despite being in Asia and sharing a long border with China, the food is still extremely Russian and hence, very bland. To get an idea of what the locals typically eat, you can head onto a canteen known in Russian as a Столовая (Stolovaya) or in Kazakh/Kyrgyz as a Асхана/ашкана (Askana/Ashkana). The concept is simple: you pick up a tray at the entrance and then you will pass a buffet of food starting from salads, breads, pastries, soups, then you will get to all the main courses with meat as well as a range of noodles, pasta and rice dishes before you get to the deserts and drinks. After you have made your selection, you go to the cashier who will then tell you the total price - these canteens are usually super cheap and depending on what you pick, I have paid as little as £3.40 or US$4.30 for a full meal there and you will never go hungry there. The quality may vary - some canteens are bigger than others and will have a much bigger selection of items on offer than others. A canteen we visited in Almaty even had a full coffee kiosk offering all manners of coffees, now that may be something we take for granted in the West but in Central Asia, there simply isn't a coffee culture at all and the locals prefer tea, and so if you're a coffee addict like me, finding a place with good coffee in central Asia is always a treat. The food, like I said, is extremely bland and lacking in strong flavours. Perhaps it is because I'm from Singapore and I grew up with extremely spicy food (I even make my own chilli sauce) but let me give you an example of how the food let me down: one of the very popular dishes there is shashlik, barbecued meat. What could go wrong with that? I expect the meat to be well marinated in spices before they chuck it on the grill and served with some sauces but no, instead they tasted very bland as if they were simply marinated in salt and pepper. The meat was often served only with raw onion and bread, that's how you turn what could be a stunning meal into one that is very bland and disappointing. So imagine I get a steaming hot bowl of soup as it is -20 degrees outside, I thought it would be a good idea to warm up with a bowl of soup but instead, I find that the broth barely tastes of anything beyond salt, pepper and maybe a little onion. There's plenty of Western fast food on offer such as hamburgers, hot dogs, fries and pizza; but that is not interesting to me - I didn't travel halfway around the world to have a hamburger for dinner.
Q: Seriously, is there any Chinese or Indian food on offer there in central Asia?
A: Well, let me give you two examples of how they take Chinese and Indian dishes and turn them into bland local versions without any spices. One of my favourite Indian dishes is the biriyani - it is a rice and meat dish that is an explosion of flavours. Imagine if you did the same recipe but left out all the wonderful spices that gave biriyani its distinct flavours, you're left with just a bland dish of rice cooked with meat and vegetable and that's the Central Asian dish plov for you. Another one of my favourite dishes from Chinese/South-East Asian cuisine is fried noodles - imagine if gave it the central Asian treatment by cooking noodles with meat and vegetables without any spices to create the blandest version of the dish, then you have Laghman. The name is actually a corruption of the Chinese words 拉面 (Lamian) but trust me, Laghman is often so bland it tastes of nothing at all. Typically, food from colder countries like Finland, Iceland and Russia are very bland compared to food from hotter countries like India, Thailand and Malaysia - thus the Central Asian countries have far more in common with their colder counterparts than their Asian counterparts. After all, this was once part of the USSR and exotic spices were imported good that were simply not available in the local shops hence there were three generations of people in Central Asia who grew up in the USSR without any spicy food and that has shaped their preference for blander food without any strong flavours. What also stood out for me was the way some fast food restaurants did unusual combinations - for example, there were these special "pizza, ramen and sushi" restaurants; I mean a restaurant that offers all three items in combination. You would not find that in the West, like either you're an Italian or a Japanese restaurant, or at least you're an Japanese restaurant that does Japanese style Italian dishes but no, these are Central Asian fast food places offering both Italian and Japanese items on their menu. Hence you could even get a set meal that consisted of a pizza with a side order of sushi or ramen. The pizza looked like it was mostly thick bread topped with bland cheese and the ramen looked more like instant noodles. Oh and the sushi rarely had any raw fish in it - oh dear, it was really bad. Sure there are some foreign restaurants available in the bigger cities like Almaty and Bishkek today but heck, I didn't go to Central Asia for the local cuisine - I went there despite the fact that the food was utterly dreadful. We may be on the continent of Asia but the food is hardly Asian. No, instead it was mostly Russian food.
Q: How long should I spend on a trip to Central Asia?
A: This really depends on how much time you have to spare. Given how long it takes to get there and how much it would cost you in flights, I don't recommend spending anything less than a week there. I met this eccentric Kiwi lady in Kyrgyzstan who had spent three months traveling through Central Asia and I don't think most people would be able to have that luxury of taking a few months off for a trip like that. So a good compromise would be between 8 to 14 days, as that gives you enough time to cover at least two countries without making it way too hectic and don't forget, the first day or two may be a write off anyway if you arrive very sleep deprived and jetlagged after the long journey just to get to there.
Q: Is everyone in Central Asia Asian or is it a mix?
A: It is quite a mix in the big cities but it tends to be more Asian in smaller villages. Back in the USSR, a lot of people moved around the country and thus Almaty is roughly about 25% white according to Wikipedia but let me compare this to the situation in the UK. We have all kinds of ethnic minorities but essentially everyone speaks English regardless of their ethnic backgrounds. In Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and other Central Asian countries, regardless of your ethnic, everyone speaks Russian. What I have noticed however, is that there's virtually no inter-marriage between the Asians and the whites - you will not find a mixed couple there as the Central Asians are mostly Muslims and the white Russians are Orthodox Christians. Also, I wouldn't make any assumptions about the white people being richer than the Asians there - I saw white Russians doing jobs like selling street food and clearing the snow from the streets. So it isn't rare at all to see white people there, but they are in the minority. You might also see some people with somewhat darker features associated with countries like Afghanistan or Pakistan but most of the people there looked rather East Asian or Chinese.
Q: How did Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan compare to other Muslim countries you've visited?
A: Even though Kazakhstan is about 70% Muslim and Kyrgyzstan is 90% Muslim, you really couldn't tell. Yes there are some mosques around and you would occasionally see some women wearing the headscarf but really, you can buy alcohol at the supermarkets and unless you're really close to the mosque, you can't hear the call to prayer. I suppose my experience can be compared to countries like Malaysia where Muslims are in the majority, but the non-Muslims there don't experience any restrictions on their lifestyles. Compare that to the Middle East, where a lot of the rules are applied to everyone regardless of religion, especially during Ramadan. The only thing that was missing really was pork - I didn't come across any pork on offer in the places I visited. I visited a few mosques on this trip and was totally blown away by the Bishkek Central Mosque. I even met a rather friendly Muslim guy outside the Almaty Central Mosque who told me that tourists can indeed visit the mosque and even encouraged me to go in to take a look. I remember asking a helpful white Russian woman for directions when trying to find the mosque in Bishkek and she said, there are two big mosques nearby which one are you looking for? I told her I wasn't sure and if there were two, I'd like to see them both and if she knew which one was more famous or worth visiting. She looked at me as if I was stupid - she was clearly white and Christian, people like her would never set foot in the mosque. Thus she said something like she wouldn't know as she was not a Muslim and not interested in visiting mosques but at least she was able to tell me where to find both mosques.
Q: What was your best experience on this trip?
A: Oh wow, I would have to pick more than one. Look, the Charyn Canyon in Kazakhstan was breathtakingly awesome and I did do a degree in geography after all hence all of these places with such outstanding natural beauty really appealed to me. But I also took pleasures in the little things - let me give you an example. We went to the supermarket in Almaty to get some fruit and you have to put your fruit in a clear plastic bag, weigh it on the machine and then get a sticker tag with the price on it by pressing the right buttons according to the product you have picked. As I speak Russian, I did that with ease but my husband who doesn't speak Russian just looked on in amazement and said something like, "how the hell did you just do that?" I just smiled and I said, "so as long as they didn't make me do it in Kazakh, there was an option to switch the machine over to Russian." It was little things like that which made me feel really good about my ability to not just speak Russian, but to be able to function as a local doing little tasks like that in the supermarket with ease. Each time I was able to have a conversation in Russian, I felt really happy. I suppose another major reason why I really enjoyed this trip was because of the laid back vibe of central Asia - you see, when we were in Istanbul, I really stood out as a foreign tourists and whilst the locals tended to speak English quite well, it was all rather predatory in terms of trying to get me to spend money with them. They were never interested in just talking to me - no, they saw me as a potential customer who could spend money with them. Whereas in Central Asia, I could easily pass for a local given that there are plenty of people who look quite Chinese there, so I very much just left alone whenever I stepped into a shop in the malls and had to even ask a shop assistant for help if I wanted to know the price of something. It was completely safe, I was not harassed, I certainly didn't encounter any racism at all on this trip - I only encountered racism in places like Georgia but it was particularly bad in North Africa given that the North Africans hardly ever encounter any East Asian people - I swear the North Africans are extremely racist and had absolutely no social skills at all. It was that uncanny combination of looking like a local but visiting as a foreign tourist that pleased me. Finally, we had the kind of winter weather I was hoping for: it was very warm for the first day I arrived in Almaty when it reached 14 degrees but by the next day, it fell to -8 and then -25 after that. Oh yeah, -25 is bitterly cold but magical. Then towards the end of the trip in Bishkek, it rose to about -1 and so it was not as cold, but all that beautiful white snow still didn't melt.
Q: What were the worst experiences on this trip?
A: Did I mention how bad the food was? Well, apart from that, traffic was a problem in both Almaty and Bishkek - there were some epic traffic jams. There were some bus journeys that were painfully slow as a result. I was also jetlagged and sleep deprived on some days which meant that I didn't enjoy the experiences as much. Another issue that bothered me was that both my Airbnb host in Almaty and the staff at the hotel in Bishkek were quite useless when it came to helping me find any information about things to do - luckily I speak enough Russian to be able to do Google searches in Russian and get the information I needed but what about the tourists who don't speak any Russian? So in the case of my Airbnb host in Almaty, she is a rich lady who owns a number of properties and she drives a nice car, so she hasn't touched public transport in years. When I asked her for information on the bus to Bishkek, she just said, I don't know, I never take the bus. Her attitude was like, how dare you ask me about the public bus, that's for poor people and I'm not poor. Rich people like me never ever get on the bus. And I was like, gee you're really unhelpful but forget it, I can find the information I need from the website (which was only in Russian) without your help. So all in all, I didn't encounter any major problems, but that was mostly because I am a very experienced traveller who can speak Russian reasonably well.
A: Oh I was warned not to mention him at all when I was in Kazakhstan. Look, the Kazakhstan that was represented in the Borat movies was nothing like the real country - the movies were shot in Romania and thus everyone was white. Oh please, white people are in the minority in Kazakhstan and so we already know that the movie is a wildly inaccurate representation of Kazakhstan and that Sacha Baron Cohen wasn't really interested in trying to show the viewers the real Kazakhstan. The country that he portrayed in the film was far more like Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova or Western Russia - ie. a predominantly white but painfully poor European country. Kazakhstan certainly wasn't poor and it was mostly Asian. Having been there and seen the real Kazakhstan, I think it is best to just ignore those Borat films. It is sad that Borat seems to be the only thing most people associate with Kazakhstan but that's a sad reflection on them if they bring it up - my more educated and intelligent friends would never mention Borat and they asked far more intelligent questions about my trip to Kazakhstan. Anyone who has been to Kazakhstan or has any knowledge of Kazakhstan would not embarrass themselves by mentioning Borat at all, because that just sends out the message, "I mentioned Borat as this is all I know about Kazakhstan as I'm so ignorant and stupid." I have seriously blacklisted every person who has mentioned it to me when I told them about my trip to Kazakhstan. I can be really unforgiving when it comes to people with poor social skills.
Okay that's it from me on this topic for now, I could go on and on but I'm saving it for part 2. If you do have any questions about my travels in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, please kindly leave me a comment below and many thanks for reading.
Glad to know you had a wonderful and enjoyable trip to Central Asia! I wouldn’t have any mental picture of Central Asian cuisine even if you described it to me. It is no wonder they don’t export it or have people go out of their way to locate it for consumption, unlike French or Japanese cuisine.
ReplyDeleteBut do you happen to know why Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan have so many Muslims? From what I understand they weren’t part of the Ottoman Empire and Russians (as you have described) were mainly Orthodox Christians.
So on the issue of why the food is so bad, this is a part of the world that has always been quite poor. They were poor before the Soviet era (well the Silk route passed through this area but they didn't leave the Chinese recipes there) and you need a certain level of prosperity for ordinary folks to develop quality cuisine that's not just reserved for the royalty, the mega-rich and the privileged but it then becomes ordinary, everyday street food for the masses. So in SE Asia, there's enough money in places like Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia for street food to become delicious but in poorer places like Myanmar, Laos and Indonesia, the street food is of poor quality - this is because in the poorer countries, people had no money, so they couldn't spend money on better food, they compromised by eating low-quality tasteless food made with the cheapest ingredients. Low cost trumped flavours and tastes, that's why street food in Malaysia is soooo much better than in Indonesia because Malaysians have more money to spend on nicer food and that creates a market for it. A pasar malam in Indonesia may offer much cheaper food but the quality is really inferior to the equivalent in Malaysia. So by that token, Central Asia is a poor area where for a long time, people just didn't spend that much on food and as a result, there isn't the development of a sophisticated cuisine that was of very high quality. Heck, a common habit amongst the locals would be to eat a lot of plain bread with every meal as bread was cheap and would fill you up so you wouldn't go hungry - that's the habit of very poor people to make a little bit of food go a long way. You used the example of French and Japanese cuisine - well, they have money on France and Japan to spend on very good food, that's why they have a demand for high quality cuisine in those countries, the economic conditions have got to be right to foster the development of fine cuisine that costs a lot of money but produces excellent meals. Delicious, high quality food isn't cheap at all and that's why poorer countries like Kyrgyzstan will have terrible food. I say this as someone from a richer country where we have the money to spend on quality food.
DeleteAs for why Central Asia is predominantly Muslim, Islam spread there in the 8th century - for context, it reached Malaysia and Indonesia in the 7th century, so it wasn't like these people were conquered by the Ottomans and forced to convert but Islam was spread throughout various parts of Asia in that period. Kazakhstan is 70% Muslim, Kyrgyzstan is 90% Muslim and if I had time, I would have done one more country like Tajikistan and they are 98% Muslim. Islam has spread far and wide throughout Asia, from China to the Philippines to India in that period. The people in central Asia are not Russian, the Russians colonized the area and incorporated it into the Soviet Union. The Russian language and cultural influences are still very strong as a result and the area doesn't feel the same as other Muslim majority countries like Malaysia, Indonesia or the Middle East.
A good example of how it doesn't feel very Muslim this - alcohol is freely available, you have bars selling alcohol, night clubs and other forms of entertainment are quite liberal there and you can purchase beer, wine etc at the supermarkets. I suppose it's the equivalent in a city like Kuala Lumpur where you can get your hands on alcohol very easily and do whatever you want as long as you're not a Muslim, you're not subject to those rules. But I suppose given that these central Asian countries have names ending with 'stan', I had expected them to be a lot more Muslim in nature like Pakistan and Afghanistan.
DeleteCuisine wise I am unable to comment about France, but I know Japan is not considered a particularly rich country currently due to various reasons I'm sure you already know. Recently one of my friend just returned from Japan where he feasted on many delicious Japanese cuisine amongst which was a bowl of ramen (free refill of noodles) for 500 yen which is about S$4. The equivalent would cost close to $20 in SG with an inferior taste and lesser quantity. I suspect it is more a cultural thing since the Japanese have a artisan and craftsmen culture and take great pride in their work. On the other hand the communists destroyed whatever semblance of a culture in a diverse country like China, I suspect the same would apply to the former countries under USSR as well. A combination of stripping them of their wealth and supression of the local culture. It ended up leaving behind a bland post-soviet environment upon the collapse of USSR. I think the countries don't have the finance or the time to rebuild their own culture, a similar problem China faces too!
DeleteAs for non-Muslim like Muslims I used to work with a PRC colleague who is ethnic Hui from Xinjiang. She is Muslim but doesn't wear headdress and looks outwardly like a Han Chinese. The only hint that she is Muslim is that she doesn't consume pork. When the company organises company wide dinners at normal Chinese restaurants, she sits with pork dishes and alcohol on the same table but she is acceptable with that arrangement. There are no special halal cuisine or food establishments in China so she pretty much had to compromise everytime when dining out. This is pretty much the experience all the Muslims in China. Central Asia is probably something like that I would assume?
Hi Choaniki, if you don't consider Japan rich, then goodness me, what about the rest of average countries like Thailand, Egypt, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico etc who are poorer than Japan? There is a sliding scale of course, if we use GDP per capita there are the mega rich countries like Switzerland and Norway at the very top, then you have the "rich but not at the very top of the list" countries like Japan, Spain, South Korea and Taiwan. These are countries which are around the 30th position on the list (ie. Japan's position). There are a total of 194 countries on the list and if you already say that a country at position 30 is not considered a particularly rich country, then I think you're forgetting the context here of whether there is enough wealth for ordinary folks to spend decent amounts of money on nice food. Hence countries like Japan may not be as rich as Norway, but there's enough wealth there for ordinary folks to afford nice food compared to the countries near the bottom of the list list Burundi, Afghanistan, South Sudan and Sierra Leone where people are so freaking poor they suffer from malnutrition. We're not talking about having enough wealth to do something like afford expensive luxuries but simply enough to buy a better quality of meat & other nice ingredients when preparing a meal. Hence by that token, any country in this list here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita that is within the top 50 is considered rich enough for that. In any case, even in a country like Malaysia ranked 68 on that list, there are enough rich people there to provide a demand for high quality food to create a vibrant food culture there - can everyone in Malaysia afford the best quality cuisine available in KL? No, but the fact is enough rich individuals can create a demand for it, so high end quality Malaysian cuisine exists, compared to a place like Sierra Leone where people are so freaking poor, the middle class is so tiny that it doesn't fuel a local demand for high end local cuisine there. Hence rich people in Sierra Leone eat foreign cuisine whilst some rich people in KL can choose to eat quality Malaysian cuisine. You make a valid point about artisan craftsmen taking pride in their work but there's the basic economics of them being able to earn a living from it - if nobody is willing to pay for a higher quality of food, then it makes no sense from a business point of view to invest in more time to & money create a better class of food without that demand in the first place. Hence, you can't run away from the economics of the situation and just focus on the cultural factors. Are there people in Sierra Leone and South Sudan who dream about opening fine restaurants serving quality local cuisine? Yes. Is there a demand for it? No. Pride and job satisfaction is not going to pay the bills if you're running a restaurant.
DeleteAlcohol was very widely available in Central Asia but pork was more rare - ie. you might find some pork products in the supermarket (I did see pig bacon in one supermarket) but you're never going to find it on the menu in a restaurant in a Muslim majority country. That's in sharp contrast to Malaysia, where I can go to a Chinese restaurant and order char siew easily. I did see some women wear veils over their heads but that was not very common at all. Most women just wore western clothes that made them indistinguishable from non-Muslims, it's only from their Asian features that I could tell they're central Asian and hence probably Muslim since the non-Muslims were usually the white Russians.
Maybe I should further qualify my statement, developed countries comparatively speaking Japan is not that rich. Before WWII they were closed up and protectionist and post-war they were still very poor. It was the US of A that dragged them kicking and screaming to open up their economy and trade with other countries to buildup their wealth to former 2nd largest in the world. However after the real estate bubble burst in the early 90s there was 3 decades of deflation which is why things (food and real estate) are so affordable in Japan currently. The average salary of the middle class is pretty low, increments are miniscule and majority of the households are single income. That is why they are unable to beat their deflationary cycle until most recently, everyone is saving and no one is spending money. And, I’m sure you are aware, businesses are unable to raise prices because the average person can’t afford those increases.
DeleteI mean just considering the price of average meal while dining out in a large European city like London, Paris, Rome, etc. Tokyo prices are comparatively so much lower than all of them. And when I think of ostentatious displays of wealth I would think of those gulf states or even rich European countries like Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg, etc. Japan used to be very rich and their tourists are happy to go around spending huge sums of money. But those days are long gone. Maybe poor is not the correct term to describe Japan but their glory days are behind them and with the aging population, hard to imagine them bouncing back too…
Also I have begun to do some budgeting for my Dec trip to UK and food and transport prices are already mind boggling compared to Japan. 5 quid can’t get me anything filling and let’s not even get started on prices of rail tickets…
DeleteWell, I go back to the list of countries ranked by GDP per capita PPP so we know what we're comparing Japan against. We know Japan used to be near the top of that list, now it is sitting in 30th position out of 194, which really isn't bad at all. It's not like it has crashed to 130th position, now that'll be another story altogether. Simply saying that it wasn't as rich as it was before doesn't mean that it's poor today especially if you compare it to other Asian countries like Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Philippines and East Timor. My point is simple: you don't need to be mega rich like Switzerland and Norway to have good cuisine (mind you, their cuisine isn't great), you just need to avoid being extremely poor and Japan simply isn't extremely poor. Everything you said is true but it still remains a fact that Japan isn't "extremely poor". When you have extreme poverty such as in the case of Indonesia, then ordinary folks can't afford nice food and want to buy the cheapest food possible, that's when street food competes on the basis of price rather than quality/taste. That's why street food in Indonesia sucks whilst it is better in richer countries like Japan where you don't have that level of poverty.
DeleteAs for your UK trip, I still think it's a waste of time for you to just come here to London as you've already visited London before. You need to either plan to get a budget flight from London to somewhere in Europe or plan it as a stopover. For example, if you're flying KLM via Amsterdam, you spend a few days in Amsterdam rather than just change planes at the airport. Transport prices are out of this world here but it really depends on what you wanna do lah. I think if you could find an relevant event/conference to visit during your visit, then at least it serves a greater purpose.
DeleteAlso, in December, the last day of the school term before the Christmas break is 20th December 2024. Some schools do break up earlier than that and that's when the parents finally get to take their kids on holiday, so prices for flights + hotels start going up from the 15th December onwards, so you need to make sure you come in early December and return before the 20th, otherwise Christmas in London will be frightfully expensive as some parents do bring their kids to London for Christmas after the school holidays begin.
DeleteBut are you 100% fixated on coming in December? Why not November or October? It is cold and dark in December, the short days are not conducive for sightseeing.
DeleteI completely understand your point about “extreme poverty” and the quality of the local cuisine. This is why you don’t see African cuisine being famous since I doubt people appreciate eating insects, tree bark or whatever else passes off as food in a highly impoverished region. However I would like to suggest that average income of the local populace is not the sole reason for development of good local cuisine otherwise we would see Switzerland and Norway cuisine being more reputable, which you have pointed out is not the case currently. And looking at the wiki list you have posted, I can see Vietnam bringing up the bottom end even lower than Indonesia. Vietnamese cuisine is pretty famous for certain dishes like pho and banh mi so I don’t think it is worse than Indonesia.
DeleteAs for my UK trip I am going with a group of friends and we are thinking of spending only a small amount of time in London before heading North towards Manchester. It would be in the first week of Dec so well before the Christmas surge.
DeleteSwiss and Norwegian cuisine isn't that famous for being excellent, with a few exceptions. The Swiss are famous for their love of chocolate but the key ingredient of cocoa is grown in the tropics, not Europe. So that's them using their money and sourcing the best tasting ingredients from far away at huge expense and creating delicious treats - something a poor country simply cannot do. As for African cuisine, it varies from region to region but one thing is the theme of watering food down to make it go further. Take the example of Fufu a common staple, they take yam (but often add other ingredients like tapioca), pound it down to a mash and then add water to make it go further. Then it is served with a stew of meat and vegetables, but compare that to a stir-fry of just meat & vegetables, the addition of a lot of water to turn it into a stew makes whatever ingredients you have go a lot further. Thus Fufu and Stew is a staple meal in Africa, it's not as gross as what you have described as insects and tree bark, but you can just imagine an African mother with a very limited budget at the market thinking, I have to feed a big family of ten people but I have so little money, I have to be creative to make whatever I can afford go a lot further. Thus take yam for example, you could slice them up like French fries and deep fry them for a treat but that's an expensive option as cooking oil isn't cheap compared to water which the African mother uses to boil the yam and then dilute the yam mash to create this sticky porridge called Fufu. Thus when the primary motivation is to save money and make the food go a lot further, taste, texture and the dining experience is often completely compromised. Fufu and stew is a bland meal but it's the kind of staple that sustains millions of Africans. It's not as extreme as eating insects and tree bark, but it's hardly what people in London or Singapore would choose to eat if they went to a restaurant. On my travels in Indonesia, I've had some awful street food of the same nature where they used meat and bone meal to make meatballs - urgh, that was just awful. This is when they use parts of the animal that's usually discarded (from bones to eyesballs to skin) to create a mincemeat which is then turned into meat balls. As for Vietnam, yeah the food is pretty good actually and I like Vietnamese cuisine very much, but that's mostly because Vietnam has always had an unequal society where there were at least some rich elites who could afford good food creating a demand for high quality local cuisine. Whereas Norway can afford good food but they just import stuff from abroad rather than create their own cuisine. So having money doesn't always force you to innovate when it comes to what you do in the kitchen.
DeleteOh I didn't realize you were traveling with a group of friends - then I'd suggest you head on out to somewhere with beautiful nature like the peak district, the lake district or even Northern Wales. Heck, you can even go to the Scottish Highlands. Unless you have some kind of specialist interest in football teams from the north of England, I usually find smaller Northern English towns depressing and they hold little of interest to me. I've only visited such places when work takes me there so I've been there, done that all over the years: Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Bradford, even Glasgow and Edinburgh up in Scotland but have no desire to go there on holiday when continental Europe is far more interesting to me. Why do you and your friends wanna go there?!
DeleteOn the topic of streetfood, I remember going to Bali once with friends and one of the staff members at the villa we rented on AirBnB offered to go out and buy some streetfood for us. They said we could request any dish we wanted, so I requested Bakmi ayam. I was surprised when they came back and the price-tag was so low, it was less than $1 usd, considering the staff member must've pocketed some difference like your aunt who worked at a hotel Alex. Then I tried the food, and it was very bland compared to the Bakmi Ayam I was used to eating in Jakarta's restaurants which cost minimum 5x as much. But considering after the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, some street stalls in Indonesia were protesting the increase in price for sunflower oil, they're really at the margins in terms of using the cheapest and fewest ingredients possible in order to simply break even. There isn't any extra money to provide the best flavor, only sustenance. And this was in Bali, a very touristy destination. But even in Bali there is extreme inequality. I think like half the population are still subsistence farmers, even if a small minority work in high end White-Lotus style hotels which have very good restaurants that serve amazing food. So Alex, I assume you didn't try to go to any of the high end restaurants in Kazakhstan then?
DeleteI thought the whole point of street food was that a) you walk down the street, b) you see and smell the street food on sale and witness other people enjoying it, c) prompted by those signals, you impulsively walk up to the hawker and say, I'd have some of that please. Instead, asking staff members to buy a takeaway for you isn't quite the same street food experience. Even if that bakmi ayam was prepared by the side of the street, it is not quite street food as we know it? In Singapore, I would walk around the food court and hawker center to see what other people are eating, what's popular and allow my sight and senses to guide me before I make a decision. As for my meals in Kazakhstan, to be honest, that was poor planning on my part. I had a few dishes in mind that I wanted to try: horse meat, laghman and plov were on the top of my list but my focus was on sightseeing rather than restaurants. So for example, on my first day there, we went to First President's Park which was in South Almaty. I then noted on the map that there was this big mall called Mega Mall a short walk from the First President's Park and my planning went as far as "I'm sure we'll find some dinner options there, it's literally a Mega Mall". So when we got there, we had a tour of the food court and the restaurants - we settled for a Laghman place which looked quite attractive. But did I google the best restaurants in Almaty before each meal time? No, I didn't - I only went as far as to see on the map where we ought to go for dinner, like "we'll come out of the Circus at 7 pm, then the big mall is just around the corner to the West". Could I have planned better? Maybe. But I just looked up the top restaurant in Almaty on Tripadvisor and the food there turned out to be mostly Italian-inspired. I guess that's what the rich in Almaty do, go out for a fine dinner at an Italian restaurant. But I didn't fly all the way to central Asia to have pizza and pasta, I was just in Italy in December. So we mostly picked our dinners in the malls near where we were sightseeing or near where we were staying. In Istanbul, we ended up in a restaurant just 5 mins from our hotel which was excellent and we loved it so much, but that's just a lucky coincidence, we didn't Google it. We got to Istanbul so late and by the time we checked in, I said to my hubby, I think that street up the hill looks quite lively, we might be able to get some dinner there as I think the cafes and restaurants there are still open. So we wondered up the hill and after one junction, my hubby said, "I think I smell some kind of barbecue, roast meats". We followed our noses and ended up in this amazing place - now that's street food for you. Hunting for good food in the streets of Istanbul with our noses.
DeleteWe did go to a very good restaurant in Bishkek twice - my hubby loved it so much we went back a second time. I would consider that higher end, ie. it was a nice restaurant, waiter spoke English even if the menu was only in Russian and we had a lovely time. The waiter even remembered what my hubby's favourite drink was there (cherry kompot) after one visit. But even then, I found the food somewhat bland. On my second visit there, it was so freaking cold that day, so I ordered a hot soup to warm myself up and oooh boy, that was a very disappointing bowl of tomato soup with bits of meat and vegetable in it. I only had one good bowl of soup in Almaty and that was a traditional Russian beetroot soup with sour cream, but it's hard to go wrong with a classic like that.
Oh yes I really miss Singaporean streetfood. A hawker stall may not look fancy, but it can serve amazing food for not that expensive. I'm visiting Singapore in a couple weeks, and I'm definitely gonna have some amazing streetfood when I visit. American streetfood just doesn't compare. I went to a Rennaissance fair last year with my boyfriend, but all I could buy there foodwise was deep fried meat on a stick, funnel cake (deep fried batter with icing sugar), and turkey legs. There is no "follow a delicious scent to find a good meal" like you did in Istanbul in America. Haha you're right, Indonesia doesn't quite have night food markets that you would find in Malaysia or Vietnam. There are people who prepare food at a cart for a living in Indonesia, and I describe them to my American friends as "like a hot dog stand" but it's not the same as a street with many carts side by side selling food, or a hawker center with many stalls.
DeleteWow I'm surprised even the high end restaurant's food wasn't that good. I dunno if it's because Kazakhstan is mostly desert or steppe that it doesn't grow that much spices compared to South, Southeast and East Asia. I don't think they do that much international trade as countries like Norway or Switzerland that they can mix and match more ingredients aside from local ones. Surprisingly Kazakhstan is not that poor, they're 56th in the world for GDP per capita. But I suspect like Singapore and Ireland, which are the 3rd and 2nd in the world, the numbers are deceptive. A lot of Kazakhstan's economy is based on oil, but I suspect most of it flows into the hands of oligarchs rather than the average joe/jane. Even with Singapore I'm surprised their GDP per capita is 133k usd/year, since many Singaporeans I knew weren't making that much. When I google the average wage, it's only $3850 usd/month. https://smartwealth.sg/average-income-salary-singapore
@Amanda, the mere fact that the staff offered to packet food for you is a red flag in my book. He/she is probably going to find the cheapest and not necessarily best food item requested so that he/she could pocket more money as “tips”.
DeleteHi Amanda, let me give you an example of what we did when it came to street food in Bishkek in Kyrgyzstan. We were in the big market called Osh Bazaar when we saw people queueing up to buy some buns and we could smell the freshly baked buns as they came out of the oven. I was even able to feel the heat from the ovens on that cold day and that's when I thought, oh you can't go wrong. The buns are called 'samsa' (singular, plural in Russian, 'samsi') and it's a massive bun filled with potatoes and minced lamb. It is devoid of any spices but at least it very hot and savoury, the kind of snack you would want to enjoy on a cold winter's day. I paid the equivalent of about US$0.90 for these buns and admittedly, my husband liked them a lot more than me. I thought they were okay but lacked spices to jazz them up. The word samsa is taken originally from the Indian word samosa but a samosa would usually contain curry spices and not only did they drop the 'o' from the word samosa, they also left out all the spices. But that's part of the street food experience, it's about discovery, it's about following your noses and being impulsive and sometimes it's good, sometimes it's okay, sometimes it can be a bit of a let down. As for the restaurants, we were eating in the mall most of the time, not the most imaginative option but I simply focused on the sightseeing rather than tracking down the best restaurants in town. I even stumbled upon some Singaporean Chinese rice in Almaty and I couldn't resist. I did an Instagram post about how it tasted wrong. As for Kazakhstan, there's a massive wealth divide. The oil industry benefits the elite whilst ordinary people are poor. To give you an idea, I took the public bus from the airport and it costed me 200 tenge and that's like US43 cents only, like not even 50 cents USD. The public bus has got to be thaaaat cheap otherwise the ordinary folks cannot afford it. I stayed at a nice Airbnb penthouse in a newly constructed condominium block in a nice part of town, I was craving coffee so I went to the local cafe and to my surprise, I paid about US$3.75 for a cup of coffee and I thought, why is the public bus so cheap but a cup of coffee not as cheap? I then realized, oh of course, I went to a cafe in a part of town where the rich people lived so you paid those kind of prices for a cup of coffee. If you went to where the poor people lived, then you can pay like US$0.550 for a hot drink. So there are two sides of Almaty, where the rich and the poor live side by side, but have very different kinds of lives. My Airbnb host was mortified that I took the bus as that's for poor people but I'm like, there's absolutely nothing wrong with the bus, they are great. At first I thought she was concerned I'd get lost if I didn't speak Russian/Kazakh, but I realized, nah she's just a rich snob who doesn't want to stand next to poor people in a bus.
DeleteI'm sure Choaniki will tell you as well that in Singapore, there are places where you can still get coffee for under S$1 and there are fancy places where you can pay S$10 for a cup of coffee. And as for Amanda asking the staff to get her street food for her, I think that is missing the whole point of the street food pasar malam experience where you enjoy not knowing what you're getting and are simply guided by the spontaneous stimuli of what you are seeing and smelling as you walk through the crowded market?
DeleteI mean seeing as how @Amanda is a relatively high income earner I doubt she needs to scrimp and save that extra few dollars for a drink. There are affordable coffee/tea sold at the hawker centre at Bukit Merah and $1 set lunches at Bt Panjang CC. But to travel all the way there just for food and drink is not recommended since even I won’t do it since I value my time and I’m sure Amanda does as well! And “street food” in SG is a scam! These stalls all have high rentals and foist the costs onto consumers. The essence of street food is that of non-licensed vendors who setup shop without having to pay rental or obtain any food handling licenses so their raw materials are their only costs. That is so not like Singapore!
DeleteI used the example of a simple cup of coffee as that's exactly what I'm drinking now, it's something so basic but rich people will pay a lot for a cup of coffee whilst poor people will find places where it is very cheap. I am not implying that Amanda needs to hunt for a cheaper cup of coffee in Singapore but rather I am simply illustrating the point that all big cities are defined by inequality - ie. there will always be very rich people in any city living alongside very poor people whether you're talking about Almaty, Bishkek, Singapore or New York. This is in reference to when Amanda was discussing whether or not Kazakhstan is a rich country or not by looking at the GDP per capita figures - my point is that even in poorer countries like Indonesia, Laos and Nepal, there will always be some rich people there and even in rich countries like Switzerland, Norway and Singapore, there will always be some poor people around.
DeleteYeah even London has huge inequality. When I googled the average wage in the UK and found out it's only 31k pounds/year, I thought that was weird because it also includes all the rich people working in finance, and London rents are extremely expensive. But it's a Singapore/Kazakhstan situation, some people are very rich and can afford private homes in the city center(like that penthouse you stayed in Alex), and others have to settle for public housing or living in the countryside.
DeleteY'know I was thinking about this rich/poor divide because I have a friend named Todd who is an aspiring author and YouTuber. However Todd just puts out novels he wrote on Amazon Kindle hoping they blow up with zero promotion. And he uploads a YouTube video every 3 days that I can tell he clearly put a lot of effort in, but gets max 1k views. In contrast, last week my boss put out a post on LinkedIn about the A.I I've been developing. Then an online newspaper specializing in my industry saw that LinkedIn post and contacted my company asking for an email interview. My boss answered their questions, then the article went up. Then another big company in a different state read the article and immediately contacted my boss saying they'd like to license my A.I from us. We basically got free promotion just from knowing the right people and talking to them. Todd on the other hand, isn't partnered with a big publishing house which can help him do media interviews with online websites or local bookstores. Neither does he know a big YouTuber whose channel he can appear on as a guest to drive traffic to his YouTube channel, which I think is why he struggles compared to me. But Todd has this illusion that the Internet has removed the barrier to entry since anyone can upload to youtube or sell books on Amazon Kindle, therefore it should be easier to achieve the American dream. But no, there is still a barrier to entry, anyone can upload but there's no guarantee anyone will see what you're selling, you just have to hope the YouTube algorithm favors you. Even the Internet is an unequal place. There's millionaire YouTubers like Logan Paul and Mr Beast, and people like Todd who aren't making any money.
Well Amanda, allow me to point out please that for every one person who has a well paid job in finance, there are thousands in terribly poorly paid jobs. The streets of London are not paved with gold and there are people out there cleaning the toilets at the local McDonald's or delivering their burgers who earn very little money. These people at the bottom end of the food chain are the norm whilst those who are raking in millions a year are the exception. It's the same thing with any big city like New York, Singapore or Almaty. The working class will always be the majority - it's just that in New York or London, the person cleaning the toilets at McDonald's would be paid a bit more than his counterpart in Almaty or Jakarta. By that token, averages are meaningless since the wealth is never equally shared - yes rich people pay more taxes than the poor, but that is by no means effective in sharing the wealth. This is why people like Todd are likely to remain poor as they will remain the working class majority whilst very few will achieve great success and become super rich.
DeleteYeah Alex, even though London is the finance capital, most people living in London don't work in finance. Same goes for Singapore I guess. The thing about Todd is that he does have a master's degree, which he uses to make his YouTube videos in some niche field. But he has a tendency to only want to do the fun or glamorous side of every job. It's just so competitive to get one of the cushier jobs in society that you can't just be competent at something, you also have to be charismatic and willing to do unpleasant/boring things if it keeps the business afloat.
DeleteAnyway, given your last trip to central Asia, would you go back? Or is the food that terrible you'd go elsewhere for your next trips. I was always curious what African cuisine would be like. Maybe in Nigeria they're sufficiently developed enough to make good food, or I could try African food in a restaurant in America.
Well you remember I wrote a piece not so long ago about how some of my friends would love to get a lucrative job in financial services but are stuck doing poorly paid jobs in the service industry - the irony is that I am also kinda doing a service job but I simply am paid a lot more by companies in this industry with higher budgets to do the same thing. I am looking at the details of my next business trip to Luxembourg. One of my clients is a company there who has Chinese corporate clients and the big boss there wants me to help her schmooze the Chinese clients, she needs a Mandarin speaker on her team to persuade her clients to spend more money with her and I'm spending a day with her at an event, a day at her office and then a day sightseeing before coming home. So that's 3 days 2 nights in Luxembourg, but schmoozing Chinese clients - how's that different from say a Mandarin speaking manager at a hotel where they have guests from China? I'm essentially doing the same thing but at a much, much higher level where the corporate clients are spending a lot more money than a guest at a nice hotel. That's why this lady in Luxembourg is willing to fly me to Luxembourg and put me up in a 5 star hotel there just because I can add so much value to what she is doing - but how many Chinese people in London would love to do a gig like that? But the key reason why most people don't do lucrative jobs like that is because they are not able to add as much value as I do when it comes to selling to corporate clients. I have a certain set of skills that a lot of people don't have and when it comes to extracting money out of corporate clients, it is an art form that I have mastered. As for Todd, he has yet to figure out what he can do to add value because right now he is not doing anything that is all that constructive. As for returning to central Asia, yeah I will go back - I wanna go to Uzbekistan at some point as it is a lot more 'Muslim' than Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Samarkand is supposed to be incredibly beautiful with a charming old town. Just do a Google image search for Samarkand, it almost looks AI generated but it is all real.
DeleteAs for Nigerian food, there's a huge difference between what the rich eat and what the poor eat. Take Ponmo for example, that's dried cow skin, it's the same stuff that gets turned into leather but when food is scarce, they eat it as well. It is dried, sometimes smoked and you have to boil it in water for a long time to turn it back into something edible but it is very chewy and tough. Obviously, a rich Nigerian will never touch Ponmo and will have the finest steaks instead but for a poor Nigerian, eating Ponmo stew is cheaper than getting fine cuts of beef and that's all the poor person can afford. I looked at the menu of my local Nigerian restaurant here in London, they have the classic staples made with yam and tapioca, but since they're catering to richer people in London, there's a lot of grilled meats which is what the rich Nigerians will eat. But the question is whether or not this is authentic, is this what ordinary Nigerians eat? Probably not, it can at best represent what very rich Nigerians eat.
Oh man selling to corporate clients is such an art form that I think the sales guy on my team gets paid a lot more than me. But he brings in the customers and has a huge list of contacts so... Anyway, recently my company has been spending a lot on cloud computing services so someone on AWS' sales team reached out to us asking us about our business requirements so they could promote their latest products. The thing is though, I think they did a poor job on our first meeting because I didn't choose to commit to anything. So they sent a follow up email offering to do a live demo of their product for me, and I'm just like wow, they're really pulling out all the stops to get more of our business. It feels so nice to be the customer for a change, getting the vip treatment. But unless they can thoroughly convince me they can add value to our technology, I ain't gonna spend a cent. I must have to add value to my own company so I can't waste a cent of our budget either.
DeleteOh okay cool, historical buildings are always nice to visit. I kinda wanna visit istanbul for that reason because it was the capital of the Byzantine empire. Hmm I'm not too focused on authenticity as long as the food is good. But eating what Egyptian kings ate doesn't make the dish any less Egyptian. I just wanted to try Nigerian cuz I heard they cook snails.
Btw the thing about Todd's YouTube videos is that he thinks he's making good educational content that he should be rewarded for. But there are far more people who go to YouTube to be entertained in addition to being educated rather than only educated, and he doesn't like focusing on the entertainment part. Todd did get a job teaching at a community college as an adjunct instructor, but these kinds of positions are very poorly paid with no benefits or job security. Adjuncts are hired only for a semester and are paid on a per course basis(about $3-4k/course over a 3 month period). I think Todd's problem is that he thinks because he's highly educated in something difficult he should be paid well, but no people are only paid well if they add lots of value to the people buying their shit. A professional basketball player isn't very educated, but they add a lot of value because they are entertaining to watch. Likewise nobody taught you Alex how to sell, but somehow you've managed to acquire the ability to convince very rich people that what you're selling is good value for money. That's something an MBA or other masters degree can't teach. Even though I like Todd as a friend and he has his merits, I don't like how he said the reason why I'm more successful than him is because I got my master's from a higher ranked university while he went to a school which took anyone with a pulse. Even if someone went to a high ranked school, if they don't add value they're gonna get fired pretty quick. I mean me and you Alex went to pretty decently ranked schools, but when we were just starting out we didn't make very much because we didn't have enough experience to add a lot of value. Although someone like Todd has more hurdles to clear because he's starting from a worse position from going to a lower ranked school, he should view success as an incremental long term process rather than an over night one. My boyfriend dropped out of university after one semester and now makes 6 figures, but his first job paid him about the same as McDonald's, but he learned a lot on the job and exceeded expectations so they gave him a promotion to a better job with higher pay, and his income grew at a rate of 10% each year to get to where he is now. Putting out YouTube videos and expecting to blow up immediately is just not realistic, but better for Todd to make YouTube videos than turn to gambling or investing in get rich quick scams.
DeleteI googled Samarkand, it has very beautiful Muslim architecture. It doesn't quite look like the old buildings in Saudi Arabian, but it looks even better than them because of the blue colors. You have very good taste in ancient wonders of the world to visit.
Hi Amanda, yeah I spent 28 hours in Istanbul on an extended stopover to Almaty. It was a good deal with Turkish Airlines as they threw in a free night's hotel to encourage you to go with them. It's a city I know very well having worked there a long time ago but it was always good to revisit it. Samarkand is like Istanbul by that token, it's just well known and it is definitely a place I wanna visit. I could probably fly into Tashkent and then out of Samarkand, but given that I've just done Central Asia, I might wait a year or two before going there given that it is somewhat similar already. The only thing I'll miss are the high mountains as Uzbekistan is a lot more flat compared to Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. As for snails for food, it's poor man's food. Snails are edible and are eaten everywhere including Indonesia. The reason is that if you wanna buy expensive meat, you need money but the poor people could just go down to the rice fields, ponds and riverside to gather snails as a cheap source of protein to add to their meals. However, given the way this is associated with poor people, the rich Indonesians like you would never touch it given that you have all the money in the world to buy the best meats available in Jakarta, so why would you touch poor people's food like snails? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snails_as_food#Southeast_Asia
DeleteSorry I spotted a big typo: "it's LESS well known" ie. Samarkand can be just as fascinating and charming is Istanbul, but fewer tourists visit Samarkand as it's less famous.
DeleteAs for Todd, the problem is far more simple and universal actually - he doesn't understand the difference between supply & demand. Let me us a simple analogy to make my point since I've just been in my garden. Imagine I found a huge colony of snails in my garden and I think, woah I have hundreds, even thousands of snails here. I can be rich if I sell it as food given that some cultures eat snail meat, or I could market them as a low maintenance pet for people who live in apartments and can't have dogs, cats, rabbits etc as pets. But the flaw in that argument is whether or not anyone is willing to pay me good money for the snails because without having a demand (ie. customers willing to offer me good money) for those snails, none of the business plans make any sense, I can't monetize what I have. It is therefore worthless. Now I don't dispute the fact that Todd is qualified expert in his niche field but is there are demand for his knowledge through those Youtube videos? No, there is a demand for other kinds of videos but Todd is so focused on supply (ie. "what I have to offer") rather than demand (ie. "what people wanna watch on Youtube") and that results in him getting a handful of views per video despite the fact that he has spent many hours recording those videos. That's a stupid mistake that a lot of people make and it usually stems from wishful thinking - they wish and hope that what they have to offer will be in demand, but of course, it isn't. That's why I am good at corporate sales, I sit down and listen to what the client wants/needs, then I tailor a solution according to their want and needs rather than just flog whatever I have off the shelf in order to make a quick sale. It's called listening, it's not the most complex social skill in the world but it is so important and fundamental.
DeleteOh yeah you also really like mountains. I remember when you went to Norway you had a hiking guide take you up a mountain too. Yeah that's the thing about central Asia, nobody knows about them because it's so isolated. The only thing they're known for is oil and being friendly with Russia. Oh I didn't know southeast asia ate snails, I thought only French people ate them until I found out Nigerians did too. Its funny how lobsters used to be known as poor people food in the US because they were so abundant and nobody wanted to eat them. I really liked eating escargot when I was in Singapore, but of course it was the French version with lots of butter garlic sauce that was very expensive. The Nigerian or even Indonesian version probably has less spices and care put into the cooking process because its not luxury food, but I'd try it at least once.
DeleteI mean considering there isn't even that much demand from the higher ed sector that Todd is working a bottom of the foodchain job, there isn't that much demand from YouTube unless Todd becomes more entertaining like the educational channels "UsefulCharts" or "Sci-show." You're so right about simply listening to the customer in corporate sales. The AWS representative who was doing most of the talking in the initial meeting just talked very fast and tried to push whatever latest product Amazon told her to sell, without even asking me if it fulfilled my requirements. Because she was trying to push an A.I product on me similar to chatgpt without even telling me the accuracy score since in my industry we need 99% while chatgpt is only 80% accurate. The most she asked was "any questions?" like she was a primary school teacher rather than a sales representative hired by Amazon who has to secure business. Todd also talks fast like that when explaining what he studied in grad school. We once had this discussion where he was telling me he was busy preparing the lecture material for the university course he was hired to teach, and I said I was also invited to my undergrad school to give a guest lecture, but for free. And Todd said "oh yeah when it's free then it's networking, but I find that stuff annoying so I don't think I do it as often as I should." I said "yeah it is annoying, I don't like doing it, but my Dad said I can be as nerdy as I want focused on learning something, but if I don't do networking events how will I make money?" and Todd said "or you can just be a poor nerd, like me...." Todd doesn't really think of his audience when he's writing books or making YouTube videos, he just thinks of what content he likes. However, what pays the bills is content that other people like, irrelevant of whether he likes it or not. It is wishful thinking like you said. Todd is thinking "I want to be a rich youtuber with millions of subscribers making educational videos" rather than "what kind of people do I want to watch my videos? What kind of video formats/speaking tone do they like? How can I reach them?"
Snails are found everywhere and they are edible, they simply are not that delicious as a meat due to the texture and some people may also have a 'yuck' reaction due to the fact that they look slimy and disgusting. But nonetheless, it is a form of cheap protein and poor people would process it and disguise it, for example, they'd chop it up and create snail meatballs with other herbs and spices, so you can't tell the meat came from a snail. Todd's a lost cause, he will never make money if he focuses on supply and not demand. Reality will catch up with him sooner or later.
DeleteTo me snails taste very similar to clams, because they're both molluscs. They just feel drier because they're land molluscs rather than sea molluscs. Some people think that farmed snails(or insects for that matter) are a more sustainable form of farmed meat than cows because they don't take up as much space. But unless people consider them less icky it will be a tough sell.
DeleteThe funny thing about Todd is that he is a local born straight white male, yet he accuses me, an immigrant Asian woman, of having way more privilege than he does. I suppose he would be the type of voter that Trump would appeal to, because those men look at the democrats fighting for minorities, women, and LGBT, and think, "what white male privilege are you talking about?"
Oh the texture may be similar but the taste is not. Snails live in the mud, the soil, they pick up this flavour of the soil that is unpleasant, that's why they need to be cooked in a strong tasting sauce to mask the flavour that most people will consider unpleasant and resembling the soil. There's nothing toxic about it, it's just unpleasant. Whereas clams live in seawater and tend to have a taste that resembles seafood, seawater - we have developed a liking for that taste. I like to cook this side dish called seaweed rice, where I mix shredded cooked kelp with white rice to give it that taste of the sea. That salty, umami flavour is very nice indeed, but snails don't have that nice flavour - though a lot of it depends on the preparation process. Some fine dining institutions would keep their snails in their kitchen and feed them only carrots to flush out their insides. When they start pooping only orange poo, they know they only have carrots in their system and the nasty soil taste will be gone. That's what a top French restaurant would do but it is a costly, labour intensive process. Your average Indonesian or Nigerian poor person who picks up some snails from the riverside will never go to such lengths to improve the taste of the snail meat. So apart from the yucks/icky factor, you also have to consider how hard it is to make snail meat actually taste as nice as beef or lamb.
DeleteHey I actually watched a YouTube video about that where Gordon Ramsay found some snails in his back garden and fed them only carrots for 3 days to flush out their insides before cooking. That explains why the canned snails I buy from France or the Netherlands are so expensive, I think they were like $20/pound which is the same price as frozen scallops in the grocery store, which is considered more luxury. I kinda think with global warming being an issue food supply chains will have to change eventually. It's cool to watch the evolution of the food industry, where advanced countries like the Netherlands can become a huge food producer because they use a lot of technologies to improve efficiency. Being a farmer in the Netherlands is no longer a working class job but a high tech job. If we could professionalize farming bugs or snails then maybe they'd taste a lot better while staying affordable.
DeleteIt is uncanny how I know so much about the cooking of snails - I've never cooked snails before, I've only gone as far as having them in the restaurant. But snails and worms can be made to taste palatable if prepared correctly, ie. if they were farmed in an environment where their diet is strictly controlled rather than just gathering worms and snails from the fields in the wild.
DeleteThere is a hokkien adage that is roughly translated as rubbish eat, rubbish grow (I’m sure LIFT is able to figure this one out). That is why people in poor developing countries in Africa, SE Asia, and S.America eat insects as it is a cheap source of protein. I doubt this source of food is particularly delicious and don’t think many tourists would go out of their way to seek it out. That is also why the cattle that is used for the highest grade wagyu gets massages and also gets to drink beer as part of their diet. Similarly, the pigs that are used for Jamón Ibérico are free range and get fed acorns only. Since whatever you feed the animals affects the final quality of the meat, if you want the best you need to give it high quality feed. Hence, expect to pay the highest prices for the final product!
DeleteClams taste good if they are harvested from clean waters and they have a healthy diet, that's why quality seafood costs so much. Whereas a snail that lives in a muddy river bank will taste of the muddy river bank unless you go to great lengths to purge them of the crap they survived on by keeping them on a diet of carrots for a few days - that seems to be the tried and tested method to make sure they purge everything until they only poo orange carrots out. The fact is poor people eat things like snails out of desperation and poverty, not because they taste good. If these poor people could afford Wagyu beef and Iberico ham then they would not be eating snails.
DeleteGiven how expensive snails are, it seems more worth it to just buy quality mussels or clams instead for 1/3rd the cost. But industrialization of mussel/clam farming has been going on for a while. There is another creature that lives in the mud that is farmed, and that's crawfish, which looks like a mini-lobster. Though I don't really like crawfish, the tails are smaller because they don't swim as much as lobsters and walk through the mud instead. But they're cheaper than lobsters and take less time to mature (2 months vs 5 years).
DeleteCrawfish/Crayfish are so popular in China now, I have sat at a Chinese restaurant with a pair of plastic gloves slowly working my way through a pile of craw/crayfish and they are known as little lobsters. In the West, they are processed and served without the shells but in Chinese cuisine, the diner is expected to do some hard work before enjoying the rewards.
DeleteOh I didn't know the Chinese ate crawfish too. In America they're really popular in Louisiana where you have to peel and eat an entire bowl of them. I haven't found crawfish that is served peeled, but I live in the South, maybe in the North they do that. Btw I forgot to congratulate you on your trip to Luxembourg. I think you've been there a few times for business from previous posts. Do you like Luxembourg? I'm glad you've managed to find good clients to pay for all-expense paid trips even as a freelancer.
DeleteChina consumes about 90% of the world's crayfish and I've enjoyed them before when I was last in China, but they were actually unpopular with the Australians I was traveling with as it seemed like a lot of work for very little reward - you had to work your way through the shells to get to very little meat. But here's a great article to explain why it is so popular in China for you: https://www.goldthread2.com/food/how-louisiana-crayfish-became-china-national-dish/article/3023711
DeleteLuxembourg is like France on steroids, it is so much richer than France, so for example public transport is 100% free as the government has tons of money to spend on everything. On the street, everyone speaks French but it's safer, it's got so little crime, it's cleaner and it's super well organized. It's also expensive, like woah, I'm glad I'm going there on business because the last time I was there, I found a cheap flight to Luxembourg. Then I looked at the hotel and Airbnb prices and said, nope, we're staying across the border in Germany as it is so much cheaper in Germany. Luxembourg is tiny anyway, so I stayed just across the border in Germany and crossed back and forth most days. That was during a really hideous heatwave when it was like 38 degrees everyday, thankfully I'm going back now in spring and it is currently 8 degrees at lunchtime there. As for the work there, it's a loooooong time coming. I was meant to work with this woman there last year, I had already done a bit of freelance work for her last year. But then she fell out with her business partner (she was one of two directors in the company), so they had a 'business divorce', she took her half of her team, set up a new company and then she came back to me after I got back from Central Asia, okay I'm now the only dictator of this new company, this new ship only has one captain, when can I put you on a flight to Luxembourg? So all this is about 1 year behind schedule due to what happened with her business divorce late last year but now she's completely ready to give me loads of work and I can't wait to get started with her new firm.
Oh and in the UK, you can buy a small tub of crayfish that is cooked and peeled from the supermarket seafood section. You can then use that for your salads or sandwiches.
DeleteWhoah low crime and free public transport. Sounds like it would be very hard to become a citizen there, like Switzerland, but probably lots of foreigners work there because of the tiny population. It's funny how with tiny countries like Monaco or Luxembourg you can stay at a hotel across the border and commute in. Oh yeah I think you mentioned that woman last year but never wrote about a trip to Luxembourg. Oh well, suppose she was busy with all the accounting to divide the company's assets and employees.
DeleteLuxembourg is to France, what Singapore is to China, ie. a richer, safer, more efficient version of it where everything just works super well. Except public transport isn't free in Singapore - that's just how rich Luxembourg is.
DeleteThe fact is Luxembourg is rich and sparsely populated - it only has a population of 640,000 and once you get out of the main city, you just see forests and farmland. So in sharp contrast to Singapore, there isn't that feeling of congestion and crazy high population density, it's a sense of the model answer of what Europe ought to be like.
DeleteHaha true public transport isn't free in Sg, neither is public school education(though it's very cheap). Oh so it's not that cramped either. I googled pictures of Luxembourg and they still have some castles. Sounds like you're visiting a very expensive Disneyland for work haha. Imagine winning the passport lottery and being born with citizenship in super rich socialist countries like Luxembourg or the UAE. Granted these countries and their economies are small compared to the US or UK, but it would be a very relaxed life.
DeleteOh yeah I am now wondering if I should check out something within Luxembourg or just nip on the train to go across the border to Arlon in Belgium which was my plan A. I have done a lot of Germany bordering Luxembourg and I've not been to Belgium for a good number of years, like since 2016. I could go to France as well but hold up, I just got an email today telling me that my Skyteam air miles need using or they will expire, so that's essentially Air France or KLM, so I might go to France again soon just to use those Air Miles up. I've done small towns in Luxembourg already and unless you're specifically going to see or do something like a museum or art gallery or even a waterfall, it's quite pointless going to these small villages in the middle of nowhere in Luxembourg. It's small but super rich.
DeleteI googled how big Luxembourg is and it has 3.5x the surface area of Singapore with only 10% the population. I was gonna ask if taking a flight was worth it compared to a train, but given how it's bigger than Singapore, then yes definitely. Are you thinking France or the Netherlands?
DeleteBtw I went to two fancy dinners this week and I just thought of how I'm very introverted and don't enjoy schmoozing for work. But this is just the reality of most jobs that pay well, I will have to put on "customer service mode" and wear a pantsuit in these fancy all expenses paid places, if only so I can live somewhere nice and afford epic vacations like my trip to Singapore in a couple weeks. I was even invited to golf next time. The upside is that if I ever get laid off I'd build lots of connections I can turn to for my next job, compared to a software engineer who only codes but never attends events. Alex I think you haven't sent out a job application in 10 years, because whenever you're out of work a former colleague recommends you to work for their company.
Well it is possible to go to Luxembourg by train - I'd get the Eurostar to Brussels then switch to a local train from Brussels to Luxembourg but it would take a lot longer. We're talking 2 hours to Brussels then 4 hours to Luxembourg (yup, Eurostar is high speed rail but the line to Lux is a lot slower), that's 6 hours and way too slow compared to the flight which is like 1 hour 10 mins. I have no idea what I am gonna do with those Air Miles, I've not had the time to think about it yet, I could always fly to any of Air France's destinations, eg. New York or Singapore via Paris, I'm not limited to France. And for the record, I've not applied for a job since 2009, so that's 15 years and that's how important networking is. Am I missing out on better opportunities by not looking further afield? Maybe, but I only have 24 hours in a day and only can do so much, so I am happy enough with the way things have panned out.
DeleteHoly cow 4 hours between Brussels and Luxembourg. Yeah a flight is definitely worth it, or even a drive for 2 hours or less. Do you also have points for hotels? My boyfriend used to travel a lot for work so he accumulated a lot of points he could spend on free hotel nights. What are you looking to get out of your next trip? I would be kinda tired and looking forward to staying home for a while. But your work hours are a lot less than mine so you seem to have more stamina for travel.
DeleteWow 15 years, and you've swapped companies at least three times in that period. Half the job/school opportunities I've had came from just knowing someone, and they were a lot better comparitively to the opportunities I got by just applying. I think you network and work just enough to have lots of time and energy to enjoy the money you make. I mean you could work 50 hours a week and make a boatload of cash, but you'd probably only have time for one big vacation a year, even if you had more money.
Urgh, now that you mentioned it, I tend to use either AirBNB or stay at smaller boutique hotels rather than big chains, so I don't collect points for hotel. As for my next trip, I saw my agenda this afternoon and it's PACKED. On one hand, I am keen to prove to the folks in Luxembourg that I can add so much value. On the other hand, I am also keen to see how I can pull together all these various companies I am working with. So for example, I am collaborating on two deals with my old friend in NYC, so I am hoping if I share that story of those two deals with my friends in Luxembourg, they would be able to say, "oh I can help you with this aspect of it" rather than just, "yeah good luck with it." I am at the stage where I am hoping to do a lot more cross pollination.
DeleteAh well Airbnb is nice if you want to live in a house or villa. But they don't have a rewards program, unfortunately. Oh yeah at one of the events I went to this week, an alumni fundraising event for my university, there were a lot people in finance, A.I, or law that I talked to. I probably would've worked harder to cross pollinate if I was sales team, but I was too scared to approach a middle aged grey haired hedge fund manager and only talked to the young people at the event, which there weren't many. Btw when you mentioned "oh I can help you with this aspect of it", I was surprised that at these types of events people like having the spotlight and looking knowledgeable that they'd happily give away advice for free if you asked most of the time. It's just a matter of social skills to make people feel smart for giving away their knowledge. As much as I find that tiring sometimes, it's not that much effort for a huge reward.
DeleteI would like to point out that if someone does help me out, then I don't expect a favour for free. I would work that into the business model to see how we can carve out of a piece of the profit to reflect their input. You have to reward and incentivize people to help you, so they will do it again and again. It really depends on how much effort they put into it, like if it's a suggestion off the cuff with zero follow up, then yeah I'd just say thank you. But if they really do something that helps me solve a problem, then that needs paying one way or another to reflect the value they have added.
DeleteOh yeah being able to not just horse trade, but also show people who helped you gratitude by trying to help them too is a great way to build a good reputation in the industry. People talk a lot about how cutthroat finance/tech can be, but someone can't screw over everybody or be only a taker but never a giver or else they'll make zero allies. It's good you try to give people a piece of the pie if they put in genuine effort to help you.
DeleteBtw I managed to talk my boss into letting me do some investing on the company's behalf. At first I offered to invest imaginary money so I could test out my quant strategies with no consequences, while showing my boss all the trades and my reasoning behind them. But he said they could give me a small amount of real money, and if I beat the market they'll give me more to invest. And if I beat the market consistently I'll get more to manage and eventually I'll start asking for a cut of the profits. I did this convincing over a fancy dinner. Although I had to drive there after 5pm which extended my workday, I think it was worth it. Even if I suck at the beginning it's good to have some quant experience if I want to try to get into the finance industry in the future. Man, nobody teaches these kind of "street smarts" at university... How to approach people, negotiate with people, explain things to people, read people's desires, reward people, etc.
Delete@Amanda, wrt Todd, I think he needs to change his way of thinking. I have spent the past one year essentially being self-employed and doing lots of side-hustles. So now I'm much better in marketing myself to potential clients. From my short stint with a finance broker I now have some experience in evaluating deals. Unlike Todd, I don't go and demand $X amount because I have XYZ skills or educational qualifications. I need to think what sort of value I can bring to the client and how much in monetary terms it is worth, before proposing a compensation which I feel would be fair for both parties.
DeleteAnd as @LIFT previously mentioned helping me find that gig with the financial broker, I am now helping refer a SG company to one of his US partners. If we close this deal both of us stand to gain something from it, fingers crossed that everything goes well.
Yes fingers crossed, I hate to count my chickens before they hatch but it is looking promising for now. It would be the first time we're collaborating properly and working as partners on this deal.
DeleteHey Choaniki. I think the issue with Todd is "sunk cost fallacy", he thinks because he spent so much time, effort, and money on two masters degrees they must be worth a lot to people. I have a masters too, but I had the opposite mindset where I thought employers would value me less than someone with only a bachelor's degree that opted to work in industry instead after graduation. I had to think of ways I could give them a different kind of value despite less industry experience. I mean I was rejected from a few quant interviews because I had no trading experience or internships, so now I do have a quant opportunity but I won't get paid from it until I turn a profit. Anyway, Todd really struggled to get his masters, more than I did because he had to pay for it himself including living expenses, while I had a full tuition scholarship and a small stipend for living costs. I guess it must suck to have worked so hard and lived in crappy student housing while working low wage jobs to get a degree that only results in more poorly paid work. I don't think Todd is stupid per se, but he's just not very practical when it comes to business and making money. But for Todd it's easier to blame classism and elitism with regards to university ranking than to admit there's something he's not doing right.
DeleteOh it's good you guys are collaborating. Hope everything goes well and is a good learning experience, regardless of the outcome.
Long time reader here: Just curious why you haven't been to Japan yet? Couldn't find you talking about reason(s) while searching your blog archives.
ReplyDeleteOh you're wrong, Japan is amongst the 78 countries that I have visited. It's just that I have not visited Japan recently. I never said that I didn't go to Japan - it's just that when you've been to 78 countries, it's getting to the point where it is easier to list the countries that I have not yet visited. So if I was heading to NE Asia, I'd go to South Korea instead as I've yet to go there whilst I've already visited Japan. Why did you jump to the conclusion that I haven't been to Japan yet? Social skills 101: if you're not sure, you should pose it as a question like, "I see you've been to loads of places, have you been to Japan yet and what do you make of it? How does it compare to other Asian destinations?"
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