Quick Question with Soren and Daniel - QQ ep 29 - How to say "boungiorno" in Thai

Episode Date: January 30, 2020

Hello again and welcome to another episode of Quick Question with Soren and Daniel, the advice podcast where two best friends get together to ask a series of questions while not really being concerned with answering any of them. I am Daniel O'Brien, one half of that podcast, joined as always by my co-host Mr. Soren Bui. Soren, hello. I think so hard about my answers for this podcast. Really? I really want to get it. Yeah, I want to give you a fair shake on the questions you ask me.

Okay. When do you think you were most helpful? Well, I mean. What specifically about my life has improved since doing this podcast with you? Okay. doing this podcast with you. Okay. If you ever encounter a man in a trucker hat threatening to kill himself because he lost his job the same day as he told his family he was gay, I think you could handle that situation. Actually, probably about the same. I think I told you you did exactly right. Perfect. That is fantastic. But anyway, that's Soren. And the other person you

might hear on this podcast from time to time is our business daddy and producer and the guy who first had the idea that we should do this podcast. Bacon, what's up? Hey, Dan, how are you? I missed you guys. Glad to talk to everybody. I miss you too. You know what was crazy about this? Because we banked a bunch of these before Glad to talk to everybody. take time out of my life to do this podcast, but I missed our regular check-ins. It was the time that we all talked together and I'd grown accustomed to it. Yeah, I know. I think a lot of people think things are bits that aren't bits or things that aren't bits are bits, but that's actually not a bit that I think we all really enjoy hanging out with each other while we're recording this stuff.

Yeah. But let's get into the show. As always, we are Quick Question. And as even more always, you, our listeners, whom we love, have a name that you prefer to be called. And that name is, of course, Stevie Quicks. Did I do that one already? It does feel like it's really, it just feels so obvious. I'm surprised that we didn't. It's funny. Like, it's funny, it just feels so obvious. I'm surprised that we didn't.

It's funny. Like it's funny, Dan. Hey, thanks. I wanted to make it longer and add more to it, but I didn't. Does that show?

No, I guess not. I, the minute you said Stevie Nicks, I was like, Oh yeah, of course. And then when you said,

have I done that one? I was like, Oh yeah, of course you've done that one before. We must have. Well, Dan, I do have to to actually given that we did do uh our holidays instead of podcasts recently and we haven't talked at all in a long time i want to ask you basically our check-in i want to ask you a quick question to lead into our check-in here okay you went to thailand i yeah. And I want to know all about it. And

I have very specific questions about it. But first, I just want like a general overview of your experience. I really enjoyed it. I really loved it. I went because a co-worker of mine told me to go there. And like, I knew that I had this chunk of time in between seasons that I wanted to go somewhere and do something. And I was bombarding my friends every day with a different thing where I was like, I might go to Banff or Mexico City. I heard Mexico City is nice. Or maybe I'll go to Maine and just do a fishing trip. Or maybe I'll spend all of it in Hawaii. And then I had a coworker, her name is Kay, and she's a producer. She's very good and organized with things like this. So she said, you you should do this here's the itinerary i did when i went to thailand and i was like sold

all of my decisions made already because she had a bunch of excursions that she did and recommended and so i did basically the trip that she did and oh god tell me it was a honeymoon or something like that. No, it was fine for one lonely man to do. She did it with, I don't know if I tell her secret. She did it with her sister. She didn't agree to be on this podcast, so I have no business telling this. But it works as well for a group of friends as it does for one person going out there. And that's what I did. I visited a lot of temples.

I took a cooking class, which I never would have done. But anyone who has ever been to Chiang Mai, which is the part of Thailand that I went to, it's Northern Thailand. They've all said, take a cooking class while you were there. And now I also strongly recommend it. It's a very fun thing to do if you're traveling, I assume anywhere. If they offer a class that is going to teach you like local cuisine, you should take it. So I did that. I saw a bunch of elephants and that was- Yeah. So did you go to an elephant sanctuary while you were there? I did. Yeah. And it was one of the good ones, one of the best in the world. Because if you

go to any elephant sanctuary- They kind of give you the little spikes on your feet when you get to ride them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. Any elephant sanctuary that allows you to ride them is bad you shouldn't you shouldn't go to one of those you shouldn't support them uh and this one was really great and we got to feed the elephants and just sort of get very close without like obviously riding or like tugging on them or touching them like a very safe distance and just observing them and learning all of their stories and everything they've been

through and it's it's it's it's far from a zoo you know it's not just like look at the polar bears it's very much like this is an elephant it's part of its foot was was blown off in a landmine and now we keep it safe here and had like a lot of these elephants were orphaned and you didn't even get to see a whole elephant uh do you feed sugarcane that was my favorite part uh i was in bali and we we saw some uh elephants at a sanctuary and like there's just this bucket of sugarcane you're allowed to give elephants and they love it they come up and we fed them uh like bananas and and uh fruits and shit and it's very funny because there are some like leafy vegetables that they'll eat

sometimes and you could feed them bananas and they take the banana with their trunk and put it in their mouth and they're happy. And then I was like, here's this leafy stuff. You want this? And they grabbed it with their trunk and then threw it on the ground. Like, now I know what this is. Fuck you. Where are the bananas? That's great. Yeah. And that was very fun. And like, that's great yeah and that was very fun and like it's it's it's nice to see i don't know i like seeing big animals to remind myself of how small i am and uh i did a really nice long hike on monk trail to a couple of different temples uh i saw local live music which i always try to do i went to a bunch of markets because they're a bunch of great markets in Chiang Mai. I went fishing.

Oh, cool. Because of course I'm going to go fishing. And went to this lake where we fished with bread and cake was our bait. Just like balled up. What? Yeah, they do it in a couple of parts of Florida too. It's like a really cheap form of bait that some fish just go nuts for. And we caught some giant fucking 94

pound catfish when i was there oh wow wait are catfish okay those little tentacles that they have in the front of their face are those things poisonous i don't think so i hope not i fucking kissed so many of those fish right on the mouth and you feel fine that's i'm sure it's fine yeah yeah um this is a question i always like to ask people when they go on vacation to foreign countries because i think about it constantly uh did were there any circumstances in which you really fucked up like in a temple or were you really embarrassed yourself no because i did so much reading in advance uh about that specific thing because i really didn't want to be disrespectful in any way uh so i did so much preparation on that and like you know me i'm the

sweatiest person on the fucking planet and it's 90 degrees in thailand and everything says if you're going to visit the temples um you shouldn't wear sleeveless shirts because it's disrespectful and you should wear shorts that go down past your knees so i just did that i was wearing like button down shirts and and longer shorts when I went to all these temples, just sweating like a monster because I didn't want to offend anyone. And like, no one's going to yell at you because I saw plenty of people in tank tops and,

and short skirts and short shorts. And also like pointing their feet at statues of, at like religious important statues, which you're not supposed to do. You're supposed to sit legs crossed or with your your feet behind you if you're in a temple oh wow and people were just not respecting that basic thing and uh getting away with it scot-free so um i don't know i guess you can do that but i didn't want to I was so nervous about being an ignorant, offensive presence that I would try to overcorrect. I'm still certain I was because the language... But you never got called out for it at all. hello and thank you. But everything else, like I was reading about it and I had a translator on my phone, but it's one of those things where, you know, I can mess around in Spanish, Italian,

and French. And I thought I could just do this too. Like I could learn a few key phrases and I just can't. It's like, it's hitting my ears in a way that I can't make my mouth do. Even looking at it written down phonetically and hearing it over and over again. I'm just like, I can't make my mouth do even looking at it written down phonetically and hearing it over and over again. I'm just like, I don't, I feel like I'm missing a part of my mouth. The part that says these words. We're pretty wishy-washy with our vowels and our language. Like you can get away with substituting vowels out. As long as the consonants are in the right order, you get this gist of what someone is saying. But in other cultures, it's like those vowels are so crucial to meaning completely different things that I'm just like, well, I can't.

Those open mouth sounds, those like the ones where you've got like, you're doing it kind of in your throat. Yeah. And Thailand was also the first place I've been to because I've been to a bunch of different countries. I'm very lucky that way. And no one ever expects me to be anywhere at any time. And no one ever expects me to be anywhere at any time. But this was the first one where I really, the language barrier was really felt. Because most places, everyone speaks enough English everywhere so far.

And there were certainly plenty of people who spoke English better than I speak any second language in Thailand. But there were also a few people that just didn't at all. And they didn't, I think the crucial difference between like when I'm traveled to France or Italy versus what I've now traveled to Thailand is they, they don't care if you're lost there. Like, like it's okay. If, if, if I'm lost,

I feel like when I'm in France, everyone's like, Oh, this, this, this American, we'll, we'll find him.

We'll make things okay for him and get him somewhere. And Thailand is like, no, this is Thailand. it's like a whole other place yeah and that's good and if you're not prepared then you're not prepared yeah well i mean that's what honestly like that's the best way to experience a country i feel like you yeah places where it's just they've given you a gentler form of the united states or a gentler form of their country actually right if you're from the united states like, you don't want that as much. You're not getting an authentic experience by any means. There was no place for me to be like,

let's all settle down, forget our differences and speak the language that I speak and take the money that I have. Because at the end of the day, isn't that what this is about? It's my comfort. And it's not like there are some times where I'm just lost and didn't know where I was going

and didn't know how to communicate to people. And it was scary, but also like very, you know, what you want out of a trip like this. I have another question for you. Sorry, Dan, to occupy. That's good. No, I love the questions because if you leave me to my own devices, I like I don't know how to answer things. Because when I first got back, my brother was like, how was Thailand broadly? And I was like, at breakfast, they serve lunch foods and the toilets don't accept my toilet

paper. Like, I don't know what's interesting to other people. Okay. Well, my question is, when do they serve the lunch foods? My question is, okay, this is hard to explain. So, when you got off the plane, you walked through customs, and there was a woman or a man sitting there at customs who was going to check your passport. And you walked up to them, a single guy, all by himself, middle age, not middle age,

in his 30s, going to a country famous for sex trafficking. Did you get a sense from them that they were trying like work around what you were doing there? No. I think I got a whole lot more of that from people in America that I told I'm going to Thailand, like other guys and not even like gross, horrible guys, like your standard guy, which is just a little bit gross and horrible your standard guy what i'm when i've said like yeah i'm going just by myself i'm going to thailand for like 11 days and they're like oh yeah yeah i went to thailand i went to thailand after college yeah yeah yeah i'm like no no no no i'm gonna go i i want some like level of of peace and serenity so i'm gonna go to a bunch of temples they're like yeah yeah yeah no yeah you are you're gonna get that peace

you're gonna get that serenity i'm like i don't like it yeah. No, yeah, you are. You're going to get that peace. You're going to get that serenity. I'm like, I don't like it when you say it. You keep winking at me. It's truly not my mission here. Nudging me in between two ribs. I don't like it. Yeah, I think about, I would cast so much judgment on every single person. If I was working that job, anyone who was coming in, I was like, look at this pervert. Right.

Coming into my country alone. Earth, could they possibly want here? This guy either likes kids or he likes elephants. I don't know which one. Well, that sounds exciting. I'm glad you had a good trip. Would you ever feel like your life was in danger at any point or was it just smooth sailing the whole way through?

At no point did I think my life was in danger. That's boring. I was a little bit scared. It's a very long flight and I spent one night in Bangkok at a very nice hotel shout out Avani Atrium Hotel uh Bacon I'd like you to know one of my first acts of 2020 was uh

I told the people at the Avani Atrium Hotel in Bangkok that I was going to plug them on my podcast and I didn't want any money to do it didn't even get any special treatment from them I told them after the fact I was like I had such a good time that I'm gonna share this with my followers and that's okay have a good day our i'll keep an eye on our uh thai listening please do uh so i spent one night that's not

really the demographic who's staying there bacon but i spent one night there and it was great. And then I flew to Chiang Mai, again, Northern Thailand, and got in late enough that it was dark. And just the ride from the airport to the inn where I was staying. Shout out, good morning, Chiang Mai, the inn that I stayed at. You're just walking around Thailand, yelling to everyone that you have a podcast and you can't wait to tell them how great they are. You're just walking around Thailand yelling to everyone that you have a podcast and you can't wait to tell them how great they are. But there are very narrow streets in Chiang Mai that are incredibly walkable and can fit like one car. So it feels like an alleyway, especially it was my first time there and it's night. I feel like I'm driving down an alleyway to get to my hotel. And that was one time where I thought like, oh, I might be in over my head here because I'm going to get dropped off in an alley somewhere in a place that doesn't feel like a city at all. It doesn't feel like

you're at like Hotel Row or anything like that, where it's just hotels down the street. I'm just getting dropped off at this dark place in a country where I am very far away from understanding the language. And it was just that night where I thought, yeah, if, you know, my mom was right to be concerned that I'm doing this trip by myself. But then I woke up and it was bright and everything was fine. Yeah. But that was, again, like, I never felt life threatened. I just felt a little bit spooked. But then I, you know, watched Netflix in the bungalow that I booked.

And you were right at home. Yeah. All right. Well, are there any more? If you're in Thailand, watch the Netflix. Are there any more rickshaws or convenience stores you want to plug before we move on? Well, not that I want to plug, but there's like an iconic American chain that was all over Thailand. And I wonder if you can guess it.

Okay. I would say it would be culinary. I think it would have to be uh a mcdonald's that's what i imagined too and there were a few mcdonald's but overwhelmingly there were 7-elevens everywhere really yeah i was very surprised by that because because they're like on the same streets too it's it's like a cartoonish amount of 7-elevens and they have all the same stuff i mean it's like a cartoonish amount of 7-Elevens. And they have all the same stuff. I mean, it's just like, it's clearly still a convenience store over there.

It's not like their fashion is, all their shirts are in 7-Eleven. No, yeah. It's a convenience and liquor store. Because I know some 7-Elevens in America don't also serve alcohol. Like in Jersey, they don't. My son is sort of like starting to learn to read a little bit. And he knows numbers really well. And he always points out 7-Elevens to me because he read the sign 11 and was very excited about that.

Because it always says the 7 in written out is 11. And I realize now because from his school to my house, we passed four 7-Elevens in a four mile, like going four over four miles. So there are a lot here too. There are. Yeah. I just, I, I don't know. I guess in my brain, I feel like I see more Starbucks than I do 7-Elevens, more McDonald's than I do 7-Elevens. But in, in Chiang Mai, they were, they were, they were damn everywhere. That's a good trip, man. I'm glad you had fun. It was a great trip. Yeah.

I'm glad your mom is, is breathing a sigh of relief that you're home. Yeah. Yeah. I'm i'm i'm i'm safe everything's fine it was uh it's a beautiful country i highly recommend it i wish i could spend more time there and you know i did the thing that i wanted out of this trip was was to get out of my head and just be present and find a little bit more balance in my life which i did and that's why uh i'm coming into this new podcast as as a different person i don't know if you could tell how much more chill i am soren did you notice that i'm more chill now soren can you hear me yeah i'm sort of waiting for you to soren how many how many how many more units of chill would you say that i am yeah i mean

uh there's a right answer. Four. Okay, that's close. Okay. Okay. Hey, Soren, quick question. Go ahead. Because again, this is our first time talking since... Our first time talking after the holidays. And I imagine you spent some time at the holidays with your family, yes?

Yeah, with both my family and Colleen's family as well. Yeah, with my family and Colleen's family as well. One of my favorite things about being around family for the first time of the year is as someone who's extremely online, teaching them about various pop culture things that they don't know about because they blissfully live a life that is not online. So jealous. Yeah, they're just like happy and experiencing the world as it's presented to them and not as it's viewed through the lens of 40 angry people on Twitter. Yeah. So is there something that has been a part of your life this last year pop culturally that you've had to teach to your family? There is something I had to teach them, but I wouldn't say it was a part of my life either. And so I was not the guy to be doing it. Um, they, they came up during dinner that Star Wars fans all hate. Why is it that Star Wars fans all hate Star Wars? And, uh, I was like, there was no one in the room more equipped to answer that question than I was. And I am not your first choice in that circumstance. Right. You quite famously hate Star Wars.

I feel no connection to the franchise at all. And so, the question came up and I knew that there was an answer and I had at least like 60% of it. And so, I had to answer the question and like handle it as clumsily as, as I have to, cause I don't know what I'm talking about, but I was trying to explain to them that Star Wars fans, there's like a faction of Star Wars fans that felt betrayed by the new movies. Uh,

and they felt like the narrative was going in the wrong direction, but ultimately a lot of that was just like a veil for some, some pretty blatant sexism. And it was very, very complicated. And the way that I was explaining it was not good. No one was understanding it any better than I was. But me trying to get across that the people who don't like Star Wars are not right for not liking Star Wars, at least some of them,

that's really complicated to do. Yeah, I had a similar one with Star wars with my my brother david at christmas eve we were all everyone had just seen the latest star wars and my cousin audrey and i were talking to david about things we like things we didn't like and audrey mentioned that uh she was hoping that the characters finn and poe would have kissed and david was like that's a thing where did that come from and and audrey and i just had to like like tag team this thing of like oh yeah if you're like a normal person who's seen the movies sure you wouldn't have thought about this but if you'd watched the movies several times and then spent a bunch of time on the internet

you'd have seen and like captured every interview that oscar isaac had done for the last 10 years five years uh you would have seen that there's this small but like very vocal crowd of people who watched uh force awakens and based on a couple of looks that poe gave finn and like one scene crucially where he was like biting his lip while looking at biting his lower lip while looking at fin and let your imagination run wild with what's going on in his mind and then see these interviews where Oscar Isaac is like, yeah, I think there is like a playful flirtatious chemistry and I hope the movies, you know, tug at that thread a little bit.

And then you went online and read a bunch of fan fiction for years uh then yeah you would think there might be you would be shipping this relationship and my brother was like but finn like explicitly in the movie is into ray his whole arc in every movie is making sure ray's okay i'm like well yeah if you just watch the movies, then sure. I'm just trying to explain to you why the internet is mad that these two boys didn't kiss. Yeah. That's what, that was also the part that threw me in my conversation was that I haven't

seen the last movie. And I think that like pretty universally people didn't like it from both sides. And so I could, I had a really hard time explaining to them that it there's not like it's not just one group of people who are bad and they they're against these movies and they're trying to boycott them there's also like within these groups there's those people like no the narrative like it didn't do justice to this particular character or no the narrative was

bad or this this undid all the work that the previous movie had done right and it was like i can't do that having not seen any of them and also not caring right and it's tough because made it really difficult the the second in this new trilogy the uh the last jedi the ryan johnson directed one it's it's tough because both things can be true you can hate that movie because the writing was bad. And you can also hate that movie because you're a sexist and a racist. Those things are both true. And this latest one, The Rise of Skywalker, is trying to A, complete J.J. Abrams' story that he started in the first one, and B, address everyone's problems with the second one. And that includes addressing the problems of people who hated the writing

and addressing the problems of people who were racist and sexist. And of course, you're not going to get a good movie out of that. But it's difficult to explain that to people who just saw Star Wars and was like, yeah, it was fine. It was a Star Wars movie, which is the bulk of my family, because the bulk of my family is made up of normal yeah i think that's pretty much that's most people yeah it's like but those are not the loudest people in my life right and so i'm a privy to these other people i i honestly wish that my um my brother-in-law was there my so my wife's sister

is getting married or just got married and he actually knows star wars really well and he's very versant he knows it all backwards and forwards and he just was not there and so like i spent a lot of time trying to describe stuff to people and being like you know so like so so ray is the new character but like she doesn't know where she's from she doesn't know her parents and she's apparently she doesn't even have like she's not from any sort of lineage you know what marty marty would explain this a lot better than me just like telling them to wait a lot uh the only other one of these that i had which was great was uh i hosted my parents for christmas was the first time i've ever hosted anyone for christmas because i've always been flying back to the east coast for christmas and

now i live here um and we were talking about uh that that joker movie which spoilers i thought was bad because of the writing. Um, and Joaquin Phoenix was great in it. Uh, and I think it's worth watching for his performance, but I think the writing is bad. And I think Todd Phillips is, is,

uh, has shown himself to be kind of a prick in every interview, separate from those feelings, the topic of, uh, Joker being a controversial movie came up. Like I, I brought it up in casual conversation with my parents and like what's what is controversial about joker i was like oh well thanks for asking

while there have always been frustrated and misguided young men who grew angry at the world because they felt they were being denied the women money and success which they believed they were entitled uh they've now thanks to the internet found each other and formed a community bordering on movement of similarly toxic and entitled males. And they work themselves into a state, and now they've all found a horrible little toilet of the internet to hang out in and encourage each other's impotent rage. And some of them get so worked up that they write manifestos and go on murder sprees. And we'll add to that, that the last time a Joker movie was made, a guy was so motivated by Joker's energy that he went to the opening night of that movie's sequel and opened fire on a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado. the entire publicity tour railing against PC culture, which to the terminally online is often used as a bonding cry for people who wrongfully believe they're being oppressed for having the

worst ideas and impulses. This leads to one faction of the internet to say things like, hey, we don't need movies about unstable, violent white men who go on murder sprees because they think it's unfair that women and the world weren't handed to them like they were supposed to be because we see enough unstable, violent white men in our churches temples malls mosques schools and movie theaters sometimes when a batman is playing and another faction of the internet saying stop trying to silence art and other points of view and still another faction of the internet saying it's just a movie and my parents were like your family is lucky to have you daniel and my parents were just like it is just a movie and i was like yep probably right i don't know i don't even know anymore

i don't know anymore i can't see the force of the trees i got no idea yeah uh we do i just so we get screeners through the wga through our solidarity hashtag solidarity stay strong wga you do not have to pay for this endorsement i'm i do a thing that you're not supposed to do but i think is probably not discouraged because this is how they get people to watch the movies i bring them home with me during the break because it's when you get all of them and uh i watched the screeners with my parents and my my in-laws and gave them j and tried to, they're asking about it. And I was trying to explain the same kind of thing as you. I was like, and not nearly as eloquently, but I was

like, oh no. So there's this group called the incels that sort of glorifies this idea that men are, white men are actually shit upon in our society and that no they have no voice and that the only way that they can ever be heard is through action and violence and how they shouldn't be glorifying something like that and trying to get that across them and they were like oh like falling down and i was like yeah oh shit yeah like falling down i would like to go back and watch falling down and see if now that movie is like, oh boy, buddy. Right. I saw it so long ago and I remember Michael Douglas complaining about the pictures of McDonald's burgers not living up to, or like the actual burgers they sold not living up to the burgers they got.

And being 12 years old and agreeing with him and being like, yeah, you have every right to be mad. And now what are you going to do? Walk the streets with a gun? Good. That'll fix the burgers. It starts because of traffic. There's some construction. He's like, enough of this shit.

He's like, I'll kill everyone. I'm going to get a bag of guns and walk the city um feels like yeah if i went back and watched it now i think i i it might be a little hard to watch in the current climate but anyway uh yeah i there were i was asked to explain a couple of things over break and i don't think i do as good a job as i used to do it correct also you know i don't think about things as analytically as i used to when we were at our old job like my i i don't think about it in terms of like there actually being a terminology to it all in a glossary of terms that i need to know and like be able to use in order to explain this type of thing so i'm using like these very basic tools to try and explain something that's very

complex and i just don't do anything justice anymore i've certainly waffled on uh my belief when i was writing for for cracked that uh movies matter because they're they're helping dictate what culture is and and like what the young people who are watching movies are going to use that to inform uh how things should be or to recognize when things are going as they shouldn't be. That was certainly, you know, a whispered part of every movie and TV and music criticism we ever did at Cracked. It was like, no, we're talking about this

because it's important, because it is shaping the world for a lot of people who are consuming it. As I've gotten older, it was like, I don't know, is that true? And I still don't know the answer to that question. I i kind of lean that yes it's true but i also um grew up on disney movies and i'm fine i don't know i don't know it's really it's fucking complicated because it's fine for some people and not for others like it's i remember growing up,

how much of my life was dictated by the movies that I saw and how I thought that's how you act as a teenager in those like coming of age movies. That's how you're going to act as an adult. When you go on a date, it's customary that you kiss somebody at the door after you're done. Like that came from movies, man.

That didn't just exist. Right. And it's crucial that you say you kiss somebody. It doesn't need to be your date, but it just like at the door during a date you kiss somebody right or you get bad luck for seven years with the gun which is another trope and uh and growing up i i was like okay these are the things that i can implement in my life oh i didn't understand this is how you do this thing i'm gonna put that in i'm gonna try that out and but i also did it with like a grain of salt growing up. And I don't know where

that grain of salt came from, where it was like, what real life is different than this? And so I can try these things and I can try them sort of like calmly and quietly and see if they work out. And if they don't, then abandon it. But there are other people who just don't, there's that grain of salt doesn't exist for them. Right. I can certainly recognize things that i did because i'd seen enough movies but i can also i also eventually learned that those things were wrong and not reflective of real life because because my mom told me or my friend told me or one of my sisters-in-law told me and set me straight it's uh oh shit what yeah you're right i'm just realizing now you're

absolutely right that it was it's just it's very simple but i didn't know i didn't realize it it's that you have somebody in your life that you trust more than movies yeah and i think there are people who don't have that yeah that sucks uh i guess for those people listen to this podcast oh no that can't be right what is the solution anybody um well dan i have a quick question for you oh let's hear it after the holidays i won't say specifically when because i don't want people to inundate you you had a birthday i did yeah i think it's public knowledge at this point it's on my wikipedia page i don't know where they got it from but but yeah i did have a birthday. I did, yeah. I think it's public knowledge at this point. It's on my Wikipedia page. I don't know where they got it from, but yeah, I did have a birthday. And how was it?

It was great. I was at an elephant sanctuary in Chiang Mai, and it was like a very real moment for me because someone, I made a bunch of friends on this this thing and I was talking to this to this guy it's no reason to explain why that we all called him tater but I was talking to this guy tater and he's a bit younger than me and and he's from Australia lives in San Francisco now and we were just talking about life and he was like uh yeah how old are you by the way and it was I had to like genuinely think about it like normally i would have said the normal answer which is at this point 34 but at the time like i couldn't help

smile and really think about it be like i am 34 as of today like it like you know you don't wake up thinking it's your birthday uh so like i didn't go about my day thinking about that i woke up thinking like i'm in thailand and it's time to go to the elephant park and so just like like realizing it in real time and saying it to him and he was like oh happy birthday and then he told the people that he was with that it was my birthday and then we all like made a nice thing of it being my birthday and that was very nice of tater yeah tater tater's a saint because i've found that when you tell people it's your birthday and you're doing something with them and they you tell people it's your birthday and you're doing something with them and they didn't know it was your birthday they're deeply unnerved by that

yeah yeah they were they were cooler than anyone should have been at the knowledge that a 34 year old single man was at an elephant park alone on his birthday my which is like honestly this is not a cry for help that was like i don't like making a big deal out of my birthday around family and friends so this was yeah of course my favorite thing to do was to be like hey i'm sorry i won't have internet or cell phone access on my birthday everybody so much of my time knowing you has been me trying to punish you for not wanting to celebrate your birthday in different ways you've been very successful it's been great i mean they couldn't have gone better uh speaking

of which your presence is not fucking done okay um i talked to him before go ahead i was gonna say it's it's christmas eve i'm with my family uh my whole family listens to the podcast. I've told them several times that they don't need to and that they shouldn't support us on Patreon, but they all listen anyway. And it's Christmas Eve and my Aunt Pat, the first thing she says to me is like, what did Soren get you? And I have to be like, unclear, Aunt Pat.

It's, at this point, it feels almost like we're like gunning for a second season of a show all right well we can stretch this out i i so i contacted him the guy who's making it i contacted him leading up to christmas and then and i was like okay i asked you if this could be done by um somebody's birthday um do you think it's gonna be done he's like yeah it's gonna be done so your birthday rolls around and i contact him again and i was like do you think it's gonna be done he's like yeah it's gonna be done so your birthday rolls around and i contact him again and i was like do you think it's gonna be done he goes no it's not finished i got sick um it'll be finished by the time fuck i can't tell you this other part without revealing something but he said it's gonna be finished by like by january

20th or 22nd and uh i was like okay great those dates roll around and i don't say anything to him but i get a notification from him. He's like, here's like a sample of it. It's not done yet. And he gives me another picture that's like a small, like a photo of just a portion of it. And I'm like, okay, great. When do you think it'll be done? Radio silence.

So it's coming, but it's still not fucking here. When did you start this? Because now Chekhov's present has been looming and people are leaving the theater because they're like, well, I really thought that gun was going to go off, but it's been days and I have other stuff to do. I can't let Bacon see what I'm doing over here,

but I'm going to go look at... Okay, here we go. November 15th of 2018 is when i when i commissioned this goodness gracious it's so long ago i thought and i at the time i foolishly thought oh yeah i'm two months ahead this will be ready in time for dan's birthday. And now two have passed and still not ready. Okay. And especially like knowing my personality, whatever weird shit I was into in 2018,

I have moved on to some other hobbies. I'm a fisherman and a detective. Yeah. But think of this as like a tattoo, Dan, because this is something I knew you would like, there's no way I'm going to, have I told you how much I've spent on it? I do think of it like a tattoo in that it's a thing I don't have.

You didn't tell me how much you spent on it. Is it substantial? Yeah, that's exorbitant. It's so much. Did you prepay for it or is it paying on delivery it's payment on delivery but i'm like i have like this money uh sectioned off because i know that i have to to pay it and i've had it sectioned off for like a year unbelievable it's it's great yeah all right well um we'll sorry we'll both benefit from it though sorry stevie quicks the mystery continues yeah i'm hoping it'll be done really soon i think

uh i think by february because he's he i can sense that he's also getting a little nervous that like he hasn't turned this in yet well he's been busy because he is presidential candidate mayor pete budaj am i close so you're so close it's not pete all right uh it's bloomberg oh fuck great that's gonna be that's i mean you really it's your own magazine i'm releasing your like like oh like oprah has oh i i've gotten you your own dying magazine it starts out dying by the way no yeah all magazines do i can't wait to to have my first issue about uh one of the members of the royal family on bump watch that's what magazines do right oh god that was another thing i had to talk to somebody recently about was the

the royal family and like what megan had done to the family i was like oh no um oh i have so much there's so much i don't know how far back to start that was a great thing when i mean not great but like unifying thing when i was in uh thailand having a bunch of having lunch with a bunch of strangers from different parts of the world and i was like oh yes i'm from america and they're like how do you feel about uh this this this trump fella and this happened to be like i was in the air when uh things first started happening with iran like i i was traveling for 20 hours and missed a full day because of a 12-hour time zone shift.

So January 3rd just didn't exist for me. And I got to my hotel, shout out to Vani Atrium Hotel in Bangkok, and used the internet for the first time. And the top thing trending on Twitter was World War III. So I closed my laptop because that's a lot and I was sleepy. And so I was talking to these people and I was like, yeah, it's not great. I hope we don't go to war with Iran. And we're very sorry and sad about our president.

Where are you from? And they're like, France. We're like, oh, good. How do you feel about Brexit? And they're like, it's really bad. We think it's a waste of time. We don't know who it's for and meanwhile everyone and all the transit workers in in france are uh on strike right now separately i was like great let's go around the chain where are you from australia

yeah how do you feel about the wildfires very sad very unhappy where i was like all right but thailand is nice so we're all sad but like nice. So we're all sad, but like around the horn, we're all sad. We agree that no one has it figured out. Good. All right. Oh, wait. One of the strange thing about Thailand that I wanted to run by is that on this hike on or not even run by you.

So this hike on on Monk Trail and I was going. You won't shut up about monk trail. I know it was really great. And I was going down cause I, I visited the, the one at the very top, uh, which is,

uh, what do I see that, uh, which is at the top of Chiang Mai. It's one of the, there are two mountains that are the, the, the twin mountains in Chiang Mai where you can see all the city.

I went there and was going back down to, uh, uh, what Salat, which is like a temple. That's like right in the woods on a waterfall it's very peaceful and as i'm hiking down uh this middle-aged woman comes up to me and immediately starts speaking italian to me whoa uh which is fine and i know like i know enough italian to explain to her that because she's asking where the the temple is and i can explain to her that it's about 45 minutes up and that it's very steep and it's all uphill because like the the second half of this hike to uh what voice is that is completely exposed and it's just up

it's just up on dry land and the the you know the breathing is heavy because you're going up in altitude and so it's like, 45 minutes that way. But it's like very difficult and it's very hot and very steep. And I'm saying enough that I can, it's clear that I can communicate a little bit in Italian, but also very clear that I'm not great at it. Like I'm communicating that this is not my language. And she is still trying to speak to me she's not trying she never tries thai and never tries english and i'm i'm going back and forth between

italian and english of like i don't know uh uh known known known conosco known you know whatever whatever yeah like butchered conjugation i'm doing of i don't i'm sorry i don't understand i can't do it and she is still speaking Italian to me and then two of her friends come up and they're speaking Italian to me and I'm saying in English and Italian I don't know I don't understand I'm sorry it's 45 minutes that way and then they just speak louder Italian at me that's the answer I felt very much like oh this must be what like anyone's experience in America is if they're not from here. It's just like someone speaking louder English at you and like, oh, she doesn't understand you?

Okay. Well, maybe my buddy shouting at you will help. Which is like an experience that is very foreign to me as someone who grew up in America. That now these people are just like yelling louder language at me. And at one point, like definitely pointing at my face and how sweaty and red it was and being like, look at him. We can't do this hike. Look at him.

Look at him. And it was very funny to me. And also like they got very frustrated that I didn't know enough Italian. And I really wanted to break and be like, listen, lady, you found me in the middle of the woods in Thailand. It's insane that I know any Italian. You are not owed any Italian right now. It's a miracle. Please say I did a good job. I'm sure that when they were talking to you and they realized that you didn't speak Italian very well and that your conjugation was terrible, that they started using smaller words, but you would have no way of knowing that. Because your level of understanding is so much lower like

that's what i think the instinct is is like i'm gonna speak clearer and louder and i'm gonna use more simple words i might even need like for some reason like the instinct is to try to talk to them as you would as somebody who only spoke the language brokenly would talk to you you're like as somebody who only spoke the language brokenly would talk to you. You're like, time, what is it? Get mountain up there? Like, not even full sentences. If they had tried to very calmly just say, what is the altitude?

In Italian, I couldn't do it because it was like, oh, we didn't, there was no cause for me to learn the word altitude in high school italian didn't seem to come up yeah you also just figure out how to translate feet to meters like it'd be a whole thing anyway um i i'm glad you had that experience finally dan you got to sit on the other side yeah it was nice not so high up on your helpful but your american your American mountain now. Yeah. Tower. Tower, not mountain. But we do have to wrap up. I need to track down all the social accounts. But before I do that,

I wanted to use this space to mention something Soren did recently. I know we use this time to, it's no secret, to give each other a hard time and set us up for failure. But Soren very quietly did something the other day that he's too humble to bring up. And I feel like it needs to be said.

17-year-old Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg has been fighting tirelessly, urging global leaders to do more to save this planet. So we have something to leave to our children and our children's children. For her efforts, she's received mockery from some high-profile people, including the president, and even death threats. What's getting less credit is that she's also received a check from Soren Bui for $10,000, something he chose not to make a big deal out of. I bring this up because in the memo section of that check, you wrote, maybe you can use this to buy a friend.

Would you care to speak to that? I mean, obviously not i do these things not for the fame or the glory that comes along with it but to help society um and you my thinking is that with society you can't think so globally you need to think about individual people and here i saw someone on television and i thought i could help her i could help her i mean she's clear she's upset she's upset about i mean she says the world and like all the fish getting caught in six-pack rings or whatever that is what she says yep but you can just tell it's loneliness and so so i was like i can solve that problem that's a problem that you can throw money at and i sent her it was a novelty check you didn't bring that up that's fine big big novelty check and uh i thought this is a good amount to really get started on having friends if this would allow you to get a new wardrobe a ps4

and a big enough tv that you could have friends over to play like mario party no wait that's gonna be on a switch it's a big tv that you could you could have friends over and you could like uh i don't know you could game gang beasts you play gang beasts together really get to know one another and who knows maybe with all that money spent two people think she's a good person and like her and then she's got buddies and we don't have to hear about oil slicks and the the apocalypse coming soon anymore great sounds good you can uh follow up with soren on this topic on twitter at soren underscore ltd or you could talk to me at dlb underscore inc or our our our main buddy in charge make me bacon

please that's make me bacon please spelled pls all one word you can email us at qq with soren and daniel.com find the show on twitter at twitter.com slash qq underscore soren and dan or instagram at qq underscore with underscore soren underscore and underscore daniel uh we also have a patreon that i would love bacon to plug right now uh it's a patreon uh backslash quick question some kind of slash i don't fuck it no that was great that was really good uh oh if you uh are in the new york or tri-state area i will be the special guest on the daily zeitgeist live podcast performance at the bell house in brooklyn on february 12th you can find tickets probably by googling things like bell house brooklyn daily zeitgeist february 12th and uh come see me talk live in front of people with jack o'brien

and miles gray and who knows other special guests perhaps also if you are listening to this podcast and you're thinking oh finally another episode uh it's probably because i harassed them so much over twitter to tell them to do another episode after they didn't for so long if you ever find yourself thinking these guys haven't done an episode in a while i want you to you could write that on a piece of paper fold it up and then just keep it in your pocket forever because we fucking know we know we haven't done episodes we're trying to things come up and we'll get them out as frequently as we can but but you're like the level of entitlement when someone says where's your stop tweeting and give us another fucking episode it's like all right all right i'm never doing another one how do you feel about that wow i'm in control i'm loving this 2020 heel

turn for soren that like now i'm the chill one and he's the one who hates this that's very fun i'm excited we'll see how it goes all right i'll talk to you later dan all right bye