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Born In A Refugee Camp: Why He Left America To Return To The Country His Family Escaped! · Babes, how did you get here

• 0:00
  Cambodia was a kind of where I was based in, but like working wise, it was always, you know, Global.
• 0:05
  Yeah.
• 0:06
  You interface with people on the East Coast, the West Coast, Japan, UK.
• 0:09
  It's, you know, you have to kind of reset your own biological clock.
• 0:14
  Yeah.
• 0:16
  You know, to understand, like, okay, what do I function best?
• 0:19
  Right.
• 0:19
  And when should I work, you know?
• 0:21
  What did your family think when you said, oh, I'm not coming back?
• 0:25
  Oof.
• 0:26
  Initially, I think they were really worried.
• 0:28
  They were really concerned, you know?
• 0:29
  I think there was that sense of, like, oh, this is a place that we escaped.
• 0:32
  Right.
• 0:32
  This is a place that we tried to leave behind.
• 0:35
  Yes.
• 0:35
  In a way.
• 0:35
  And so I think it was initially very strange for them.
• 0:42
  But I was always very, like, I will do my own thing.
• 0:45
  you know, kind of person.
• 0:46
  So they knew that they couldn't stop me.
• 0:48
  Sure.
• 0:49
  So, yeah, but I came for probably a year and a half before my mother first came back with me.
• 0:58
  I mean, my parents had come on their own without me when we were growing up.
• 1:03
  But it was the first time that she came back, you know, when I was here.
• 1:06
  And I just remember that sense of like walking around and seeing the world through my eyes.
• 1:12
  where she was able to let go of her memories, some of the memories and some of the things that she had attached to in these places, because it was no longer her world, right?
• 1:25
  Even though it was very much a part of her experiences.
• 1:28
  Yes.
• 1:31
  We're dropping new episodes every single week.
• 1:34
  So make sure you subscribe.
• 1:35
  You don't want to miss this, babes.
• 1:37
  And leave a comment and tell me, what do you want to hear out of my next conversation?
• 1:41
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• 1:44
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• 1:47
  Babes, send them the podcast.
• 1:50
  Vana is the managing director and owner of Dorsu, a slow fashion label rooted here in Cambodia.
• 1:57
  He was born in a refugee camp and raised in America.
• 2:00
  His life is interesting, to say the least.
• 2:02
  With a background in philosophy, film and dance, he has worked with global giants such as LVMH and Apple.
• 2:09
  I'm super keen to hear about his past, but I know how deeply he values focusing on the present and looking to the future, as he continues to inspire, advocate, and drive for meaningful change.
• 2:22
  It helps that he also has great taste in food.
• 2:25
  But first, I must ask, babes, how did you get here?
• 2:28
  Oh, honey, it all started with rejection.
• 2:32
  Tell me.
• 2:33
  Oh, I came to Cambodia probably a few years after I was told that I couldn't come to Cambodia.
• 2:41
  Okay.
• 2:41
  You know, so I was finishing my graduate program in D.C. in the early aughts.
• 2:47
  And I had applied for the Fulbright Fellowship.
• 2:50
  And it was to study film history and do archival research in Cambodia.
• 2:56
  And I made some connections with some great, really interesting directors and filmmakers and documentarians here in Cambodia.
• 3:05
  And everybody at Georgetown at the time where I was going to school was like, you're a shoo-in.
• 3:09
  You'll definitely get it.
• 3:11
  I did the interview with the panel and submitted the...
• 3:15
  you know, the application and everything was, okay, this sounds amazing, you know, super important work.
• 3:21
  And then the rejection letter came and it was devastating, you know, because I, you know, I don't take anything for granted.
• 3:31
  And I didn't, you know, there's just one of those things in life where, you know, it's like, oh, the world is like, okay, this is going to be it.
• 3:36
  This is it.
• 3:36
  This is it.
• 3:37
  And then.
• 3:38
  It didn't happen, you know, curveball.
• 3:40
  And, you know, it took me a little bit of time to kind of process it.
• 3:44
  And, you know, at that time I was like, whoa, I was going to be leaving D.C. and going to Cambodia.
• 3:50
  And then that plan had to change.
• 3:52
  So I was like, OK, I'll just move to New York for a while.
• 3:57
  Save up my money, you know, and then see if eventually I can do it on my own.
• 4:01
  Okay.
• 4:02
  Which is what I eventually ended up doing.
• 4:04
  Yeah.
• 4:05
  So, but I mean, it taught me a lesson that like you don't need permission, right?
• 4:09
  From the Fulbright committee at that time to go follow your passion and follow your dream.
• 4:14
  I had a dream at that time.
• 4:15
  I had a question.
• 4:16
  What was the dream?
• 4:17
  The dream was to kind of understand more of what was missing from the picture of Cambodia, of the story that I inherited as fragments and as pieces from my parents and from the older generation.
• 4:32
  Because we were living in America, but knew that our past was rooted in Cambodia.
• 4:36
  Right.
• 4:36
  But we didn't know exactly what that was.
• 4:38
  Okay.
• 4:38
  Right?
• 4:39
  You know, growing up as an American, you kind of identify with just
• 4:43
  you know, being an American and the Cambodian side was always a bit over there.
• 4:49
  It felt like a distant place.
• 4:51
  So I think by the time I was in my mid to late 20s, you know, I got more curious about my past and about where we come from.
• 4:58
  So it was that dream, you know, that I had accomplished all of these things in America, finishing school and going on to my master's and, you know, externally seeming like a successful person, somebody that achieved a lot.
• 5:12
  But realizing that kind of internally there was something missing.
• 5:16
  And I kind of used, because I was always really pretty gifted academically.
• 5:20
  I think I used that as a way of trying to get a pass or a ticket to explore this part, but realizing that I actually never needed that.
• 5:31
  Which is what New York sometimes teaches you, is that you have to just...
• 5:35
  Pick yourself up by the bootstraps and, you know.
• 5:38
  Before we continue, make sure that you join our community by clicking the link below.
• 5:43
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• 5:50
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• 5:54
  Take me back, all the way back to, like, your first memory.
• 6:00
  Where are you for your first memory?
• 6:01
  Gosh.
• 6:02
  You know, after a while, it's hard to remember or to understand the difference between memories and dreams.
• 6:08
  Yes.
• 6:09
  Right?
• 6:09
  I have some vivid images of, like, being in very closed and tight spaces.
• 6:17
  Okay.
• 6:17
  Right?
• 6:18
  Being amongst, you know, my grandmother and my aunties and my, you know, my mother.
• 6:25
  Was that actual?
• 6:26
  Sure.
• 6:26
  Was that, you know, some memory?
• 6:29
  After that, I think there was a cold, like there was a coldness in like arriving in America.
• 6:34
  Okay.
• 6:34
  And, you know, I remember standing on the kind of the shoreline in Chicago, which was one of the places that we came to, originally came to before we settled in Massachusetts.
• 6:44
  Okay.
• 6:44
  But windy, the windy city, it's cliche.
• 6:48
  But yeah.
• 6:49
  How old were you?
• 6:51
  Four years old, three or four years old, you know.
• 6:53
  And then going from Chicago to Massachusetts was also very cold, right?
• 6:58
  It's just those memories of like New England winters, which was not familiar to our people.
• 7:06
  But yeah, those are the earliest memories that I have.
• 7:08
  And who did you move with?
• 7:10
  My mother and father and my grandmother.
• 7:14
  So our family was split after the Khmer Rouge period, so the late 70s, early 80s.
• 7:22
  Half of our family had gone to Australia and the other half to America.
• 7:25
  So we grew up the American side, you know, and then calling our cousins like on the weekends, you know, and they would have these strange accents.
• 7:34
  Right.
• 7:35
  Are you speaking English?
• 7:37
  Right.
• 7:37
  Like, good day, mate.
• 7:38
  I'm like, wait.
• 7:40
  You know, so it was really funny because in a way it made you feel like you're not alone, you know, as being kind of an other in your places.
• 7:53
  But yeah, we had a very tight-knit family and community, I think, in Lowell, Massachusetts in the 80s and 90s.
• 8:02
  It was a very big immigrant family.
• 8:04
  community.
• 8:05
  So there was like Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laotian, but also prior to that, you had the Greeks, you had the Irish, like New England, very Catholic, very strong Catholic history.
• 8:23
  And I think we all inherited that in some way as well.
• 8:28
  It was, yeah, I think, you know, when that was when melting the melting pot, like the idea of the melting pot really made sense.
• 8:35
  Yes.
• 8:36
  You know, because we were all somehow very different from one another, but kind of really, you know, blended into this idea of the city and being rooted in kind of a.
• 8:46
  and immigrant history.
• 8:49
  So I was raised with a deep appreciation for the contribution of immigrants and migrants generally.
• 8:56
  I feel like the temperature, at least from a UK perspective, in regards to immigration and refugees...
• 9:05
  Right now, I would say it's very toxic, right?
• 9:08
  And I'm not speaking for the entire globe.
• 9:10
  I'm just speaking from a UK perspective in terms of how the media will portray immigration, that you have people who are going to hotels that are hosting refugees and they're literally vandalising them, attacking people.
• 9:23
  And I just wondered, from your perspective...
• 9:26
  having lived that story, what do you think people need to understand?
• 9:30
  Because I think that there are really misconceptions when it comes to the idea of a refugee.
• 9:37
  I mean, I think people need to understand that we're all refugees, right?
• 9:41
  We all come, we were all...
• 9:43
  guests in the lands that we occupy that we are that we are now in right uh i mean i don't want to be too like conspiracy theorist but i kind of think human beings are aliens like we landed on a space rock uh we must not be from here because we're not taking care of the planet like it's our actual home yeah uh
• 10:04
  But yeah, I think this idea that immigrants make us stronger.
• 10:09
  Migrants make us... Our strength is in our diversity.
• 10:12
  And we come from different backgrounds.
• 10:15
  And it's that belonging isn't something inherent to you and a place.
• 10:20
  It's something that you work at.
• 10:22
  It's an action.
• 10:23
  It's a verb.
• 10:24
  Identity is forged in creation, in making things.
• 10:28
  I think I don't want to...
• 10:34
  paint a too rosy picture of like, yes, there's problems with people abiding by regulations.
• 10:41
  But I think that...
• 10:45
  I don't know, call me old fashioned, but like grew up like thinking that like, you know, there were ways that, you know, we can bring these elements that we take care of the weakest, that we look after the most vulnerable, you know, and I was never, you know, don't want to sound like a bleeding heart, like humanitarian.
• 11:04
  That was not where, you know, I come from.
• 11:07
  But you know, that, that said, I just feel like the general vibe has been so like,
• 11:13
  unkind.
• 11:14
  Yes.
• 11:15
  You know, and I feel like that's, it's a basic thing.
• 11:18
  Like, I don't think it's, like, radical to, you know, to want to make people feel, you know, like they belong or that, you know, they can, that they have value and things.
• 11:29
  And just what I see in the media and, you know, it just feels like there's a tone shift, there's a vibe shift.
• 11:37
  Sure.
• 11:38
  Which means that, like, you know, everything shifts.
• 11:40
  It's all cyclical, right?
• 11:42
  Like,
• 11:43
  The pendulum swings.
• 11:45
  Yeah.
• 11:46
  And, you know, if we want to despair about what the current moment is, that just means that there's an opportunity, right?
• 11:52
  I think people that look at challenges as opportunities, you know, where people that see, like... Have you always been really optimistic?
• 12:00
  No.
• 12:01
  Really?
• 12:02
  In the five minutes I've known you, I feel like there's always a sense of calming peace, like underlying optimism that I really admire.
• 12:11
  Okay.
• 12:11
  Okay.
• 12:12
  And I want it, so how did you get it?
• 12:14
  Yeah.
• 12:15
  Yeah, I, you know, it comes from a...
• 12:19
  Deep responsibility, a sense of responsibility.
• 12:22
  You know, I'm the oldest of four children.
• 12:24
  The only one that was born in the refugee camp.
• 12:26
  My younger siblings were all born in America.
• 12:28
  So they were able to take certain things for granted and, you know, have a different kind of, you know, upbringing than I did.
• 12:35
  Sure.
• 12:35
  I always saw myself as a bridge between my parents and between, you know, like local communities and schools, like having to...
• 12:43
  Be the translator, the interpreter, you know, the person that would kind of say, OK, how do we resolve this?
• 12:49
  Right.
• 12:50
  In the least painful way possible.
• 12:53
  And that skill has definitely benefited me, you know, through life because, you know, it's it's.
• 12:59
  it's constantly a negotiation it's constantly kind of recognizing that just because you're on the other side doesn't mean you're my enemy you know it's like you have a different point of view about this thing let me try to understand that so I think you know maybe not optimistic but kind of like trying to be pragmatic trying to be practical understanding that everything is a negotiation which in business we all need babes babes it's just the first offer right
• 13:31
  The opening salvo.
• 13:32
  Yes.
• 13:33
  You know, I mean, I think life is a long, it's a journey, it's a marathon, not a sprint, right?
• 13:37
  And as we get older and as we kind of accumulate these experiences, like, you know, now I have staff who are in their early 20s, the Gen Zers who are very, you know, they have their different points of view, you know?
• 13:48
  And I'm like, I'm not going to rule you by fear.
• 13:51
  Sure.
• 13:51
  The way that my boss ruled me by fear, you know, when I was that age.
• 13:58
  And trying to understand and to see, like, what motivates them and what, how do you, like, actually get people engaged in your cause.
• 14:07
  Yes.
• 14:07
  Right?
• 14:07
  Because at the end of the day, I do want to achieve something.
• 14:10
  Right.
• 14:10
  Right?
• 14:11
  Whatever my beliefs are.
• 14:12
  Yes.
• 14:12
  You know, my...
• 14:13
  I have my values.
• 14:14
  And those are the things that, you know, when you're living a life that's driven by values, you're always trying to look for ways to get more people on board.
• 14:22
  On your side.
• 14:23
  Exactly.
• 14:23
  Right?
• 14:24
  It's always easier if they're on your side.
• 14:25
  How did I get here?
• 14:27
  Through the help of my friends.
• 14:28
  Okay.
• 14:29
  With a lot of help from my friends.
• 14:32
  You know, I've never... You don't...
• 14:34
  accomplish and achieve much in life without yourself right and when you're part of a family when you're part of a community when you're part of you know whether it's like local or transnational right like you feel like well there's always like somebody out there you're not so alone right you don't feel so atomized when you were growing up did you feel isolated
• 14:57
  because of your journey, especially because your siblings don't have the same story.
• 15:01
  Yeah, I mean, I also was taken out of my...
• 15:05
  In kindergarten, I was taken out of my classroom by my principal.
• 15:09
  I, you know, we told me to... And I was in a class with mostly other immigrant kids, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Lao kids.
• 15:18
  And he told me to pack my bags and bring all your things and come with me.
• 15:22
  And then he took me to another classroom with all the white children.
• 15:26
  Oh, it was white children.
• 15:27
  And then there was a table of kids in the back.
• 15:29
  There was like a Laotian girl, a Puerto Rican girl, I think a Chinese girl and myself.
• 15:34
  OK. We were the kids like in the back and he's like, here's your new classroom.
• 15:37
  Why?
• 15:37
  So because I was I had fluency in language.
• 15:40
  You know, I had I was picking up English much quicker and, you know, I was a bit more advanced.
• 15:45
  Right.
• 15:46
  So it was the same grade.
• 15:49
  But they had a classroom that was catering for language purposes.
• 15:52
  Yes, exactly.
• 15:53
  So they had the immigrant kids in the kind of language bubble.
• 15:57
  And then they had the more mainstream kids, which is 80%, 90% predominantly white.
• 16:03
  So I was taken from that early on, put into this other class.
• 16:05
  So even though I was in the more academically gifted track, I felt such a pressure.
• 16:11
  to represent for my people.
• 16:13
  I'm like, oh, I'm going to get the best grades and I'm going to try my best.
• 16:19
  And that always kind of made me feel a little separate from my friends.
• 16:24
  Not my friends, my classmates.
• 16:25
  Because I didn't ride the same bus with them.
• 16:28
  I wrote on a different bus, but then like went to that classroom.
• 16:30
  Right.
• 16:31
  And then during school, like when I would need to go to the bathroom, I would take a different route to go to the bathroom because I want to avoid like the immigrant kids because I would get made fun of.
• 16:43
  Right.
• 16:44
  So it was, you know, it was always feeling like kind of I didn't belong in either space.
• 16:48
  Right.
• 16:49
  Fully.
• 16:50
  Which, you know, I've learned later on in life that that means that you have freedom to be who you are.
• 16:54
  Sure.
• 16:55
  But as a child?
• 16:56
  As a child, it's devastating.
• 16:58
  Okay.
• 16:58
  I mean, I found a lot of solace in my teachers.
• 17:01
  My teachers were always my greatest.
• 17:03
  Amazing.
• 17:04
  cheerleaders and support and opportunities.
• 17:07
  And to me, education has always been kind of at the heart of what has given me opportunities in life.
• 17:14
  And one of the main, one of the big reasons that we really try to center education and learning as a part of the company and as a part of our brand is that ultimately all of this, whether it's gender equality,
• 17:28
  in garment making or whether it's environmental sustainability.
• 17:34
  We can solve for those things, but we won't solve for anything if we don't solve for education.
• 17:39
  And that's the real heart of it.
• 17:41
  And Cambodia has a long way to go.
• 17:45
  In terms of education?
• 17:46
  In terms of education, yeah, and prioritizing that.
• 17:48
  And it's so many wonderful schools that are popping up and so many wonderful people.
• 17:55
  And I think that's one of the key things.
• 17:58
  If we can start to unlock...
• 18:01
  some of those things are on there.
• 18:02
  I think we really prepare the next generation for some really great achievements.
• 18:05
  Sure.
• 18:07
  But, you know, I think in some ways, like, fashion and apparel making is a kind of...
• 18:11
  It's an oblique way of getting at that, you know?
• 18:13
  Because, like, we often think that apparel making and, you know, fashion production, it's, like, low-skilled labor.
• 18:20
  Right.
• 18:20
  Right?
• 18:21
  It's, like, you know, you don't need, you know, cheap, low-skilled, you don't need much education to do it.
• 18:27
  Actually...
• 18:28
  doing it well, creating high quality products requires, you know.
• 18:33
  I mean, doing anything to a particular standard is going to the same thing could be said of hospitality.
• 18:37
  Exactly.
• 18:37
  Right.
• 18:37
  It's like viewed again from a UK perspective as the thing that you kind of do whilst you're figuring out your life or you're doing it alongside studying to just get some extra income.
• 18:48
  And what you find is that
• 18:50
  You contrast that to like Paris, where you'll have a 70-year-old gentleman waiting on your table with pride because he knows it's his profession.
• 18:59
  And also the consumer gets a better experience, but the consumer values that position.
• 19:04
  Whereas I would work in my restaurant and people would be like, oh, how long have you worked here?
• 19:08
  I'd be like, oh, from the beginning.
• 19:09
  And they're like, oh, is this just what you want to do with your life?
• 19:12
  With disdain.
• 19:13
  And I find it so bizarre, that kind of condescending thing.
• 19:17
  attitude.
• 19:17
  It's crazy.
• 19:19
  The industries that we tend to think about that, I mean, retail, F&B, apparel making, you know, it's like, well, I've seen, have you seen a pattern maker at their craft, like understanding how to bisect right angles?
• 19:32
  They only appreciate it when it goes wrong.
• 19:34
  It's absolutely, I'm just saying, have you seen the calculus that goes into consumption and understanding what, you know, the ratios should be to reduce waste on a garment?
• 19:44
  Yeah.
• 19:45
  We need actually very smart, very skilled people doing these things, right?
• 19:49
  I think that if we were to invest more into making sure that people were prepared and skilled in what they're doing, I think we would produce ultimately better quality products, which ultimately, at the end of the day, is the key to sustainability.
• 20:05
  Sustainability is not going to be a hero fabric.
• 20:07
  It's not going to be organic cotton everywhere, right?
• 20:11
  No, it's going to be more thoughtful, more skilled approaches to making things that last, making things that get people to understand that at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is quality.
• 20:24
  And quality in your garment, quality in your clothing reflects the quality in the life of the person that made it, right?
• 20:33
  We've all seen drunken seams.
• 20:35
  Yeah.
• 20:35
  Right.
• 20:36
  You know, we all have seen kind of shoddy construction.
• 20:40
  So just let it pass.
• 20:41
  Right.
• 20:42
  Ultimately, that's coming from somebody that sat there, whether or not they had full control over how their hands moved the fabric through the machine at the appropriate levels of tension and, you know, consistency.
• 20:55
  And that actually you need a healthy person on the other side, you know.
• 20:59
  So to me, it's inputs and outputs.
• 21:01
  Right.
• 21:02
  Shit in, shit out.
• 21:04
  Right?
• 21:04
  You want to have as high quality inputs as possible.
• 21:07
  That includes the human being, as well as the fabric, as well as the thread, as well as the machine.
• 21:11
  All of it needs to be used to be.
• 21:12
  Have you always thought like this?
• 21:15
  You know, I grew up in a manufacturing kind of hub in Massachusetts.
• 21:22
  It was an old textile industrial revolution.
• 21:25
  We had lots of boot mills and fabric mills.
• 21:28
  And so we grew up in the shadows of that.
• 21:32
  So I had a deep appreciation for that as the historical backdrop.
• 21:35
  My parents also worked in, they were immigrants in America in the 80s and 90s.
• 21:39
  So in New England, we were creating the,
• 21:42
  you know, kind of the chips and the cables that were the backbone of the future IT industry, right?
• 21:48
  Computers and all of these things.
• 21:50
  We were, you know, we had remnants of it in our house.
• 21:54
  And my parents would bring home boxes of things that would connect together that, you know, were going to ultimately be used in computers.
• 22:01
  So I always deeply appreciated how things come together, who makes these things.
• 22:06
  And, you know, it was a very blue collar, working class, you know, kind of environment.
• 22:11
  So, yeah.
• 22:12
  Do your siblings, I'm really interested in this dynamic of the fact that you have a slightly different story to your siblings.
• 22:22
  So I'm the youngest for my dad.
• 22:24
  My dad has three kids.
• 22:25
  He was married first, had two, and then me.
• 22:27
  I'm the only one that's grown up in Jamaica.
• 22:30
  They've grown up in England.
• 22:31
  And I think that that contributes to a significant difference in the way that we think.
• 22:36
  You're the youngest of how many?
• 22:38
  Of three.
• 22:39
  But I'm the only one.
• 22:40
  One brother, one sister.
• 22:41
  Okay.
• 22:42
  Right.
• 22:42
  Big age difference.
• 22:43
  My brother is almost 19 years older than me and my sister is 10 years older than me.
• 22:46
  Okay.
• 22:47
  And I think that growing up in Jamaica means that our mentality is very, very different.
• 22:53
  Our like perception of the world is very different.
• 22:57
  An easy example, I'll never forget my niece.
• 23:00
  So my sister's daughter, she was about 30.
• 23:03
  three or four and she was doing like a gymnastics competition and I had driven like an orange something to get to this competition to watch and when I tell you that my niece killed it she's like in her little body I saw the toe pointing the back was arched I was like yes babe and I make up all of our knives um and that's not the British thing babe you know everyone kind of just and I'm like wait wait like
• 23:27
  going crazy.
• 23:29
  And when we were waiting for the medals to be called to see who's hitting the podium, my sister said, oh, I just need her to get to the podium, right?
• 23:38
  Like, as long as she gets third, because I know she really wants a medal, I'll be really happy.
• 23:44
  And she said it like a flyby remark.
• 23:45
  It wasn't even a major point.
• 23:47
  And I immediately said, did you tell her that?
• 23:50
  Like, did you tell her that all she needed to do was to get to the podium?
• 23:54
  And my sister kind of shimmied around it, but yes, she told her that.
• 23:57
  And from a Jamaican perspective,
• 24:00
  that was beyond comprehension, that you would say all you needed to do is to get to the podium.
• 24:06
  Because in Jamaica, all you need to do is win, right?
• 24:10
  You need to be coming number one win.
• 24:12
  And it's not to say that if you don't win, I'm suggesting that all hell breaks loose,
• 24:16
  But I was just raised in a culture that celebrates competition, that really celebrates wanting to be the best and striving for that.
• 24:25
  And for me, the UK society is very anti-competitive because they'll give participation medals at sports day.
• 24:32
  So just by turning up, everybody gets a medal.
• 24:34
  And there's this idea, I think, that if you want to win, it's almost like a bad word because then someone has to lose.
• 24:42
  And so our mentality in that way, just one example, was very, very different.
• 24:46
  And so I'm wondering, because also I'm aware that you're so young, so I'm not sure if you have strong Cambodian beliefs that perhaps your siblings didn't share.
• 24:58
  That's an interesting question.
• 25:03
  I've always found myself trying to bring together a mix of both.
• 25:08
  sides of it, you know, recognizing that there is, there are some deeply problematic parts of quote unquote Cambodian culture and thinking and, you know, ways that we identified as, okay, that's the Khmer way or that's the Cambodian way versus, oh, that's the American way or the Western way.
• 25:27
  Is there an example?
• 25:30
  So, I mean, I think in traditional Cambodian culture, it's not good to talk back to your elders.
• 25:37
  Okay, that's Jamaica.
• 25:38
  Speaking up, right?
• 25:40
  For Americans, that's what we thrive on.
• 25:43
  You guys are too rude.
• 25:44
  Yeah, but in a local Cambodian family, it was like, no, don't you speak up.
• 25:51
  Don't you talk back to your parents.
• 25:53
  Elders are never wrong.
• 25:54
  Right.
• 25:55
  It's just kind of like you have to, there's a lot of kind of like base, right?
• 25:59
  Sure.
• 25:59
  And like you have to be very respectful.
• 26:02
  Yes.
• 26:03
  Right.
• 26:03
  And I think there's pros and cons of that.
• 26:06
  So I think that tension, I mean, for me, I was always, I think I was more on the side of like trying to find the balance.
• 26:11
  Right.
• 26:12
  Whereas my siblings never.
• 26:14
  My siblings were like, talk back.
• 26:16
  It was just natural to them.
• 26:18
  They didn't even see why.
• 26:20
  And for me, I was always, I think I held on to that a bit more.
• 26:23
  Like for my parents and from my older generation, my aunties and uncles and my grandparents.
• 26:27
  When they said like, don't talk back, I would be like, okay, I'm so sorry.
• 26:30
  Whereas my siblings were just like, whatever.
• 26:32
  We're just gonna, you know, like say whatever we want.
• 26:36
  How did your parents react to the differences?
• 26:40
  I mean, I think.
• 26:41
  I don't know.
• 26:42
  I haven't been a parent.
• 26:44
  But I imagine that your kids, you know, we're all nuanced people.
• 26:50
  Your pros and your cons, right?
• 26:52
  You're like, well, he does his homework.
• 26:53
  Right.
• 26:54
  Yes.
• 26:55
  But he talks back.
• 26:56
  It's like the other ones, they don't do well.
• 26:59
  They're not studying at school, but also like, you know, they're super respectful.
• 27:03
  They're super respectful.
• 27:04
  You can't have it all.
• 27:05
  Right.
• 27:06
  I love that.
• 27:08
  You know, my parents also were, you know, they were young.
• 27:12
  They were, my parents had me in their early 20s, right?
• 27:14
  And they were completely, their lives were uprooted in their teens.
• 27:19
  And, you know, war is happening in Cambodia.
• 27:21
  They didn't get to finish education.
• 27:23
  And then, you know, all of a sudden they're in refugee camps.
• 27:26
  And then all of a sudden they're in America.
• 27:28
  And none of this feels normal, like home.
• 27:30
  And I think they were always struggling.
• 27:33
  You know, I think we got a bit of a sense of that, you know, because we obviously were going to we were going through systems and experiences that our parents never had.
• 27:42
  Right.
• 27:42
  So they couldn't really give us guidance.
• 27:44
  Yeah.
• 27:45
  Like, what do you do when you get bullied at school?
• 27:47
  I don't know.
• 27:48
  Like, you know, we couldn't run to our parents and be like, oh, this and that.
• 27:51
  Yeah.
• 27:51
  They were going through their own struggles.
• 27:53
  Yeah.
• 27:53
  You know, how was school?
• 27:55
  School was my refuge.
• 27:57
  School was where I excelled.
• 27:58
  School was where I felt really valued.
• 28:03
  And I think that fed my competitiveness.
• 28:07
  But it was always a striving for excellence and to show that we could be excellent.
• 28:14
  That Cambodian excellence.
• 28:15
  Because that didn't exist at that time.
• 28:19
  The pressure of representing a nation, and I don't mean that
• 28:24
  I mean that exactly for what it is.
• 28:25
  For example, I always feel that it is my duty to represent Jamaica, right?
• 28:31
  And in a way, almost as to give thanks to the place that made me the way I am.
• 28:37
  And I feel that it's human nature that when something is other, it all of a sudden becomes singular.
• 28:43
  But when it's within, we appreciate the spectrum.
• 28:47
  And one of my life's missions is just to broaden that spectrum just a little bit.
• 28:52
  Make people kind of question their initial stereotype or that first thought.
• 28:56
  And I personally thrive.
• 28:59
  In that, like I take great pride in it.
• 29:01
  I enjoy doing it.
• 29:02
  If you meet me and you don't know where I come from, I have not done my job, right?
• 29:06
  But I can also understand being young, especially, and especially being taken from one class, being put into another, I can see where that may be a negative experience.
• 29:16
  And I'm just wondering, where did you fall?
• 29:18
  I mean, I think I was always just so determined to prove them wrong.
• 29:22
  Okay.
• 29:23
  And I was always, again, that responsibility gene that you're raised with, that you're born with in some ways.
• 29:31
  I recognized that it was such an immense privilege to be...
• 29:37
  academically gifted, right?
• 29:39
  To have talents, to have, you know, an opportunity because, you know, you looked around and you saw a lot of other immigrant kids that didn't have the same opportunities who struggled way more.
• 29:48
  And as much as I was going through, you know, my own things, I could see that on a material level, other people suffered so much more.
• 29:56
  Sure.
• 29:57
  And that broke my heart.
• 29:58
  You know, I, I saw that I had a ticket out.
• 30:03
  You know, I had opportunities for whatever reason that other people didn't.
• 30:08
  And so I always felt a bit of, you know, that responsibility to do it, to get it to achieve because you had so many people rooting for you.
• 30:19
  Right.
• 30:19
  You had so many people that were supporting you and wanting to see the success story, you know, and, you know, I was lucky I had, you know, great, uh,
• 30:28
  community and great, you know, extended family.
• 30:31
  And I was always, you know, really encouraged when I did well.
• 30:35
  So it just kind of fed that.
• 30:36
  Yes.
• 30:36
  I think of it, you know, in a way it's it's can be a virtuous circle.
• 30:40
  Yes.
• 30:41
  But I think there's also limits to that, too, as you get older and you start to recognize, like, why am I continuing to do this?
• 30:47
  Because I'm trying to please others or where do I find myself?
• 30:51
  Like where where where.
• 30:55
  Yeah.
• 30:55
  Where is it not just doing things to like
• 30:59
  the applause and what you're accustomed to versus like, what is authentically me?
• 31:04
  What does my heart tell me that I want to do in this particular moment?
• 31:07
  You know, is it like, was it going to grad school?
• 31:10
  Was it like trying to become a successful entrepreneur?
• 31:13
  What's the, did we find the answer?
• 31:15
  Did we know when it kind of stops?
• 31:18
  Babes, this is what this journey is all about.
• 31:20
  Right.
• 31:21
  You know, I think it's the lifelong journey to kind of, to kind of, I don't know how to say it, like uncover in some ways, but also create, right?
• 31:39
  I guess I'm thinking...
• 31:42
  about exactly what you're saying.
• 31:43
  And I feel that personally, I'm not sure if that energy necessarily stops and starts in terms of transitioning from the recognition and the satisfaction from that to moving into a space where it's just authentically you.
• 31:59
  From my perspective, I think that my energy wasn't necessarily the applause of the wider community, but my dad, right?
• 32:08
  Like I felt that,
• 32:10
  My pride in him, because he is one of 15 children.
• 32:14
  He grew up in the bush, as we'd say, in Jamaica.
• 32:18
  He didn't go to university, you know, self-made in the truest sense, right?
• 32:22
  Not in the sense that, like, your parents helped you and then you claim to be self-made.
• 32:25
  Right.
• 32:26
  And I am so like in awe of what he has achieved and grateful that it has provided me with set opportunities that I think even if I was doing things that I wanted to do, I'm not saying I didn't want to do those things.
• 32:40
  I'm just saying there was definitely an undercurrent of, I want to show him that I'm grateful through achieving, right?
• 32:47
  Like I want to show him
• 32:48
  that his investment in providing this life and working so hard so that I can do has not been wasted.
• 32:57
  And I think that when I had children,
• 33:01
  the shift started, but it wasn't that it became, okay, just about like my authentic April experience.
• 33:08
  I think the pressure changed from me wanting to show my dad to, yes, I still want him to be able to see Wagwan, but now I want to be the dad for my kids in the sense that I now need to provide them.
• 33:23
  And so I'm not sure if I'd ever be able to get to a space where it's
• 33:28
  It's like an inner, just an inner focus and an inner pull.
• 33:33
  Right, right.
• 33:33
  I think I've just transferred it from my dad to my kids.
• 33:36
  Maybe it's also a bit of a myth, like this idea that there is a self beyond its relation to others.
• 33:44
  You know, I think that...
• 33:45
  As you are a daughter, you're now a mother.
• 33:50
  That sense of self gets more complex.
• 33:53
  And I think there's a point in our lives when we don't have children and we're actively pursuing our own things where the ego takes precedence over everything else.
• 34:01
  But then when you get into your relationships and whether they're familial or business or any other things, you're...
• 34:11
  I think, yeah, we're always kind of going back and forth between like, you know, okay, I need my me time.
• 34:15
  But then also like being on this earth living life means that I kind of have to engage with others.
• 34:22
  Right.
• 34:22
  And in that way, kind of lose a bit of myself, but also maybe gain some things also at the same time.
• 34:27
  You know, it's not, what is it?
• 34:30
  It's not, it's not like a zero sum game.
• 34:31
  Like it's constantly kind of.
• 34:34
  it deepens your appreciation for so much, right?
• 34:36
  And I feel thankful that I'm constantly engaged in things that make me feel like I'm becoming bigger now
• 34:45
  and more like inclusive as a person you know things that challenge me totally I was like oh my god will you be somebody that is okay with like all of these you know challenges and things and you know people will lie to you people will steal from you people will cheat you could you imagine yourself being if somebody asked me that at 25 and said you're gonna run a business one day where all these things are gonna happen like how do you feel so run run go other direction you know but
• 35:15
  So the universe in some ways has prepared me for this.
• 35:18
  Sure.
• 35:19
  Right?
• 35:19
  It's like, for better or worse, I believe that you're uniquely, we're all uniquely positioned to do something in life, right?
• 35:27
  That's only you can do it.
• 35:28
  Nobody else can do it, right?
• 35:30
  Everything that's happened before was for a reason.
• 35:33
  I'm a big believer in everything for a reason.
• 35:35
  Right?
• 35:36
  I don't know if it's the lie that I tell myself just to comfort myself at night, but babe, I'm going to...
• 35:40
  I'm running with it.
• 35:41
  Babe, that's the story.
• 35:42
  That's the storyline.
• 35:43
  We're going with it.
• 35:44
  When you were going for the Fulbright Scholarship and you knew that you wanted to, I think it's fair to say, fill in some gaps, right?
• 35:51
  In terms of knowledge and understanding.
• 35:54
  Did you always have a sense of I needed to access more knowledge and more historical context?
• 36:01
  It's a crazy thing about me is that I always thought that, you know, I could pull together all the information and come up with the solutions.
• 36:08
  Okay.
• 36:09
  Like I was a kid that I would bring the encyclopedia to the dinner table and like look for the cure for cancer.
• 36:14
  Right.
• 36:14
  In there, right?
• 36:15
  It's like, oh, I'm just, you just need to read the encyclopedia from front to back, all the different volumes and somehow like synthesize that information.
• 36:21
  Yes.
• 36:22
  And that's how you come up with the, with the idea.
• 36:24
  Right.
• 36:24
  Right.
• 36:26
  So yeah.
• 36:27
  Wait, what was the question again?
• 36:29
  If you always had that pull for something missing as you were growing up, or was there a turning point where you're like, actually, I no need answers?
• 36:38
  I think when I came to Cambodia was the turning point.
• 36:40
  Okay.
• 36:41
  I think when I came here and, you know...
• 36:45
  You have to question everything that you've learned previously when you come to a place like Cambodia.
• 36:52
  So you've come to Cambodia at this point.
• 36:53
  It was my first time.
• 36:54
  That was my question.
• 36:55
  So I moved here.
• 36:56
  I'd never been here before.
• 36:57
  So I didn't know what to expect.
• 36:57
  So when you came, you were moving.
• 36:59
  Yeah.
• 37:00
  Like the plan was, I'm now going to live.
• 37:02
  2010.
• 37:03
  Yeah.
• 37:03
  And you've moved from New York.
• 37:04
  New York, yeah.
• 37:05
  And you're like, I'm now living.
• 37:07
  Yes.
• 37:07
  Tell me.
• 37:08
  It was a one-way ticket.
• 37:09
  Like really?
• 37:10
  It was a one-way ticket.
• 37:11
  Yeah.
• 37:12
  Hold on.
• 37:12
  And I'd never been here before.
• 37:14
  I'd spent like a couple of months backpacking.
• 37:16
  Okay.
• 37:17
  Southeast Asia.
• 37:17
  Right.
• 37:18
  I'd gone to visit my family in Australia for the first time.
• 37:21
  Attended my cousin's wedding.
• 37:22
  So that was like, actually my exit from New York was, first stop was Melbourne.
• 37:27
  Yeah.
• 37:27
  To my cousin's wedding.
• 37:28
  And it was incredible just to get out of America.
• 37:32
  Right.
• 37:34
  And get a different sense of life.
• 37:35
  And Australians at that time, you know, just the difference in work life balance was so jarring and refreshing.
• 37:42
  And I just really deeply appreciated, you know, the style of life there.
• 37:46
  But after that, I spent a month there and then did a couple of months, you know, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore.
• 37:52
  OK.
• 37:53
  knowing that my final destination was Cambodia.
• 37:55
  It was gonna be, okay.
• 37:56
  And so like I had a couple of months where I was like going through Southeast Asia and that was the first time.
• 38:00
  And you know, Thailand is wonderful.
• 38:02
  Singapore is crazy in its own way.
• 38:04
  And everything is really, the sights, the sounds, the smells.
• 38:07
  It's a very like, you're living life in like 5D, 4D.
• 38:11
  I'm like, this is incredible.
• 38:15
  And yeah, so coming to Cambodia and that sense, that feeling of like,
• 38:21
  I know this is where I'm from, but I'm totally not from here.
• 38:24
  I want to know what was the thought process?
• 38:27
  Where was your head at when you decided I'm moving to Cambodia?
• 38:31
  I think it was, I think at that time, you know, I believe in signs from the universe.
• 38:35
  Yes.
• 38:36
  And it was 2009, 2008, 2009, the financial crisis.
• 38:38
  Yes.
• 38:38
  Lehman Brothers.
• 38:42
  So I started school in New York in 2009.
• 38:45
  Do you remember that time?
• 38:46
  Yes.
• 38:46
  It was a very strange time.
• 38:51
  And I was already thinking about the Fulbright from a year or two previous and wanting to be in Asia and connecting to what's going on there.
• 38:59
  And I think when the financial crisis happened, everything was just kind of...
• 39:03
  I would see all these news articles and I would get all of these signs to say, go to Asia, go to Asia, go to Asia.
• 39:09
  And I just...
• 39:12
  I didn't plan for it to be like forever, you know, it's supposed to be like six months.
• 39:17
  Okay.
• 39:17
  Like a volunteer position.
• 39:19
  Okay.
• 39:20
  You know, it's, but yeah, I didn't know what to expect.
• 39:29
  And there is that sense of strangeness and familiarity.
• 39:32
  There's words and sounds that I'm kind of familiar with hearing, but that don't feel comfortable in my mouth yet.
• 39:38
  Yes, yes.
• 39:40
  And people kind of looking at you strange and being like, are you from here?
• 39:43
  And you'd be like, what's the right answer here?
• 39:46
  I don't know.
• 39:47
  Where do you feel like you're from?
• 39:49
  Where do I feel like I'm from?
• 39:50
  I mean, you know, global citizen these days.
• 39:56
  Now I've been back in Cambodia 15 years.
• 39:57
  Right.
• 39:58
  So about a third of my life that I've lived here, worked here.
• 40:04
  The other two thirds have been in the US.
• 40:06
  So, you know, America is a part of my identity.
• 40:09
  Yeah.
• 40:10
  You know, I will always be deeply invested in what's happening there and but also invested in what's happening here, obviously.
• 40:18
  Do you have family that's still here?
• 40:21
  Not really.
• 40:22
  No.
• 40:22
  Yeah.
• 40:23
  So I was interesting when I came back here, I didn't really know anybody, which is kind of liberating, to be honest.
• 40:30
  You know, you hear all these stories from other people, returnees.
• 40:32
  There's a kind of interesting community of people coming back from the U.S. or France or Australia.
• 40:38
  Okay.
• 40:39
  It's interesting.
• 40:40
  I think most Cambodian returnees are French.
• 40:43
  Okay, I've seen a lot of French here.
• 40:44
  A lot of French, a lot of Australian.
• 40:47
  I think actually Americans are very minority.
• 40:50
  Right.
• 40:52
  Yeah, so that whole international Cambodian expat community is a really interesting one because, again, that sense of we're similar to each other but also very different.
• 41:02
  The way that you would, like, an American talking to a French person, except they're both Cambodian.
• 41:06
  Right.
• 41:08
  It's very funny to observe.
• 41:12
  But, you know, I think that when I came back here, you know, I think we were raised with kind of ideas about what's right and what's wrong.
• 41:22
  Okay.
• 41:24
  Rule of law.
• 41:25
  And, you know, don't drive past like this side, like sidewalks, all of these things that you're like, oh, wait, I need to question everything.
• 41:34
  Right.
• 41:36
  You know, why do we eat sugary cereals for breakfast when you could have rice porridge and dried fish?
• 41:42
  Yes.
• 41:43
  Why not?
• 41:44
  I'm definitely with the rice porridge fix.
• 41:46
  I mean, it's, you know, I think there's deep wisdom in some of the things that...
• 41:51
  still exists, right?
• 41:53
  There's a reason for it.
• 41:54
  And I think that's the view that I've come to appreciate more than just thinking, oh, it's so weird and exotic, it can't be right.
• 42:01
  Like, I'm right, because I've studied, you know, in the West, and I know all these ideas, and I know all these things, but it's like, no, babes, maybe people have been doing it this way for a reason.
• 42:12
  For hundreds and thousands of years for a reason.
• 42:14
  And, you know, reconnecting with, you know, the roots of,
• 42:20
  from the temples and like history and culture and religion, those aspects were like, it's so much deeper and longer than kind of the history that we grew up with, which was like, Oh, that's mid century.
• 42:35
  That is ancient.
• 42:36
  Okay.
• 42:37
  You know, that's from 1940.
• 42:39
  It is so old.
• 42:41
  Like it's 1490.
• 42:41
  Try 851 AD, you know?
• 42:43
  And I think that,
• 42:49
  appreciating that sense of history more so than I previously had growing up in America, I think was also one of the things that really deepened my appreciation of where we come from.
• 43:00
  It's a much deeper lineage and a much deeper history.
• 43:04
  When you arrived, it was for volunteering?
• 43:06
  Did you go through the volunteering?
• 43:08
  Yeah, it was an organization that I won't name.
• 43:10
  They're wonderful.
• 43:11
  I mean, so many wonderful organizations.
• 43:13
  But it was around technology, and I had a background.
• 43:15
  I did my master's in communication, culture, and technology.
• 43:19
  And so I was really interested in kind of how do we help bridge the divide
• 43:23
  between the digitally skilled and knowing that technology is really important.
• 43:29
  And I did a volunteer position.
• 43:30
  It was about six months that I originally did that.
• 43:33
  So the original plan is to do that six month program and then go back.
• 43:37
  And then go back, yeah.
• 43:39
  But we don't go back.
• 43:40
  We don't go back.
• 43:42
  We're just, yeah.
• 43:44
  There was this palpable sense of optimism.
• 43:47
  Okay.
• 43:49
  that I felt here that I didn't feel in New York at that time.
• 43:52
  Right?
• 43:53
  It was very, I mean, back then it was very, it just felt like very depressed and very like- It's so funny as an outsider.
• 43:58
  Yeah.
• 43:59
  And I say this a lot, the New York London comparison.
• 44:02
  And for me, there are so many similarities.
• 44:04
  However, the thing I love about New York is that when I land, and I haven't been post COVID, so this is all a pre COVID analysis.
• 44:11
  But when I land, I feel like I can do anything.
• 44:15
  I can do it big.
• 44:16
  And I don't know what that is, by the way, but I can change the world from here.
• 44:20
  I definitely feel that.
• 44:20
  And I think that's like celebrated.
• 44:22
  Like if you meet people in New York and you're like, oh, this is what I want to do.
• 44:25
  Immediately they're like, oh, speak to my friend so-and-so because I think that they could be a good link.
• 44:30
  I think that's my general vibe of New York.
• 44:32
  I think it was that specific time with Lehman Brothers and...
• 44:36
  yeah it was depressing it was depressing and yeah America generally you know just kind of wondered where all of this is going whereas here it was like
• 44:48
  You know, young people, very young population.
• 44:51
  Okay.
• 44:52
  Very smiley, very friendly.
• 44:53
  Yes.
• 44:54
  Very tomorrow might be a better day.
• 44:57
  Like our brightest days are still ahead of us.
• 44:59
  I mean, I think obviously the contrast between the more recent history was also more darker.
• 45:03
  Sure.
• 45:04
  I think when you have societies that have gone through such traumatic, you know, tragic circumstances and challenges, then, you know,
• 45:13
  the ones that survive have this different point of view.
• 45:16
  Of course.
• 45:17
  And I think that coming from America, we didn't really have that, right?
• 45:20
  If anything, like Iraq and the Vietnam War all felt like so long and so distant ago.
• 45:26
  To be honest, even my knowledge of Khmer Rouge was nearly non-existent, right?
• 45:31
  And so when I go to the museum and I see the dates, I'm like, yo, 1975 was just all the day.
• 45:36
  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 45:37
  Like just the other day.
• 45:39
  So that for me was a huge realization because a lot of times when we do talk about atrocities, it's whether hundreds of years ago or whatever, and we still speak about their effects today.
• 45:48
  So I couldn't even really get my head around that that was just so recent.
• 45:52
  Right, right.
• 45:54
  I mean, I think it's one of the narrative, dominant narratives that I think Cambodia has kind of struggled with.
• 46:02
  Okay.
• 46:03
  How to what extent do we let this define us?
• 46:06
  Yes.
• 46:07
  How do we define ourselves?
• 46:09
  And some of those narratives are told by non-Cambodians.
• 46:14
  And I think that we all understand part of the necessity of that, but also the problem of that, and starting to reclaim
• 46:23
  the stories that have yet to be told, to help enrich that picture.
• 46:31
  So I think, yeah, that to me was one of the really interesting dynamics of the society that made me want to stay and kind of explore more.
• 46:39
  And I think also coming from,
• 46:42
  privileged academic background and having all these experiences, I was uniquely positioned to take on different projects and jobs and roles and working with prestigious companies all over the world and different brands and getting insights into these different industries.
• 46:58
  And you were able to do all of that from here?
• 47:00
  From here.
• 47:01
  And I had projects that were in New York City.
• 47:06
  you know, in our globalized world, you know, you're on these calls and chats with people like all over the world.
• 47:12
  And Cambodia, it just, it felt like, you know, Cambodia was a kind of where I was based in, but like working wise, it was always, you know.
• 47:20
  Global.
• 47:20
  Yeah.
• 47:21
  You interface with people on the East Coast, the West Coast, Japan, UK.
• 47:25
  It's, you know, you have to kind of reset your own biological clock.
• 47:31
  You know, to understand, like, okay, what do I function best?
• 47:34
  Right.
• 47:34
  And when should I work, you know?
• 47:36
  What did your family think when you said, oh, I'm not coming back?
• 47:40
  Oof.
• 47:41
  Initially, I think they were really worried.
• 47:43
  They were really concerned, you know?
• 47:44
  I think there's that sense of, like, oh, this is a place that we escaped.
• 47:47
  Right.
• 47:48
  This is a place that we tried to leave behind in a way.
• 47:50
  And so I think it was initially very strange for them.
• 47:57
  But I was always very, like, I will do my own thing.
• 47:59
  Right.
• 48:00
  you know, kind of person.
• 48:01
  So they knew that they couldn't stop me.
• 48:03
  Sure.
• 48:05
  So, yeah, but I came...
• 48:08
  For probably a year and a half before my mother first came back with me.
• 48:13
  I mean, my parents had come on their own without me when we were growing up.
• 48:18
  But it was the first time that she came back, you know, when I was here.
• 48:21
  And I just remember that sense of like walking around and seeing the world through my eyes where she was able to let go of...
• 48:32
  her memories, some of the memories and some of the things that she had attached to, you know, in these places, because it was no longer her world.
• 48:40
  Right.
• 48:40
  Even though it was very much a part of her experiences, I think being able to see that things change and that things move beyond your control and your grasp is very liberating in a way, you know.
• 48:54
  Yes, there's tragedy around every corner.
• 48:57
  I just remember driving around with my stepfather and my mother, both Cambodian, and telling stories about, oh, I saw this happen over there.
• 49:07
  Atrocious things, but also just like it was normal.
• 49:11
  But now it's a football field where kids play.
• 49:14
  Now it's a school where kids go to school.
• 49:18
  It's to see that nothing is stable, nothing is static.
• 49:23
  Right.
• 49:23
  You know, change is the only thing that we can... That is inevitable.
• 49:26
  Yeah, it's inevitable.
• 49:27
  But also to see that, like, okay, now we're trying to control the story.
• 49:31
  Not control the story, but make it ours.
• 49:33
  Own it.
• 49:33
  Yeah.
• 49:34
  You know, so I think that that...
• 49:36
  In some ways, I think if I came back and just worked for a company, which I've done, you know, but to have my own business, to be engaged with, you know, the community and to be doing things and they see how we're connected to, you know, other...
• 49:50
  kind of community organizations and being engaged in different projects and different things sees and they see kind of like how it's such a community effort to really bring Cambodia to its full potential.
• 50:04
  And so that's a really powerful thing.
• 50:06
  When you first came, how were you received by the Cambodian community?
• 50:12
  Like the local Cambodian community?
• 50:15
  Do you speak Khmer?
• 50:16
  I do.
• 50:16
  Now I do speak Khmer.
• 50:17
  I mean, I think for my first year, I was still struggling.
• 50:20
  Oh, really?
• 50:20
  So you didn't speak it at home in America?
• 50:23
  I mean, I did...
• 50:25
  I did, but probably 90% of the time I spoke English.
• 50:30
  Okay.
• 50:31
  I definitely spoke more than my siblings.
• 50:32
  Right.
• 50:34
  But it was always jarring.
• 50:35
  I remember working in New York and my mother would call the days we had landlines in the office.
• 50:40
  And I'd pick up the phone and I'd start speaking Kamiya.
• 50:42
  And my coworkers would be like, what are you saying?
• 50:46
  They're like, we forgot you were Cambodian.
• 50:48
  Right.
• 50:48
  I was like, okay.
• 50:54
  No, and I think when I came back, it's, you know, I think it's, yeah, it's,
• 51:01
  people thought I was like an alien.
• 51:02
  Really?
• 51:03
  It's like that sense of like, are you Korean?
• 51:05
  Are you Japanese?
• 51:06
  Are you Chinese?
• 51:07
  Now it's like everybody thinks you're Chinese.
• 51:09
  Right.
• 51:10
  I still get it, right?
• 51:11
  Because I think there's like certain codes, like whether it's fashion or like how you present yourself.
• 51:16
  Right, just an energy.
• 51:17
  Just an energy.
• 51:18
  Yeah, I feel you on that because I remember once, my dad used to have a money transfer company.
• 51:22
  And me and my brother were giving out leaflets in a particular Jamaican area.
• 51:26
  And we'd give out these leaflets.
• 51:28
  And I could tell a Jamaican miles away.
• 51:31
  I can't even describe what I'm looking for.
• 51:34
  But it would be like, just the way, the gate.
• 51:37
  I was like, yeah, man, that's a Jamaican.
• 51:38
  I'd be like, yo, my youth.
• 51:39
  And then my brother immediately is like, you can't call a big man my youth.
• 51:44
  Because, again, from a British perspective, why are you calling an adult my youth?
• 51:48
  Youth.
• 51:48
  I was like, no, Phil, this is how it works.
• 51:52
  I'm letting him know from a distance we are one.
• 51:55
  Okay, I got this.
• 51:56
  I see.
• 51:57
  Yeah.
• 51:58
  And it was just a thing of you can spot a Jamaican from a mile away.
• 52:02
  So I guess they're having that same je ne sais quoi, but there's something there.
• 52:07
  I love that.
• 52:08
  I love that.
• 52:09
  I love making people second guess what they're seeing, right?
• 52:12
  But also, like, having them see that, like, something that they could consider theirs might be so strange.
• 52:18
  Yes.
• 52:19
  Right?
• 52:19
  It might be something that they didn't consider before.
• 52:21
  Right.
• 52:22
  I mean, I think we see it now in the younger generations.
• 52:24
  Like, there's so much more mix.
• 52:25
  They're, like, pulling in all these different...
• 52:27
  influences and references from these different things.
• 52:29
  And they don't feel constrained by a narrow lane for identity.
• 52:35
  You don't need to be Buddhist to be Cambodian, for example.
• 52:38
  You don't need to be quiet, submissive to be Asian.
• 52:41
  I think that's always a really...
• 52:51
  like interesting dynamic, that spark of getting people to think differently about something without it feeling threatening.
• 52:57
  Yes.
• 52:58
  Right?
• 52:58
  And I think that that's kind of one of the unique capabilities that, you know, one of our superpowers is to kind of like get people to the table, at least like have that conversation to say like, we're not so separate from one another.
• 53:12
  Right.
• 53:13
  You know, where can we find common ground here?
• 53:16
  Do you feel that your personality is different in English versus Khmer?
• 53:20
  I don't think so.
• 53:21
  I think when I'm in Khmer, it's just my American personality just with a different total shift.
• 53:28
  You speak Khmer with an American accent.
• 53:30
  Oh, you do?
• 53:31
  So sometimes they can see how my brain is like, okay, you've got the concepts, and now you're trying to apply the Cambodian words to get at it.
• 53:41
  Which leads to some funny quirks.
• 53:44
  Yeah.
• 53:47
  So tell me when we go from volunteering to where we are now with Dorsu.
• 53:53
  I mean, it's, yeah, I mean, the initial 15 years.
• 53:56
  So it's been quite a journey.
• 53:57
  But the long and short of it was I took some jobs with marketing companies and agencies, always in a kind of marketing communications role.
• 54:06
  And then I got this opportunity to work for this incredible arts festival in New York City from 2012.
• 54:12
  And then we had the festival in 2013.
• 54:16
  This was a once in a lifetime project that I was involved in.
• 54:20
  We worked with 34 partners in New York City, the Guggenheim, the Met.
• 54:25
  Big boys.
• 54:26
  Big cultural institutions, you know, that all had something of a soft spot for Cambodia.
• 54:33
  which was something that I didn't realize until that time.
• 54:38
  But we presented 250 Cambodian artists in New York City for two or three months.
• 54:44
  It took over the city in 2013.
• 54:46
  It was such a prideful, empowering moment to see Cambodian artists presented at BAM, at Lincoln Center, at New York.
• 54:57
  We took the artists, some of the puppeteers to visit Sesame Street workshop.
• 55:03
  We had the shadow puppets performing at the World Trade Center.
• 55:08
  Just incredible moments.
• 55:11
  And yeah, that was a once in a lifetime kind of experience.
• 55:14
  I did that and working with all these different partners and learning about partnerships and how you have to
• 55:22
  constantly keep everybody on the same page about everything right and marketing communications was also in charge of pr so dealing with the new york times the new yorker like all these publications it was it was just so intense and i was like you know it blood sweat and tears right
• 55:41
  anything of beauty it's like when you create work something on that kind of level you see how much like just how much energy and effort goes into it and i so deeply appreciate it in retrospect at the time i was like we were all dying you were dying we're all dying you know you didn't sleep like it was everything was just it's production yes production never stops
• 56:04
  You have to find your ways, your time.
• 56:07
  But it was a full on project.
• 56:11
  That, I came back in 2015, 16 was when this opportunity to work for DFS, which is the travel retail division of the LVMH group, came to me.
• 56:23
  I got to open up one of the first shopping malls, luxury shopping malls in Siem Reap.
• 56:27
  Okay.
• 56:28
  At that time, it was the first Gucci boutique, Cartier, Fendi.
• 56:33
  You know, it was all of these luxury brands, beauty, fashion, watches, you know, things that I never really wanted to know about, but, you know, a deeply appreciated experience.
• 56:44
  We also gave jobs to 300 young Cambodian people who didn't have opportunities, you know, like that.
• 56:50
  So to see the investments that were made by the brands into training and development and, you know, making sure that the staff were ready to represent for these companies and these brands, because you don't convert customers and you don't drive sales without people knowledgeable, skilled, who understand why this is high quality products.
• 57:08
  Why is this worth $100?
• 57:10
  $5,000, $10,000, right?
• 57:13
  In a place like Cambodia that doesn't have that infrastructure.
• 57:17
  So that was an incredible experience.
• 57:19
  Again, you know, blood, sweat, and tears.
• 57:25
  building stores and I just you know to me it was a time when companies like that were building stores okay and that you know from the ground up and so your involvement wasn't just from the marketing I was the I was the consumer marketing manager but you know when you work in a team you know it's you're directed to the sales directors the travel industry people the operations admin finance oh my god how much finance and admin we had to do because you know
• 57:53
  You're all responsible for your own stuff.
• 57:55
  It's not like these companies are not equipping you with like, here's your team of assistants to help you with everything.
• 58:02
  They're like, no, you fill out the budget request forms yourself.
• 58:09
  You learn, right?
• 58:10
  You learn kind of what you need to build relationships to other people and other things to get things done.
• 58:15
  You're not going to achieve anything by yourself.
• 58:17
  Right.
• 58:18
  So that experience I did for three years.
• 58:22
  So it got up to like 2018 and then hit a wall.
• 58:26
  I was just done seven days a week in the mall.
• 58:29
  You know what I mean?
• 58:30
  Like I was in Siem Reap and my partner and my partner was here in Phnom Penh.
• 58:34
  So we saw each other like once a month or something on the weekend.
• 58:36
  Right.
• 58:37
  So it was it was really full on.
• 58:39
  I was learning a ton.
• 58:40
  And that's, you know, the highs and the lows and just, you know, just wonderful experiences.
• 58:48
  But I hit a wall with that and then came back to Phnom Penh, had an opportunity to do some work for the Apple distributor here in Cambodia.
• 58:58
  And we might need to be sensitive about saying Apple on screen.
• 59:01
  So let me know if I need to say, you know, make it anonymous.
• 59:06
  Yeah.
• 59:07
  You know, they're very sensitive about their brand.
• 59:15
  Because I work for the distributor here in Cambodia.
• 59:20
  And that was based in Phnom Penh?
• 59:21
  Based in Phnom Penh.
• 59:23
  Working with the team in Singapore, because that's where the regional business headquarters are.
• 59:31
  So again, you know, my experience from working with big brands and then, you know, one of the biggest brands in the world, you know, that I think that was in 2020 when COVID hit and this opportunity to acquire Dorsu came across my plate.
• 59:51
  I was, you know, at that time, COVID was, you know, it was...
• 59:56
  terrible situation for so many small businesses in Cambodia.
• 59:59
  A lot of great businesses were having to fold and this one particular company had come across my radar previously because in retail we were looking at maybe bringing in some local brands into the assortment and so we had done some research on different companies.
• 1:00:15
  This one came across my radar and I was like oh this is interesting.
• 1:00:18
  They do basic apparel, t-shirts, you know
• 1:00:22
  very lightweight summer, you know, kind of styles.
• 1:00:29
  And the story, you know, really spoke to me.
• 1:00:31
  So when the opportunity to kind of help keep it going came across my way, you know, my partner and I, you know, we fortunately don't need anything in life, right?
• 1:00:44
  We're so privileged, you know, to have our health, a roof over our heads.
• 1:00:50
  And it was Yeah, it was a really great
• 1:00:54
  Can I take a pause?
• 1:00:55
  Yes.
• 1:00:55
  I just want to get some water.
• 1:00:56
  Of course.
• 1:00:56
  I'm getting a little dry.
• 1:00:58
  I feel like we're getting into something that's like, wow, that's a lot.
• 1:01:00
  It's just kind of going to.
• 1:01:03
  There's two boxes just on the hips.
• 1:01:07
  How are we on time?
• 1:01:09
  One cup.
• 1:01:10
  Yeah.
• 1:01:28
  Can I use the bathroom?
• 1:01:29
  Of course, babes.
• 1:01:30
  It's just there on the left.
• 1:01:34
  Yes.
• 1:01:49
  I think you're right.
• 1:01:50
  This leg is better.
• 1:01:52
  Yes?
• 1:01:53
  It's not as dead.
• 1:01:56
  See, I was resistant to your suggestion.
• 1:02:00
  None is dead.
• 1:02:04
  Who are we talking to tomorrow?
• 1:02:08
  Or a girl from Kazakhstan?
• 1:02:11
  We're talking to a girl from Kazakhstan tomorrow.
• 1:02:14
  Kazakhstan?
• 1:02:15
  Yeah.
• 1:02:15
  It's Russian.
• 1:02:16
  Yeah, that's why I said it.
• 1:02:19
  I don't know anything about Kazakhstan.
• 1:02:22
  Anything?
• 1:02:22
  I don't know.
• 1:02:26
  What's interesting about Kazakhstan?
• 1:02:31
  I don't know.
• 1:02:32
  He's good people.
• 1:02:33
  Yeah?
• 1:02:39
  Strong.
• 1:02:40
  Okay.
• 1:02:44
  Independent.
• 1:02:45
  Independent.
• 1:02:49
  And a man, I can't remember where he's from, but he's a photographer.
• 1:02:57
  Tomorrow.
• 1:02:59
  Oh, and maybe Miss Planet.
• 1:03:03
  Planet.
• 1:03:05
  Miss Planet.
• 1:03:31
  Thank you for that.
• 1:03:32
  Of course.
• 1:03:39
  You okay?
• 1:03:40
  Yeah.
• 1:03:43
  I think I felt like I was just getting a bit long winded.
• 1:03:45
  It's like, okay, maybe we need to break this up a little bit.
• 1:03:53
  Is there any place I shouldn't be looking?
• 1:03:56
  Sometimes the camera I'm like,
• 1:03:59
  Does it look unnatural?
• 1:04:00
  So it's speaking to, it's whispering.
• 1:04:03
  I whisper.
• 1:04:05
  Can this be an ASMR episode?
• 1:04:09
  Oh, man.
• 1:04:11
  Okay.
• 1:04:12
  Yep.
• 1:04:13
  Cool.
• 1:04:14
  So tell me how we go from hearing about Dorsu and what it was that spoke to you.
• 1:04:21
  You know, I think...
• 1:04:23
  Going back to that sense of responsibility, growing up with feeling like you need to represent for a whole country.
• 1:04:29
  I think that because the garment industry in Cambodia is so massive, it's an important part of the economy.
• 1:04:38
  I saw that a slow fashion label
• 1:04:41
  could have a really great opportunity to make a statement and have an impact that's outsized from what it actually is.
• 1:04:50
  And what's the vision for the impact?
• 1:04:55
  I know education is a big part of it and getting respect from the craft.
• 1:04:59
  Yeah.
• 1:05:01
  You know, to me, the impact is just every day knowing that thousands and thousands of people who have a piece of clothing from us, you know, put it on and for a split second think about where it came from.
• 1:05:13
  Okay.
• 1:05:13
  Who made this, right?
• 1:05:15
  And having that connection to it makes me feel like
• 1:05:20
  That's what it's about, right?
• 1:05:22
  That little moment where you stop, considered where it came from, and that impact that has on the rest of your day, right?
• 1:05:28
  And the rest of your kind of understanding of the world, you know, and I think whether it's clothing or food or other kinds of consumption, just that split second to be a bit more mindful can really have incredible impacts.
• 1:05:44
  What was the thought process behind leaving the comfort of working with big brands to then running your own business?
• 1:05:54
  The reason I say this is because...
• 1:05:55
  I question that all the time also.
• 1:05:56
  Like, in my mind, I would love a job.
• 1:05:59
  I say this all the time.
• 1:06:00
  And people think that I'm being silly.
• 1:06:01
  But I think when people don't understand what it really takes to run a business, an independent business, and just...
• 1:06:10
  Ownership is a responsibility.
• 1:06:13
  Ownership is not just, oh, you get all the profits and you get all of it.
• 1:06:17
  And people really have this idea.
• 1:06:18
  And they think it's liberation.
• 1:06:20
  People are like, oh, yeah, small business hustle, like, oh, freedom.
• 1:06:24
  And you get to work less, they think.
• 1:06:25
  There is no freedom in being a business owner.
• 1:06:28
  So I'm like, if I was working as you have done in terms of get to these positions, you know, you've earned your place, you're working with really big brands, you're doing fun, glamorous things.
• 1:06:37
  But that's not to say that I won't go back to that at some point.
• 1:06:40
  I think that, you know, at that time it was kind of seeing the limits of what you can do within the system.
• 1:06:45
  Right.
• 1:06:46
  But it also made me feel like, okay, I'm uniquely prepared to do something that others would not be able to do because I've been in those boardrooms.
• 1:06:54
  I've been in those...
• 1:06:55
  strategy planning sessions on what the forecasted targets will be.
• 1:07:00
  independent of what the impact on people's lives and on the environment will be.
• 1:07:04
  So now you can bring the two?
• 1:07:06
  And I think that that's vital to actually making progress within sustainability or within ethical labor.
• 1:07:14
  You really need to understand the different players in the conversation, the reasons why these decisions get made, what is the thinking behind why we go for these particular objectives and these particular targets.
• 1:07:27
  One of the things I've learned is that there's not really villains in this story, right?
• 1:07:32
  It's not like some evil factory owner is, you know,
• 1:07:39
  to rob his team of, you know, his workers of wages and salaries.
• 1:07:45
  You know, I think the reality is much more complex than that.
• 1:07:49
  I think that the different forces at play and institutional structures around how the business is set up and how we look at buyers and suppliers, how
• 1:07:59
  financial terms are set up, you know, across these different contracts and agreements, these nitty gritty things are much more involved, you know, when you look at it, more so than like, oh, just this evil person doing terrible things.
• 1:08:14
  Okay.
• 1:08:15
  You know, I don't think that anybody's trying to...
• 1:08:19
  screw over really you know uh across the board across the industry you don't think i guess sometimes you just need one bad apple right to spoil it so like the fast fashion big boys right the ones that are seeing something on the red carpet you come up with the version that's like cheap polyester and they're encouraging you to over consume and they're not paying people well the conditions are poor and then they send all their stuff to god i think that's the system
• 1:08:43
  It's like the people that are actually doing the work.
• 1:08:45
  I mean, the worker, right?
• 1:08:47
  It's like the designers that are being told to do this and told to do that.
• 1:08:50
  Sure, no, I don't blame low level.
• 1:08:51
  I just think that in the fashion space, and I'm not a fashionista, babe, so you can feel free to put me back in my box.
• 1:08:57
  Could have fooled me.
• 1:08:59
  Put me back in whenever ready.
• 1:09:00
  But I do get the sense that
• 1:09:03
  the like capitalistic overconsumption is really encouraged like culturally.
• 1:09:09
  And to me, that creates villains, right?
• 1:09:12
  Not the people working at all.
• 1:09:14
  To me, they need to be saved, right?
• 1:09:16
  And again, I do think that there is a fine line between saying, okay, we don't want people to be making so many clothes because they're just ending up in landfills with, okay, but the people that are getting jobs that are feeding their family as a result of that,
• 1:09:33
  100% Give them opportunities and give them jobs So I appreciate there's a lot of layers to the problem But I don't think that there's Like when you talk about big scale big boys I don't think there's a lot of innocence going on Top level No I don't disagree I think
• 1:09:50
  you know, the fundamental problem is with kind of shareholder capitalism, right?
• 1:09:57
  And the priorities that it gives to shareholders at the expense of other stakeholders in the business.
• 1:10:06
  I mean, the same can be said for food, right?
• 1:10:08
  Absolutely.
• 1:10:08
  You need people to keep consuming to make those profits.
• 1:10:11
  And so it's counterintuitive.
• 1:10:14
  I think it's, you know, it's the system that sets it up, that creates the...
• 1:10:20
  the thing that leads to terrible impacts and terrible effects.
• 1:10:28
  It's just to me, I think that what's needed is actually more
• 1:10:35
  good people working inside of it right i just i don't want it to be taken as like an excuse to kind of like abandon sure you know the industry and the system to kind of say like well it's totally corrupted and we can't change anything so just leave it 100 like you know when young people come to me and they say okay i care about sustainable fashion and i want to do something you know like to help support it like
• 1:10:59
  you know, should I create my own brand or should I do my own, you know, sustainable fashion label?
• 1:11:04
  I'm like, I think probably one of the best things you can do is get a job in like the larger industry.
• 1:11:10
  Yeah.
• 1:11:11
  So that you can learn about how it actually works and how these decisions actually get made.
• 1:11:15
  What you actually need is a seat at the table, you know, where decisions are being made.
• 1:11:20
  Change from within.
• 1:11:20
  A hundred percent.
• 1:11:21
  But what is the change that realistically...
• 1:11:24
  can be achieved where you're still realistic we had to be realistic i mean because ultimately business is about making money yeah in a very simplistic form i appreciate that for other people it's about change and but let's like big boy companies i think are trying to make money i think we are trying to create value i think we're trying to i mean we
• 1:11:49
  Not you.
• 1:11:50
  I mean the industry, right?
• 1:11:52
  On a high level.
• 1:11:53
  Really?
• 1:11:54
  Trying to increase the size of the industry.
• 1:11:59
  Whatever it is.
• 1:11:59
  $2 trillion, $3 trillion a year.
• 1:12:01
  Okay.
• 1:12:02
  You want to get to $5 trillion.
• 1:12:03
  Whatever it is, right?
• 1:12:04
  Money.
• 1:12:05
  Right.
• 1:12:05
  Numbers.
• 1:12:06
  Yes.
• 1:12:06
  I think we can...
• 1:12:08
  It's so funny.
• 1:12:09
  When you say value, I come from like a moral, ethical value, not the number.
• 1:12:15
  So it's really funny that my mind went completely different.
• 1:12:17
  But now that you explain.
• 1:12:19
  Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 1:12:19
  Because I was thinking like the value in education, like the things that you spoke on as point of values, not value in money.
• 1:12:25
  So now I'm on the same page.
• 1:12:26
  Interesting.
• 1:12:27
  That's so funny.
• 1:12:28
  But yes, value, bigger pie.
• 1:12:30
  You want to grow the pie.
• 1:12:31
  If we want to grow the pie, I mean, ultimately the math needs to work.
• 1:12:34
  So can we do, and I guess the unrealistic proposition we're trying to make is that can we do, can we increase the value of the pie on lower consumption, on lower units?
• 1:12:45
  Yes.
• 1:12:45
  Right?
• 1:12:46
  But that means that then the quality of the units needs to grow so that the value of each individual unit is bigger.
• 1:12:52
  Right.
• 1:12:52
  Right?
• 1:12:53
  Simple mathematics.
• 1:12:53
  But also price point.
• 1:12:54
  Exactly.
• 1:12:55
  So people need to pay more.
• 1:12:57
  Right.
• 1:12:57
  Right?
• 1:12:58
  Ultimately, what are the consumers that need to pay more?
• 1:13:01
  I think there's more sophisticated analysis that need to be done about different markets and segmentations and whatever.
• 1:13:07
  I don't think it's about the poor mother in Detroit needing to go shop at some exclusive design store for three pack of t-shirts that she can get for $10 at the mall.
• 1:13:23
  But there needs to be a space where you have better quality product.
• 1:13:27
  A hundred percent.
• 1:13:27
  The people who can afford to buy that product.
• 1:13:30
  A hundred percent.
• 1:13:31
  Buying that so that it lasts longer.
• 1:13:32
  A hundred percent.
• 1:13:33
  Yeah.
• 1:13:33
  Because you know what?
• 1:13:34
  Back in the day, I used to have like a pair of guest jeans back in the day.
• 1:13:38
  And those guest jeans, I grew out of them.
• 1:13:40
  So it looked like I was preparing for a flood.
• 1:13:43
  But the jeans themselves were intact.
• 1:13:45
  There was no normal jeans.
• 1:13:46
  I feel like if you looked at.
• 1:13:47
  We used to thrift.
• 1:13:48
  I mean, we would go to like...
• 1:13:49
  But I'd give it to my cousin.
• 1:13:50
  My cousin got to wear the jeans.
• 1:13:52
  Then when she grew to them, another cousin got the jeans.
• 1:13:55
  You could never do that, no?
• 1:13:56
  We, in the 90s when we thrifted, we got things from the 70s and the 80s and they were still great quality.
• 1:14:00
  And nowadays you go and it's all trash.
• 1:14:02
  But also people don't repair anything anymore.
• 1:14:04
  It's so funny.
• 1:14:05
  I was in Phuket.
• 1:14:06
  I get the luggage off of the carousel.
• 1:14:08
  Brand new suitcase, right?
• 1:14:09
  Bright green so it doesn't get confused amongst all the black.
• 1:14:12
  I'm like, great.
• 1:14:13
  When I take it off...
• 1:14:15
  Excuse moi, ma buzze.
• 1:14:19
  When I take it off the carousel, the wheel is broken.
• 1:14:23
  First trip with a suitcase and the wheel broke up.
• 1:14:25
  My immediate thought was, I need to go buy a suitcase, right?
• 1:14:28
  So I go to the mall and I'm like, yo, isn't Thailand supposed to be cheap?
• 1:14:31
  Why am I having to pay 130 pounds for a new suitcase?
• 1:14:37
  This don't make any sense.
• 1:14:38
  So then I'm like, okay, Googling to see if there's a particular luggage store.
• 1:14:42
  Aton.
• 1:14:43
  Les filles, pen, pen, pen.
• 1:14:51
  Can you take them to the kids' playroom for me, please?
• 1:14:56
  Thank you.
• 1:14:57
  Allez avec... S'il vous plaît, ma... Allez.
• 1:15:01
  No, no, the... Yeah.
• 1:15:19
  Where are we going?
• 1:15:21
  Can I have a cup?
• 1:15:25
  Just for 10 minutes.
• 1:15:36
  You know what's so crazy?
• 1:15:38
  I send this lady an exact time schedule of when we are filming to say don't come here when we are filming and somehow you still reach Yasser.
• 1:15:49
  What the fuck was I saying?
• 1:15:51
  You pair a suitcase?
• 1:15:53
  Thank you.
• 1:15:54
  So I Googled to find a luggage store near me to buy a suitcase.
• 1:15:58
  And it comes up on Google that there's a man who repairs suitcases.
• 1:16:02
  And so I'm like, what?
• 1:16:03
  It didn't even occur to me as a thought that that was a possibility.
• 1:16:06
  I then take my luggage to the guy.
• 1:16:08
  He repairs it for the equivalent of something like nine pounds.
• 1:16:11
  So I've gone from spending 120 pounds on a suitcase that I don't need and don't want to buy to he just repairs the zip and the wheel for nine pounds.
• 1:16:18
  And in that moment, I was like, why didn't I think to look for that though?
• 1:16:22
  I should have thought to look for a repair option, but it didn't occur to me.
• 1:16:26
  In the same way that I feel like with clothing, there's a hole in it.
• 1:16:29
  There's something immediately...
• 1:16:31
  Disposable.
• 1:16:32
  Yeah.
• 1:16:32
  I think, you know, the system has kind of conditioned us to believe that
• 1:16:38
  clothing can be made cheaply fast that it comes from nowhere and that it goes to nowhere yes right it's like you know people think that clothing comes from the mall yeah right and when you throw it away it just disappears into the trash can yes we know the reality is science
• 1:16:54
  The fibers that created the textiles that made the garment needed to be planted and sewn and all this water needed to be used.
• 1:17:01
  Yeah, there's no connection in the consumer's mind.
• 1:17:03
  No connection because it just disappeared magically, right?
• 1:17:05
  Yeah.
• 1:17:06
  And then when it threw it away, it just put it into the trash and you're right, no, it goes to...
• 1:17:11
  countries in the developing world that have to reckon with it in our oceans and in our landfills, right?
• 1:17:17
  So I think that that disconnect between the Western consumer, and this is predominantly, right, in America, the EU and Australia, these are the places where the consumption is happening at such a level that,
• 1:17:28
  You know, I don't blame consumers in Cambodia for shopping with it.
• 1:17:33
  They literally were just using up the rest of the waste from the rest of the world.
• 1:17:36
  Sure.
• 1:17:37
  Like what we're using here, right?
• 1:17:38
  So I think that that nuance is lost in the conversation around sustainability and like what are the choices that consumers need to make.
• 1:17:45
  It's not a one-size-fits-all thing.
• 1:17:47
  We're not all in the same boat, babes.
• 1:17:49
  Yeah.
• 1:17:49
  Yeah.
• 1:17:49
  we are in very different situations in very different contexts and we make the choices that we do based on our particular constraints, right?
• 1:17:57
  And I think that people in the developed world, in the first world need to be more mindful about that, right?
• 1:18:02
  And I feel like those things are really important in those areas.
• 1:18:06
  This is why you see regulation in the EU really gaining strength.
• 1:18:09
  Australian consumers have also been really kind of at the forefront of these things.
• 1:18:13
  Americans are just hopelessly, right?
• 1:18:16
  I mean, again, also, like, the economic conditions are different, right?
• 1:18:19
  The levels of social security and infrastructure in these different contexts are different, right?
• 1:18:25
  How is opening a business in or running?
• 1:18:28
  Because I appreciate you bought Dorsu.
• 1:18:30
  Yeah.
• 1:18:30
  But, like, what is that like?
• 1:18:32
  Yeah.
• 1:18:33
  It is the best personal development journey that anybody could go on.
• 1:18:38
  Unexpected.
• 1:18:39
  Did you always see yourself having a business, by the way?
• 1:18:42
  Absolutely not.
• 1:18:43
  Okay.
• 1:18:43
  I mean, I was, you know, I was going to be a dancer.
• 1:18:45
  Then I was going to work in media and film and, you know, kind of artistic pursuits.
• 1:18:50
  Right.
• 1:18:51
  And I think when I came to Cambodia, I was like...
• 1:18:55
  Everybody was like, business, business, business, right?
• 1:18:57
  And I was like, I get this.
• 1:18:58
  Like, I understand.
• 1:18:59
  Right.
• 1:19:00
  You know, you set goals and targets and then you set actions and plans to make this happen, right?
• 1:19:05
  I...
• 1:19:07
  Yeah, I didn't really, you know, growing up as a creative person in America, like you don't you're not pushed to be in business.
• 1:19:14
  Like it seems to be like two separate planets.
• 1:19:17
  OK. Like somebody who's a business person can't be somebody who's like a creative person.
• 1:19:21
  Right.
• 1:19:22
  Whereas I think here.
• 1:19:23
  Yeah, I think it's a bit more gray.
• 1:19:26
  It's a bit more gray.
• 1:19:27
  And yeah, I think if you're if you're if you're intelligent, like people will push you to take on things that you might not think that you're prepared for.
• 1:19:34
  Right.
• 1:19:35
  But, you know, I've always loved a challenge.
• 1:19:40
  Business is a challenge anywhere.
• 1:19:41
  But I can imagine coming from a system that you've grown accustomed to, then that just adds, like, another layer of madness.
• 1:19:49
  A hundred percent.
• 1:19:50
  I mean, I think also, like...
• 1:19:52
  The support for small business owners here is just a bit different.
• 1:19:57
  In America, interest rates are really low for loans.
• 1:20:02
  A lot of infrastructure to help support small business owners.
• 1:20:06
  It's more pro-entrepreneurial.
• 1:20:09
  Nobody bothers you.
• 1:20:11
  Your first million, like, just go, you know.
• 1:20:14
  Here, it's like, if you got into the regulatory regime of, you know, filing taxes and compliance and all those things, it's additional work that is not core business, but you have to kind of factor it in.
• 1:20:30
  And I didn't, you know, like, of the amount of admin, right, that's required, it's...
• 1:20:37
  Numbing.
• 1:20:38
  It's so funny because I feel like a lot of people would think the opposite, that it wouldn't require as much.
• 1:20:43
  I mean, I think.
• 1:20:46
  I think part of the challenge of a post-conflict nation is that the level of human resources just isn't at that same place.
• 1:20:56
  I think there's a lot of trust put into accountants and administrative people, and there's a layer of ethical understanding about how to behave in business.
• 1:21:07
  Right.
• 1:21:08
  You know, we've seen lots of those challenges and, you know, kind of policies put into place to protect against that.
• 1:21:16
  Right.
• 1:21:17
  Whereas in a place that is developing context, it's still developing.
• 1:21:20
  Right.
• 1:21:21
  Right.
• 1:21:21
  Right.
• 1:21:23
  Don't forget also, like the Khmer Rouge kind of wiped out a whole generation of people that we would look to be like the middle managers.
• 1:21:30
  Yes.
• 1:21:30
  I read that if you were seemed or perceived to have too much knowledge, then you were executed.
• 1:21:37
  I mean, it was very much an anti.
• 1:21:39
  It was crazy.
• 1:21:40
  Paradoxically, it was an intellectual movement that was very anti-intellectual.
• 1:21:44
  You know, people that wore glasses were targeted.
• 1:21:46
  I saw that.
• 1:21:47
  If you spoke more than one language.
• 1:21:49
  Yeah.
• 1:21:50
  then that made you a target.
• 1:21:51
  Yeah, it was a marker of being international.
• 1:21:53
  It was a marker of being impure, right?
• 1:21:56
  And you see these things happening in authoritarian, totalitarian kind of environments.
• 1:22:01
  Like, you know, the country was, the whole idea was to bring it to year zero, right?
• 1:22:08
  And this idea that you could erase what happened before in the past.
• 1:22:12
  And I think that that's a really dangerous, you know, kind of way of thinking, you know?
• 1:22:17
  Were there particular work culture surprises?
• 1:22:20
  So from my perspective, when I went to open a restaurant in England, I mean, exalt the fact that I'd never worked in a restaurant in my life.
• 1:22:28
  But from a staff perspective, my dad had employed like 100 people.
• 1:22:33
  There were people that worked for him before I was born.
• 1:22:35
  I'm not exaggerating.
• 1:22:36
  And every Friday, my dad would order crates of oranges.
• 1:22:40
  He loves oranges.
• 1:22:41
  And I guess he believes that everybody should love them.
• 1:22:43
  They're great.
• 1:22:45
  He would order them and just sit and peel.
• 1:22:47
  So like in the foyer area of the office, sit and peel.
• 1:22:50
  And whoever wanted oranges could come and get oranges.
• 1:22:53
  And obviously that is his like olive branch of saying, yes, I'm CEO, but nobody cares because I'll peel you some oranges, right?
• 1:23:00
  And the point is I grew up in that environment where people stayed with us.
• 1:23:03
  Like they still are there.
• 1:23:05
  You know, I took my kids back home a couple months ago and they are like, oh my gosh, I raised you and now I'm looking after your children so that you can go do a podcast.
• 1:23:13
  And there's so much pride in that.
• 1:23:15
  And I love that culture.
• 1:23:16
  And the point is, I thought that if you treated people well and you created this family environment, that they were gonna stay with you.
• 1:23:25
  Then I get to England.
• 1:23:26
  Babes, that's not a culture.
• 1:23:28
  Nobody cares if you treat them well.
• 1:23:30
  Again, bring on the extra layer of hospitality.
• 1:23:33
  So I was like, oh, at first, when I had turnover of staff, I took it really personally.
• 1:23:39
  I was like,
• 1:23:40
  But I'm nice.
• 1:23:41
  I'm respectful.
• 1:23:42
  Yes, I want things on a particular way.
• 1:23:44
  But why are you leaving me?
• 1:23:45
  Only then to kind of speak to other business owners and appreciate the culture of it all.
• 1:23:50
  And I'm just wondering, did you have any moments where you were like, oh, I didn't know that this was the work culture?
• 1:23:57
  Because, again, it's very different to come here and live and be in a structure versus to come here and live.
• 1:24:03
  And now you are creating that structure.
• 1:24:06
  Yeah.
• 1:24:06
  I mean, I think I didn't...
• 1:24:10
  I didn't appreciate how much was needed to kind of build that sense of family in a company.
• 1:24:17
  And I think coming from America, we always kind of separated like, okay, the family from the business.
• 1:24:22
  Right.
• 1:24:22
  Whereas I think in some Asian countries, it's like everything is a family business.
• 1:24:27
  Yes.
• 1:24:28
  And there's reasons for that, right?
• 1:24:30
  Having to do with trust, having to do with accountability, having to do with continuity.
• 1:24:34
  Yeah.
• 1:24:36
  You know, you don't necessarily have law.
• 1:24:38
  I mean, like you find out that fraud has happened in your company.
• 1:24:41
  Your instinct is not to get the authorities involved.
• 1:24:44
  Right.
• 1:24:45
  It's probably not the wisest thing.
• 1:24:47
  Right.
• 1:24:49
  I think that, you know, it's yeah, it's it's.
• 1:24:52
  trying to find what is that balance between being humane about things, but then also wanting to instate some kind of regulatory boundaries around things as well.
• 1:25:06
  Like, you're a professional.
• 1:25:07
  I should be able to professionally count on you to do this thing or that thing.
• 1:25:12
  I think the biggest learning for me as a business owner is that at the end of the day, people are still humans, right?
• 1:25:17
  And as humans means that they...
• 1:25:19
  are subject to their own circumstances in life, right?
• 1:25:23
  And you need to be mindful of all those parts of them in order to fully engage and to minimize your risk as a business owner, too.
• 1:25:30
  Because if you just make assumptions that, oh, this person has this role, so they'll be able to do this, right?
• 1:25:35
  It's like trust but verify.
• 1:25:36
  Yeah.
• 1:25:39
  You know, I and again, it's like it's a company is an organization in order to be healthy.
• 1:25:46
  And every organization is an organism.
• 1:25:48
  It wants to be healthy.
• 1:25:50
  It wants to thrive.
• 1:25:51
  It wants to have a future.
• 1:25:52
  Right.
• 1:25:52
  And in order to do that, you need to understand kind of the different parts of it and how it works together to make something that wants to keep going.
• 1:26:01
  Right.
• 1:26:01
  To have that kind of productive, generative.
• 1:26:05
  kind of ability.
• 1:26:06
  To me, it sounds crazy, but that's the value creation that we do as a business.
• 1:26:12
  And that a successful business or a worthy business is one that is creating that value.
• 1:26:18
  Yes, in monetary terms, because that is the lifeblood without which you will not survive financially unsustainable.
• 1:26:25
  but also generating value of other forms, right?
• 1:26:29
  Whether it's emotional, whether it's inspirational, whether it's cultural, whether it's, you know, so many different ways that I think, I don't think that our current time has adequately come up with language or systems for how to talk about the different kinds of value and capital that there is, right?
• 1:26:46
  Beyond financial capital, you have social capital, you have relational capital, you have emotional capital, you have cultural capital.
• 1:26:54
  we're all creating these different forms, you know?
• 1:26:56
  But unfortunately, we only tend to quantify it in one particular way.
• 1:27:00
  You know, that's to me like when people ask me, what does being an impact entrepreneur mean?
• 1:27:04
  You know, it's like, well, it's having impact across these different ways.
• 1:27:07
  That's not just money.
• 1:27:09
  I can measure you.
• 1:27:10
  We have the spreadsheets and the systems for accounting in that way.
• 1:27:16
  But how do we account for, you know, the lives of people?
• 1:27:21
  Our impact in the community, you know, yes, it's decent salaries for 20 people, but those 20 people become the breadwinners for their families, right?
• 1:27:31
  Affording education for the children in their homes to be able to have a future and to think about, you know, how they can contribute to their communities and how to strengthen these communities.
• 1:27:42
  So for me, I don't have the answers.
• 1:27:45
  I don't know.
• 1:27:45
  We all try to do the best that we can every day, and every day of being a business owner, it's like,
• 1:27:51
  Such a challenge, right?
• 1:27:52
  Like I was saying before, like Monday through Friday, it's just dealing with like fire after fire.
• 1:27:57
  Sure.
• 1:27:58
  On the weekends when I, my mind can kind of relax a little bit is when I get my creative ideas and can kind of like shut everything else out, you know?
• 1:28:06
  But, you know, I think...
• 1:28:09
  remembering that you're part of a team and that you work together with everybody else.
• 1:28:13
  I think that in some Asian cultures, especially in Cambodia, there's a tendency to default to hierarchy and to look at the boss or the manager or the leader is the one that has the decision-making power.
• 1:28:27
  But what we try to do is be a bit more collective and collaborative.
• 1:28:31
  I don't have the answers to how we should operate our retail or what production line improvements need to be made.
• 1:28:39
  You guys are there every day.
• 1:28:41
  You're looking at what's happening.
• 1:28:44
  you know, analyzing that information and that data and coming up with the insights and then coming up with actions that we can do.
• 1:28:50
  All I can do is kind of be a coach.
• 1:28:52
  Right.
• 1:28:52
  Give guidance.
• 1:28:53
  Right.
• 1:28:54
  To say like, you know, it's kind of like growing up with sports, you know, in America, like sports culture is very dominant.
• 1:29:00
  And, you know, to me, business is like a sport.
• 1:29:03
  Right.
• 1:29:03
  You play a game.
• 1:29:05
  There's a there's this number that you've scored.
• 1:29:07
  Right.
• 1:29:07
  Here's your opponent's number.
• 1:29:09
  It's your revenue and expenses.
• 1:29:10
  This number needs to be higher than this number.
• 1:29:13
  It's a very clear thing.
• 1:29:14
  It's funny.
• 1:29:14
  I used to always say for my guys in service that Friday and Saturday is game day.
• 1:29:21
  But what we do on those training days, so on your slower days in a restaurant, is going to define how you show up on game day.
• 1:29:29
  Are you prepared to, you know, when the traffic comes and when the customers are there?
• 1:29:33
  So to me, it's getting the team to understand that business is not rocket science.
• 1:29:37
  Literally, this number needs to be bigger than this number.
• 1:29:40
  But every day, did you win or did you lose?
• 1:29:42
  Right.
• 1:29:42
  And we can be honest about that.
• 1:29:43
  Okay, today we didn't make more than we, you know.
• 1:29:48
  than we spent or whatever it is.
• 1:29:50
  But at the end of the day, you know, as a coach, all I can do, I'm not playing the game.
• 1:29:54
  I'm not on the field, you know.
• 1:29:56
  I can see you need to run a bit faster, otherwise that person's going to block your, you know, your next attempt.
• 1:30:02
  Right.
• 1:30:03
  I've seen it before.
• 1:30:04
  Like, please, trust me, right?
• 1:30:07
  You, off the field, you know, you didn't get enough sleep last night.
• 1:30:11
  Sure.
• 1:30:11
  Where is your head?
• 1:30:12
  Yeah.
• 1:30:12
  Why did you make that decision, you know?
• 1:30:14
  But in a way that they feel like is encouraging and motivating rather than criticize.
• 1:30:20
  Like, again, going back to something in Cambodian culture where it's like, oh, don't talk back or don't, you know, criticize.
• 1:30:26
  Right.
• 1:30:26
  There's this very kind of anti-criticism, you know?
• 1:30:31
  But I'm actually trying to show that, like, actually, criticism and feedback is a form of love.
• 1:30:36
  Yes.
• 1:30:37
  Right?
• 1:30:37
  I would not open my mouth.
• 1:30:39
  I would not give it the time of day if I didn't actually care.
• 1:30:42
  100%.
• 1:30:43
  I tell people all the time, get scared when I stop talking.
• 1:30:45
  And that's what I'm like.
• 1:30:47
  That's the mindset shift that I would love to kind of help be a part of.
• 1:30:54
  It's to get people to realize that, like, when people actually care and they give feedback, you should thank them.
• 1:31:00
  Yeah.
• 1:31:01
  Like, that's somebody loving and caring about what happens next.
• 1:31:05
  Yeah.
• 1:31:05
  So I think that mentality is a bit different than, like, your traditional company and corporate structures here.
• 1:31:11
  But, yeah, it's a vibe shift.
• 1:31:13
  And we're trying to be a part of that because we have that kind of, you know, one step in, one step out.
• 1:31:19
  you know, kind of dynamic to be able to kind of be like an insider.
• 1:31:24
  With a broader perspective.
• 1:31:26
  Yeah, you know, so it's also like, yeah, showing people that it's okay to make mistakes, right?
• 1:31:31
  It's not the end of the world.
• 1:31:32
  Yes, you really messed up.
• 1:31:36
  But to be honest about it in a business context, understand mistakes happen.
• 1:31:43
  These legendary situations where you lose tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars, do they become the most valuable lessons?
• 1:31:52
  you'll ever have?
• 1:31:54
  Or do they become your fatal, the fatal blow?
• 1:31:57
  And I think we're constantly always kind of trying to turn it into something that, it's a lesson, right?
• 1:32:04
  It's a learning.
• 1:32:05
  Try to tell the team, we stopped losing a long time ago.
• 1:32:08
  You either win,
• 1:32:10
  but we learn.
• 1:32:12
  I think that's that educator in me, that kind of, OK, this is all a learning experience.
• 1:32:18
  This is our organization.
• 1:32:20
  I want it to be a learning organization.
• 1:32:23
  That will equip us for whatever comes our way.
• 1:32:27
  We don't know where this industry is going.
• 1:32:29
  Today, we sustainability and the darling of this and that.
• 1:32:34
  Wonderful.
• 1:32:35
  Do you think sustainability has become a little bit of a buzzword that people are tacking on?
• 1:32:39
  A little bit.
• 1:32:43
  I think it's definitely a buzzword, you know, and I think that, no, I think that at its core, it's absolutely vital.
• 1:32:50
  Right.
• 1:32:50
  It's almost, I think just the word itself has become so overused that it's almost been kind of...
• 1:32:57
  almost devoid of meaning.
• 1:32:59
  Yes.
• 1:33:00
  Because, yeah, I mean, it gets invoked as a marketing term, which I don't love, like as a category of product, like as though this part is sustainable, but that part's not like it's the same company.
• 1:33:13
  Right.
• 1:33:14
  You know, I think that's always a weird bit of cognitive dissonance for customers also.
• 1:33:18
  Sure.
• 1:33:19
  So you're saying this rack is sustainable.
• 1:33:21
  But no, no, babes.
• 1:33:25
  That's not how it works.
• 1:33:26
  Right.
• 1:33:26
  I think that it's actually, it should be something, it's a philosophy, it's an approach, it's a way of looking at things, you know, focusing on repairs and recycling and other practices that go into it.
• 1:33:37
  It's not just like, again, it's not a silver bullet.
• 1:33:40
  Right.
• 1:33:40
  Right.
• 1:33:40
  Right.
• 1:33:41
  It's a it's a it's a relationship that we have with our clothes that says these are valuable things.
• 1:33:47
  These are quality things that I want to take care of, that I want to last, you know, that I want to make last.
• 1:33:53
  I think that that's, you know, yeah, it's that.
• 1:33:54
  What is it like planned obsolescence?
• 1:33:56
  Yes.
• 1:33:57
  Is that, you know.
• 1:34:00
  the way that products are developed now, I think we need to go back to something that says, let's honor the earth, let's honor the resources, where this comes from.
• 1:34:07
  If we're gonna make it, let's make it well.
• 1:34:09
  Yep.
• 1:34:09
  Right, I'm not saying like, we shouldn't use plastic, or there's a reason that plastics develop,
• 1:34:15
  durability right you want a garment that lasts a long time you're probably going to have some plastic in it right i don't think that we can be purists about these things right i think we need to consult scientists i think we need to study materials i think we need to look at the physics of things and understand it's not just a choice between like the good or the bad thing it's understanding what's the purpose of it
• 1:34:38
  But that said, I think too many people nowadays, instead of going into solving these problems, which I think could be solved...
• 1:34:46
  They go into finance.
• 1:34:47
  Right.
• 1:34:48
  Right.
• 1:34:48
  Private equity, venture capital.
• 1:34:50
  Right.
• 1:34:50
  Like this is what all our best minds are going into.
• 1:34:54
  Right.
• 1:34:54
  Following the money, baby.
• 1:34:55
  Follow the money.
• 1:34:58
  They think it's my, but again, easy come, easy go.
• 1:35:00
  Right.
• 1:35:00
  Right.
• 1:35:00
  I'm like, if I learned anything in life, it's like, if it comes, if it's the easier it comes, the easier it goes.
• 1:35:05
  Right.
• 1:35:05
  I'm like, I actually don't want the money that's easy.
• 1:35:07
  I want the money I have to work for.
• 1:35:09
  So it stays.
• 1:35:10
  So it stays and I don't get too attached to it.
• 1:35:12
  Right.
• 1:35:13
  Right.
• 1:35:13
  You know?
• 1:35:14
  And I'm like, at the end of the day, like... You're giving me hope.
• 1:35:16
  I'm like, damn, I'm out here working, so the money better come and it better steal.
• 1:35:19
  And it will.
• 1:35:20
  I mean, at the end of your life, you're not going to be like, oh, great, I have this pile of money.
• 1:35:24
  Yes, for your daughters and for the next generations.
• 1:35:26
  Yes, you need a bit of that.
• 1:35:28
  But ultimately, it's about what the money is for.
• 1:35:31
  Sure.
• 1:35:31
  Right?
• 1:35:31
  What's the purpose of having all of this money, right?
• 1:35:34
  I think stockpiling cash is... What is it going to do?
• 1:35:37
  You're going to take that to heaven with you?
• 1:35:39
  I don't think God's going to be very impressed.
• 1:35:40
  Yeah.
• 1:35:42
  She won't be very impressed at all.
• 1:35:45
  Is Cambodia home?
• 1:35:47
  A hundred percent.
• 1:35:48
  Yeah.
• 1:35:49
  Yeah.
• 1:35:49
  I mean, you know, it's home.
• 1:35:51
  Yeah.
• 1:35:52
  It's I've really struggled with that question throughout my life.
• 1:35:55
  But now I feel like I'm in a place where, yes, Cambodia is definitely home.
• 1:35:59
  And what makes it home?
• 1:36:00
  I mean, my partner, wherever he is.
• 1:36:03
  Did you meet here?
• 1:36:04
  She's the answer.
• 1:36:04
  Yes, we met here.
• 1:36:05
  Okay.
• 1:36:10
  He's only the most beautiful man in Cambodia.
• 1:36:15
  No, around the world.
• 1:36:15
  I don't know if you'll be mad about that.
• 1:36:18
  Babes, Globos.
• 1:36:21
  Globos.
• 1:36:24
  Yeah, home.
• 1:36:29
  Yeah, I think like a lot of people who've lived in many places and been privileged to, you know,
• 1:36:38
  been privileged to feel comfortable and belong in places.
• 1:36:45
  I think definitely Cambodia is a place now that I feel like I belong in, but more so probably because of the struggle to get there.
• 1:36:55
  I think when you kind of take something for granted, again, easy come, easy go, right?
• 1:37:02
  It's kind of the fight and the grit to,
• 1:37:09
  reaffirm that it is a part of you and that you've helped to create it, what this world is.
• 1:37:17
  Right.
• 1:37:19
  I wake up every day kind of amazed, awestruck by the fact that all of this happens around me and I somehow, you know,
• 1:37:27
  help bring it into existence.
• 1:37:29
  You know, when I walk into the workshop or our retail store, and these things happen without me, right?
• 1:37:34
  It's like when you're a business owner and you're like, your team just does it.
• 1:37:36
  Yes.
• 1:37:37
  You'll be sound asleep and then all these things are happening around you.
• 1:37:40
  And I really believe that, you know, that's why it's important.
• 1:37:43
  All of our actions, all of our thoughts, what we put out into the world, everything is energy, right?
• 1:37:48
  Yeah.
• 1:37:48
  So you put the right energy out there, it will produce and it will create energy.
• 1:37:54
  Without you needing to kind of always be standing there.
• 1:37:57
  Sure.
• 1:37:59
  Is there anything that we haven't spoken about that you would have wanted to touch on?
• 1:38:02
  Gosh, not really.
• 1:38:05
  No, nothing that I can think of.
• 1:38:08
  My last question is if your life was a postcard, what would the picture be?
• 1:38:16
  Oh, that's interesting.
• 1:38:26
  So hard.
• 1:38:27
  Huh.
• 1:38:30
  If my life was a postcard, it would be a blank postcard.
• 1:38:34
  It would be blank.
• 1:38:35
  Yeah.
• 1:38:36
  Fill in your own.
• 1:38:37
  I love that.
• 1:38:38
  Very cool.
• 1:38:39
  Yeah, you get to decide.
• 1:38:40
  Yeah.
• 1:38:41
  Thank you so much.
• 1:38:42
  Thank you, April.
• 1:38:43
  It's a pleasure.