> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://nerdontour.net/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Ryan Li — Self-Taught Polyglot and Privacy-First Nomad in Asia - URL: https://nerdontour.net/ryan-li-self-taught-polyglot-and-privacy-first-nomad-in-asia/ - Published: 2026-08-11T12:00:27.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-19T02:33:31.000Z - Description: At nineteen, Ryan sold his car and flew to Japan with no plan. Twenty years and a dozen countries later, he speaks several Asian languages and runs his companies from Qubes OS. We talked identity, visas, and the bank account he closed on day one. - Author: Piotrek Bodera - Tags: #project, podcast, #toc ## Who is Ryan Li? Ryan Li is a Texan who has spent the last twenty years in Asia. His friends call him an egg: white on the outside, yellow on the inside. He got there without a plan. At nineteen, he sold his car, gave up his apartment, and flew to Japan for three months. Two weeks before his flight home, he answered a newspaper ad, landed a job at a small conversation school in Gunma, and never moved back. Since then, he has lived in a dozen countries and taught himself Japanese, Mandarin, and Khmer, mostly through karaoke lyrics, notepads, and stubbornness. He builds things for a living. In 2010, he co-founded a creative agency in the US with a friend from his anime store days. Grew it to thirty people. He also opened a second company in the Philippines to support it. Along the way, he has run VR startups in Taiwan, a Web3 company, and a small mining farm in Singapore. Now Ryan's building an AI startup. Additionally, he's serious about privacy. GrapheneOS on the phone, Qubes OS on the laptop, and a habit of taking malware apart. Just to see how it works. ## Ryan Li and his projects - [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanli0x/?ref=nerdontour.net) — the only social network Ryan consistently uses. - [X (Twitter)](https://x.com/ryanli0x?ref=nerdontour.net) — account created for the Solvegent project. - [EggBanana](https://eggbanana.com/?ref=nerdontour.net) — Ryan's podcast with Marc and Edward, one "egg" and two "bananas". Talking about life in Taiwan, Japan, Singapore and beyond. - [Going Borderless](https://goingborderless.com/?ref=nerdontour.net) — Ryan's newer podcast series on being born in one place and choosing to live in another. Side project, not a business. - [Ilfusion](https://www.ilfusion.com/?ref=nerdontour.net) — Texas-based digital marketing agency co-founded by Ryan run since 2010 - [Solvegent](https://sovegent.com/?ref=nerdontour.net) — Ryan's current AI project focused on securing agents on the Internet. [Sovegent Nomad — Your agent, protected on a hostile web.Sovegent Nomad — security, privacy, and sovereignty for AI agents. Your agent. Your keys. Your rules.![](https://static.ghost.org/v5.0.0/images/link-icon.svg)Sovegent![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/16/3e/163e6ae2-f4f9-4a47-9fd9-81c2af8159f2/content/images/thumbnail/og-image-6957077d-f3be-405c-ae72-13d8a2945f16.png)](https://sovegent.com/?ref=nerdontour.net) ## Identity and culture - [Egg and banana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List%5Fof%5Fethnic%5Fslurs?ref=nerdontour.net) — an egg is white outside, yellow inside. A banana is the reverse. Ryan and his co-hosts wear these labels on purpose. - [Anime](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anime?ref=nerdontour.net) — Ryan's entry point was the art and design, not the fandom. Japan was also my first pop culture window from Poland, and my first trip outside Europe. - [Japanese domestic market cars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese%5Fdomestic%5Fmarket?ref=nerdontour.net) — the shared obsession that kept Ryan connected to his Texas friends across an ocean. - [Subaru](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru?ref=nerdontour.net) — the specific brand behind those junkyard phone calls from Japan to Texas. - [Eikaiwa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eikaiwa%5Fschool?ref=nerdontour.net) — Japanese conversation schools. His first position in Japan was with a petite school that had three educators. ## Sign up for Nerd on Tour Nomading since 2005\. I help colivings & travel tech brands reach digital nomads like me. Subscribe Email sent! Check your inbox to complete your signup. No spam. Unsubscribe anytime. ## Languages and learning - [Hiragana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiragana?ref=nerdontour.net) — the first script Ryan learned from a book handed to him in an anime store in Texas. - [Katakana](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katakana?ref=nerdontour.net) — also the source of the pronunciation problems his students had. Table becomes *teburu*. - [Kanji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji?ref=nerdontour.net) — Ryan studied 300 characters from a book called Kanji Power, writing them daily. - [On'yomi and kun'yomi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanji?ref=nerdontour.net#Readings) — the dual readings of Japanese kanji. Learning Mandarin partly overwrote them for Ryan. - [Traditional Chinese characters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional%5FChinese%5Fcharacters?ref=nerdontour.net) — Ryan's preference. He argues simplified loses meaning and pronunciation clues. - [Simplified Chinese characters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simplified%5FChinese%5Fcharacters?ref=nerdontour.net) — he learned traditional, switched to simplified, then went back. - [Bopomofo (Zhuyin Fuhao)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bopomofo?ref=nerdontour.net) — Taiwan's phonetic system. The reason Mandarin was harder for him there. - [Pinyin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinyin?ref=nerdontour.net) — the romanization he expected in Taiwan and did not get. - [Khmer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer%5Flanguage?ref=nerdontour.net) — Ryan's most recent language, picked up in Cambodia. - [Karaoke box, KTV, noraebang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karaoke%5Fbox?ref=nerdontour.net) — how Ryan actually learned to read Mandarin. Song lyrics on a screen. - [Pimsleur method](https://www.pimsleur.com/?ref=nerdontour.net) — I brought this up because Ryan's school independently built the same thing. Repeated native audio until the sounds stick. ## Places - [Gunma Prefecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunma%5FPrefecture?ref=nerdontour.net) — where Ryan was staying when he found three job ads in a newspaper. - [Narita International Airport](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narita%5FInternational%5FAirport?ref=nerdontour.net) — he cancelled two interviews and bet everything on the one closest to his flight home. - [Kansai region](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kansai%5Fregion?ref=nerdontour.net) — part of his first three-month trip, along with Kyoto. - [Taiwan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan?ref=nerdontour.net) — four months on the first attempt, then back to Japan. He returned later for a VR startup. - [Singapore](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singapore?ref=nerdontour.net) — Web3 startup and a small ASIC mining farm. - [Philippines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippines?ref=nerdontour.net) — the internet cafe and design shop that taught him what an unsustainable business looks like. - [Kuala Lumpur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuala%5FLumpur?ref=nerdontour.net) — where we first hung out and where I noticed we have many common interests. - [Pantip Plaza](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantip%5FPlaza?ref=nerdontour.net) — most likely the Bangkok IT mall Ryan describes, now closed, where he bought the CDs that started his security curiosity. ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/16/3e/163e6ae2-f4f9-4a47-9fd9-81c2af8159f2/content/images/2026/08/Gunma-prefecture-Japan.jpg) Gunma Prefecture in Japan, where Ryan Li used to live ## Money, visas, and banking - [Tax residence and the 183-day rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax%5Fresidence?ref=nerdontour.net) — the threshold that shapes how long countries let you stay before things get complicated. - [Foreign Earned Income Exclusion](https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/foreign-earned-income-exclusion?ref=nerdontour.net) — why US citizens file forever but often owe nothing. Ryan puts the current ceiling around 120,000 dollars. - [Revolut](https://www.revolut.com/?ref=nerdontour.net) — one of the two apps Ryan credits with ending the local-bank-account-per-country era. - [Wise](https://wise.com/?ref=nerdontour.net) — the other one. Both come up constantly in our circles. - [Mizuho Bank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mizuho%5FBank?ref=nerdontour.net) — his first bank account in Japan - [Bank of America](https://www.bankofamerica.com/?ref=nerdontour.net) — closed out of spite in year one. After the Tokyo branch he had researched turned out to be gone. - [Traveler's cheques](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveller%27s%5Fcheque?ref=nerdontour.net) — how he actually moved money around Asia before neobanks existed. - [401(k)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/401%28k%29?ref=nerdontour.net) — still running through his US company payroll, alongside a maintained US address for credit score reasons. ## Technology and security - [Google Glass](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google%5FGlass?ref=nerdontour.net) — Ryan owned three pairs and wore them full time. He is an early adopter. - [GrapheneOS](https://grapheneos.org/?ref=nerdontour.net) — his degoogled Android operating system. - [Qubes OS](https://www.qubes-os.org/?ref=nerdontour.net) — the security-focused Linux distro on his work laptop. - [Tails](https://tails.net/?ref=nerdontour.net) — the run-from-a-flash-drive OS he also experimented with. - [Signal](https://signal.org/?ref=nerdontour.net) — where our group chats live, with disappearing messages on. - [ASIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Application-specific%5Fintegrated%5Fcircuit?ref=nerdontour.net) — the mining hardware behind his Singapore farm, back when mining still paid. - [Web3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web3?ref=nerdontour.net) — Ryan's draw was sovereignty over your own money, not speculation. It grew directly out of his banking frustrations. - [Social engineering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social%5Fengineering%5F%28security%29?ref=nerdontour.net) — attackers cloned his employees' Telegram profiles to target him as a Web3 founder. - [GoDaddy](https://www.godaddy.com/?ref=nerdontour.net) — the domain registrar he used as a reseller behind his first failed business. - [Anthropic](https://www.anthropic.com/?ref=nerdontour.net) and [OpenAI](https://openai.com/?ref=nerdontour.net) — the APIs he combines with local LLMs. He briefs his AI at night and reviews the work in the morning. - [Animal Crossing: New Horizons](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal%5FCrossing:%5FNew%5FHorizons?ref=nerdontour.net) — I mentioned this as the other pandemic recording studio. People conducted full interviews inside the game while Ryan and his co-hosts moved to VR. ## Health, work, and mindset - [Vegetarianism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vegetarianism?ref=nerdontour.net) — Ryan went meat free at sixteen, after losing his mother to a sudden heart attack. - [Burnout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupational%5Fburnout?ref=nerdontour.net) — his defense is diversification. Several projects are running at once, so he can pause one and pick up another. - [Serial entrepreneur](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial%5Fentrepreneur?ref=nerdontour.net) — the label he has been given. He says he never set out to be a boss; it just happened over the years. ## BONUS: Ryan’s favorite travel YouTubers - Drew Binsky: [https://youtube.com/@drewbinsky](https://youtube.com/@drewbinsky?ref=nerdontour.net) - Travel with Chris: [https://youtube.com/@travelwithchris](https://youtube.com/@travelwithchris?ref=nerdontour.net) - Sabbatical Tommy: [https://youtube.com/@sabbaticaltommy](https://youtube.com/@sabbaticaltommy?ref=nerdontour.net) ## Timestamps / Chapters 00:00 Create Your Own Opportunity 00:27 Show Intro and Guest Introduction 02:48 Exploring Identity: The Egg Concept 05:10 Learning Japanese, Chinese, and Other Languages 09:38 Cultural Connections: Bridging East and West 11:59 First Steps in Japan: A Journey Begins 16:24 Teaching English and Building Learning Materials 22:33 The Quest for the Perfect Place: Moving Through Asia 29:40 Navigating Bureaucracy in Asia 34:25 Visas, Tax Residency, and Banking Abroad 40:15 The Accidental Entrepreneur 46:18 Exploring New Technologies 48:02 Egg Banana: Podcasting in VR 50:48 The Rise of Remote Work and Creativity 51:57 Minimalist Tech Stack and Daily Devices 54:04 The Fascination with Technology and Security 58:27 The Importance of Personal Privacy and Control 59:57 Going Borderless: Exploring New Horizons 01:01:25 The Ideal Listener: Learning from Experiences 01:02:25 Overcoming Societal Norms and Pursuing Dreams 01:08:37 Self-Care and Combating Burnout 01:10:40 Vegetarianism and a Life-Changing Loss 01:15:46 Diversifying Projects to Prevent Burnout 01:18:55 The Future of Technology and Personal Data 01:21:06 Where to Follow Ryan Online 01:22:13 Closing and Podcast Outro ## Quotes > I tend to not stay anywhere for more than a year at a time. I can't say that I would necessarily recommend that to people. I think it would be better if you could stay somewhere longer.” > — Ryan Li > “It was mostly through trial and error, because I think I was in Asia for ten years before I started really fully understanding visas and all this stuff.” > — Ryan Li > “Why do you need to look for a job? Why don't you create a job?” > — Ryan Li > “You don't have to be somebody of importance to care about your own security. It's not about whether you have something to hide or not. It's just our right to our own data.” > — Ryan Li > “The key to preventing burnout is to have more than one project that you're working on.” > — Ryan Li ## Transcript of the conversation with Ryan Li #### Read the full transcript Ryan Li (00:00) One of the things that I hear most commonly is people are unhappy with their job. And I always think like, Well, if you're unhappy with your job, why don't you do something about it? People are always like, Well, do you know anybody hiring? I'm like, Why do you need to look for a job? Why don't you create a job? Mm-hmm. You know? But then people are like, Well, I don't have any money. I'm like, Well, I don't either. Piotrek Bodera (00:27) All episodes of this podcast are available for free, and to listen more, I encourage you to subscribe on your preferred podcast app. NerdonTour.net is a specialized blog designed for digital nomads, combining the best bits of the internet, long-term traveling, and decentralization. Support the show by using Nerd on Tour services and recommendations at nerdontour.net And now, let's start the show. I met Ryan on some random nomad meetup in Kuala Lumpur in twenty twenty four. It was very intriguing because he's one of those people where we quickly jump into geopolitics and gaining citizenship, tax residency, all of those digital nomad topics that you have to know something about them to really have a meaningful conversation. Ryan moved around Asia. And he knew from his own experience how hard it can be. So over next meetings I was able to learn more about his vast experience around Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Cambodia, so many different places around Asia. And most importantly, I am still amazed how proficient he is with those languages. The languages that are spoken in Japan and China and also now learning Khmer, the language in Cambodia. So he is a real deal in that regard. The other important thing is that he is always on the bleeding edge of technology. Previously he worked in virtual reality, in blockchain, and now of course he is into artificial intelligence. His long-term digital marketing agency is called Ilfusion in Texas. And his newest AI startup is called Sovagent, like Sovereign and Agent. The links to all of this are in the description of this show. And now enjoy. Hi Ryan, welcome to Nerd on Tour Podcast. Ryan Li (02:46) Hi Piotrek Thanks for having me. Piotrek Bodera (02:48) So I would like to start from the concept of your identity because I find it really intriguing that you come from Texas, as far as I know, and you spent so much time in Asia that yourself and your friends regard you as an egg. So you could tell us more, what is it and why would you use this kind of identity? Ryan Li (03:14) Yeah, sure. so I guess for those of you who don't know what an egg is, it would be someone who is white on the outside but yellow on the inside, meaning someone who's more Asian at heart, I guess. So even though I was born in the US in Texas, like you said, at least I guess around the age of fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I started getting more into Asian culture and Asian languages. and things like that. And especially back then in the early two thousands, Japan in particular was still like a tech leader in mm in a lot of areas, phones and laptops and stuff. And I love, you know, gadgets and things like that. So multiple things brought me really to Asia, to liking Asia, to liking the languages and Japanese, Chinese and stuff like that. So I I I really came to like Asian culture and Asian Piotrek Bodera (04:07) Thanks. Yeah. This is also true to me. Japan was this first popular culture that was very present in Poland when I was growing up and I really wanted to see it. Yeah. So Japan was my very first destination outside of Europe and introduction to Asian cultures. But focusing on your experience, most people just watch anime and read manga. And they are completely fine being in the small bubble of those amazing, you know, superheroes and other fantastic stories that Japanese are producing. How come you were a bit more? Yeah, you are focused so much on learning and getting to know the Asian cultures much more that you learned Japanese, Chinese, recently the Khmer language from Cambodia. How come? You are so into it that you can learn those foreign languages. Ryan Li (05:10) I guess anime had a little bit influence on me as well. Not quite as much as some people like growing up, again, when I was like fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, I was watching some Japanese anime, but then I met some real anime lovers and I realized maybe I'm not that big into anime. It was I do like art. I like design and stuff like that. So I think what really drawed my attention to that was more along the lines of like the style and the art and stuff like that, less so about I don't know, the fandom and all the characters and all these things like that. It wasn't really my thing. I did have a good friend, he's a Vietnamese American, also in Texas, and he opened a Japanese anime store. And I was like, wow, I I didn't know anyone in Texas even knew what anime was or cared about it or or whatever. So I actually found his store like just maybe days or weeks before he opened. And I was going there from time to time waiting for him to go there. I didn't know him at the time, but I was like, Whoever this is, I I wanna know who this person is because you know, I was interested in it. And then yeah, we became good friends. And funny enough, Not only him, but a lot of my friends from back home, we're all car guys. We all love sports cars. And it started with, you know, Japanese, the love for Japanese sports cars. So we all hung out a lot and we would hang out at the anime store and and we were always surrounded by, you know, Japanese things, posters and things written in Japanese with, you know, kanji and hiragana, katakana and so on on the walls. And one day I met a guy who was half Persian. Half Mexican. His father was from Iran, but his mother was from Mexico. And he spent one year in Shanghai. And then he was studying Japanese at a university in Texas. And he came into the anime store one day and he started reading the posters on the walls. And one of my friends, girlfriend, she was from Taiwan, and he just started speaking to her in Mandarin. I was like, dude, what? How are you able to speak Mandarin and how can you read Japanese? That was the beginning for me. I was just like, wow, this is what I want to do. I was like, that's so awesome. Like I've I saw Chinese characters, but I didn't know how to even get started, right? And then he gave me a book. It was a basic book for learning how to read hiragana and katakana. So I started there and then later I bought another book called Kanji Power. And that had like 300 characters in it. And I just studied it every day. And I would write hiragara, write katakana, write the kanji characters. It was just something that I had a passion for. And I asked him, I was like, if I really wanted to improve my Japanese, what would be the best thing for me to do? And he said, Well, if you could, you know, obviously the longer the better, but just spend six months, even just three months if you can, but six months ideally. Overseas in another country, immerse yourself in the language, and then, you know. So I was like, okay. So yeah, when I was seventeen, eighteen, I started studying Japanese on my own. I would go to the local university there in Texas and I would just try to meet some Japanese people. I ended up meeting some Taiwanese people, Koreans and so on. I had a notepad with me and I would just like write down phrases and expressions. And it was all just so interesting to me. And I met Other people too. Like I met a guy who was half Taiwanese, half Korean, and he could speak both Korean and Mandarin as well as English. And I was just like, this was just fascinating to me. I just loved the idea of being able to communicate in multiple languages. So yeah, so I just continued down that path. And by the time I turned nineteen, I I got everything ready. I sold my car, got rid of my apartment, and I just went traveling to Japan. I was there for like three months. never thought of that I would actually be able to live there or what I could even do there. But I traveled around, met some people that I had met through like, you know, pin pal things, like people who wanted to learn English and you and they would teach you Japanese and so on. And and I just kept on throughout that journey learning Japanese and trying to figure out how to to survive outside of the US. Piotrek Bodera (09:38) Perfect. It's so uncommon, I have to say. I met a lot of Americans where they admit that learning foreign languages is a big challenge for them because so many people around the world already speak English. Yeah, it's it it became this lingua franca, so they don't really feel yet that they have to learn anything beyond some polite words. So it's so refreshing to hear that in your story you were the one who were like seeking new international friends and you had the opportunities to meet so many of those mixed cultures and mixed ethnicities in Texas. Did it already create some kind of rift that you you felt more connections with the Asians or health Asians who you met in the US and then you felt less and less connection with your Fellow Texans. Ryan Li (10:39) I don't know, that's hard to say. I w I guess sometimes when something's new to you, it's more interesting. Definitely the cultures are different between like the average westerner that's in the US or in Texas, for example, versus somebody from Asia. But of course, Asia's huge too, so it I don't like to generalize. And also honestly, Asian people who are in the US are all different too. So it's it's not easy to generalize. But yeah, definitely I did feel somehow that Asian people in general were somehow less rude or more kind and more open to things. But that's not always the case, obviously. I mean, there are good and bad people all over the world in every culture and every country and so on. So I I I really don't like to generalize. But yeah, I did find myself somehow to be more comfortable around Asian people for a very long time. I have also made really good non Asian friends too, but I guess honestly a lot of them are also similar to me in for example, like you or some of our other friends who they also feel a bit Asian, you know. Yeah. They also love Asia and they love Asian languages and things like that. So I mean, we have that sort of thing in common. Piotrek Bodera (11:59) Definitely. I still remember our first meetings and we talked about Japan and your time there, and I was amazed I am still amazed that you are fluent in those hard to master languages. But let's get back to the point in time when you said you were nineteen, you went for your first three month trip to Japan. How it developed further? Like did you find some opportunities already there to stay longer, or did you need to come back to US and find some other type of visa to stay longer in Japan? Ryan Li (12:38) So back then like I had almost zero knowledge of what we have today about visas and how to stay somewhere or permanent residency and you know, all this digital nomad stuff. So it was all all new. I had no idea anything. All I knew is I could stay there for ninety days and that was it. I never would have thought that I could possibly live there or I guess anywhere really outside of my my hometown. Piotrek Bodera (13:05) Would you like to regularly receive intriguing content like this? Subscribe to Nom Tuesday. Every week you will get an email from me with fresh podcast episodes, practical tools or fascinating travel destinations. Subscribe at nerdontour.net Ryan Li (13:24) But yeah, I guess it was like maybe two or three weeks before I was gonna have to leave Japan. I had a few friends tell me like because they heard that I liked it there and I and I wanted to stay. I wish that there was a way to stay. You know, I considered even enrolling in some sort of like school or something like that, although school's not my favorite thing. so I I wasn't sure that that was the best path for me to choose at that time. However I had at least one or two friends who suggested like, well, I mean, back then newspapers were still a thing, you know, online was still kind of catching on and so like people were posting jobs. There were lots of job offers for native English speakers. And I was like, I can't do that. I'm not a teacher. I don't know anything about that. I mean I was just starting to do web design at that time. I think it was just two or three years before I went to Japan that I started getting into web design and later development and so on design and but yeah, I kinda lucked out because I found three different job offers in the newspaper. And again, I was just, you know, two or three weeks away from having to leave and go back to the US. And at that time I was in Gunma. Gunma Prefecture, and I had a friend up there, so I was staying there. I traveled all around, like, you know, Kyoto, Kansai, and so on. But I ended up in Gunma for a little bit. And then I had three interviews. So I scheduled them, but I was gonna need to go to the airport, which was, you know, in Tokyo, or actually in Chiba, like Narita the Tokyo International Airport. One was in like Saitama. I forget where the third one was, but One was not far from the airport. So I ended up canceling the third one. I also canceled the one in Saitama because I just felt like it was really inconvenient to go there. So I bet everything on this one job interview at this small A eikaiwa which is just like a it was kind of like a free conversation school. I stayed just maybe one or two nights there. And I had the job interview and like a day or two later I flew back to the US and I called them a week or two after they told me that they were interviewing some other people and they would let me know. And yeah, they were like, Hey, we have good news. We would like for you to fly back here and work for us. And I was like, Wow, okay. I you know, it's really unexpected because I didn't think that I could do that because I don't have any experience and And doing something like that. So that was kind of the beginning of everything because then I was able to get like a work visa, stay in Japan for a year at a time legally, and that was the beginning of the rest of my twenty years in Asia. Piotrek Bodera (16:24) Yeah, sounds amazing. I only had a opportunity to get the work and travel visa. Quite a much easier thing to get than the proper work visa. So I can imagine you needed to switch your mindset, yeah. As you mentioned, you never done teaching and you were just native English speaking person and the job was kind of obvious that's okay, most foreigners coming to Japan, they start with this kind of job. So how long did you do it and how was this experience? And did you manage to somehow bridge it with the web development? Ryan Li (17:07) Yeah, actually I feel very lucky to have found this school. And unfortunately I think that they did end up going under some years later. They were a small school. I think they only had maybe three teachers at any given time. There was one guy from Canada and another guy from the US and me. So it was a pretty small school and it was the guy who owned it handed it down to his son and then he had passed away. So it was just his son running it. And then he had kept the manager that had been there for many years. They'd been around, I don't know, like 10 years, 20 years, quite a long time. And because it was a free conversation class, it wasn't that difficult. It wasn't like I didn't have a lot of things that I had to prepare. There were some books, but people preferred to just talk, you know, and to actually speak the language. And it I thought it was interesting because I learned a method that we kind of developed at that school. We called it Breakthrough, where we just created lots and lots of situational sentences and conversations like at the airport, at the bank, and so on. The other guy from Canada and I, we recorded our actual voices. And I actually built a website for the school because they didn't have a website. We ended up creating all the lesson material from scratch and we just used our voices. I had a a Mac, old iMac. That wasn't in the first year, that was in the second or third year that I was there. But I had lived in Japan, I guess, for a total of maybe four and a half years, I think it was, but it was not straight. So I lived there for like six months and I left and I came back. I was there for a year, left, I came back and one more year and so on like that. Because I kept on, you know, I tried Taiwan for a little bit, I tried Korea for a little bit, I kept coming back to Japan because I was always treated very well. There and luckily at that time they always opened their arms to me and let me help them with their company. So it was pretty cool because I yeah, I helped them create their logo, their website. We created their lesson material. We recorded all of the sentences. We printed it out on paper and put it in like little booklets. So we would hand the material with the CDs to the students. And they would just listen to the sentences over and over again and they would repeat what they heard. And then eventually they became more familiar with the actual sounds because that's as you know, many Japanese people have trouble hearing the real sounds from the English language because they learn it with kind of a katakana pronunciation or a guide. So if you or I say table, table, they don't know what that is. If they read it, they know what it is, but if they hear it, they don't know what that is. You have to say tabu. And they're like, Tebru. Okay. Yeah, I know. So through this method of being able to hear a native speaker say it again and again and again in their own time where they're comfortable, and just repeat it as many times as they want, they were able to then bring it back into the class and practice it in real time with a teacher, and it gave them confidence, like they could now understand and also pronounce more clearly. These situational phrases. Piotrek Bodera (20:30) Yeah, yeah. It reminds me about the Pimsleur method. Have you heard about it? Ryan Li (20:35) I am familiar with Pimsleur, but I don't know exactly the I feel like I've seen it before, yes. Piotrek Bodera (20:41) So basically the guy called Pimsleur recorded tapes back in the day, because I think it was like fifty years ago or so. But he re realized the same thing as you're saying, that people are not familiar with the sounds, with the pronunciation of other languages. So one of the ways to master it is to listen repeatedly to the same recordings. And nowadays, of course, we have the digital version of their happens, all those recordings, but it's Nice to hear that you have help the Japanese school to do the same. And then probably, you know, dozens or more students in Japan, thanks to you, can now speak proper English. Ryan Li (21:25) That's cool. Piotrek Bodera (21:26) And it's funny also that you mentioned that the Teburu is often like a meme, a thing that people would show on YouTube or or some other You know, TikTok videos where they you know find a Japanese person on the street and then ask them, pronounce this word. Yeah, it's like, ha ha ha, it's so funny because they cannot say correctly. And it's to the point that even like known brands like McDonald's has its own like Japanese localized pronunciation, yeah, which is the McDunner Duru, if I'm remembering correctly. Ryan Li (22:00) Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that one's pretty difficult to say actually. One thing I do like about the Japanese language is that they like to shorten slang words for a lot of things, so maku or makudo, you know. It's a generational thing, but it at one point makudo was very popular and then later I think it just became maku. So Piotrek Bodera (22:21) Yeah, if you if you say Makudo, it it really sounds Japanese, yeah, like the I don't know, kimono, yeah, or some other karate kind of word, not even English. Ryan Li (22:31) Right. Piotrek Bodera (22:33) So you started with Japan, but you then tried other places around Asia, and that's kind of the second stage that I really paid attention to your story. When we were hanging together around in Kolalumpur, I noticed that like Okay, you spent here like two decades, but it wasn't just one place. You really covered most of the Southeast Asian countries, and then also Japan, Korea. So if you could say what was the pattern, yeah, or what were the reasons for you to move around to switch those residences and getting the work permits in those countries? Ryan Li (23:14) I think this happens to a lot of people. Maybe not not a lot of people act on it, but as a human, we're often looking for the grass that's greener on the other side. So, you know, obviously like things are not perfect in Japan. They're not perfect anywhere. So I was always looking for that perfect place. And you know, I've lived in nine countries now, Japan being one of the first. I went to Taiwan thinking that maybe it would be similar to my experience in Japan. And it was it was a bit different than what I had expected. I had less foundation of Mandarin at the time. And also Taiwanese Mandarin is slightly different than standard Mandarin. They're using traditional characters, which were not really a problem for me since you know kanji, Japanese kanji is already kind of a half-step between simplified and traditional in many ways. But it was it still was difficult for me because also they didn't use pinyin They used bopomofo mofo like the Zhuyin Fu Fuhao system that was only for Taiwan. So there were many obstacles for me in Taiwan to learning Mandarin. And I guess before I went to Japan I already had a pretty good foundation of kanji hiragana katakana, quite a bit of vocabulary. But I didn't really know grammar before I moved to Japan. But when I moved to Taiwan, I didn't really know much of anything except for just some basic phrases in Mandarin. And it was much harder for me to pick up new characters. At first I learned traditional characters, then I went to Simplified and then I came back to traditional. But I learned most of it honestly through listening to songs and reading the lyrics and going to KTV or karaoke or noraebang In Korean and just learning the sounds of every character. And I wanna say that I have a bit of a photographic memory. So like even though I never properly studied kanji or or Chinese Hanzu, I was still able to kind of make out the character just by looking at it. And later on I was able to break it down into the radicals and everything like that, which obviously can help you. But I think it's a brilliant system, honestly. I think Chinese, traditional Chinese characters in particular, are really great. I'm not a big fan of the simplified. I think you lose a lot of the the meaning and also some of the pronunciation helpers and some of the characters can be kind of deceiving in simplified Chinese versus traditional characters. But yeah, it was just much harder for me to have the same kind of life and to pick up Mandarin as easy as I learned Japanese while in Japan. I actually only stayed in Taiwan, I want to say, for like four months at that time and I ended up going back to Japan. But I think, you know, honestly, with learning multiple languages, I've I've tried to learn, I don't know, like five, six, seven, eight different languages. I think that it does help sometimes to take a break. So when I pushed myself as far as I could go in Japanese at the time, Then I took a break and I went to learn Mandarin. And that kind of pushed Japanese deeper into my mind somehow. And then I was bringing in the new information of Mandarin. Then when I came back to Japanese, somehow it felt more, I don't know, not native, but it felt more familiar. You know, it was something that was easier to access somehow. I know sometimes you can forget something if you don't use it, but maybe because I was so obsessed with learning the Japanese language from an early age, that really stuck with me. So even though I don't use Japanese on a daily basis, I still tend to remember a good majority of everything that I've I've learned in the past. I assume that eventually I will start to forget how to read some things, like definitely like Onyomi and Kunyomi with the kanji, like the Chinese characters in Japanese. that is definitely more difficult for me now because learning Mandarin, I kind of replaced a lot of those readings with the Chinese reading. So it's it's interesting when I read something in Japanese. Sometimes I forget the pronunciation of a character, but I know it maybe in Chinese, you know. So as long as you know the meaning or something, then I just I just keep on moving forward with it. But, you know, I went to Taiwan, I went to Korea, I went to Singapore, Thailand and around just looking for that greener grass and Japan just seemed to treat me better than a lot of places, but I think that four and a half years was enough for me at that time. Piotrek Bodera (28:10) Yeah, thank you for describing this in that way. I bet many people can relate to it. One thing that you mentioned about the Japanese pronunciation, it's really intriguing. I was reading the etymology of the Chinese characters that were incorporated as kanji in Japanese, and it's fascinating that they were like waves of the Buddhist monks that were coming from China to Japan. And because they came, let's say, in the fifth century, and then you know, two centuries later, there is another wave of the Chinese monks coming and teaching the Buddhism bringing the characters, and then they were like bringing the new updated sound of a character, and that's why in in Japanese, from what I read, is that they were so precise in the records. They kind of kept both of those things, yeah. From the first time they brought it, and then the second time, and maybe the third time, yeah. So it's it's intriguing to see how a language can develop being an island, yeah, because Japan, their culture and their maybe also the reason why so many people are in the world are fascinated about them, is because they have very separate mindset from everything that is happening in in Asia and around the world. Ryan Li (29:39) Right. Piotrek Bodera (29:40) Hmm. Getting back to what you said about looking for the the greener grass, I admit your flexibility in looking for the better place for yourself around Asia, but then you know, today we can ask AI how to deal with some bureaucracy or how to, you know, what are the steps of the the visa or even paying taxes in one place or another. So I'm really curious how did you deal with this part of moving around? Because if it's still so hard, then I can imagine that 10 years, 15 years ago, it was even harder because you would need to understand the local language and the local rules to follow, you know, and not to to break some, you know, allowances. So yeah, how did you do this? Ryan Li (30:32) Honestly, I guess through trial and error, right? Some of the places that I stayed, you know, sometimes I mean people still do it today. You you try to stay somewhere for ninety days, you might even leave and then come back for another ninety days. Mm-hmm. A lot of countries are becoming stricter. Once you stay a hundred and eighty days, they try to keep you out for another hundred and eighty days to prevent you from becoming a tax resident. Something to do with I think a hundred and eighty three days in the in a lot of countries. But yeah, at that time it depended. Like on if I was going to be able to to work somewhere in that country. I think the first year that I stayed in Thailand, I actually got a student visa. Later I actually found a job and I was going to switch to a work visa, but then I ended up leaving the country. I I don't know, I t I tend to not stay anywhere for more than a year at a time. I'm just constantly on the move and just looking for new things, new opportunities. learn new things. So it I I don't know. I c I can't say that I would necessarily recommend that to people. I think it would be better. I think it would be better if you could stay somewhere longer. Cause honestly, I I lived in Japan like three or four different times. I lived in Taiwan two different times. I lived in Thailand two different times. I lived in Singapore like two or three different times. I've just you know, I live there and I leave and I go to live in another country and I go back to that same country. It's really It's not so easy and it's it's kind of annoying sometimes to have to start over or do things over again and but you know, always always searching for that better place. But to answer your your question, yeah, it definitely wasn't easy. There were some, you know, like gaijin blogs or farang blogs sites that you could go to and you could learn a little bit of information. They would share things and tips and things like that. So not really YouTube or anything at the time. There was something like forums or blogs and stuff. And of course you could also meet some local like expats and some of them could give you advice and stuff like that. But yeah, I guess it was mostly through trial and error 'cause I think I was in Asia for ten years before I started really fully understanding, you know, visas and all this stuff. It it it took it took a long time before I realized there was a a a good way and a and a not so good way to go about handling all these things. So Even like bank accounts and it was a different world back then for sure. But thankfully and I know you you too, you like Revolut and Wise and these neo banks and stuff, they've really saved my life 'cause now it's like I don't really need any other bank or anything like that. So just to have something like Revolut has been has been amazing. But yeah, before to have to rely on a bank account in Korea. bank account in Japan, a bank account in Taiwan. Yeah, that was not fun for sure. it's gotten harder too over the years. I remember one of the things that surprised me the most is like I had a bank account in Japan. And I was there for, I don't know, maybe six months plus a year or so like a year and a half at two different times. And then I left and I came back and I had already closed that bank account 'cause you know, when you leave you You don't necessarily think that you're gonna come back, right? So I closed a bank account and then when I came back I needed to open it again. They had changed names. They were maybe bought by another bank or something like that. And they're like, I'm sorry, but you need to live here for six months before we can open up an account for you. I'm like, But I lived here for a year and a half in the past and I even had a bank account with you guys under the previous name, but they were like, I'm sorry, yeah, no exceptions, you know. So it's like, Yeah, it ha certainly wasn't easy. It wasn't easy at all. But you get through things and you learn things little by little, trial and error. Piotrek Bodera (34:25) Interesting. One thing I need to ask here because it's another perspective from my experience with people from US that it's a bit easier for you guys when you can use your American Express or your American bank account anywhere in the world. And of course there are some exchange fees and some other things you need to be aware of, but in general they are not closing this opportunity for you. So I can imagine that you are still tax resident in the US, because from what I know, you you you you are like until you you officially sign out of the system, you have to pay taxes in the US, even if you're living abroad. And then considering that, do you still get some type of benefits or you know, before Revolut, could you use your American bank accounts when you were going around Asia? Ryan Li (35:22) Actually the first year that I moved to Japan, I closed my bank in the US. It was Bank of America. And I actually did it I I guess you would say out of spite, because before I moved to Japan, I did a little bit of research, what I could do to find out what American bank also has a branch in Japan. And I found that there was either a branch or at least an ATM machine that I could use. Japan was pretty advanced at that time with ATMs and stuff. But at that time I'm not really sure. I think you probably still needed to go into a bank and speak to a teller and and stuff. But when I got to Tokyo, I had found out that that had closed down. They didn't have a Bank of America there anymore. Okay. So I had to call them on the phone and I had them send a bank cashier's check that I could deposit into my I think it was musical or something bank. Once I got that, I closed that account and I never banked in the US again. Piotrek Bodera (36:23) Okay. Ryan Li (36:24) Later on I did end up opening up an account at a credit union, but I I'm not a big fan of banks in particular. Same with American Express or credit cards and all that stuff. I typically try to stay away from all that stuff. When I traveled around, I would either have cash or at the time like travelers checks and stuff like that that you could get someone to cash for you and then maybe for a fee and then you get the cash. So no, it it really wasn't easy for me to maintain any kind of bank account back home while I was in Asia. So that's another reason why I really do like revolution wise, because it does give me that extra freedom. But yeah, I was basically always relying on a local bank account at at that time in Japan or Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, even Singapore. Originally I I had local bank accounts. Even in Cambodia had local bank accounts. So but luckily technology's a lot better now, so it's not so hard to do international wire transfers even within a mobile app or something like that. Taiwan though, they're I don't know about right now, there might be some banks that are allowing it, but usually if you want to send an international wire, you actually need to go into the branch and they need to like verify you or you and like they and ask you like why are you sending this money and Piotrek Bodera (37:41) Yeah. Ryan Li (37:42) you know, it's really like Yeah, it's really crazy. But to touch on your point about the taxes, you're partially correct there. So I have been a tax resident of multiple countries, depending on where I was living at the time. I do try to maintain an address for my credit score in the US. But if you're a legal tax resident of another country, depending on treaties and whatnot, You are tax exempt for up to like, I think right now it was raised to maybe around a hundred and twenty thousand US dollars per year. So as long as you earn less than a hundred and twenty thousand, you don't owe additional taxes to the US. You would just pay taxes wherever you're a tax resident. And then of course that can get tricky. It depends also like if that country taxes you on foreign sourced income or, you know, there's a lot of things like that. Like I have a company in the US and my payroll is coming from that company and there are some things taken out. For example, I believe it's like four one K to go towards like social security, things like that. So I guess potentially in the future I could draw from that if I had the need. So I do try to maintain these things because I learned actually More than once going back to the US that I was very shocked to find out that I like at one time I had a bad credit score and then I made it a good credit score by getting a credit card. And then later having no activity again in the US, I had a zero credit score and then I had to fix that again. So I I was shocked to find out like you do need to do certain things to maintain a credit score. It's it's good if you If you do have an address and you do have a bank account or a credit card or some kind of line of credit somewhere and that you use it sometimes and it helps with your credit. So that that would be good if you were to ever want to buy a house or buy a car or get a, you know, business loan and things like that. So I think that there is some value there. But I think a lot of people, they probably don't bother with it if they're overseas. It gets tricky depending on which country you're in and tax residency and all that stuff. But you're right. As a US citizen, you have to file forever, but you don't always owe depending on your tax residency status and how much you earn. Piotrek Bodera (40:15) Okay, okay, yeah. So thanks for that clarification. I'm now curious because you started going to Asia and it's interesting to hear that you felt like okay, I'm done with my past life in the US. Now my new life starts in in Asia, so you you close down the the bank accounts and then you realize okay, maybe I have to like open a new one and so on. But I feel like there was this very important step. with launching a company in the US and now you have your colleagues all over the world, but mainly it is a US business with US clients. And I'm curious, at what stage did you saw that okay, you have already done a lot of different projects and we will be talking about them in Asia, but then when was the moment you realized actually I can work with the US with the US clients while being in Asia? Ryan Li (41:12) You know, honestly, like I had never thought about being a business owner. It was just something that kind of happened to me over time. I don't really like to be a boss. I don't like to be the number one person in a company. I prefer to be number two or you know, helping somebody. I like to work behind the scenes. I like to be on the tech side. I d I'm not sales and marketing type. So I feel like I sort of retired once already when I was around I don't know, my late twenties, like twenty seven, twenty-eight, I felt like maybe I'm I'm semi retired and I was just I had opened up a small local business. It was like an internet cafe and I was also offering some simple stuff like graphic design, web design services. But I very quickly learned that that was not really gonna be a sustainable business. And I was in the Philippines at the time. So that was actually when I decided to change things up and I I went back to the US For a short period of time, opened up this company that I still have now 17 years. With a good friend of mine, he was also from the back in the anime store days and a car lover, Subaru. That's what kept us in touch. I remember many times when I would go to junkyards and in Japan and I would be on the phone. He would call me internationally from his cell phone to my cell phone in Japan in a junkyard, and I would be looking for parts for him and our friends. So that's what we kept in touch and he his background was graphic design and he studied mass communication in school and he worked for a like a in-house marketing team for five years. And he and I actually we tried to do a couple of businesses before. We had like a third party web hosting company. We had a domain registrar service. So we tried to throw a little bit of money at like Google Ads. And we did get some business. We had people hosting with us and You know, there's a lot of companies out there like GoDaddy, Wild West Domains and and various things that you can become like a third party reseller. They would allow you to white label their service or whatever. So like people would sign up through you and you would get a small cut of it, basically. So that was the first thing that we did. So we already had some past experience working together. That business didn't work out too well for us just doing web hosting and domain registration, but later on we ended up Creating like a full service creative agency with his design background and my programming background. And both of us had photography and video as a hobby. Piotrek Bodera (43:47) Mm-hmm. Ryan Li (43:48) So we kind of just decided to do it all. Like we we thought about creating a video production company, but then even trying to find clients who wanted video production, they also wanted logos, they wanted websites, and later on they wanted social media management and so on. So we just, you know. kind of created this agency and we hired more and more people. I think we grew the company to about 30 people in the US. And I had come back to Asia to start another company to help my US company. And I think we grew that company as well to almost 40 people. At that time it just kind of all happened. You know, it wasn't my goal to become a business owner or to start a company or to be a boss and an employer. But yeah, it just it was a nice change actually. Cause I used to do all the work myself. I would do all the design, all the coding, all the photography, whatever. I still do that some, you know, today for my own projects and stuff like that, which is fun. But for client work, you know, we would just, you know, hire more people. They would be full time employees, work for us in our offices. So it was it was a good experience and it felt good to hire people, give people jobs and watch them grow and Piotrek Bodera (45:05) Yeah. Nice. It sounds like a big journey that you accidentally started with your friend. And it's great to hear that it's still ongoing that you managed to bridge the time and the passion for Asia with hiring also people and getting the the customers or growing the business in US. Now it feels so natural when we have the asynchronous remote work. But 10, 15 years ago it wasn't so obvious. Yeah. So it's even more of a feat for you that you managed to get those clients and complete the projects. And I wanted to talk about the projects now, because at some point I asked you if you could share some of the links to your websites, to some of your portfolio. And again we found a lot of things in common. I'm particularly interested in those big things, even if they didn't manage to become big consumer products, I'm still curious why did you go into such domains like VR, blockchain, or metaverse? Ryan Li (46:18) Yeah, I I just I love technology. I like to learn new things. Usually if there's like a new tech gadget or whatever, whether it was Google Glass or I know that one wasn't very popular, but I had it. I've had I think three different pairs of Google Glass. I've I even wore Google Glass like full time for I don't know how long. But I like the idea. And then yeah, later I got more into like virtual reality and things like that. And aside from my businesses in, you know, the US and the Philippines, I also did try some startups in Taiwan and also in Singapore. The one in Taiwan, yes, that was more like VR or metaverse focused. And then in Singapore it was more like web three with blockchain and cryptocurrency. And I even had like a small ASIC mining farm for a period of time in Singapore. Back when mining was still was still profitable. So yeah, I've tried so many different types of startups and businesses and things like that. And I I think if you're just doing it for money, that's maybe that's a different thing. But I I think for me it was never really about the money. It was more about the experience and like learning things and helping people, doing things, creating things. Ultimately it's about creating things. Honestly, I mean, with a lot of my startups, we really didn't make much from them, but it was a good journey. It taught me a lot. And I'm still doing that to this day where I'm I've just recently started another AI web three related startup too with some other people. So I'm constantly trying to create things and innovate and always building things and learning new things, basically. Piotrek Bodera (48:02) Nice. One thing that you were also sharing some YouTube videos that I can link in the description for this podcast is something called Egg Banana And I found it funny that you managed to connect with some Asian friends who would not be afraid of using the banana nickname, which is the opposite of where we started, yeah, with the egg. But some Asian people can be considered Yellow outside but white inside, yeah, as in Western. So you had the whole kind of podcast series recorded as a video, but you were all wearing the VR headsets from what I remember, yeah, and like talking to each other. Ryan Li (48:47) Yeah, yeah, that's correct. So me and two other friends of mine that I met in Taiwan, they were actually both American Asian people. And they had been living in Taiwan. I think both of them had been living in Taiwan for almost ten years at the time that I met them. Yeah, very cool, very nice people. And we decided to start a podcast together. And yeah, it was called Egg Banana. We didn't do it for very long. I think it lasted for around maybe three seasons. And that went into the time of COVID. Before COVID, we actually set up like a little podcast recording studio inside of one of my rooms in Taiwan, where I was living at the time. And we would record our podcast there. Later on, it did become VR-based, but there were Two reasons for that. One, one of our co hosts actually moved back to New York for a period of time. He's back in Taiwan now, but he had moved to New York at that time. So we thought, how can we continue this podcast if he's there? So we thought, well, why don't we do VR? Because actually both of these guys were also part of the VR startup. So we were all interested in the technology and we knew how it worked and how to use it and But then also COVID was happening, starting to happen, and it really made sense for us at that time. So me and another guy that were in Taiwan, we would still record the podcast from our own places, but in VR. And then the other guy in New York, he would also join us in VR. So we just started recording the podcast that way. And yeah, that was a lot of fun. You know, it the quality could have been a little bit better, especially with the VR headset. The microphone is not the best quality. Especially compared to our first episodes where we had like a studio quality microphone and so it was it was a little bit of a change, but it was fun to involve more technology in such a thing. Piotrek Bodera (50:48) Yeah, I I feel like the pandemic was the period where people really got creative because they were forced to sit at home and the internet was the only, let's say, social space yeah, where they could create and experiment and do things that they would not normally do. I still remember, I don't know if you saw it, but for a moment there was this craze around animal crossing the game on Switch. People did like podcast interviews inside this game. So it wasn't even like VR. It was more like, yeah, you have your character, I have my character. We created, you know, our little house that looks like a studio. And then you couldn't even animate your a character too much. It was just two video game characters sitting in some TV kind of studio scenery and then recording the conversation. in the background. So yeah, I can imagine that you're you also had a lot of fun recording your podcast. Ryan Li (51:55) Yeah, for sure. Piotrek Bodera (51:57) Since we started talking about technology, you mentioned also that you you like gadgets, you are always playing with them and and trying new stuff. What is your tech stack but in a sense of what you cannot live without? What is like the most important devices that you always carry with you wherever you were traveling or wherever you would go to a next country, you always need to have to function. Ryan Li (52:23) It might not be too different from the average person, honestly, until recently where I have gotten more heavily involved with AI. But AI aside, I mean, yeah, just the usual. My MacBook, maybe one or two phones. I I have both iOS and Android. I run a custom version of Android though, using graphene graphene OS, AirPods. Not too much really. I I I'm a minimalist for the most part. I I have gotten carried away sometimes with home offices and had, you know, like seven screens around my my desk. But I I've realized moving a lot, it's really bad. It's a bad idea for me to buy such a big thing. So right now I've I've trimmed it down to just two laptops. Mm-hmm. But in the past I've had, you know, it's like seven computers and seven monitors and so on. And it's just it's a bit crazy. But I I yeah, I've Basically, I survive right now off of one MacBook and then I have one kind of a Windows laptop, but it's running Cubes OS. It's kind of a more of like a security focused Linux distribution. So yeah, that's maybe something a little bit different about me is I am pretty big on security. So like, you know, I'm running GrapheneOS OS on my on my phone, I'm running Qubes OS on my laptop. I try to be pretty careful with online security, cybersecurity and mm and stuff like that. But it's also not always very convenient. So I I have a personal laptop and a work laptop in a way and I try to keep things a bit separate. Piotrek Bodera (54:04) Yeah, I noticed this is also an recurring theme whenever we talk in our group chats that are of course on signal to make them even more secure and also ensure that our messages disappear after a set s time. I am curious where did it start? Because yeah, when you moved when you were just nineteen to Asia, you were just starting out with the web development. Can you Try to find the the moment when you realize okay, cybersecurity is a super important part of my life and I need to be better at it. Ryan Li (54:44) Yeah, I guess I would say back to the early two thousands, I guess when I was living in Thailand, there was IT mall. I it's since been closed, but you could go to that mall and you could buy anything. Any kind of software, any kind of hacker tools, anything on CDs, you know? And that was when I first started getting really curious about such things. At that time too, I had like a Sharp Mebius. a laptop from Japan and then later I picked up a secondhand like Sony Vio laptop and I was running Linux on the Sony and I was running Windows on the Sharp Mebius and I was just always constantly like installing different Linux distros and formatting Windows and seeing what I could delete and w what I could do and like I was purposely trying to get my computer like infected with things, see how things worked. I would get These like worms or Trojans, viruses, whatever, and just try to disassemble them. Like I had tools that would allow you to take them apart and see how they work. One of the things that was most interesting to me is these hackers would always like to leave their signature. They would like to say, like, this is the team behind this tool, you know. And and at one point in my life I thought, Man, I want to be the guy who finds these hackers and brings them down, you know, like the people who do bad things, you know. I thought that would be so cool, but I I never really went down that path. And then later on, getting into web three, and me and a another business partner of mine, we were actually targeted quite often being co-founders of Web3 projects. And people just assume that we have money or whatever, just because you're in a web three. And so people would like pretend to be our employees. They would create a fake profile on Telegram picture and name and all everything. And they would message us and try to use social engineering tactics to trick us to give something, or you know, you're constantly getting emails with phishing attempts and things like that. So just these kinds of things led me down this path. And becoming more like conscious about this kind of thing. Yeah, I started trying Tails OS, which you can run from a flash drive, Cube's OS, which you can install. on your computer custom Androids that de Google your phone basically. Just stuff like that is just very fascinating to me. Again, it's all I guess it's all similar. It's just like technology and things just to keep on learning. And it doesn't really cost you anything to learn. You can just open up YouTube or you can read something or now you can just ask AI and it will teach you everything basically. And then really the best way to further learn it is to do it yourself, right? So I've always loved the technology and being secure and I mean you you don't have to be somebody of importance to care about your own security. I think everybody should care about their own their own privacy and security. And it's not about whether you have something to hide or not. It's just our right to to our own data and things like that. And that's something that got me into Web3 and the thought that you could actually really have full control over your own money and not having to go through a third party because of, you know, things that I've had problems with with bank accounts and things like that. I thought I thought it was just brilliant. It's genius to have money that's really secure that you control a hundred percent yourself. Piotrek Bodera (58:27) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I I totally agree with this notion. I'm really g glad that you mentioned this spirit. I think from nineteen nineties and early two thousands when we were assembling our own PCs. This really taught us a lot because you understand technology from the most basic elements. And when the computer was slow, you were buying more RAM. And you need to learn how to install it and how to you know check if it's working and if your operating system is now much faster. And nowadays it's a bit different. I wonder my nephew is now ten years old, and so I hope that he can develop the same kind of mindset, yeah, the tinkering drive to really disassemble stuff and and learn how to then reassemble it, it is connected to the banking story, or many stories that you had in the US in and in Asia, that's the dream of crypto, the dream of owning your own money, either is Bitcoin or some other currency. I think it comes down from this that we the technologists, we understand how sovereign having your own computer And controlling your own operating system is. So why not money, yeah? Ryan Li (59:56) For sure. Piotrek Bodera (59:57) And I feel that this is a very good segue to your project, because you recently started something called Going Borderless. Tell a bit more, and is it actually connected somehow to the dream of crypto? Ryan Li (1:00:13) Actu not necessarily. I mean, I guess for those people interested in web three technology, I guess it could be useful to the people who might be interested in going borderless, but I don't know. It's just one of my many crazy ideas or startups. It's not something that I'm very focused on at the moment. But yeah, going borderless is kind of like a podcast series where we just share tips and and information about the lives that we've had traveling and living in different countries and being born one place but choosing to live somewhere else. I think it's sometimes interesting to hear stories from other people and why they chose to do what they did. I think that that's very fascinating. Piotrek Bodera (1:01:01) Yeah, yeah, yeah. Especially when we needed to do this on our own accord, yeah, like we chose to do it and to learn on on our own mistakes. So how would you describe the ideal listener and people who should go into the rabbit hole and learn from your experience or from the guests that you're inviting? Ryan Li (1:01:25) I'm not really sure who it's most beneficial for, the actual people who will go out and do what we're talking about, or the people who just would prefer to live vicariously through other people's journeys. I'm kind of thinking it's the latter, honestly. I don't know if you've felt this, like even me, like I've been to a little bit over thirty countries now, but honestly, I still enjoy traveling through watching people on YouTube. I don't always need to be out there doing the traveling myself. So I think other people can also enjoy new experiences and learning things. And they're just sometimes curious about something, but they don't necessarily want to do it themselves. So I think it's really more so for that type of person. But yeah, so going borderless is one of a few things that I'm working on currently. It's definitely something I'm passionate about. It's more of a like a side project or a hobby thing. It's definitely not to make money or anything. So Piotrek Bodera (1:02:25) Sure, sure, sure. You know, my channel or or my podcast series that I'm doing here, the digital nomads, the people who are running companies and living in many countries, like in your case, it's also about showing that you can, yeah, that people have done before. It's not rocket science. And I'm curious, considering your last experience, considering that you are also self-aware about searching for this greener grass. What kind of message would you share to people who would like to follow what you're doing? Ryan Li (1:03:00) That's a tough one. I think honestly a lot of people think that they're not capable of doing something. But it's I don't know if it's about courage or if they just listen to everybody around them while growing up. Because I think what school teaches us and what society teaches us that we won't ever be anybody important or special or We should just stay put. We should just follow orders. Just be a a good company employee. Don't start your own business. You know, go to school, finish college. Things like that, you know. I think that's the norm. I talk to a lot of people, you know, obviously we we go to a lot of places, we go to a lot of different countries, a lot of different meetups and things like that. We talk to a lot of people and one of the things that I hear most commonly is people are unhappy with their job. And I always think like, well, if you're unhappy with your job, why don't you do something about it? People are always like, Well, do you know anybody hiring? I'm like, Why do you need to look for a job? Why don't you create a job? Mm-hmm. You know? And that's always been the path that I've taken. It's definitely not always the easiest. But then people are like, Well, I don't have any money. I'm like, Well, I don't either. You don't necessarily need to have money to start something. You know, not everything requires a huge amount of capital to get started. I will say luck is obviously part of it. Skill is another part of it, but there are a lot of people who are very skilled that don't have any luck or not much luck. So you just have to try. That's the first step is you just have to try. So whether it's you want to live in another country or you want to start your own business or you want to learn another language, just do it. Only you will make it happen. You can't sit there and wait for someone else to make something happen if that's what you're waiting for. I remember back when I was living in Japan, I had two Japanese friends in particular who were very typical Japanese people in many ways. You know, the Japanese system where they go to school, they study hard, they get into a good school, then they get into a good company, and then They will only get the promotion after they get married and then they stay in that company until they retire. That was the kind of the the traditional way. I think things are changing a bit in Japan now, but still this is kind of the typical path. But I these two guys I knew, they were friends of mine. They were not friends with each other, but I knew both of them individually. And the common thing was that they just hated their jobs. They just could not stand their jobs. But every day they would wake up. Get ready, go to work, be miserable, Piotrek Bodera (1:05:56) Mm-hmm. Ryan Li (1:05:57) come home late 'cause they needed to work overtime for no additional pay. And then do it all over again the next day. I'm just like, dude, why are you doing this? And I was actually very proud of both of them. And I don't know if it was my my influence or what I've lost touch with them since, you know, back then there wasn't even like Facebook or anything like that. So only email and people change emails and phone numbers sometimes. So You know, I can't find them today. Unfortunately, I wish I could, but I was very proud of both of them. They both quit their jobs eventually. And one of them went to, I think, Hawaii to study English. That was very unjapanese thing to do. When you're when you're like 30 years old or something, you're not gonna quit your job and go do something else. And then the same with the other guy. He quit his job and he went to work at another company that he wanted to work at. And Sure, that meant him starting over and starting from the bottom, but at least he was gonna be happier. And I think that this is really great for people to be able to get motivated and to do something that will help them eventually have a better life. Cause it's it's their life and it's maybe the only life that they're gonna have. So they had better make the most of it, right? While they can. Piotrek Bodera (1:07:15) I'm happy to hear that you had at least a part in inspiring other people. And in a culture that typically follows the the societal norms, yeah, like Japanese are really known for being kind, but also being you know, by the book. If something has been established by the culture, it's very hard to to break it, even if they feel miserable, yeah. And it's sad to to hear that so many people around the world just keep On living in in the same like train tracks. Yeah, there is no room for anything else. I feel the same. Yeah. I kind of felt that living in Poland meant that I would need to follow this social scripts. Like the biggest aspiration was working for some big international corporation, and that's it. But I I really wanted to go somewhere and then figure out. How to find work or how to, you know, do this long term or how find maybe a partner that is not from Poland So yeah, it took some time, but I'm glad that I I managed to achieve those things. And I highly recommend others to follow on their dreams and yeah, just to maybe get inspired from stories like that. Ryan Li (1:08:36) Yeah. Piotrek Bodera (1:08:37) I would like to know how do you take care of yourself? I think that this is a very important part of being a digital knowledge. We are usually very driven, we want to achieve our goals and we, you know, push ourselves. But then I'm curious how do you combat burnout but also take care of yourself? Ryan Li (1:09:05) Yeah, I guess I've never really been asked this. I mean, I do try to maintain a vegetarian lifestyle. I could probably do a lot more. I could I could do more exercise and physical activities. I think sometimes it's not easy. If you are a business owner and you're tied to your computer and you're working like twenty hours a day, it could be very difficult to find time to hit the gym and and do things like that, but I do admire people who can. Like I think that you you do find time to work out and to take care of yourself. And I and I believe you're also a vegetarian. Piotrek Bodera (1:09:46) Yeah, yeah, yeah. True on buffer cunts. Ryan Li (1:09:48) So yes, that's something I could definitely do more of. I have a couple of business partners and at different times, like one of my business partners, he focused a lot on his health and going to the gym and then now my other business partner, he's he's been doing the same and yeah, it's amazing how you can transform yourself if you take the time. I mean everybody should take the time, but I can't really unfortunately I'm not the best example on on that one. But I I myself also need to get more into that and take better care of myself. I mean, yeah, it's hard when you put a lot of time and focus into your projects and other things like that. But yeah, I think people should follow you more, Peter enough, Mike. Yeah. You're always running and hitting the gym and eating healthy. You're a much better example than I am. Piotrek Bodera (1:10:40) Yeah, yeah, yeah. To be clear, it's not about finding on purpose what we do or we don't do. It's more like I want to have this part of our conversations where we don't forget that we are still human beings and we still need to rest and to socialize and do other stuff than work. So I'm curious because you mentioned the vegetarianism as a first point. Is it something also that started when you moved to Asia? Ryan Li (1:11:10) No, actually it started when I was still in the US. I used to be in a band actually. I played the guitar and I was kind of into like the punk rock scene, I guess. punk and ska core and things like that. And I don't know, maybe I feel like at that age, fifteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, it was also partly trendy. So Yeah, that was something I kind of got into at that time. And then actually later on when I was turning sixteen it was my mom passed away. And she yeah, she had a a massive heart attack and it was actually a surprise to everyone because she didn't have any kind of health issues or condition pre existing conditions or anything like that. It was her first heart attack as well, but it was the one that took her life and It was just me and her living together. When I was younger, my dad had you know, gone a different path. So just my mom and I. And yeah, so like just one day I woke up and and my mom was taken from me. So I think that was a real turning point, honestly, for many things in my life, because I realized that we probably better watch more closely what we put into our bodies. Not that that was the main thing that caused it. It was probably more to do with like stress and many things in her life, but I think that it's definitely one of the contributors is just eating healthier. So at that time is actually when I became a vegetarian was when my when my mom passed away. And then after that I just I stopped eating meat for like two or three years, I think it was. And then I just mentally couldn't think about eating meat anywhere. I didn't feel like it was something that I should do. But honestly, living in some countries, a little bit of Korea, a little bit of Philippines, some different places, I actually did try chicken on and off for a couple of years, two or three years after becoming vegetarian. But it especially today, like with all of like the tofu, the soy and mushrooms and all these things, like I don't I can't tell the difference between real chicken or fake chicken or things like that. So for me it doesn't really matter. I don't understand why we still feel the need to eat meat and s especially seafood. I was never a seafood eater. I don't like fish at all. I don't like any seafood. I've never really had any I've never eaten crab or shrimp or snails or any of these things. I can't even imagine. Like for me it's not even human food, but I understand a lot of people love it. So but I don't have a problem with chicken, honestly. But again, I I don't see a big difference between eating like breaded fried mushroom with the right s seasoning and sauce. It's almost identical to chicken to me, but I couldn't be grown. Me moving to Asia was also partially possible too, because I did lose my mom at an early age and so I kinda was forced to grow up very quickly on my own because I didn't have my dad around at the time. It wasn't until some years later that we became closer and you know, I grew up too and I I better understood life and p and his decisions and everything. And so we have a we have a good relationship today. But at that time it forced me really to grow up very quickly and kind of do things on my own and shared apartments with friends and worked jobs to survive on my own and and then eventually made my way to Asia. Piotrek Bodera (1:14:54) Yeah, I'm I'm sorry to hear that. and thank you for disclosing that part of of your life. It's interesting how this kind of changes drastic changes can push us into some direction and then it affects us in a hopefully positive and healthy way, yeah that we are at least more mindful, as you said, about what we are eating and the nutrients. of our dishes. So I I I feel like it's it's important. I do it as well because of that. Yeah, that that most of the meat or most of the cheap meat that is kind of available in many different forms, very high processed, it's not really good for us. Ryan Li (1:15:45) Right. Piotrek Bodera (1:15:46) Just one more thing, because I mentioned burnout and I'm interested if That's something that ever happened to you? You know, kind of the cycle when you are working a lot and you feel like, it's just too much, or you still manage to kind of find some balance and never get to this part where you're feeling very depleted by work. Ryan Li (1:16:11) Yeah, actually I wanted to touch on that as well. I I realized that maybe you were not only talking about health, but also in regard to work in particular. I do think that it's important to diversify. So obviously if you're working on one thing all the time, all day, every day, you're gonna most likely get burned out. I think for me, I am working on so many different things. throughout almost every day. I mean, sometimes, yeah, sure, I do need to focus on one thing in particular, but I do have that situation where I can move on to another project and come back to that thing or whatever it might be. And for the most part, since I do like technology and I'm working with some pretty cool stuff with whether it's Web3 or Metaverse or whatever it is, I mean, a lot of it's really fun stuff. And a lot of it to do with my startups and stuff is like it's it is more difficult to burn out on that. And obviously AI plays a big role now, helping a lot with a lot of various things, especially the more tedious tasks and stuff like that. Like even just last night I I had an idea and I just fed it to my AI before I went to bed and I woke up and it was mostly how I had envisioned it. And then I just started to tweak it, you know. And it's pretty awesome that even when I'm asleep, I'm still working Basically Piotrek Bodera (1:17:39) Yeah. Ryan Li (1:17:40) sometimes I'll check my phone and I'll just check and see if there was an update from my AI and I'll be like, Yeah, carry on, do this. And you know, sometimes it likes to try to stop and wait for your feedback or input, but then yeah, I just wanna not waste any time. So I give it some feedback and let it continue. But yeah, I think really the key to preventing a burnout is to have more than one project that you're working on. ideally enjoyable projects, whether it's a hobby project or another client project or something like that. That helps a lot when you can pause on one thing, take some time on another. I mean, people often ask me like, what is your hobby? And unfortunately my hobby is so close to my work. Yeah. It's like it almost seems like the same thing. Piotrek Bodera (1:18:27) Yeah. Ryan Li (1:18:28) Every Monday morning we have a meeting for my US company and people come to the meeting and they're like, how was your week? And I'm just thinking, There was a weekend? I don't even remember. Like every day every day's the same to me. I just work, but I'm not always work working. I'm working on my own things. I'm working on fun things, hobby things, client things. It's a bunch of different things. So I think it is harder to get burned out in that situation. Piotrek Bodera (1:18:55) Yeah, yeah, it's it's really interesting to hear that tapping into different domains is your way to kind of making space in your mind and remain curious and engaged and just happy with with the progress with the tinkering. one thing, because you mentioned that you can spin your AI for the night and then wake up in the morning and see like, yeah, you follow with my initial thought. Would you consider this is like a sci-fi scenario, but maybe not that sci-fi in a few years? Would you be open to transfer yourself, your thoughts, like everything you ever created and then the your whole life experience into a machine and let it live as some sort of an avatar? Ryan Li (1:19:45) I think so. I think I'm one of the first people on the on the front lines to to sign up for anything that's somewhat like that. Either I don't know I don't know about whether it's becoming a cyborg or s a little bit of biohacking or what, but yeah, I'm definitely interested in that sort of thing. Especially if it's something that we own, like where we own our own data, if it's a local L L if it's a platform that we're able to run fully offline, then That shouldn't be a problem. Yeah, if you ask me that question and we upload it to like Microsoft, no. I don't want to do that. I don't I don't want to do that for sure. Or Google or even Apple, honestly. But yeah, technology is gonna get better, our hardware's gonna get better, LLMs are gonna get smarter, we're gonna be able to do more locally. Piotrek Bodera (1:20:37) Yeah. Ryan Li (1:20:37) My setup is a combination of local LLMs and also various APIs through Anthropic and OpenAI and stuff like that. But yeah, I'm open to whatever. I mean, if it's technology and it's useful, I'm open to it. Piotrek Bodera (1:20:53) Yeah, excellent. So I can't wait for the next episode that we'll conduct it between my AI avatar and your AI avatar. Ryan Li (1:21:04) Yeah. Yeah, we should do that. Piotrek Bodera (1:21:06) See it in the near future. Okay, Ryan. Thank you very much. where people should follow you online, where you are the most active. Ryan Li (1:21:17) Well, honestly, I've tried to do, you know, Twitter, X, IG. I tried a lot of different platforms. I don't honestly share a lot of personal stuff on them. And I often find myself repurposing them for various startups. So like you'll you'll see my name on it one day and then the next day you'll see like a different startup logo and name on it. So I would say probably LinkedIn is the most clear way to find me. That's the one of the only ones that I maintain is a more business professional social networking platform. Yes. Piotrek Bodera (1:21:53) share. Thank you very much, Ryan it was a pleasure. I am really amazed by the experience and the stories and everything you you shared here today. So once again, thank you very much. Ryan Li (1:22:08) Yeah, thank you for having me, Piotrek It's been a pleasure. Piotrek Bodera (1:22:13) Thank you very much for listening. The best way to support the Nerd and Tour Podcast is to subscribe, review and share it with friends. Go ahead and do it directly in your podcast app. For more digital nomad stories, follow me on social media and check my blog, where you can ask questions and comment on each episode. Most importantly, please subscribe to Nomad Tuesday. It's my weekly newsletter about all things digital nomad. Each Tuesday you will get an intriguing email from me with fascinating travel destinations, practical tools or fresh podcast episodes. Subscribe at nerdontor.net