Live from Beijing, ASMR Experiments and Street Wandering

Aug 17, 2025 8:16 am

This Week: Live from Beijing, ASMR Experiments, and Street Wandering

Broadcasting from the streets and from the seats, this week saw us go live on a couple of occasions and a glimpse of what Beijing is like. Answering questions and giving information, this week was all about experimentation and exploration.

🎵Listen to the latest podcast episode

Available on Libsyn, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube

🎥 This Week's Videos

☕ LIVE from Starbucks in Beijing - A comprehensive livestream covering everything from AI tools for teachers to life in China, business ideas, and the challenges of content creation. 👉 Watch here
🎬 To Melbourne! | ASMR - Experimenting with a new format—a collection of travel shots from Melbourne without forced narrative, just pure visual experience. 👉 Watch here
🚶 Walking Around Beijing - Exploring the Shuangjing area, from local food shops to JD Mall, with a map included for those who want to follow the route. 👉 Watch here
BONUS! Idioms and Natural Conversation - A little teaser of a course I’m working on for those who need help expanding their vocabulary. (Secret View Link HERE)

☕ LIVE from Starbucks in Beijing

A little sit down on Monday morning as the rest of the city went to work, I went to the cafe… if you consider Starbucks to be a cafe. Although it was unannounced, we did receive a few questions (thanks Danny!).

Topics Covered:

– AI tools for teachers (grading, assessments, and IELTS prep)

– Resources for ESL teachers (Dave’s ESL Café, Transitions Abroad, Reddit)

– Creating an IELTS course & newsletter

– YouTube, podcasts, and creative workflow challenges

– Trying out ASMR and other video ideas

– Reflections on teaching different age groups in China

– Selling/monetizing online (YouTube, livestreams, WeChat)

– Chinese study tools (Yodao pen, local reading materials)

– Identity verification, visas, and doing business in China

– Taxes and apostille requirements for documents abroad

👉 Watch the full video

🎬 To Melbourne! | ASMR

Trying out a new form of video: ASMR.

To be honest, I’m not sure if this is a real type of ASMR as I just call it “found sound” or “location sound”. I guess the real purpose for ASMR videos is to provoke a response from your viewer’s body, eg, someone eating a pizza. Apparently this is huge in South Korea where “mukbang” is all the rage, that is, people live stream while eating.

I hate it when they mic eating scenes. Worse than nails on a chalkboard.

But cityscapes and nature? That I can do.

Since I tend to take a lot of photos and videos while travelling (always with the thought that I’ll piece something together… later), I figured I’d try it out on the channel.

Well, the response has been overwhelming: not much enthusiasm for this still of video.

Pity, because I had a few more in mind (South Korea, Canada, China?)

Take a look through the link below.

👉 Watch the full video

🚶 Walking Around Beijing

Another Thursday and another live stream. This one mostly worked but apparently cut out when I was at the Burger Shop (map below).

Some places visited or seen in the video:

-Food shops in Shuangjing

-JD Mall (JiuLongShan)

-Guangqu Road

-Bakeyang St

Map of area walked (the walking :

👉 Watch the full video

BONUS! Idioms and Natural Conversation

Finally, a little teaser of a course I’m working on for IELTS test takers: how to use idiomatic language naturally.

This video discusses some of the common (and cheesy) idioms that students learn when preparing for the IELTS test. “In a donkey’s years,” “Over the moon”, “It was raining cats and dogs”, these are old, cliche and hardly ever used. Instead, I provide a series of phrases and vocabulary that sound natural and academic at the same time.

👉 Watch the full video

We'll leave it there for this week. Thanks for reading. I hope you found this useful.

📩 Questions or comments? Just reply to this email.

Hope you’re well,

Steve

PS - I guess people prefer me to write these emails out myself as opposed to using AI. Not sure how I feel about that as it does take some time, but, time permitting, I’ll do my best to piece them together on a weekly basis.