Bus Rides, Living Overseas, AI, and Strategies for Learning ANY Language

Sep 14, 2025 7:47 am

This Week: Bus Rides, Living Overseas, AI, and Strategies for Learning ANY Language

Taking the bus across town, thinking about what it's like living overseas, what is AI good for if not for building my own language APP, and how to learn ANY language.

🎵Listen to the latest podcast episode

Available on Libsyn, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube

🎥 This Week's Videos

🚌Taking the bus across town - Taking the “scenic route” back from Changping to Shuangjing, this upcoming video showcases what it’s like to take the bus in one of the world’s biggest cities. 👉 [Coming soon!]
🌍 Is it worth it to live overseas? Insight from 15 years abroad - Is it worth it to take a “take a career break” or even start a career overseas? This video discusses some of the implications and things to consider. 👉 Watch here
🤖AI for language learning - Tucking into a new skillset (maybe it’s no surprise), but right now I’m focusing on building. 👉 READ BELOW!
🎯 10 Strategies to Learn ANY Language - Originally published last year, this is a short ebook I created to get people started learning their language of choice. Does the advice still hold true? 👉 FREE EBOOK!

🚌Taking the bus across town

In a forthcoming video, I venture across the city from Changping to Shuangjing by bus. I often try to avoid using the bus due to all sorts of hassles but, given the time I have and associated costs with taking a cab, but is it worth the trip?

👉 Coming soon!

🌍 Is it worth it to live overseas? Insight from 15 years abroad

In what seems to be an annual review of the topic, this video discusses some of the things to consider should you want to go overseas to live.

As I come up to eleven years in China, I wonder if it’s worth suggesting that other people go live overseas, particularly my young nieces and nephews: should young people today go abroad for a certain amount of time or should they stay in their hometowns or home countries? This video considers the move from the side of having left the home country many years ago.

👉 Watch the full video

🤖AI for language learning

If you’ve been following along for a while, you’ll no doubt know that I’m a big proponent of automation and other AI-related workflows. A large part of the behind the scenes admin work of the YouTube channel, podcast, and other outlets are automated, even if it means only copy+pasting from one website to another.

However, my other interest is in creating applications that can help people learn their target language. My focus would be in two areas:

Mandarin Chinese, particularly learning to read characters early on without the use of pinyin.
English, wherein I basically automate my job.

Now, to be clear, I don’t think AI is going to replace the need for language learning (despite what Apple is putting into their headphones), but I do think the era of learning from one APP or textbook is over. If anything, much like my own classroom work, I think APPs and learning platforms are going to be ever-adapting to the needs of the learner.

Although I’ve only dabbled so far, this is something that I’m working on right now and will let you know more once it’s complete.

The one thing I can say is: remember that Chinese course by email from last year? Well, I’m looking to re-do that this year with a bit more of a filled out learning experience.

👉 Chinese course by email HERE

🎯 10 Strategies to Learn ANY Language

Finally, an ebook that I originally created last year based off of a video we did for the YouTube channel. Now, a year later, are these methods still valid? Would I change anything? Add or subtract components? Find out this week on the podcast as I revisit these ten strategies once again.

Want a copy of the ebook? Download HERE.

👉 Listen to the podcast HERE

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