Geopats 46: Kelly Merks: The Comfort of Mundanality Online

 

In this podcast episode we chat with Kelly Merks, a Texas expat who has lived abroad since 2011, in Japan and in the Netherlands. Her Twitter bio tells is: “A Texan full of fernweh (NOTE: “fernweh is a German word that means “ A Farsickness or Longing for Unseen Places.). Noob knitter and clay thrower. Fairy godmother of @WeAreXpats, a project of @xpatarchive: http://wearexpats.org “

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@WeAreXpats is how Kelly and I first met online and connected over discussions of place, social medianess and expat life. For those of you not familiar with rocur accounts, they are rotating accounts where usually 1 person in that category (in this case, an expat) tweets for a week and then the account will rotate to another person after that. Kelly started this rocur account while she was a volunteer at the Expatriate Archive Center in The Hauge where she now is their Public Relations Manager. Outside of the EAC, Kelly also is raising a tiny human with her husband and somehow finds time to write about her geographic pondering in her blog, Bullet Trains & Bike Lanes.

If you like this episode, feel free to buy me a coffee here: 

 Kelly’s Info:

https://xpatarchive.com/

http://wearexpats.org/

Kelly’s culture comparison blog: Bullet Trains and Bike Lanes

https://btabl.wordpress.com/about-the-author/

Show Notes:

-China Influencer Podcast : http://www.chinainfluencermarketing.com/

-U.S. centric websites that Kelly stopped using overseas: Hulu, Netflix

-Line: Japanese messaging app, which is also very popular in Thailand (Kelly says they have the best stickers but I, as a WeChat user in China, am very skeptical!)

-International Podcast Day WhatsAppinar presentation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUSZqdH5DDE

-Janeane Garofalo: “living every day like it’s my last is exhausting…” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u03J-CelRaU

-Pico Iyer TEDTalk, “Where is Home?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m6dV7Xo3Vc

-Being Tokyo rocur account: https://twitter.com/beingtokyo?lang=en

-Yi-Fu Tuan, Geography Scholar who focuses on placelessness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yi-Fu_Tuan

Would love to hear from you! Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn  & you can even leave a voice message on Speakpipe

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Music courtesy of Damon Castillo, https://www.damoncastillo.com/ , song "I Hope You Figured It Out" on the "Mess of Me" album

Check out all of our podcasts: https://stephfuccio.weebly.com/

This episode was created with:

My microphone, Samson Q2U
Remote video software, Zoom
Auphonic, leveling software
Podbean hosting site: Get 1 month free, https://www.podbean.com/virtualexpats