大家有呷飽齁？OK，好！OK─

The world is my playground.

In 2001, I graduated from MIT.

不是Made In Taiwan(台灣製造)

I graduated from MIT in 21S.

Now before any of you say, “Oh MIT, oh, can you fix my computer or…”

“Oh, I have this really complicated math problem to solve”

Uh,uh

I graduate in 21S. Now, for those of you who non-Beavers or non-MITers, what that basically means…

is that I graduated from the world’s top Engineering school

with a degree in Spanish.

Hola!

Ok, so I love to travel.

I learned languages because I love to travel.

It is my passion.

And in travelling you do need languages, but sometimes,

I always tell my friends you don’t necessarily need to be able to speak a language

to have a great travelling experience.

For example, there’s a time that I went to Cambodia.

Now we went to see Angkor Wat, and it was great, everything was awesome.

And there are some vendors outside and they were selling some things that are a little bit like barbeque.

Now I was like, “Oh okay, that’s really good!”

So I went over there and I was like “Excuse me. What is this? Is this chicken? Or beef? Is that pork?”

Their reply was...

That’s a fluent Cambodian by the way.

Then I said, “Okay. How do I get my point across?”

I always can’t speak Cambodian and they can’t speak English also.

And I said, “Excuse me, is this chicken?”

Oh, this guy he was very very happy because now we finally had a way to communicate, right?

He said, “Oh!”

Excellent! So I bought two. You know two little Kebab things.

You know I started eating it and I thought that as I was eating it, I was like, “This is not chicken”

You know instead we eat chicken breasts, chicken nuggets.

This thing it was like a little bit crunchy on the inside and you know a little fatty and there’s crisp on the outside.

"This is not chicken!"

So I went back and I was like, “Chicken?”

Very very happy like,

That was my introduction to chicken butt.

So you do languages and that is a great thing.

And travelling that is my passion.

And I really wanted to always do something that involves travelling in my profession.

I wanted to think what can I do in my career

that involves something I really love which is travelling.

I always thought I was gonna be a doctor.

I wanted to be inspiring. I wanted to make a difference in the world.

I wanted to come to TED to give a speech.

You know these are all the things I want to do as a doctor.

As luck would have it, right after I graduated, I got a job here in Taiwan

在榮總天母消防隊

I was working as an Emergency Medical Technician.

I was really excited to come in Taiwan as in first time I came to Taiwan.

My parents are both Taiwanese but I couldn’t speak any Chinese

我來台灣時只會講台語

Actually, that’s not true. I can say three things in Chinese.

Very simple stuff. You know Ni Hao. That’s everything that we know it’s easy. Hello!

And then Xièxiè, that’s easy too.

我姓謝嘛！

So thank you. And then the last one was one that my friends taught me.

They said that Taiwanese are some of the nicest people in the world.

They’re very friendly. You must be very polite.

You must say “Hello! Nice to meet you!”

你要說：「你好，你的頭很大！」

I got tricked you see.

So here I was in 榮總 Veterans General Hospital going around all these big top shot you know hotshot doctors say, “Hello! You have a very large head!

Anyways because of this opportunity that I had at 榮總 that I came to Taiwan to learn a little about my heritage.

It was also at that point that somebody came up to me and said “Hey! Do you want to be a model?”

I was like, “Okay. Yes sure! Why not?!”

So I did it. It was fun!

And then the opportunity came back and actually be a model here in Taiwan.

But damn it! I had to give up my medical school.

Wooo! That didn’t go well with the parents.

In fact my dad is right here right now.

I remember what he was thinking,

還用想噢！絕對是回來當醫生啊！有什麼好想的！

It was a tough decision. I really really struggled with this.

I’ve been preparing my whole life to be a doctor but now these opportunities come out to be a model.

It’s not something I ever really planned to do but you know it’s something exciting. It’s something new, different.

It was really difficult to decide to choose.

First I had to consult with my parents. That was very hard.

Then I had to come in to myself. That was even harder.

But you know what, what finally helped me make my decision was I thought if I really wanna do something,

if I really wanna to be doctor, forty fifty sixty, I can be.

I can go back to school. Sure, it’ll be a little more difficult but it is possible.

Nothing is impossible.

You know I can be a doctor at 60 years old.

If I want to come back to Taiwan and be a model, as a 60 year old, that might be a little bit more difficult.

So I took the risk. I came back to Taiwan and I started doing modelling work

and yeah there’s ups and downs. I started from nothing.

I mean I studied at MIT. We didn’t have any sort of like taking picture type of thing.

I remember my first molly is where they like okay smile for us. Okay!

Okay, do a little bit of a sweet smile. Okay!

Okay do something sexy. Okay!

That was how I started.

Eventually I thought that this is it. I’m pretty much done with it.

I want to go back home. I think I’m ready.

Things weren’t exactly going exactly how I wanted.

This is really really I wanted to do.

Right before I left, another friend of mine said, “There’s this audition for a show called ‘Fun Taiwan’. Do you wanna go?”

I was like “Okay sure, why not?!”

So I went there. I went to the audition and by some luck some chance, they said, “We want you to be the host.”

And so I thought here I was, ready to go back to the States again and now somebody’s offering me a job to go around,

experience all these cool things, meet these new people, and pay me.

COOL!

So I took the job.

Now, it is my dream job. It really is something I absolutely love.

But don’t get me wrong, I had my fair share of mistakes.

When I first started, again, language problem.

I remember I was being all confident.

This is郭爺爺. He’s a 79-year old surfer in Ilan.

Very famous, he is in the centrum commercial if you’ve seen it.

And my producer he’s trying to encourage me, “Okay, you need to lead him."

妳要領導他

You know,‘coz you’re the host.”

So I said, Okay okay.

我要領導他、我要領導他...

So,we got to the scene, we got to this set, we’re filming and it’s me and 郭爺爺.

Okay, I wanna use my Chinese. Okay, I’m really good, okay! Here it goes.

54321

Ok We're filming.

欸~郭爺爺！你可不可以鷹道我去衝浪啊？

Yeah basically I just told Mr. 郭 to vagina me to go surfing.

No wonder he looks so happy in this photo.

This has been a tough job and a lot of people don’t know this but we work 10-14 days.

That’s 100 plus hours of footage for one show for 47 minutes of Fun Taiwan.

We really do work very very hard and there are these days like “Oh my God. Have I made the right decision? Did I make the right choice?”

But at the end of the day, I look back in my life and this is what I love to do.

This is my dream job. I mean who gets to do this for a living?

Who gets to climb to the top of Jade Mountain, swim with the dolphins, and playing violin while rock climbing and feed sharks.

Okay, a lot of people are looking at this video, “I don’t wanna feed sharks for a living. Are you crazy?”

But really, I wake up every single day, excited about work.

This is what I really really love to do and I’m lucky .I’m lucky that I have this opportunity. You know, this job to do things that I love.

And, you know, there are times really when I look at my team and they also work very very hard.

You really have to love what you are doing to be able to wake up every day and enjoy what you are doing and be passionate about it.

We’ve been filming Fun Taiwan, Fun Asia now for 5 years almost 6 years.

And people ask me, “How do you have the energy? Don’t you get bored? Don’t you get tired?”

I can honestly say that I do love what I’m doing.

Who gets to wake in the morning and fly a sea plane for work unless you’re a sea pilot, I guess.

This was just on a recent trip that we just took in Queensland.

We went to Queensland.

昆士蘭那邊

And this was my first time ever flying a plane. I don’t have a license.

I was just so so excited

我真的很期待

What happened was this is a small sea plane.

We have me, the pilot, the two cameramen - one is filming outside, one is filming me.

And then we have two people in the back. The sound guy and also the production assistant.

And this is my ending - the ending of the whole episode. I’m really excited.

I’m flying the plane, and I’m looking at the camera, he’s behind me basically the audience.

I want to prove to the audience.

我要讓大家知道，我真的在開飛機

So I’m like holding the plane and I’m like, “Oh my God! This is so awesome! Can you believe that I’m flying a plane?

I’m really flying a plane. See?

No! Really!

真的真的

Okay, how many of you have flown with a plane? I don’t know

if you know this maybe you probably know this, you can not only go left to right.

You can actually go up and down. Of course this is what I also had to prove to the audience.

So I was like..

耶！真的可以往上往下耶！你看

Here I was, having the time of my life, flying the plane, and then we get out, we arrive, we land the plane

and I’m like, “Oh yeah! This is so cool. This is so cool!”

Then I turned back and I’m like “Wasn’t that awesome?”

I was looking at the team.

Yeah, things are so much different when you’re actually in control.

When you’re actually behind the wheel.

完全不一樣

I am constantly still making these mistakes. Don’t get me wrong.

I mean language is still always a problem and I still make mistakes

like just recently actually I was learning Taekwondo.

In Taekwondo, you have to do a certain kicks and you have to kinda use your waist. Sometimes use your hips.

I’m asking the teacher so I wanna know when you do the sidekick, do you use your waist, do you use your hips, right?

So I said,

老師不好意思，你在踢的時候...是靠腰嗎？還是靠背？

All the time. I mean really I make some of the worst most embarrassing mistakes.

Another thing that I did recently, we are at the press conference for a boat launch,

and I’m very nervous because they had everybody there.

像是郝龍斌、馬英九...

Everybody was there at this press conference.

And here I am holding my notes, and it’s all in Chinese, and I can’t really read Chinese, it’s all pinyin,

那是皇后號，你有坐過嗎？

It’s a big boat launch. I’m like okay live cameras everywhere, everybody is looking at me.