Trump Brings Uptick in Sales at Chinese Restaurants?

Sana: 00:00:14

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm here standing beside your host, James Newcomb.

James: 00:00:21

And, ladies and gentlemen, good evening. I am standing next to your host, Sana Dorey. We are co hosts of this show, Bavo Stahn. Welcome.

Sana: 00:00:34

You're welcoming me or the audience? Because I'm already here, and I know I'm welcomed.

James: 00:00:39

Yes, you are welcome. It's nice to see you. And we don't have. Okay, let's set the stage for what we're doing here. We are putting together a comprehensive definition of.

What does Voan mean?

Sana: 00:00:55

Ask me how am I doing?

James: 00:00:56

Okay. Sana, how are you doing?

Sana: 00:00:58

Couldn't be better.

James: 00:01:00

I'm glad to hear that. Okay, so as I was saying, we're putting together a episode that is like a comprehensive definition of the word Voishtan, which is Persian.

And the best way that I can describe it to Americans who ask me, what does it mean? Is it basically means conscientious. It's like conscious. There's, like, just your. Your conscience telling you what is right, what is wrong.

You sometimes use the term. My Voan doesn't allow me to do this. Right.

Sana: 00:01:36

Right. My conscious doesn't allow me. But for rest of the world, it's just. Okay, so what is it so important you're making a podcast out of it?

It's just conscious, but nobody knows.

In Persian cultures in centuries back, conscious itself create kind of a religion at home, become basis of family and how people act, behave, talk out there in a society.

James: 00:02:02

Consciousness. There's a lot of podcasts that are focused on the word consciousness. One of my friends, a client of mine of ours, I should say, Jennifer Hill, hosts.

She hosted a show called Regarding Consciousness, and it's still on Apple if you want to check it out. She's had some great interviews. Yes, that's Kendra Kumarhani.

Sana: 00:02:25

I don't know him.

James: 00:02:26

That's the super bowl halftime show.

Sana: 00:02:28

Right. But I don't know him.

James: 00:02:29

Right. We chose to not watch Kendrick Lamar on the super bowl halftime show and instead record this podcast. How can so many people fit into that car?

Sana: 00:02:41

They're coming from bottom.

James: 00:02:43

Yeah, from the bottom. Yeah. We had an eventful weekend this weekend, didn't we?

Sana: 00:02:50

Yep.

James: 00:02:51

February,: 2025

Sana: 00:02:54

Right.

James: 00:02:55

Yeah. Tell us about it.

Sana: 00:02:58

Well, it was very restful.

James: 00:02:59

Yes.

Sana: 00:03:01

We did a lot of productive things.

James: 00:03:03

Yes.

Sana: 00:03:04

Actually, I forgot. What did we do Friday evening?

James: 00:03:06

Friday evening I did some work, and.

Sana: 00:03:09

Then you picked me up from Mall of America.

James: 00:03:13

Yeah, the Mall of America.

Sana: 00:03:14

And I bought you your, I think, 10th sunglasses. Because James loses sunglasses.

James: 00:03:23

That's one of. That's one of my hidden talents.

Sana: 00:03:26

You don't lose this one, I'm not gonna spend another $300 on a ray Ban.

James: 00:03:31

Sana gave a very nice gift. Very expensive sunglasses. They're awesome. They're wonderful.

Sana: 00:03:37

They're not really expensive.

James: 00:03:39

Well, I used them today in the sunlight in Minneapolis with the snow, which can be blinding.

Sana: 00:03:47

Right.

James: 00:03:47

And they are wonderful.

Sana: 00:03:49

I would say, by far, they're the only brand that most doctors prescribe.

James: 00:03:56

Yes.

Sana: 00:03:56

Nobody could beat them. Especially polarized one.

James: 00:03:59

Yes. Yes. So that was Friday evening. And then yesterday I did a little work, and you did some work around the house and chillaxing, relaxing.

Sana: 00:04:10

We went for a Chinese hot pot.

James: 00:04:12

Chinese hot pot was last night. You have an interesting theory about this, because we've gone to this hot pot. Hot pot is. There's a.

If you're not familiar with it, envision a large bowl of broth at your table, and it's boiling, and you bring in your raw meat and your raw vegetables, seafood, whatever you want, and you cook all of this stuff right in front of you in this boiling pot of broth or soup. So that's hot pot. So that's something that Sana and I do on a regular basis.

Sana: 00:04:47

Basically cook it in front of yourself. Yeah, you cook it, wait until it's done, and you eat.

James: 00:04:52

Right. Take it right out of the pot and you eat it.

Sana: 00:04:55

And it doesn't have a specific taste because it's just a normal, original broth with no seasoning. You boil the stuff. But what makes it tasty is the sauce.

James: 00:05:06

They have this whole bar of sauces and garlic.

Sana: 00:05:08

They're ingredients you can mix up to make your sauce of your favorite sauce. But if you don't make the sauce tasty, the whole experience going to go down.

James: 00:05:18

Yeah, it's all about the sauce.

Sana: 00:05:19

There's a metaphor in life for that.

James: 00:05:21

Makes or breaks the experience. Yeah. What's the metaphor in life in that?

Sana: 00:05:25

So we have all these blessings around us. God given us all these resources, and sometimes we go to church and we pray. God, thank you for all your blessings. You're so undeserved.

But sometimes we don't understand what that phrase means, you know? But when you know, you use those resources in the right way, not only you, that blessing become something very good in your life.

It flourishes your life. It does develop your life. It makes it beautiful. But also you can use that to bless others.

So that sauce, the ingredients that you use to make the other resources. Whatever ingredients we pick up from the fridge, you kind of add that to it. It's just like God gave us the brain.

But a lot of people just decide not to use that brain. It's just as time grows, as the time goes and the grow up, the brain, brain shrinks, you know, and okay, what is the use of it?

And then they will be blaming God. Oh, God, what's going on in my life? Why am I not going anywhere? Why My neighbor is driving Escalade.

I drive a motorbike from Vietnam, you know, because you're. God gave you. The biggest resource in your life is your brain. You know, behind our eyeballs, there are 10,000 neurons.

Each neuron is connected to 1 billion neurons and more.

We are on this world sitting every Sunday, go to church, explaining who is God, but we still don't know how to explain what's happening behind our eyeballs. So the God that we go to church and pray given us such a big resource, we don't even use it in the right way.

And every Sunday we go to the church and we lift up our hands and say, God bless my family. Bless me. Bless more. Bless me. Last week. Can you bless me some more?

James: 00:07:25

Yeah, it's just like this, sitting on Santa's lap saying, I want this, I want this, I want this. It's really no different.

Sana: 00:07:33

I know. It's just so weird. And we go to this hot pot place.

James: 00:07:40

Back to the hot pot.

You have this interesting theory because we've been there many times going back, I think we've been going there for three or four months on a probably first month.

Sana: 00:07:50

We used to go there like three times during the week and then go Saturday lunch and Sunday lunch.

James: 00:07:55

Right. It got to the point where they'd say, okay, see you tomorrow.

Sana: 00:07:57

Yeah. So there is this waiter over there from Malaysia. He's not Chinese, he's Malay. Yeah. And he always say, bye, see you tomorrow.

James: 00:08:09

Anyway, the times that we've been there have been, you know, we go there and there's. There's a couple there. There's maybe a family there. It's not. It's not full and there's a lot of seats there.

There's a lot of tables and it's not at capacity, not even close to capacity. We've been there and the busiest that we've seen is maybe four or five tables are occupied while we're sitting there.

And we're there for an hour and a half, two hours, sometimes three hours. Yeah. Because you can take your time and Eat as much as you want. Stay there as long as you want. Anyway, we go there last night and it's. It's packed.

There's probably 20 tables there, and they're all full. It gets to the point where they're even filling the tables that are in the middle of the restaurant.

Everybody likes to have the tables that are on the. On the walls and on the windows. But yesterday it's so full that they're even filling the tables in the middle of the restaurant.

And Sana has this theory about this, and she said, this is all about Trump. Trump has demonized China. And now people, if I understand your theory correctly, people are saying.

Sana: 00:09:22

I didn't say demonize.

James: 00:09:23

No, no, you didn't say those words. He put those tariffs on. And in effect, he's making us. He wants us to believe that China is.

Sana: 00:09:31

And all Americans know, if we ask them to empty your house of any Chinese product, they end up sleeping on the road.

James: 00:09:39

Yeah, yeah. Everything is made in China.

Sana: 00:09:41

So they want to support Chinese now.

James: 00:09:43

All of a sudden, because there's this pejorative in our minds about China from Donald Trump. And so Sana's theory is that people are maybe unconsciously rebelling against Trump, just.

Sana: 00:10:01

Supporting Chinese people in America because of.

James: 00:10:03

What Trump has said about China. Something is your theory.

Sana: 00:10:06

It's not even negative. It's just funny.

James: 00:10:08

Yeah. And I don't know. I don't know if. We don't know if this is true.

Sana: 00:10:11

Even today, when we went to this.

James: 00:10:12

Buffet, we went to a Chinese buffet today, and it was packed.

Sana: 00:10:17

It's not supposed to be that.

James: 00:10:18

Unbelievable.

Sana: 00:10:19

They are busy all the time, but.

James: 00:10:21

Huge restaurant, this hibachi place, overrun with.

Sana: 00:10:24

Not that busy, Overrun with people.

James: 00:10:27

It was crazy. So Sana's theory is that this is the American peoples who have this deep seated loathing of Donald Trump unconsciously rebelling against his.

And the thing about Trump is that when he does these tariffs, he doesn't really think that these are going to go into effect. Like he. He announced that. He announced that there's going to be this 25% tariff on Mexican products, on Canadian products.

And then within 24 hours, Mexico says, okay, we'll send 10,000 troops to the southern border. Canada says, we'll send 10,000 troops to the northern border. And this was his strategy all along. He had no intention of what.

He doesn't have the authority as the President of the United States. He's a powerful guy, but he can't just say there's gonna be tariffs. He doesn't have that kind of authority even in modern America.

Sana: 00:11:27

I know he just put, I think 10% tariff on Chinese product and China shoot us back with 5% more. 15% on. There are 3,4 tariffs came back from China. 1 and 4.

James: 00:11:42

The point is that these are politicians doing politics. And for all we know that Mr. Trump has no intention of placing any tariffs on anyone. This is just a power move.

And in the case of Canada and Mexico, it worked. It was effective because they said, okay, that's what he really wanted.

He wanted security at the borders to stop the flow of fentanyl and illegal immigrants coming over the border without authorization.

Sana: 00:12:12

Actually, something on positive note, I have a friend who is an engineer on refinery in some part of Canada, I think near Alberta. He was saying that we are actually happy the tariff on the natural resources like gas, oil, because I am trying.

He said, I'm trying to resign for so long because I've already ready to retire myself. And he's very young. He's 43, 44 years old. And this could make, you know, our organization to lay off people.

And I want to be the first one on the chart because resigning is so painful. And I understand him because I'm like that, too. When I start working somewhere, I reach to a point, I feel like maybe this is not for me.

I need to go for another place. But I cannot resign. I feel my voice down or my conscious doesn't allow me to do it because I already give a promise that I'm going to be there.

And I just don't want whatever I reply to my interview questions to just be another somebody who prepared for the interview, you know, they were genuine. And I want to show that I am genuine. Whether they want to keep me or not, or when it's time for me to leave, I want to have a good reason.

So I'm like him too. It was like, maybe this tariff will, you know, actually do what I have to do for a long time ago. And I want them to lay us off.

So a lot of people want to use that as an opportunity to, you know, have a restful life than working so hard. So it's not that bad.

James: 00:13:50

So that was Saturday, and then we talked a little bit about today.

Sana: 00:13:54

That was not all about saturning.

James: 00:13:56

No.

Sana: 00:13:57

We started watching a movie and I fell asleep.

James: 00:14:00

Remember. It was published in: 1957

Sana: 00:14:12

We're gonna watch it tonight.

James: 00:14:13

Yeah, we'll finish it tonight. If you've. If You've ever seen Sleepless in Seattle? You've seen that, right? Yeah, Sleepless in Seattle.

Sana: 00:14:20

All the old movies I watched with you. Because you like to watch movies that are suitable for your age.

James: 00:14:24

Not all old movies. There's a lot of movies that are old that we haven't watched.

Sana: 00:14:29

I understand, honey. You like to watch stuff that are more understandable for your generation.

James: 00:14:34

So anyway, Sleepless in Seattle is based off of they're going to meet at the top of the Empire State Building. You remember that part? And the affair to remember is they're going to meet at the top of the Empire State Building.

She gets into a car accident, breaks her leg, so she can't go up there. He gets up there and says, where's the love of my life?

of. There's no cell phones in: 1957

She has no way of getting in touch with him and saying, I, you know, broke my leg. I couldn't make it. So that's the. That's the. The movie in a nutshell.

So I've just saved you two hours of watching An Affair to Remember, but highly recommended those movies. I like to watch them because they are. There's a lot of really deep insights in the writing that you don't find in movies today.

American movies, I should say. Americans, generally speaking, don't have a palette for deep stuff when it comes to mass media, in my opinion. And so we will part ways.

This is James Newcomb. And this is Sana. Sana. This is James and Sana coming into your earballs. You've been listening to Ba Vocdan.

Listen to us on your favorite podcast player. Learn more about us@vojdan.com. v O J- Double A, N.com not G, J, J. Yeah, I said V, O, J, D double A, n dot com.