The truth about cafes in KL

In our very first episode, Shawn sets himself on a mission to explore the new cultures and identities in Malaysia. He felt the urge to inform and to keep people up to date with the cultures and identities as a consequence to the effects of the pandemic and people's busy everyday life.  Shawn gives an introduction of himself, a self-reflection and talks about his personal experiences with the cafe culture. Doing so will provide a small look into his personal life in an effort to get comfortable and share a connection with the listeners.  As the episode progresses, Shawn will talk about his Tinder date, which will be a reoccurring aspect of the podcast throughout all episodes. By the virtue of his dates always taking place in the new contemporary cafes located in Klang Valley, it serves as Shawn's motivation to investigate further about cafe culture. This is because, on every date that Shawn goes on, he always finds out something new about cafes. Essentially, his Tinder dates influences the topic that Shawn will investigate further in the podcast.  Shawn soon discovers that due to rising  prices, his favourite humble kopitam and many other kopitams are at risk of closing down.  As a result,  Shawn attempts to uncover truths about cafes in Klang Valley. 

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This episode was planned to provide a solid foundation for our cafe culture series in order for the following episodes to be associated with one another.  The production of this episode was exciting yet nerve wrecking as we wanted to ensure the content provided is sufficient and thoughtful towards the culture. Due to cafe culture being a relatively new culture, it is not a culture that has an abundance of research conducted about it. We had to be careful when depicting information to portray the culture, fearing of misrepresenting cafe culture. On the account of the handful amount of academic resources available, we had to comprise by utilizing sources such as food blogs, websites and personal experiences.