The typhoon 9 entry

So Hong Kong got hit with a T9 typhoon signal which makes it a pretty bad-ass typhoon. But now we're back to a mediocre T3 signal which makes it a lame one again. It's good to enjoy the peace of your own room when it's going wild outside. I usually like to go out during typhoons and enjoy the craziness. It's a different feeling when you go out wanting to get wet, you're carefree and fearless and face the hard rain head on.

Speaking of being fearless, I recently went to Singapore to help out at a Comedy workshop as well as be a guest performer at that first and only open mic in Singapore! It was a great experience to see how some of my A-grade bits turned into C-grade bits and also great to meet all the comics there! Man I really want to learn Singlish (Singapore accent English) now :P I must say, everyone there has such a good heart and is willing to take out their spare time to help towards creating a comedy scene there. It's also great to see how people are fearless to go on stage and take advantage of this rare opportunity. Sure, not everyone was hilarious but you could see the sincerity in their speech, their willingness to embrace failure to seek the path of success. Motivating.

I also recently gave a speech at the Employees Retraining Board (ERB) in Hong Kong to a group of ethnic minorities and shared my challenges with getting work and income in Hong Kong, being a foreigner. I suppose I took a different approach, I kept reminding them that being different is a good thing. It's like saying everyone sells hamburgers, why compete on that level of who has the best hamburger? Go a whole new route and sell fishburgers! It was interesting to meet a lot of people, some of them were there writing notes about things such as books I suggested they read, others sat there with hopes I'd give them a job offer. There was a wide range of personalities. When it came to the Questions and Answers session, I must admit it was sad to see that a lot of the audience were so stuck in the box of "I need to find a job" that they forgot about stepping out and looking at the big picture instead. I mean, if you took a little time out and thought about why you didn't have a job, it may trigger a lot of responses and answers such as "perhaps I need to have a skill that differentiates me from the rest?". In many ways that triggered a thinking process in my mind as well. I realized recently, I've been so swamped with my own work that I had lost site of all the goals I had before. Goals such as improving my drumming, writing new comedy bits, enjoying life, rewarding myself, etc. All I'd been doing is get stuff done. Sure I got a lot of stuff done, but at the same time I only got that stuff done, I didn't improve much as a person. My skills haven't been upgraded and my comedy vault has grown stagnant. Having watched Ted Alexandro last week perform woke my comedy side up and really made me realize there's so much more I can do with the opportunity I've got. For one, I could use a comedian website so people interested in me and read about my upcoming shows, my personality and even get to enjoy some new stuff :) The good news is I've added it to my GTD, the bad news is it's at the bottom of a list of 53958304242 things to do.

So all I can say is today's the day I get these wheels rolling and rolling fast. I need to clear this stuff out, and step out of my box, look at the bigger picture and re-consider a lot of stuff. I just hope I don't burn out halfway through it all. But if I do, well maybe I'll just go for a walk in whatever's left of the typhoon. Have a great 10 days and step out of your box!