High 5 (years anniversary)

Wow. I cannot believe it's been 5 years since I started this blog! And in celebration of that, I shall....get back to work :P
The the future me when I read this post for some random reason, I just wanted to let you/me know that it's a peaceful Saturday morning, kind of like the calm before the storm because from here on till 1.5 months later, I'm going to find myself packed with to do's to check off and visits to the airport at least a couple of times and almost a whole day on a plane combined.

So if you/me survived through all this, then I suggest you/me stop and get some ice cream to celebrate this entry.

Yep, a very pointless post, but just the way I like it ;)

Storing crazy thoughts in an asylum

If you're a Batman fan and are interested in video games, stop everything you're doing and check out Batman: Arkham Asylum. Last week, after feeling totally burnt out and frustrated on Sunday, I decided it was time to play games and I chose this game because it had Game of the Year attached to it and 2 weeks later after having finished the game, I understand why. This game brought me back to the joyful days of Alone in the Dark. Man, those games kept me hooked for hours and days but were totally worth it. I know I've found a great game when I feel perfectly fine playing it instead of "working".

The coolest part about that Batman game is its mixture of story, puzzles and plain, awesome violence. You get to learn more about each character as well as Batman himself and one of my favorite parts of that game is the Riddler's challenges. They almost always involve Wordplay and it forces you to sit and break down the sentence bit by bit to solve the puzzle. Having played this game, it reminded me of university when I took that game design course and learnt how freaking difficult it actually is to design a fun game. At the end of the day, a game is only as fun as the actual game. Not the graphics, not the cool effects, not the concept, but the actual experience during gameplay. Otherwise why would Alone in the Dark be so much fun when you're character has diamonds for hands?

I'm also almost done with the book I'm Dying Up Here. Awesome story so far, hearing about how the comedians from the 70's united and tried to fight for their right to be treated properly, like any other professional performer! I've been struggling recently to find the mental energy to sit and work at my comedy, partly because all the web projects I have on hand are relatively fresh and that means they all require designing and I've realized that I have a limited dose of creative energy everyday. After around 2 proper designs (I'm talking starting from scratch till I've got something I feel the client is ready to see), I'm done for the day and probably can't genuinely work on something creative for at least 4 hours (playing games works even when I have 0.0001% brain power left, oddly, just like you have space for dessert after a heavy buffet).

After having watched the extremely funny Tom Cotter last weekend, I was totally re-inspired to work at my craft but reality set in and usually by the end of the work day, nothing is funny to me anymore (well except some of Riddler's challenges).

Update: I'm continuing this literally 24 hours later and I actually thought today is Wednesday (when it's actually Thursday). Woah. Somehow this week feels like a  day was lost somewhere... I suppose I must have been enjoying it since the time flew so fast I didn't notice it :P
I guess it's time to enjoy the next 10 days as well!

The dragon's roar

Things have been busy but somehow, it seems like the busy-ness isn't madness anymore. I don't find myself sitting around, yet I haven't been fully burnt out in a while (except for yesterday, ahah).
The last few days have been great. Particularly, I got a chance to speak to the CEO of www.alivenotdead.com casually and we discussed our common views of being organized as well as our differences in tackling things like emails. He's suggested this to me before and I've tried it but boy it's quite tough -- To deal with today's emails...tomorrow.
I tried that out for a while, but my curiosity and need to get things done wore me down and now I'm back to the GTD system of tagging items and creating next actions, then dealing with them one by one... it's still not perfected, but so far things are moving along smoothly.

On another note, tomorrow's the big day for Legend Fighting Championship 7! This time, they're putting the undercard fights live on Youtube! So check out their Youtube Channel and catch the fights at 4:30pm Hong Kong Time! I'm particularly excited about this event because the match ups are awesome!

I'm currently reading, well more like listening to I'm Dying up here via audible.com. It's great to learn about the comedy scene in the 70's and how it developed. Not to mention, learning about the stories of many of today's famous comedians and celebrities. It's kind of re-enforced my passion and mentality with comedy and the scene here in Hong Kong. There have been shows and times that have left me empty inside but it's cool to remember that 40 years ago, things were very similar back in the States.

By the way, a few days ago, it finally registered in my mind, I'm 29! Ahaha that's 1 year short of 30! Woah! I can't believe I'm here, I still have scribbles of things I wanted to achieve that I wrote when I was 23! I remember telling myself "when I'm 25, my web business needs to be running smoothly". Ahah, well thankfully my goals have been flowing smoothly, but the weirdest thing is, I can still picture myself sitting on the couch when I first told myself this stuff. Yet, I can barely remember what I have to do sometimes without consulting my to do list. Oh well, at least I'm remembering things memorable to me :)