25 October 2013

The "Spirit" is strong in this one

Well, it's day 10 and I come with good news. I have been awarded the Hong Kong Spirit Ambassador Award (along with 7 others) this year.
Everyone who won had a great, inspiring story to tell and it was a real honor to hear what they'd been through and how they are not only over that dark period, but also thriving on life.

I'll be invited to different secondary schools to speak with students and share my life's story with them in hopes that something clicks and inspires them to pursue that dream they always had (even if it ends up as a side-project). So far I've had some good response from this event, both press coverage and also schools contacting me to invite me as a guest speaker. The most interesting thing is I received emails from my web clients congratulating me on this! I love it how everyone is so much faster than me in noticing....me :P

Anyway, so the next few days, weeks and months are going to be super, duper busy for me with my work, gigs and school sharings so I'm looking forward to a very, very fruitful November 2013. Go figure, when 2013 first started, I'd never expected any of this.

14 October 2013

When traveling, it gets hard

Hello from Singapore! Well, in around 3-4 hours time I'll be on stage performing at the always epic Comedy Masala show. It always feels good to take a moment to just take in the fact that I'm once again blessed to be doing stand up comedy, especially now that it's out of Hong Kong!

I've also got another big gig lined up for Kuala Lumpur:
That's right, I'm going to be performing with 3 other super, duper comics in the Asian region:
  • G. B. Labrador: I first met him in 2009 at the HK International Comedy Festival, after I saw his act in the English competition preliminary round, I asked him to do me the honor of being my opening act for my first English one-man show
  • Rishi Budhrani: I met him in Singapore when I first started comedy masala and we've had many gigs together including Karma Komedians in Singapore!
  • Jason Leong: Met him when I was in Kuala Lumpur for the first time for Kings and Queen of Comedy Asia 2...ever since then, our tastes and social skills (the lack of it)
Update: So here I am 5 days later in Hong Kong already. It's always weird when I start a blog entry and then find myself almost a week later, picking up from where I left off.

So the Comedy Masala show was fun! It's always a great crowd there! I got to hang out with some people after the show and it was nice just talking and then headed back to the absolutely awesome Wangz Hotel room! After being put up in small, tiny hotels the last few times, it was overly-refreshing to get a wonderful room!

Before I continue, if you haven't heard the song by Daft Punk called Get Lucky, stop everything and check it out. I first heard it on the Colbert Report when they were supposed to appear on the show but had to cancel at the last minute.

Then I went on Groove Shark and heard the rest of the album. I have to say, ever since watching Metallica live in Singapore, I've found a new love for live experiences especially with music. I suppose I have to be totally into that band to truly enjoy it. I mean, I remember going to watch Slash when he came to HK, but since I wasn't very much into his stuff, I couldn't fully enjoy it. On the other hand, I will never forget the epic Lamb of God show I got to enjoy many years ago. I know every single song of theirs and man, it felt like every song was the song I wanted to hear! Ahaha, hopefully one day that'll happen for comedy :P I mean, Jerry Seinfeld did it in his I'm telling you for the last time where I'm sure most of the audience went to go hear specific bits.

It's quite odd, this comedy thing, I've actually done gigs where people booked me and told me which bits they wanted me to do, I've also had gigs where people told me "I want all new material, if I've heard it at your show, it better not be at my party". Woah!?

Well on the brighter side, I've finally had a chance to sit down properly and go through my endless comedy ideas/notes and already found some good gems that just need some proper love and polish and hopefully it'll turn into comedy gold! One lesson I've learned from comedy is that what doesn't work today may work tomorrow. I mean it doesn't exactly help when you have too many ideas, but thanks to the digital world, I'm not too worried about storage, so I can hoard away! Long live instant searches and storing stuff on the cloud! :D

Speaking of the cloud, now that I have 300M Fiber-to-the-home broadband service, I can finally take advantage of the cloud like I've always wanted!! So yeah....umm..happy uploading both ideas, files and what not.
Enjoy your next 10 days!