10 years old. This blog is double digits!

So, this is a shock to me. My blog is now officially 10 years old. That makes me a pro blogger?! Well, no, that's the 10,000 hours practice concept. Anyway, so how are things?
The last 6 months (well 4 since I was 2 months late with my last major entry) has been a whirlwind of an adventure, but I have to say, after all the seeds I've been planting for the last 10 years, working on myself, my career, life in general, I feel like I'm in a really good place. OK so I'm writing this on the 1st day of a 5-day cruise gig I'm doing (and technically I only perform 3 days later so I'm 'on holiday' for 2 days!) and I just went for a workout, ate a bunch of really good food and am now in my room enjoying a bunch of music I have offline from Spotify (there's a playlist of game sound tracks and man it's awesome because it mixes horror, action, war, funky, etc. games so one moment I'm tapping my feet, the other moment I'm scared as I reply emails lol).

Lucky for me, I managed to totally focus in my hotel room getting essential online work done (because the internet is very limited on the cruise) and now all I have to do is my own stuff that can be sorted out offline.

So a lot has happened but a few things stand out, well it's only been 2 months but I've already done 3 cruise gigs so far, spoke at another TEDx event (this time at my old secondary school! What an honor!), worked out a bunch of stuff for our upcoming (high risk) run of 12 Cantonese shows in Melbourne for the comedy festival... did a bunch of awesome cantonese shows this year in different venues and I'm still searching around for more opportunities for that as well. So comedy-wise, it's happening, oh it's happening big time.

Fitness-wise, wahahah let's just say all these cruise ships means every meal is a buffet and well that's my kryptonite as in no matter how hard I try, when I'm at the buffet, an extra plate of dessert sounds A-ok....so last time I checked, I was at 14.7% body fat but judging from my recent travels, chances are I'm at 16%... I guess you win some and you lose some. But the cool thing is I'm much stronger than before and I'm getting better at my hand stands. I'm able to hold off the wall a bit more now but still need to work on it so I don't need the wall at all. Olympic lifting has improved and my general mobility has improved a lot so it helps with all my snatch/clean/jerk moves. In general, I'm enjoying my fitness routine and I'm at a point that I have a bunch of stuff I want to do. I've been reading up a lot about fitness in general, reading classic books like Starting Strength and others.

Web-wise, well this is up and down. I still have my old clients from before and I'm very happy working with them as we understand each other's rhythm in work so that is good. On the other hand, I totally need to update my funnyvivek.com and I've got all my files ready to work on this cruise ship. I'm re-branding everything and making the whole site up-to-date (looks and photos... let's just say I have less hair on my head heh). Also need to update our Viveknfriends.com website to reflect the new direction we're heading towards.

Well I got a bunch of travels lined up which means even my looking for a flat will havec to wait till May this year. We're only at the end of February and I'm already planning for May. Interesting, I used to plan like 1 month in advance but now it's like 2 - almost 3 months! Woot!

I've got a lot lined up for the next 6 months and I'm curious to see what happens in 6 months' time and where I'll be writing the entry from (so I've done it on the plane and on a ship, maybe on a train? A ferry? A helicopter? Or maybe finally back to normal on land lol).

I have to say the coolest thing in the last 6 months is that I've been invited to speak at many different events, from social groups of entrepreneurs interested to hear the business angle of a self-sustained/managed stand-up comedian, to schools curious to know how they can do something as bizarre as stand-up comedy for a career. The best thing of all this are the questions session in the end. Once the ball gets rolling, people have some very interesting questions that make me think a lot to make sure I know what I'm talking about as well.

Anyway, so now the ultimate questions, what will happen in the next 6 months? Well now I'm focusing on the next 6 hours and as I always seem to notice, time flies and before I know it, it'll be 6 months. Until then, bon voyage on your journeys as well!

Oh travels you are harsh...

Welcome to the glamorous life of a traveling entertainer. A lot of people speak to me and say they wish they could do what I do -- travel the world telling funny stories that I experienced or crafted. Yep, I don't deny it, I'm extremely grateful every time I get to do this. But what a lot of people miss is the weird yucky side that involves anyone that finds themselves heading to the airport at least monthly (unless you work at the airport in which case you win lol...)

So here I am, sitting at the Singapore cruise terminal after having to wake up at 6:00am.....as usual, every time I board a cruise ship, there is always some glitch, something they didn't tell me or a total waste of my time. Thankfully this terminal has wifi, or else I'd have totally lost my mind.

I arrive along with everyone, I line up, get the usual security scan treatment, then after sitting and waiting, they come out and tell me I can only board the ship at 11am. Contrary to the other crew members who board at 8am.... so now I have 3 spare hours, 1 Clifbar and no intention on snacking on chips and pre-packaged sandwiches...when I am going to be buffet-ing for the next 4 days. Ah well, I guess I'll have to re-brand this as a fast.

Luckily, there is wifi and even more thankfully, I had the smarts to go to sleep at 10:30pm last night so I caught up on my sleep (I slept for 2 hours the night before...)

My biggest issue isn't really about all this stuff, it's the fact that it could have been easily avoided if people simply told me what time I'd board the ship. I could be in my hotel room now working on new material to entertain their guests but instead, I'm stuck outside the public toilet trying to find where wifi is strongest while keeping my eye out for my luggage.

Don't get me wrong, I still won't trade my job for anything else even if I have to deal with stupid stuff like this every time, but it's just one of those things that drives you nuts.

Either way, thank you for having wifi :) Slow, but still connected!
Happy 10 days everyone!

Woah that's a lot...

So it's February and today, today I'm burnt out. I think it's my 2nd burn out day of the year so far. And we're just in the middle of Feb 2017!? But to be honest, this time it doesn't feel like a frustrated burn out but a really fruitful one. From looking back at the last few weeks to seeing what I've already accomplished in the year so far, at least I'm not feeling tired and empty, but exhausted and satisfied (though I would love to have a bit more gas in me to get through a few more items for the day).

In case you missed it, the G-1 Fight Club show I was on is now available on Youtube, so you can check it out here (no idea if it's the official channel):

It's all 13 episodes of Season 1 and it's still great to watch even though I was there live and I saw every episode when after it aired.

Another cool thing is I got to speak at my secondary school at TEDxDBShk last night and man, thank goodness I did alright and didn't end up getting detention for what I said :P No idea if they'll put the video of the talk up but I'd love to keep a copy of that, could very well be my last TEDx talk before I go completely bald...

So how are things for 2017 for you so far? I have to say, other than eating a bunch of junk food (because I either do that when I'm in a really bad mood or really good mood and this time it's because of good mood), the year has been going well for me. Not to say it's been easy but at least it hasn't been beating me up every other day. I'm actually fairly excited nowadays which is wrecking havoc in my sleep quality because I'm excited to wake up again, which was what I was like when I started my business like 10 years ago. Not to say I wasn't exited after that, but it was not like this where I'd go to bed thinking "is it morning yet!?"...

Either way, enjoy the next 10 days and if you're into it, Happy Valentine's day, and if you're not, happy yet another day where everywhere with a heart sign is stupid expensive.