100 words a day

Having a teenager is a pain in the ass. The snarkiness I can handle, but the snarkiness while being ignorant just makes me want to tear my hair out because it makes me feel like I've failed as a parent in more ways than one, like I've failed to teach him manners and I raised a stupid kid. Me, my wife and my son were flying back from Singapore yesterday, and we looked up at the big board to check which gate we were boarding at. My son says, "G1!" and starts rushing off. I said, "Wait!" and I took a few more seconds to look at the board. He was exasperated. Then I said, "It's not G1, it's G10." Our flight, AK712 was flying out of gate G10 to Kuala Lumpur. Gate G1 also had a flight to Kuala Lumpur but it was flight AK710. I looked on our boarding pass and our flight was AK712. But my brain had just absorbed all this information and I hadn't yet found the words to explain all this to a rushing teenager, so we went back and forth like this f

 I only want two things right now. 1. To wind up my father's company properly and quickly, so my siblings and myself don't have to stress anymore about it. 2. To reinvest the money before my wife spends it all, so that she, me and our son will have some income. I tried to think of a third thing but actually everything else is insignificant. Even comedy. I think I gave up the dream somewhere along the way, even if I never wanted to admit it. I would not mind it if I found a way to enjoy comedy again, but chasing a comedy career doesn't seem to be the way for me. Sometimes I think I am hanging on to comedy because I am afraid of having no identity. Honestly, I've lost the drive for it and although I would not mind finding it back, realistically, it's quite possible that I might never do. This is all old man talking. I wish I could tell all this to my son sometimes, but I don't want to burden him more than I already have with my tiredness.

A long time ago, when I was in university, I played an online game, I forgot what the name was but it was a MUD. Sometimes new players would come on and ask how to play the game and someone will give a snarky reply - just press the play button. I was always fascinated by this concept of a play button, because most games have tedious parts and sometimes, they are improved through updates by removing these tedious parts that players had to go through but if we removed all the tedious parts, maybe the game would be too simple and it would just be like a play button. You press the button and you're already playing the game and of course, that would be no fun at all. Nowadays, I sometimes wonder if I don't actually like living and I just want to press a live button. I don't actually want to do anything. We just got back from a trip to Finland and Singapore and I don't really want to go anywhere after this, at least not for a long while. I don't want to organize any come

Around 2013-2016, I did quite a bit of what most Malaysians call, for the lack of a better term, political comedy. What I learned from it was, most of the time, people aren't into it. And I noticed the best time to do it is right before elections. After elections, it's just not really worth talking about the dumb things politicians do or say. People just aren't that interested. I never figured how why but I recently did, so I'll share it with you. Most of the time, when we say look how stupid this politician is, look how bad this situation is, look how ridiculous our country is, we're just complaining without providing a solution. Nobody wants to be reminded how fucked up everything is. They came to the comedy show to escape from that.  And even when we do provide a solution, it is a comedic one and not a practical one. And this is true most of the time, except right before an election. Like a week before election, yes, we are still ranting and raving about how stup

Some days, I feel like I'm worthless and I can't contribute anything to society or to even to my family. I know how to drive a car, automatic or manual. I know how to ride a bicycle. I know how to speak, read and write in English and Bahasa Malaysia, and to speak in Cantonese and Mandarin somewhat, and I know a few words of Japanese and French. I know basic html. I know how to edit and color correct videos in DaVinci Resolve. Not enough to be a professional editor, or colorist, but enough to put make videos look decent. I know how to put a PC together. I know how to read guitar tabs, and how to set up and tune a guitar and I can play Tears In Heaven and Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out. I know how to write jokes, not enough to be a full time comedy writer on a daily or weekly show, but enough to write a joke from time to time and entertain people.  I know how to sharpen a knife and a chisel and do some basic woodworking. With the right tools, I am quite sure I can

Okay, this post is about video and audio equipment and it's going to get geeky and I apologise for that. Years ago, if you wanted to record yourself on video, you could either use your phone or a camera, but neither one is perfect. If you moved at all, the footage would be shaky unless you put your phone/camera on a gimbal, but then that whole contraption would be heavy and bulky and attract way too much attention. Then someone figured out that you could just use an action camera, particularly the GoPro Hero 7 Black. It was tiny, waterproof camera with great electronic stabilization that could record in 4K. But it overheated easily, so you mostly shot in lower resolutions and even then, it would sometimes freeze up for no reason and you would lose your recorded footage. If only there was an action cam that was more reliable. And then there was. DJI came up with the Action 1, which was reliable but didn't have a wide enough lens. Then they made the Action 2, which was wide and h