Sam's Sanity Diary

I keep thinking I was very bi-polar this week. Let's see. Monday - Feeling energetic. Called a tax consultant to ask about starting an enterprise. Closed Andre's open mic at Hush Theatre. Killed it. 2022 is going to be my year! Tuesday - Took the son to the Royal Selangor Yacht Club for his sailing lesson and spent the whole day there, then rushed home, changed and rushed to the Joke Factory open mic. Killed it. Met my buddy Sam See who is up from Singapore. Thenesh, Steven Bones, Vishnu are all back on stage. Feels great!  Wednesday - Went climbing with the son. Had some good climbs. Dropped him home and rushed to the Crackhouse open mic, where I was the closer. I feel like I'm doing well in climbing, comedy and as a dad.  Thursday - Tired. Just spent the whole day looking at furniture on the Ikea website. Felt unproductive and mood was low. Friday - Spent 3 hours looking for my wallet and dreading all the people I have to see to replace my ID and credit cards. Found my wa...

  This is my mancave. Believe it or not, this is the one part of the house where I can reliably find my stuff. If I have an important item I don't want misplaced, I will misplace it in this room. Then, at least I know that it is me that misplaced it and I can deduce where I would have put it. I'm slowly trying to turn this into less of a mancave and more of a work space. The amount of time and effort that has gone into decluttering this room is highly disproportional to the amount of things I managed to throw out. In fact, I overall, I added more things to the room! That table in the middle of the room is new and I bought some new plastic containers. If you see the door to the left, that's the toilet and inside the toilet is a rack. That's new too, kinda. I always had it disassembled and tucked under my workbench but recently decided I needed more storage. It's cheating. I'm moving stuff into the toilet. It's a temporary solution, but at least, I'm not c...

 Ah shit! I think I really lost my wallet this time. I repeated looked at all the usual places - the bedside drawer, the counter top outside my bedroom, the area around my main computer, the kitchen counter top, on the sofa, the dining table, the bookshelf in my man cave, the keys drawer. I have not seen it anywhere. I have misplaced my wallet and my glasses numerous times before but I have this sinking feeling that this time, I really dropped it somewhere while I was out or maybe I got pickpocketed. I'm still looking around, hoping against hope that it is somewhere I just didn't see or somewhere I forgot to look, because I am really dreading having to replace my ID and drivers license and my credit cards. I definitely do not have the energy for it today. Fuck me! I spent yesterday cleaning up my man cave and was quite happy with the way it is slowly turning into maybe a usable space for my work this year (Recording Youtube videos, keeping important documents sorted). Now I...

The roast went well. I beat Mike in the first round and lost to Mik in the second round and I'm happy with that. I didn't want to win but I also didn't want to put up a bad show, so I guess I did what I set out to do. All in all, it was more fun than I thought and it was a good exercise for the brain, but I'm not sure I'll do another one. One thing that happened though, was Sam got Asyraf to do a short set to open the second half and he did a joke based on one of my premises (Asian women who wear bright contact lenses are scary. Don't judge me. I respect women. You have to hear the joke). He said that was his take on the topic. I didn't really hear the whole bit because I was thinking about how to roast Mik, so I'm not sure how I feel about it. I guess I'll have to watch him and listen to his bit again to see if this will cause problems for me. I don't think it will but until I find out for certain, it's a source of anxiety for me. He's a...

Okay, I wrote my roast jokes. I hope it's enough for tonight. As always, I should have done this days ago, so that I didn't have to be so high strung the past few days. First round is against Mike, and if I win that, the 2nd round is against the winner of the Nat-Mikhail matchup. I only needed 4 jokes each, but I panicked and wrote a few extra just in case. I love my friends and I don't mean any of these things, but here's what I wrote... Vs MIKE SADDI Mike once auditioned for the role of a Klingon in a Star Trek movie and got rejected. They said his forehead was too big. Fortunately, to take attention away from his forehead, Mike has this giant belly.  Mike’s kid is the only kid in the nursery who has to put up with Yo Daddy So Fat jokes. When Mike heard there was a roast, he was super excited and called me to ask if it was a roast pork, roast beef or roast chicken.  Mike’s arteries pray every day that Jollibee doesn’t open a branch in his neighborhood. Once they...

I'm just going to list out the things that are stressing me out right now so that I won't be as stressed out, so this is totally boring, there is no entertainment value and you will not learn anything from this entry. 1. We're planning a family trip. I enjoy travelling but it also always stresses me out plus this will be our first overseas trip where we have to worry about Covid. I am going to have fun on this trip and I'll make a video or two for Youtube but until that happens, I'm stressed out about it and I'm stressed out about even telling people about it (which I have not done). Worst case scenario: We catch Covid there and have to spend a week in quarantine. 2. A lot of things are gridlocked at work and I can't talk about it and I can't do anything about it right now,  so I am going to try my best to bury my head in the sand until I can actually make some decisions about it. Worst case scenario: I can't talk about it but it's going to be ok...

I listened to my recordings from 2013-2015 and Oh My God, I was so funny back then! I need to get back that confidence and that swagger that I lost somewhere along the way. I want to be the younger me again. Am I trying to be someone I'm not? I was so happy then. I want that back.

The only real advice I could give to any new comedian is to record all your sets. Record all of them and watch them back. Or get an audio recording and listen to them. I have not been practising what I preach. For the past several years, I have been getting an audio recording of most of my sets but I have not been listening to them. Yesterday, I sat down and listened to a large chunk of my recordings from the past 2 years and I was shocked at how inaccurate my memory of how I did at shows were. I remember doing well at the second night of the Giant Show and that was true. I remember doing well at all the shows my wife was at and that's sort of true. The show I was so bummed out about on Jan 1st, I actually did okay. I was getting laughs. I could have cut down on the waffling a bit, but it wasn't as bad as some of my other shows that I remembered doing okay in (those were actually really bad). So don't be like me. Listen/watch your recordings. It's like giving yourself l...

Okay, here's the situation. I suck. I accept that. And my jokes suck. It is possible that I may have to write a new 40-60 minutes of solid material before I can do my hour. My wife and son wants to go to Mexico for a month, so that's complete family time which means I'll not be performing, writing or thinking of comedy. If I'm going to do my Show in October, I have nine months to write a new 40-60 minutes. I don't think that has ever been done before in the history of stand up comedy. But I am going to try. I have to try. I am going to have to be the kickass comedian I always thought I was.  No problem. Because I kind of kick ass. Even though I suck.

I paid for, downloaded and watched Louis CK's two latest specials Sincerely and Sorry. I know about the sexual misconduct cases, of course. I don't know what to tell you except I wanted to watch some Louis CK specials and I didn't want to steal them, so I paid for them and watched them.  Did I think it through and have a big debate with myself about whether that was the right or wrong thing to do? No. Actually, yes, I did - a couple years ago and I came to no solid conclusion. I couldn't figure it out back then and I probably never will and I just don't have the energy right now. Be honest - do you have a big debate with yourself about the ethics of every purchase you make? If you do, then good for you. I don't. I think what he did was not right, but I also don't think he should be lumped together with rapists. They didn't even call it sexual harassment. They had to call it sexual misconduct, which was something I hadn't even heard of before that. He...