Into the final quarter
Yes yes it's been too long. Maybe I've been too scared to face my thoughts, my reflections. Maybe I just haven't had time, running around desperately making this wonderful life of mine work.
Responsible citizenship
So let's start with being a good Malaysian. Save our judiciary (oh dammit requires a Facebook account). Ok this one's good too. Check it out, e-mail the dude, sign the petition.
Moving on to being a good Earthling. Join the protest against Burmese (Myanmarese?) tyrannical crackdowns. According to my Dad, 50 years ago Burma was ahead of Malaysia. HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED. That's what 20 years of military dictatorship does to your country.
Just to add to that note, Sri Lanka was ahead of us 50 years ago too. Now's what happens when civil war doesn't end. The Philippines were ahead of us 30 years ago (in fact, even ahead of Japan). Now's what happens when corruption is rife, and military coups come by every so often. Are we fucking lucky? Hell yes. We have it so damn good here, we have to compare against the best in the world to get upset.
Of course it's no bed of roses, but we're actively making things better (start with that petition). And we generally fight hard against overly dumbass behaviour. So, so far so good.
Life's a stage...
... and the stage is my life. In a nutshell - Tunku's over, rocked. Next up, Rose Rose I Love You (blog here). Yay, first supporting lead role! Name on postcard!! KICKASS!!!
Possible Christmas event at a shopping mall, to be confirmed in a week or so. Little dance sketch at the end of this month, which I'll find out more about soonish. Possibly stage managing a KLPac production in Dec. Possibly directing a short play I wrote, in 6 months; more info when 1) the play's written and 2) I know more.
Helping out The Oral Stage with setting up auditions for their 2 forthcoming productions (a triple-bill in end Nov and The Illusion by Pierre Cornielle in mid Dec) and managing their people database. I so love that kind of data. The Illusion's audition will be this Saturday, which should be an interesting and fun day. Interested, e-mail people.theoralstage@gmail.com to book an audition.
Their auditions last weekend was most enlightening. It was posted on kakiseni and sent out to friends of TOS, with a reasonable turnout. Some of the characters that turn up, wow. It's quite an experience sitting on the other side of an audition table. After the event, I went nerdy on the results and seems that 67 was quite a key number.
- Percentage of people who booked auditions from the number of contacts: 67%.
- Percentage of people who turned up for the audition after booking: 67%.
- Percentage of people who can possibly act from the turn-ups: 67% (by my generous estimate).
Invaluable experience, in terms of both sides of the table. I understand better why people can be hesitant about open auditions. I also see better what works and what doesn't work as an auditionee. Funnily enough, the person who irritated me the most was not the person who rambled pointlessly like he loved the sound of his own voice, but the person who took too damn long to do everything. Tell us about yourself: 3 minute answer (avg time being 1 min). Perform your monologue: 1 min to start it, 1 min to restart it, can't remember if I stopped him after 3 mins. Perform the readings: 1-2 mins to start each (of 3) readings. Do improv: 1 min to prepare, 1 min to restart. Holy shit fuck off my stage!
Another interesting point is feedback. I've been dying to give some feedback on what they could do better, but I'm reserving it for people with the initiative to ask. So far, only a few people (who know me) have asked. C'mon, sure it's hard to hear that you sucked, but don't you wanna know how NOT to suck at the next audition?
Money makes the world go round...
... and my world revolves around making enough to sustain this journey of mine. To be self-sufficient. To be able to shove it into someone's face and go - see, I did it, now go away and don't presume to tell me what to do!
Unfortunately, Tunku took a toll on my Agel and I've yet to get that engine running again. I've recently finished reading Timothy Ferriss' brilliant Four-Hour Workweek, and I'm so inspired. Been scrounging around for ideas for an automated information business, anyone with potential ideas and a desire to be more in this life give me a yell.
But thinking about all this people database thing, I've just been thinking about having some kind of actor's database here. A one-stop destination for actors, directors and producers to find each other, something superior to what kakiseni currently has. It would maintain good, clean records that ensures a certain standard to the applicants. No more "I'm a singer... for the tone-deaf club". Could it work? Not financially, but as a service for the community. Hmmm must test.
The written word
Just finished Mitch Albom's For One More Day. Brilliant brilliant brilliant. It's my first Mitch Albom, and I finished it in under 24 hours (I think). Simple, poignant, tear-jerking. I try to apply it to myself, to see what lessons I can learn from it and be personally changed by it... but I just can't. There just aren't those moments in my life. I don't know lah.
Through a magnificent series of fortunate events, I landed myself with a freelance writing job... for a marketing e-zine. Pays amazingly well for a relatively short article - I just hope my marketing bullshitting skills are up to par. Done the main article, just gotta review a book called Leadership Brand. Life is good.
Working on a short script for production next year. Working on a musical for production... sometime in my life? Well the theatres are practically packed for the next 12 months so I suppose it'll have to continue on slow-motion. Anyway we'll see.
So I semi-recently wrote a tech article on Aggregators, and had to do some research on it. To cut things really short, check out Google Reader (it'd help more if you had a Google Account). Put in the URLs (links) of all the blogs you read, and it's a one-stop centre for all your blog-reading needs! Handy stuff... except that I've put too many in there and I can't keep up. :P If you've already added blogs as your Firefox as Live Bookmarks, fret not: check out this OPML exporter extension that allows you to export all those Live Bookmarks and then you can import them into Reader (or another Aggregator out there). If you don't know what the hell I just said last sentence, ignore it - your life won't be made better by understanding it, trust me.
Another funky thing I used recently was Gmail (excuse me - Google Mail)'s Vacation Responder. Now it's a brilliant thing to use at the office (thanks Tim Ferriss), and for e-mail addresses for specific functions. I used it for the Oral Stage auditions - it'd just respond to every mail answering FAQs or asking for the relevant info I needed. It's in Settings, the General tab. However, if you encounter problems using it, this thread will help.
Enough seriousness
Indeed. Couple of colleagues from Tunku performed for Reshmonu's MTV - The Way It Makes You Move. Check it out on YouTube. Pretty good video, looks like good production quality. Don't know about Reshmonu himself endlessly swimming.
Now THIS you have to check out for the cleverness of technology. Coolness.
My self-definition of Metrosexual:
Walking into Body Shop wanting to buy a loofah ("bath lily" in Body Shop talk) and walking out spending 10 times as much, with a moisturizer ("clarifying night treatment") and a mask ("3-in-1 deep cleansing mask") in the bag. Sheesh.
fin
Yeah I'm done. About bloody time eh. Quotes coming up!
Responsible citizenship
So let's start with being a good Malaysian. Save our judiciary (oh dammit requires a Facebook account). Ok this one's good too. Check it out, e-mail the dude, sign the petition.
Moving on to being a good Earthling. Join the protest against Burmese (Myanmarese?) tyrannical crackdowns. According to my Dad, 50 years ago Burma was ahead of Malaysia. HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED. That's what 20 years of military dictatorship does to your country.
Just to add to that note, Sri Lanka was ahead of us 50 years ago too. Now's what happens when civil war doesn't end. The Philippines were ahead of us 30 years ago (in fact, even ahead of Japan). Now's what happens when corruption is rife, and military coups come by every so often. Are we fucking lucky? Hell yes. We have it so damn good here, we have to compare against the best in the world to get upset.
Of course it's no bed of roses, but we're actively making things better (start with that petition). And we generally fight hard against overly dumbass behaviour. So, so far so good.
Life's a stage...
... and the stage is my life. In a nutshell - Tunku's over, rocked. Next up, Rose Rose I Love You (blog here). Yay, first supporting lead role! Name on postcard!! KICKASS!!!
Possible Christmas event at a shopping mall, to be confirmed in a week or so. Little dance sketch at the end of this month, which I'll find out more about soonish. Possibly stage managing a KLPac production in Dec. Possibly directing a short play I wrote, in 6 months; more info when 1) the play's written and 2) I know more.
Helping out The Oral Stage with setting up auditions for their 2 forthcoming productions (a triple-bill in end Nov and The Illusion by Pierre Cornielle in mid Dec) and managing their people database. I so love that kind of data. The Illusion's audition will be this Saturday, which should be an interesting and fun day. Interested, e-mail people.theoralstage@gmail.com to book an audition.
Their auditions last weekend was most enlightening. It was posted on kakiseni and sent out to friends of TOS, with a reasonable turnout. Some of the characters that turn up, wow. It's quite an experience sitting on the other side of an audition table. After the event, I went nerdy on the results and seems that 67 was quite a key number.
- Percentage of people who booked auditions from the number of contacts: 67%.
- Percentage of people who turned up for the audition after booking: 67%.
- Percentage of people who can possibly act from the turn-ups: 67% (by my generous estimate).
Invaluable experience, in terms of both sides of the table. I understand better why people can be hesitant about open auditions. I also see better what works and what doesn't work as an auditionee. Funnily enough, the person who irritated me the most was not the person who rambled pointlessly like he loved the sound of his own voice, but the person who took too damn long to do everything. Tell us about yourself: 3 minute answer (avg time being 1 min). Perform your monologue: 1 min to start it, 1 min to restart it, can't remember if I stopped him after 3 mins. Perform the readings: 1-2 mins to start each (of 3) readings. Do improv: 1 min to prepare, 1 min to restart. Holy shit fuck off my stage!
Another interesting point is feedback. I've been dying to give some feedback on what they could do better, but I'm reserving it for people with the initiative to ask. So far, only a few people (who know me) have asked. C'mon, sure it's hard to hear that you sucked, but don't you wanna know how NOT to suck at the next audition?
Money makes the world go round...
... and my world revolves around making enough to sustain this journey of mine. To be self-sufficient. To be able to shove it into someone's face and go - see, I did it, now go away and don't presume to tell me what to do!
Unfortunately, Tunku took a toll on my Agel and I've yet to get that engine running again. I've recently finished reading Timothy Ferriss' brilliant Four-Hour Workweek, and I'm so inspired. Been scrounging around for ideas for an automated information business, anyone with potential ideas and a desire to be more in this life give me a yell.
But thinking about all this people database thing, I've just been thinking about having some kind of actor's database here. A one-stop destination for actors, directors and producers to find each other, something superior to what kakiseni currently has. It would maintain good, clean records that ensures a certain standard to the applicants. No more "I'm a singer... for the tone-deaf club". Could it work? Not financially, but as a service for the community. Hmmm must test.
The written word
Just finished Mitch Albom's For One More Day. Brilliant brilliant brilliant. It's my first Mitch Albom, and I finished it in under 24 hours (I think). Simple, poignant, tear-jerking. I try to apply it to myself, to see what lessons I can learn from it and be personally changed by it... but I just can't. There just aren't those moments in my life. I don't know lah.
Through a magnificent series of fortunate events, I landed myself with a freelance writing job... for a marketing e-zine. Pays amazingly well for a relatively short article - I just hope my marketing bullshitting skills are up to par. Done the main article, just gotta review a book called Leadership Brand. Life is good.
Working on a short script for production next year. Working on a musical for production... sometime in my life? Well the theatres are practically packed for the next 12 months so I suppose it'll have to continue on slow-motion. Anyway we'll see.
So I semi-recently wrote a tech article on Aggregators, and had to do some research on it. To cut things really short, check out Google Reader (it'd help more if you had a Google Account). Put in the URLs (links) of all the blogs you read, and it's a one-stop centre for all your blog-reading needs! Handy stuff... except that I've put too many in there and I can't keep up. :P If you've already added blogs as your Firefox as Live Bookmarks, fret not: check out this OPML exporter extension that allows you to export all those Live Bookmarks and then you can import them into Reader (or another Aggregator out there). If you don't know what the hell I just said last sentence, ignore it - your life won't be made better by understanding it, trust me.
Another funky thing I used recently was Gmail (excuse me - Google Mail)'s Vacation Responder. Now it's a brilliant thing to use at the office (thanks Tim Ferriss), and for e-mail addresses for specific functions. I used it for the Oral Stage auditions - it'd just respond to every mail answering FAQs or asking for the relevant info I needed. It's in Settings, the General tab. However, if you encounter problems using it, this thread will help.
Enough seriousness
Indeed. Couple of colleagues from Tunku performed for Reshmonu's MTV - The Way It Makes You Move. Check it out on YouTube. Pretty good video, looks like good production quality. Don't know about Reshmonu himself endlessly swimming.
Now THIS you have to check out for the cleverness of technology. Coolness.
My self-definition of Metrosexual:
Walking into Body Shop wanting to buy a loofah ("bath lily" in Body Shop talk) and walking out spending 10 times as much, with a moisturizer ("clarifying night treatment") and a mask ("3-in-1 deep cleansing mask") in the bag. Sheesh.
fin
Yeah I'm done. About bloody time eh. Quotes coming up!
posted by Jo at 2:26 am
1 Comments:
I love your rants!!! Only we are all too busy these days to really have a good go! :) And I am doing these days is whinge! heh heh. Congrats on 'Rose'. Maybe I can finally catch some of it in Dec/Jan? xx
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