Edinburgh day: *Oh I dunno*

Yes people, I am alive.

Edinburgh is great! So busy either seeing shows, doing spots or just general catching up. I think the end bill of shows I seen will be over £200 at least. Also done around 7 gigs in the same time interval in roughly around the same amount of days! Every night rolled home around 4:00 a.m. in the morning and never sleep till at least 5:00a.m. and wake up past 12:00p.m.

Its been a strange week for me in Edinburgh, this place is just one big “conference” for us comedians!! Will have a detail write up later but for now I needed to work on some material on a cricket standup show.

If you dun have time to read the blog: Everything is good.

Cause to be fair I dun have time to write the updates either!

I dun usually talk about work but its been pretty full on for the last few days. I walked out of work one day at 9:00p.m. and gotto my gig at 10:00. Luckily there weren’t too many nights like that night and it comes with the terrotity with IT consulting. The best bit though is this is one of the smoothest project I worked on in my career and also my first where I didn’t enter the project midway through. Granted that it is a relatively small implementation of Hyperion Planning with around 20 user bases, but the client decided to have the system as simple as possible and an in-house project manager who can turn back anything “unreasonable” from business users. I have worked on project in the pass where the project manager dun have knowledge of the business or technologies and have to cave in to political pressure resulting in a rather “clunky” system.

Enough about work, nothing interesting there compare to my comedy. Comedy been progressing really wel. I believe now I have a pretty solid 5-7 mins + a few extra minutes of material. One interesting thing that did happened was someone mistaken me for another recent comedy course graduate who is also a Chinese guy that has material on Chinese, eating pets, being Australian and have a gag on midgets. I dun mind if other people has gags on a similar topic like being Australian or eating pets but having a string of material on these topics does sound a little more than co-incident. I hope this is really just a co-incident as its frowned upon to steal other people’s gags let along being on the same circuit as the person you stole from.

Than again, these sort of thing does happened and sometimes its not even stealing. Multiple comics can think about gags based on common observations such as a torch equvi to a million candles. As soon as a more famous comic start doing the gag than its theirs rather than yours. Its sad but thats the way the cookie crumbles unless you have a famous comedian friend of your own:

Hopefully one day Stevie/Max/Anthony/Phil/Anthea/Alex/Shane/Denis and whoever else will be as famous as Stewart Lee, but until than I will just have to be careful sticking my set on Youtube.

Not much been happening, booked my ticket to Australia so I am all set coming back end of October. Just received a bill for council tax because this flat has not pay any council tax for “N” years. Luckily the guys here are reasonably organised so they have put away some money for the council tax. I think we might still a few £ short but it won’t be much. Since the lease start Feb and I moved in at June I will email the last guy and see if I get the difference of the months he lived here back. *Sigh* a shower that “barely” works, house that old and far from tidy and a pretty hands off landlord – I think I should look for another place to live end of this year. That might have to wait till I come back from Australia.

4 day working – not looking forward to Wednesday and Thursday of work (Long story) but from Friday I am heading up to Edinburgh for a week! Look forward to it! The guys who took shows up must be working their asses off with material and flyering, I guess I am sensible in that I didn’t take a show up myself. Perhaps next year……

When you asked me 2 years ago……

Currently writing this is the dark in the middle of the power blackout. Ironic that I have like 3 backup laptop so I can do any computing even power is down. Sorry the updates been a bit slow of late: work is having me up to the eyeballs the last few days and having some relatives from overseas visiting, thats of course on top of the gigs that I am doing and seeing Tarkan and Zed coming back to visiting London.

Camping at Wales

Spent the last weekend of July camping at Wales as part of Tarkan’s bucks weekend. It was organised by Zed and Tarkan’s friend Alex neither of them are based in London. (Yes as friends of Tarks we are a bunch of slackers!!) We hired one of those “Wicked” camper van and drove upto Wales from London. We camp in a farmer’s paddock south of Brecon Beacon national park. We left London at 6:00 and managed to arrive at the camp site at 10:30 and setup tents and campfire. Its been a while since I done any camping. We spent most of the night sitting and staring around the campfire. The fire is a strangely hypnotic for some unknown reason.

  

We were quite lucky that the weather held out for Friday night and Saturday and only rain on Sunday morning when we pack up. As long as one can stay dry they stay as a happy camper. The camp site is very well located with the paddock right next to a ravine and a river with a steepish hill laying on the other side. We spent our Saturday scaling the Hill and enjoying some cool views of Wales.

     

Admiring the view below

 

Living in London makes you forget that there is a big country filled with green fields outside the urban jungle. Should really make it a point to get out of the city more!

 

The only thing about camping in Wales in a farm is most of the land are used by sheep and goats for grazing and their shit tended to be plentiful around where we are. Also I am sure that the field are constantly soggy and never dry, afterall we are in Wales! I got used to camping in the dry Australian bush as opposed to the fields of Wales It rain alot less in Sydney and the sand based soil also meant rain drains away alot faster at OZ. Nevertheless its good to be enjoying the outdoors again!

 

You dun get many days like this in this part of the world.

Zed return and Tarkan’s engagement.

Its over a year that I last saw Zed and caught up with him in Sydney.  It didn’t felt like a year has passed: I still thought he was still the same age as 2 years ago!

 

Hmm…. Smoked Chicken!!

Than again Zed man’s is a quiet and gentle demeanour has not changed since the first day I met him. It felt like he haven’t left London that long ago! But there is a reason for his visit and it aren’t about coming back to see me. Over a year ago Tarkan met a Slovakian girl Eva and they been going out for a while. Eva moved in with Tarkan and only a few months ago they decided to get marry! The location of the marriage might have changed from Slovakia to Turkey to suit Tarkan’s family arrangement and the original date of the ceremony was meant to be first weekend of August but got moved to end of August.

 

Zed was originally plan to be here in London for Tarkan’s wedding but due to the change of timing Tarkan organised a London BBQ engagement for all his London based friend who can’t make it to Turkey.  I admit I should organise a trip to go to the ceremony but I am a slacker and Tarkan like to keep it a small wedding. 

If you asked either me or Tarkan or anybody else that Tarkan will get marry in 2 years time no one will believe you. Than again Eva is a lovely caring soul and is what a work focused but absent minded everything else person needs, I am happy that he is in good hands. The news of their marriage took all of us by surprise. (Well not me, cause I am ALSO work focused and absent minded everything else! J Sometimes good things come knocking at time most unexpected, and when the time comes what looks to be a daunting decision end up feeling so trivial.   

Its funny feeling being a scribe of my own story for the past two years, if you asked me is it my plan to meet these characters in my life my answer would be no……BUT I did choose to be somewhere where I will meet these characters and fate choose the characters for me and so far its been rewarding.

Family visiting

Not many people from home visited me in London, maybe thats why I chose to be in London cause its a million miles away from everybody so it felt special when I see them. My cousin Janis and her family visited over the last 2 weeks and I spent 2 days with them. They spent most of their time out of London so they were mostly catching up with me when they were in London.

Its funny feeling to meet my young cousins Gloria and Paulix who were raised and educated in Hong Kong, meeting them made me realised that how much apart I am from the traditional Chinese culture. Gloria keep asking me why am I speaking in mixture of English and Cantonese and why did I chose to live in London. She is 8 and the concept of being independent in a foreign country is till “foreign” to her but eventually she will understand.

Speaking to both Paulix and Gloria make me realised the wit that Hong Kong people processed. They are not a sports orientated culture but they always verbal spar and one up each other with puns and juxtapositions. This happened at a very young age and someone like me is no match for the kids growing up in Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong puns are a powerful weapon in a contest of wit. What makes punning with Hong Kong people even more intriguing is their widespread multi-lingual ability. E.g.

Q: What kind of animal is thief scare of?

A: A lion (Because the English word Lion is similar to Lai – Yen which is Cantonese for “arrest”)

A different example in another form of humour:

Man loves to make money, eat and sleep;

Woman loves to spend money, eat and sleep;

Pigs loves to eat and sleep;

Because spending money neglects making money so:

Man + woman =2 pigs.

This might all sound like crude gags but the point is it was told to me by an 8 year old. These sort of things are usually share between a comedian and an audience of adults who experienced the dynamics of human relationship, but an 8 year old understood this like light of day.

Hmm…..Maybe it just me getting old!!        

 Wow! Its getting late! August is a big month for me!! Edinburgh awaits!!!