….Cause thats how Max would wanted it…..

Its freezing and snowing in London. Maybe the flip side of global warming is you guarantee a  white Christmas, if only we don’t lose arable land and my landlord can get around fixing the broken window. *sigh*

On Thursday we gave Max his sent off and I have to say its the best funeral ever. (in positive tone)

For some strange reason I woke up in a jovial mood: No I AM sad and upset that Max is gone, but I think its a sense that the day is different to any ordinary day. Maybe the thought of a day off plus there will be plenty of good company around to share memories of Max is what I am looking forward to. It will be sad but there will be some good times ahead today. I did ended up taking the wrong address and late for the ceremony. *Doh*

Even though its a sad occasion everyone focus on the positive: It’s not a mourning of the passing of a son, brother and a beloved friend but a celebration of a colourful life  live well: One which touched so many people from different walks of life who all came to this West London church for a final tribute.

The funeral was different also - everyone were in bright colours at the request of the family. There were no flowers instead everyone was asked to make a donation to the charity Changing Faces  instead. We ended up listening to one of Max’s favour comedian’s standup routines and sign Max’s coffin with our farewell message. (He was cremated so his coffin resembles a cardboard box.)  During the wake we released balloons in honour of Max.

Everyone was really positive throughout given the circumstances. I personally pass on my condolence to Max’s Dad, it was hard not to shed a tear in a funeral. After going through my grand dad’s funeral I realised there are no easy way out when it comes to coping with losing someone you love. I wish the Turner family all the best and thank them for bringing up Max and into our lives.

It’s also great to see so many comedians turn out for Max’s final send-off and not just those who done the comedy course. Us comedians tended to operate in cliques (I am also guilty of this as Max did the comedy course and is part of my “clique”) and tended to hang around our own than branch out. You do social with other comedians but you always ended up hanging around a few that you are closed to. At least a good 20 comedians showed up to pay their respect. Even our “dad” Logan was there!

When it comes to the open mic comedy circuits it does  behave like some form of “dysfunctional” family – sure there are people you see a few times but not close to, a few that you really enjoy their company and a few that you just dislike/hate. But when it comes to something like one of us passing away or leaving the country we get together and support each other. As Max’s dad put it: we are almost like a second “family”. I am glad that quite a few of us took the day off and spent the rest of the day/night sitting around drinking and enjoying each other’s stories. Even though we all ended up walking half a mile to transport in heavy snow it was still worth it. We really should do this more often – hopefully someone dying again!

Nelson organised a comedian Christmas get together on saturday and there were like at least 50 comedians from open micers to pros all coming together for a drink. I mean Wow talking having charisma Nelson! Its good to see all of these people together in one room without having to worry about getting on stage or getting home before the last train. Sure we just kind of invaded a bar and stay there till 3:30 in the morning.

 
Picture courtesy Of Ben Leto

Maybe one day when I made it, I will have a “Charlie and hooker” party for everyone. However since unless you are Ricky Gervais and making Hollywood movies there isn’t as much money in comedy as people like to think. Than again tell me tell me which job pays for people to go on stage for 20 mins to talk about total bollocks. It will be years before anyone of us see decent cash coming from this. In the meantime we are all toiling out of  love for our art.

 The most important point is we doing this for our enjoyment, we will have to figure out how to pay the bills in other ways.

*                                                                       *                                                                       *                                                                       *

On a more happier note – This is the third Christmas I am having in London! Hooray! Time to get Jolly…..and Rest!!!!

Merry Xmas ppl! xx

 

A year on – progression

When I started comedy a year ago, I really dunno how long, how far or where I am taking with this shebang. To be honest a year on I still have no idea where this is going.

Just over a year ago I finished my comedy course and show case, back than I am glad just to get a bit of stage time and have the “ticker” to make people laugh. I remembered going to Oct 2008 Gong Show and watch and marvelling at the act who go up and give the comedy thing a whirl. Back than I be just glad to last 5 mins.

Went to September 2009 Gong Show just before I went back to Australia and  they were even more nastier than before! Some of the “curve ball” heckles the audience come up with are just down right savage. During than I was wondering how long my Gong show gig will last, I think 45 seconds is realistic. Gong show can be notorious harsh, there are times Comedians gonged off without a chance to touch the mic.

So round comes 30th November I left work a touch early to secure an early slot on the gong show. The earlier slots are better since the audiences are not quite settled in and not drunk yet either making survival relatively easy. The night get progressively worst with the comedians on the last few slots doing more “crowd control” rather than comedy.

Work didn’t really mind me taking off early as a few of them will be coming down to the show later on.  So I arrived at 6:00p.m. and signed myself up to slot # 4 (out of total of 24). The show started at 8:30p.m. with the MC coming on doing a bit of banter and warming the audiences up.  This MC was nice as he didn’t really egg the audience on with their heckles and largely left the crowd to their own accord. Paul (One of the London Circuit regulars) went on slot #3  and did well and at one point looked like he will lasted the full 5 mins. He got gonged off at 4 mins after he went quiet on one of the heckles and the audience started booing. Didn’t really matter as hes already doing 5 min open spots for Comedy Stores already.

I came on next and got a big laugh from the way I said “Hello Gong show!” I was a bit puzzled why it got such a big laugh and will have to look back at the video again when I get my hands on it. The first 3 mins of my set It was going down a treat with people laughing on the punchlines and sometimes at the ad-libs things I do on stage. I thought “I will really have to fuck up to not last the 5 mins.”

Than I got on my stool and started doing the squat toilet material and the audience lost patient and started booing me. It only takes 40 seconds between them laughing and them booing, Gong show can turn on you quickly and dramatically.

While the boos are going I was starting to think I am about to gonged off soon and one of my comedy career highlight happened:
I looked at one of the judges at the front with the red card on his lap with the full expectation that “he will finish me off look.”. The young dude just looked back at me and said “Keep going!”

This was a shot in the arm for me! With this moral booster I got off the stool and started on the Ninja material and the booing stopped. I even have the ticker to tell one of the guy to piss off when he started again! Unfortunately never really have a chance to finish the ninja material: The 5 mins mark is passed and I survived! Hooray!! Something that I can only dream of in a year ago has happened! I survived the 5 mins of the gong show!

There were 4 others who survived as well. Tall Handsome Christian with his very loveable personality, Johnny with his young Jimmy Hendrix looks and his racial observation humour about getting a free holiday from BNP back to Jamaica,. Rick (??) the Asian/Indian comedian with his larger than life persona and beatboxing skill and Tania who came on right at the end and held her ground from a booing crowd to last the full 5 mins. Tania is a great comedian and would go down a storm on any normal nights. Tonight she was doing crowd control “with gags” and feels like she was verbal fencing against a room of  140+.

I didn’t win the King gong: Christian and Johnny won the clapoff in the end and Johnny won the night. Tania should be commended for playing to such a difficult slot and still managed to pull through the full 5 mins.

I was hoping they will offer me a 5 min open slot at the Comedy Store for surviving the Gong show. Although I did survived but I did wobbled with the Squat toilet material. I am booked in again for the April gong show and to come back with some new/different material, if I did well I might just get a 5 min slot at the she store in 2010! Well looks like the bar has just been raised!

Anyway I will chuck the video up on Youtube once I get it. My mission for the next few months is to write some Gong show ready material.

Oh and hopefully before that: I can reapply for my visa, look for a new flatmates and potentially find somewhere to live where it is not comparable to paying the mortgage of a 2 bedroom London apartment. Sigh! The dream is over for now – back to the mundane things that is known as life!

When it rains…..

…….It pours.

The thing about rain in England is that its just a constant rain but never a full deluge or snowing. I guess the weather is kind of parrallel of my life at the moment: Lots of headaches and change but nothing particular hard or difficult and I am sure it will all be resolved in meantime.

I guess biggest thing happened on the weekend is my good London friend Kate is leaving on Tuesday, we all went out for a curry and drink to say goodbye. Compare with all the happenings of the hostel days 2 years ago it was a relatively low key event. Just a few friends catching up and remember the 3 years that Kate and Allan spent in London, I was feeling like a drag for the night: I am not a big party person and I can’t drink for the whole night because of my stomach upset. Still – the curry at Brick Lane was good and this is the second time we been to the resturant. I think I will come back again next time! Their claim to fame was that Prince Charles visited the place back in the 70s and got a photo of him shaking who I presume to be the owner’s hand. I am not sure if everyone in the photo still have any connection to the resturant.

Me and Alan have a bit of a beef during the night. Alan can get quite moody when he got drunk and do things that hes not 100% intended. I didn’t really help the situation by egging Alan on. I guess I am trying to proof a point and hopefully he will remember it afterwards. Alan and Kate are both leaving London for Melbourne and I hope Alan especially can look after himself when he goes there. London is a ”safe” city compare with Sydney or Melbourne, back home in Australia city are alot smaller and different elements of society have more contacts with each other compare with London and its very easy to run into trouble just by ”looking” or “talking” to others in a wrong way. I just hope that Alan can calm down a little bit and look after himself. I know when I am always very careful with myself when my families can’t really effectively look after me when anything happens.

Still: know Kate and Alan for over 2 years now. They are key part of my social circle here in London and it will be tough not seeing them around for 2010. I cried when I said goodbye to Kate at the bus stop. I wished we can have a bigger farewell rather than a teary goodbye at a bus stop in East London – but I believe I will see her again someday in the future. Yeah I am sure someday I will visit Melbourne………

                                                                                  *                                                                                  *                                                                                  *                                                                                  *

On Sunday night me and my housemate have an early Christmas dinner for the house and it was great! Steve and Shelley did most of the cooking while Alicia did a very yummy desert. I didn’t do any of the cooking so just ended up doing the washing up. We never cooked as a house before and it really does feel like a family with everyone helping out, cooking, chating and cleaning up.  

The people are great and I would love to live with them for quite a while, but the house was a bit of a dump, in no particular order:

* Water pressure of the shower is bad because the pipes are old and its unlikely Landlord will replace them;
* Lights in staircase wasn’t working. I fitted new bulbs in and they works, however the switch is dead and they dun switch off;
* The heating in the small room I am in cannot be turn down because the switches on the raidator is broken. It gets really toasty;
* The entrance to the kitchen leaks after heavy rain;
* Kitchen windows been broken for 2 months and it still not fix;
* There are no hot water on taps. They go hot for like 20 seconds and than cold again:
* The landlord is not in the country. I deal with his handy man and hes really slow on fixing these things;
* I paid too much for my old room. No one really wanted to take it off me.

So with the lease up for renewal at start of Feb. I am tempted to just pack it in and find a new place to live round next year. Its a shame cause I really like my flatmates and I don’t think they intended to move from such a comvienent location.

Well better get some sleep: I am doing the gong show tomorrow night at the Comedy Stores. yikes!

 

Heres to another winter

Home at the moment sick from heartburn/indegstion. You guys might think I chuck a “sickie” but if I have I would be outdoors rather than stuck indoors in front of my laptop and TV. Doctor asked me how old I am and don’t I get heartburns: I think I have to admit that middle age is finally creeping in, hope I won’t peep my pants anytime soon!

Been looking for a new flatmates for my old room. A few weeks ago a girl moved into my flat and stay in the smaller room for a day and than moved out. The problem was the central heating radiatior was low pressure and ended up making alot of gurgling noise. The central heating is now pumped up and the radiator seens to be ok. Although every now and than it does make a loud “tonk” noise. I believe from my research it might be a case of “Water Hammer“. Not 100% sure if the Landlord can fixed it but I am preparing a pair of earplugs just in case.

Met Kate and Alan and Tarkan and Eva for a sunday lunch. It was good to see those guys again! Unfortunately Kate only have a week in London before heading back, Alan will be staying on till just before Christmas and head to Australia. Its sad to see friends leaving London and going back home, but than this is a journey to us traveller: once it ends it either we all return home and start a brand new adventure in other things. Such is part of growing up and being alive.

Next year will be the most uncertain year for me in that I am not sure what am I looking forward to: 2007 is about moving to London, 2008 is about living a life of independence, 2009 is about me doing the stuff that I always wanted to do and prove I got what it takes. What does 2010 hold? This is unlike the past 3 years where I really didn’t have an explicit aim of what I am really after.

Got a few more weeks to ponder. In the meantime my priority is to recover from this damn bloated stomach and trying to find a new flatmate for the house!

 

Fun in the Sun

Its been a good weekend of sunshine, coffee and catching up with friends.

Caught up with TC for a bit of mountain biking around Manly Dam before he head off to his honeymoon. The old gal (my Giant Reign Mountain bike) held up well. Sure we spent over 20 man hours bleeding those hydraulic brakes and the brake pads replaced but everything else still works great. I have to say I will be selling the bike next time I come back. Manly Dam changed as well with most of the downhill sections now graded so they can get the fire truck through. I think I will really rock Manly Dam next time I comeback because it will progressively get “nerf” as time goes.

Good to see Marky and Brettpei again. The days where we trained together in Budo is now long passed but we still kept in touch with each other via email. It was fun carving pumpkins and hitting pinachette for Halloween. I have never done either of that before. Mark also has a young son of 5 months and is now settling into the routine of a new dad. We are all too “old” to have wild party night but it sure is good to see he had a chance to have catchup drinks with mate.

What visit of Australia will be completed without at least time spent on (or close to) a beach? Sunday was the annual “Sculpture By The Sea” exhibit. Every year the Bondi to Clovelly walk will be converted to a large outdoor “Tate Modern” with sculptures by sculptors from all over the world. I have to say I am no big fan of art or sculptures but it was a really cool concept to combine sunshine, beaches/sea and sculpture.

Stereo Sonic is what he meant. Whats the chance for a sky writing business in London?

The walk between Clovelly and Bondi was pack with people. It was a Idyllic sunny spring day and Sydney and get to spend some good times with friends I haven’t seen from yonks. The best sculpture I like was the flag that was setup overlooking Bondi beach. I dunno how long it took the sculptors to create some of these exhibits and how did they envision the final sculpture and how it combined with the landscape itself.

Yes! I was there at Bondi Beach

*                                               *                                                  *

What had changed since last time I was here? Nothing change drastically but everything changes ever subtly as time passed: From friends getting marry, new born kids, people getting new cars, price of things are more expensive than last time I was here, (Starting to be on par with London on something) parents getting older and so is my brother.  Sydney is getting more expensive and buying a house is becoming a pipe dream.

____________________________________________________________________________

 What I did notice is there a significant increase in Asian immigrants in Sydney (Especially Epping/Eastwood area) than 2 years ago. I used to be very against concentrate migration into one area producing a middle class racial ghetto. After living in London for the past 2 years my attitude has became mellow: Whether you are Asians, African-Caribbean or British/Australians it is in human nature to gravitate towards people with things in common such as race and language. Poms/Ozzies/Kiwis/Safas to have a similar culture making their integrations more straight forward than other races. One would even argue that these colonies are just “derivatives” of the original colonial master, (the Poms) hence cannot be count as a different culture. (Unlike Chinese/Koreans/Japanese for example)

 My point is this: I used to have a belief that once you migrate to another country you should “assimilate” with the locals. What I did wrong was attempting to discard my original cultures and roots in embracing that of the new country.  Now I learned that there is nothing “wrong” with being born in one culture and adopting another during your life. Most people on this planet never migrate to another country so will never understand what it takes to settle down in a foreign land. Most native population only sees the ills of other countries and ignore the benefits of culture diversity. It is a dangerous hyperbole claiming that Importing people from different cultures with conflicting view will cause culture clashes like the ones we seen in other parts of the world.

If I can go back to my teens and start over I would have done things differently but this will also made me a slightly different person with a different outlook on life. I guess growing up is like walking a complex network of roads: there are many to choose from but as long as you keep moving “forward” you are doing well. I was ignorant of the reality that I am a Chinese person living in Australia with two very distinctive cultures, my children will have a much easier time growing up as they won’t have to deal with dilemmas that I was faced with.

 

Old Habits Die Hard!

When you work full time, you only get around 2-4 weeks of annual leave. Irony is we ended up stressing ourselves try to make the most into the few weeks we going away and totally forgot holiday is meant to be a period of rest and relaxation.

Last few days in Sydney I just taking it quite easy: catching up with various friends, going to some of my favour places in Sydney remember how things used to be and not a rush in the world to do anything. Classic mode when it comes to a quiet holiday

UNLESS…….you are an open mic comedian! Than its your swore duty to get on wherever someone is offering you 5 min spot. It is an occupation disease!  A month ago I booked 4 gigs for the week I am in Sydney with the intention of checking out the local scene.

On Tuesday, Laugh Garage in Sydney CBD runs an open mic night. Laugh Garage is an established comedy club in Sydney with a dedicated club similar to The Stand at Edinburgh. It started like Comedy Store in London as a Pro comedy night in pubs and only recently moved to a purpose built venue. The night usually consisted of 8 open mic standup and a MC, but tonite was different with an American comedian named Rick Shapiro also on the bill trying some new material.

Trudi from the comedy course in London also turned up to watch and end up doing a 5 min slot as well because someone dropped out.   It was a good gig with around an audience of 7 and around 6 comics and MC.  My 5 min went well:  this is the first time I done my 5 min at home and I am amaze how portable my material was in different country.  Trudi did really well having essentially told that shes going on and given 40 min to ready some of her material. After the first gig it appears that our time on the London circus served us really well.  It is a shame that this is my only gig at the Laugh Garage, I will have to score more stage time before I can play with more accomplished comedians.

On Wednesday I scored a gig at The Roxbury Hotel at Glebe. This is part of the “Quest for The Best” preliminary final open mic competition. The room was filled with around 130 punters with 90% here to support their friends on the bill – the chance of winning the comp is nil. With that in mind I just focused on having a good gig. This gig is the highlight of my Sydney tour.

The room is a split level room (only realised it when I stood on the chair at 2:30 mark) and I got thrown by a heckle from someone upstairs (3:30 mark) and got myself confuse. Problem with split levels is that a heckle from upstairs is not well heard by people on the lower level. In a five min set its not usually worthwhile to address a heckler unless they were persistent. Still – the crowd gave me the biggest laugh of my set when I fluffed up my lines. Can’t get a more supportive audience than that!

This is also the first gig where I performed my set at home in front of my friends, some of them are from my high school days and I have seen them for more than 2 years! Its great to see them again and even greater for them to come out to support me!

Thursday gig was a “variety night” on a stage next to a uni bar. To put it kindly the gig was absolutely RUBBISH!!! I don’t usually slag gigs but this one was badly organised in a shitty venue. The stage is next to the student bar with a bunch of drunken students, they all decided to yell “jukebox” at the jukebox for some reason. There is no separate room for comedy and random drunken students interrupt by giving drunken rants to each other. Most of the acts left the venue as soon as they were on to head across town to catch the “best” open mic gig in the circuit. My friend Zed came along with his flatmates and friends to support me and I have to apologise to them for coming to such a shamble.  One valuable lesson for all is that even free comedy night are not “free”, the time invested by acts and audience involved should be enough to warrant the promoters to put in a bit more thought and effort into their nights.

Friday at Comedy Court at Star Bar: This is my last gig in Sydney and like all my friends show up to this gig! The room is really nice – it was a old small theatre inside Star Bar which used to be the old Planet Hollywood restaurant, a 50 seat room with proper sound and lighting! There were like 19 audience and only 6 of them are genuine punters! I brought like 11 audience to a new act competition, Oops!

It was a 8-10 slot and I ended up doing around 11 minutes. For some reason I was a bit nervous because I am essentially performing to my friends which make the whole gig a bit weird. I seen a few gigs where the audience are mainly friends with one of the acts and it makes the gig less of a “gig” but more like some sort of secret society meetings where jokes are only understood by the privileged few. The other problem is I usually run a 7-8 min set and hardly play a half slot (10 min set) I have to take the “covers” off some of the older gags to get to the 10 min marks.

My friends are great audience members. Donte who runs the night is a good compere and made my friends laugh and kept the night running smoothly. The other acts (Ray, Joey and Joseph) are all competent as new-ish acts and all my friends found them funny. I did ok since the gig is filled mostly by my friends so it was a pretty safe room to play to. Couple of my friends pointed out afterwards that I needed to work on my delivery and the squat toilet “conversation” gone for a sentence too long.  Good to get feedbacks and I agreed with them there are room for improvement. It always good to know you have to do better , it keeps you going for your comedy.

*                              *                             *                                *                                *

So what is my assessment of the Sydney scene? Well its no match to New York, London and even Melbourne for sure. There are a few nice room on the circuit but IMHO the audience bases is too small to support a stand-up scene. There are more rooms popping up over the last few years but surely if a city like Melbourne can support a fully fledge comedy scene than the biggest Australian city must be able to do the same! Unfortunately this is not true as the few Sydney based comedy club are struggling with the Sydney Comedy Store (No relation to the UK one) currently run by its second owners.

Its a bit sad that a city of 3 millions can’t support a scene. I do not think this is a fault of the promoters or the acts but more a reflection of the population of Sydney itself. The denizens of Sydney are not very cultured compare with our cousins down south and won’t actively seek out arts related activity like theatre or music. (unless its a festival where the big acts are on.) The laws regulating pubs & bars also play a factor: To put on a live performance the venue must have a live performance license in New South Wales, its free for pubs to put in poker machines. Why would any publicans paid money to put on a how which might or might not lift their drink sales when you can just use that performance base to put in extra poker machines. With a city booming due to effects of increase of Asian immigrants, there is more money in gambling than there is in standup comedy.

Another ones Bite the dust – again….

Well just finished with TC’s wedding this weekend. Sydney weather forecast was 3 days of deluge and it was colder than even London! Go figure!!

It was funny how last time I was on these shores it was for David’s wedding, now it is TC’s turn. I hope no one else going to get marry soon or I will be using up all my annual leave just to fly home to visit friends and the folks. Good to see TC and Sophie are finally settling down. Its been a year and a half since the last time I was here and there are a few things that changed (New railway lines, friend’s lives even my dad’s lifestyle) and there are a few things that never changed. (Well the family home and the traffic for example!) Even more than a year has passed this place still feels like home!

Good to see that all the guys are doing well. (Jim and Richard now driving, Denis building a new house, David and Sue is expecting and Bart now has his own place with a cute daughter.) Not sure what will be in store next time I come back but I am sure it will be good!

The day started with the “Bridal games” in the morning. This is essentially a Chinese traditions for marriage, I am not 100% sure the exact origins of these games but I am guessing this relates back to old days of China where the groom and his party has to travel to the Bride’s village to collect her. Since in those days once a bride left her village she will live with the groom and his family and only coming back to visits, the groom has to proof his love for the bride before he can collect her from her village. Usually the key to these is the red packet that given as fee as dowry to the bride family.

In modern days, these games became less formal and more emphasis on “mocking around” and add a less formal friend times rather than the rest of the day where it is more formal and focus on family and the couple themselves. If you do a “time-movement” study I bet the amount of times you spent with friends and amount spent with family will be at least equal if not more leaning towards friends as you grew older.  The weather was terrible for outdoor photos and ceremonies, luckily there are backup plans: We shot most of the shots indoors around Circular Quay and the Queen Victoria Building and moved the wedding ceremony indoor inside Curzon Hall.

Curzon Hall is a chateau in the Northern part Sydney built since 1900, it used to sit on quite a sizeable block of land but since the area around it started filling up with residential houses many of the land are sold off and all that is left is a small lawn area and the main chateau building. I have to say I love the way the Curzon Hall used to be rather than a specialized wedding hall that it is at the moment. It’s a good place to house TC and Sophie’s wedding and the rain largely held out when it comes to doing the photos.

It is interesting to see why some people wanted to do a comedy course for wedding speeches. Denis done a great job MCing the wedding, he introduced people with wit and humour that you will found in comperes for most comedy or variety night. With a few more “gigs” I am sure he can make some money out of Mcing. Mr Lee (Father of the groom) also injected his own humour into the speech with his jokes about growing old and the animal parallels. He captivated the audience during this time and it was definitely a very accomplished feats. Finally the groom himself TC also called back on a joke that Sophie’s dad mentioned in his speech and used it to great effect.

It appears that comedy is an innate talent amongst all of us. Great number of people did comedy course to prepare for best man speech but these courses is only guide us in exploiting what is already there. It never can artificially implant us with a foreign “power” like a radioactive spider can. These guys prepared their speeches in their own voice as an extension of their personality and this not dissimilar to comics exaggerate their persona on stage. What we do as a comic is not that different to normal person afterall!

It was good to see Bhautik and Jacqui came back to Sydney from San Francisco and Adelaide to catchup. Even though it only lasted for a day before everyone has to head home. Now that the weekend of festivity is over we all depart and resume our lives, but not before a week of catching up, relaxing bit of Mountainbiking and a bit of standup comedy.

Home sweet home – Again

Back in Sydney yesterday morning. Its been a long day: Did a full day of work in the office and went to the airport straight afterwards. It was a long day indeed. Managed to get some cat-nap while on the plane so wasn’t 100% knacked when I arrived.

Do you guys know that this “no liquid” aboard policy really put a dent on buying dutyfree booze? I can’t buy any while in London because the security will take it off me in Bangkok, than I can’t buy any in Bangkok because Australian security forbids it in the plane. Only place you can buy it is back in Sydney airport and this REALLY is annoying. More planning is needed for next trip me think.

Sydney changed a little bit since I came back a year and half ago. New buildings gone in, some stuff moved but the town essentially remained the same. Maybe the biggest bit of change is they predicting a deluge over the next few days. There goes the sunshine!!

There is also a sense of anitcipation as well. Catching up with friends who I haven’t seen for over a year. Running my set in front of a Sydney audience which has a large Asian population (thats Chinese not Indians) will be challenge. Of course, its always good to see the family again and eat one of mum’s home cooked meal.

Final bit of news is that Jongulers went into administration with closed of 5 of the clubs. This surely not a good thing for comedy even though Jongulers have a rep with Stag and Hens party, they are also one of biggest and most regular payer for comedians. Not really affecting me at my part of the comedy pond but I am sure quite a few of the circuit comedians will be feeling the sting. Looks like nothing is immune from this recession afterall!!

Its getting close….

A week and a half than I will be on a plane heading back to Australia. Not sure what to think but I hate flying!! But 12,000 km journey and the end are where friends and family lives makes it all worthwhile.

Didn’t do much in terms of comedy: quiet week this week with just one gig and the new and old material went really well. I think this is the first time I am getting multiple applauses for my material in front of a room of 50 ppl. New material still needs a bit of work but with a bit of work they can go in the regular set, will have to play a few more gigs.

Its also an interesting execrise to see if my material will go well in Sydney. People from different countries find different things hilarious so what work in London might not 100% translate over.  Hope some of my friends are alright to come but looking at some of the tickets they all looked pretty expensive. $10-$15 just to see some new acts nights? London is definitely cheaper when it comes to comedy?

ALso lots of movement in the house: old flatmates moving out and new faltmates moving in next week. Always needed new people to see my comedy! Of course I also enjoyed new ppl’s company as well!

Cause deep inside we are a pack of c*&ts

*I am going to start another blog where the private stuff will go. Right now I will double post to both blogs but in time there might be a split between the 2 blogs*

Well, the week and pass and NO, I did not get on the gong show. I did show up at the Store on Monday night and I have to say the night gone even harsher than last time I was there. It seens to me that with its low entrance fee (£5) and happy hour of the whole night it attracted quite a bit of following. Many of the audiences are regulars and some are more than experienced with Heckling than comedians with their routine. Some of the curveballs thrown on the night inclued…

“… We seen you twice, do some new stuff…..”

“Stick with you day job!!!” (Which is just pure nasty!!)

Not to mentioned the regular heckles like “you Shit” or “tell us a joke”. I can’t help to think that these are paid £5 and think that they runs the night. Must be the best £5 anyone can spend!

To be fair, what the crowd after is someone that can “knock their socks off” so to speak. They wanted someone that can take charge, that can establish themselves as hilarious and have this person be confident where he/she can exert authority over the crowd of 100+. Put it this way: In Gong Show Bullshits don’t fly and the crowd will let you know if your material is crap or not tight enough. They are usually fair and they not afraid to let you know if its not working!

So here I am, thinking that I will be have 5 mins of material ready for the Gong and now got a set with holes big enough to drive a truck through. Its back to square one of rewriting and tightening the material again.

Did an audition and heat of a new act competition last sunday and friday. I didn’t go through to the semi-finals but I do definitely felt I am more confident with my material. Competition can be a bitch and sometimes I feel sorry for the judge that have to pick 2 person out of 6 good comics all with their own style. The words apples and oranges comes into mind.

 

Anyway other news, I will be back in OZ on 23rd Oct for a week. Oh I can’t wait!!