My Reelity

This month of September…

As a self employed, albeit struggling, actor, the recent CPF changes don’t really affect me as much as the rest of Singapore. But when the changes were announced, even I felt indignant about the whole situation.

I give kudos to Mr Siew for highlighting and bringing the crux of the matter to light in his parliament speech and in his blog. And kudos to Thomas Koshy for eloquently putting this matter in the right perspective again.

Ever since I saw more and more old folks clearing tables at hawker centers and food courts a few years back, I’ve already wondered about the adequacy of the CPF system (which reminds me of a certain debate I had with another blogger over this and he has strangely not say anything about this matter so far). If our aged are doing these menial tasks just to survive their wonder years, one has to wonder how effective this system has been so far.

So while it is good that they are planning to improve it, I too, echo, Mr Siew’s thought on this :

But I remain unconvinced that the proposed changes are adequate, or fair to the people.

And aye, I know of no reason why this should ever be forgot.

Was about to go get one for myself, after my client showed off his hacked and working iPhone to me. Then came the news that Apple intends to break the modified phones with their future firmware update.

I think Ed says it best here.

“Why the hell would you want to buy anything from a company that does these kinds of things?” Really, is your life so lacking in abuse and disrespect that you need to buy some more?

For me, there’s an excellent way to avoid all these iPhone issues: Don’t buy it! Don’t let your friends and associates buy them! Most importantly of all, make fun of the people you see who have bought one! Call them shallow, call them Stevie’s saps, be highly unimpressed.

If a status symbol gets not respect but ridicule, it stops being a status symbol.

No, I don’t think this is likely to catch on, too many shallow saps out thet.

But you and those around you don’t have to join the zombies.

Looks like I’m still getting the Samsung F500 afterall.

And I’ll wait for you.
And I am waiting for you.

A movie I acted in last year will be screening in selected GV screens from 4 October onwards.

I play “Ang Chee Beng” a loanshark victim and I hear you can see me in action right from the start, during the opening credits. So don’t be late hor! There’ll be a meet the cast session this Friday after the sneak preview at 730pm, GV Europa at VivoCity. Do check it out!

I just realised that I’ve used the phrase “truth be told” many times in this blog as well. Hehe, truth be told, I kinda preferred “Expose” as the title. Oh well.

On another note, I have to say I’m a little disappointed not to have gotten free tickets to watch its premiere. The director gave a not so PR reply, but luckily the producer called me personally before I got to see the reply and explained the situation to me. And truth be told, I’m pretty sure that they would have given all the supporting cast tickets to the premiere if they could.

Anyhoo, I’m still pretty psyched about my first movie screening. Now to find someone to go watch it with …

Two years ago when I built my current PC, I really didn’t expect it to last more than three years. And true enough, I’m beginning to find recommended specs on games out-speccing my current rig.

Which means, upgrade time. I’ve spent the better part of the year agonising the upgrade path. Mostly because I don’t really want to upgrade until Vista is more stable and also, I’m trying to scrimp and save as much as I can. After all, a struggling actor has to do what he can to save moolah right?

So I waited for Intel price cuts to come our way and for ram prices to continue to drop, and yet I knew this wasn’t the ideal upgrade path I had planned two years ago. But AMD screwed those plans big time by stopping production on dual core socket 939 processors. And my only alternative appeared to be building a whole new system from scratch.

Or so I thought. Over the weekend I got wind that a server grade processor was going for a steal and quickly placed an order for one.

This processor used to cost almost $700 a year ago, and can now be had for the struggling actor friendly price of $218. Needless to say, this solved all my upgrading headache, and put the upgrade path I envisioned two years ago back on trade. 😀

Good things indeed comes to those who wait. And with that in mind, I think I will continue to wait, fool that I am.

Got roped in to play as Quah Kim Swee, one of Quah Kim Song’s brothers in a docudrama about his Life Story. The script called for a scene where we were playing football and I was pretty excited about it.

Of course, the last time I played a full football match of sorts was almost two decades ago, while I was in primary school. And, mind you, Kim Swee was a national player. Talk about an acting challenge. -_-”

The director choreographed the moves with us yesterday morning, and we kept practising till we, errm, could pass off as national players on screen. I think we took a good one hour of practice and then another hour just to shoot the sequences down.

The experience was almost akin to 2 hours of interval training. And to say I was damn shagged at the end is really just an understatement. Typing this now, every freaking muscle of my body aches and I remember taking a three hour nap after I finished the rest of the scenes (the football scene was the first scene, and I had two more scenes with dialogue after that).

Oh, and I had blisters on both my feet as well. The pain-until-walk-must limp-a-bit kind. Talk about suffering for the art man. 😛

But my efforts did not go to waste; the director was really impressed with my football skills (and, I hope, my acting as well). All I can say is that despite such a long hiatus, I still have it man. I guess what they say is true, form is temporary, class is permanent, kekeke. 😉

Either that or its the power of Method. But if it really is Method, I think I’m about to freak out…

I first met Moralis (Melo) in Camelot, but for the life of me cannot remember if we ever did group up before then. I met him again in Stormreach and through the guild FRENS, we’ve been through a couple of adventures together.

He first wrote this funny article on a forum, and has since took on my advice to start a blog about his online adventures.

Which, I suspect, is really to pave the way for his chronicles on his sexual adventures in Second Life in the future.

If I haven’t said it before, let me say it now. This path I’ve set down for myself is sure not an easy trip. And the toughest part, is always, trying to improve myself as an actor.

Firstly, there is always a lack of projects. The market is small and even if I don’t do anything else but acting, I’ll be hard press to find enough projects to be gainfully employed. But this is hardly surprising, and is, in fact, something you should be prepared for if you are going into this line.

With the lack of projects, means there is a real lack of practice. If acting is an art form, it must be the hardest art form to excel it at, simply because there is only so much one can do on one’s own. In contrast, with other art forms like singing and dancing, one would be able to practice on one’s own, and see an improvement. But from my experience, my acting only improves when I practice with others, and not on my own. Sure, there are things that I can do to sharpen my tool, but I always find that all I’m doing is just trying to maintain my edge, rather than kicking it into the next level. And sometimes, I feel I’m just barely maintaining the edge, if not already slipping.

And what complicates things for me is that the other stuff that I do besides acting, the one that puts the food on the table, the one that makes me able to buy the girl across the bar a drink, is so totally different and detached from acting. And the more I do it, the more I feel alienated from acting, and the more I feel like I’m slipping up.

This year so far, I’ve taken on a lot of such projects. The reason is because I really need the dough for a private matter (all I can say is that it is for the sake of my acting). But in doing so, I really feel my acting has become lousier. I guess you can call it lack of practice, but somehow, I feel it’s a bit more than that. I can’t really put my finger on it; right now I think its really because I’ve become too jaded as a result of doing too many of such projects.

Afterall, I do remember these projects have a way of sapping every ounce of creativity out of you. >.< The good news is that its beginning to die down, and I foresee myself taking a good break from November onwards. And of course, my bank balance has never looked healthier. 😀 I'm also glad for the couple of roles that have come my way recently. Although they are small roles and are not really challenging, they make me realise how bad I've gotten. But better to falter at these roles than the upcoming movie role I'm getting into. I'm confident that I can get better with more "practice". I just pray that I've enough roles in the next few weeks to help me regain my form in time for the big shoot. *gulp*

Finished up the last bit of my 杨小郎 role about a week back. I was left with one short scene, but a different director was directing this one.

As we made our way there, we did our usual going through of lines. After that, the director turned to face me and asked “你是谁?” (Who are you?)

At first, I wasn’t sure what he was asking, but I had a hunch he might be asking about the character so I just replied, “An office worker.”

When he asked further what type of office, I knew for sure he was asking about the character. Which was really surprising because in all these years of acting for chinese drama, I’ve never met a director who asked me for my character’s given circumstances. And even though this is a small role, I had given him one and so I went on to tell the director the rest of the character I had planned him out to be.

The director looked duly impressed with the “homework” I have done.

I’ve been advertising myself on AADB for over a year now, and while I have gotten lots of auditions from there, I haven’t been able to clinch any job so far.

That is until about two weeks ago. Wendy called me up for a last minute photo shoot and with that, I finally get my first job there at last.

We were told we were going to Bintan for a shoot, but when we arrived at the Tanjung Pinang jetty, I realised it was a part of Bintan that I’ve never seen before. A totally new and very different world existed at this part of Bintan, a far cry from the picturesque resorts that one usually associates with Bintan.

This part of Bintan was populated and rural and one could see from the surroundings that this wasn’t a very prosperous part of town. I would be told later that this particular area is where folks go for cheap sex, although I really didn’t see any women hanging around street corners as we made our way in a mini van that had a non working air-con.

Our first location was a very nice beach.

My phone camera don’t really do the beach justice, but the scenery is really nothing short of amazing. I doubt very much any of the main resorts in Bintan have such a nice beach front.

After that, we went to a few plantations as well as a few farm stay houses that had these interesting murals on its walls.

The scenery wasn’t half bad as well.

I actually had a blast doing this and I certainly wouldn’t mind doing more of such shoots in the future. But since I’m not really model material, I can only hope and pray. 😛