My Reelity

As you all know, nowadays, thanks to Eve, I’m now carrying my showreel around with me. So this CNY, as we went on our annual meet-the-distant-relatives-once rounds, it would be inevitable that some of them would not have noticed my exploits on screen. ( Yes, it is possible because yours truly don’t really get that much screen time 😛 )

As my acting career always seem to border on the non-existential, my father has over the past years decide to use it as a conversation topic when we meet these relatives, partly, I suspect, so that he would not be forced to talk about his own short comings. So this year, knowing that I have portable “evidence”, he relished almost every chance to talk about me being a non-existent actor.

When his audience gets wide-eyed and stares at me in disbelief, he would ask me to whip the damn thang out and quelch their skepticism. I generally take such things in my stride, because after all, I don’t blame people for not knowing. In fact, its more like a stark reminder that I have a long way to go because if I truly am making some headway, these relatives would have recognise me and asked me on their own accord. And this is the very reason why I don’t go round telling people I’m an actor because I believe that my work should speak for me and itself. If you have not seen my performances before, its cool, cuz like I said, I don’t get that much screen time. But if you have and are wondering if its me, I would not hesitate to confess to you my identity.

So the very first relatives to witness my showreel is my mum’s cousins (third or fourth removed); an old couple that although I don’t know well, I have always admired and respected their way of life. They hardly watched television and so it is not at all surprising that they thought my dad was kidding with them.

They’ve watched my showreel for only about a minute before the wife turned to me and told me that I got potential. She declined to watch further, saying that she has seen enough to know how good I am, and that she could not imagine the me that is sitting in front of her now to be the character inside those clips.

To hear compliments instead of chastisement from a wise old couple, to me, is really a great encouragement, even though all I could do was to beam sheepishly and thanked them.

Later on, we met our cousin and her family at another realtive’s house, and I noticed her sons gesturing to me and whispering to each other when we were introduced. We have not seen our cousin in what must have been about five years, so I doubt her sons would know that I am their errm cousin (or is it uncle?). But by their mannerisms, I could tell that they probably have seen me on screen. So when it was blurted out that I am an actor (no prizes for guessing who did it), the older brother couldn’t help but exclaimed “So you really are an actor?!”

I asked where they have seen me before and they quickly chirped “Kids Central!” (KNN, must be the Science Guy PI one :P). However, my cousin was still in denial. So I presented the evidence, and as her sons nod appreciatively at the rest of the clips (cuz there were some that they have seen before), all my cousin could say was

“I’ve seen these before but I cannot recognise you leh!”

To which I only smiled and thought, “Oh stop it already. My head is starting to get big and I do want to be able to take off my T-shirt at some point today.” 😀