First of all, repeat after me: Nintendo Wii is cool! And fun! And very cool!

Next, absorb this: Sony PlayStation 3 is kinda cool, too, I’ll give you that, but PlayStation is also passé.

So what do you do when your goon partner (affectionately known as The Goonfather) goes and buys a PS3 instead of a Wii?

You protest, that’s what.

So, I made a video protest.

I had fun making my first video, and I figure I need to work on the old “video presence”. That first video didn’t seem to have made much of an impression on the people I was trying to impress. No calls.

No biggie.

I just try again. That’s what I do best. Try try try until I die, but, like, I make slow progress. This new video doesn’t seem to have any more charisma than the last one did.

But, never mind, this is a video protest and I’m not, like, sending it for competitions.

You know, you should get a Wii, too, even if you’re not a gamer, because the Wii is revolutionising the gaming world. Everyone, from very young people to very old people, is enjoying it. Not only is it fun and games, it also doubles as a gym workout machine. Yeah, cool, huh?

I don’t know what the Goonfather was thinking, getting a PS3. He is such a Sony fanboi. He already has a PS1, a PS2 and a PSP. What does he need a PS3 for? Pffft.

Okay, enough of ranting. Go watch my video and petition in my comments for dear Goonfather to pawn his PS3 and buy a Wii! Now!

The life of a freelancer is immensely exciting because you never know where your next pay cheque will be coming from.

Of all the places, I never expected to be invited to write for an actors’ resource website based in the USA.

But it happened, and I wrote, and I got published today.

Am now working on my next piece.

I usually tolerate my writing jobs as purely a means to earn a living. But this is one writing job I can dig into with relish because I get to write about acting. Coolness!

Thank you for the job, BackStage.com!

Recently, I volunteered to write a theatre review for The Flying Inkpot so I could watch a play for free.

Plays are expensive, you know.

But I need to watch them because I want to act in them again. After so many years of acting for film and TV, I’ve forgotten how to act on stage. So that’s how I came to volunteer to watch this particular play and write about it.

It’s a noisy play about a bunch of delinquent immortal students who have lost their godly powers.

Delightful plot. It was very entertaining and the leading actor is very charming, but I’ll do my official review when I do my official review, which is not now.

Anyway, watching it made me wish I was there on stage instead of sitting among the audience. How I enjoy torturing myself… not. Watching plays always does that to me, which is another reason I hardly watch plays, aside from costly tickets. (But cost is the bigger deterrent because I’m not exactly rolling in the dough with my struggling actress status.)

Immortalx — that’s the title — was staged at the Jubilee Hall in Raffles Hotel. Very romantic and charming venue.

Hardly appropriate for a wacky teenage comedy, especially when you have people walking around dressed like this:

But I suppose venue choices are limited in Singapore and it doesn’t really matter where you perform something as long as you perform it and people enjoy it, right?

I’m now attending another acting class which I hope will give me the tools to audition successfully for theatre. The next time I blog about a play, I hope it’ll be because I’m performing in it.

Will you watch it if you have to buy costly theatre tickets to see me perform?

I was at Jack’s Place last night when I overheard this dialogue at the next table where a man and his date were dining:

Waitress: Your order, please?

Man: Yes. Can you give me two spring chickens… but, er…*slight pause*… change one of them to baked potato.

The Goonfather and I couldn’t stop laughing. (Very quietly.)

We were still laughing about it 4 hours later, after dinner, after catching a play, on our way home.

I just uploaded a YouTube video for the first time in my life. Not that YouTube has been around long enough for that to be a remarkable statement, but you know what I mean.

Anyway, it’s a video clip I’m not extremely proud of, so when I had to fill in the field called “Tags”, I only typed “Qiaoyun” because I don’t want the clip to be searchable and watched by strangers. I’m assuming that nobody would ever do a search for “Qiaoyun” in YouTube because it’s a weird sort of word to begin with.

So. This is a one-minute video of me giving a meaningless self-intro.

You see, I had to e-mail a production house a showreel so I can be shortlisted to go for an audition. But I don’t have a showreel because I’ve been having trouble editing my mpeg2 files (direct recordings of my TV shows) and rendering them into a compressed and viewable form.

To cut the boring technical story short, I had to quickly record an emergency video of myself using my digital camera. The casting lady said I could just shoot a quick-and-dirty self-intro because they just want to see my “video presence”.

So here’s my quick-and-dirty.

If you’re planning to offer up some constructive criticism, please bear in mind that this video isn’t meant to be the least bit entertaining. It’s meant to show how I look on video.

If you’re watching only so you can laugh at me, well, okay, that’s allowed. I do that to other people all the time so I suppose I deserve some retribution.

Have I mentioned how I hate doing self-intros? Yes, I have.

I think I’d drop dead and die if I ever got to watch all the millions of self-intros I’ve done in my life, at production houses and studios. Okay, few hundred is a more accurate number, but the point is that I’ve been doing self-intros all my life and I have yet to reach a point where I feel comfortable giving one.

I just don’t like talking about myself, you know. I mean, verbally. I don’t mind writing about myself, you realise.

Anyway, self-intros suck. Unfortunately, they’re a necessary occupational hazard.

They’re a hazard to me because, like I said, I’d drop dead and die if I ever have to watch any one of them.

Vincent told me he’s watched one of my audition tapes. I think I should kill him for that. You think?