stop waiting, start doing
This is my latest creative work that I posted on Youtube and on ESLinsider. It’s about teaching in Korea. If you are a first timer then to teach in Korea you basically have 2 options for schools to teach in.
You either teach in a hagwon or in a public school. Hagwons are private institutes. There are quite a few horror stories online about teaching in hagwons.
Yet they are not all bad, but I decided to make my own horror story to help promote one of the latest ebooks that I wrote.
I recently made a video called What’s your kung fu? I did a lot of editing in that video of little bits like ummm, ahhh or ughhh.
I edited it because it seemed to drag on and ughhh like slow it down. After I decided I would try to make something with it. So I did.
Voila!
I added a few more bits like a dragon fly from Shanghai and some rock jumping in New Hampshire.
So I tried to make a piece of art from my own junk. It was kinda interesting and fun. I think I like it too.
I have been meaning to do this for a long time. I find pictures sometimes around the web that people have taken of me street performing and I thought it might be cool to put them up.
For the last 3 years I have been painting my face blue (or occasionally white), dressing up and going out into the streets performing and trying to make some money. I have been doing a bit of beatboxing, miming, and storytelling.
This was a recent interesting pic that was taken by Trevor Ryan in Chinatown. Those were actually people walking by, but it sort of looks like some paranormal activity or something.
It looks like I was trying to scare someone here. That’s pretty fun. I have seen some pretty fun things. Laughter is good.
I think most figure you are real, but sometimes you can catch someone off guard.
There’s a fair amount of picture taking going on. Which I don’t mind if people ask and if they tip something. Otherwise I don’t really like pictures.
That’s just me and although I may look kinda cool, but it’s just like normal for me. If you had people pointing cameras at you wouldn’t you get tired of it?
Maybe not. People are different. I am an introvert for the most part and can live without them.
Can’t imagine what it’s like being a celebrity.
I am not surprised some of these celebrities flip out and punch people in the face for it. Always ask.
Here I am telling a story that I made up. It’s about “my boat trip” to Taiwan and an encounter with a pirate I had.
This one is old school. It’s probably close to 3 years old. Those hats are cool. They’re great for keeping the sun and rain out. Guess that’s why many farmers use them in Asia.
Doing some beatboxing.
This is a close-up thumbnail from a video I made called a day in the life of a street performer.
See my more recent costume.
When I lived in Tainan, Taiwan I took some kung fu classes. Downstairs was a guy who owned a t-shirt shop. He said his kung fu was making t-shirts.
That’s actually the real meaning of the word. Kung fu can be pretty much anything. It can be skill like a martial art, making t-shirts, coding, writing, teaching, playing golf, etc.
I find myself sometimes in awkward positions reaching for something sometimes and then ask myself, “how’s my kung fu?” or just notice that my kung fu is bad.
What’s my kung fu?
Nowadays it’s jiu-jitsu, art (scratching records, beatboxing, performing, etc.), yoga, meditation and ESLinsider.
What’s your kung fu?
Here’s a video that I made that combines some of the street performing that I do as well as some dj scratching.
I came up with the idea for this show since before pushing play many people thought that I was the robot kind of guy. They assumed I did the robot or danced.
Not really, but I do beatbox and scratch. And in this video I mix the beatboxing up a bit and then scratch it.
Here’s a video I made that combines a little of the street performing I do and some of my dj scratching.
The secret sauce is a sort of joke I made that was inspired from a kung fu teacher I had in Taiwan who used to break bricks with his hands.
It was tricky matching the video to the sound. It has quite a few layers to it with the music, the scratching and the video and getting it all to sink together was a challenge.
I have been working on a new costume behind the scenes. I have been in love with caution tape for quite some time. It looks cool and I like the colors. I saw some pics of people making caution tape dresses out of that and duck tape.
They stitched it together. I don’t have any sewing skills or a sewing machine. So I had to come up with a different solution.
The other thing was I had been looking for a one piece suite for a long time. I actually had two different flight suits that I only used like once or twice. They were orange and I tried dying and painting on them and only ruined them.
They weren’t that comfortable either. I made this with a temporary coverall suit that you can get in the hardware store for like $14. It’s pretty cheap and like paper.
So how I did it was like this.
It sounds easy, but it was not. That carpet tape is super sticky. There were wrinkling problems when applying the caution tape.
I was thinking the blue would look good with the yellow tape. But to cover the whole suit in that is going to take a lot of time and money – like $50 in carpet tape.
I have been thinking yellow and black for a long time and since the suit was still white I think painting my face white with the white hair looks cooler and more uniform. However, the white paint sucks. The blue paint is from the same company, but feels a lot better and comes off easier.
I haven’t actually been performing much out on the streets. And I don’t know if making a new costume will actually make me want to do that more. Probably not.
It’s cool to make stuff, but I my interest in doing what I have been doing is waning and has been. It’s kinda like…
Plastic surgery
They say plastic surgery has effects that only last temporarily. It might give you a boost in the short term, but you can’t see how you look. You essentially feel the same and you’ll soon feel like you did before you got the surgery which makes the whole point of getting plastic surgery in first place pointless.
Maybe it’s more about the process than the final product. I enjoy making stuff sometimes. Time flew by when I was making that suit.
Press play
I have about 4 of these signs that I have made. That one with the yellow costume there I originally made to put a phone camera in it, so I could capture the goofy things that people do sometimes. But the quality of the footage I got was pretty crappy.
It turned out that this one actually matches the suite, but sometimes I just think of getting rid of the whole push play thing. That’s another story.
I have thought of doing some artwork on mannequins. It might actually be more fun to make, paint and dress up mannequins than it would be to pretend to be one. Then take those out in the streets with me.
I have a lot of ideas for street performing, but there is a practicality and cost issue with a lot of them. If it’s difficult to get your stuff out there then you’re not going to want to do it.
Here’s a video a made of some of the highlights of my day out in the streets performing. It can be a lot of fun. We paint our face blue, dress up, freak some people out, do some shows and beatbox a bit.
I made this video over the last summer in Chinatown, San Francisco.