Fighter turned one this week. That means I’ve had the privilege of being a father for a year now. Before you become a father a lot of people tell you different things about how you’re going to feel. How you won’t have time to do anything anymore, how you won’t get enough sleep and well the list goes on.

After a year of being a new father, this is what I notice.

1) You go out less at night

They say your life changes when you have a baby. You go out less and you have less freedom. What they don’t tell you though is that while you do go out less, it’s not because you have to. It’s because you want to go out less.

You look forward to going home after work to spend the last few hours with your baby before he/she goes to bed.

2) Just hearing the sound of a baby cry in a mall or restaurant makes you miss your baby

We’ve all been there. You’re walking around Midvalley when you suddenly hear the sound of a baby cry. You first start thinking “Hey that sounds just like my baby boy”. Then you start to think of your boy and miss him until you realize you’re being like a clingy mother when you’re actually a man. So you get a grip of yourself, grunt, spit on the floor and punch a wall.

3) You get used to waking up many times a night

One thing they tell you about having a baby for the first time is that you won’t get much sleep at night. That is true. But what they don’t say is that you eventually get used to it. You get used to waking up 3 times a night and walking around the zombie so much that you don’t feel as lethargic as you used to during the day.

4) You still try to avoid changing the diaper as much as you can

You’re not the only one. We all do. Tactics to avoid this range from calling out to your babysitter or maid to change it to waiting for mommy to come so she can smell it and change it. But when all that fails or when your wife tells you to just do it…. you do it anyway because you’re eager to prove to her that men can change diapers if we need to!

5) Working at home becomes really unproductive

You sit down with your laptop in your living room trying to send off those last few emails. Then your baby starts crying and so you have to run up and carry him. Once he settles down you feel like since he’s awake, might as well play with him.

Then after a while you remember you have work to do. So you go back and do your work, putting your baby next to you. He then crawls all over you and starts banging away on your keyboard making it impossible to get any work done.

6) You feel bad whenever you curse… even though you convince yourself that your baby didn’t understand it

You drop something on your foot then you go “FUCK!” and you hop on one foot holding the injured foot with your hands. Then you look around and see your baby sitting up looking right at you. You tell yourself that he probably didn’t understand the F word anyway and brush it off. Then you think “I hope he doesn’t”.

7) You never talk about it with your guy friends, but you’re actually an encyclopedia when it comes to parenting knowledge

You know lots about parenting not just because you Google it and read up about that stuff. But because your wife who does it much more than you always discusses them with you. Before you know it, you’re like a walking encyclopedia of babies but nobody knows it. Nobody knows because when you’re out with all your fellow father friends, you guys never talk about parenting tips or stuff like that. You leave it to the ladies. You instead talk about business, sports, games, hobbies… whatever. Anything but parenting tips.

8) Going home late makes you sad

Not because you don’t get enough sleep or anything. But because deep inside you know that if you go home late, your baby will be sleeping. You won’t get a chance to play or interact with him until the next day.

9) You worry about not being able to support your family

When you have a baby you realize shit just got real. You have a family that now depends on you to provide for them. That means less money for you to spend on that watch or that new gadget. And more money to save for diapers, medical fees, milk and oh yes.. who could forget… the impending school fees that will likely cost you a quarter of your house.

10) You realize the balance of power in your relationship with your wife has shifted.

If she wasn’t already the boss before your son or daughter was born, she is now.

By now the whole world would have known about Robin Williams’ passing. I posted something on my Facebook in memory to him and I wanted to write something about it on my blog but I didn’t know what. There are already (rightfully so) hundreds of articles on the internet that pay tribute to him. Ranging from the Best Robin Williams movies to the Best Characters he played.

Then just an hour ago I was sitting in my living room watching a CNN tribute to Robin Williams. It was a Larry King interview and Robin Williams was being asked about his alcohol problem.

Unfortunately this video ends before the interview was over but what happened next was Larry King asked Robin Williams if he had beaten his alcohol problem.

When many other celebrities get asked questions like these they normally answer with a resounding yes. Robin Williams though paused… and then he said “No”.

Surprised, Larry King asked why not?

And Robin explained how we never really beat an addiction. It’s always lurking in the dark somewhere waiting to come back. We only beat it for the present and we can only live day by day. Every day we make decisions in life and it’s a constant struggle we have to make sure we continue to make good decisions over the bad.

Thank you Robin Williams for all the joy and the laughter. And thank you for parting this last piece of advice to us.

Imagine this. You go for a job interview and here’s what the interviewer tells you.

“Hello John. For this interview I’m not going to ask you any questions about whether you’re fit for this job or whether you know anything about the company or not. I’m just going to offer this job to you. Just like that. Yep… really… just like that.

The only catch is that in order to get this job, you need to pay $500. This job is a sales job but you will get no basic pay, no EPF, no SOCSO, no employment benefits of any sorts. Sound like a shitty job?

Well here’s the best part… your job is to convince more of your friends and family to pay to take this shitty job and you will get a commission for every friend or family you convince to pay to take this shitty job. If you don’t manage to convince anyone to do it, then you earn NOTHING. BUT if you work hard and convince many people to do it… then THE SKY IS THE LIMIT AND YOU CAN MAKE MILLIONS! (at least theoretically)

So what do you say John? Does this job sound like a great opportunity to you or what?”

—–

If you answered NO to that question then you know that it’s a shit job and you know what a bad deal Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) is.

If you answered YES… then please state in the comments below because there are thousands if not hundreds of thousands of MLM sales people out there looking for people JUST LIKE YOU!

Let me backtrack a bit to why I’m writing this article. I’m writing this article because of the following comments on my Dayre.

I always thought that given how MLM has been around for so long people would know better but from the comments above it’s obvious that’s not the case. People still are getting into it with the wrong expectations. So I want to write this article now that will most likely offend an army of MLM sales people and their bosses… but I want to do it because I think people deserve to know.

The following is what MLM schemes tell you and what I think about it:

1) “The company you’re joining has a revolutionary product that is great and everyone wants to buy”.

No it doesn’t. If it really does have a great product that works and everyone wants to buy, why do they need to do an MLM scheme? Does Apple use MLM to sell their iPhones? Does Toyota use MLM to sell their cars? Does GoPro use MLM to sell their cameras? NO… they don’t. Because they don’t need to. The product sells itself.

The spectrum of products MLM companies sell are at one end products that are completely useless and utter scams to the other end that are products that have some use and are okay at best. That’s it… the best MLM products are just okay. They’re not revolutionary, they’re not magical, they’re not great… they’re not something that everyone wants to buy on their own accord.

2)” MLM is a chance for you to do your own business”

Well the raw definition of doing business is basically “engaging in commerce”. In which case the MLMs aren’t wrong to say that.
But what’s often implied in the use of the term “business” by MLMs is that if you sign up as a downline, you become an entrepreneur. Entrepreneurs take something and make something out of it. They create full-time jobs by selling a service or product that society wants and needs.

That is not what you are in an MLM. You are a salesperson. A salesperson who actually works for a company but doesn’t get a basic salary or any benefits of a full-time job. So you’re a sales person with a pretty bad employment package.

3) “MLM is a great way to earn passive income and we need passive income to grow rich”.

If you have another full time job. This is the sell they’ll give you.

People grow rich not from doing many many different jobs that earn you commission. People grow rich from being good at ONE thing and focusing on that.

In fact the very few people who make good money from MLM (don’t get me wrong… I’m sure there are some out there) are those that do nothing at all but make MLM. They make MLM their full time jobs. So it’s not a passive thing to them.

But the people growing really rich from MLM schemes aren’t the downline.They’re the bosses who started these MLM companies. And look… they’re focused on being good at ONE thing and ONE thing only. To sell you a dream. And they’ve become rich for that.

Also, the definition of “passive income” is income received on a regular basis with minimal effort to maintain it. This is NOT the case for MLM. It IS a lot of effort to first recruit all that downline you need… and don’t forget you have to maintain them too? If they drop out,  so does your “passive income”. MLM income isn’t passive. It is very very active. The only one difference is that you don’t have to sit in the office.

Now here’s what MLM companies don’t tell you.

1) That you will likely lose your friends

When I was 16 years old I made friends with this girl who was in my BM tuition class. We saw each other fairly regularly till I was 21 years old then lost touch with her for a couple of years. She was special to me though because we go a long way back.

Then one day a few years later she messaged me about wanting to meet up and catch up on old times. I was delighted of course. I happily made the time to meet up with this old friend of mine. Within 5 minutes of sitting down with her at a coffee place I realized what I was into. This friend of mine wasn’t interested to catch up on old times. She was only interested in one thing. To recruit me to join her MLM scheme.

I felt cheated. I felt lured in with the prospect of maintaining a friendship only to realize that all I was… was another potential downline.

Right that moment she dismantled some 8 years of friendship or so for an MLM scheme. I never saw her again and never bothered to make contact with her again.

2) You will likely hurt your family

The Dayre comment I posted above is one perfect example of the strain MLMs can put on a family. I’ve seen families where the insistent son or daughter looking to earn money goes out and convinces the father or mother to part with their hard earned money.

I’ve seen families that become less close because one MLM sales person started using family gatherings as an event to recruit downline.

I’ve seen families fight, because of MLM schemes.

Can you earn some money from MLM… OF COURSE YOU CAN… but very often the price you pay is that of your friends and of your family. So what are your friends worth to you? What’s your family worth to you?

3) That if you’re good at selling, why don’t you sell stuff that people have a use for?

The difficult thing to swallow about MLMs is that most (not all) of them sell products that are fluffed up or useless. How many times has a friend come to you wanting to sell you an MLM product but no matter how hard you try and want to support this friend of yours, you can’t get over the fact that the product is useless. It doesn’t really do you any good at all.

If you’re good at selling.. why don’t you sell properties? Why don’t you sell cars? Why don’t you sell phones? There are a lot of things you can sell and if you’re good you’ll make just as much money or more than an MLM can offer you. Plus you won’t even have to pay an upfront fee to sell these other things.

4) That there is a value to your time

Lets say you put in an investment of RM1,500. After going out there to recruit a number of people you finally make something like RM2,500. That’s a profit of RM1,000 right?

WRONG!

Realistically you have to take into account time costs. How much time did it take you to make that RM2,500? What other costs are involved? Phone bills, parking expenses … meals.

AND… if you had spent this time working at another sales job that pays a commission, would you have made more?

5) That they’re not a scam

I wouldn’t disagree with this. Scams are when you’re told that you’re going to get something that you don’t get in the end. MLM doesn’t exactly scam you. They tell you upfront that this is the deal. That you have to pay this and if you work hard and sell a lot you can make money. If you don’t… then you don’t.

Do they oversell the glory of being in MLM? Sure they do and they do that intentionally too. Look at how they often talk about their success stories of people making a lot of money or driving nice cars. But at the end of it… you know what you’re getting into when you join an MLM. They don’t really scam you and that’s why a number of them are still legal.

—–

What’s my beef with MLM then if I don’t think it’s a scam?

My beef with MLM is that it tugs on the very same emotions that casinos tug at and that is greed and hope.

The sad thing is, most of us human beings are weak to that. We often let greed and hope get the better of us and that’s why MLM has hurt many many people just like gambling has. The only difference is perhaps there is some entertainment value that can be derived from gambling. I don’t know what entertainment you can get from pitching MLM to your friends.

Do people earn money from it and does it create disposable income? Yes for some people it does. For many others it doesn’t.

Should you stay away from MLM?

That’s your decision to make

——

Update: I’m aware that definition-wise there is a difference between an MLM and a pyramid scheme. For one, a pyramid scheme asks you to pay a certain capital up front (just like in my example), whereas a proper MLM doesn’t. Pyramid schemes are illegal. MLMs aren’t.

But today the layman on the street refers to pyramid schemes as MLMs. Look at the case of The Richest Man in the World. Was that referred to as an MLM or a pyramid scheme? Even pyramid schemes don’t want to be referred to as pyramid schemes.

Sure it doesn’t help that pyramid schemes masquerade as MLMs and yes it does bring a bad name to the traditional MLMs but now they’re often referred to as MLMs and my article refers to these bad MLMs that don’t sell proper products. They appear to sell products but what they’re really selling is a promise of getting rich and making a lot of money.

I’ve always dreamed of owning a restaurant. Some people want to own upscale Italian restaurants, some want to own a bar, some want to own a (hipster) cafe that’s pretty much in trend now…. well the restaurant I want to own isn’t really glamarous. One day I wanna own a steamboat (hotpot) restaurant. Something about having a round table with a hot pot in the middle that everyone takes food for each other from gets me.

In the past years I’ve gotten to know a number of entrepreneurs in the F&B or restaurant business. People who own large chains like Absolute Thai or Madam Kwans, to Chatime outlets to cafes or bars or independent burger joints. Talking to them I’ve learned quite a few things about the restaurant business that I never knew before and so today I thought I’d share that here. Note that I don’t think any of these are real secrets. Anyone in the F&B industry would know this and more… but from someone not in the industry I thought this was interesting.

1) It costs anywhere from RM500,000 to RM1,500,000 to start a restaurant/bar/cafe

The lower range of the budget is achievable for restaurants that don’t have to spend too much on renovation and restaurants that are based in places where rent is low. The upper ranges are for restaurants that spend more on renovations, have a bigger premise and are based in places where the rent is expensive. Like in malls.

2) Location isn’t really everything.

If you’re based in a mall you probably have the ability to drive more customers than say being based in a suburb somewhere… so if location IS everything then why doesn’t everyone just open restaurants in malls?

While malls give you a lot of foot traffic, it’s expensive. Restaurants based in malls can easily spend 1/3 of their revenues on rental. There are other costs involved too. Most malls require you to renovate your restaurant every X number of years regardless of how well maintained or well kept your premises are.

To make things worse, the rental agreement with a mall normally lasts 3 years. So if your business doesn’t make it in the first year, you can’t just shut it down without paying the remaining 2 years of rental which can be substantial. So once you open an outlet in a mall, chances in you’re in for the long run… whether or not you make money.

The entrepreneurs I speak to who do well in malls normally do so with big volume. Perhaps that’s why you don’t see many fancy fine dining restaurants in malls.

One entrepreneur shared with me that in malls, your food doesn’t have to be super good. As long as you have a restaurant with a nice look and feel and your food is average or above average (with maybe one or two hit dishes)… people will come because it’s convenient.

This is really different from restaurants outside that are known for really good food. Whether it’s Village Park Nasi Lemak, or Teluk Pulai BKT… nobody cares about what the look and feel is like. People go there for the good food.

3) It takes 2 years on average to earn your initial capital back

If it takes you less than 2 years then you’re doing a great job. If it takes you more then you’re doing a bad job.

4) Staffing is a major problem

One thing all restaurant owners seem to have is problems with maintaining their restaurant staff. Whether it’s the people who help in the kitchen or the waiters and waitresses. They often hop from one restaurant to another and more often than not, they just don’t show up at work leaving the restaurant very short-handed.

Larger chains cope better with this because they’re able to move staff from restaurants to cope with sudden shortages.

Most of the F&B entrepreneurs I talk to tell me that staffing is their biggest headache.

5) Theft is another problem

With technology and point-of-sale systems, it makes it harder for cashiers to steal money from the cash register but not impossible. Theft also happens in the kitchen. In some kitchens where the chef orders the food, sometimes he chooses one supplier over another and pays a higher price in return for a commission. So restaurant owners have to constantly manage this. Again this gets easier once a restaurant becomes a chain because they centralise the buying process rather than leave the power to each individual chef.

6) Franchising is an easier way to learn the restaurant business but…

I know entrepreneurs who have built very successful businesses from franchising the right brands from overseas. Tony Romas, Chatime, Din Tai Fung … they’ve all done super well and many of them had no previous F&B experience or knowledge.

The tricky thing about franchising though is it all depends on the franchisor. Good franchisors provide a lot of support and marketing for their own brand so it drives more people to your restaurant. Bad ones don’t…. and then you find your fate stuck in the hands of the franchisor.

7) How much money can a restaurant make?

This really depends. A decent restaurant should be able to pull at least RM2-3 million revenue a year. And make a profit of about 15-25% of that depending on how well they manage costs.

There are restaurants that make good money with even less revenue because they have lower costs. And some that make many times that RM2-3 million because they’re huge. It’s really hard to say.

————–

The consensus I got from all these entrepreneurs I’ve talked to is that the F&B industry… while it looks easy is actually really hard. But then again no business is easy… any easy business out there would have strong barriers to entry or been done so many times over and over again that competition would naturally make it hard.

I now know that the dream of my steamboat restaurant is achievable. But the dream of a profitable steamboat restaurant… well that’s harder.

The 28th of July 2014 was our second anniversary. I’ve been married for two years now. Two great years that flew by so quickly it feels like I’m still dating my wife. I’ve learned that when you’re with somebody, that person tends to change you. Most of the time for the better. I decided to look back at how my wife has changed me to make me a better person.

Here’s how.

1) She got me to stop to smell the roses

I’m a kind of person who likes to plan everything so much that even while I’m at lunch, I’m planning dinner. My wife on the other hand is the complete opposite. She doesn’t like planning. She just likes to go with the flow.

One day during lunch I asked about what we should do for dinner. She said “Don’t think about it. Why don’t you just sit back and enjoy lunch. We’ll worry about dinner when it comes”.

While both of us agree that some level of planning is important, I see the value in what she’s been telling. Since then I’ve learned not just to appreciate having the certainty of plans, but to treasure the moments I currently live.

Two weeks ago we were walking around on Santa Monica beach. Shorty noticed I was really quiet. She turned to me and asked “What’s wrong?”.

I said “Nothing… just enjoying the moment”.

2) She cured my temper

I used to have a really bad temper. A side of me that she would experience too whenever we had a fight. Over the years though she helped me see how my temper wasn’t doing me any good and was hurting people more than I should.

I probably didn’t change immediately but over the years I found my temper slowly and slowly disappearing

Today I only allow myself to really lose my temper once a year. So far I can’t remember the last time I did.

3) She taught me how to stop worrying about things

Remember when I wrote about 9 Easy Ways To Be Happy?

The part about how we sometimes spend 80% of our time worrying about things that only matter at most 20% of our lives… well that was inspired by my wife.

I often share the things that worry or stress me out. Many times would she tell me about how I’m worrying about something that I can’t change… or that it really doesn’t matter at all. She has never ever though told me never to bring up a worry I have no matter how many times I brought it up and how many times it annoyed her.

4) She changed the way I dress

Before I met my wife.

After I met my wife.

Nuff said.

5) She taught me how to put myself in people’s shoes.

I read an article recently about why people who read a lot make great partners in life. Why? Because reading fiction puts them in the shoes of many many different characters in storybooks so they can apply that to real life.

I see that in my wife and she rubs a lot of that perspective on to me. Never have I ever seen her not consider the other side of the coin. No matter how angry or emotional she can be about something.

6) She made me a father

Being a father changes you in a way that I can’t explain. I now understand why my dad used to say “One day when you’re a father you’ll know”. It’s because what he was trying to get at wasn’t something he could just explain. It was something you had to experience to know.

My wife gave me a chance to be a father. And I believe that made me a much better person. It made me love more, made me realise how time is the most precious thing I can give anyone and it brought me joy I’ve never felt before.

7) She taught me how to laugh at everything including yourself

My wife is one of the most cheerful people I know. She takes the opportunity to laugh at everything. In fact there are few things in this world and few jokes in this world that can’t make her laugh.

She even laughs at herself when embarrassing or unfortunate things happen to her. Being with her… has made me a much happier person.

I have always loved living in KL. While doing my degree in London, many of my Malaysian friends there set a goal of getting a job in the UK and then never coming back. They cited the usual reasons we hear about our brain drain today: Higher pay overseas, better opportunities, better lifestyle and the likes.

I knew all that and it would be hard to argue with some of these points but I personally never wanted to stay in the UK. I always wanted to come home.

Why? Because of family and because I felt it was easier to excel in our home ground than it is in a foreign country. Besides I love KL. There’s so much energy in the city and increasingly more and more things to do in the city. I love the people too. That I can go to a park or go cycling somewhere and easily make friends who speak my language and come from the same culture and background that I came from.

Today I look back with no regrets that I had come home but I have to concede that there are a few things that have changed in the past few years. A few things that have made it harder to live in KL than it was before.

1) Crime

This is a sore point for many Malaysians. Just about every one of us Malaysians have either at one point or another been a victim of a crime, or directly know a friend or relative who has been a victim.

Forget about who’s to blame for our crime rate today. Crime after all is a factor of economic reasons, immigration, enforcement and the likes. So attempting to find the reason for crime we’re facing will lead to a whole long debate. Heck forget that official statistics for crime have come down because that’ll lead to a whole new debate.

Today we talk only about perception. Whatever our official crime rates are, few Malaysians especially those living in the urban areas feel truly safe. When our women walk on the streets, they hold on to their handbags tight for fear of a snatch thief coming along. Wherever we go out we make sure to lock our cars and heck many of us don’t even keep our SmartTags on our windscreen for fear that someone might break in to steal it.

We don’t feel safe from crime and I think we feel even less safe today than we did 10 years ago.

2) Property Prices

One of the plus points of living in KL or Malaysia was that property prices in KL was relatively low compared to the rest of the region. Most of us Malaysians can own a home.

In the past few years though property prices have gone up so much that it has become increasingly difficult for us to own homes. So we settle for living in smaller homes or living further away from the city. But even then it’s hard.

3) Haze

The haze isn’t new. I remember having it around as far back as 1997. The difference with then and now was that in 1997 the haze was expected to last only a certain number of weeks in a year. This year though I can remember just as many days we have with haze than I can without. Cycling, running or doing any form of outdoor sport in clean fresh air has never before felt like a luxury as it does this year.

Sure KL isn’t the only city in the world to suffer from this. Heck there are cities that have much worse air quality. Cities in China, India and Iran to name a few.

But we still have it very consistently. It used to be when the haze came everyone would rush to pharmacies and buy up all the facial masks. That doesn’t happen anymore because most of us stock up a number of masks at our homes. It’s like we no longer see the haze as an unfortunate temporary event. We now see it as a regular thing in our lives that we have to contend with.

4) Water Disruptions

We don’t just not have clean air. We also occasionally don’t have clean water too.

The past two years have seen a number of water disruptions in the Klang Valley. Again we’re not here to debate whose fault is what but the fact is that many of us have had to face this. This year in fact was worse than last year.

Just like facial masks with haze, today many households make it a point to store water or install water tanks. Again we don’t see this as an unfortunate one off event. We see it as a regular thing now that we all have to deal with.

5) Education

I’ve never really had to think about this until I became a parent but now that I am… I do. I think about it all the time. About where my kids will go to school, what will they learn and whether they will have a good education.

I spent my primary school in a private school and my secondary years in a government school. Personally, I preferred my years in government school and always held the belief that I would put my kids through government school as well. Government school after all is real. It’s where they would meet the real people of Malaysia… not just a select upper middle class that you would see in private schools.

Today though many of my peers don’t have the same confidence in our education system as they did before. Which is ironic because we all came from that same education system. Perhaps it’s just a perception problem again…. but you can get a sense of the seriousness of this problem by looking at the demand we have now for private or international schools. Never before have I seen so many private schools in existence and never have I seen such insane school fees just for schools.

So to live in KL, you either have to have the faith that the government school system is as good today as it was during our time a decade or two ago…. or pay top dollar for private schools. The latter would make it really expensive to raise a family in KL… on top of rising property prices.

——-

Overall I still think KL is a great city to live in. There are many things we still have going for us… the food, the people and the likes. My hope is in the next few years, we’ll see improvements in these areas. Perhaps one day we’ll find KL in the list of the best cities to live in the world.

I love movies. I guess we all do. Heck even in this internet age we all still can’t get enough of them. We can’t get enough of the great blockbusters that keep coming out, the independent movies that touch us and even the actors and actresses that we see on screen.

I’ve always wondered what it would be like to work in Hollywood. I never had ambitions to be an actor or an actress simply because I know I can’t act like so many of these A-listers can. But I’ve always wondered how fun it would be to work behind the scenes. On set. To be part of the crew that make movies whether they’re in editing or sounds effects or visual effects or even just film crew on set.

This trip to Los Angeles I visited the studios of Paramount PIctures and Universal. I went for the tours and asked loads of questions to the tour guides about the insights and the workings of the studios. I thought it would be good for me to share them here.This is what I’ve learned about Hollywood.

1) It’s very hard to get a job in Hollywood

Now I don’t even mean it’s hard to get a part in the movie as a lead or supporting character or to be a director (this is undoubtedly very hard). I mean it’s hard to get a job even as one of the film crew or people behind the scenes working on producing the movie.

The tour guide at Paramount Pictures told me that even for her job as a tour guide, there were 2,500 people who applied for that job and they selected only 25. One of them being her.

I asked her why? Do the crew get paid really well? She said they get paid “decent” but people come from all over the world wanting to be a part of movie magic so it’s very competitive.

2) You need to be part of a union before you get a job

Everyone has a union in Hollywood. The writers, the crew… everyone. In order to get a job you need to be in the union but here’s the Catch-22 part of this. In order to get into a union you need work experience in the relevant field. But how do you get work experience when you’re not part of the union?

I asked the tour guide this and she said it really boils down to connections. You gotta know somebody in there who knows there’s a job available and is willing to stick up for you.

3) The Movie-making crew work very hard

Shoots can last for a long long time. Even till really late at night and as long as the director feels they haven’t got what they need, the shoot carries on. The plus side though is that the film crew get overtime so they get paid for the extra hours they work. But they gotta work hard nevertheless.

4) There is a good reason why the movie and TV capital of the world is Los Angeles

Paramount Pictures was apparently the first studio to move into Los Angeles. They found it a movie making paradise for two good reasons:

i) It was always sunny in Los Angeles and it seldom rained. A very rainy weather can ruin a shot if you’re trying to shoot a bright sunny day. If you’re looking for a rainy day though, that can be easily simulated. Well much easier than having to simulate a bright sunny day.

ii) It’s 1-2 hours drive away from dessert, the beach and whatever kind of terrain anyone needs to shoot in.

5) Most of the scenes are shot in the studios in Los Angeles (even a movie that’s based in New York or Chicago or somewhere else)

Paramount PIctures, Warner Bros, Universal and all have their own studios where people can go in to shoot everything. Everyone has a metro set like this.

There the crew of a movie can do it up to look like whatever they need it. Whether it’s New York in modern times or New York in the early 1900s. Whatever it is… they can do it.  They shoot it all in Los Angeles because it’s a lot cheaper than flying everyone out to New York. Yes there are some movies that fly for some takes overseas but most of the scenes are still shot in Los Angeles.

6) Many Actors are Shorter than they look on Screen

Tom Cruise, Sylvester Stallone are all actually shorter than they look on screen. The film crew just use a number of camera tricks to make them look taller.

One of them is by having doors like this.

If you want someone shorter to look tall you put him in the smaller door so he looks big in comparison to the door.

If you want someone tall to look shorter (say like The Hobbit) you put him in a big door.

7) TV is getting bigger

It used to be that movies are where all actors or actresses want to end up. Movie stars tend to make the most money.

However in today’s world with internet companies like Netflix that make TV shows a lot more accessible to an online audience, TV seems to be taking a more important role. The income gap between TV and movie stars now has become a lot more narrower.

8) Many things you see in movies aren’t real

The city of New York you see in Ugly Betty isn’t real, Wisteria Lane of Desperate Housewives isn’t an actual street. It’s a set in the studio with fake houses that have nothing behind them but wood and metal holding the structure up.

The same goes for a lot of things. Whatever you see on the camera was just made to be good enough to look real on camera and nothing else.

And here’s a bonus one I got from my tour guide. Which I thought was pretty cool for me because Forrest Gump is my favorite movie of all time.

At the 10th Anniversary of Forrest Gump, Tom Hanks sat on this bench that was used in the movie and is now on display in the studio. He then gave out chocolates to everyone who passed by.

Four of these benches were made. I’m sitting on one of the four.