The Clubhouse app has been around for more than a year and a kind friend gave me an invite a few months back. I just wanted to share my experience of the app in this blog.
Imagine if you can invite yourself into a unique room full of strangers from anywhere in the world anytime you want to listen and discuss a specific topic. You choose only the chat rooms which are live at that moment which interest you, listen for a while and then can leave quietly anytime you want.
At your first app sign in stage, it will ask you to list your interests in order to show you ongoing chats that you might like. But as you start to use the app more often, you can begin to follow people or groups that appeal to you. When they host new chats, you will be informed or they will show up in your feeds.
At the start, it was to tune into my friend’s chat as he was trying to pivot from his many passive LinkedIn followers into this newer and more interactive medium. Then I saw pop-ups of famous people participating in live chats and immediately jumped into those rooms to have a look-see.
I went into one where Marc Andreessen was talking. He is one of the original investors in Clubhouse and a famed technopreneur whom most would want to listen to his experiences and views. The other one I happened to chance upon was the actor Jared Leto. It was amazing that I could listen to live discussions by well-known people and surrounded by like-minded audience from every corner of the world. The limit for participants in each room is 5k and you can jump in when you see it filling up fast.
As I was interested in technology and AI in particular, I started to follow certain groups and joined the chats. There were fantastic and knowledgeable people with PhDs or professors who speak from a level of authority on the topics which were so enlightening for me. Anyone can put up their hand to ask a question and the moderator can “upgrade/invite” you to the panel where you can ask your question. The panellist of experts will try to attempt to answer your query.
There were so many groups of special interest to join and learn from. It was especially useful for me to tune into one during my long morning jogging sessions as they were intellectually stimulating. One can chance upon a chat that will blow your mind once in a while. The fact that you have participants from all over the world even though it is now only an iPhone only app gives one a wider appreciation of cultural differences and thinking.
The hype has since died down and usual chat group sizes are now smaller, anywhere from 100 to 1k in size. Many other firms like Twitter have also jumped onto the bandwagon with similar functions. Discord had also been doing the same for a while now via a gaming angle. Given the year of Covid, the need for human interaction had certainly played a part in encouraging these apps to blossom. It feels so nice and personal to listen to a private conversation of like-minded people discussing a favourite subject in a warm fireside chat setting.
The latest one I enjoyed was a few days back in a comedy chat group. Jeff Foxworthy was the special guest featured. I didn’t even know who he was before the call. He is a 30-years stand up comedy veteran whose speciality was clean redneck jokes. I couldn’t stop laughing for more than an hour. So many joined in, some comparing the similarities of redneck and black jokes, all agreeing that comedy is a great unifier of different people across all cultures. Something new I learnt that day.
We had a family gathering last Sat to celebrate my dad’s 92nd birthday. Thankfully, it was a week before the lockdown that will start today because of the new clusters that were discovered recently. While we still had to limit household visitors to a maximum of 8, we organized it in 2 separate locations to accommodate everyone. The older adults went to my dad’s place while the younger generation came to my place and we did FaceTime to connect both sides via live streaming. We ordered some food delivery and did some potluck plus birthday cakes to celebrate.
Dad is not a very chatty person and usually looks stern and quiet. But he did something different that night which surprised all of us. After the cake cutting, he told all of us that he wanted to speak and address all of us as a group. It seems that he wanted to get something off his chest.
He started to tell us the reason why he has always had an altar in the house for my grandfather. I never got to see my grandfather before and always assumed that he had left my grandmother for another wife a long time ago while dad was still very young.
My dad related that when he was a 14-year-old boy something happened. As he was born in 1929, that would be 1943 then. During that time during WWII, my grandfather apparently had been preparing for a journey to Indonesia via ship to do some trading and exchanging money for goods to sell back in S’pore. He never returned and dad heard absolutely no news from him thereafter. He consulted a temple for help and they advised him to place an altar at home to pray for his safe return. That was how it all started.
Forward to 78 years later, dad was still doing this. He still periodically burn joss sticks offerings to the altar in the hope that his father will return home safely. That was the legacy of his practice all these years and he wanted all of us to know. I am touched by the story that he was sharing this with us now, given that he has always been a very private person. He told us that this would continue with him while he is still around and that we need not continue this practice after he passes along if we do not want to.
I guess that at a certain age, he has the right to want to share certain things with his children rather than to keep them bottled inside. My full respect for him. As we age, we will look back to our life and legacy to decide what we want to be remembered for, rather than depend on using material stuff to serve as a rememberance.
We finally had a family holiday this week in these new normal Covid times. Beggars can’t be choosers and the choices were a cruise or more staycations. We chose a 3 nights cruise to nowhere on the World Dream ship by Genting. There were a 2 hours check-in process that included a Covid test, multiple briefings and tokens issued for tracking purposes of your whereabouts on the boat at all times. Due to social distancing rules, the ship can only be 50% full. They had a capacity for 3,400 passengers and hence there were only 1,700 of us in this 19 stories high ship structure.
It was an eat, drink, sleep and repeat leisurely vacation. There were sufficient activities to keep us occupied, gym and pool sessions included. All activities and speciality meals had to be pre-booked in advance. Alcoholic drinks buffet packages were tempting and we managed to consume 4 bottles of wine and cocktails during the stay. Food was alright and was part of the cruise package except if you want to dine at the speciality restaurants where you had to pay extra. The casino was one of the highlights but it did not interest us.
For 2021, S’pore had become one of the top countries with the most cruise passengers in the world. The government had started a trial cruise experiment with 2 cruise liners a few months ago and it seemed to have gone on well with so much penned up demand to travel boiling over.
These are interesting times as the new normal continues to evolve. The virus has taught us to not take things for granted and that we should count our blessings all the time.
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