VIDEO DESCRIPTION:
In this morning chat over coffee, I dive into a massive tech rabbit hole about bicycle camera mounting, followed by some absurd and hopefully funny customer service experiences I’ve had lately in Malaysia.
Topics covered in this podcast:
🚲 Camera Tech Struggles
– Manual focusing for solo recording (thanks to Daryl from Wander Eats for the genius kettle trick!)
– Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II autofocus pulsing issues
– Why the recording limit and battery life drive me crazy
– Focus peaking vs. continuous autofocus – which is better?
📹 The Great GoPro Bicycle Mount Obsession
– Why mounting a camera on a bicycle is SO much harder than on a motorcycle
– The parallax problem explained – why my face bounces while the background stays rock solid
– My “patented” Planet Doug broomstick mounting system (wooden vs. aluminum experiments)
– Frame mount vs. handlebar mount – the pros and cons
– Why most cyclists end up holding their camera
🔧 Gear Talk
– Wing Outdoor’s GoPro Hero 12 footage – why does it look so different from mine?
– GoPro Boom vs. broomstick – is the expensive gear worth it?
– Kickstand disasters – cheap Malaysian kickstands vs. Swiss Pletscher
– Mirrycle Mirrors – why I can’t cycle without them (and how I broke mine)
– The 1.8 ringgit mirror that caused chaos at DIY
😤 Customer Service Rants (The Good, The Bad, and The Bizarre)
– The fried banana shop where the guy wouldn’t get up to serve me
– DIY price check nightmare – the employee who assembled both mirrors instead of checking the price
– Otai Burger “no gas” saga – waiting 45 minutes while customers were turned away
– Hotel front desk issues and why I’m now “gun-shy” about going out
🦅 The Touch ‘n Go Visa Video Disaster
– Trying to film a simple video at Starbucks
– Crows, jackhammers, motorcycle gangs, and construction – all at once
– Why shooting “talking head” videos on the road is exponentially harder than in a home studio
– The 1,000-view reality check – did I waste my time?
Plus: Bicycle mirrors, DIY hacksaws, welding fantasies, and why I leave my hotel room with extra tools behind.
VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:
Good morning. Welcome back to the Planet Doug podcast. A morning chat basically over a cup of coffee. I recently did a live stream. I wanted to figure out how to do a live stream and I was thinking that something like this, you know, podcast, this morning chat over coffee, it could easily be a live stream. Except with a live stream, I think you really should be interacting with people. Anybody that’s watching the video, they’re chatting with you in the live chat window. And they may ask a question, bring up a topic, and you’re basically whatever you’re talking about is being guided by whatever is going on in the chat window. But for one of these morning chats over coffee, I mean, I just want to talk about what’s been going on in my life, with me, with technology, of course, with just being in Malaysia, interactions with people, all of my typical Planet Doug adventures. So, I have like just topics I want to talk about. So, it doesn’t really suit a live stream, if you see what I’m saying. The other day when I did the live stream, it was more like a test. I just wanted to refresh my memory of how you do a live stream and I use a GoPro connected to the GoPro Quik app on my phone and then I just put the GoPro on my bike and I went out exploring riding around Port Dickson and just chatting. So, I was basically, it was almost like shooting a regular Planet Doug video, except it was being broadcast live, and I was curious how that would work. And people were leaving comments and questions in the live chat window, but of course, I’m busy riding the bike, so I’m not monitoring that. And in fact, ever since that day, I haven’t even gone back to check the live chat thing. I tried once or twice, but they didn’t show up for some reason. Anyway, I’m going to try again. And then I can go back and review what people were saying in the chat window. And then maybe, I’m not quite sure how to now if anyone asked a question. How do I answer the question now that the live stream is over? Anyway, so yeah, for this, doing a live stream doesn’t really make a lot of sense. It’s more like me, as I said, just talking about life over coffee. And of course, as always, there’s going to be a lot of technology talk, a lot of YouTube video talk, like videos that I shot, videos that I found from other YouTubers, travel videos, stuff like that. So, if you’re not into that, run away. Run away fast because there’s going to be a ton of technology talk. Customer service rant. Yeah, that has been on my mind a lot lately. Not in a positive way. Wow. I’m just I’m being worn out by this. And we’ll see how many of those stories come up. And then I’ll be talking about YouTube videos. I’d love to talk about pop culture, but that always gets pushed to the side because I end up talking for so long about other things that I just run out of energy, run out of time, my voice gets worn out before I get to movies that I may have watched, TV shows, things like that. And I got a lot of interesting topics there I could dive into, but it’s almost like that needs to be a completely separate pop culture podcast because there just isn’t enough time and there isn’t enough space to combine Planet Doug technology, Planet Doug video stories, and pop culture. Anyway, so let’s get started with the podcast with the first topic.
The first short topic is related to actually shooting this podcast because I’ve struggled quite a bit with doing these recordings because if you’ve been following my podcast, you know I would normally in the past put my GoPro on a little tripod like this and then just put it on the bed in front of me very, very close to me. So it would be like right here and then every time I move on the bed, you know, it wobbles and shakes and I have to put my legs like around the tripod and it’s kind of awkward and GoPros are not great for that kind of thing. They’re not great in low light. And now that I’ve been reunited with my Olympus, I’ve been shooting these videos with my Olympus camera, which I have set up way at the far end of the bed on a bigger tripod that’s resting on the floor. So, I can’t reach the camera from here. And I’ve been experimenting with different techniques. And one problem I always have and people who know about cameras and are interested in these things pointed out that my videos are pulsing because this Olympus OM-D E-M5 Mark II has contrast detect autofocus which is not great for video and it pulses in and out and it’s constantly searching for a new focus point. So even if it’s focused on my face, it might pulse in and out because it wants to keep locking focus. So it kind of goes this way and then focuses on the background. And it’s basically dialing in the right focus point and it does it. It keeps thinking about it like am I in focus? Let me check. Okay, I’m in focus. Five minutes later, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah. It keeps doing that. And if I’m using continuous autofocus, every time I raise my hand, it might lock focus on my hand. So then it pulses on my hand and then when I drop my hand or I lift up my cup of coffee or I pick up my phone, it might focus on that object briefly and then go back to my face and then people have pointed that out to me. So what I should do, of course, is manual focus because I’m not moving. It’s not like I’m going to get up and wander around the room. So, I don’t need autofocus. But when you are a one-person operation, how do you manual focus? I’ve never been able to figure this out because the camera is way over there. So, I need somebody standing behind the camera looking through the lens and they focus on my face, lock focus, and now you’re done. But there’s no way to do that when you’re by yourself. You know, I’ve experimented in the past where I’ve tried to put something in the air right here where my face is and then I hang it there or I put it on a chair or a stool. I put something here at face level and then I go over to the camera, focus on that object which is a stand-in for my head and then I come sit down and I put this thing aside and that’s one way of doing it but it’s so awkward to do like it’s like you’re here building like a Jenga pile just roaming around the room looking for things that you can stack up to get an object to my face level and then the thing falls, you know, you walk over to the camera and your Jenga pile falls over and you got to restack it. It’s just so hard to do. But then Daryl from Wander Eats, I was babbling to him about my endless problems and then he says, “Hey, why don’t you focus on your kettle and then like put your kettle on the bed, focus on that and that will be fine.” And then I pointed out to him like, well, no, that isn’t going to work because now the camera is angled down at the kettle and then when you raise the camera back up again, like angle it at this level, you’ve changed the distance and now you’ll be out of focus. But I had misread his comment. What Daryl was suggesting, and he pointed this out to me, is no, no, no, no, that’s not what I mean. What you do is you put the kettle on the bed right here where my body would be and then lower the whole tripod so the whole camera goes down to the level of the mattress on a straight line. Focus on the kettle and then lock focus and then lift the camera back up. Don’t angle it. Leave it level, but just lower it on the tripod and then raise it back up again. And that’s what I did today. But I didn’t use my kettle because my kettle was busy boiling water. I happened to have a carton of milk, a big one liter carton. So I put the carton here, leaning it against the bed or against the pillows, trying to put it exactly where my face would be, and then I lowered the camera, focused on the milk carton, and then raised the camera back up again. All right, so that’s what I did. And I have focus peaking on this camera which you can, it’s a feature you can turn on or off and it will actually put an outline around the object that’s in focus. And so I use this Daryl technique and focus peaking and maybe I’m in focus but I’m using manual focus. So, kind of the downside to manual focus is if you get it wrong, now I’m out of focus and I will be out of focus for the next hour. Right? So, you have to be really sure that you got it right. And from here, I can’t tell am I in focus or not. I just tried my best. So, maybe I’m in focus, maybe I’m not. I don’t know. If you use continuous autofocus, well, you’re in focus most of the time. It works really well even on this Olympus, but then every time I wave my arm or move my cup of coffee or put something up, it could go in and out of focus. It can be pulsing. So, you pick your poison with technology. But anyway, am I in focus? I don’t know. The way, one way to fix that of course is to just add more light because the more light you have, you can stop down on the aperture and the smaller the hole, the aperture, the greater your depth of field and then it’s much more forgiving. But in a low light situation like this, the lens usually goes wide open so you have a very narrow depth of field. So anyway, Olympus camera talk, that is my first technology story.
And since I started the technology section with an Olympus camera story, I might as well move on to GoPro because I’ve been experimenting with different ways of mounting my GoPro on a bicycle. I’ve talked about that in depth even in the last video. So again, if this doesn’t interest you, bye-bye. Run away. But yeah, I’m obsessed with this topic and I’m obsessed with it because I watch a lot of YouTube travel videos and a lot of these people are on motorcycles, scooters, bicycles. So, I’m keenly aware of the challenges people face when they are filming themselves, particularly while cycling. As I talked about last time, on a motorcycle or scooter, it’s really easy. Anybody can do it with almost any gear that you have. Everything’s going to work basically. You got to do a little bit of thinking, a little bit of adjusting, but it’s easy on a motorcycle. On a bicycle, it is hard. And what most people end up doing, you know, my fellow YouTuber, the American Hobo, is a good example of this. He didn’t even try because, well, he’s using a Pocket 3 as well. That’s what he’s been using most of the time, a Pocket 3 camera, which provides amazing video quality. It’s a really, really nice camera. Beautiful colors, beautiful exposure, lightweight, beautiful gimbal stabilization. You’re not going to get anything better than that. But it has an Achilles heel in its form factor for one thing. The form factor makes it difficult to mount on like a chest harness or a helmet mount. It’s not designed to be mounted like a GoPro, like an action camera. And even if he did, he actually bought a mounting apparatus way, way back like months ago. And he tried, he was going to put it on his bike and I would have warned him, no mounting apparatus for a Pocket 3 is ever going to work. They just don’t. I used to have a Pocket 2 and I tried them all. You know, everybody has like a knapsack and they think, “Oh, I’m just going to get the knapsack mount on the strap and I’ll put my Pocket 3 here.” Doesn’t work. Nothing you try will work because the Pocket 3 is basically maybe, you know, not this big, but basically that kind of size. And this is how it’s designed. You hold it in your hand and then all the buttons are right here and then it’s got the gimbal on the top. So, the Pocket 3 is designed to be held in your hand. So, all the mounting apparatus, I mean, you can mount it on a tripod, that works awesome, but no other mounting apparatus works. Even hand grips don’t really work. It’s just not meant to be used that way. So, that’s one problem. The other problem is if you do like just mount it on the handlebar of your bike, which you can do, you can just grab any kind of a handlebar mount, put a little tripod thing on the top and screw the Pocket 3 on there, and there it is. But the gimbal does not adjust for that kind of movement. Like if you’re walking around holding the Pocket 3, the stabilization from the gimbal is amazing. But when it’s on a bicycle handlebar, like vibrating, it can’t compensate for that. So your video is just, you know, jittery and moving and shaking. You can’t mount a Pocket 3 on a bicycle. It just doesn’t work. So, the American Hobo figured this out pretty early on and it was the only camera he had. So, what he does is he holds onto the handlebar with one hand and then the Pocket 3 with the other and then he’s like riding his bike and moving and then he’ll aim the Pocket 3 even behind him at the scenery around him and then put the camera in front of himself and now he’s talking into the camera but he holds on to it. And even people that shoot with GoPros or DJI Action 4, they do the same thing. They just stuff this into their pocket. This is my GoPro Hero 12. And then when they want to film something, they have to take out the camera, turn it on, and then they hold it like this while they’re riding their bike. And I mean, it works. You actually get really good stabilization, and I’ll be talking about that in a minute because you’re holding it in your hand, and that dampens the bike movements. And the stabilization is perfect. But of course, it’s awkward. It’s weird. Your arm gets in the shot. I hate seeing people’s giant hairy forearms, you know, filling half of the camera angle. I mean, it works, but that’s how most YouTuber cyclists, that’s the method they normally settle on. They try everything else that I’ve tried and then they just like, “Ah, none of this is working.” You know, you mount the GoPro on the handlebars on a regular mount and it’s just like pointing straight up in the air, you know, because the camera’s down here and it goes up your nose and into the sky and it’s like, well, they edit the video at the end of the day and they’re like, well, that’s a really unflattering look and you don’t see the world. So, the next day they just instead of mounting the GoPro, they hold it in their hand and they’re like, “Oh, well, that kind of works. Yeah, that works.” The downside to that, of course, is 90% of the time, your camera is not accessible. Like even the American Hobo Daniel with his Pocket 3, when he’s finished filming, he puts the cap back on, he puts it back in his case, and he stuffs it in his pocket. He’s got, you know, shorts, like cargo shorts with big pockets, and he stuffs it in his pocket, and now it’s in his pocket all the time. And then he sees some interesting scenery or he has something he wants to talk about. He basically has to stop the bike, get the camera out, you know, remove it from its case, put the case in his pocket. I’ve never seen him do any of this, but I know what would be involved. Put the case in his pocket, you know, turn on the Pocket 3, now it’s recording, start riding, and then when he’s done talking, well, he’s got to stop the bike, turn off the Pocket 3 back, you know, and I guess, you know, these are the things that become automatic after a while. So, it’s probably not a huge deal for him. He just does it all day long. And for him, it’s normal. But what it does mean is if something happens really quickly, maybe you’re riding your bike and then somebody comes running up to you, a friendly local person, and you want that interaction on camera. Well, you’re stuck because what are you going to do? It’s like, tell the person, “No, no, wait, wait, wait. Don’t say anything yet. Don’t talk to me. Let me get out my camera.” And then you got to get out your camera. Turn it on. Wait, wait, wait. Okay. Recording. Hi, how are you? you know, and then you have your conversation. But if your GoPro is already mounted, it’s there and then you see something ahead of you like coming at you really quickly. Oh, there’s a bunch of water buffalo on the street or some goats. I can see some people coming towards me. You just reach over and go beep. Your GoPro is now recording. Your DJI Action 4 is recording. So, I like having the camera out in the open all the time. So that’s why I obsess about mounting the GoPro. And I guess I missed the main point. The main point is that most of the time when people mount a camera, it’s close to their face and their face fills the entire video screen. And that’s the main problem for me. I just don’t like that perspective. It’s like nobody wants to look at your giant face the entire time. They want to see, at least I assume, I know I want to see what’s going on around them. So then how do you mount a GoPro on a bicycle so that it is far enough away from you that it gives a wide perspective? So that is the challenge that I have been struggling with for a long time. And if you’ve listened to me babble about this before, you know that my solution after endless experimentation was the patented Planet Doug broomstick. And I’ve been working on that over the last couple of days because when I developed a system going way back in time. I took a full-sized broom like basically this, right? I bought a broom from a hardware store. These can cost like $1. And I don’t need the broom. I need the stick. So, I buy one of these for a dollar and then I unscrew this. And then I leave this behind. And then I’ve got a broomstick. And my original method was to take this broomstick and with hose clamps from a hardware store, really, really cheap, but really powerful, I would clamp it to the frame of the bicycle. And that worked really, really well from one point of view because the frame of the bicycle doesn’t move. Like when you move the handlebars, the frame stays solid. So the camera is like floating in the air ahead of you. And even as you turn the handlebars, the camera doesn’t move and you get a nice smooth perspective. So that’s what I did for a while, but there were a few problems with it. Because you’re using such a long broomstick, it bounces up and down. So, if you go over a bump, the GoPro might stabilize, you know, a little vibration, but then if your camera after the vibration is like going and then finally settles down again, yeah, that gets really annoying after a while. And putting it on the frame of the bicycle was like having this giant unicorn horn sticking out from the front of the bike. And then it seemed to get in the way because you’re turning the handlebars and you’re going this way, but then the camera is still sort of pointing straight ahead. It’s hard to keep track of it and it feels like it’s going to hit cars, hit people, hit walls. It was just kind of awkward. So, I experimented with putting my broomstick on the handlebars. And I’d originally rejected that idea because what I pointed out already when you turn the handlebars, the broomstick moves with the handlebars, but I developed that system and I was using it in Sumatra, but then when I was there, I made the mistake of cutting it too short. I had it at a certain length that provided a nice wide field of view, but it seemed to be a little bit too jittery. I wanted to shorten the stick so it would be more stiff. It wouldn’t be as flexible. So I thought and I experimented and I made a calculation. Okay, where do I cut it? And I ended up with this and it worked really, really well, but it was just a little bit too short. You know, I needed another 6 inches or something. It was just, you know, it was one of those situations, you know, experienced people will say measure twice cut once. Well I measured 20 times before I cut it but I guess I overthought it and for some reason I just cut it a little bit too short. So now that I have my bike back I wanted to get a new broomstick and then I was going to cut it to a length like this. And basically like this but with another 6, 8 inches and then just sort of experiment. Basically I wanted to do this and leave it long enough and then if I keep it really long then I can cut off a little bit at a time. And I figured out another technique which I’ll talk about in a minute. But since I was starting all over again with a brand new broomstick, I kind of wanted to go back to the frame mount like mounting the broomstick on the frame just to try that out again because if you’ve watched any of my videos when I’m riding the bicycle with the GoPro, you may have noticed there’s a really weird movement. And this has been puzzling me for a long time because GoPros have amazing stabilization. I mean, you can shake the GoPro as crazily as you want, but the video will be rock solid. And yet, in all of my video, when I had the GoPro mounted on the broomstick, my face was moving and vibrating and shaking. And I’m like, that’s weird. Like GoPros have such powerful stabilization. Why can’t it stabilize my head? I mean, there’s this weird motion. And I’ve seen it in most videos from cyclists. Unless they’re holding the GoPro in their hand, then they don’t get that. And that’s kind of a key to what I’m talking about because their arm acts as sort of a dampener. But I did a whole bunch of research into this because what I noticed is in my video everything around me, the buildings, the trees, cars, the street, houses, other people, everything is stabilized. Everything in the background is rock solid. So the GoPro stabilization, it can handle bicycle movements. Like I go over all kinds of bumps, you know, I can see the GoPro shaking like crazy and yet everything around me is perfectly stabilized. So the stabilization is not the problem. So why am I, the one thing I want to be really solid, why is my face bouncing up and down and moving all over the place? So, I was doing research into this and my AI buddies and the internet tells me it’s because of a concept called parallax. And the GoPro is focused on the background because that dominates the view. It’s stabilizing the background, but my face is much closer to the camera. I’m in the foreground. And parallax is related to the angle between, you know, the focal plane and whatever you’re filming. So if something is 50 feet in the background and there’s movement, the angle of movement is very, very small. It’s imperceptible. But anything in the foreground, the angle is much sharper and it moves a lot more. So you get this weird effect where it looks like my face and my body is superimposed on the background. It looks like there’s two videos. There’s a video of the background which is rock solid and it’s like someone stuck in a video of me and I’m moving around in this really uncanny way in the video. It’s like I just didn’t like that movement. It just bugged me and I thought, well, how in the world can I get rid of this? I mean, I can’t tell the GoPro focus on my face. There’s no setting like that. You don’t set the stabilization. I misspoke there. I can’t tell the GoPro, stabilize my face. That’s not how it works. I don’t even know how it works, to be honest. But even if you did stabilize your face now because of parallax, it’s the background that’s going to be moving and warping and doing weird things. So, thinking about this, I wondered whether mounting the GoPro on my broomstick on the frame of the bicycle and having the GoPro even farther ahead of me, would that reduce the parallax? So, that was where I started from in my most recent experiments. So, I bought a new broomstick. My Olympus just shut down because it has a recording limit. It just turns off after a certain amount of time when you shoot video. One of the many annoying things about some cameras. So, I went up to my camera just to review what I was filming and to me it looked blurry. I was only looking on the LCD screen and my eyes are a wreck. But I don’t know, I didn’t know whether it was in focus or not. So, I’ve changed it now to continuous autofocus. So now it’s focused on my face continuously because it’s at the center of the screen more or less and but it may be pulsing in and out. Anyway, I just wanted to do this as an example comparison so when I edit the video I can look at the manual focus and the continuous autofocus and see how they were working. My suspicion is I set the manual focus incorrectly. My Olympus camera just shut down two times. Yeah, I hope this video quality is better than the GoPro quality to justify all of the work you have to do to keep this camera running because the first time it shut down it was because it reached the recording limit. It has a recording limit built into it. It records for a certain amount of time, then it just turns off. I’m told this has something to do with some laws in Europe where they imposed this restriction and camera companies just had to build it into their cameras. I think that law is gone now. But anyway, and then after I got it all set up again and then I sat down here to start, I was talking and then the battery died. I was like, “Ah, I forgot how short the batteries last.” You know, I should have changed the battery at the same time. So anyway, the camera shut down a second time. I had to get back up, go over there, change the battery, reset. And what I decided to do was put the camera back on continuous autofocus because when I was looking at the LCD screen, I replayed the previous video. To me, it didn’t look right. It looked fuzzy. So, I think I missed focus on the manual focusing or something. Anyway, it did not, I don’t know. My eyes can barely see these days. So, who knows? But it didn’t, I don’t know. I wanted to make a comparison. So, now it’s back on continuous autofocus and we’ll see how it goes. Yeah, the Olympus is weird, too. The camera manufacturers drive me crazy. I don’t know why they do the things they do. With the Olympus, when you’re not recording video, you get a nice focusing box that shows you what the camera is focused on. And that box is like a tracking box and it will follow you around because I have tracking turned on. This camera has like limited tracking capability. And then if I, you know, I can, if I do this, I can see the box tracking me. So I know I’m in focus. But that’s only when the camera is not recording video. As soon as you hit the record button, the box disappears. So when you’re actually recording video, you have no idea what’s in focus. They don’t show you the focus box when you’re recording. They only show it when you’re not recording. And again, as I fantasize about endlessly, I want to go to Olympus, like get a time machine, go back to when they were designing this camera, and find the engineer who made that decision. So, you know, puts his hand up in a meeting. Oh yeah, I have an idea. Why don’t we turn off the focus indicator when it’s actually recording video and everybody’s like, “Oh yeah, that’s a great idea.” It’s like, why would you do that? I don’t understand. I want to go to that meeting, go back in time, and just slap them. You know, it’s like, you deserve a slap for that. I’m sure it had something to do with it was harder to implement live focus boxes when you’re actually recording. But anyway, it was a dumb design decision and it drives me crazy that as soon as I start recording, when I really need to know what’s in focus, that’s when the camera decides, “No, no, we’re not going to show you anymore. We’ll show you what’s in focus when you’re not recording. What do you think about that?” You know, and I’m like, ah, technology and cameras just drive me up the wall. Anyway, continuous autofocus is operational. And I was just saying that since I was starting from scratch, basically with a brand new broomstick, I bought a wooden broomstick. I thought since I’m starting from the beginning, why don’t I first go back to the frame mounting, you know, because I may have mentioned already, I was curious that if the frame mount and then I have the camera farther ahead of me, maybe that would reduce the parallax. And I thought, hmm, okay, let’s just try that. Since we’re, you know, dismantling my whole system, starting from the beginning with a brand new broomstick, let’s try that. So, that’s what I did. And I put a wooden broomstick back on my bicycle, attached it to the frame of the bike using hose clamps, and I put my, you know, camera on. And I went out all around the streets, cycling, finding bumpy spots and smooth spots, going up and down curbs, like whatever, all the stuff you would normally do on a bike, just so I could test the video. And it was awful. It was just absolutely awful. I don’t know. I don’t remember it even being this bad before, but with that long broomstick, I would go over a bump and then the camera, the broomstick would dip and then it would just go boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing, boing. I was like, what the heck is it? Is it a rubber band? I don’t remember it ever doing that before. And then if I would like shake the handlebar a little bit like you go, you’re avoiding a rock or something and then the camera would go from side to side. Boing, boing, boing, boing, boing. It’s like, “Oh, come on. This is ridiculous.” Anyway, I tried to stiffen it. I was working on this and working on that and but there was no way to brace it. I mean, you’d have to be at home in a workshop with welding tools and drills and you’d have to have your home base of workshop in order to do some of this stuff. You can’t do this sitting in a hotel room with a bike, a set of bike tools. Anyway, it was just like, nah, this isn’t going to work. And I thought maybe it’s because this particular broomstick is more flexible. And when I was out wandering around, I went back to my broomstick store and I noticed that they had these aluminum broomsticks made out of metal. And it’s hard to tell until you mount a camera at the end of it, but I was comparing it to the wooden one and I thought, you know what? I think that is stiffer. You know, it’s like, maybe if I replace my wooden broomstick with an aluminum one. It’s lighter, actually. It’s a lot lighter than the wooden broomstick, I thought. And it only cost, this one I think was one, no, 2.6 ringgit. Yeah. 2.6 ringgit for this. And it didn’t come with a broom attached. You just bought these just separate. You know like you have a broom and your broomstick broke, but you still have the handle, you know, the broom head, then you just go out and buy a new one and screw it on and you’re good to go. So, I just bought two of them, in fact, because if something is as cheap as 2.6 ringgit and I figure, well, if I’m experimenting with one, I’m probably going to break it or cut it in the wrong place and then I have an extra one, you know, rather than having to go all the way back to the store, you know, waste 2 hours on an errand. I thought, well, you’re here now, just get two of them. And I was thinking I could maybe tie them together. And with two of them, because they’re so lightweight, even two of them together is lighter than a wooden broomstick. And then with two of them, I wrapped them up with electrical tape or something. Maybe that would be so stiff. And I, okay. Anyway, so I just bought two of them. And I put one of these on the frame of my bike. And as I said, I thought, wow, you know, that’s stiffer. That could be a good thing. I went all around, did a big cycling tour, recorded all kinds of video, but exactly the same thing because when you hold it in your hands, it feels stiff. But that’s entirely different from having it mounted down here at the base and now you’ve got a heavy camera rig at the top. Now you’re talking about a whole different set of physics. So anyway, there I was with my aluminum broomstick and the GoPro was just going. It was just like flopping all over the place. I thought, “Okay, I’ve seen enough. This is not going to work.” So, I gave up on that. And then I went back to, “Okay, let’s put it back on the handlebars.” And then, as I said, that’s what I was doing before with this short stick. And I still put this back on the bike to get a comparison. It’s very easy to do, by the way, these experiments I’m talking about. It’s not like it’s a two-day construction process. All you do is stick this into the hose clamps, tighten them down with a screwdriver, and it’s there. So, it only takes a couple of minutes. So, anyway, I put this back on the bike. I did a test with it just so I can gauge where I want the camera to be, how it works, and then I spent some time with my new wooden broomstick and measured it against this one trying to find out, okay, where do I want the camera to be? And there’s a lot of factors at play here. And then I made a discovery. You know, I’m such a dummy that I miss the most obvious things like when I was trying to focus manually and I was trying to put something here and then Daryl comes up with the obvious idea. Oh, you don’t need to do that. Just lower the camera to the level of the mattress, then focus and then raise the camera. It’s like, why didn’t I think of that? You know, I have blind spots. I think I overthink just about everything. So, I miss very obvious things. Anyway, what I missed in this case is that in terms of the length, I was thinking that the base of it was strict, like, okay, here’s where I mount it, and then now where do I cut it? But then I realized that this is mounted on the handlebars. I can have it pushed way back like that, right? So, I have all this extra broomstick to work with. So, I don’t have to cut it right away. I can just lower it like this, mount the camera, and then if it’s too close to me, then I just pull it up a little bit, you know? So, if I leave this part on, I can move it in and out on the handlebars and dial it in over time. I don’t have to commit right now to this is where I cut it. I can make adjustments over time because you don’t actually have to fix the base. The base can be adjustable. And then when I do eventually say, okay, this is the right length, then I’m going to cut it off at the base because it does get in the way a little bit. It kind of when you turn the handlebars, it kind of gets close to my bicycle bag and things. So anyway, you do want to cut it off eventually, but you don’t need to do that right away. Took me ages to figure that out. It’s like thinking outside the box. I don’t think I’m very good at that. I’m very straight ahead, very logical, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And I don’t see the imaginative out of the box angle on it. I just, I don’t know. I’m blind to those. Anyway, so that is that the end of the story? Not entirely because once I’d mounted my new broomstick and I’m adjusting the lengths and I can also adjust the angle. I haven’t quite figured that out yet because normally I mount the broomstick right parallel to the handlebar stem because here’s the stem and then you just lock it to the stem. That’s the easiest thing to do. But if the camera is too high because of the angle, I’ll have to figure out a way that I can attach it but raise it this way and lower it. Then it can be farther. Anyway, there’s a lot of variables at play. And I went out with my new broomstick and then I was experimenting to see, okay, how is the parallax? And the parallax was still there. I look weird in the foreground like my head is like bobbing around. It just, there’s something uncanny about it. It doesn’t look natural. But maybe most people, if someone is watching one of my videos, they may not notice how weird it looks. I mean, I’m riding a bike, so obviously the road is going to be bumpy. And then they’ll just go, “Oh, well, yeah, he’s bouncing up and down because he’s on a bike.” They’ll just accept it. And I know that’s not what’s going on. It’s this parallax, this weird motion relative to the background, but maybe other people, yeah, won’t care at all. Anyway, peak behind the curtain here. I’ve got to go down to the front desk of this hotel. I just realized it’s quarter to 12 and if I don’t reset my card because I extended my stay at this hotel, they’re going to turn off the power. So, I got to go down right now before noon and get them to reset my card based on my new reservation and then I’ll have electricity. So, I’ll be back in a minute.
I’m back. I made it just under the wire. Yeah, it’s really quite a shock when you’re not prepared for it. When you forget. And now the computers are in charge of everything. There’s no leeway. The card is programmed to deactivate your life at 11:59. Right? So, you’re sitting here doing something, you know, talking into a camera, and then suddenly wump and the whole room goes dark and you’re like, “What the heck?” Oh, yeah. My card. My card. A human being could give you some leeway. They could come knock on the door and say, “Oh, yeah. That’s right. You’re staying longer. Okay, you booked another.” But computers have no compassion. You know, you paid up until noon. Whack. We cut you off at noon. Right. That’s kind of funny. Anyway, I got there under the wire and since I was downstairs, I had to wait for the guy to do his thing. So, I went outside and I took a couple of pictures of my bike. I can show you what I was talking about. There’s a photo of how the broomstick extends down beyond the handlebar stem. It used to be a lot longer than that and then I kept moving it up and up and up, but you can still see there’s a bit left over there that I can play with, dial it in, and then when I finally get it right, I can cut that bottom part off. And you can see the hose clamps that I use to attach it to the handlebar stem. Works really well. It’s a surprisingly simple, surprisingly stable system. So, I’m pretty happy with how it all came together. And this leads nicely into a next topic because I recently started watching videos from a cyclist from Singapore. Her channel is called Wing Outdoor, I think. Outdoor, no, Wing Outdoor, and she’s using a GoPro Hero 12. That really puzzled me. I talked about this in a post that I put across all of my social media and on YouTube where I was watching her videos and to me the video looked awful. Like the colors were weird, overly washed out, over, I don’t know. It’s weird. I don’t even know how to describe this look of this type of video because I would say it’s HDR maxed out like way too saturated but at the same time the colors are also kind of washed out and pale like it’s a pastel blue and weird greens anyway it just looks bad and then she’s like fuzzy like out of focus all the time like nothing is sharp nothing is clear and I, you know, being a GoPro user I looked at that video and ah, that’s the DJI look. Especially with the DJI 5 and even more so with the DJI Action 4, they’ve baked in HDR into the video. And some people don’t seem to get it, but others do. Like this weird, overly pastel, washed out kind of look. I don’t like the way that video looks. People that I know who use one of them regularly that care about these things like Daryl from Wander Eats. He gets around that. He uses action cameras, DJI Action, and he will shoot in a log profile. I think it’s called D-Log M for DJI and then you apply a LUT in editing to add in all the colors. So, he bypasses that HDR weirdness. But if you’re just shooting on auto, you know, you just turn on the camera and shoot, it’s just got that weird look to it. So, I was thinking this is another DJI action camera user and I’m feeling so smug as a GoPro user because I actually prefer GoPro colors. I just think the GoPro video looks better than the video from competing cameras. Even with all of the problems with GoPros, I still like the look of the video better. So, anyway, I’m thinking, “Oh, wow. You know, you should use a GoPro.” Then I went into her gear list and she is using a GoPro. Like in her gear list, it says GoPro Hero 12. And I tracked down her packing video about, you know, this is the gear I’m bringing on my bicycle trip. And there it is right in the video, a GoPro Hero 12, same camera that I’m using. So I was like, what in the world? I don’t know how she’s getting that kind of video out of the GoPro. I actually left a comment on one of her videos just asking her like I see you’re using the same camera as me. I’m curious because the video that you’re getting from that Hero 12 looks very, very different from the Hero 12 video that I’m getting. So I’m wondering what are you doing? Like are you using like what settings have you got on the camera? And then are you doing something in editing? Like where is this video quality coming from? She hasn’t replied yet. I don’t have any confidence that she will. Here’s another tangent after a tangent. This is something I do on YouTube where I’ll leave a comment on someone else’s video. Highly detailed, well thought out, proofread, you know, giving a lot of interesting information and perspective. Nobody ever replies to my comments. Like they get no reaction at all. And I have this pattern I’ve developed where I give them a week to reply. And if they don’t, I delete the comment. Because I feel like I’m adding value to their channel. I’m taking the time to think about this subject. I’ve watched their videos like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And then I take the time out of my life to write a comment. I’m adding value to their channel. And then I see that here’s my comment that was posted 2 days ago, no reply, no indication that the YouTuber saw it. And there will be comments one day ago, a whole bunch of them. And the YouTuber will have replied to all of those. And then all of the comments after mine, replied to all of those. My comment never gets a reply. I don’t know what it is about me. Maybe it’s my tone, the way I write. Maybe I freak people out because I don’t do the usual social media thing. I write in complete sentences with punctuation, paragraph structure, you know. Ah, I can’t help it. Old school English teacher, English editor. I will proofread most of my comments. Not all the time, but I mean I’ll still make mistakes, but I try not to. And I’m not using abbreviations and slang and short form and I’m not being all goofy. I’m just being a serious commenter. So maybe that’s why nobody ever replies to my comments. I freak them out. But anyway, I give them a week and if I go back to that video, they still haven’t replied, I just delete my comment. So, you can’t even be bothered to click a little heart or a like or like say, “Oh, thanks.” Anything at all, then why am I wasting my time on your channel? I’m going to spend time on my channel anyway. So, I’m very petty that way. If you don’t reply to my comment after a week, assuming it’s a big interesting, thoughtful comment, like if I just say, “Oh, good video. I liked it.” That’s fine. I leave that up. But if it’s something more in-depth and they never reply, I just go back and delete it. Like I said, you know, you can’t be bothered to reply, then why am I adding value to your channel? Why am I wasting my time? Anyway, tangent after tangent. But anyway, this woman from Singapore using a GoPro Hero 12. I still, she hasn’t replied yet, so I don’t know why her video looks so different from mine. What I saw was that she was mounting her GoPro with a GoPro boom. And I talked about the boom a lot in a previous podcast. It’s this specialty GoPro item. Costs about $140 US here in Malaysia. 550 ringgit. And it’s essentially two arms with an elbow joint. And then on every joint, it has multiple pivot points. So this boom can be placed anywhere like you mount it. And because each elbow, every joint has like 360° motion, you can essentially put your camera anywhere you want. And of course, it’s made out of carbon fiber and it’s very precisely engineered and designed. So it’s an expensive piece of gear. And I’ve always wondered whether I could use it. And I’ve always rejected it because it’s too short. You know, everything I’ve been talking about up to this point, if the GoPro is sitting right here in front of my face, that’s too close. It just my whole face fills the video. So, that’s why I use the broomstick. And I never bought the GoPro boom. It’s too expensive and I don’t think it would work. But, she was using one. So, I noticed that in her video, and I can see in her video that the boom almost works for her because she’s sort of, she’s a smaller person than I am, shorter. Her bike is smaller, smaller frame and somehow the boom can extend out and up and get more in an appropriate, like on eye level for her because she’s a lot shorter than I am. And if I was using the boom, I would be towering above it. So, it does kind of work for her, but it’s still way too close. It’s like the GoPro was like right there and you don’t see much of the background. So, it was kind of cool. That’s the only one I’ve ever seen like a long-distance cyclist using a GoPro boom. Never seen it before. She’s the very first one that I’ve seen. And yeah, watching her videos has been interesting for me because her gear is interesting where she uses a GoPro Hero 12. Most like smaller YouTubers, they’ve all abandoned GoPro. The big ones still use it like Itchy Boots and Unamoto, another one I follow. A lot of like really big popular YouTubers, they’re sticking with GoPro. And I think they’re sticking with it because they see what I see that on a full sunny day. The video from a GoPro is just solid. It gets you the good greens, the good blues, the good whites. It just it’s reliable, solid video. Weird things don’t happen with it. And with a DJI Action, it’s a little bit like rolling the dice. You’re never quite sure what you’re going to get. In terms of the features, obviously, a DJI Action is leagues ahead of the GoPro cameras. They’re so much better in every single way, but I still kind of like the quality from a GoPro. Anyway, so she’s using a GoPro, so I can relate to that. She’s using the GoPro boom. I thought that was interesting. And she’s using a Trangia stove, which is the same stove that I like to use, which is also a bit of an unusual piece of gear. You don’t see a lot of long-distance travelers with a Trangia. They’ve all got the multifuel MSR WhisperLites and things like that, like jet engine, you know, and then you cook with white gas or gasoline or whatever, you know, they’re the stove of choice. You don’t often see a Trangia out there in the wild. So, yeah, it’s kind of interesting to see all of her gear choices. And that leads nicely into my next technology topic.
And I said that that leads into my next technology topic because in her videos, the latest one that I watched, she broke her kickstand. She has a, you know, touring bicycle, really nice one, really nice gear. She spent a lot of money on her equipment. So, and she’s carrying a heavy load, a full bike touring load. And I didn’t remember seeing it in the video, but in one of her videos, I guess the kickstand snapped. It just broke. And I was like, “Ah, the endless trouble with kickstands.” I can relate to that because I’ve had my own struggles in my lifetime. And there’s my old kickstand right now because I just bought a new one. This is all in a video actually and a video I’m going to post either today or tomorrow. It’s just me running some errands and exploring this area. And as I was riding my bike, I happened to ride right past the bicycle shop where I bought this kickstand months and months and months ago. And it’s a piece of junk. Here in Malaysia, I just have not been able to find good kickstands. It’s good enough for a bicycle. You have a bike at home, this will do fine. But if you’re touring and you have a heavy load, you need something different. You need a heavy-duty kickstand. These things are just not up to the task. The metal is too bendy. The design isn’t right because it puts all of the force right here at a bend in the metal. So, when your bike leans over, this whole top part just bends like spaghetti, like rubber. It’s just not strong enough and it’s too complicated. It has all these parts like all these pieces of metal. You have to attach this with bolts. Stick this onto that with bolts. And they got all these bolts and then another piece here that goes on the other side. It’s just like a multi-piece. And the more pieces you have that all have to be bolted together, it just weakens it overall. And the whole thing just, I mean I bought it and then almost as soon as I put it on the bike and I put bags like heavy bags on it and then I tried to lower the kickstand, the thing just bent and the bike fell over like, oh for Pete’s sake, you know, that didn’t last long. Anyway, I tried to reinforce it. I added more bolts. I bent it back into shape and then I was trying to be very, very careful how I put it on the bike, the angle to reduce the stress. And anyway, I’ve been fighting with this thing ever since. And I’ve always wanted to buy a new kickstand, but I can’t find one in Malaysia. The kickstand that I like is from a company, a Swiss company called Pletscher. And you can’t buy them here. I would have to buy it online and have it shipped. And I was just never organized. And I didn’t want to spend the money. I’ve just been spending so much money. It’s like, where do you draw the line? So I was like, ah. I never pulled the trigger. And then I happened to be riding by that bicycle shop where I bought this kickstand and I thought, huh, like, why don’t I just get another one? Because this one has bent and been bent back and rebent and I’ve bent it in and out of shape so many times. I thought it’s the best I can get right now, so let’s just buy a brand new one, start from scratch. So, I popped into that shop and I went up to the guy and says, “Yeah, you know, this is going to lead into another topic of mine because I go in there always, I’m always expecting a bit of a social event like being greeted like an old friend. I go in and say, “Hey, you know, like remember me?” “Yeah, I bought this kickstand from you months ago. Do you remember?” and I want to buy, you know, I want I asked him, “Do you have any other kickstands?” Like I started from the beginning and I just said, “I’m looking for a really strong heavy-duty kickstand. What’s the biggest one?” And he just took this one out. Okay, this is it. This is the best one we have. And I was, “Yeah, well, I already bought one of those from you. Do you remember months and months ago? And for a loaded touring bike, it’s not strong enough. The metal just bends.” And he says, “No, that’s all I’ve got.” Anyway, I was hoping to have a nice long chat with this bicycle guy about kickstands and cycling and bicycles. And he just was not interested at all. He gave me that normal shopkeeper look. I come across it a lot in Malaysia. It’s just like, “Are you going to spend any money or not?” Basically, you’re like, “Are you here to buy something?” Well, then buy it and give me your money. Other than that, I’m just not interested in anything you’re saying. So, I always get kicked in the face because I go in there like an eager puppy. My tail is wagging. Oh, a bike shop. You know, this is so cool. We get to talk about and it’s like, “Get out of here.” You know, either you pay your money or get out of my shop, you know, not quite that harsh, but I’m a very sensitive person in some ways, and that’s how it feels to me. Anyway, we did not have an in-depth conversation about kickstands, but I did buy a new one. And the good thing about Malaysia, as I talked about in the video, is that when you buy something, the purchase price comes with installation. Of course, I can install it myself easily, but I’m there at the bike shop and he has better tools than I have. And he does it all the time. So, I just said to him, “Oh, like, do you have time right now?” And he’s, “Oh, yeah, yeah, that’s automatic.” He assumed he was going to be putting it on my bike. So, he removed the old one and then he put on the new one. And then in the middle of that, I tried to I told him that I’d added more bolts to try and strengthen the connection. And I was talking to him about, oh, because I took the bolts from my rig and I was like, oh, can you while you’re putting this in, can you add this bolt here and then this one here and tighten it all down? And of course, he really didn’t care. He wasn’t really paying attention, but he did eventually add the bolt. I had to really show him what I was talking about, but unless I like do it myself and really get in there, they don’t really listen. Anyway, so I have a new kickstand on my bike and with Wing Outdoor, this Singaporean woman who’s cycling, her trip is done, by the way. Her trip was last year and maybe she’s still ongoing. I’m not really sure. I don’t think so. But when she was in Malaysia, cycling through Malaysia, it was like last year, October, November, December maybe. And maybe she’s gone on to Thailand or something. I don’t really know. But her Malaysia portion is already over. And even so, even though these events were like 3 or 4 months ago, she’s posting the videos like kind of more recently. But anyway, yeah, so she broke her kickstand and then she had the same experience I did. She went to like a local bicycle shop. Like it’s not like a dedicated high-end shop for touring bikes. These are just like a small town shop where people buy bicycles for their kids or to go for Sunday rides around the park or something. So all they’re going to have are kickstands like this. And she was talking on the video about how heavy her bike is and she wants like a strong one, but of course at the bike shop they just had the basic model. And I noticed someone in the comments said you should try a Click-Stand. And I’ve always wanted to try a Click-Stand myself. It’s a very interesting one. Basically, the way a kickstand works, like these ones attach to the bottom of your bicycle frame, and that’s the hardest place to put a kickstand because of levers and physics, you’ve got the whole bike towering above this pivot point and then the whole weight of the bike really applies a lot of force down at the bottom of the frame and really twists it. So with a Click-Stand, it’s basically like a broomstick and then it attaches to the top of the bike and then goes down to the ground. So of course the forces on that are like next to nothing compared to a normal kickstand. So they’re much stronger. And this kickstand it breaks up into like several sections. So you basically fold it. It’s like a folding stick and you put it in a pocket or something. And when you want to use it, you got to take it out like a tent pole basically and then put it in place and then you put it there. But I’ve never had one. I’ve never tried one. I’ve never used one. I can see the advantages, but I can also see the disadvantages because when you park your bike, it always has a tendency to roll forward or backward. So, there’s also tension on the kickstand from the bike leaning over, but then it’s also digging into the ground, preventing your bike from rolling backwards if you’re on any kind of a slope. And normally, like when you park a bicycle, like a touring bike, you’re looking for somewhere that’s flat because if it’s too angled up or down, your bike is just going to fall over anyway because it rolls backwards and forwards. And then if you use a Click-Stand, it’s even more of a concern because there’s nothing digging into the ground holding with a tight grip. It’s just basically the bike is leaning against it and then if the bike rolls forward or backward, the bike is just going to fall over. The Click-Stand cannot control for forward or backward movement. So I don’t really know how they compensate for that. What I do is make my own parking brake. So, if I find like a heavy-duty rubber strap or an old inner tube, I wrap it around the handlebars and then I apply the brakes and then pull up this big rubber strap and it locks the brakes. So, then the bike won’t roll forward and backward. My old one broke recently. So, I actually have some inner tubes here. What I’m going to do this afternoon working on my bike is reapply the emergency brake. So anyway, I left my long comment on her video about this talking about the Click-Stand and how yeah, it probably works great, but you probably also have to work out some kind of an emergency brake or parking brake for your bicycle, otherwise it’s just going to fall over. And then I told her all about the Pletscher kickstands. The one, they cost like $100. They’re Swiss and they have two versions of the touring one. One that supports 25 kg and another that is rated to 50 kg. That’s the one that I’ve had in the past. And yeah, it’s amazing. It’s the only good kickstand I’ve ever found. But the one that I had, I had it, you know, since 1999. So it was like 24, 25 years old. And the kickstand itself was still working, but then the metal became brittle and then it snapped. It didn’t bend or anything, but a part of it actually just snapped and so it’s broken. So that’s why I’ve been using one of these, you know, cheapo pieces of junk. Anyway, so I told her all about the Pletscher. And I don’t think I put a link because I find YouTube doesn’t like links that take you out of YouTube. So if you put a link in your comment, YouTube might delete it. So, I didn’t. I just told her the name of the company and go to their website and the name of the specific kickstands because they have a whole range of them and they have weird names. So I gave her all this information. So, I’m still wait, I think she will reply because she’s not a huge YouTuber and I noticed she replied to a lot of comments. So, we’ll see. I only posted my comment like a couple of days ago, but I’ll give her a, I might give her two weeks because she seems like a very, very kind, a very nice person. So, if she’s not replying to my comment, it’s not because she’s mean or anything or doesn’t care. It’s just she hasn’t had time. So, we’ll see. So, I guess yeah, that is the story of my kickstand.
And one thing I want to do with my new one that I have on my bike, I would love to reinforce it because the physics here is kind of hard to imagine if you don’t see it for yourself, but the frame of the bike goes in here and then the pivot point is down here at the bottom and it’s not in the right place. So, this is a real weak point and it bends here. So, what I would like to do is insert a brace, a triangular brace from here to here. And as I talked about in the video, in my life, I often find myself needing welding. Like, if I had my own workshop and I knew how to weld, man, I could go to town. You know, if you have a woodworking shop and a 3D printer and a welder and drills, I always need a drill. I’m always going around the world looking for drills. Like, hey, can you drill one hole for me, you know, real quick? And right now, of course, I’d love to go find a welding shop to put in this brace for me, but I’m really nervous about doing that because of all of the customer interactions I’m having in Malaysia, particularly recently. I’m kind of, I’m really gun-shy and I’ll talk about that when I get to my customer service story, but I haven’t gone out to a welding shop because it feels like I’ll just spend days going from shop to shop to shop trying to find someone who understands what I’m trying to do. And with my old kickstand, I actually have this piece of metal, one of the many pieces that you use to assemble it, but it goes up here somewhere. But I think I could put it here and then use it as a brace. It wouldn’t be perfect, but I can use the bolt here to attach it. And you see, I can get a little bit of a triangular brace right there. But in order to do that, I can attach the top with a bolt. I can do that myself. But then I need the bottom attached like a little spot weld right there. And I think that would like triple the strength of this kickstand. So I think I’m going to try to do it. I’m going to put this in my bag and then if I happen to pass by a welding shop, I’ll show them my idea and I think it’ll be really hard for them to understand. Nobody ever understands what I’m talking about. It looks really simple to me. Like right there, put a bolt in there. Weld the bottom. That’s all I need right there. Weld that on. I think that’ll, I really like that. That looks really, really sharp. So, I think I’ll do that.
The next gear and technology story is also about my bicycle, but this one is about mirrors. And mirrors are fascinating to me, especially when it comes to cycling. And particularly as it relates to, you know, I’m not Mr. Safety. I’m not overly concerned about the safety, safety, safety mania that has taken over the world. But in my lifetime of cycling, I’ve gone on a few long distance cycling trips across Canada, in Africa, places in Asia, and the one piece of gear that I cannot live without for safety reasons and just for convenience reasons is a mirror. And I normally put two mirrors on my bike. I believe in them that much and I like them that much. Put one on each side of the handlebars. And most people don’t bother with them. Like if you look at every person who’s riding their bicycle around the world, I’m always astonished that they don’t have mirrors on their bicycles because I rely on them constantly. It’s really just like driving a car. If you think about how you drive a car, you know, you’re driving along and you’re looking at the road ahead, but a good driver is constantly monitoring what’s behind them and beside them and they’re just glancing at their mirrors, right? It’s not like a huge, you know, you’re not like doing this, but you know, you’ve got your mirror here going behind you and you’re driving and you glance up at the mirror. Everything’s okay. Nobody’s back there and you look at the side. Okay. Okay. You’re just your eyes are constantly roving from the road ahead to the three mirrors. And it’s just natural. It’s an instinct you develop while you’re driving a car. And then if you ever want to turn or change lanes, of course, there’s a natural flow to that as well. We all get taught that in driver’s ed. And then it becomes instinctive after a while where here you are. I want to move over to that lane, right? I check the mirror, see who’s behind me. I check my rear view mirror over there. Okay, everything looks good. I hit the turn signal. And then you do a shoulder check to look at your blind spot. So, you first check all the mirrors. Everything’s okay. And then you turn and you physically look to make sure there’s nobody right there in your blind spot. And then check the mirrors again. And then over you go. That’s how you drive a car. And that’s exactly how I ride a bicycle. So, when I’m riding a bike, I’m looking at the road ahead, of course, but I’m constantly checking the mirror. I just, you know, it’s a little bit harder on a bike because of the placement on the handlebars. So, the mirror might be a little bit down. So, it’s a little bit more effort involved. Okay. Checking the mirror. Back to the road. Checking the mirror. Back to the road. But it’s just instinctive for me. And then as I’m riding the bike, I’m constantly monitoring the traffic coming up behind me. And yeah, I like to know what’s happening back there. I don’t want to be surprised. You know, when I was riding a few days there in Sumatra, heavy, heavy traffic there. And back when I did my ride from Dumai up to Bukittinggi, I mean, my gosh, the roads there are just overwhelming with the amount of trucks. And then if you don’t see the truck coming up behind you, I mean, you have a heart attack every time. But I’m riding the bike. I’m staying as close to the edge of the road as I can, maintaining my position, but then I’m looking in the mirror. Oh, there’s like four giant trucks and a bus coming up behind me right now. So then I double my efforts and then I’m looking ahead of me. And if I see trucks coming towards me, occupying that lane, and I see trucks coming up behind me, I know there’s not enough room for me on the road anymore. We’re all going to meet at the exact same time. I’m looking in the mirror. I can see that. I pull over to the shoulder and I wait for this thing to happen and then I go back on the road. Without the mirror, you know, you’re not going to see what’s coming. So, I don’t understand why it’s not standard like across the board that cyclists have mirrors. But my one explanation for that is I think most people when they start their cycling life as children or teenagers or as adults, I don’t know, they get a mirror on their cheap department store bike and the mirror is a piece of junk. It just doesn’t work. Most bicycle mirrors are crappy. They’re made out of cheap plastic. The mirror material itself, you can’t see anything in it. The positioning of it is bad. And worst of all, like the curvature is wrong. It will either be so narrow, you can’t really see what’s behind you, or it’s so wide and so bulbous, you see the entire world in 360 and you can’t make, you have no idea how close or how far. I mean, there’s the old Jurassic World joke, right? While they’re driving away from the T-Rex and the camera pans down to the rear view mirror and it says, you know, objects may be closer than they appear. That’s a very real thing, particularly with crappy bicycle mirrors. So, I think everybody has had experiences with horrible bicycle mirrors that don’t do anything. So, they’re just like mirrors are junky. But what, in my life I was lucky I stumbled across a company. I looked into it just recently. I think it started in 1979 and I believe I discovered, I’d have to really look at some photos to be honest. But I think I bought my first mirror from this company when I set up the bike I have now. I bought it in 1998 or 99 and I set it up to go to Ethiopia and I put on Mirrycle Mirrors. It’s from a company. This guy who founded the company, probably a man after my own heart. He couldn’t find a good mirror on the market. So, he made his own because he just couldn’t find a good one. So, he’s, oh heck with that. I’ll just make my own. And he did. And that turned into the Mirrarycle Mirror. And he now, his company makes a variety of them. But the standard Mirrycle Mirror that I use and I’ve used it my entire life and they’re amazing. They’re really good. I mean, everything about them is perfect. I mean, the perfect mirror would probably be up a little bit higher for me, but it’s good enough. Like, it attaches onto the handlebars a little bit down low, but it has three arms. So, there’s an arm that goes in and then there’s an arm that goes this way and an arm goes this way and an arm goes that way. So, it’s like the GoPro boom in that because there’s so many elbow joints, it can be placed anywhere you like in a perfect spot and the mirror surface itself is perfect and the curvature is just right. So, it gives me a nice view and I can judge distance in this mirror. It’s an amazing mirror. And when I was in Sumatra, well, I had two of them originally. One of them broke. I can’t remember when it was, but it broke. And then when I was in Sumatra recently, when I was, where was I? Oh, yeah. Just in Tanah Merah. And I rode up into the mountains a little bit. And then as I was leaving, I wanted to get my bike cleaned up before I put it on the ferry to come back to Malaysia. And at a hotel, of course, it’s really hard to wash your bike. Like, you don’t have access to a hose or anything. So, I brought it to one of those scooter washing places, and I don’t need them to like do mechanical oiling and greasing. But, you know, it’s nice to have them just take out their big hose and their soapy water and just wash down the bike, get rid of all the mud and the dirt and the dust, and then I can fine-tune the cleaning with the grease and the oil and stuff like that. So anyway, I dropped it off there and then because of my stupid kickstand while they were washing the bike, it fell over, landed on the mirror and broke the mirror in half. So I thought, “Ah, my last Mirrycle Mirror.” But it turned out I could still use it and it was shattered down the center, but I could still use it on the bike. So I kept using it. I could still see what was coming up behind me. But then just a couple of days ago, I was out riding and then I tried to adjust the mirror and this piece of plastic, one of the arms just snapped off. And this really isn’t a criticism of the Mirrycle Mirror. It’s just what happens in Southeast Asia. Plastic and rubber in this heat and humidity just disintegrates. There’s a chemical process that happens out in that hot sun day, you know, hour after hour, this plastic and it just becomes brittle. So, up here at the top, this is where the mirror was mounted and then you just sort of turn it to angle the mirror differently and I wasn’t using any force. I just kind of, I was going to tilt the mirror a little bit and it just broke off in my hand here at the bottom and here at the top just anyway. And I thought, that’s the end. And now I’ve been riding the bike without a mirror. And that really drove home how much I rely on the mirror. I can’t go out on these streets without a mirror. Drives me crazy. You can’t see what’s going on around you. You really feel unsafe. You feel like you’re in the firing line. And there’s a weird thing with bicycles, of course, where you can do a shoulder check, but your body instinctively wants to turn. It’s really hard to move your head and keep your body completely stiff. So, every time you do an over the shoulder check, you turn the handlebars and then you drift out into traffic. It’s almost impossible to stop your body from doing that. You think you’re still going straight. You know, you’re looking over your shoulder. You think you’re going straight, but you’re veering off into traffic. And then you overcorrect, especially if you’ve got heavy bags on your bike. Now you overcorrect and then you go flying off the edge of the road. So I really depend on mirrors and that was really driven home here when I was out cycling without a mirror because my mirror was broken. So the other day I went to a DIY shop and the reason I went there was because I needed a hacksaw. That’s another funny story. A very typical Planet Doug story. It’s like it’s a habit with me because I always need to cut something and I keep buying hacksaw blades. So, I went to DIY and I bought hacksaw blades. They’re really, really cheap for the most part. And then what I tend to do is I need to cut something because I was still using this aluminum broomstick and I needed to cut the end off. So, I needed a hacksaw. So, I went down, I hopped on my bike and I was riding to DIY. It’s about 2 km away and I wanted to buy a hacksaw and I bought one. This is it here. Nice little, you know, it’s not it is not like the big handle one that would be better. This is just like a little grip, you know, but I’m not in a hurry. I sit here on my in Planet Doug. This is Planet Doug workshop. Planet Doug studio. Planet Doug everything. So, this is Planet Doug Workshop. And I sit here. I got a movie playing on my tablet and I’m like, slowly, slowly, you know, cutting through this aluminum. It was really hard to cut. This is very strong aluminum. Anyway, of course, I finally got through it. And now that I cut through that, you know, I have no more use for this hacksaw. But I tend to carry one with me. So, I’ll probably remove the handle and then put this blade in my tool kit. I don’t know whether it fits or not. But anyway, everywhere I go in the world, I always seem to be looking for a hacksaw, buying a hacksaw, then I often leave it behind, and then 4 months later, I need another hacksaw, and I’ll just buy one and then leave it behind in the hotel room. Like, anybody need a hacksaw? Just go to the hotel where I’ve been staying and just break into the room. There’s going to be stuff all over the place, you know, little tools that I leave behind. Anyway, so I went to DIY to buy this hacksaw. And as I was wandering around the store wondering, oh, is there anything else I need while I’m here? And lo and behold, I found a bike mirror. Like, what the heck? I, you know, and I was looking at it and it’s absolutely crazy. But this bicycle mirror which has, you know, the mirror, a long arm, a mounting apparatus that attaches to the handlebars. Very complicated, a lot of pieces, a lot of parts. Do you know how much this thing cost? 1.8 ringgit, right? And I knew this mirror was a piece of junk. I knew it’s horrible. I know it’s not really going to work, but I thought it will get me through the next few days, right? I need something. So, I thought, well, while I’m here, I’ll just, 1.8 ringgit, right? So, I think, okay, I’ll pick one up just in case. And in fact, I picked up two for that price. Again, my philosophy is you’re at the store now, get two of them because I do like having two mirrors. And I thought, well, who knows? Maybe it’s a really good mirror and then I can put one on the left side of the bike and one on the right, you know, because I usually like to have two mirrors anyway. So anyway, I bought these two mirrors. I have a really funny customer service story related to these mirrors. I think I’ll save up all of my customer service stories for that section. I’ll go back and tell that story. But anyway, I bought this. I bought the, you know I think this was two ringgit for the hacksaw something. It was really, really cheap. And then I bought a roll of electrical tape because my roll, I always have a roll of electrical tape with me. My roll was almost down to nothing. And I need this for mounting everything basically. So I walked out of DIY with all of this. It was a pouring rain that day. It was a miserable trip. I didn’t expect it to be raining and I left on my bike and just as I left the rain came pouring down. I wasn’t prepared for it so I got soaked. I got to DIY and I found cyclists like long distance with full touring loads at DIY and they were underneath the parking shelter. They were taking shelter from the rain. And oddly enough, lately I’ve seen all kinds of cyclists, like in the Port Dickson area. Every time I go outside on my bike, I see another pair of them going by. It’s always couples, always two people, usually man and a woman. And they’re cycling together. And I’ve just seen every single day I see them going by. This must be the cycling season for Malaysia. They’re all foreigners or like foreign long maybe they’re going to the ferry and they’re crossing over to Sumatra or maybe they’re going down the coast, Malacca, Singapore, wherever they’re going. But yeah, cyclists are everywhere. And I must admit, I had a little bit of a Planet Doug moment with these cyclists because there they are sitting there out of the rain. They’re not on their bikes. They’re not moving. They’re like right there. They’re kind of a captive audience for my puppy dog routine because I’d love to talk to them. I’d love to go up to them and say, “Oh, you know, look at your bike and look at your gear. Let’s talk about bike touring, anything like that.” But at the same time, I’m aware that long-distance cyclists always get asked, you know, logistical questions, you know, how long have you been cycling, how many kilometers a day do you cycle, etc. And I never ever ask those questions because I know how repetitive they are. So when I do see another cyclist and if I do talk to them, I’m very careful not to ask the stereotypical questions. I try to be more creative. But I really wanted to talk to this pair. But I felt too nervous. I’ve been rejected so many times lately. Like I said, I’m gun-shy. So I, you know, I made eye contact with it because I was parking my bike near them under the shelter. And then I just kind of nodded and I was waiting to see if they would, you know, like, oh, hey, you know, say something about my bike because my bike clearly looks set up for touring and I’ve got the broomstick and a GoPro and if they were interested in a conversation, I thought they would initiate it. And couples are kind of hard to approach. You know, a man and a woman traveling, they’ve got a bubble around them. They’re like in an enclosed space with each other. And you feel like you’re not welcome. Anyway, I gave them all kinds of signals that I was open to chatting, but they weren’t interested. So, I cried and I just went into DIY and got my tools and they were gone by the time I came out. I probably couldn’t have talked to them anyway, to be honest, because the rain was coming down so hard. It was thundering on the roof above us and I have so much trouble understanding people anyway that with that noise we probably would have ended up screaming at each other to be heard above that. It wouldn’t have been a very comfortable conversation. So anyway, I didn’t get to talk to the cyclists. And then I spent some time, way too much time doing the Planet Doug routine with these mirrors. I mean, I suppose since I’m talking about it, why don’t I take it out of the box? Yeah, it’s kind of a cool little thing. There it is. And it is better made than I thought it was where even the mirror part moves. It adjusts up and down, left and right. So, you can angle it a little bit like you can do micro adjustments. And I was like, “What the heck? Wow, that’s kind of cool.” At first, I thought the mirror was terrible because it’s just dark and dirty. But it turns out there’s a coating on it. There’s like a protective piece of plastic. And when you peel that off, you get the actual mirror. And it’s like, you know, that for a 1.8 ringgit, how do you even how do you make this for 1.8 ringgit and sell it? I mean, you’re losing money, right? You have to because that’s just the mirror. And then you get this mounting apparatus with several pieces of rubber spacing, screws, a tightening mechanism that goes on your handlebars, and then this goes in there with another screw, and you know, it raises up pretty high on the handlebar, which I kind of like. It looks dorky, and I think that’s why a lot of people don’t use bicycle mirrors, because they’re very utilitarian. They don’t look cool. You spend $2,000 on your fast, lightweight carbon fiber racing bike and you got this thing sticking up from the handlebars and okay, grandpa. Like your bike, but what the heck is that all about? You know, where’s grandma? And, yeah, they look goofy, but I do not care about that, obviously. So, anyway, that’s what the mirror looks like. But then by the time I took it out and started going over everything and tried to put it on my bike, it does not fit because my bicycle has a problem with handlebar space. There was no way and there’s no easy way to put this anywhere. And what I would have to do, and I’m still kind of monkeying around with this idea, is that with my, I’ve got my handlebars, but then I also have extension arms that go up in an L. And I discovered that those extension arms, I mean, they’re hollow, of course. These broomsticks fit right inside them, nice and tight. So now I’m thinking I’m going to cut a piece of broomstick and stick them in on each side of my L extensions and then I can add 2 inches, 3 inches on either side because they’ve always been too short for me. I need where my hands are, there isn’t enough room. I always wanted to expand them a little bit and I might be able to do that. And I thought, well, if I put this as an extension, then I can mount this right there. And that’s what I did. I actually did a DIY rig and I put this on my bike and I went out and tested it and almost instantly it was like, nah, it’s not going to work. I mean, I would have left it on the bike in an emergency, but the main problem with it is my eyesight. Well, there’s so many problems with it. This is all made of plastic. I mean, obviously, we’re not talking about aluminum. And why you put that in there, it shakes, so you’re trying to see what’s coming up behind you. And because of this long pole, it vibrates and then everything is like kind of out of focus. You need to be able to glance and see. You can’t have this thing like vibrating like crazy. And because it’s all plastic, you go over one bump and it, you know, and you got to put it back into place. It’s not great. It would, I could use it in an emergency, but it’s yeah, not great. And then I would have left it on my bike, but then I made this weird discovery. You know how I mentioned I don’t think very clearly out of the box because when my Mirrycle Mirror broke, I just threw up my hands and went, “Oh, well, can’t use it anymore.” This whole arm broke off, so I’m finished. What else can I do? And I just removed it from my bike and I threw it in my bags because I don’t throw things away right away. And I thought, well, that’s it. But then while I was working on this, I started wondering, hey, can I put my Mirrycle Mirror in here? Like glue it on and then I get, you know, a little bit better mirror. So, I got out my broken mirror and I started fiddling with it on the bike and I made the discovery that because the Mirrycle Mirror has three arms and this is the last arm, it broke off, but the other two arms are still there. And I took my Mirrycle Mirror and I thought, nah, there’s no way this is going to work. And I just screwed it into the second arm. And I screwed it in and I went, “Oh, that works.” Like if you have all three arms, you can move it in 360°, right? It has perfect motion. If you only have two arms, you have to be very lucky about placement. Bing, bing. Put the mirror. And if that placement works for you, you don’t even need the third one. And for my bicycle and the way I sit on it, it actually worked out. So I can’t move the mirror as much as originally. But where I can put it, I can actually tilt the mirror up and down and then move this one up and down. And that gives me just enough motion to be able to see behind me. And I should have been able to figure that out the first day that it was broken, right? But for some reason, I just, ah, it’s broken. I took it off. Ah, my mirror is broken. And it never occurred to me to troubleshoot and think, “Huh, maybe I don’t even need that arm. I can just screw it into what’s left.” And it turned out that it worked. So, once I discovered I could reinstall my Mirrycle Mirror, I took this one off and now I have two mirrors that have never been used. Have all the parts, all the pieces, and 1.8 ringgit each. And I’m just going to leave them behind in my room. So, anyone who gets this room, they get the two mirrors, they get a hacksaw, a couple of hacksaw blades, because I’m not going to bring all the blades with me. I’m only going to bring one. So, extra hacksaw blades, part of a kickstand. It’s like it’s a treasure trove. Yeah, pretty funny stuff. And I think that is the entire story of my bicycle mirror.
Now, it’s time for what may be the last topic for today. I was going to go on and talk about a whole bunch of YouTubers and things, but I think I’ve been babbling on long enough. So, this may be this podcast may be all about technology and a classic Planet Doug customer service rant. I started thinking I could develop an industry like what’s that kitchen cooking guy? No, there’s someone who goes to failing restaurants and bars and then he helps them make their bars better, you know, helps them with their service and their production, you know, basically fixes the place for them. And he’s very famous. He’s very bad-tempered and he gets to shout at everyone all the time, I think. And I was thinking I could be that guy for customer service around the world because I would just love to go into these places and just lay down the law, you know. Anyway, okay. Customer service. Of course, it all started with my arrival at this hotel in Port Dickson where I mean the customer service at the front desk is just abysmal. It doesn’t exist. It’s not like it’s bad. There just is none. The guy just sits there. And there are a lot of hotels like this that seem to be somewhat family-run or casual or something like that because the guy who sits behind the front desk who does nothing, he’ll be back there just playing video games on his phone the whole time. And then it becomes a hangout for his friends. Like you go down to the lobby and all his friends are there. They’re all sitting in chairs in the lobby. He’s sitting with them and then they’re all just shouting and laughing and playing video games together and then family members show up and so the whole family and friends just basically take over the hotel and I guess there’s really nothing wrong with that but at the same time the hotel is supposed to be my home. It’s not your home, right? I’m paying you so that I have a home. This hotel for the time that I’m here, I think of it as my home, my sanctuary. But when you go to a hotel where family and friends just take over the whole place now, it feels like you’re, what’s the word I’m looking for? You’re an annoyance to them where every time you go through the lobby, you feel like you’re bothering them. You kind of start tiptoeing around like, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” You know, and you don’t feel welcome anymore. It’s not your home, it’s their home, if you see what I mean. But anyway, there’s no customer service at all from the front desk and then they just sort of hang out and play video games all the time. Of course, the main problem with customer service here at this hotel was the whole tourism tax fiasco where they didn’t seem to understand how the system worked and we got into that whole argument about the tourism tax. So that was my arrival here in Port Dickson and it just sort of left a bad taste in my mouth. It took me a while to get over that and try to start feeling good about things. And I don’t know, that just seemed to set the tone. And I’ve had similar encounters, funny ones, bad ones almost everywhere I’ve gone lately. And as I said earlier, it’s made me gun-shy. I mean, I’m nervous about going outside. Like, I don’t want to go to a new restaurant, try new food. I want to get a haircut, but I don’t dare do it because I feel like I’m going to go into the barber shop and I’m just going to get such terrible, like such an, I want a warm welcome and I want to feel like, oh, they want me there, but I just don’t feel welcome lately. Everything feels awkward and people seem unfriendly. So now I’m too scared to go get a haircut because I don’t want to put myself where I’m now in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Like you walk into the barber shop and they just kind of look at you. Yeah. And they just sit there and you know something’s going to happen. And yeah, I’m gun-shy. I wanted to get, you know, some welding done. And normally I would just love the heck out of that. It’s like I love working on stuff and going to a welding shop and chatting with the guy. Hey, let’s. But I know it’s just going to be a bad experience. So, I feel kind of stuck right now. Yeah. So, I was out there riding my bike around, you know, testing everything. And I happened to go by this spot just up the road here, heading towards Lexis Grand Hotel, the fancy resort. And on my very first day, I noticed a big sign that said Fried Bananas, Pisang Goreng, which I love, but it was never open. And I kept seeing that sign. And then the other day when I was out riding around testing, I happened to go by it and it was open. So I thought, “Oh, I’m gonna come back here later, get some fried bananas.” So I’m sort of really looking forward to it. And then I’m testing my GoPro, my mounting. And then as I, and now I’m riding back to my hotel. My testing is done. I’m just going back and I remember, oh, I’m going to go get some fried bananas and then bring them back to the hotel. I’m very excited about this. And I think the key to my annoyance is that most of the time what I’m trying to do is a very small thing, right? It’s just it’s not a big deal. In my mind, I’m going to grab some fried bananas, pick up some fried bananas, and go enjoy them. But whether I have the fried bananas or not, it’s not a big deal. Like it’s not in the grand scheme of things whether Doug has fried bananas today is not that big a deal. So I don’t want to put a huge amount of effort into it if you see what I mean. I go in there thinking, “Oh,” or wherever, I’ll go into a store, wherever. Oh, I’m gonna pop in, get this, pop out, and it seems like a worthwhile errand. But if because of the customer service, it starts getting bigger and more complicated and difficult and annoying, it’s like, then I feel kind of silly. It’s like, well, sure, I want fried bananas, but I don’t want to work this hard to get them now. Now I feel kind of ridiculous. So anyway, I rode down the road and in my mind I was like, “Oh, I’ll zip down there on my bike. It’s like half a kilometer away. So already I’m investing quite a bit of effort in getting these fried bananas, but I thought, hmm, they’ll be good.” So, I zip down there on my bike and I park my bike and put it in a place and I get off my bike and I walk up to this counter, you know, fried bananas. And there’s a counter and there’s all kinds of different products, baked fried goods. Maybe they’re all related to bananas. I don’t know. But I could see the ones I like, the standard sliced bananas that are battered and deep fried, and I want to get some of those. So, I’m all very happy and I go up there, but there’s nobody there, right? So, that’s kind of the beginning of the customer service problem for me. Places are never open, right? This fried banana place, of course, it’s a weekend crowd, right, here in Port Dickson. It’s understandable, but it kind of bothers me that I ride past this place day after day after day and I see fried bananas. They’re never open. Other shops, you never know when they’re open. Their opening closing hours are just at random. You never know what’s going on, what day they’re open, what hours they’re open. It’s just you just guess basically. So, there’s that already. And then I go up to the place and then like there’s nobody there. So, I’m looking around and it’s like, yeah, well, I don’t want to wait 10 minutes. You know, like I said, fried bananas are not worth that to me. But then over on the side there was an area with a bunch of tables, chairs and tables and I guess customers can sit there and enjoy their snacks. And there was a man sitting there and right out of the gate I didn’t like the look of the guy, you know. I kind of looked over at him and I, oh I think he works here but he was like this big, fat, disheveled guy. A typical man and in dirty clothing, dirty shorts. He had like a white dirty singlet on, you know, it just he didn’t look that pleasant, you know. And he was actually cutting up some bananas. So I was like, you know, again, I’m not that overly concerned about hygiene and everything, but I was sort of looking at him going, “Oh, man. When was your last shower, buddy? And you’re the one cutting up the bananas. I don’t know about that.” But anyway, he was the one working there. So I noticed he was cutting bananas. So oh, so he works here. And then he kind of, you know, looked over at me, didn’t get up, didn’t come over. He was quite far away, you know, far enough away that communicating was a little bit difficult. And then he just kind of looked at me and grunted something. I couldn’t understand what he said. And then I said to him, you know, pisang goreng. And I pointed to the tray, pisang goreng, you know, and I’m like, and I’m expecting him at this point to get up and come over so we can talk face to face and he can see what I’m pointing at. And then we can get on with it. And he just sat there. He would not get up. He would not move. And he said something else. I didn’t know what he was saying. So I was like, “Yeah, excuse me. What? You know, what was that?” And he said it again. And then he said it again. And he was telling me how much they cost. I figured that out eventually. He wasn’t speaking in English, but he said something in the language he was using. I think this was an Indian operation. So I don’t know whether it was Malay or not. But anyway, he I eventually understood it was something, something for two ringgit. Like so many pieces for two ringgit or two for this many ringgit. It’s like I don’t really know what you’re saying. My go-to method in these situations is to just hand over the money. Like, can I have five ringgit worth? Because I don’t need to do the math. Like, you can tell me so many and I have to calculate and figure it out. 10 ringgit. Can I have 10 ringgit worth of fried bananas, please? That’s usually the easiest way. And my other, okay, my main customer service problem was that this man would not get up, would not come over to the counter, would not come to serve me. And I’m standing there and he’s telling me and I told him, you know, 10 ringgit, you know, this is how much I want. I want 10 ringgit worth of fried banana. Can I have that there? And I told him what I want. And then he just still just sat there and would not move. And by then, I’m already done. I’m just like, “All right, I don’t need to work this hard to get fried bananas for now. I’m starting to feel ridiculous.” And then I just walked away. I started to walk away. But the other problem for me, and this is across the board, if I were Mr. Customer Service going around the world yelling at people, I would tell them one thing. Put prices on your products. Ah, this drives me crazy. All around the world. So they had like five trays of different things. I don’t even know what they are. And I understand I’m a foreigner. Local people look and they know what all these things are. And even I know what fried bananas are. So I don’t even need a sign. But if I were running this place, there would be a sign, a nice sign, clearly labeled on every tray, the name of what it is and how much it costs. Price, price, price, price. To me, it is such a no-brainer. I don’t understand why people don’t put prices on things. I don’t get it. I mean, maybe you can argue that, oh, they’re going to want to charge you more money, so they want to negotiate. And if they see a foreigner, they’re going to give you the foreigner price. No, that’s not what’s going on here. It’s just I don’t even think it’s laziness. I think it’s just never occurred to anybody. And then everybody around the world seems accustomed to this where you have to ask for every single thing. So, he told me how much the fried bananas were, but now if I’m interested in other things, I’d have to go, “Oh, how much is this? Oh, and how much is that?” Like every single product on display, I have to ask over and over, how much are these? How much is this? It just strikes me as so ridiculous. I don’t understand it. So, that also fed into my annoyance. So, I just walked away. And by that point, a family had shown up like they parked a car. And this was a Malay family. And well, Malay, they, you know, a Muslim family. You can tell by their dress. And so this family came up to the counter and they could see that I was not being served and that I was leaving. And the woman with this family, very kind, very nice woman, spoke to me in English and said, “Oh, you know, can I help you? What is it you want?” And I just said to her, it’s like, “Yeah, it’s too much trouble. I mean, I’ve already been here for so long talking with this guy, trying to get him to come so I can buy some.” And he’s not interested. So, even with your help, I’m done with this place. I’m sorry. So, I just got on my bike and I left. And I have that experience so often. It really is starting to get to me. So, yeah, Fried Banana Story, customer service. The other one, what were the other ones? I feel like I’m missing one.
But I guess the other one was the mirrors. And this one is more funny than no. Oh, there’s one more. I’ve got the funny one and then I’ve got one more. Okay, I knew there was another one. Okay, I got the funny mirror story because on Planet Doug, I have a lot of bad luck. I was at DIY, right? They have thousands of products. Every single product that everybody else picks up and takes to the counter, they scan them, the price comes up on the computer. Not on Planet Doug. On Planet Doug, the item, the one item I want to buy is the one item that does not come up on the computer. So there I’m in line at DIY. There’s people ahead of me. I’ve already waited a long time because it was busy and crowded and they’re so slow. And then I finally get to the front of the line and I hand over the stuff and then she scans the mirror. There’s a barcode here. Price doesn’t come up. Scan it and she’s like, I don’t know. So like of course the one item in the entire store that I want to buy is the one item that is not scannable for the price. So she said to me, “Oh, if we price check, we have to do a price check.” So now I’m thinking of course. And again, I’m starting to feel a little bit silly because even these items that I was buying, it’s not like I really wanted these mirrors. It’s not like I was desperate to have them. They were just kind of an afterthought. Oh, 1.8 ringgit. I’ll pick up a couple, see how they work out. But now I’m going to have to invest a lot of time and a lot of effort because she’s not going to do the price check. She went over to a phone. Now she’s on the phone, you know, communicating with somebody else, you know, okay, we need a price check. We need a price check. And then she gets off the phone, goes back to the cash register. Now she’s serving the people in line behind me. I have to get out of line and now I’m waiting and I’m waiting and I’m waiting and I’m looking at the mirrors and I’m looking at the hacksaws and I’m thinking, well, I really need the hacksaw, so I guess I’ll, if it was only the mirrors, I just would have walked out. It’s like, okay, just like the fried bananas, this is too much trouble. I’m not that invested in these dumb little mirrors for 1.8 ringgit, but I really needed the hacksaw. So, I thought, okay, I’ll stick it out. Finally, somebody comes up, a man comes up, store clerk, and then the woman hands it to him, the two boxes, and says something to him. Says, “Oh, we need a price check on these.” So the guy takes them and then he’s just standing there and I’m like, price, like go, like I’ll go with you. I went up to him and I said like where they are on display it says 1.8 ringgit. I can show you where I got them. And then he’s looking at me. He never replied. He didn’t talk to me. He was not interested. And then he took out an X-Acto knife and he cut it open as he opens the box and I’m like what the heck are you doing? And he’s like I thought is the price on the inside. I thought oh maybe he’s looking for a barcode on the inside. So he takes out, you know, the little bag holding the little parts and he’s looking at that and he’s opening it and then he’s looking at that and he’s looking at the box and he’s pulling things out. I’m like the price is not hiding in there. And then he takes out the mirror and then he starts and I’m like, he’s not doing a price check. He’s checking the product. He thought he was being asked to double-check to make sure that all the parts are there. And so he’s assembling the mirror, right? So I’m like, “No, no, no.” I go up to the guy and I’m trying to tell him in English. I don’t think he spoke much if any English. It was hard to tell. And again, I went up to him. He says, “No, no. You don’t need to check that. I’m fine with it. It’s okay. You don’t need to put it together. The price. We’re looking for the price. This is a price check.” And I’m looking at the woman. I’m trying to get her attention. Like, can you tell him price check? He doesn’t need to do this, but she’s not paying attention. So, this guy goes through this entire mirror, checks everything, assembles the whole thing. The whole time I’m trying to tell him, “You don’t need to do this.” And then he goes to the second box, and he starts opening it. I’m like, “Oh, come on.” So, I went over to the cashier and I got her attention. I had to kind of butt in line to get her attention. Like, can you tell him? He doesn’t need to check the product. It’s a price check. Can you tell him? And she’s like, she doesn’t know what I’m talking about either. And I’m trying to make it a light-hearted moment. And I point out that the guy is checking the product. And I tell her like, “This mirror, it costs 1.8 ringgit. I’m expecting it to be a piece of junk.” He doesn’t have to check it. I’m assuming it’s broken, has parts missing, doesn’t work properly. It’s 1.8 ringgit. So, they made me feel silly as a customer that I’m buying this mirror and I’m demanding that they open it in the store and assemble it and make sure it’s working properly. I’m not that dumb. You know, I know what I’m buying here. So, I finally get this woman to understand that he’s checking the product and he doesn’t need to do that and this is taking forever. Can you remind him that it’s just a price check. So, finally she goes over to talk to the guy and he’s like, “No, no, no. We just need to know how much it is.” And then he just seemed so out of it. He was looking at her and he just kept assembling the second mirror and she had, “No, no, no. The price. We need to know how much it is.” And he’s like, “What? What?” You know, he’s like, “Oh, come on.” Eventually, after he assembled the second mirror, it dawned on him like he thought he was done and he’s handing them back. And then she’s like, “No, no, no, no. Price check. We need to know.” And then finally he tried to scan it on his little thingy there and of course it went. It’s like, “Yeah, we know that doesn’t work. We’ve already tried that.” And then he just handed them, what did, no another woman came. Another cashier finally came back because there was only one cashier open. All the other ones had said, “Please go to other cashier.” Another cashier came and she saw that there was something going on and she was a little bit better. It’s like, “What do you need, sir?” And I said, “Well, I need a, we’re trying to do a price check on this.” And she said, “Oh, I can do that for you.” And then she went to another cash register and then she just typed in the whole number. She scanned it and it didn’t work. And then she just went, you know, typed in the number and then the price came up and she told me, you know, that’s 1.8 ringgit. And I was like, well, yeah, I know that. I’m just trying to pay so I can get out of this place. And I was soaking wet at the time. My glasses were all steamed up because I just come in from the pouring rain. And it was just not a good situation. In my mind, this was a pop into DIY, pop out, get my hacksaw. This is going to be fun. And by the time I was done with this whole errand, I was exhausted. I was just so worn out. And anyway, that’s my funny customer service story. And yeah, let me put this away. All the parts are here. We know that. And they all assemble correctly. We double-check that. Anyway, third customer service story was last night I posted something to YouTube and to Patreon and everywhere else about Otai burgers because there is an Otai burger stall right outside this hotel. And I’ve had burgers there already and they were good. So last night I thought, huh, I hadn’t eaten all day again and it was getting around 7 o’clock at night and I was either not going to, I was just going to go to bed without eating, but I thought let’s have a burger. It’s right there. So again, in my mind, I’ll pop out, grab a burger, pop back in. It’s going to be amazing. And these Otai burgers are really good. So, I go out there. I tell the guy I want a couple of burgers, a beef burger and a chicken burger. And then he’s busy putting them on the griddle. And I tell him, it’s like, “Oh, I’m going to go into 7-Eleven is right there. I’m going to pop into 7-Eleven, get a drink, and then I’ll come back out and then when the burgers are ready, pay.” So, I go into 7-Eleven, hanging out in there. I come back out and there’s one beef patty on the griddle and the guy is just sitting in a chair doing nothing. Just sitting there on his phone of course. So I’m like standing there like what happened? Like I thought he had no chicken burgers. Like maybe only the beef and he’s cooking the beef but they have no chicken so he’s not going to do that. So, I’m sort of standing there and he’s on his phone and this and that and I’m trying to calculate what the heck is going on here and nothing was happening. Like there was no cooking. There was no heat coming off the griddle. It was just like this slab of beef sitting on the griddle. And eventually I had to go up to the guy, excuse me. Like I what I wanted to tell him I assumed there were no chicken burgers. So I thought, “Oh, okay. If there’s no chicken, two beef, that’s fine. I don’t need that, you know, I don’t need beef and chicken. If you only have beef, okay, just give me beef. I’m fine with that. So, that’s what I’m telling him. And then he looks at me and he didn’t speak any English at all. And then we couldn’t communicate at all. We tried and then eventually we had to go to Google Translate. And this is another funny experience that I have all the time. He got out his phone and he started working just typing and typing using his thumbs typing typing typing and I’m waiting. I’m like what is what are you? It shouldn’t be that hard. Why is this taking so long? He was typing so long. Again, as I always joke, it’s like, you know, you can work on your novel when you get home. I just need to know why we’re not cooking burgers here. It can’t be that complicated. I use Google Translate all day, every day. It’s easy. And I use voice to text, you know? I would just hit Google Translate. There you are. It’s so fast. But he’s typing and typing and typing and typing. And then finally he turns the phone around to me and it says no gas.
Two words, you know, the Malay and then the English translation, no gas. Why did that take you 10 minutes to type out? Like what was the thought process there? And then he’s like, oh, we have no gas. So of course I’m annoyed about that. It’s like, “How does that happen?” That you set up a burger stall and you’re here for your shift and the owner, the manager, everybody involved, nobody knows that the gas canister is empty. I mean, come on. Anyway, he says no gas. So then I went to Google Translate myself and of course I’m waiting for him to follow up on the no gas. Like no gas. Obviously, I’m going to want to know how long will it take before you have gas? I’m assuming you’re on the case, right? But he doesn’t volunteer that information. So, of course, I have to open up Google Translate and I say in English, you know, how long will it take to get gas? Boop. I hit the, you know, and it said it speaks to him in Malay. How long will it take? Now, he gets back to his phone. It was, I thought honestly 90% of the time I think I’m living in a prank. Like the entire planet Earth is a joke being played on me and there’s cameras like the Truman Show. They’re just trying to see how long it will take before I break and I go insane because nothing that ever happens to me ever makes any sense. So anyway, yeah, he’s back on his phone and he’s typing and he’s typing and he’s typing and I’m like, “What in the what? Why is this taking so long?” And then after what felt like an eternity, so much typing, he must have typed like 200 times. Why you would need to type that many times? And he turned his phone around 10 minutes. How? There’s no way it took you that long, that many keystrokes to type out 10 minutes, right? So, I have no idea what he was doing back there. And I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to take this young man under my wing, give him the benefit of my decades of experience and show him about voice to text. It’s like you don’t need to do all that typing. Whatever typing you are doing, not necessary. Look, it will take 10 minutes to get a new gas can. 5 seconds at the most. That’s how easy it is. And I wanted to teach him. I wanted to give him the benefit of my knowledge. But I’ve done that in the past. I’ve dealt with people so many times who just type and type and type and type in Google Translate. And I show them, oh, you know what? I think I’m telling them something that will be useful to them. Hey, you know what? You can just do voice to text. Look, see, why don’t you try it? And no one will ever try it. It’s like, no, no, no, no, no. Like, everybody is set in their ways. So, I didn’t even try to convince this guy that, you know, next time we can do voice to text. It’s a little bit faster than, you know, okay, you wrote, you know, another novel. You don’t need to do that much typing. So, anyway, he says 10 minutes. And of course, deep down, I know 10 minutes, that’s nonsense. Anybody in your entire life has told you that something is going to happen in 10 minutes, it’s going to be at least 30 minutes. You know that, right? I don’t know why people never tell the truth, but they always want to make you feel better by shortening the amount of time, which ends up harming you in the long run, but they don’t want to tell you the truth. Well, it’s going to take 30 minutes. He says 10 minutes. And then I said, “Okay, that’s fine. I’m trying to be casual. I’m trying to be relaxed.” And I thought, “Ah, I’ll just sit here for 10 minutes. I’ll watch a YouTube travel video and hang out.” Starts raining, of course, which makes things harder. 45 minutes later, I’m still sitting there. No gas has shown up. The young man has done nothing. It’s not like he got on the phone to check like, “Hey man, it’s been 45 minutes. Where’s the gas? I got a customer.” Nothing. He just sat in his chair looking at his phone doing nothing. Worse than that, he ignored every single customer that came up to his stall. Like, it’s not like he put up a sign that said temporarily closed. Customer after customer came up to the Otai stall to look at the menu. And again, no genius here. I’m not Einstein, but I know that this person who just spent five minutes poring over the menu, he’s doing it because he’s trying to decide what burger to order for him and his family. That’s why he’s there, obviously. So, if I were working at this stall, I see a customer come up, I would jump up and go up to him. I’m sorry. You know, we don’t have any gas right now, so don’t waste your time picking out and placing an order because we don’t have gas. The young man running the stall just ignored every customer, let them stand there again for what felt like an eternity. They finally make a decision. Okay, I want two chicken burgers and two beef burgers and a roti John. And then they go over to the young man to place their order. Then the young man looks up. Oh, can’t. No gas. And goes back to his phone. That customer leaves. Another group of people come. They all stand around the menu. They’re all talking to each other trying to decide what they’re going to get. Oh, what about this? What about this? They spend a long time making up their mind. They walk over to the young man. Oh, could we get it? Oh, sorry. No gas. Unbelievable. I mean, and he’s a perfectly nice young man. I’ve seen these guys there before and I’ve sort of chatted with them. They’re nice guys. And I don’t understand. That’s the thing. I just do not understand how these things happen, how anybody can operate that way. Anyway, 45 minutes. I’m still there. By this point, I don’t even know why I’m still sitting there honestly. Like, why am I doing this? But I’ve invested so much time. To be honest, I wanted to see the end of the story because I knew gas was coming, but it was taking, oh, it already had taken 45 minutes. And I’m thinking when this gas shows up, I want to see what’s going on here. Like, is it going to show up on a scooter? Is it being sent by UPS and had to come from Singapore? Is that why we’re waiting? Is there a, you know, is a special truck being sent out to deliver this? Like, there has to be something special about this gas canister, right? I wanted to see the end of the story. So, I just waited and waited and waited, lost all track of time, and all these cars kept showing up. And every time a car pulled up and parked, I’m like, “Oh,” and that person would get out of the car, go into 7-Eleven and like, “Ah, next car.” and oh nope nope nope. Finally a like a big SUV, a big pickup truck style SUV kind of thing shows up and kind of and I noticed the young man kind of came to life a little bit. So I thought, “Oh, this must be the gas can delivery.” And here I can switch my criticism to whoever was driving the truck. I got the impression that this was the boss. He was the owner, the manager, and he just hired this young man to make money for him. And I have a bit of a problem with business owners in general because I’ve had so much trouble with businesses in my lifetime and customer service and things like that. So, when this guy showed up in his fancy brand new truck, I immediately think, huh, okay, you’re making a lot of money off of these things. And you can’t even stay on top of your business enough to have a gas can available and he’s on the phone. So, he’s like driving with one hand. He’s talking on the phone and he just pulls up beside the Otai thing and he just stays on the phone talking. He parks the car, you know, puts it into park and he just sort of settles back in his chair. He’s in no rush to deliver this can of gas. He just sort of stays on the phone talking and talking and talking. Finally it occurs to him, you know, I’m aiming daggers at this guy, right? And then he finally, he’s still on the phone, but then he kind of looks over, sees the young man who’s kind of eager to do something and then he just kind of does something with his hand like points at the back. Yeah, go get the gas can. It’s back there. So, this owner of this place, he can’t even be bothered to get out of the truck to go get the gas can, to communicate with his employee, to apologize to the customer who’s been waiting for an hour for his Otai burger. Like, how in the world did it take that long for this guy to get from wherever he was to deliver this can of gas? Anyway, it was really bad. And the only reason I stuck it out so long was because I was interested in the story and I was curious how things were going to end. And I wasn’t disappointed where it looks like the lack of customer service, the lack of urgency is coming from the top down if this is how the owner operates. He communicates that to his staff. So that’s how they operate as well. So really bad, really, really bad customer service there last night. Anyway, oh boy. So, that’s kind of why I’m sort of gun-shy right now. Like I said, I want to do some things like haircut, welding, go out to try new food, go to restaurants, go out exploring, and I just don’t want to go outside sometimes because I’m nervous about what’s going to happen when I get there because of all these negative experiences, you know. Yeah. Kind of funny. I think that’s the last customer service story I want to tell. There are more.
So, yeah, I think I’ve come to the end of my bad customer service stories for now. I’ll end it with the Otai Burger gas can mystery.
I just realized I do have one more story I want to tell. So, it’s not a customer service story, but more of a Planet Doug drama story. Again, you can file this in the category things that only seem to happen to me. And yeah, I’ll end the podcast with this story. Round it out a little bit with a story about shooting a Planet Doug video. And this one is kind of interesting. Gives a little window into how my days go because I wanted to make a video about the Touch ‘n Go Visa card, right? I’d made a video about using Touch ‘n Go e-wallet in Malaysia. I’d made a video about using Touch ‘n Go e-wallet in Indonesia. Made a video about using the GoPay e-Wallet in Indonesia. And I made a video about using GoPay in Malaysia. But the one thing I hadn’t talked about was the Visa card. Exactly what is it and then why do I like it so much and what can you use it for? And I thought that would be helpful for other foreigners who come to Malaysia. I mean I found it amazing that I could get one. And as I’ve told the story in the past where this Touch ‘n Go Visa card saved my life because there was a point when I was in Kuala Lumpur where my Canadian credit card, my only credit card got cancelled because of fraud and I was left with no way to pay for anything online and I had all these bills due and I had no way to pay them and things were getting pretty touchy, pretty sketchy. And then I had this Touch ‘n Go Visa card and it was like, “Huh, I can pay with that.” And I just put money into my e-wallet and then I used the number from that Touch ‘n Go Visa card and I paid my online bills with money that was deducted. It amazed me that I could do it. I was like, “Wow, I could not believe that this was even possible.” And then people started telling me that, oh, with this card you can do tap and go as well. I’m like, well, I’ve never even done tap and go. To me, that seems like voodoo. Seems like sorcery. I see people doing it. They take out a card and beep. And I’m like, oo, like, there’s no way I can do that. I mean, that’s what that’s for rich people. That’s for fancy people. That’s for smart people. I don’t even know what they’re doing. I’d had no experience with it. And then when someone told me I could do that with my Touch ‘n Go card, it was sort of like really. So I learned how to do that, that I could do it and I wanted to make a video about that. And that video again was supposed to be short and sweet to the point, not a big deal, not a huge project. But of course it spun out of control Planet Doug style. It started to spin out of control because of course I want to know what I’m talking about. So I don’t want to just turn on the camera and start babbling about the Touch ‘n Go Visa card and then come across something I don’t know. It’s like, oh you know what, I’m speaking on video and oh I don’t even know how that works or oh I don’t know how much that costs. I don’t know if you can use the card to do that. I want to know in advance everything that I can possibly know. So of course I have to do research. I’m going over the websites. I’m reading. I’m studying. I’m testing. And that takes a while. And then I’m taking all of my thoughts and I’m organizing them into a bullet list. Not a script per se, but just the topics I want to cover. And then I group them into categories. So, okay, how should I do the video? You know, open with this, then that leads into this topic and then this and then do a practical demonstration using the Visa card to withdraw money and then going to 7-Eleven and I have an outline in my mind. And in this case, after I had the outline, I actually sat down and wrote out a full script. I didn’t intend to use it as a script, but I just started writing out one of the points. And because I’m a very fast typist, before I knew what had happened, I had written out the whole story like what is Touch ‘n Go Visa card? This is what it is. And oh, these are the three advantages. The first advantage is it can do this. The second and so all of my thoughts were written out in a full complete script. So I had that on my tablet or on my smartphone, tablet, laptop. It was everywhere. So that took a lot longer than I thought. And then I didn’t want to film it here in Planet Doug’s studio. I wanted to film it out in the world somewhere interesting. So there was several days in a row where I got on my bicycle intending to record this video and I rode my bike to downtown Port Dickson and I was thinking, huh, where can I go? I was trying to think of a place where I could sit down in comfort, not bother anybody else, have a cup of coffee, maybe get set up and record the video. And places like that are hard to find. And I thought, “Oh, I can go to Zeus coffee because I remember Zeus having an outdoor seating area. I can probably find like the worst table that nobody else wants to sit at. There’s always a table like that. It’s either too hot or it’s in a really dirty area near the garbage cans. Here on Planet Doug, that’s where we always sit anyway. So, I thought I’ll go to Zeus and sit outside far away from other people and then I’m not bothering anybody. I can set up my camera on a tripod and I can record this video with nice background, a beautiful coastline, beaches, trees. That was my idea. So I rode down to Zeus, but of course that turned out to be the long holiday weekend. And Zeus was a zoo. Zeus was a zoo jammed. And it was like, ah, there’s no way I can record a video there. And by the time I got there, to be honest, I went on a bit of a detour on my bicycle and I’d shot a lot of video and I was just kind of hot and sweaty. I wasn’t in the mood anymore. I didn’t have the energy left. So, I just abandoned the whole project, came back to the hotel, and I went out there on, did I go back on a Monday? I may have been downtown on a Monday as well, not realizing that it was a long weekend. That Monday was also a holiday. So, I show up. Zeus jammed. Nah, can’t do it today. I went back on a Tuesday. I remember that specifically, thinking, okay, the holiday is over. Everybody’s gone home. Everybody’s gone back to work. Zeus is going to be empty. I show up packed with people. Another day where I went there to shoot the video and I couldn’t really think of another place to go. It was like I was thinking of all the places in Port Dickson, you know, the circumstances, the physical setting. I couldn’t really think of anywhere where I could go. And then I just gave up. So, another day I decided I remembered Starbucks here has two levels. There’s an indoor air conditioned section. I couldn’t do it there because I would be bothering other people talking out loud as long as I talk for one of these videos. Couldn’t do it there, but I knew I’d never gone up there, but they had a second floor. And if that second floor is relatively empty, that might work. That could be the Planet Doug studio. So, I packed up all my gear, tripod, everything, my camera, extra batteries, my script, my bullet point list, everything ready to go. I made sure I had my card, my enhanced Touch ‘n Go card because I need to be able to show them on video. Made sure I had everything I needed. And I rode my bike downtown. It’s like 5 km away. And Starbucks was relatively empty. I couldn’t do it on the main floor. As I said, I could, yeah. I was like, “Yeah, there’s nowhere I could sit.” But I went up to the second floor to scout it out and nobody was up there, completely empty. And I thought, “Huh, maybe things are turning around here on Planet Doug.” So, I thought, “Okay, I’ll set up here somehow somewhere.” And then, I went back downstairs. I ordered a latte, hot latte, and then when I had my latte, I went back up to the second floor and then I tried to get set up. Boy, was that a struggle because I mean that’s kind of the story I wanted to tell is how hard it is to just shoot one of those videos. I just about lost my mind because I set up on one table and I wanted a nice background, but when you aim the camera in that direction now I was backlit. So there’s so much bright light behind me. I was completely black. I was just dark. So it’s like, oh, I can’t sit there. That table is no good. So I find another table where I’m no longer backlit. But now the only places that weren’t backlit, the only thing behind me were like pillars and cement walls. And it was like and now it was suddenly really ugly. The whole, the only reason I was trying to film the video outside was to have a nice setting and I might as well have filmed it here because yeah, there was no pleasant background at all. Anyway, I set up my tripod. I got my camera ready. I’m all ready to go. Now they turn on the music because the music wasn’t on, I don’t think, up until that point. Or maybe I just never noticed it, but suddenly I’m just about to hit record. I’m like, “Oh, for Pete’s sake, I’m right underneath a speaker and they’re playing popular music.” You know, copyright strike, copyright strike. So I can’t sit there. So now I’m going from table to table to table. I sit down on the table. Speaker. So now I’m trying to find a table that isn’t close to a speaker. And that was really, really hard to do. I never found one where no music could be heard, but I thought it was just quiet enough and if I talked loudly enough, I could maybe get away with it. So I finally picked a spot where I could sit and I set up my camera and I’m all ready to go. And then the crows start cawing. When I first went up there, there were actually two crows perched on chairs. I thought they were like puppets or something because they weren’t moving. One crow here. Big ones, right? These are big, big birds. And one sitting here, one sitting here. And they weren’t moving at all. They were just like statues. Beautiful birds. I was like looking at them. I was like, “Man, you are a gorgeous animal, aren’t you?” And I’m getting closer and I’m thinking of taking a picture and you know I get closer and there’s like I’m like oh no, oh no, how’s this going to work now? But anyway, they quieted down and I start recording the video and then they start cawing and they invite all their buddies. I’m in the middle of a crow party. I got crows on the chairs. I got crows in the rafters. I got crows flying through. Caw, caw, caw, just endless cawing and I’m trying to like shh, you know shh, I’m recording over here, you know, and I just gave up on them. I just decided there’s nothing I can do. The crows, this is their territory and they’re letting me know that I’ve intruded in crow territory and they are going to keep cawing throughout the entire video. So, it was really funny when I was editing the video because I’m talking about something to do with the e-wallet and I’ll say something like, you know, I can see the audio waveform, you know, the audio track and there’s my voice going up and down, you know, and I end with something like, and that’s why I love the Touch ‘n Go Visa card. And then there’s like go. It’s like all these like the audio after I stop talking, the audio track just keeps going because you got all the caws. And when I edited the video, I tried as hard as I could to cut it before too much of the cawing started. And I recorded different sections multiple times because I would make a mistake or the cawing would be so loud it just overwhelmed everything else. So, I would have to redo it, and it made editing the video take forever because I was cutting and pasting, trying to get rid of the cawing and getting rid of my own mistakes and things like that. What a finding a table where the lighting is good, a table where there’s something interesting going on in the background, that alone is next to impossible. Find a table where you’re far enough away from the music, where you’re not bothering other people. Oh, I forgot construction. So, I started recording jackhammers right across the road. There’s a building right across the road. These workers showed up out of nowhere. Now, they’re out on the balcony. They’re drilling and jackhammering. It’s like, of course, of course, of course. And then of course, Port Dickson is a pretty busy place. You wouldn’t think so, but right down by the waterfront, you’ve got all the people down there for the weekend. And they like to rev their engines. So, I’m busy. I just start talking about the next section of the Touch ‘n Go Visa video. It’s like, oh, now I want to talk about the third reason why, you know, the motorcycle gang is now roaring up and down the waterfront. And I’m like, “Okay, take number three.” I start talking. The jackhammers start. Take number four. Just I mean, if you watch that video, I can hear it because I know what my voice sounds like. If you go towards the end of the video, the last, you know, few minutes, I sound like I’m losing my mind. Like I’m not breathing properly anymore. I’m speaking faster. I look tense. I’m like leaning forward. Yeah, the Touch ‘n Go Visa. You know, I can I’m just about going crazy trying to record this dumb video. It was so hard to record. I was exhausted by the end of it. But yeah, when you’re trying to record like a studio talking head video, most YouTubers who do that, they do it in their home and over time they develop a home studio. They buy lights. They have a nice background. They experiment with different lenses and cameras and angles and microphones and lighting and you know they eventually get it set up properly and then they don’t have to worry about it from that day forward. If you’re in a brand new place every time, wow, it is hard. It’s so hard to do. Couldn’t believe it. I mean, it was like again the perfect storm. I mean, any other YouTuber telling this story, they would say, “Yeah, I had trouble getting away from the music.” Yeah, it was hard to get away from the music. And that’ll be the end of their story. But on Planet Doug, it’s everything. I’m dealing with the music, dealing with bad backlighting. I’m dealing with heat because it was really hot up there because I was sitting outside. And then we’ve got construction jackhammers, motorcycles revving their engines, cars racing up and down. And as if all of that isn’t enough, you’ve got the Crow Brigade cawing constantly throughout. It was just, oh, it was really quite something. Yeah, that didn’t work out very well, I must say. I did spend some time thinking about the mechanics of doing this as well because I do everything off the cuff. I do like make bullet for a video like that. I’ll have like bulleted points. Even for this behind-the-scenes video, I make notes like on a Google Keep app. If I’m going about my normal day and something happens that I think is a funny story, I just make a little note like Otai Burger, no gas, and I remember that story or DIY, you know, the guy didn’t understand he was supposed to do a price check. I make a little note. So, I have a list of topics, but then I just tell the story off the top of my head. I don’t write out a script or anything. And with the Touch ‘n Go e-wallet video, it’s the same thing. I just have bulleted points and then I just talk. But and that works. I enjoy doing it. It feels natural. But it is very easy to miss a key point. So like when you’re talking about something like the Touch ‘n Go Visa card, you really want to get your facts straight and you don’t want to forget anything because I don’t want to tell the entire story of the Touch ‘n Go Visa. Come back here. I’m editing the video. I’m like, “Oh, I forgot to mention the travel card versus the basic card.” Like some big topic or some little detail that you just forgot and it’s like, now you got to reshoot that. I mean, it just gets so difficult. So, for a video like that, it would be good to read from a script. It really would. And I think I could do it naturally or it would be nice to have the script in front of me and then I can just sort of talk off the cuff, but I can just sort of glance at the script and just sort of skim along. Like but that’s really hard to do. Like when you think about professionals like politicians giving a speech, they read from a teleprompter and that works for them because teleprompters are very advanced, high technology. They’re invisible to everybody else and then they have, you know, teleprompters all around them and then they can just read whatever’s on the teleprompter and it looks like you’re looking at the audience. It looks like you’re delivering a speech that you memorized, but you’re actually reading and nobody can see the teleprompter because it’s invisible. So, me, what can I do? Right? And I was trying to think of any way I could do it, but there’s really no way because even if I have a script on a tablet or a smartphone and I can think of some way to mount it on the GoPro or on the Olympus, it’s too far away for me to read anyway. The lettering is too small unless I make the lettering huge. And even then, the slightest difference in your eye line, if I’m looking at the lens, but now I’m suddenly looking at a screen, you know, six inches above the lens, you can see it. My eyes are not looking at you anymore, and you just can’t do that. So, I was trying to think, is there a way, a kind of a compromise? And one thing I was thinking of is that I could, well, it wasn’t even my idea. An AI gave me this idea because I was running ideas past an AI talking about, you know, can you suggest any way? Can you think of a method where I can mount a camera and yet have a smartphone or something in front of me? And I mentioned in my question that I actually have two tripods. And then the AI says, “Hey, there’s your solution right there. You take your camera, put it on your big tripod on the table, line it up properly, and then you take your tablet. Where’s my other? It’s around here somewhere. There it is. I didn’t even I didn’t even know these existed, but the AI told me, well, there are mounting gizmos that can grip a tablet, right? Top and bottom, like a smartphone mount. I have smartphone mounts like well right here I have this phone inside a smartphone mount. You just need one of these but bigger that fits over a tablet and then you screw that mount onto this tripod and then I can put it on the table underneath the view of the video. So the camera would be on that tripod. This would be on this tripod mounted underneath it and I wouldn’t be reading from it, but it wouldn’t be so difficult to see because normally what I might do is if I have all of my notes here or if I have my notes on a tablet, I have it sitting beside me so I can be speaking to the camera talking about section one of my Touch ‘n Go video and then I finish talking about that section. And then I want to move on to the next section. And then I just, I don’t look at the camera anymore. I look down at the tablet and I’m like looking through my notes, scanning. Okay. Okay. Okay. Section two. I talk about this, this, this, this. Okay. And then I go back to the camera. But if I had this rigged up on a tripod there, I might even be able to get into a flow where I don’t even have to break where I just sort of see it out of the corner of my eye and I can follow the bulleted points, make sure I don’t miss anything. So anyway, I was just thinking of some way where you could physically, even within the limits of recording at a coffee shop, mount a camera on one tripod and then have some sort of a homemade teleprompter nearby just giving you a list of bulleted points, you know. Anyway, that was the only idea I came up with where it might even come close to helping out where yeah, you get a big mounting apparatus for a tablet, put it on here, increase the font size. Yeah, if I were still in Kuala Lumpur, I’d probably hop on to Lazada and then look for one of these tablet grips, a cheap one, a lightweight one, just to try it out, see if I have a use for it, have it delivered to a collection point. No more hotel deliveries on Planet Doug, and then try it out. Here in Port Dickson, I don’t know if I want to risk it. There might be, I can’t remember if there’s like a good gadget store here or electronics, mobile phone shop. There’s no shopping mall or anything like that here in Port Dickson. So, but even if there was one, I don’t know if I dare go out. Like I said, I’ve been burned so many times lately by, yeah. My mood gets ruined by customer service problems. I don’t dare go to shops or stores anymore. I don’t even dare go to restaurants anymore, so I’m sort of nervous. Yeah, I’m gun-shy, as they say. But yeah, I finished the video, as you may know. I edited it, uploaded it, and it went live yesterday. Yeah. So, it went live on my YouTube channel and yeah, certainly raises the question of whether it’s even worth the effort because a lot of work went into that video. A lot of time, a lot of energy. I enjoy it. I mean, I hope that comes across in my stories. I’m telling these crazy stories, but I enjoy all of this. It’s funny to go try to record a video with the crows and you know, making YouTube videos keeps you on your toes and I enjoy the process. I enjoy fiddling with gear, all that kind of stuff. So, that doesn’t bother me at all. But, it is such a tremendous investment of time. And I’m looking at the video right now, the stats, and it has 1.6,000, 6,000 views, which is more than average for on Planet Doug, but for an ongoing YouTube channel, you might as well not even bother for a video like this to be worth the time you put into it. I mean, it has to have a minimum 50,000 views, 100,000 views. If you’re not reaching that level, yeah, you’re just wasting your time. The amount of money I’ll make from this video, if I make any at all, it won’t even pay for the cup of coffee I had, right? You know, in terms of shooting the video, you know, sounds kind of silly, but I did an ATM withdrawal, which I didn’t need to do, but I did it just as a demo, and that cost me 1.4 ringgit in a service fee. The day that I bought, I usually buy a lot of milk anyway, but for the video I ended up buying two liters of milk for a total of like 20 ringgit. Milk is more expensive in Port Dickson. I don’t know what’s going on. It’s more expensive than other places. So, I bought, you know, 2 liters of milk because I used my Visa card to do tap and go, you know, just to demonstrate it. And then of course I paid for my latte at Starbucks just so I can sit at a table and have a place to record and that’s another 17 or 18 ringgit for, you know, a Starbucks coffee. Yeah, on and on and on. So in the end it will cost me more money to make the video than the video will end up earning like in terms of YouTube AdSense. So yeah, that’s just the harsh reality of YouTube. Yeah, 1.6,000 views. 33 comments somewhere around 33. I’ve already replied to a lot of comments, so probably half of those comments are mine, so it’s not really 33 comments. So not a huge amount of engagement. My Touch ‘n Go e-wallet video was more popular. It had like a broader reach and even my GoPay e-wallet video. But this Visa card doesn’t seem to hook people. It’s like okay Visa card from, I mean I know why, it has a special place in my life as a like sort of backpacker style tourist in Malaysia. It’s really cool. You know, that card has a lot of benefits for me, but maybe not meant for Malaysian people. You know, what do they care? I mean, a lot of the comments that I get will often refer to bank things like, you know, well, what’s the big deal? I do that with my other credit cards and I do that with my bank debit card. You know, this is nothing new. But you’re look, they’re looking at it from a Malaysian point of view where they have local bank accounts and credit cards. I’m looking at it from my perspective, a backpacker perspective. We can’t open a local bank account. We don’t have bank debit cards. We can’t link a credit card to our Touch ‘n Go e-wallet. So, this Touch ‘n Go Visa card is really quite something special. So, but how many people, even foreigners, would see a video thumbnail like that? Like, why would I get a Visa card in Malaysia? I already have a Visa card. So, you know, it just doesn’t seem to have a hook for people. But anyway, I enjoyed making it. I enjoyed doing the research. I certainly enjoy using the card. But, yeah, and fiddling around with all the technology is always kind of fun.
And that is it for today’s podcast. I still have a whole bunch of things I could talk about, but obviously if you look at the length of this video, I’ve been talking long enough and I’ve run out of batteries. I have four batteries for my Olympus camera, and I’ve used up all four of them. I had to stop for a while to put one battery back in the charger just to get a few more minutes out of it so that I could record this epic conclusion. So, yeah, that’s it. Thanks for hanging out with me on Planet Doug, listening to the Planet Doug podcast. I hope I added some entertainment value to your life along the way. So, that’s it. Shutting down. I’ll see you in the next video.