3.11.20

My #STROKELIFE Sharing Sessions: A Decade In


I "celebrated" my 10th Anniversary of surviving Stroke this October, with sharing my "Strokelife" online, which has since been made available for your listening considerations in three parts"

PART #1: Where I talk about my pre-Stroke lifestyle leading up to the day of my Stroke, on October 20th, 2010. I was forty-one years old when I suffered my (first) Stroke. (Direct link to Soundcloud recording HERE / Embedded below).



DURATION: 1:38:16
SPOKEN LANGUAGE: (Primarily) English
WARNING: Coarse/Adult Language Used.

PART #2: Where I shared my post-Stroke recovery for the first 6-8 months, with hospital stay and rehabilitation. (Direct link to Soundcloud recording HERE / Embedded below).



DURATION: 1:36:29
SPOKEN LANGUAGE: (Primarily) English
WARNING: Coarse/Adult Language Used.

PART #3: Where I shared my Strokelife for the past ten years, and an update to my current state of health. Viewable via a youtube video recording posted below (because I had exceeded my free Soundcloud upload limit :p).



DURATION: 1:14:37
SPOKEN LANGUAGE: (Primarily) English + (Simple) Mandarin.
WARNING: Coarse/Adult Language Used.

THE STORY OF STROKELIFE: I had initially done a FACEBOOK LIVE sharing session on October 24th (Q&A HERE), which I had since Privated, primarily because I had felt it was too huge a chunk for folks to have to go through, and admittedly I'd felt uncomfortable for oversharing TMI in personal sharing ... but had felt I still had wanted to share my experience for folks' point of reference and knowledge, NOT that I was offering medical advice nor "selling" anything, but at the very least be able to provide one person's point-of-view and experience = something I wished I had access to, when I fell to Stroke so many years ago.

And so I decided to re-record my share (and I am also currently unable to edit on my desktop, in the first place), but this time planning to do so in "shorter" chunks, and maybe less TMI - even though I also recognised sharing all these were also meant to symbolically stop myself from "talking about Stroke" again, a decade in ...

The irony being, instead of the 3 hours 40+minuter Facebook Live recording, I now have a combined total of (slightly over) 4 hours' worth of words and my whining OMG ~ LOL

But I don't beat myself over it (much) ... it is what it is. It is a huge chunk of my life - essentially 1/5th of my entire life (I'd just turned 51 years old in late-September), so it still is and will always remain apart of my life, whether I talk about it publicly or not.

I'll end this entry with a re-look at a video recording of how I was, 2 days after succumbing to Stroke, filmed on October 22nd, 2010, when my mouth straighten back after a couple of days being crooked/drooped, and voice slowly returning ...



Thank you for listening.
Stay healthy, cheers.
Andy Heng


ASIDE: I am accepting PayPal donations via "toysrevil@yahoo.com" (Payment type under "Friends and Family"). Thank you for your considerations and generosity.

24.10.20

Ten Years On... Answers To Questions During My Facebook Live Sharing


And so I "celebrated" the 10th Anniversary of my Stroke in 2020, wth a FACEBOOK LIVE (over) sharing of my experience(s) with having Stroke, with tons of TMI ("too much information") that I had subsequently felt uncomfortable to be sharing online moreso than I already had (go figure), after I spent 3 hours and fourty-eight minutes rambling on about it in the first place ... That said, I certainly hope to be able to edit down the entire video to focus on my experiences with Stroke itself ... but that might be a while before it happens, due to my current desktop woes.

And I forgot to also mention - after pouring out my heart and thoughts - the one thing that had been hanging over my head for the entirety of the past ten years: That I might not just have ONE Stroke, but there will be might have more to come. Unless I manage to keep myself healthy, which for all intents and fears, I do not think I am doing that well ... which is a real bitch, because essentially how am I to responsibly push forward in life, if its gonna go bottoms up somewhen? Hence not keeping myself healthy enough to stave off the "inevitable" WTF.... but that's on me.

I might have pushed ahead and recovered to whatever level I am in NOW, but lies ahead, is an uncertain fear, which I too realise would be a foolhardy notion to continue fearing over, but not choose to LIVE FORTH ... easier said that done tho...

That said, here's a look back at some questions I'd received during my FB-LIVE Sharing Sessions, with my answers - some of whom had been expanded upon, after I had posted them on my personal Facebook. Cheers :)



You ROCK, Napat! THANK YOU!
Find out more about both events linked here to TOYSREVIL:

*CLICK HERE for all coverage about Character Licensing Expo Asia AKA "CLEA 2010" - which happened BEFORE I fell to Stroke in October 2010!

*CLICK HERE for all coverage of "CE2 CONTEST" circa 2012, when I returned to Thailand after my Stroke! I referenced my experience in this blogpost: "Keeping Pace", and have been living this adage since.



RE: My STGCC2010 visit while in my wheelchair (All links to my Facebook albums / Some are privated, sorry)

- Facebook Album #1 (Friends)
- Facebook Album #2 (Seen)
- Facebook Album #3 (Artist Alley)



ANSWER #1: I have a "portfolio" of works viewable HERE on Facebook, and as well I have begun to chronicle my work-past in a dedicated BLOG. Here is my IMDb-page.

ANSWER #2: I started out with 1/6th-scaled figures (dedicated Hobby-Bloghobby-Blog: / dedicated FACEBOOK Page), and subsequently dived into "urban vinyls", with Michael Lau etc.

I am of the era of Dragon Models, BBI, and pre-licensed Hot Toys lol (I do not have a single licensed Hot Toys figure since they went "legit"). I utterly adored "kitbashing" above anything else - using different brands and make to make a single figure!

I wasn't until 3A Toys before I begun to collect whole figures again, and even then as selective as I had been, I ended up "buying" more than I "opened" them... until such time when I could no longer afford my "plastic fix" LOL



(Above) QUESTION: "How do you see your value today as a professional and as a person, who is a stroke survivor?"

ANSWER: Beyond the physicality and physical limitation, I'd felt I had gained a certain sense of emotional perspective, at least in the Point of View (POV). And while I cannot argue "different strokes for different people" (Pun Not Intended), having lived thru this exprience had helped me attain a certain semblance of understanding and perhaps further depth into "visual aesthetics", moreso that I had felt years ago before Stroke.

(Above) QUESTION: What has changed and what do you feel about that? Has it taught you anything?

ANSWER: Connected to the above answer to. My perception has changed. Even my language has been altered - how I blogged before Stroke, and how I am now as well. The initial fear was that Stroke had changed and screwed with my brains - which I cannot doubt it still had tho LOL - but who I am now and who I read wrote the blog articles (for example), feels "different". "Aesthetics"-wise, things might remain the same or different, and I cannot differentiate between evolution/evolved tastes or otherwise :p

What Stroke has imbued in me are many faceted but perhaps sutble (?) to folks? Humility. Awareness. Guilt. Consequence. Struggle. Living Life.

And I am less likely to play into politics as I would rather do what I choose to do, which equates to not being able to adapt into a corporate environment, perhaps.



(Above) QUESTION: Does your blog influence the price of and demand for specific toys? Can you share instances of this?

ANSWER: I cannot really say, as I had much feedback though the years, truth be told. I do not "hype" as much as I think I should (to get folks attention) though LOL ... and while I would not say "price fluctuations", I would like to think I help "fuel the demand for" LOL ... one immediate example if of the SHIN-COOKIEZILLA that was released over the weekend and sold out within minutes, and yet I am still receiving DMs (on socials) asking "How Much?" (But I don't sell them!), and the blog stats have shown there are the highest read feats for the past week.

I also recognise I am now not johnny-on-the-spot for "breaking news" as before (I cannot play that game anymore post-Stroke, anyways lol), but I'd rather aim to be able to provide as much and as accurate information as I can, be it pre-sales or even post-sales lol

(Above) QUESTION: How old were you when you were doing sustained demanding work?

ANSWER: I think I had passed my early-30s by then. When you'd put in work in your mid-to-late 20s dong the grind, and being able to walk the talk in your/my 30s.

I made my first feature film when I was 29 (in 1998, as a "Art Director"), and my 6th and last feature film in 2006, when I was 37.

30s was my prime, and if I had heeded my own personal issues of burning out, perhaps I would have been able to achieve more in my 40s? The point is moot now.



I would say in-between spending time with family (admittedly very rare before my Stroke), friends (exceedingly less too), ex'es - in fact most of my free time is spent with them, and admittedly in the hustle and grind, I poured more of my time over work.

I was unsuccessful in balancing both my geeklife and my life, before Stroke, sadly.

After Stroke, when I was not gainfully employed, and remained single, I could devote my time and indulge in what I had loved doing. But the reality of not earning meant I could not spend on maintaining a hobby such as "toy-collecting" - but for "gifts" from folks - which in turned became "work", as I devoted my time on my blog instead.

What were "hobbies" I passionately loved from before, how gradually became "work" since when I started the blog 15 years ago. Still love TOYS though, but that love is no longer the same as it was.

END :)