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You can apply for ProTech computer insurance at any Coco Gen branch or inquire by the phone or email, details in the video description. Hi, Rafael from Hardware Sugar. I think I finally got everything going. This is going to be a different kind of live video. Usually, we do these, we do Puede Magtanong and I'm actually talking to other people in the Puede Magtanong show but right now, I'm actually just interviewing myself today. So it's a bit strange. So today, we're just going to do some minor career talk and a sort of get to know who we are personally, me and Anton. Anton's not joining me today so maybe he can do his version of this afterwards. This is sort of like a continuation of my desk setup tour which I did last week. But before anything else, I want to give a shout out to David Gong and Pug Puji. Thank you for joining the Hardware Sugar family, Super Subs. How do you say your name here? Puji Puggy. Ah, there we go. All right, I Katima Gaming. Thank you. Yeah, anin. It takes some getting used to talking to myself. I don't even know if sometimes the microphone is working but na, I'm looking at OBS. I've used OBS, by the way. So that's, I don't want, it's not going to be a super long livestream because it's a Saturday night and I know that you all want to catch up with other things. So let me get right straight into it. So number one, where did Raphael videos on Hardware Sugar come from all of a sudden? So if you've been following the site since the beginning, we've actually been around for two years I only started, no, actually, I think ma, three years na kami. More than two years. But I only started making videos for Hardware Sugar in September of last year. So actually, if you go back, my first video ever was the ASUS M3 mouse and mouse pad which we did a review for ASUS and then after that we reviewed the ASUS K3. So I wasn't making videos for Hardware Sugar in the beginning because when COVID struck, I was busy handling our other business. So Anton and I actually have a first business which is called Alcobes Philippines. We, it's an apartment hotel that we put up while I was in law school and he was a practicing attorney and that's how we also learned how to begin business in the beginning. So everything we learned from our first business which we put up last in 2012, we're applying it right now in present. So the importance of customer service, the need to reply to everyone punctually and the importance of communication is all very important things that we learned from our first business. So Alcobes Philippines was an apartment rental business that we set up and well, unfortunately, it was doing very well in the beginning and then well, COVID happened and then all the apartment hotels and Airbnb's had to close down. So I was in damage control from March all the way up until September. So when things settled down, I had Anton called me over and he was like, yo, I need you to make some videos. And I'm like, I don't know how to make videos. And I'm like, well, and he's like, well, go learn how to make videos. And I said, all right, let me see if I can do these videos. So if you actually watch my first video, it's really super cringe. Looking back now, I hate it. At the beginning of that video is me talking to a cell phone microphone. So pangit yung sound quality. Ang layu ko sa niyan sa camera. There's so many things that I hate about that first video. But really, it was honest to goodness my very first ever video that I shot, outlined, wrote, and edited all by myself. So we actually have a crew who does most of the video editing for like Anton's videos. But all the videos that you see of me are me. So I write, cast, shoot, edit. So the Rocky videos are all just, all the Rafael videos are actually just me doing the edits. So yes, Joseph po, what law school did you both graduate from? Anton graduated from Atanaya Law. I graduated from DLSU Law. I was part of the first batch or they call it the Pioneer Batch of DLSU Law. So, next question. So anyway, so that is why Rafael Ayimi showed up all of a sudden in September because, you know, the other business isn't doing anything anyway. Why don't you help me out here at Hardware Shure? Alright, okay, it's cool. And by the way, some interesting fact of where did Hardware Shure come from was back in 2017, no, 2016 I think. In 2016, Anton and I went with our family to Japan. We went to Kyoto and we went to Tokyo. And then I was in Japan, I already had gone to Japan a number of times before going with Anton. So I already knew where to take him. So I brought him to Akihabara and then in Akihabara it's this place in Tokyo where it's just full of anime toys, manga, and computer stuff, like computer mecca. It's not even super cheap naman yung binibeta nila dun. It's actually around the same price as if you get it from online there. But the beauty of going to Akihabara is there's just so many options and you get to see and touch everything. It's different when you're actually in a store. But literally it's like it's like Gilmore na 5 star na times 50 the size. I remember I was there, I was just going around and I saw like this store selling iPads for 100 pesos. Or I think it's 200 yen. 200 yen for an original iPad 1. That's why it was 200 yen. So anyway, I took Anton there to Akihabara and he was all like, wow. Let's make our store. Let's make a gaming store. So that's where it came about. It came about because of one trip. And then after that, he couldn't stop talking about how he wanted to put up a computer hardware store after going to after just one visit to Akihabara. In fact, I think he never even went back. He just went there once on one day with me. Then after that, he just absorbed everything. He was like, yeah, we can do this. We can do that. And then after that, he was taking notes on who we can talk to when we were flying on it. But computer stuff here. We never ended up getting any Japanese suppliers. But that was the birth of hardware store. The birth of hardware store came from a family trip on a single day. And Anton's curiosity of, damn, there's a lot of computer stuff here. This is cool. Yeah, you know what? Actually, Katima Gaming, I also did not buy. I don't actually buy a lot. I don't buy anything actually in Japan. But it's nice just walking around. You know, walk around. It's the experience of going to onion. These stores, like very unique. Yung nga kehabaran yun. It's puro secondhand toys or toys you will never ever see anywhere else. Even if you don't want to buy them, it's just nice to just look at them. And this is a Nintendo store called Super Potato. It's on the second floor of some dingy building. But they have like three floors of old Nintendo stuff. You can buy an original Game Boy yung malaking gray. And it's all wrapped up in plastic. I mean, there are things there. You can't see anywhere else in the world. I mean, how many places do you know would sell Game Boys or SNSs just lying around on the floor? Right, next question. Alright. Why do I speak English in my videos? Alright. So, why do I speak English? It's because three things. One is my Tagalog is just satisfactory. So, it's not as good as Anton's. And my job on YouTube is to communicate with you the best way possible in order to get the idea across to the viewers. So, I don't think I can successfully bring out the idea I want if I use a combination of Tagalog. I'm just not good enough in it. And I'm not confident enough in it. Number two is because we're also trying to get two audiences with hardware sugar. We want to get, of course, our local audience who've been very supportive. All of you guys subscribing to hardware sugar and being top pan superstars. We all know are all locals and we feel the love. Thank you so much. That's why every time we start our show, we always say thank you to the new subscribers. And seeing all of you guys here on the live stream, talagang it's really an in heartwarming considering we didn't even do live streams until like November last year. So, and hell, this is like my second live stream na solo, which is very strange, by the way. Like, I don't know, maybe you guys think na we're like used to this kind of thing but really this is all super alien to me. Like right now, I'm just, I'm talking to my cell phone. I don't see, I don't see a 30 people who are right now on the stream right now, which is, it's a very strange feeling. But anyway, um, you know, I'm also going crazy here with onion, with COVID. I have no friends to talk to in person. So, I guess this is also pretty healthy for me. Oh, yeah. So, I spoke of two reasons. One, I don't feel comfortable with it and because it won't get the message that I want to communicate about my videos properly. And number two, we're trying to reach an international audience, which a lot of Filipinos actually know English and we're known internationally for being one of the best people to hire anywhere because we know basic English. And so far, so good. So sometimes I get videos, I get comments that they, I think I can count on my hand, maybe like seven people in the past like seven months in the comment section who said that they would prefer that I spoke in Taglish. So, seven people doesn't seem like enough people for me to conclude that I'm doing a horrible job in communicating what I want to say about a product. So, until then, well, maybe anya, maybe I'll follow suit and Anton. But as I said, on the first question, I only started doing this last September. It's not like it's my, I didn't really foresee myself talking to a large amount of people regularly. So, you're gonna have to forgive me. I didn't really see this coming, ba? It's, which is one of my next questions actually. All right, let me check and think, ayo, nice to see you. See, as Anton said sa comment section a couple of videos ago, I'm trying to keep my cool down sa Call of Duty and online gaming. But actually, kanina, kanina, because I was waiting, because when we say 8.30, we make sure that we're going to come out on 8.30. Like kanina, mga 8.15, I was like, you know, what am I gonna do? I can't, I can't relax because I have to bring in the stream. I did a 2v2 gunfight. And then after, this guy called me anyan, called me all sorts of curse words, which I can't say, kasi mga demonetize kami. But at the end, we won, 3-5, anyan, 5 wins against 3 losses. So, sa me, some random angry child. But, ya, he was calling me names and I was like, but, you know, sa kanina lang. I mean, it's the internet I won anyway, right. Guys, this might be relevant, pero, kaka siya bang Noctua NH-D15 sa Cooler Master TD-500 or no. Dio, I haven't actually memorized the measurements. But, Noctua has a, actually, if you go to the Cooler Master website, they show you the measurements. And if you go to Noctua website, I know that they have like the diagram with the specific interest and centimeters for your NH-D15. Now, shout out to KEN's cast. Okay, next question. All right. Do Anton and I have IT backgrounds? Parang, I feel like this is an important question that needs to be answered. Because, you know, the Facebook chat and means sa comment section. They're asking us, people are asking us, Hey, I didn't graduate IT. Can I also start a computer shop or can I also start a YouTube channel about tech? And so, no. I mean, yes. Yes, you can. Yes, you can because anyone can. Because, we don't have backgrounds in tech at all. Sino ba kami? Si Anton, on yun. Ano yung tech background niya academically? Nag-literature sa college. Nag-law school. Yun. I mean, that is our full educational background. Ako, I just followed him. I mean, nag-literature ako and nag-law school. Si Anton, ako lasal naman on all counts. So, our only IT background was, I would be late for classes like Algebra 101 kasi nag-dota kami dun sa EGI Taft Tower in a place called Microsmith. God bless those people. Not Microsmith, sorry. Microsmith sucks. Speedbytes. God bless speedbytes. I think they closed during COVID but they were around all the way from 2005 all the way up until last year. Anyway, so, the only IT experience that he and I had was actually more Anton. Is he Anton on yin? Because when you're growing up, there was only one computer. So, Anton was the one in charge of installing on the games, installing the windows, fixing the computer. Lahat, everything. Like, Anton was everything. Like, he would, I don't even know what a driver was before and then it got so irritating before as a kid because if I wanted to install a game, I would install it by just pressing the okay, okay, okay, okay. Like, I didn't know like, it was going to go in a directory. I don't care. But saan, it gets installed and I get to play it, right? In fact, I thought he'd be proud. I think I did it like two or three times and he would be so pissed. And ako naman, I didn't even, I was amazed that he even found out I installed some game. And then he A tells me na it wasn't in the proper folder. Dapat drive D. Bakit namin lang ay mo sa drive C? And I was like, I didn't even know there were drives. Ram, this is an high school. So, ayun, si Anton was really the tech guy in the household which, you know, in fairness, pili ko lat naman kayo. You're also the tech guy for your household because if you're here watching this stream and following hardware sugar, it's probably because you like gaming or you were the one in charge of getting all the computers for the household. In which case, in all cases, you're always going to encounter some technical problem. It's impossible to game and not have a problem. Like, the game can work but the game can work slowly which is unacceptable, right? How do we increase the frame rates? Why is the game crashing every 30 minutes but okay naman siya every 15 minutes? These are quite, so if you're a gamer, you've experienced problems with hardware, with software. And yun, wait, what's my question? So, no, Anton and I don't have IT backgrounds. In short, if you don't have an IT background, you can still do what we're doing if that's what you want to do. And if you have an IT background and you want to do things like you want to be a writer, you want to do things unrelated to IT, then yes, the reverse is also very much possible because yun nga, we're the living cooking examples of the attempt to do well. Even though we don't have the educational, we didn't go to school studying what we're doing now. Like, for instance, like this film editing, okay? Like, I went to literature is in the same college in Lasal as communication arts. So, hindi ako nag-organization, hindi ako nag-org-com, which is organization communications and hindi din ako nag-com art, which is communication arts, which my understanding is you are taught basic video editing in order how to convey and package a complex message into something simple. That's the point of our communications course. I didn't take up com. Instead, I took up literature. So, what's that got to do with video editing? Well, actually, I think that's part of the next question. Let me see. Ah! What courses did we take up in college and did that chart my life and should that chart yours? So, hindi yun, every now and then we get people asking me, asking us how to get into different industries while they were never in that specific industry. And let me yun yun. Let me see. Any questions here? I do. Good evening. Good evening, Ardell. All right. So, one, so, the question is, does this chart your life? Um, you know, I remember that ah, when I was in college, mga anin, I was already majoring na, second year. There were, na actually not second year. First year palang, people were always coming up to me in college and they were like, anong gagwin mo sa literature degree? Anin, panamang ko pera yun? Or ano yun? Magig ni writer ka? May pera ba yun? Yung anin, there was a severe stigmatism against people taking courses which weren't practical. And literature was really something, you know, in fairness, we live in a country, we live in a third world country where in order to be able to make a living is very important, regardless actually of what country you're in. But I chose literature because something called out to me there and I liked writing to begin with in high school. So, I took it and by the way, I forgot to mention, when I was in grade school, I was diagnosed with dyslexia. So for all the way up until grade, up from grade one until grade four, no, grade one to grade three, I had a hard time reading out loud. I had a difficult time pronouncing the words. You couldn't get me to say a complete sentence. So, I was heavily handicapped in grade school, all the way up until, I think mga second year high school, I finally got my bearings. So if you think I'm talkative now, I could barely talk back in grade school. And so they had to send me to a therapist, a special therapist for people with dyslexia and in the end, I just ended up, well, you know, so dyslexic people, pala, yun. You have a hard time reading and you're gonna have a hard time, I guess, writing, I guess. But here I am, against many odds, I can finally talk. I'm talking to all of you and I'm still rattling off my mouth and I think my message is somewhat clear to an extent. So again, the stigmatism that I received when I was in college na at literature degree, what are you gonna do with it? So my response was always, oh, I'm gonna go to law school, I'm gonna become a lawyer. Ayan, so, ayan. The literature majors who would say, ah, yeah, magiging abogado ako, you know, they got the pass. They got the pass from the other people. And you know, I'm gonna have to admit, may draw on na peer pressure ako, yeah, I'm gonna say, oh, yeah, yeah, if any of the adults ask me, yeah, magiging abogado ako. And um, what? So, I, but before I went to teaching law, before I went to law school, I actually taught literature first. In fact, I did well enough majoring that I was offered a job by my department chair in the DLSU lit department even before I graduated and I went to school early so, I think mga Lasal is three years lang for literature and so I graduated at 19 and I actually taught my first class in Lasal at 19 also. So, the teaching literature which apparently came to be my first job is not something that I foresaw. But it was a hell of a lot of fun and I knew some way, somehow that being able to master public speaking would be important regardless of where I was going in life. Where are we at? At 47. Okay. So, after that, I went to law school after teaching for a year and then in law school, man, man, law school was just, law school was a different animal but, you know, you just got to do what you got to do. At law school, we were taught so many. I guess anyan, being a literature major made me creative and law school taught me to be disciplined. Discipline. Like, if there was anyan, if there was a military equivalent in the academy, it would probably be law school but even in med school, I don't know if the teachers yell at you but in law school, they yell at you and they try to make you feel bad which is okay naman kasi, it's all about confrontation. Especially when you graduate and when you pass the bar, they're just trying to ready you for a life of confrontation because the other opposing council is going to be confronting you and vice versa. Okay, all right. All right. So, my anyan, going back to my question, do I regret? Ah, wait. Ah, wait. No, that's my next question. All right, before I move on to that question, let me check the chat. All right, let me see. Dio, hello, good evening. Jesus Rice. No, 80% of graduates do not get the job they graduate for. Yup, that's true, Katima. Ah, I would agree with that. Ula akong nakitang 80x cases. All right. Ay, liya magday. Shout out. Ay, Katima Gaming. Yup, 19 years old because I was, I went to grade one a year early. So, that's one year. And then after that, but na grade seven ako. And then after that, I took up literature which is only three years in Lasal. Because I regularly, sa college is four years, but Lasal has a trimestro system. So, I earned, so niyan, I got a free two years ahead of the usual group. So, by graduating at 19, a lot of my, their average student would be graduating at 21. All right. So, my next question. All right. Do I regret taking courses not related to what I'm doing? No. No, not a one bit. And I'm going to say why. Because number one, you know, during, when I was in college and I was a literature major and I didn't have, I didn't know anything else. I didn't care about anything else. All I cared about was mastering literary theory and being able to write my own stuff. In fact, I wrote my very first ever short story, a science fiction story for a contest held by fully booked. There was a Neil Gaiman contest in which he was going, he was offering 100,000 pesos of prize for the winner for a short story writing contest. He did it three times. I participated on the second one. I think I'm forgetting what they called it. Basa, you've type in fully booked Neil Gaiman. Ayan. I was one of the contestants there. And my very first ever short story which I had no experience writing before, got shortlisted. According to them, I got, mine was parang, I recall that, one out of the, one out of the 10. Parang there were 10 short stories selected out of hundreds according to them. And my short story was about a future Philippines in which tayo yung first world. And the Americans, the Europeans, they're all like, they're like our, they're like our maids. So they're like, sila yung kasambakay natin in my future. So actually, Philippines first world and then all the current first world people, they were us. And my twist was we the Filipino people were actually an evil people in this fiction. So I guess my point in that short story was it's we as a people we like to want to be better than we are right now. However, there are significant political pressures which would might push us into a different moral standing. I mean, it's easy to complain about how the Americans and the Chinese should do this and do that, but we're not in their position to be pressured in so many other things. So that was the point of my short story and after my time travel pa and stuff like that, which by the way, I really hope I get to have that published along with my other. Yeah. So anyway, I'm still writing. So I have I'm trying I'm finishing up a sci fi short story collection which I want to send out to Anvil and if they don't like it, I'll just self publish on KDP Kindle Direct Publishing which is free. Any internet you can do anything. All right. Do I regret taking course not related to what I'm doing? Also there. So literature I was able to I didn't know I could write and actually all my videos I make actually Anton also, he makes an outline before he starts his video. Me, I write an outline and then a script and then after that, there we go. So some people are flatter me by saying na the script that I wrote is nice and the truth is that when I make a video, it's more of like a video essay. So when I I don't think of it as a video. I think of it as an article or essay first because that's what I'm good at. And then after that, I just read it. I read it with my my blue yeti mic and then after that, I add B roll na appropriate for each for each word or every for each sentence. Animal farm. You know what? Cup noodles. I did read Animal Farm. I did read 1984 though. 1984 diba? 1984 that one was my favorite. Nat dystopia. Yeah, 1984. I really should I really should read George Orwell na. My recommendations if you have if you have time to read this, you get into Isaac Asimov's series. That's really good. Light din, you know, because at the end of the world natin tayong ngayon, it's nice to get away sometimes. So wait, I'm going back to my question. Oh, yeah. So that's all right. So actually every time that I make a video, it's like an essay. So I actually in my mind, I call it a video essay. And my experience with essays is that when I was in college and ensuring that I sent out my very first personal essay to inquire young blood and then shit. Like, they published it, man. They published it. Like, I forget. You know, every time inquire publishes an article that I wrote, I never find out myself. It's always someone who calls me or messages me and says, hey, you're in the paper. And I'm in the paper. Oh, yeah. So like, I was, I think 17 when I first got published in the inquire young blood section with an essay that I wrote about. I believe it was something about I was touched about something that I read by. Anin, Nathaniel Hawthorne's Ah. What's his name? What's his name? It was a Nathaniel Hawthorne short story. The title was The Minister's Black Vale. Oh, yeah. That's a great story. Anyway, there was a line there that really touched me and I made a personal essay. So, ah, got published 2017. First, at 17. And then after that, ever since then, I've been sending out an essay whenever I wanted to every two years. So if you google my name right now and type in Rafael Coneos, inquire, you'll see some of my work there. And so I figured, okay, if I'm going to start doing videos, let me do something because I don't know how to make videos, but I know how to make articles. I know how to write. So let me write the video and then make the video. So that's how I, that's how I try to work with the skills that I already have. All right. Now, so I got my undergrad. So again, I don't regret the undergrad. Law school, law school talaga taught me all about the discipline involved in finishing. Okay? Finishing. Okay, let me check first. Self-publish talang po, sir. Ah, yeah, yeah. Casey Boyos, yeah, I agree. Parangin? Parang magsumadili mag self-publish, no? But, you know, I want to say at least that I tried. In fact, I can only, if they like my work, I can always make more. Paperback sugar sounds good. Yeah, young blood inquire. Young blood is a, is in the column section, opinion section of the inquire newspaper. It's called young blood because only people age 10 years old if you're writing at 10 years old before you get to 30. So 10 to 29 years old if you send an article there and they like it, they'll publish you under your young blood. 30 years old and above, you're placed in the high blood column, which by the way, I'm already in the high blood. Actually, you know, they never placed me in the high blood column. Instead, they put me as commentator or opinion piece, which is nice, because I don't want to be in a column called high blood. Because it's just true, I'm under maintenance. I've been on maintenance since I was 12 years old. So, law school. So I covered undergrad. Now, what about law school? Law school taught me about finishing and discipline. Because it's one thing to be creative and you write. But if you never finish and you want to accomplish anything in law school, it was a situation every day of why the hell am I doing this? Why am I doing this? Why am I reading this? There's no passion involved. I'm not passionate about the law. At the time, early on, I'm a literature major. I write fiction. I read fiction. What do I care about what the executive department or the judiciary can do which Congress can't? These were questions that troubled me. And so for around two to three years, I had to bury my creativity. I needed to force myself to not care what I was reading. The point was, I said I was going to become an executive director and I said I was going to become a lawyer. Gaguin ko to. In fact, when I was taking the bar examinations, my study regimen was always six, it was supposed to be six hours a day. And in order to make sure na nakas six hours a day of study ako, actually originally eight hours, pero hindi talaga kay, is I would have a timer. For six hours. And then if I needed to pee, didn't count. I had to pause it. If I had to eat, pause. So I made sure that in the seven or eight months that I was studying for the bar exams, that I was studying at least six hours a day na tuto'o. Hindi yung, oh yeah, mag-Instagram mo na ako. Yeah, yeah. Nde, doesn't count. If I'm not looking at what I'm studying, I put the pause on the timer. So you can imagine doing six hours a day like that six days a week for seven months. You go crazy. Like, not only when you go crazy, but you'll be like, you'll be wondering, bago ginagawa to? Why is this? Why do we even do it? So I had to find out different ways to encourage me to keep going. So what I did was this is actually, this is original. This is my yellow pad. This piece of paper were my dreams and wishes that I wrote, that I filled up. I filled up over the many months and these were the wishes that I would do, that I would, that I would do after I become a lawyer. So that I have something to look forward to. So yun nga, so it was this, this wish list which kept me going and on the time sa lagan, I really didn't give a, give an F anymore na talaga, I would pull out another yellow pad and then I would just write over and over again, attorney, I think I would write it mga 20 times. And you know, it felt good. It felt good and it reminded me of the things that I promised I would do and I would win in order to get there. Because sometimes, kalangan talaga na motivation otherwise, malay, nothing will go in and malakang passion. So no, I do not regret taking up law school because even though I'm not practicing law every day, that discipline of not giving up when all sorts of weird shit is happening. Like COVID is a disaster. It was a disaster to our original business and it is, actually, it was a disaster to our original business but thanks to COVID, hardware sugar went up thanks to you guys and thanks to COVID because everyone wanted a computer all of a sudden. So parang, parang inyan and even if it really went up and our popularity also skyrocketed because of one of our YouTube videos, it's really hard every day. It's hard every day. What you don't see sometimes behind the camera is we need to check inventory. We need to find out from suppliers on who can provide these cards, who has GPUs pa and then after that, sometimes we have customers who have to return an item because the item isn't working, which because we have a very lenient return policy and we check, we try to make sure that every customer is taken care of telegram we listen to everybody and we try to help them out as quickly as possible so that we don't become one of those computer shops. Now you're branded as they don't care because they don't care because they have so many customers and I never, ever want to get into that position because panang it's morally incorrect to abandon someone who trusted you with something, i.e. your business. However, this doesn't go to show. This doesn't mean that we're okay with being treated like dirt. So, we don't accept customers who make unreasonable demands like let me see. Actually, Anton may post a lot about a lot of customer problems. What am I? If you remember back maybe six months ago, someone returned a power supply unit and then when I opened the returned item from Shopee, it was a pump pala, a red pump. And so, what am I? I'm just gonna roll around and then say, ay, what do you call it? It was pissed off. So, you know, we contacted Lazada, Shopee, tried to contact the customer anato. You know, in the end, in the end, Lazada did, it was Lazada, by the way, not Shopee. Lazada never refunded us for that damn pump thing. And, you know, as a business owner, we get, we get an in, we get, we get cheated. Quite a number of times. Sometimes it's not direct. Sometimes people don't know that they're cheating us. For instance, anin, ah, for instance, this monitor, this MSI monitor that I have here is actually from a customer who said that there were three dead pixels there. And then I posted this on the on the Facebook page, like, maybe mga, four months ago. And then, I was like, I can't see any dead pixels at all. But anin, we refunded him. Even though nakabukas na yung box, it's, wala, we can't sell something which is no longer brand new, brand new eh. So, yun. I was like, ah, okay, at least my bago monitor na ho, na discounted. So, I just bought, so anin, so I just bought it from the store. But yun na, yun na, we can't survive on being too lenient with our policy. But yun na, we try as much as possible to be lenient because consumer protection is not something that happens in our country. It's very hard. In fact, in terms of consumer protection, I had a, I had a situation in 2012 na I was in, I was in mercury drug. Teka. I bought them. I was in mercury drug and after, I tried to line up but in mercury drug, alam mo, wala naman, wala naman pila dun eh. Like, it's whoever gets to the drug counter first. Like, it's not even about the cash register. Whoever gets to the counter first, yun. So, I was there at mercury drug. I made a line behind someone and after that, that person was taking so long. But a new guy came in and then a new guy came in and then they got to the counter and then they were served ahead of me even though I was there for so long. In fact, but then in my mind, I was like principle, pipila ako even though wala nang pila. So, mga 15 minutes, 15 minutes unlike a Thursday night at 10 p.m. na nang they were about to close. I just went wild and I said, ma'am, kainina pa ako nag-iintay and they were like, no sir, you just got in now. Like, you pull up that camera footage and they're like, and baawal sir, baawal magpulap ng camera footage, security lang pwede. All right, okay. Sige, all right. I was so pissed. So anyan, here what I was, I wanted to make order in an institution which is known for this order and I was being penalized for trying to follow a line which they didn't, which they don't apparently do. So I said, you know what, I'm not going to do this. So let me talk to your manager and sabi na manager, ako yan, ako yan. I'm like, okay ma'am anin and I explained it and then wala wala. So I said, okay, sige, who can I give my complaint letter to na I was waiting in line for 15 minutes even though I formed a line and you guys took other people who were lining, who didn't line up at all and just walked through the door and there's a, ah, sige sir, begay mo lang sa akin. So you, so I gave my complaint letter about you to you. Yes. And I said, wala bang complaint procedure and work rate drug and then she was like, gunon talaga, sir? And I'm like, oh, okay, sige. All right, fine. All right, you know what? Never mind. I'm not going to give you a complaint letter. So that night, that very night, I wrote an essay and I entitled it pila and it was my essay about waiting in line when no one cared to make a line and I compared it with Makdo. Ayan, Makdo. May pila sa Makdo. So, there is more order in a place which kills you kasi, you know, fast food kills you than a place which is supposed to give you things to make you live longer. Parang there's something wrong with that. Parang dapat may, there should be more order in a place that's supposed to make you more healthy than a place that's supposed to kill you. So I made that essay on the same night that I was so pissed. Sent it to the inquire. I didn't, I didn't care if they didn't publish it. I was so mad. Then a week later, it got published. So I went back to that mercury drug and then I called out to the manager and I said, ma'am, ah, di ba niyan? Naala mo ko and then she's like, ah, yes sir, o. Di ba sabi mo sa akin na, niyan, gumawa ako ng complaint letter and then she's like, oh, sir. Asigit, ah, eto yung complaint letter ko It was the Philippine daily inquire and newspaper for that day and I said, I just gave it and I said, ayan ma'am, eto yung complaint letter ko. This is your copy. And she said, eto yung copy ako, sir. And then I sabi ko, oh, ma'am yan man copy sa Bansai. I was like, damn. So yeah, so writing has, nothing changed na man in the end. Actually no, there was a change. Like, this is that two months later, mercury drug had a queuing number system and then you pulled it, you got a number and then you waited anywhere else in mercury drug and then when they called you number, mga may tunog kumunta ka dun sa counter. That was great. And then after that, they removed the queuing system. I don't know. So anyway, so my academic background, yes, it came in handy. All right, let me check the, ah, do I have a link to that essay? Wait lang. You know, inquire usually has, um, has all of them, has all of it posted. However, it's a bit old na, 2013 na. Let me see. Pila, inquire of El Caneros. Ah, no, they didn't keep it anymore. But they have my other essays, though. Ah, but, ah, since ITX addicts, since you know, since you're a super subscriber, Alan Yan, ah, and a religious follower, I'll give you a copy of the newspaper. Ah, wait lang, I think I have a copy of the newspaper. Hold on. So, ah, when you get published, it's always handy, or if your business gets featured anywhere, it's always handy to keep a copy of the article. So I have one for each. I know I kept the pila. Just a moment, folks. 2017, 2019, ah, if I don't find it soon, I'm gonna quote quits. 2019 to 2019, 2019. Ah, I don't know. Parang I can't find it right now, but I'll send you a copy. In fact, my former students ended up looking in the inquire, like, dun sa library namin, because they have the full list of all the inquire newspapers there, and then they found it there, and they sent me a photocopy like three years ago. But I'll send you a personal copy. Okay. Next question. All right, let me read the chat. So, kung may mafen, you can see my screen ba, that's a real pen, it's my idranasorto to. Revingin, actually, see, Anton gets strange followers now who look at him weird when he walks by a store. Like, sometimes they just look at him weird, and he's like, they go out to meet, and sometimes they're like, sorry, ko yung anin, sa hardware sugar ba? Okay. So, I don't know what, I mean, I really hope, man, I mean, I don't get weird shit happening to me after COVID's over, but it would be nice to meet all of you also. Maybe we can have a get together, meet out thing when we're all, when we're all, and all of this is normal. All right, next question. Okay, you know, I'm gonna answer for Anton. Like, does he regret anything? No, he doesn't regret anything, in law school. And yeah, I think he also learned all these, all the discipline involved in finishing. It's always nice to have a good idea, a good idea will make money, a good idea will get things done, but if you're not going to execute the idea, then your idea is useless. And it's so hard to find people who will do the work and who are passionate about the work because you need to have things. You need to be a doer and you also need to be passionate about what you're doing. Otherwise, there's no life in what you're doing. Ah, yeah, addicts also known as the diabetics. Oh, by the way, speaking of addicts, that is one of my essays which is still actually available at the inquire site. Just type in addict, Rafael Conejos, yung inquire. Ayan, nalabasa ho. All right, is this our first business? No, our first business is an Airbnb apartment rental. We find broken down apartments and then we rent them, we rent it out from the owner and then after that we sublease it out to tenants at their approval and then we pay them a fixed rent and then we charge a daily rent. So essentially, it was like, anong hotel siya na hindi. Sort of like a hotel. So we did the check-in like aho, Anton and I in the beginning we would meet guests, we would check-in, we would and also, we would also reply to all the guests via email and in addition to operations I was in charge of interior decorating. So let me see, let me show you. So this is, for instance, one of the apartments that we sublet, that's Anton in the barong and that's one of the, that was the owner. And then, this is how the apartment looked like before I decorated it. And this is after I decorated it. I changed the lighting, I put new furniture, I painted. I got the artworks. This is again, before I touched it. And then now, I also got that red tree there, that wallpaper thing. I looked up a classmate of mine in college and I asked her to make that wallpaper just for me. Lighting. Yeah, so night and day. So that was our business before hardware sugar, apartment rentals. And I think we were pretty good at it. We were pretty good at it. In fact, we were one of the first, we were the one of the first people to actually professionally start Airbnb. I remember when we started out in 2012, there was sobrang conti lang yung listings and the other listings didn't have high reviews but we did, we stuck out. Now, obviously Airbnb is so popular that it was hard to compete. And also hardware sugar and yung ngayon, COVID, not allowed to have anyone. So here, this is our first, our first TV appearance on ANC's Shop Talk. That's on Tone and myself. This was anin, kumito. I think this was 2013. It was 2013. I remember that, so here, this is about in relation to what I was talking about in a literature degree. So I said, yeah, you know what? We started a business. I'm in law school. You're a lawyer. Let's do it. But let's, we need to get more people interested in our business. Our business was called Alcoves Philippines. So I, one day, I went into Antone's room. He was gaming but he had the TV on. And what was on the TV was ANC Shop Talk. And I was like, aning Shop Talk? And wait, they're talking about, like it was some kind of, like she was interviewing someone na food cart, food cart or making jewelry at home. And then I was like, I was like, dog. We could totally, we could totally talk better than this and I think we have a better product, product slash service that people would be more interested about. And then Antone was like, he was like, he was like gaming. I don't know, I don't know what he was gaming. And he was like, oh, sige, why don't you write out a letter to ANC? So, that night, just like a mercury drug, I wrote a short enough letter. Because when you, when you try to reach out to media or to anybody, like a supplier that you want to impress, it needs to be concise but it needs to be packaged enough na the person on the other end wants to know more. Because if you just throw then, if you throw like a 10 page letter or a two page letter, they're not going to read it. So, I drafted it, reread my draft and then I asked myself, if I was a producer on ANC Shop Talk, would I want to invite these two brothers? In fact, marketing pitch ko, oh, we're two brothers, we just started out. It's not related to our educational degrees but we're in a business. So, I understood what they needed. They needed a story which was relatable to everyone and that's what I was trying to sell them. I was trying to sell them these guys started out from nothing and then they started something and it's unique and it's something that anyone can do. So, I sent it out and then literally three days later, someone called me on the phone. I remember, I was in the DLSU library and then there was this girl who was like, oh, you know, I'm a producer from ANC, wondering if you and your brother can come on the show live this Friday. And I remember, I went down on my knees in the live. I went down on my knees but I was holding my phone, I was holding the phone and then I went down on my knees while I was listening to it. And I called him and I was like, oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, sure, Friday's fine but I was on my knees na. I was on my knees because I was like, oh, wow, first time on live television. And we only got there because Anton was gaming and he said, yeah, why don't you go write them? Oh, I will and I did and on Friday that week we got on the show. In fact, here, that's a picture of Anton and I. Yes, I look a lot younger here. Actually, people are wondering who's older. Anton is older than me. I am younger but certainly, you know, I'm briefly going to mention it. I don't know what happened but I got the short stick when it comes to going bald. So, especially during COVID, my hair just started to fall out like crazy. So, this wasn't too long ago. Anyway, it's just something you have to deal with that I have to deal with. Let me see. Detailed and understandable mga videos na na para talaga sa mga beginners. I don't why you never call Anton Kuyah. Mark Lewis. Well, because if I call him Kuyah, sometimes other people won't know who I'm referring to. So, I better to say Anton para, claro, because everyone knows who Anton is. I sabihin ko. Si Kuyah. And also, secondly, I stopped calling Anton Kuyah at age 8. At age 8 because yung ate ko. Ahyan, yung ate ko talaga. I call him, I call her ate talaga. May ate started nicknamed Anton as broth, short for brother. And so, yun, naging, so, para, I was like, ay, yung ate ko is calling him broth. So, I want to call him broth also. So, yun, yun ang story. So, up to this very day. In fact, hindi lang ako, yung magulang ko, na yung also call him broth. Like, wala na, na face out yung Kuyah dito. It's not my fault. It's just more practical and more natural to call him broth. In fact, my friends also call him broth. In fact, I even tell my girlfriend to call him broth. Because, it's more personal. And also, it's more unique. I mean, how many brothers, how many families, but you have the siblings calling one of them broth. But I still call my ate ate. No, I'm not calling him on each hand. All right. But you guys can also call him Kuyah Anton. I don't mind. All right. So, since I got successful with ANC Shop Talk, I was like, okay, let me try out for Entrepreneur Magazine Philippines. Entrepreneur Philippines. So, I set up an article and I was like, oh, hey, would you be interested in two brothers? And then I said, oh, by the way, we also got feature on ANC Shop Talk. So baka, you might also be interested. Anin, Entrepreneur Magazine wanted a feature on us. So there, boom. And all of this, I really thank my writing skills for it, which I got from, you know, my degree, which lots of people kept saying that wouldn't amount to anything. Oh, I didn't amount to anything, but it got us media. It got us free, media time. Live interview, Entrepreneur Magazine feature. And hell, I'm doing the writing now. It's just that it's not an essay form. It's in video format. Oh, yeah. If you guys want to see Anton and I being young and weird on the ANC Shop Talk, you can watch the live, you can watch the video. It's still on YouTube right now. There it is. Feb 5, 2013. Wow, how far we've come. Like, you know, one of our videos has literally more than 1,000 views regularly within two days. And this video has been up for like so many, so long. I don't need to say 1,200 videos, but you know, those are good times, too. All right. All right. Oh, hey, valiant cashew nuts. So valiant cashew nuts, you messaged last time that I should do a Q&A, and here, I'm doing a Q&A. And not to get anyone jealous, but valiant cashew nuts has really been religiously supportive of the channel for a long period of time. And my understanding is valiant cashew nuts is still in school. And as a former literature and law professor, I am still sensitive to the needs of our future leaders. Even though like, you know, I'm like what, what am I? I'm 32, but I'm still very passionate about teaching and yung, I couldn't ignore someone who was so loyal to us and who's probably in the age group that Anton and I used to teach when we were still teachers. So here we go. This is your career talk. Alright. Did we get into Bitcoin? Okay. So we did get into Bitcoin. In fact, we got into Bitcoin so early. We got into Bitcoin in 2011, I think. And it was a time when people didn't even know it existed. In fact, I remember being so excited about mining Bitcoin that I told my closest friends from college and law school. And they were all just like, ah okay, that's nice, Rob. That's nice. You know, my closest friend from law school. He was just like, oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, yeah. Like, you know, nothing. College friends. They were all like, oh, yeah, yeah. Maglaborakay tayo, laborakay. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, but what about mining Bitcoin? Aniyan. Kita-ra. You know, it was a time when people didn't know what it was. Didn't know the potential. I didn't, no one knew the potential. Even we, who were mining Bitcoin in 2011, we didn't know the potential. All I knew was, Anton came into my room once, one day and he said, hey, you want to make free money with the PC that you have now. And I'm like, all right, let's do it. So he just did some, see, Anton, he was fiddling around. Okay, there. And then he said, leave this on. If you want to mine, just press this program, open this program and press mine. Then he told me about the digital wallet. And so like, this is 2011 now. We're in 2021. This is 10 years ago. My God. It's been 10 years ago. But yeah, we were mining Bitcoin 10 years ago was freaking weird. And no one cared. Parang we were like, I felt like we were those death prophets. You know, one say na, oh, it's the end of the world. Kamay, we were saying na, this is going to make us rich. This is going to make us rich. But na, I mean, no one believed us. But that's really how things are, talaga. And then, ah, Makana electricity bill, dude. It was small. 2011. Oh my God. We were mining. I'm on my PC alone, which was already, which was new at the time. I was able to get four Bitcoins a week. Four Bitcoins a week. And I would leave the PC on maybe 24 seven for five days. And I remember the electric bill was minimal. Like parang my contribution to the electric bill was 2,000, 3,000 pesos for the month. But with one Bitcoin, I mean, like, I mean, I mean, I think Bitcoin at the time, then was like what, $10 per coin or something like that. Basta, it was crazy. It was crazy, you know. And then after that, I won't get into the many details about what we did with the Bitcoins. Basta, I stopped mining. Number one, ang init. You know, it's hot. Talaga, like, kumihinit yung kwarto, kasi nakaon yung PC. And the PC is like, it's struggling. And it was hot. And it was noisy. Like, oh man, those fans, they were spinning really hard at the video card. Like, I knew I was killing the video card by mining. But I was like, I'm printing money. So, yun. So, I think aniyan, ma one year later, I decided to, seven months later, I decided to stop. Anton also stopped mining. And then, I won't tell you when. So, one time, I saw aniyan, on my, I was in pancake house. I remember I was in pancake house, BGC. And then after that, a news article came out on CNN. Bitcoin skyrockets to so and so. And I was like, I was like, oh, oh, oh. And I was like, called Anton and I was like, where are your Bitcoins? And he was like, oh, you know, it's still there. And I was like, oh my God, where are my Bitcoins? So, I was like, oh, concerned. Oh, where are my coins? It's been. Masa, significant amount of time had lapsed. So, I was concerned where my Bitcoins were. Thankfully, I had never reformatted my PC. And my Bitcoins were stored on the hard drive. So, I kept them. And then, well, that's a story for another time. Oh, before we get into that anymore, a word from our sponsors. Whether your PC is brand new or an old war machine, siguro malapit siya sa puso mo. But no matter how careful you are, sometimes accidents happen. Or sometimes it's not your fault, nikalindol, bahak, tumutulu yung condo unit sa taas ng unit mo. Wala kang controls mga bagay na yan, but they can damage your devices. The worst is, when it is someone's fault and your things are stolen. 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Basah, sobrang katoa. There was a guy, he said na, his, my mom said I wouldn't amount to anything in my life. And then he was this crazy fat nerd guy na talagang yung bong garahin yan, na ging bit mining center. And then his mom, you know, this is 20-something. And his mom said, you're not gonna amount to anything. Tapos talagang boom. And he said, you know, my mom said, I wouldn't amount to anything, but now, I'm a millionaire. And I was like, damn, this is crazy. And I was thinking, why did I stop mining? By the way, if you're curious, my mining machine is in the hardware sugar store, our hardware store. It's an old gaming PC now, but our Indian, one of our staff members, Roxanne, uses my PC. So if you ever want to know what machine I was using, it's there. It's a big black one. When you enter, Roxanne's PC is the one on the far right. So yeah, that's history right there. All right, next question. Bakit maraming ASUS products kayo na Rene review? Because so far, I haven't been as lucky with my attempts to get Samsung and LG on board with hardware sugar for sending us products. The thing about ASUS is and hardware sugar is that hardware sugar was really a small store. Oh, by the way, if you've ever been to our store right now, it was really a hole in the wall. Walang cemento sa baba, hollow blocks lang, nothing. Practically, the new store that we're in now, talagong nothing. Ako yan ang renovate dun. And it was only because of my experience renovating apartments in our other business that I knew what I wanted to make hardware sugar look like in the store. So, well, right now, it's full of inventory which is good. But so far, we've gotten a lot of good compliments saying that they like our interior decker and thank you. How you design dun sa shelves for the cement. I wanted a rust, I wanted an industrial look. So, above you, the pipes, they're all, version, they were like blue, whatever, whatever. But, yeah, so, you learn all sorts of things even though it wasn't, even though it's not your academic forte, but you know, you just learn it. And it was fun, it's fun, interior decorating. My question, ah, so, before we moved in to the new store, we were in a very, very, very, very small space. Like, I would say like 10 square meters? That's kinda space, that's space. Like, maybe a really big bathroom. That's how big the original hardware sugar store was. And, you know, Anton was the one who wrote out to Asus Philippines na, hey, you know what, we're a new store. We'd love to, we'd love to, we'd love to again, supply, be a retailer of your products. So we asked for a contact for a supplier. And then Asus, oh my God, like Anton was there at the small store in a chair. And then, Asus said, yeah, can we come over? And then, not only did they come over, but the head of marketing and parang the regional head went there with two other people. So there were four people who went to this, parang bathroom stall, our small ass store. And then, Anton was like, kind of embarrassed. Kasi, yung nga ang late namin, and Asus sent all their big guns to greet us. And medyo, medyo na surprise din sila. But we told them now, you know, we're really a small, a small store right now. And they're like, no, that's okay. We want to see them. We want to see, you know, we want to drop by medyo. And so, honestly, I don't know how many companies would send their big guns to some nobody at the time where a nobody went a small ass store. So, the answer to this is two things. One is because Asus seems to be very accommodating and they want to really reach out to people who are just starting out, and you can't really say much about, you can't say that with all local companies, regional heads. It's difficult to sometimes reach out to other companies, like especially the big ones. I've tried. And even when we've already reached, we're about to reach 60,000 subscribers, but I'm still getting a, I'm still getting a hard time. So maybe we're just not, we're not big time enough for the other companies. Well, that's their, that's their choice. I mean, good for them. They found other viewers who they find more competent, but I have to upload Asus for looking out for potential. And none of, none of the products they give us comes with money. So, every time they give us a new product to review, like anin, like this ROG Chakram Core or the three Asus mini key, or eight keyboards, anin, 360 Hertz monitors. Man, none of that, we don't receive any money. So when I see them, I'm like, oh my God, that's a lot of work. Like, you know, it takes a lot of effort to make a video. You can make any video really quickly in this call today, but I really put a lot of effort into every video that I tried to make. So when Asus gives us stuff, it's anin, it's a lot of hard work with no pay. The only benefit we get from reviewing it is we have content. We have content which you guys can watch because if we didn't have any of the toys, what are you going to listen to? You're just going to listen to me and Anton talk about our lives. You know, that's nice to the first couple of videos, but you know, we want to be able to educate you and tell you something new and useful, okay? So, thank you to Asus for sending us over the toys. And in fact, to be honest, I'm going to give a poor, I'm going to give a poor rating for the the 360 Hertz monitors that they're sending over. Poor rating not because it's a bad product, but because it's just not accessible. And I wouldn't buy it myself. So in short, even though we do review a lot of Asus products, we're not in any way bought by them and we can say whatever the hell we want. And they still send the stuff. So good on them. Thank you. And truth be told, lots of manufacturers benefit from reviewers because the critics are the ones telling them if this microphone sucks, that this mouse is too expensive, that this mouse doesn't offer anything new. Without the critics, there's no innovation. If there's no innovation, then we're not moving forward and we need to move forward. So, critics like us YouTubers are part of an important cycle of life in terms of not just capitalism, but to improve our lives as well because if no one was putting the pressure, then imagine if we never put pressure on Apple to release a better phone, then we would just have the same phone for 10 years. No, we're always pressuring people to make better things because we need better things and we're part of that. Roland, yes, there are, we actually do offer internships, very, I mean it's not much, but right now we do have an intern. So, maybe you can check back with in, maybe you can check back with us in like two months when his internship is done. All right. Next question. Oh, by the way, I'm a big Samsung fan. Okay, so if anyone if anyone knows Samsung, shout out. Maybe you can tell them to look us up, but ako, big fan of Samsung monitors, big fan of Samsung cell phones and yeah, Samsung in general. LG, I've never owned an LG monitor, but I've always wanted to buy an ultra-wide LG, but hindi siya available leh. You know, like the really nice product sometimes they never reach the Philippines, but you know what, I must say, ASUS, they get here. They get here to the Philippines even though they're expensive. Fine. Okay. I probably might not be able to buy or afford them, but at least they get here. In my bang LG monitors that I really wanted, like there was a 144 hertz refresh rate monitor at 34 inches. Well, it's never coming here or it hasn't come here and it's been like several years na. So ASUS is in, you know, to their credit, they're doing something right. Okay. So when I put out the career advice and Q&A thing, we got a message from Mr. Han. Good evening po. My question is kind of person who is not working in the ICT sector. So gurus of healthcare or financing, wanted to opt for a part-time job. Can he or she take a CSS class and take the NC2 exam? See, so this is the reason as to why I felt the need to answer the question about do we have an IT background? Wala. So my simple answer to this is yes, you can do whatever you want because you don't need, it doesn't matter what field you're in now. It doesn't matter what field you took up in school, you can always learn a new skill. It's all about if you have the time and the commitment. So it says here that you want to do it part-time. My understanding of this is is you are coming from a non-IT sector and you want to take up wait, CSS is actually a programming language called computer system servicing and TESDA actually offers some of these courses. I think it's very, I think it's, I think you should go for it. You should go for it and yun na, I think based on the way you phrased your question, parang you're hesitating because since you don't have, since you didn't originate from that background, baka there's no place for you in it. That's not true. And yun na, antaan ay a very examples of that. Most recently, I have zero knowledge on how to video edit and I learned how to do it. Actually it's still a learning process talagang from zero to nothing. Like every time a school project acquired video editing, I always let someone else do it. So I never learned and I was never taught in school and same thing here. I was never taught I mean even if you didn't take up programming at any point or IT related courses, that doesn't stop you from trying now or hardware related stuff. I mean answer a question of never mal sitra. How do you get in a hold of your products yourself? For example on GPUs, do you pre-order them directly from a manufacturer? No. The manufacturer sells their stock to a supplier. So manufacturer, let's say the manufacturer is Samsung. They look for a supplier in the Philippines. So the supplier is the one who has the warehouses and who has the contacts of the retailers. So hardware sugar is the retailer. So it is Samsung supplier and then it is supplier to retailer. So hardware sugar doesn't contact Samsung. Instead it contacts the supplier who is in contact with the manufacturer and we get it from the supplier. We don't pre-order whatever they have in stock that's what we get. Vic, what app are you using on your phone to stream and on your PC to stream? Right now I'm using an app called DroidCam. It converts your Android cell phone into a webcam. So wala ako talaga ang webcam ngayon. It's really like it's really just there, see? Cell phone. And then the web, the DroidCam allows my cell phone to communicate with my PC. And then the the program that I use to stream is called OBS. So I use in short two programs. DroidCam for cell phone to connect to my OBS. Alright, next question. What got me interested into video editing? Okay, so I said earlier that I got into video editing because Anton said hey, can you make video? I'm like alright, okay. Game lang. But the truth is before that medyo naging obsessive na rin ako sa YouTube. I had a very I had a, I followed a number of YouTubers and then not just them, but panang I got an overall feel for watching cell phone video reviews. Sometimes I would watch cell phone video reviews even if I had no interest in buying the phone. Sometimes to the point that I just watched the video because I like the person. I like the person talking. And so here are some of my favorites. Actually, this is the video. One of the videos that really got me interested into video editing. It is an iPhone 6 review published back in 2014 by Pocketnow. And this is significant for me because my very my favorite cell phone reviewer is a guy named Michael Fisher and he was originally with a site called Pocketnow but he moved on to his own his own site. That guy and of course MKPHD Marquez Brownlee I also watched his iPhone 6 review back in 2014. Actually my bar exam was on November of 2014. So this was when this video came out when this video came out I was my brain was shot na. Like after after studying for six hours a day for seven months five to seven months sometimes I would just sometimes I would just watch YouTube videos one after the other and then I wouldn't and then I'd read and it's still night. These were the exhausted days I remember na when the iPhone 6 came out I was just like wow Oh my God That's an awesome looking phone. And then and then it was more than just that then I realized okay I'm going to watch all the videos all the video reviews of the iPhone 6 so I watched them all and then I realized after watching them I had a few favorite tech guys and then I was like okay so again I'll buy the iPhone 6 but now I still want to know more about these YouTubers like Michael Fisher Seymour Kez so I began watching their videos even though it was about something I didn't care to buy and then before I knew it I realized wow I'm watching these people because I actually like them and so that's when I got into like wow this is a different kind of media now we're actually watching people not because they can teach not because they're money or to or to demonstrate to us now this we should get this over that product I was literally just watching people because they were nice to watch and that really got me curious and I was wondering why why am I watching them so I was analyzing it so I realized now people like B-roll pala some people like making videos now they're talking to the camera and then after that my occasional B-roll or yung style nila is lahat B-roll tapos voice over so so there anyway let me see oh yeah so that's how I got into obsessing over YouTube videos and then when Anton said I wanted to make videos and I was like okay so I drew back my memories of what I felt like in 2014 and I was like oh yeah all those things that I thought that I really liked about them I can try and emulate them and find my own self in the video editing world and that's what I'm doing up to this day I still watch their reviews they're just really fun to watch you should go see Michael Fischer's though Michael Fischer's and yun YouTube channel now is I'm sorry my nose is so itchy now it's called shit what's this wait lang Michael Fischer YouTube ayah Mr. Mobile yeah you should go you should watch some of his videos I think I missed Michael Fischer's style kasi of doing video reviews is very lit majorly actually I wouldn't be surprised if he was a lit major so he's articulate he's fun he uses he's quick to the point and he's witty and I like watching people like that alright what was my experience like teaching university you know one time I was going to the states and I had just become a new teacher as I said I was 19 I started teaching and then the immigration officer asked me what I did and I said I thought university oh my god when I said that she grilled me so hard kasi para she was like you're 19 but you're teaching university and I looked I looked dangerous na all of a sudden panang I looked like panang medyo weirdo to essentially I don't think she believed me and and the thing was what was my experience like it's weird because my first ever class that I taught yung student ko ka-classy ko she was one of my students in lasala and I was she parang she was taking up a five year course and I had just a three year course so it was weird I was teaching she was calling me sir but you know it wasn't too long ago na we were on the same level so my initial experience was wow it's kind of weird teaching people who are your who are the same ages you but and the thing is it was actually I thought that would actually make it more difficult because that would mean I would need to prove myself more because that means the students would be more rowdy ah yan si sir ah okay kasi yan yan chill naman yan yan ka yan kasing age naman natin so there won't listen so no I knew her outright na I needed instilled discipline so I I wasn't a shouting type I just I was more of a performer I guess so I would knock on a blackboard and then I would ask them questions socratic method so I was doing socratic method even before law school and I'm saying this now because it is it was super rewarding to teach after I taught my first my my two classes I went on to law school then after I graduated law school and became a lawyer I taught literature again for one class and I taught law in one class so I would it was weird to be able to teach two very different fields and I'm very proud and happy and humbled that my students gave me a very stellar rating because in Lasau they have every teacher needs to be evaluated by their students so if you suck we're gonna give you a failing grade and you can't complain which is okay with me because you know what in high school and college I had some horrible teachers talaga those teachers would just go to class stop was or hell teachers who don't go to class those are the worst and then after that they give you an exam and they expect you to pass why? or there are teachers who don't care to know if you're learning those teachers who would just lecture I had one I had a crazy professor in college philosophy teacher he would lecture but face the air con so you know we're all below here and he's looking he's looking here so so every time if I raised a question he would be looking at the air con and not me so it was so strange and his tone was that he had no way of sympathizing or empathizing all of his students and I really hated those teachers and I knew that I didn't want to be that guy who taught and I'm talking about teaching because what we do on hardware sugar is somewhat like teaching see Anton he never taught but he taught lip and he taught more classes than me and so he has more experience when it comes to teaching young adults and what I can tell you about who we are who we were teach as professors based on how we felt we were based on what students and our co-faculty were saying was that we were pretty good at it we were pretty good at it because we know because we talked we we were relatable now and in na I still think that being able to talk candidly and to keep going without any notes is a skill and trait which I learned na in law school and in teaching so you never know when you're going to learn something and when you're going to use that something for something else which we're doing now so don't take anything for granted and if I had advice for two kinds of people one is people who are still in college you shouldn't or in high school you shouldn't you shouldn't tell yourself na ah di ko gagamitin to or ane ane yan the thing is even though you think you don't know you're going to use it you never know when you might come it might come in handy to master it at least at one point in your life and you don't know where life will throw you and here I am did I answer that question oh yeah alright how is that different making youtube video so from how ane ane yan how does being a lawyer forget the lawyer part how does being a former professor lit or law professor differ from making youtube videos for one thing one thing you guys are not forced to listen to me so all of you guys can just tune me out which is totally okay so para siang classroom na you can sit in and sit out any time without disturbing anyone that's what a youtube video is like so it's a youtube video is I guess we're all in one way or another teachers and there is more pressure on us as the youtubers to impress you because if we don't impress you that means you're just going to click away and you're not going to watch the whole video we won't get revenue from the ads and we won't get we won't be part of the youtube algorithm the youtube algorithm is what ends up showing our video to other people around the world more so there's a lot more pressure on us to package the message in a way which is more universal and which it is relatable and not just understandable because you can make a video saying all the good points but it could be boring in which case that's not what you want so a youtube video needs to be educational useful relevant and exciting in one way or another and that's something that's very different from teaching in a classroom because in a classroom talagang you are forced you're forced to listen to the same dude woman man professor rattle on and then it's disrespectful to talk behind his back or to any or to to disrupt the class and youtube you can say anything you can say you know what I don't like Raphael because he just speaks English or you know what parat parat ang video niya yeah I mean there's so many comments like that there are negative comments and that is the good thing and bad thing about youtube the bad thing is that as Filipinos we are genuinely shy and bashful race but when it comes to online man sometimes we can be horrible and trash people like crazy like you know my overall feeling is if you really hated the video so much why are you watching more videos like we have like this one or two people nasi he really doesn't like the way we review video review review content he really doesn't like our content and yet he still goes he still comments naman saying this this video is bad because this you know you guys are horrible I mean yung mukha mo pangit I mean like how is that constructive because I always thought before that if you're going to give criticism it needs to be constructive meaning it needs to be criticism which will help the person improve but obviously there is for some people there is there is a genuine bias na you know what you guys suck so well that's nice I mean that's nice that you think we suck but then why are you wasting time also panang you yung nga so there are some people a lot of satisfaction just telling another person that they suck man that is a sad person right there I wouldn't waste my time looking for videos that they don't like just telling the person that they suck if I could rather game and you know win in a call of duty than do that I don't know it's nose itchy so yeah there's more pressure on us to to do a better job and to be honest I miss I miss being more spontaneous because when I am in a classroom I just like this this is how I am I just paddle on like this with no notes but in with videos oh my god like na hirapan ako in front of the camera na tataranta ako to the point that I need to start the shoot again it's tiring it's very it's it's more time consuming and but overall it's more challenging that's how I feel it that's how I see it keyboard warriors oh yeah ITX addict I remember those times when on YouTube was all just shaky cameras you know if you go look at MKBHD oh no sorry Linus Tech Tips first video I don't know if it's online tech tips anymore but he has a video talking about his first video and talagang it's just like shaky cam and he was reviewing a point and shoot camera hindi na syap hindi hindi na PC hindi na review niya point and shoot camera because if I remember right he said I didn't have anything then so I just reviewed whatever I could so I borrowed he borrowed his boss's point and shoot camera and that's what he used to review and that's what he was reviewing man those are good old those are weird days now everyone can be a youtuber really actually I don't even say that's a bad thing you know all of you guys can start your own channel as extra income or for your primary income literally in the day kasi especially in the Philippines na you have parents or grandparents or whoever telling you na oh na yung dapod maging apagado ka dapod maging doctor ka dapod maging engineer ka parang na doesn't seem to be necessary anymore in our day and age like if you go if you read Bloomberg now there are these there are these Korean gamers or just regular streamers or making like $500,000 or $100,000 just playing in their room and I'm not putting them down I think that's great I mean these are jobs which didn't exist seven ten years ago and now you can be anybody right now just as long as you put in the time put in the research and put in the effort really how long you're living in opportunity days like you know I really get I really get sick and tired sometimes of people who say na oh you know or who give up na ah ah hindi ko lang pa na gawin niyan ah nags impossible just YouTube it YouTube at tutorial like literally you can be pretty dumb but if you know how to follow a step by step thing on YouTube you can do anything hell I look at me video editing where did I learn how to video edit I learned how to video edit it's pretty amazing one YouTube video taught me everything one video taught me all the basics I was really impressed I was scared at the beginning when I started making videos last September 2020 because I was like where do I start at program where do I start so I was like so Anton told me na he uses Da Vinci Resolve so okay again I'll get Da Vinci Resolve because that's what Anton's using so I got Da Vinci Resolve and then I typed in YouTube Da Vinci Resolve how and then boom this single video taught me everything I needed to know literally it's really it's long but it's so well organized so shout out to Justin Brown for making an excellent an excellent tutorial on how to use Da Vinci Resolve and actually you can look it's everything's there from cutting to finally the finished product how to move audio how to cut it was an all in one video I was really impressed so for all the editing stuff one video which was like 34 minutes long what I did na lang was when I was starting out was I would have this video play on one monitor while my main monitor was on Da Vinci Resolve so talagang I followed it step by step talagang and then when I made my second video I did the same thing kasi I hindi ko pa na internalize yung steps by like the fifth video na I didn't need them anymore I didn't need it so talagang this video was my companion for every little thing that I did and do then after that some minor things that I wanted to do like how do you put text over a clip I learned it from other clips from other YouTube videos but the essentials everything came from this single video so I'm posting it here so that if you're ever wondering I don't know where to start I'm telling you this is where you start it's a great video Da Vinci Resolve is free YouTube video is free though anything that's not free is a PC which can render so but if you have it then you have no excuse so essentially don't make excuses for as to why you're not doing what you want to do kono alright what videos are lined up alright my next video is onion I am doing a video review of the PG I forget the full title of the ASUS 360 Hertz monitor but it's coming out on Monday I just finished rendering it and then after that so okay by the way I returned the three monitors na so that's my MSI 32 inch that's the on loan ASUS ROG 25 inch I had three monitors in the last live stream but I returned them to ASUS this is mine and I'm gonna put back my Samsung ultra wide after they picked this up on Monday oh and then after that I'm reviewing a chair by Sharkoon one thing I must say about about onion about local companies is panong we're getting more Taiwanese companies to send us products do you know that team group Taiwan messaged us last year saying na hey can we can we send you stuff for you to review and Sharkoon also messaged us hey can we send you a chair to review and they said can we pay you money and I said no send us the chair but don't pay us money because otherwise panong we feel compelled to say something nice about the chair but if I don't like it so they sent us the chair so it's over there I haven't assembled it yet and yun na ASUS is the biggest company to send us stuff and then oh by the way Fujifilm lent us a camera the XS10 so this is my first time ever to shoot videos with an actual DSLR because as you know Anton and I only shoot with cell phones so this is going to be a learning experience so shout out to Fujifilm thank you for lending us the camera and for Canon Canon also sent us a DSLR camera but before all that most recently it was the Taiwanese companies who were taking more who were taking note of our existence so I'm hoping that we'll get big enough like the LG Philippines and Samsung Philippines will notice us because we like their stuff but till then I'm very happy to know that we're getting an international audience and that we are actually getting international sponsors now so thank you to all our followers and subscribers we've come a really long way and really you guys you guys owe a lot we owe you a lot thank you very much alright and shout out again to David Goh and Pudgy for being the latest super subs whoo okay so I am yeah that's right Patrick ultra wide is the key now the problem with the ultra wide is after you get a taste of high refresh rate para mahirap din to go back to ultra wide na 60 frames eh like ngayon yung anin MSI monitor ko 145 sya 165 na 32 inches pero hindi sya ultra wide it's like it's upwards rather than wide I prefer ultra wide in terms of space but I also like the refresh rate high so my next monitor may be like two years from now would need to be a ultra wide higher refresh rate monitor sana 4k did they expect you to give a decent or favorable review of they send you money for reviewing the product or they just want to compensate you for having exposure pesto that is a very very good question I don't actually blame companies which offer us money to review the product because when a channel gets too popular everyone wants to send us stuff so it'll become backlog like to be honest I have like eight things that I need to review that were sent to us and so far my only incentive is because they sent us the stuff we might as well review them but there will come a point when what if they send us 50 stuff we just don't have the time we don't have the time to review them individually so that is why I think why I think some companies offer us money it's because they are paying for the opportunity to get spotlight to begin with they told me you can say whatever the hell you want about the chair but can you review the chair will give you money because I have turned down I have turned down a chair company because I didn't like the chair I didn't want to waste time on the chair they offered me money for me to review it anyway and I still said no because I already have a chair video in store so I don't blame companies because it's hard especially when there are a lot of things to be reviewed we just don't have the time to so there we go alright I'm losing my voice na ko lang na lang yung multiple channels na yung multiple channels ah randrey taiwanese companies are the ones that usually manufacture the things we love yes yes they do nvidia team group all taiwanese companies and I think I think the chips that make the samsung phone and the iphone are manufactured by a taiwanese company but their factories are in china yeah the chips I remember so taiwan makes a lot of stuff they're a super tech country my dream nga is when you know when covid is over Anton and I will go to like E3 sa nyan so states or the taiwanese tech show what's it called again taiwan tech conference I think they call it oh man see ah compitex type A yeah that's what I want to go to alright okay guys so that is everything that's all my questions na thank you for joining me on our first Q&A next time we post another Q&A feel free to ask questions like our other guy there and we'll answer them so till then and I'll see you guys on Pwede Magtanong I think next week ba I don't know I'll check the schedule but Pwede Magtanong will always be on alright so everyone stay safe and good night and have a great weekend