I’m Almost Famous

I’m proud to announce that I will be making my cable network reality TV debut next spring.

About a year ago I received an email from a company called Leopard Films. It asked if I would like to be on a television show called House Hunters International. I don’t watch TV, so I’d never heard of the show. From the cheesy name of the production company and the strange disco-ball logo on their letterhead I assumed that the email was from a low-budget cable access network of some kind and ignored it. A few days later I happened across the email again. This time I decided to answer it out of curiosity.

The production company asked me to send them a three-minute audition video (you can watch it below if you’re really interested).

On the basis of those three minutes the producers at House Hunters International decided to do an episode about me looking for a house in Taiwan.

I didn’t know how popular the show was until I wrote on Facebook that I would be appearing on the show. Several of my friends commented that it was their favorite show or that they watched it all the time. The director of the episode later told me, if I recall correctly, that the show has somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 million viewers.

Two weeks ago an Australian director, Paul, and a British cameraman who lives in Bangkok, Julian, came to Taiwan to film the episode in a very busy three days. Jeannie Mark, also known as Nomadic Chick, happened to be in Taiwan visiting, so she joined in as my sidekick with whom I looked at houses and discussed the pros and cons of each house. My friend, photographer Richard Matheson, also made an appearance playing the role of the helpful seasoned expat showing me the houses.

We hammed it up quite a bit for the camera. Many jokes about my personal habits were made. Several references to the suitability of each house for orgies were uttered (although I assume that they will be edited out). Paul and Julian were extremely professional and laidback, so the whole shoot was very chill.

In short, it went great.

And, sometime next year, most likely in May or June, the episode will run and I will have my 3 minutes of reality TV fame.

I was kind of hoping that I would become the next Tim Cahill, but now it looks like I’m closer to being the next Kim Kardashian.