WELP Tonight: Malaysian YouTubers The Ming Thing relive their Dota 2 days
PUBLISHED ONJune 24, 2019 7:50 AM
It’s no secret that Sezairi Sazali and his wife Syaza Qistina Tan are diehard Dota 2 players. As part of their honeymoon trip, the WELP Tonight hosts went all the way to Vancouver, Canada to attend the eighth edition of The International, the annual world championship tournament with record-breaking prize pools that go over $25 million. In fact, they’re having huge a Dota 2 showdown of their own on August 4 at the Singapore Indoor Stadium.
Nearly two months since their gaming-centric talk show was announced, the two finally indulged in their passion for Dota 2 on WELP Tonight last Friday — this time with popular Malaysian YouTube personalities The Ming Thing in tow. Hailing from Petaling Jaya, brothers Ho Ming Han and Ho Ming Yue dropped by the studio for an extensive tower-busting sesh and, of course, catching up with the hosts (and longtime buds) on their lives over copious amounts of food.
Being a new dad, Ming Han shared about his first Father’s Day experience and how The Ming Thing’s emotive video tribute to Asian dads came to be.
“So because it was my first Father’s Day, it was a big thing for me because it made me really think about my dad,” Ming Han explained.
After a highly emotional period of time when the brothers’ grandfather passed away, Ming Han thought of creating a video based on the concept of what advice his father could have given to himself when he was a new dad.
“If he could (talk to) a younger version of himself, that would be talking to me,” Ming Han realised.
“But that conversation doesn’t take place. So how could I emulate that conversation in the way of a video? I tried to piece the video together as if he was talking to both of us. It was very heartwarming because he doesn’t usually do things like that. And I wanted to make it feel as if he was talking to any dad who’s watching the video”.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AArC7zCVXiQ[/embed]
Father’s Day was also a time to finally unwind and rest after working intensely on multiple new The Ming Thing projects, including their own talk show/podcast series The Takeaway Table. The two also talked about their ongoing web series in collaboration with the Korea Tourism Organisation called That Spring My Heart Beats, a very K-drama title that was picked by their fans. The Ming Things revealed some other names that were contributed by fans, including some stereotypical ones like Kimchi Love or blatant rip-offs like Descendants of the Gods (because Descendants of the Sun).
On the topic of their creative process, the brothers discussed the common emotional vein they share with Sezairi: pushing oodles of heart and soul into the content they put out. “Putting stuff out that you don’t know if people are going to appreciate for sure, I feel that if you don’t challenge yourself or force yourself to do it right, you’ll never grow,” asserted Ming Yue.
After raving about Sezairi’s 2018 single It’s You, the Singapore Idol revealed that a line in the song — “choosing you daily” — was actually something that Ming Han said to his wife in his wedding speech. Something that also happened during the wedding? A 20-minute roasting of Ming Han by his own dad.
The brothers also recounted how they first met the WELP Tonight hosts, and of course, it involved Dota 2. Having gotten to know one another during a Munah Hirzi live show at SCAPE in 2013, they bumped into each other sometime later at Village Park Restaurant in Petaling Jaya.
“We were like ‘Where should we go and hang out with these two Singaporean people?’” recalled Ming Yue. “I was like, let’s give them the taste of what’s essentially Malaysian living: Ramly burger and cybercafe.”
The four then relived that Dota 2-fuelled night in the gaming portion of the talk show, where The Ming Tings were promptly reminded they were a wee bit rusty in the art.
Saving the best surprise for last, the WELP Tonight hosts then announced that they’ll be heading to The International finals in Shanghai later this year, and they’re calling out for two people to come along on an all-expenses-paid (!) trip. More details to be revealed in this Friday’s live stream, which will have none other than singer-songwriter Charlie Lim throwing check hooks on Apex Legends.