I’m counting the days to the de-fi Hive blockchain HiveFest in Kuala Lumpur in October 2025. I can’t wait to meet in the flesh the people I’ve connected with online through the Hive blockchain over the past few years.
In this video I respond to the 🎉 HiveFest × Splinterlands Ticket Giveaway and talk about why I want to attend the Hive Fest in October. See their post here:
@hivefest/hivefest-splinterlands-ticket-giveaway-win-2-full-passes-to-kuala-lumpur
##At the Fest, here’s what I’m most excited about:##
Connecting in person with fellow Hive users and Splinterlands players I’ve only known through comments, upvotes, and posts...
Fun parties and stimulating conversation! 🍻
Attending the “Chain Culture” conference, exploring how other blockchains and DeFi might integrate with Hive... Hoping to spark some ideas about Hive-based crypto loans.
Joining the workshops and the the Hive Expo
Exploring Kuala Lumpur with the Hive community
And if time allows, I'd like to fit in a trip to the National Museum to learn more about Malaysia’s colonial past, Japanese occupation, and post-independence story.
I’ll be there all five days to chat, learn, share, and make new Hive connections. If you’ll be at HiveFest too, let’s meet up!!
##Video Transcript##
Time for an afternoon beer. I'm in Japan, so the default beer is Kirin Ichiban Shibori. But I'm in a very good mood because I booked my ticket. I've booked my hotel and I'm on my way next month, the next two weeks, three weeks, to the HiveFest Tropical Surge.
This will be my first HiveFest ever. It'll be the first time I have ever met in the flesh, so to speak, anybody related to the Hive blockchain. So, here's cheers to that.
Ah, cheers!
##Splinterlands##
So, I have just seen this post on the Hive blog that Splinterlands are giving away two tickets to attend the whole of this HiveFest taking place in Kuala Lumpur in October of this year. And so, I thought it'd be nice to try and win one of those prizes - win or not, I’ll tell you what I'm looking forward to doing at the HiveFest.
Now, I play a lot of Splinterlands. I've got a nice position in Splinterlands. I've just bought my fourth plot of land and I've got two on the go, and I've got one that will come on stream in the next month, sometime in October, I hope. So, thank you Splinterlands for giving us this opportunity.
##My Father's Malayan Stories##
What I want to do is tell you what I am looking forward to doing at the HiveFest in Kuala Lumpur. I've never been to Malaysia, so I want to give you a bit of background about my relationship with Malaysia, which is minimal - except that when I was a boy, my father, who'd been in the Royal Engineers during the Malayan Emergency, spent two or three years in Malaya with the Royal Engineers building airstrips in the jungle. He told me lots of stories about that time. So, I was always quite fascinated by Malaya, now Malaysia, but I've never got round to getting there, even though I have been to Singapore and I've lived in Japan for many, many years.
##First Flight in 7 Years!##
This will also be the first time I will have got on an airplane since before the coronavirus. The last time I flew was 2018. So, I've been in Japan since 2018 - not going away outside of Japan for holidays or home visits or anything like that at all, business trips, nothing. So, this will be my first flight in the last seven years. And because it's been so long since I've flown, I'm quite excited about it, even a bit nervous. I've not done it for seven years. But this is a real opportunity to go to a country I've never been to before and explore Kuala Lumpur - but really to meet all the people involved in the Hive community.
##The National Museum of Malaysia?##
And if I get time - and I doubt I will have time - I would really like to go to the National Museum and look at Malaysian history, especially the history of colonialism, including the Japanese occupation of Malaya as it was then and the Malayan Emergency as we called it, and then have a look at how Malaysia has developed since independence. It's an incredible story. I think if my father were alive today and could go to Malaysia, he would be astonished at the changes from his time there in the 1950s.
So anyway, I'm so much looking forward to this.
##Hive Fest##
Let's talk about what I want to do in Kuala Lumpur during the HiveFest. For sure, connecting with people who I've only met through the Hive blockchain itself. There are several names I'm familiar with, but having never met them face-to-face, this will be a real opportunity to get to know people. That's what I'm really looking forward to. Not only meeting the ones who I've exchanged comments with and shared stuff and upvoted and got to know on the blockchain, but also many people who I haven't yet interacted with on the blockchain - to be able to interact with them person-to-person over a beer or two.
Speaking of which, I think one man I'm looking forward to meeting I think will be there - yes, indeed - where is he? Down here is 
Other people I'd like to meet coming on to the speakers are, speaking of Splinterlands, Clayboyn. 
##Kuala Lumpur Journal Hotel##
I'm looking forward to staying in the hotel. We got a really nice hotel - the Kuala Lumpur Journal Hotel. This I am looking forward to. I've got myself a nice room in this hotel. I'm not sure if I'm going to take my swimming trunks or not. I'm probably going to be busy with other stuff in this kind of venue, perhaps more than this kind of venue, but we'll see.
##Chain Culture##
So, the events - I'm there for every day, all five days. I'm arriving on Wednesday and I'm flying out on Monday just to make sure I can be present at everything that's going on. There's going to be the conference “Chain Culture” on Friday, I think, which is going to be a big one. Chain Culture is happening at a place called The Glass House and that sounds really cool. So, I'm looking forward to going there and quite possibly getting to know about other blockchains and hopefully other DeFi blockchains that could work with Hive.
##Hive-Based Crypto Loans?##
One thing that interests me is the idea of crypto loans. And I'm interested in the concept of developing - not that I'm a developer, I don't have the technology, I'm not a computer programmer or a programmer of any sort at all - but I'm interested in the idea of Hive-backed loans. It'd be amazing if we could have a Hive-backed loan system on the Hive blockchain.
I know there are already such loans available more for development projects, and that's great, that is really nice. But I'm interested in borrowing Hive to invest and then creating a flywheel. That's what interests me. So that's something I would like to talk about with anybody who's around who may be interested in those kind of projects on the Hive blockchain - or perhaps if there are such people there on non-Hive chains. So, participating in the Chain Culture conference - that would be fantastic.
##Saturday Hive Expo, Workshops, City Trip...##
We've then got the Hive Expo. Looks like Saturday is more dedicated to Hive itself. We've got some workshops, so for sure I'll be taking part in those. We've got the city trip - definitely want to take part in that, because I doubt that I'm going to have time to go to the National Museum on my own initiative. There's going to be so much going on here. I'm not sure I'm going to want to break away or have time to break away and go off on my own. This is only for a few days, my first time ever in Kuala Lumpur. So, I think I'll just be happy to go with the flow of the workshops and go on the group city trip, go on a group excursion on the last day, and get in that closing dinner and drinks.
But if there is a bit of free time, I would like to go to that museum and look at the Malaysian perspective of colonialism and then the postcolonial development.
Okay, folks. So, I think that is about it for what I want to say about why I'm excited about this HiveFest. The only thing I haven't got is the ticket. And this will be my very first time meeting other Hivers. So, I'm super excited about that.
Anyway, guys, that's what I'm up to in the middle of October, and I'm hoping to meet a lot of you there and share some conviviality together.
Cheers!
P.S. Thanks to 
https://rawcdn.githack.com/louis-88/HiveFest10-Image-Generator
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