Hi everyone! My name is Scott Jerome Yao. Scott Jerome is a name given by my mother and Yao is my last name. People call me either Scott or Jerome or Yao(It's totally fine calling me either one of these names). Born and raised at Sabah, known as the Land Below the Wind(Ayyyy where my Sabah homies at?!) I'm currently a full-time singer/performer/musician in a small island named Penang in Malaysia, also known as the Pearl of the Orient. Let me take you on a ride over my short-but-not-so-short self-introduction :)
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I used to think that I'm a weird kid. Growing up in a typical Malaysian schooling environment when students are asked of their future occupations when they grow up, they will write either Doctors, Lawyers, Engineers, Teachers etc etc. Everyone else have all these in mind and could write it out with ease. I have nothing in mind. Thing is, I don't even know what I want to be. That's the only column that gave me a big challenge cause I don't even know what to write in it. Until one day when I was 12yr-old and my P.E Teacher told me to join the school's basketball team cause I have a big-size body. I may not be good at my studies, but I wanna achieve something in life to make my parents proud of me. After I joined basketball, I became a basketball freak. I'm into basketball until a point where I decided that I wanna make basketball as my future career. I trained real hard over the years. Throughout years of blood, sweat, and tears, I'm only able to be a district player. Back at Sabah as a basketball player regardless which district you're at, it's not easy to be picked as one of the district's representative, what more as a state representative and beyond that, a national representative. I neglected my studies just for the sake of working on my craft, but my "life span" in basketball ended up short. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn't even get myself to at least be a state representative. Therefore, I give up in the end. All my hard work over the years all went into a deep pit of nothingness.
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I started to have no sense-of-direction in my life at all. I don't even know what I want to do. I felt drifted. Until one day a classmate of mine registered my name into a public singing competition without me noticing. My brain went dead deep inside while unable to comprehend the situation hahaha!! After some convincing and encouragements from my friends, I decided to just give it a shot!
My first-ever singing competition and singing in public. I just remember how scary it was being on stage while my whole body's shaking. hahahaha! I didn't get into the top 3 cause I thought I was really bad, but so happen I got the most votes for the Public Favourites' in the competition. I guess, it wasn't such a bad loss after all eh? Plus, I didn't expect that I can REALLY sing! That made me thinking, I've already gave up on basketball before this, I don't wanna give up on this so I decided to give it another shot, just so that I can make my parents proud of what I'm able to achieve in life asides what most parents would want their children to be, which is academically excellent.(That's Asian culture for you)
Therefore, I decided to go venture the journey of singing.
Back then I was very skinny(thanks to basketball), but after I stopped playing, I puffed-up like a puffy cotton candy. hahaha! I had loads of argument with my dad because he was really against me doing this because he perceives singing as a hobby and you can't make a living out of it. Soon after that I went to KL to further my studies(At the same time not giving up on singing. Trust me, I'm THAT hard-headed.) After that I get to know my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and of His love for me and through Him I found out that it is a gift that He has given to me and I found joy in singing.
This is the first big singing competition I joined back at KL! Coming from a small place from Sabah, I find it really overwhelming because I'm competing with a lot of great singers. Knowing that even though it's overwhelming but I did not waver at all. I just did what I could regardless the results and somehow I managed to become the champion out of it! This has become a stepping stone for me to go venture on to bigger stage.
This is by far the largest national singing competition I've ever joined. The grand-finals was held at Arena of Stars, Genting Highlands. Many international artists have done their concert on that stage and as I was competing there it felt so surreal to me. It was a big yet personal moment for me. It's like everyone goes there to watch my own concert(HAHAHA sorry I'm just imagining :P) First time singing to my heart's content, first time crying on stage. But I'll leave this part of the story on my other future post cause I do not want y'all to get stumbled by this part of the introduction itself hahaha!! Fast track, from joining small public competitions, I went on to join bigger and bigger-scaled competitions to expose myself on stage and to improve myself in singing and performing.
Back when the Taiwan reality singing competition "One Million Star" was a hit TV programme a decade ago, I get the chance to represent Malaysia as one of the contestants to compete at The Million Star Season 2(they changed the name of the competition). Although I ended up in the Top 50s(which is kinda sad), but I get to meet a lot of great international contestants and it was a humbling experience to me. I was sad and down for a long time after that competition, but I did not stop. I continued moving forward after that. Again, this is just a brief story for this part here. Lemme know if you guys want to know more of this part of the story and I'll do a write-up specifically on this part of the story on my future post. :)
The last time I joined a singing competition is around 2-3 years back. and I'm thinking of giving myself a break out of it. I'm still currently singing for a living and it's something that I didn't expect myself doing after graduating from my Degree programme few years back. It is something that I'm glad of. I may not know how this path of singing may bring me to, but I'll just do my best out of it and let God lead the way for me cause He knows best! :)
I didn't expect my introduction to be THIS lengthy hahahahah!! Thank you so much for bearing with me and reading through my post! I really appreciate your time and patience! A big shoutout to @danielwong for introducing me into this platform. I hope to share my joy of singing to the people in this platform as much as I can, as well as other things of my daily life. hahaha!! Thank you once again!
With much love,
Scott Jerome Yao