When Atsuko Okatsuka was out shopping with her grandmother in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles one Sunday, a funny thought popped into her head.
What if she filmed herself suddenly dropping everything and squatting in sync with Beyonce’s song, Yonce? Okatsuka did just, while her grandmother, who was both confused and encouraging, looked on. She uploaded the video to TikTok in January last year, along with the caption: “How low can you go?”
The video quickly went viral and sparked the launch of the “drop challenge”, as people around the world filmed themselves suddenly “dropping” to the beat. Serena Williams, Camilla Cabello, Kerry Washington, Zoe Saldana and the cast of Hamilton were some of the challenge's famous participants.
The viral trend is in many ways reflective of Okatsuka’s comedic style — simple, relatable and unexpected.
“It was a little bit of a surprise, but I find it very silly and funny, it makes me happy,” Okatsuka tells The National.
“I just posted it for fun because I just want people to laugh and have a good time. That's why I got into comedy. It's such a simple move that went worldwide. It was cool to see.”
Okatsuka will be performing as part of the Dubai Comedy Festival at Dubai Opera on Monday, along with comedians Beth Stelling and Rachel Feinstein. While the US comic has performed internationally before, this is her first time trying out her material in Dubai.
“I'm working on my Dubai comedy set right now,” she says, from her home in Los Angeles.
“I’m just making sure that the references make sense so it's a little more universally relatable, so you don't have to live in Los Angeles to understand what I'm saying for a joke.”
Okatsuka, who is of Japanese and Taiwanese heritage, uses her own life experiences to connect with audiences — and not much is off the table. She touches on topics such as being an undocumented immigrant in the US for seven years, cultural differences and casual racism, to her mother’s mental illness and her thoughts on marriage. Through a physical and quirky performance style, Okatsuka takes many of these deeply personal experiences and transforms them into relatable, funny anecdotes.
“When I write jokes, it's about trying to connect with people,” she says. “I talk about difficult subjects like mental health and things like that, sometimes current issues too. For me, it has to be funny first. My motivation for doing stand-up is to connect with people and to make people feel seen.”
Okatsuka’s comedy has been described as childlike and whimsical. While this may be true of her delivery, there is a universality and element of wisdom to her narratives.
“I think that stand-up comedy is sort of a service industry — the audience is our customer,” she says. “Even though we're telling personal stories or jokes that can be very specific, at the end of the day, for me, I think it's important that the audience gets relief and a laugh.”
And while her blend of wit, insightful humour and life experiences appears effortless on stage, as seen on her recent HBO comedy special The Intruder, Okatsuka’s style is not without its challenges.
“As a stand-up comedian, especially an American one, there's a certain style of stand-up comedy that people grew up listening to, which is very set-up, punchline, set-up, punchline — it's very observational, like the Jerry Seinfeld type,” Okatsuka says.
“I love that kind of style of stand-up comedy. But I want my own point of view, my own style, to comes across in an art form that is so often performed in a traditional style. It's about mixing the two and that's a challenge.”
And despite her confident onstage persona, she still gets nervous.
“You should always be nervous when you're going up to do stand-up,” she says. “But you should feel nervous when you're doing something you love, because that means you care.”
More information on Atsuko Okatsuka's performance and other acts at the Dubai Comedy Festival is available at dubaicomedyfest.ae
How Tesla’s price correction has hit fund managers
Investing in disruptive technology can be a bumpy ride, as investors in Tesla were reminded on Friday, when its stock dropped 7.5 per cent in early trading to $575.
It recovered slightly but still ended the week 15 per cent lower and is down a third from its all-time high of $883 on January 26. The electric car maker’s market cap fell from $834 billion to about $567bn in that time, a drop of an astonishing $267bn, and a blow for those who bought Tesla stock late.
The collapse also hit fund managers that have gone big on Tesla, notably the UK-based Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust and Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation ETF.
Tesla is the top holding in both funds, making up a hefty 10 per cent of total assets under management. Both funds have fallen by a quarter in the past month.
Matt Weller, global head of market research at GAIN Capital, recently warned that Tesla founder Elon Musk had “flown a bit too close to the sun”, after getting carried away by investing $1.5bn of the company’s money in Bitcoin.
He also predicted Tesla’s sales could struggle as traditional auto manufacturers ramp up electric car production, destroying its first mover advantage.
AJ Bell’s Russ Mould warns that many investors buy tech stocks when earnings forecasts are rising, almost regardless of valuation. “When it works, it really works. But when it goes wrong, elevated valuations leave little or no downside protection.”
A Tesla correction was probably baked in after last year’s astonishing share price surge, and many investors will see this as an opportunity to load up at a reduced price.
Dramatic swings are to be expected when investing in disruptive technology, as Ms Wood at ARK makes clear.
Every week, she sends subscribers a commentary listing “stocks in our strategies that have appreciated or dropped more than 15 per cent in a day” during the week.
Her latest commentary, issued on Friday, showed seven stocks displaying extreme volatility, led by ExOne, a leader in binder jetting 3D printing technology. It jumped 24 per cent, boosted by news that fellow 3D printing specialist Stratasys had beaten fourth-quarter revenues and earnings expectations, seen as good news for the sector.
By contrast, computational drug and material discovery company Schrödinger fell 27 per cent after quarterly and full-year results showed its core software sales and drug development pipeline slowing.
Despite that setback, Ms Wood remains positive, arguing that its “medicinal chemistry platform offers a powerful and unique view into chemical space”.
In her weekly video view, she remains bullish, stating that: “We are on the right side of change, and disruptive innovation is going to deliver exponential growth trajectories for many of our companies, in fact, most of them.”
Ms Wood remains committed to Tesla as she expects global electric car sales to compound at an average annual rate of 82 per cent for the next five years.
She said these are so “enormous that some people find them unbelievable”, and argues that this scepticism, especially among institutional investors, “festers” and creates a great opportunity for ARK.
Only you can decide whether you are a believer or a festering sceptic. If it’s the former, then buckle up.
Profile of Tamatem
Date started: March 2013
Founder: Hussam Hammo
Based: Amman, Jordan
Employees: 55
Funding: $6m
Funders: Wamda Capital, Modern Electronics (part of Al Falaisah Group) and North Base Media
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The Bio
Favourite vegetable: “I really like the taste of the beetroot, the potatoes and the eggplant we are producing.”
Holiday destination: “I like Paris very much, it’s a city very close to my heart.”
Book: “Das Kapital, by Karl Marx. I am not a communist, but there are a lot of lessons for the capitalist system, if you let it get out of control, and humanity.”
Musician: “I like very much Fairuz, the Lebanese singer, and the other is Umm Kulthum. Fairuz is for listening to in the morning, Umm Kulthum for the night.”
MATCH INFO
Hoffenheim v Liverpool
Uefa Champions League play-off, first leg
Location: Rhein-Neckar-Arena, Sinsheim
Kick-off: Tuesday, 10.45pm (UAE)
Evacuations to France hit by controversy
- Over 500 Gazans have been evacuated to France since November 2023
- Evacuations were paused after a student already in France posted anti-Semitic content and was subsequently expelled to Qatar
- The Foreign Ministry launched a review to determine how authorities failed to detect the posts before her entry
- Artists and researchers fall under a programme called Pause that began in 2017
- It has benefited more than 700 people from 44 countries, including Syria, Turkey, Iran, and Sudan
- Since the start of the Gaza war, it has also included 45 Gazan beneficiaries
- Unlike students, they are allowed to bring their families to France
Most%20polluted%20cities%20in%20the%20Middle%20East
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MOST%20POLLUTED%20COUNTRIES%20IN%20THE%20WORLD
%3Cp%3E1.%20Chad%3Cbr%3E2.%20Iraq%3Cbr%3E3.%20Pakistan%3Cbr%3E4.%20Bahrain%3Cbr%3E5.%20Bangladesh%3Cbr%3E6.%20Burkina%20Faso%3Cbr%3E7.%20Kuwait%3Cbr%3E8.%20India%3Cbr%3E9.%20Egypt%3Cbr%3E10.%20Tajikistan%3Cbr%3E%3Cbr%3E%3Cem%3ESource%3A%202022%20World%20Air%20Quality%20Report%3C%2Fem%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Company profile
Name: Dukkantek
Started: January 2021
Founders: Sanad Yaghi, Ali Al Sayegh and Shadi Joulani
Based: UAE
Number of employees: 140
Sector: B2B Vertical SaaS(software as a service)
Investment: $5.2 million
Funding stage: Seed round
Investors: Global Founders Capital, Colle Capital Partners, Wamda Capital, Plug and Play, Comma Capital, Nowais Capital, Annex Investments and AMK Investment Office
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Asia Cup Qualifier
Final
UAE v Hong Kong
Live on OSN Cricket HD. Coverage starts at 5.30am
Most%20ODI%20hundreds
%3Cp%3E49%20-%20Sachin%20Tendulkar%2C%20India%0D%3Cbr%3E47%20-%20Virat%20Kohli%2C%20India%0D%3Cbr%3E31%20-%20Rohit%20Sharma%2C%20India%0D%3Cbr%3E30%20-%20Ricky%20Ponting%2C%20Australia%2FICC%0D%3Cbr%3E28%20-%20Sanath%20Jayasuriya%2C%20Sri%20Lanka%2FAsia%0D%3Cbr%3E27%20-%20Hashim%20Amla%2C%20South%20Africa%0D%3Cbr%3E25%20-%20AB%20de%20Villiers%2C%20South%20Africa%2FAfrica%0D%3Cbr%3E25%20-%20Chris%20Gayle%2C%20West%20Indies%2FICC%0D%3Cbr%3E25%20-%20Kumar%20Sangakkara%2C%20Sri%20Lanka%2FICC%2FAsia%0D%3Cbr%3E22%20-%20Sourav%20Ganguly%2C%20India%2FAsia%0D%3Cbr%3E22%20-%20Tillakaratne%20Dilshan%2C%20Sri%20Lanka%0D%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
UPI facts
More than 2.2 million Indian tourists arrived in UAE in 2023
More than 3.5 million Indians reside in UAE
Indian tourists can make purchases in UAE using rupee accounts in India through QR-code-based UPI real-time payment systems
Indian residents in UAE can use their non-resident NRO and NRE accounts held in Indian banks linked to a UAE mobile number for UPI transactions
