Posts about Ramble
May 28, 2008
Goob Ama?
Managed to grab this quick shot on the way to SFO airport.
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April 27, 2008
Twitterpated
I ran into Kaiser and Paul at their personal Starbucks over at Wanda in Beijing, and they were telling me the virtues of Twitter. I said, "I've got enough distractions already. Girls wear white gogo boots in Shanghai. That's distraction enough." Silence.
Obviously neither Paul or Kaiser notice girls in white gogo boots, so we went on to talk about Social Distraction Software, and when I got home I actually installed a Twitter client on my Nokia so I can never have to talk to anybody at a cocktail party again if I don't want to, but can still stand there drinking and looking busy.
Do I need more distraction? No. But I certainly am curious. It feels a bit like those clandestine teenage telephone chat lines where used to dial into a broken number and talk between the busy signal beeps. That was annoying, but when you're 14, you are annoying, so it balances out.
If you feel the need to be distracted as well, my Twitter name is 3q2u.
@3q2u me if you feel like it.
April 22, 2008
20 years and a snack
I'm having a little private celebration today, sitting in a hotel room in Beijing, waiting for a train. Today marks the start of my 20th year here. I stepped off the plane in Taipei in 1988 and thought to myself, "What is that smell?" Now whenever I arrive in Beijing I think the same thing. Actually, to be fair, the past couple of days it's rained the hardest it's had in 40 years apparently (felt like a normal afternoon storm in Taipei to me), so today everything is clear and beautiful and fresh and green with that just rained feel in the air. A good day to mark 20 years.
Anyway, to celebrate this historic event, I went down to the convenience store to pick up one of my favorite snacks, the tasty Twix bar, to enjoy with my afternoon tea and conference calls.
After paying RMB15 for my crunchy chewy snack, I'm thinking, gee how much is that in NT$? Because it seemed to me that a Twix bar in Taiwan costs something like NT$20, which is only RMB5. How's that for Olympic sized inflation?
March 14, 2008
Presencing: Mapping our World in 2030
Today was my first time to Three on the Bund. I wanted to get a chance to hear the famous economist Jeffrey Sachs, the controversial President of Columbia University, Lee Bollinger, and two other distinguished panelists from Columbia University's International Advisory Committee discuss the topic "Presencing: Mapping Our World in 2030."
You don't normally get to see people at this level speak at all, and today it was for free - in Shanghai. I sat right in the front row next to an important Turkish businessman and Dean of some department (I'm sorry, I didn't ask). There were about 80 smart looking people in a stylish white curtained room, with lots of attractive young women in black walking around who I think were staff. Either way, it was a kind of culture shock from the construction and spitting and normal Shanghai street life just one floor below.
Jeffery Sachs sure can express ideas clearly. They kept plugging his latest book, Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet, which I went to the reception counter (again - attractive young women in black) to try to buy. No one knew what I was talking about.
Click here if you are in China and YouTube is blocked.
Peter Jungen, the Chairman of the European Enterprise Institute said some very interesting things, and you could kind of feel the Chinese in the room fluster when he said that the rise of capitalism was making the world a better place for it's inhabitants. If that were on CNN they'd have blacked it out for sure.
Click here if you are in China and YouTube is blocked.
Later in the evening, I took Brock out to hear some music at the bar at Jean Georges, where I had my first cocktail with cumin in it called The Fez, and we ran into Peter, so we bought him a drink and had a nice chat about capitalism, Marx, Chinese entrepreneurs, his investments, and attractive young women in black.
August 18, 2007
The Breezer
I was at a friend's house the other day who builds bikes, snowboards, baseball bats, hockey sticks, etc, and he showed me his bike room, which is filled with about 10 fantastic rides. My eyes immediately fell on the Breezer, an old school steel hard tail frame with Ritchey forks.
"I knew you'd dig the old school. You wanna take it home for a spin?"
"Really?"
"Yeah sure, a bike's meant to be ridden. Can't be sitting here. Breaks my heart when a bike sits around."
If you know anything about mountain biking, you'll know the lore of Joe Breeze, and understand my thrill being back on a steel frame.
After a few days of sore ass, I got right back into it again, pumping hills, cutting a line down hill (this bike can go down in a big way), and enjoying being on a bike again after 20 years. The Breezer is what a perfect ride should feel like. Can't get much closer.
If you see an old school guy in the hills of Yangmingshan, with a big smile on his sweaty face, huffing and puffing, passing cars, and riding a beautiful black and white hand painted Breezer, you'll know that's me.
August 09, 2007
If you ever wanted to know what our troops eat while getting shot at...
I was scavaging around the house for something to eat tonight, and discovered this MRE (Meal, Ready to Eat) I took from my sister a few years ago before she went out on some Army training mission. Since I had never eaten rations before, I figured the day would come when I needed it. There was no food in the fridge, I didn't want to deal with takeout, so today was that day.
For those of you (like me) who are curious as to what's in a MRE, and will actually eat one, here you go:
Results:
1) using the hightech little stove-in-a-bag was pretty cool, but I would have been shot first before I figured out how to use it.
2) the milkshake, that you actually have to shake, spurts all over, potentially dirtying your nice clean fatigues (for those fastidious soldiers), but it's actually pretty good, and a bit foamy. Note: don't try to drink it out of the bag
3) The Tabasco sauce, moist towlette, and the mint chicklets are all nice touches which would make me happy if I were sitting in a hole getting shot at
4) the apple jelly I didn't quite figure out
5) Taster's Choice coffee and condiments, very nice. But I should have put it in the milkshake bag first to make a latte. Damn.
6) the beef stew was pretty much standard Dinty Moore style fare, not bad for a guy in a hole getting shot at. Well maybe not shot at and maybe not a hole. Maybe more like a guy sitting at home in front of the TV with an empty fridge.
August 08, 2007
Elmore Leonard's 10 tips for writers after the Digital Millennium Copyright Act
I got back after a long China trip, and was going through my 6-inch stack of bills, and found a letter addressed to me from HarperCollins Publishers.
This is interesting I thought. Could they possibly want to publish one of the two books I've released here? Do they need some business development in China? Do they have some magazine they want me to buy?
So I opened the letter (below) which referred to a post I made 3 years ago sharing an interview on Elmore Leonard where he outlines his 10 tips for writers.
Apparently, I am accused of publishing his Book (capital B) "in it's entirety". If that's a Book, then this the first 1048 word Book I've ever read.
Nonetheless, the offending 1048 words of text from 2/29/04 have been taken off of my site.
Please contact Beth Neelman Silfin, Associate General Counsel of HarperCollins Publishers, who now apparently own these 10 tips. (beth.silfin@harpercollins.com)
Here's a sample letter you can use if you're such a bad writer that you can't write the letter to request the 10 tips.
Dear Ms. Silfin,
I really really want to become a better writer, and I really really like the way Elmore Leonard writes, especially his three sentence sex scenes, and I know he would want me to be influenced by him in some way, as all authors are vain, but I've heard that you now own the ten tips for becoming a better writer, so this is why I am contacting you instead.
Can you tell me which tip will help get me published at HarperCollins?
Regards,
Your name here
August 03, 2007
Where are the new little guys?
I found this interesting snippet of information while reading up on the TechSearch vs Intel case, written by Ray Niro who defended TechSearch.
"Consider these names of individual inventors who ultimately formed companies to exploit their ideas but initially manufactured nothing: Westinghouse (air brake), Ford (car), Gillette (razor), Hewlett-Packard (oscillation generator), Otis (elevator), Harley (motorcycle shock absorber), Colt (revolving gun), Goodrich (tires), Goodyear (synthetic rubber), Carrier (air treatment), Noyce (Intel), Carlson (Xerox), Eastman (laser printer camera), Land (Polaroid), Shockley (semiconductor), Kellogg (grain harvester), DuPont (gun powder), Nobel (explosives), the Wright brothers (aircraft), Owens (glass), Steinway (pianos), Bessemer (steel), Jacuzzi (hot tub), Smith & Wesson (firearm), Burroughs (calculator), Carothers (nylon), Curtiss (aircraft), Houdry (catalytic cracker), Marconi (wireless communication), Goodard (rocket), Diesel (internal combustion engine), Fermi (neutronic reactor), Disney (animation), Sperry (Gyroscope), Williams (helicopter), even Abraham Lincoln who was granted U.S. Patent No. 6,469."
We often forget that the spark of innovation often started from the little guy. What I'm wondering now is where are the next generation of little guys? The last one I met was Dr. Tomihisa Kamada, who invented cHTML, which helped power the whole Docomo rage, which was the catalyst and business model for our whole current way of looking at the mobile phone.
July 28, 2007
How obvious is obvious?
KSR v. Teleflex: The Supreme Court's Big Patent Ruling
This is a really really big deal, as it's at the same time a way to get rid of dumb patents clogging up the courts, but also kicking innovation in the balls. If you want a sense of the importance the Supreme Court ruling in KSR v. Teleflex, read this article and this article.
I liked this comment the best:
The KSR decision is the ultimate victory of the liberal arts majors over the technical people. While inventors need substantial investment backing to protect their inventions, lyricists, authors, essayists, movie makers, music composers, etc., need only to declare a copyright. Inventors must submit their work to a bureaucracy that decides if the invention is "obvious" or not. Before KSR there was, at least, established criteria for deciding the question of obviousness. That is gone now. Now the bureaucracy can do what it wants.
In the artistic fields, how would an artist feel about submitting his work to a group, operating without criteria, that would decide if the ideas expressed were totally new or had evolved from some previous ideas (the prior art) before allowing a copyright to issue?
Empty the engineering schools. Technical people dream of the day when their good idea will get them a valuable patent some day. The dream, never a guarantee, usually doesn¡¦t work out but now there is no dream at all. I shall set aside my math, physics, chemistry, and engineering resources and work on my lyrics (to be copyrighted, of course) for a great hip hop song about the 9 Supreme Court hoes.
June 25, 2007
Book trade
I normally make a habit of passing on books after I read them. Sometimes I give them to the guy next to me at a coffeeshop, sometimes a book comes up in a conversation and is dropped off at a friend's house, once I had just finished a scathing expose on Morgan Stanley's painful learning experience in China, and bumped into their CEO on the flight - and of course gave him the book.
I looked on my shelves today, and there were still a lot of books that somehow stayed stuck on the shelf, so I've decided to ask all my Taiwan friends (since the bookstores here don't have that great of a selection) via this blog to trade with me.
Here's a list of 125 books that don't need to stay on the shelf, and they are all free for the taking. It'd be nice if you can trade something interesting I haven't read. You can take as many as you want, and I'll drop them off at the Livingroom with your name on them. Just send an email or leave a comment with the books you want.
Happy reading!
*100 Twisted Little Tales of Torment, Various
A 3rd Serving of Chicken Soup for the Soul, Jack Cansfield and Mark Victor Hansen
*A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole
A Gathering of Old Men, Ernest J. Gaines
*A History of Philosophy - Volume IV Descartes to Leibniz, Volume V Hobbes to Hume, Volume VI Wolff to Kant, Frederick Copleston, S.J.
*A History of Philosophy - Volume VII Fichte to Nietzsche, Volume VIII Bentham to Russell, Volume IX Maine de Biran to Sartre, Frederick Copleston, S.J.
*A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume
All I Need to Know I Learned From My Cat, Suzy Becker
All-In-One Business Planner - How To Create The Plan You Need To Build Your Business, Christopher R. Malburg, CPA, MBA
*America, Franz Kafka
And Do Remember Me, Marita Golden
Bandits, Elmore Leonard
Basic Writings, Martin Heidegger
*Bertrand Russell's Best
Boarding Schools and Colleges, Eighth Edition
Breaking Out of The Box - The Biography of Edward de Bono, Piers Dudgeon
Chuang-Tzu - The Inner Chapters, A.C. Graham
*Coming Through Slaughter, Michael Ondaatje
*Confessions of Felix Krull Confidence Man, Thomas Mann
Convergence Marketing - Strategies for Reaching the New Hybrid Customer, Yoram Jerry Wind, Vijay Mahajan, with Robert E. Gunther
*Dance Dance Dance, Haruki Murakami
Descartes Philosphical Writings, Edited by Elizabeth Anscombe and Peter Thomas Geach
*Dialogues of Plato, Jowett Translation
Differentiate or Die - Survival in our Era of Killer Competition, Jack Trout
Direct From Dell - Strategies That Revolutionized an Industry, Michael Dell
Dream Interpretation - The Secret, David F. Melbourne and Dr. Keith Hearne
*Erections, Ejaculations, Exhibitions and General Tales of Ordinary Madness, Charles Bukowski
Essays in Existentialism, Jean-Paul Sartre
Facets of Taoism - Essays in Chinese Religion, Edited by Holmes Welch and Anna Seidel
Free Fall, William Golding
Fury, G.M. Ford
Getting Past No - Negotiating Your Way From Confrontation to Cooperation, Willian Ury
Goodbye Columbus, Philip Roth
Habits of Wealth, Bill Byrne
Hagakure - The Book of the Samurai, Yamamoto Tsunetomo
Help Yourself, Dave Pelzer
Hemlock Bay, Catherine Coulter
*Hot and Cool - Jazz Short Stories, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Julio Cortazar, J.F, Powers, Maya Angelou, Amiri Baraka, and Others
How To Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie
I and Thou, Martin Buber
In Our Time, Ernest Hemingway
In Six Days - Why Scientists Choose to Believe in Creation, Edited By John F. Ashton, PhD
*Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino
Irish Journal, Heinrich Boll
Jack - Straight From the Gut, Jack Welch
Journey To The End of The Night, Louis-Ferdinand Celine
Letters From Thailand, Botan
Like Water For Chocolate, Laura Esquirel
Love is the Killer App - How To Win Business and Influence Friends, Tim Sanders
Making Movies, Sidney Lumet
Managing a Nonprofit Organization, Thomas Wolf
Marcovaldo, Italo Calvino
Me - Stories of My Life, Katherine Hepburn
Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
Monsignor Quixote, Graham Greene
Music of the Swamp, Lewis Nordan
My Life, Bill Clinton
*Myths to Live By, Joseph Campbell
Nickel Mountain, John Gardner
Nonprofit Boards - Roles, Responsibilities and Performance, Diane J. Duca
*Notes of A Dirt Old Man, Charles Bukowski
Pandora, Alan Rodgers
Philosophy of Mind, Dale Jacquette
Pop Goes The Weasel, James Patterson
Practical Jung, Nuts and Bolts of Jungian Psychology, Harry A. Wilmer, M.D.
Primal Myths - Creating the World, Babara C. Sproul
Promise Me, Harlan Coben
Remember Every Name Every Time, Benjamin Levy
Screenwriting 101 - The Essential Craft of Feature Film Writing, Neill D. Hicks
Six Thinking Hats, Edward de Bono
Sony - The Private Life, John Nathan
South To a Very Old Place, Albert Murray
Stage Management, Lawrence Stern
Stop Paddling & Start Rocking The Boat - Business Lessons From The School of Hard Knocks, Lou Pritchett
Strategic Planning for Public and Non-Profit Organizations, John M. Bryson
*Tha KamaSutra - Special Collector's Edition
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Mark Twain
The Alexander Trilogy, Mary Renault
The Archeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, Michel Foucault
The Big Sleep, Raymond Chandler
The Boy's War - Confederate and Union Soldiers Talk About the Civil War, Jim Murphy
The Decay of the Angel, Yukio Mishima
The Diving-Bell & The Butterfly, Jean-Dominique Bauby
The Education of Little Tree, Forrest Carter
The Elements of Style, William Strunk Jr. and E.B. White
The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
The Good Schools Guide - The Independent Guide to the Best Private & State Schools, Amanda Atha and Sarah Drummond
The Hours, Michael Cunningham
The Intimate Act of Choreography, Lynne Anne Blom and L. Tarin Chaplin
*The Kinky Friedman Crime Club, Kinky Friedman
The Lord of The Rings Trilogy - Volume 1-3, J.R.R. Tolkien
*The Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover, Kinky Friedman
The Master of Go, Yasunari Kawabata
The Mind's Eye - Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, Douglas R. Hofstadter
The Monkey House, John Fullerton
The Name of The Rose, Umberto Eco
The Nature of Mind, David M. Rosenthal
The New Complete Joy of Home Brewing, Charlie Papazian
The Nudist of The Late Shift, Po Bronson
The Organized Executive, Stephanie Winston
*The Pastures of Heaven, John Steinbeck
The Sandman - Season of The Mists, Neil Gaiman
The Spyglass Tree, Albert Murray
The Stage Management Handbook, Donald A. Ionazzi
The Start-Up Entrepreneur, James R. Cook
*The Surgeon of Crowthorne - A Tale of Murder, Madness, and the Oxford English Dictionary, Simon Winchester
The Theory of The Leisure Class, Thorsten Veblen
The Thief and the Dogs, Naguib Mahfouz
The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell
The Wizard of Loneliness, John Nichols
The World As I Found It - Bruce Duffy
Theatre Management and Production in America, Stephen Langley
Through The Brick Wall - How To Job Hunt in a Tight Market, Kate Wendelton
*Tishomingo Blues, Elmore Leonard
Train Whistle Guitar, Albert Murray
Tuck Everlasting, Natalie Babbit
Tuesdays with Morrie, Mitch Albom
Unleashing the Killer App - Digital Strategies for Market Dominance, Larry Downes and Chunka Mui
Venice - Tales of the City by Thomas Mann, Edith Wharton, Orson Welles, Casanova, Jeanette Winterson, Jen Paul Sartre
Very Old Bones, William Kennedy
Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech
What They Don't Teach You At Harvard Business School, Mark H. McCormack
*Women, Charles Bukowski
Woody Allen - A Biography, Eric Lax
Yukio Mishima on Hagakure - The Samurai Ethic and Modern Japan
* Have been taken
June 24, 2007
Who was that guy?
After way too many years, I'm getting rid of all my old books. While thumbing through a copy of Hagakure - The Book of the Samurai, a few small notes fell out in my handwriting. It's always interesting to revisit your former self, if only for a few moments, even if you don't remember who the hell that was. Here's what interested that guy back then (20 yrs ago).
From Beauty and Sadness, by Yasunari Kawatabata -
p32 - "Only the beauty of it had been heightened, to the point that it was unmarred by any moral questioning."
p163 - "Time flows through human beings in the same way but every human being flows through time differently."
From A Passage to India, by E.M. Forster -
p132 - "I'm a holiman minus the holiness (just a guy who travels light)."
p245 - She was no longer examining life, but being examined by it. She was a real person."
Response 1: Do you push life, or does it push you?
Response 2: Do you "actively" - with conscious motives - some design or outcome in mind, irritate the equilibrium of existence, or are you a product of environment, moresay nudged on by ulteriors?
To Homare:
A painting, creation, where the colors, textures, and forms and space, light and shadow rather than words, dyes, notes (Is it possible - of course, but who will be the audience?) are human experiences?
Isn't to live a full life the greatest work of art?
Fullness of life? What is it?
What are you to do while inside the painting?
Stepping back to view the work, how can you really judge it until it's finished?
*Stepping back is admitting it isn't done.
Things finish themselves, especially paintings, so shouldn't we just wait until it's finished?
Who was Apollinaire with his head wrapped in bandages?
Upon landing at CKS Airport. It's not really the comfort of going home, or the anticipation of someplace new.
May 25, 2007
Old skier dude
I went skiing for the first time in 20 years the other day on Mammoth Mountain in Sierra Nevada. It was absolutely gorgeous, and I'm not exaggerating when I say there were maybe 50 people on the slopes. I skied in a sweat shirt at 11,000 feet.
The only bummer is that 20 years ago I wasn't old, out of shape, and afraid of speed.
What was really cool is that skiing on 175cm is now ok, and both tips are curled up so you can ski backwards. Back then they had to be 200cm or longer or people laughed at you.
I remember wanting to snowboard back then, and being banned from the lift. Now it's all snowboarders. Times have sure changed.
February 05, 2007
Killer IP
This fantastic patented new technology has increased my efficiency three fold. I can't recommend it highly enough.
February 04, 2007
Baseball caps
Em is my DJ friend in Beijing, and invariably we spend a lot of time cruising around in his environment which is clubs.
I commented in one trendy club filled with not so good music and not so able dancers, "Dude, let's get out of here, there's no baseball cap girls."
He thought that was funny. I explained that I judged clubs by the baseball cap factor. I loved to see girls wearing baseball caps. Usually they were cuter, more interesting, and they could dance a lot better. He asked me if this was some perverse little league desire, which got us onto a funny conversation of what guys like to see in girls. After a while of coercing, I finally got him to spit out his girl thing, which was knee high white stockings. Now I thought that was funny.
January 21, 2007
הלְּלוּיָהּ
I heard a word today I haven't heard in a while.
Someone was saying something in Chinese, and then said "Hallelujah!"
The word that then came to my mind was juxtaposition.
January 20, 2007
Pieces
A band came in tonight, and pieces of my drum set started flying off.
I knew I was in trouble when the hihat flew apart.
Sometimes you just don't know what to say.
December 21, 2006
Something about beer that Evan and I were contemplating while sucking down several
Standard Tree sized serving of Qing Dao beer is 550ml
550ml = 18oz (regular 12oz beer plus a half)
Therefore, a standard four beer evening, with a couple of Long Island Iced Teas = 1660 calories
To burn this off, see here.
I would have to play guitar for 7 hours
Evan would need to engage in 14.8 hours of foreplay
Tony would have to play 2.6 hours of soccer
Tif would have to continue writing for 18.4 hours
October 12, 2006
A jog in the park
It was a nice day and we decided that we should take a jog, so I called my friend James, visiting from Taipei, to join us. I didn't bother telling Jason that James used to be on the Olympic track team years ago, used to be a cop, and had legs up to our elbows. When James gets out of the taxi in his tight running gear and cool sunglasses and bulging muscles, Jason looks at me and says "JFC, you didn't tell me you were inviting an Olympian!"
We circled the perimeter of Chaoyang Park which was probably 5 miles, and Jason made the gallant effort to keep pace. James was sort of shuffling along so he'd have someone to run with. I eventually dropped back about 100 meters happy to have been able to make the loop without dropping dead.
Now I know that if I'm out in the woods and someone with a chainsaw is chasing me trying to kill me, I can at least run 5 miles without looking back.
October 01, 2006
Old guys on a roof
Last night I went over to Ritan Park to attend a friend of a friend's birthday gathering. It was a really relaxed evening, offering a nice rooftop view of the trees in the park, and a great start to the upcoming holidays.
The host loved to play guitar, so there was some picking going on, and it felt like we were all in college again, except with wives and kids and mortgages and job pressures and life stress and obligations, etc., but all that was forgotten for a while while we sipped wine, talked, and listened to music. It turned out that all the guys there were 41. That rarely happens, where a group of people get together and are all the same age. I'm usually the oldest in a crowd as I tend to hang out with younger musicians, and my staff are all much younger. But last night it was just a bunch of old guys on a roof in a park in Beijing.
Afterwards Tif suggested some punk music over at D-22, which is way across town in student-ville, so we picked up road brews, spent 30 minutes in a cab and caught the last set of an all girls band called Hang On The Box doing some weird stuff. The lead singer was done up in thigh high baby doll stockings, a froofroo puffy miniskirt, and yelped in a semi-erotic animalistic way which was enthralling if not a bit unsettling. The drummer looked like a condensed version of the Duke's Chinese girlfriend, Honey, in Doonesbury, and she yelped a lot too, while she banged. The bassist got overlooked due to the singer's thigh high stockings, and the banging, but I think she yelped a bit too.
Evan and Sahil were bummed since there were no women to approach, and I pointed out that young female indie college rockers were also women, but they were more interested in Suzie Wong style approachable women who will sleep with you even if you are old, so we got back in a cab, spent another 30 min back to the east side of town so they could get some phone numbers at Suzie's.
Luckily this place is across the street from my apartment, so after a beer and a couple of boring laps around the bar, I left the two bachelors in bachelor land, and went to bed.
September 10, 2006
Yak Yak
Today I had a bunch of angry people calling and yacking at me about a problem caused by someone else, which I could do nothing about, so I found the best way to quell their emotion was to just say "hao, hao, hao" to everything they accused me of. This really screwed them up, so they hung up and stopped calling.
Afterwards, I was bored and looking around for something to pick up my spirits after being scathed, and found this clip, set to Yackety Sax.
April 18, 2006
You need your head examined...
Ok, a few months ago I was diagnosed with some wierd blood restriction to my head. Ahem, not that head... The doctor had me on some weird meds that made me swim outside of water.
I finally got around to getting a second opinion. [Gosh, so many cliches in one day "getting my head examined", "getting a second opinion". It's all pretty funny.]
They did a cool neurosonagram which essentially measured the size of the blood veins going to my head. I could see them in cool green and orange colors on the monitors. Note: One nice perk about being well known 15 years ago is that you get extra special attention from the nursing staff, since they were all 15 years old at the time, and still remember attending my concerts.
The doctor looks over the charts. "Corbett, there's absolutely nothing wrong with you. Don't work too hard. Relax more. Get a massage once in a while. Next."
Good advice. Now in what order?
April 01, 2006
Once in a blue moon
If you are still up at 1:00am this coming Wednesday, consider this:
On Wednesday of next week, at two minutes and three seconds after 1:00 in the morning, the time and date will be 01:02:03 04/05/06.
It won't occur again until 3006
February 28, 2006
Are you sure?
Today I was working behind the bar, and I got the standard oldtime newbie young Chinese drinker request, "Can you make it real strong please?"
I'm always curious whether some of these drinkers can actually taste the difference, or is it a matter of economy, so I decided to find out. I poured a full glass of rum on the rocks, at least 5 shots worth, and added a splash of grapefruit juice. "Here you go. This is pretty strong."
They tasted it, and looked at me quizically. "I can't taste anything. Are you sure you made it strong?"
Sigh...
February 03, 2006
Maybe I'm missing something
Irene and I love going to movies. We always just show up, pick the one that's showing next, and usually we have an enjoyable time. We are not picky, and rarely if ever pan a movie. We even avoid reading reviews so we are not influenced before we go by someone else's opinions. We are pretty much total non movie snobs.
Today all that backfired. We went to see Syriana, which looked like a smart intrigue movie, great cast, fantastic screenwriter/director. Wrong.
After seeing the movie, I feel angry for spending two hours of my time watching someones expensive mess. I felt like like this is what happens when you give people who are too smart too much control over something.
I kept asking myself - Was this what they really intended the movie to be? Did they actually play it for a control group audience with smart entertainment executives in the audience, and get a positive response? Did they all sit in the editing room and say to themselves, Yeah, baby, this is the shit. This is killer footage. We have a hit here. I couldn't believe it, so I came home to read the reviews to confirm what I was feeling, and was even more surprised that it was so well liked by so many critics.
I must be missing something.
January 25, 2006
David's Concert
Saturday night I went to David Tao's concert. Irene had a few box seat tickets that the producer gave her (perks of being involved in the artist management business). This was the first time I'd stepped foot inside the "Dome," so I was really curious what it would look like. A staff member met us, and led us through a side door, to a private elevator, up to a nicely laid out floor which resembled an airport VIP lounge. We walked through a fancy banquet set up, down some long carpeted corridors, then through a numbered KTV style door into our box seats.
We were sharing the box with Harlem Yu, Jiao Jiao, and a few others. I felt kind of sad for Harlem as he must've been thinking, "Damn, I could've done that..." while watching the show, but his time is over now.
I was really impressed with the size of the arena. You don't sense how huge it is while passing down Nanjing E. Rd. But sitting there, mid level overlooking the entire stadium, you feel like Taipei finally has a real sports complex/arena/concert stage like a true international city.
David did a great job with his concert. It was definitely designed to work well in China, with the traditional music elements. I think the main focus was to highlight his voice and singing ability, and after the concert no one could leave thinking Tao Zi can't sing. His voice was compressed to the point that he could've whispered and it would have boomed out.
I especially like the fact that he didn't try to incorporate the elaborate feathered dancers or the silly hip hop troupe into his show. He stood there, with a guitar in his hand, and sang strong the entire evening. Pure music, with some saccharine elements where he talked to the audience and introduced the band.
The stage was set up to resemble a jungle, where apparently David crashes his helicopter (opening video sequence). He used mostly a Singaporean/Australian band, had a string section, and three very capable backup singers/additional instrumentalists.
The sound was way better than expected, considering how impossible it is to get it sounding right in a dome. I spoke with one of the producers after the show about the sound, and apparently David irritated the Dome management by bringing all the sound and lighting equipment from Hong Kong. The Dome wants groups to use the in-house equipment which apparently is not so great, and pretty expensive.
David's sound engineer from HK was excellent, able to go from delicate acoustic guitars to thrashing rock concert to solo piano. It was a good show, but my ears hurt a bit since it was pretty loud.
The next day, all the controversy hit the fan, about all the extortion going on behind the scenes. Apparently everyone got a piece of the pie, except the promoter, who ended up holding the bag. Such is the entertainment business. Where there is decent money to be made, there is always someone there to take it away.
January 11, 2006
Fix it guy
I've been kind of busy on a variety of projects. Mostly fixing broken stuff. Every three months or so stuff starts to break, and it usually takes a month to get it all working again. I've been going through this course now for 6 years, my tenure running the Living Room. It typically occurs like this:
Air cons
Car
Computers
Stage equipment
Electrical
Personal health
I think I've become the consummate fix it guy. I can pretty much fix anything now.
December 26, 2005
Nice intimate Christmas
A few weeks ago, a group of French friends were at the Living Room, and I saw a familiar face, Father Benoit, the priest who married Irene and I. We had lost contact and hadn't heard from him in 9 years, and there he was in our place. A nice surprise. So we made plans then to meet on Christmas for dinner.
Last night we had a little surprise. Benoit arranged for a mini-private Christ Mass, which he delivered, in a tiny intimate chapel in Ding-Hao. I thought this was pretty cool, as the chapel was entered through several long corrodors and floors and doors, and finally to a rooftop. I joked that this was very secretive, the secret Jesuit sect in Taiwan.
This was my first Christ Mass since I sort of dropped out of organized religion after my grandfather and I decided one fateful Sunday morning that staying home and watching TV would be more entertaining than hanging around a bunch of old ladies eating donuts. I think I was 12 then. Brought up Christian, I still remembered the Lord's Prayer, and had some idea what was going on. I could even participate in the wafer/wine ceremony since I had been baptised as a kid.
Afterwards we celebrated with a nice Italian dinner and some pleasant conversation. It was all very nice and something quite different from Taiwan.
November 08, 2005
Limbo day
Today is one of those weird days that just sort of hangs in limbo.
I had to dig through five boxes filled with 110 years of Wall family photographs, documents, and momentos, searching for one document in a manila envelope I carelessly placed in one of the boxes before shipping it all back to Taiwan. It has eluded me for months.
I found the document finally (in the last box), but also uncovered a lot of left over feelings for the past. I found a diary I kept while taking a three month long bike trip through the east coast of the US. I was reading a lot of Sam Beckett at the time, so the diary is introspective in a weird way. As I read it I could see everything all over again from the eyes of a 21 year old. I saw all my old grade school report cards, my music certificates and awards, and I also found all my old essays, writings, poems, short stories from college. It was hard to remember back that far, but I have to admit there was some good stuff in there. I might have been a writer if the ball bounced a different way.
Women also played a pivotal role in my development, as there were always plenty of them around, and it was strange to meet them once again in photographs or letters. One nice leftover was realizing that my best friend then is still my best friend now.
Recently I've been thinking about the things I've accomplished, or haven't accomplished, and I realized that I don't really care much either way anymore. Maybe that's bad. It used to mean a lot to attain one of my goals. Whether it was releasing a new album, or visiting a new country, or starting a new business, whatever, it all meant something. These days, it seems that the daily motion of daily life is good enough. Whether that's Taiwan or old age, it's hard to tell.
October 18, 2005
Our third dog
Meet Tress...
She's the one on the left. Her sister is at Steve's house, and her name is Heather. Their mother was a sheepdog named Yvonne, and their dad was a black lab named A-Tu. The cute little girl is Steve's daughter, Jasmine. You can read all about how A-Tu got lucky here.
September 14, 2005
Damn that's hot
Paul finally convinced me to try his daily dose of cayenne pepper treatment after showing up at the club with a bottle of the stuff. What you do is dump a heaping teaspoon of cayenne pepper into some hot water, and drink it down.
I did it, and if my blood could talk it'd sound like James Brown.
Read this if you are interested in sounding like James Brown too.
September 04, 2005
Sorry, I didn't hear you...
Can't believe it's already September. Turning the corner into the last lap before New Year. I used to try to get stuff done on a daily basis. When that proved impossible, it became a weekly basis. Now it seems like if I can get a couple things done a month, it's a major accomplishment.
I took Irene to an ENT doctor the day of the typhoon. She was coughing and feeling pretty bad. She asked me if I wanted to check out my ear as well (I feel like I've been losing some hearing in my right ear), so I asked the doctor about it. He probed, scraped, then started asking me a bunch of non ear related questions. Most of them I answered with a yes. Then he asked me to stand on a scale like device which was some sort of balancing machine reader.
"Hmmm, 2.85..."
Then he spun a gigantic striped prayer wheel type thing, and had me follow the stripes to the left and to the right.
"Hmmm..."
He spent 5 minutes with Irene, who is visible ill, but like 20 minutes on me.
"Ok, doctor, so what the hell is going on?"
"So you sometimes wake up in the morning, and can't make a fist. Like your hands are stiff?"
"Yup."
"And you have a lot of tension in your neck and shoulder areas, sometimes causing headaches?"
"Yup."
"And you sometimes feel a little dizzy?"
"Yup."
"And your back hurts?"
"Yup"
"And your feet are sore when you wake up?"
"Yup."
"And you forget things?"
"Yup."
I'm thinking, gee, I work all the time, standing on my feet until 3 or 4 in the morning, dealing with constant stress, in a smoke filled environment, with loud music, and don't get enough sleep, and I've always forgotten things, so all this is all pretty normal...
"It appears you suffer from restricted blood flow to your cerebellum."
"What?!"
"The veins in your neck may be constricted, resulting in a lack of blood flow to your cerebellum, causing your slight hearing loss, and these other issues."
"And you have tonsilitis."
"What?"
"And you have chronic allergies."
"Yeah, that I know."
He said "cerebellum" twice. That definitely gets your attention. Then he prescribes the meds. I take the first two days, and each dose makes me feel like a triple scotch on the rocks. Ok for the evening, but not so great at 10am.
So I'm off the meds until I get a second opinion and maybe take my cat in to get scanned.
July 22, 2005
On the road...
Not much online time as "wireless internet" does not rhyme with "Motel 6." This long overdue trip is winding down in Dallas where there are more highways signs and franchised restaurants per square mile than anywhere else in the US
Spent some family time in San Antonio, drove a killer long drive to El Paso, found out that the tacos at DQ are better than Taco Bell (at least in Texas), ate way too much Mexican food for my intestines, had time to do a lot of overdue contemplation to country music over satellite radio, 105 heat, and endless stretches of two lane roads, made it into Taos, than over Wolf Creek pass to Denver to pay respects to my Grandad, and say goodbye to the memories left in Colorado for the past 17 years.
Chris took this shot of me on his balcony in Mill Valley, while we contemplated what the hell happened to the past 20 years...
July 08, 2005
Sheeeet! It's ain't hot
Texas is a BIG state. 5 hours of driving and a night at Motel 6 later, I'm sitting in Austin, TX, music capital of the world, on my 4th margarita at TGIFs, sipping on "The Ultimate O Margarita," on the 1st floor of the Radisson Hotel, thanks to Rick Monday, whose high school buddy, Dennis, the head of Engineering for the hotel, who hooked us up with an exceptional employee rate.
The reason I'm here is because Irene is konked out from jet lag, and I'm waiting for a thunderstorm to pass so I can witness the millions of bats who fly out from under Congress Bridge each night. Apparently it's a not-to-be-missed sight, which explains the 4 margaritas, because the damned things haven't flown yet, and I'm starting to see flying mariachis and saying, "Yes maaaam" to y'all.
I have about 6 minutes before I give up and go back up to my room to try to wake her up so we can go get TexMex and burn this buzz off.
Today we had ultimate BBQ in Taylor, TX, and foraged around Georgetown buying antiques. Tomorrow we see Dad in San Antontio.
BTW, it's 105 degrees outside the car.
As they say in Texas, "Sheeeet! It's ain't hot."
June 19, 2005
Big 4-0
I got four really nice gifts on my 40th birthday.
1) I was walking my dogs, and found 6 balls in a field. (If you own dogs, you know this is a cool thing.)
2) I played with my new band, The Retrosexuals, to a packed house at the Living Room.
3) Christian gave me a big fat cigar.
4) My mother told me that she was very proud of me.
June 10, 2005
Inside smile
Running a club, I meet a lot of people I normally wouldn't in daily life.
I get to feel the excitement of a new band playing in front of a new crowd.
I get to see people making friends, getting together, and doing cool stuff.
Best of all I get free beer. Sort of. I still have to pay for it in the end.
Yesterday evening I took a night off to meet up with the band, and toast Vitasoul farewell. We're all going separate paths. A nice year of monthly playing. I stopped by three different clubs, had a beer in each, and was surprised that they were all very dead.
I went back to my place, and it was full of happy, friendly, vibrant people.
That made me smile deep inside. Sometimes you forget to smile when you are so busy working hard to build something.
April 08, 2005
On Being American
When people ask me where I'm from, I say the US. Even though I was born in Japan, and am half Japanese. There is hardly any Japaneseness in me.
The US is such a hodge podge of races. We're all mutts, and even though you hold a US passport it's hard to really say you are really American unless you are maybe full blooded Cherokee or something. Living in Taiwan, I think it's interesting how Chinese are so obsessed with family, and fascinated with heritage and blood lines, since most people can only go back three generations. It's sad too, because records were always destroyed, so a "Wu" or a "Chang" really can't have an idea of where they came from except some general speculation.
I started digging into my family history a few years back. This was sparked by the long discussions I would have with my grandfather when I was a kid about when he was a kid. I always enjoyed that a lot. I managed to sit down with him and archive about a thousand photos before he died. Writing down who was in the photos and where they were. I learned a lot about the way life was in the early 1900's.
In 2001 I put up some BBS posts on ancestory sites, and forgot all about it until last week, and went back and saw that there were a couple replies from 2001. I followed up with a quick email to a distant relative who had done an incredible amount of research, and she was able to unravel the mystery of some of the things I had forgotten over the past 30+ years, or remembered incorrectly from my childhood conversations with my grandfather. This helpful relative and I share the same great great grandfather. Her great grandmother was a sister to my great grandfather whom I knew little about since he died when my grandfather was young, and grandpa didn't have too much information on him other than to say he was from a well respected family and had a rich and important father. He showed me the photo of his own grandfather which I remembered to this day which helped verify that the above woman and I were related.
(This flag was raised over the Guilford Courthouse, North Carolina on March 15, 1781 by Captain Alexander Brevard's company, whose militiamen included my ancestor Jonathan Wall. They halted the British advance through the Carolinas and turned them back to the seaport towns. This was one of the bloodiest battles of the long war with the British losing over a quarter of their troops)
Anyway, I think it's just amazing that someone actually dug up and made these pdf images of Revolutionary War documents on my great great great great grandfather, Jonathan Wall, a descendent of Robert Wall, who was a first or second generation American descended from one of these early settlers of the Province of Maryland who landed directly from England: Andrew Wall, 1661; John Wall, 1663; Lawrence Wall, 1668; Richard Wall, 1670; Joane Wall, 1673; Thomas Wall and wife, Alice, 1675; John and Alice Wall, 1677.
Yes, apparently I am as American as they get. At least half of me.
February 06, 2005
Unalaska is as Untaiwan as you can get
My "little sister" Laurie lives in Unalaska, which is in the Aleutian Islands. Looking at the photo she sent me it's as Untaiwan as any place I've ever seen.
If you're interested in knowing what she's doing...
November 13, 2004
The gift of gab
An interesting night. I probably spoke more English tonight than I have in 6 months. Mostly foreigners in the club tonight, and I had a really enjoyable evening chatting away with 3 interesting young women who haven't been here very long. I hadn't been so chatty in a long time, but tonight I realized I just had to say or add or just plain gab. I forgot that conversations with gals were more interesting than the ones with guys. Refreshing to also get a clean windshield wiper view of Taiwan through a newcomer's eyes.
Apart from that, I was just thinking about what are some of the worst places to be when a big earthquake strikes.
1) Under a concrete overpass, in a car, with your seatbelt on
2) At a KTV
3) Anywhere in Taipei 101
4) Mountain biking in Toroko gorge
5) Asleep in a hotel room next doors to a gay sex party at the Hyatt, when they evacuate the floor, not giving you enough time to grab your pants
6) In the middle of plastic eyelid surgery
7) Juggling flaming butcher knives on a unicycle
8) Near a glass tank of tarantulas at the pet store
9) Having a root canal
10) In an elevator with Liza Manelli
November 12, 2004
A picture speaks a thousand words
November 10, 2004
Nothing is so difficult...
We've been hosting the Wordplay night at the Living Room, which is quite popular. They even got me to contribute a poem. The topic that night was: Something or Nothing. Artsy fartsy but fun.
My quick contribution...
Nothing is as difficult as
Starting something
From nothing,
With your hands
Your hope
Your high aspirations,
And yet so many people do --
The lofty dreams
Of something achieved,
Achieved for who?
Who is judging this Nothing competition?
This "I wanna be known for something" event
We participate in without end,
Day after day
Over and over
Without fail we know, but don't know
The outcome?
How come Nothing is so difficult?
