Posts from April 2007
April 24, 2007
He's free
I was sitting on the 47th floor of a fancy revolving skyline view hotel bar in Pudong tonight having a drink, and Kenny G was on all the video monitors. I finally couldn't help myself, and asked the manager of the nice French hotel chain, a well dressed Dutch gentleman, what was it with Chinese hotels and Kenny G. Was it a remnant of 80's yuppie wannabes, did Mr. G increase business, did people really want to hear his music all the time?
His honest and direct reply made me laugh and do a double take on Chinese practicality.
"Kenny G is one of the few artists where we don't have to pay royalties to play his music, his earlier stuff that is. Apparently BMG screwed up somewhere, and his rights weren't protected, so we don't have to pay royalties to play his stuff in China. He's completely free for us, and we like that a lot."
April 22, 2007
Pretty cool
Today marks the beginning of my 20th year in Asia. I stepped off the plane at CKS with no idea of what would happen to me, marvelling at the sea of black heads whizzing by. My mantra then was, "Let's see what happens."
Fast forward 19 years and that same person is still walking through the same sea of black heads, still reciting the same mantra, and this time even further into a China that didn't exist back then.
After all this time, I think the only thing I can say for certain is that people don't change, nothing is what it seems to be, and you never really know what's going on.
Funny how that works. The more you do, the less you actually know. It's a lot like that calculus equation where you can get really close to 0 but never actually ever get there.
I still don't know why I ever came to this hot, crowded, complicated place, but I'm glad I did, because I've found a wonderful wife, an interesting life, and something different to do every day. That's pretty cool.
I've never figured out whether it's pronounced "Moe's (like owned by one of three stooges) or Moss (like that guy out of Bonanza), but the one down the hill from me is open until 2am most days, which means that if I get out of the club early enough, I can catch the best burger in town, the muo si la bao or the Spicy Mos Burger. They have lots of jalapenos and 
