Been a while. Working very hard. Found out there is actually surf here after 7 years of living here. Getting readdy to work and hopefully even play some music at the Asia X Games in Shanghai. MIDI is a possibility too. Let me know if any of you Asia folks are going. Hope all is well with all of you~~

just got back from a gig in guangzhou. we played at the modern music festival there. tons of fun! the headliner for last night was world's end girlfriend from japan and they were simply incredible. just 2 really nice guys (even though the couldn't speak any chinese or english) - one does loops and samples from a laptop while playing beautiful atmospheric guitar while the ingenious jazz drummer swang from pounding cacophony to gentle rythmic breezes. the other act was this french guy called electronicat who plays kitchy surf and rockabilly guitar. would have been cooler at a sit-down place where you could relax and take it in, but it was a bit much to stand thru for an hour. he wasn't a very social guy either (even thought he spoke english very well). i'm going back next week for the rest of the fest. john zorn and bill laswell (as painkiller) were supposed to play with the drummer for the ruins (from japan) but apparently bill l. couldn't get a performer's visa to china. that sucks because he is truly one of my musical heroes. i think the ruins guys is still gonna play with some other japanese folks though and also yat-kah, cobra killer, and beautiful pharmacy, an incredible band from beijing, are going to play. the guys that put the show together are really cool and one of them has an album out on john zorn's label, tzadic.

after the show we went out for some fantastic "chao zhou' food which i would recommend to anyone visiting guangdong - shrimp congee, frog congee, amazing chaozhou pork, two different kinds of mussels, steamed fish...argh! it was sooooo good. oh yeah, and massive amounts of cold beer in a friendly beer chugging fiasco with some new cantonese friends. we were severely damaged by the time we got back to the hotel. then we went out for some killer dim sum this morning. thinking about moving to guangzhou - better culture and better food.

I'm back...had a rough time trying find an efficient way to get dollars back to the states to pay my bill. Finally got an acount set up in Hong Kong.

My company is fucked for the time being because my partner had second thoughts about the risks of doing business in China. Doing corporate English training until I figure out a way to get it back off the ground or find a decent job here. Trying to find something in sourcing, marketing and promotions, or whatever. Looking at Bertelsmann in HK or Guangzhou...anyone work for them? Anyone into sourcing electronics or purses, or anything else for that matter?

In better news, my band is playing the Guangzhou Modern Rock Festival along with John Zorn and Bill Laswell's Painkiller...has the drummer for Ruins playing with them. Mike Patton, Cobra Killer, Yat Kha, and so many other people I'm freakin' out over are playing too! I'm so stoked!!!!

Had an interesting day today. Rode my bike to take some pix of the anti-Japan protests and wound up right in the middle of it. It was pretty peaceful in general but a lot of built up anger is coming out against the Japanese. Seemed like most of the people were there to gawk from the sidelines at a specactle that is relatively uncomon here. Some people jokingly shouted out to me to ask if I was Japanese. Another police officer commented that "the foreign friend likes to take pictures". I had no problem until I got up to the people in the front who were the most emotional with banners and shouting anti-Japanese/ pro-China slogans. When I went up to the very front to snap a pic of 2 guys holding a large Chinese flag an undercover officer ran up an pushed me out of the way and I just booked on my bike before he could say anything to me. It didn't really seem malicious though. It just seemed like they were trying to convince the guys in the front to settle down and a foreign photographer would just get them all excited again. After I got a little distance from him I snuck back and got the last few photos you see of the guys with the banners. Soon the police had snatched up the banners and started convincing people to head home. Still took several hours to get everyone out of there though. After that I went to Starbucks down the street to pick up my g-friend. We went out for Hunan food and it looked like the local restaurants were loving the protests because everyone just went out for dinner after the big event. No sushi though. It's a bummer that all the Japanese restaurants are closed because of all the tensions. The sushi around here is really good and pretty cheap...or...was. Check out the pix...



Troops clasping hands and blocking the intersection.



Backup troops having a rest.



Guarding a Japanese department store.



Angry protesters





Police clearing DengXiaoPing Memorial Square



Military blocking protesters



Protesters blocking a major intersection

Just moved to Shenzhen, across the border from Hong Kong. My neighborhood is total chaos of killer HK style seafood houses, shady businessmen, late night clothing stores, hookers, massage joints, street vendors, pickpockets, beggars, giant fruit stands, coffee/ tea houses, hundreds of people out at all hours of the night, etc. In other words, I love it! Beijing definitely has more culture, better clubs, music, etc., but there's a real wild west feeling over here that makes Beijing feel like a sleepy suburb. The area is so nutty because it's right over the border, so it's where the rich HK dudes keep mainland girlfriends and come over to party on the cheap in the name of business. The lifestyle is more suitable for me in that people stay up late and wake up late. Shops don't even start opening until sometime in the afternoon.

My girlfriend just got here from Beijing last night and we went out for a really excellent V-day dinner that seafood lovers who pay big bucks in the west will be totally jealous of: 6 grilled GIANT oysters, a pound of spicy prawns, two huge crabs done up in chili sauce, a veggie called "caixin", yangzhou fried rice, and beers for about 16 dollars. If anything, I'm just happy to have warm weather and great seafood surrounding me after several harsh Beijing winters. Two hour foot massages are a nice compliment to any Shenzhen evening at a mere three bucks. I think grilled oysters are going to be my new beer snack of choice!

When I get a chance I'll pop in some pix to check out.

For the entrepreneurs - I'll be visiting some mp3 factories in the area to find decent, reliable suppliers over the next few weeks, so if anyone wants to get in on some large orders let me know. Eventually I'll be doing individual orders as well.

out for now~~

off to work at the sweat shop. my girlfriend and i opened a small sewing factory. right now we're making xmas stuff, but in the future we'll be making custom suits, traditional chinese dresses, and basically whatever people see in magazines that they can't buy here, we'll try to make it. bargaining with two retail chains right now to get our stuff on their shelves. spent half the day ironing silk xmas stockings and hats that we made. hired and fired six workers last week. two young couples are working for us now. we pay basically at least double what other factories give, plus food and a place to live. it's been an interesting experience with stories i'll have to share later. can't wait to get out of the xmas stuff and into some cool custom designed clothes.

going to a swedish jazz fest tonight in this place that was a factory during the cultural revolution. now it's a bunch of clubs and art galleries but they have preserved the massive red chairman mao slogans on the walls. great atmosphere for the triumph of art!

beijing is so dry and cold now that everybody is sick with cracking lips, bleeding noses, and downright discomfort. definitely for the rugged and hardy expat only. if you want comfort, go to shanghai. my humidifier is my best friend.

don't read the news much now that the election is over. gotta take a break and control my reality with selective information. some funk and jazz tonight will bring warmth and softness to my cracked lips.

hope you had a happy thanksgiving~~

wrote this in the "sg secedes..." board in CE. gonna have to do for a journal since i'm sick of thinking about what's happened in the last few days:

it's funny SG has seceded from the nation as i'm half way thru a bottle of jameson contemplating the same and trying to make sense of it all. like you i'm sad, angry, anxious, and also embarassed because i live in a foreign country and try to represent the goodness of america in a world of doubt and contempt from people from around the world who once believed in and "got" america more than so many americans. but i have to admit i've had a "back-up" perspective from the beginning that's workin' for me now. my mind could go on and on about the self centered rednecks and chickenshit simpletons that select a president not because he is smarter than them, but because they share the same "see dog run" (or my pet goat) vision of the world. but in a sense, there's a certain justice in this in that bush will have to clean up his own mess and not be able to blame the result on the so called liberals fucking it up. it's sick, i know, but it's the best i can do at this point. if he does well, good for him. if it disinegrates, he and the republican congress and those who chose him will have nobody to blame but themselves.

in the meantime, it's time to occupy ourselves and our angst by giving old america what it wants. if states like california, new york, massachusetts, etc. are the large economies with the education, creativity and entrepreneurial efforts that have been at the forefront of the free and (not to mention wealthy) modern world, while the "reds" in the middle have fought to keep their "fundamentalist" traditions, who are we to stop them? lets just give them what they want. no more will they have to deal with the commie liberals and the gays and the people that think there are better things to do with guns than shoot them at living things. cheney and enron can bilk the people that voted for them, rather than californians who wanted nothing to do with them in the first place. nor do they have to worry about the complexities of foreign policy, new-fangled teck-no-logical objects, economic theories, free press, or long sentences.

in the tradition of the all-american respect for the institution of marriage, it's time for a divorce! they have already gone their way, we will go ours. we will drink imported beer without shame, while they suck down coors lite. we will feast on sushi or veggie sandwiches while they try to figure out why chicken fried steak salad doesn't make them skinnier. cultural relativism at its finest. they can have prayer in school, birth on demand, faith-based economics, and we can have freedom and democracy. they can criticize foreign countries for human rights violations while torturing iraqi cab drivers, and we can create funding for education. they can watch fox, and we can read about it in multiple resources that use big words. they can grow corn and potatoes, and we will continue to make high tech machines, hollywood movies, sustainable energies, and complete sentences.

i read an article today about how the democratic party needs to learn to conform itself to middle america to win. i say FUCK THAT! i'm a god-damned, motherfuckin', god-picked-up-the-east-coast-and-let-the-loose-marbles-roll-west mother fucker. that's what needs to be said here, not to suggest that we modify ourselves to appeal to the idiots who would be used by someone so shallow as bush. i could give a shit if we ever had a president in the white house again. i would never debase what i think a president should be so that idiotic rednecks can relate to his mediocrity and continue to feel comfortable being rednecks. we need to raise the bar to win, not lower it. if "liberal" can become a bad word as someone who wants to responsibly direct the power of gov't and money to the benefit of the most possible people (of all classes), why can't an ign'ant redneck shit for brains be tossed down a steeper stairwell? >>> "it ain't cool, it's your cousin"<<<... that will take the place of the slogan about "back to what america was", or whatever it was that the democratic party used this year.

it's time to start making people feel bad for being idiots. its either that, or we stop financially supporting the narrow-minded "heartland" of america. it wouldn't crush them if we seceded. they would still have tourism from sentimental citizens of the "new states of america", spending our new-new economy cash for a look at the old america, to be reminded that such a beautiful land could be occupied by such a myopic and easily manipulated people.

executing the plan will be easy. we will simply communicate in long winded speeches, and if they ask what we are doing, we will just drawl "nah we'er noht" or "now cowmint", or "ah swayer ahn dee baible", and they will believe because that's what they do best.

so i say do it. as thefundamentalist bush gov't grows closer to its fundamentalist country cousins, the taliban, we simply bow out, secede, and let them have at it. they never liked us anyway. it's just that now they won't have our money, innovation, and creativity to empower their longing for the dark ages.

wow, my first friend request... and it came with a marriage proposal. i'm so honored i'm actually compelled to make this, my first, journal entry. you are my first, brighteye .