Iz A Gotst Me A Banjer

This post is about the three days off I had over last weekend, it's a little late but that's alright.

On Saturday all of us from Treasure Island went to race in the 1st annual 5K Lantau Beer Dash for the benefit of the Lantau Buffalo Association. There were 120 people there for the start there were also quite a few teams dressed up in costumes. It was pretty fun, the guy that won raced in flip-flops and jean shorts. I couldn't find his time anywhere, but it was probably like 16 minutes. One of the guys that I work with took second and he couldn't even see the guy in front of him after the first 1K. Oh yea, the catch with the race was that at every 1,000 meters a station was set up were you had to finish a can of beer before moving on. I got a T-shirt at the end and I was standing in the back of the awards ceremony and my picture ended up in the local paper.

On Sunday we went into the city on the MTR (subway) that was great, we went to a bunch of malls and the IFC building. We also went to Mong Kok where all the street vendors are, it's just rows and rows and street upon street of booths selling everything you could imagine.

I have been in contact with a man that I met through BanjoHangout.org for over a week. I originally asked him if he knew of anywhere I could buy a banjo, since shipping mine over would cost an arm and a leg and be risky. He replied that he had an extra banjo lying around that he wasn't playing and that I could borrow it. Long story short, he sent me a text 9am Monday morning saying I could pick it up around 11 if I could make it to his office in Wan Chai and he would give me directions to there. So I caught the 9:30 bus to Tung Chung and hopped on the MTR. The ferry would have been faster but it was too late to get on the Fast Ferry in to Hong Kong (Central). The MTR system is so massive, each stop has 3-6 exits to get up to ground level and you have to make sure you take the right one or you will end up on the wrong side of a street and have to walk around to find a footbridge over to the other side.

Finding his office only had one hiccup, right off the bat I went north instead of south, but this was corrected with a quick phone call. Then I quickly found the office building and went to the 25th floor. The man that greeted me was a director of operations of a branch of the Hong Kong government. Pretty crazy how the love of a banjo can span entire worlds. Anyway we talked a bit and he brought out the banjo, it's a pretty cheap aluminum (al-You-minney-yum as all the Brits say it) Washburn with a really nice hardshell case. It's pretty much the same exact thing as my first banjo, pretty much a toy that occasionally makes banjo type noises. It's hard to complain about it because it is pretty much one of the only banjos in Hong Kong and this man let me borrow it for nothing more than a handshake and some contact information. So it is pretty awesome being able to play the banjo again. When we all come together; Nate on guitar and James on Mandolin we sound quite good. This bunch of "Gweilos"(Cantonese for White Ghost used to describe most white foreigners) might be playing at a place in Mui Wo at some point soon.

In other news, I've had some fever/stomach/intestinal thing going on since last night and pretty much slept this entire day, hopefully I'll feel better tomorrow.