Sun Wai Dragon Dance

Fireworks and Chinese New Year in Pui O

Chinese New Year 2011 Video 4 of 4 (The Best and Longest One)

My memory Card ran out of room about 15 seconds before the end of this performance :(

Chinese New Year 2011 Video 3 of 4

Chinese New Year Video Clips part 1 of 2

My computer went on standby while uploading to YouTube so I was only able to get a couple up last night.

Here are the first few:








Two more longer clips are coming soon!

New Nepal Post and fort pictures

Day 11 in Nepal



Last Thursday I met Katy in Tung Chung for Lunch and after our Thai meal we went and explored an old nearby fort.
I forgot to upload the photos before, but I finally got to it now.

Sunday Music Jam

Went to the Hong Kong Folk Society's monthly jam at The Canny Man, Katy and Ruth came.  We ended up playing for about 5 hours.  I guess it was about 16 musicians total.  Katy was gracious enough to take some photos.

After hearing about zero degree temperatures in NY this morning I'm thankful I can still wear T-shirts most of the time.

"Yea, that's right, I don't even need to look when I'm soloing..."

Here's (from left to right) Worth, Tony, Jon, and Tanya

First time in about a year and a half I've put any photos up on facebook, after ripping all my others off and out of Zuckerberg's clutches.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2121567&id=44805355&l=8e5001989d

More Pictures from the Pui O Tai Long Wan Hike

eltit

Here is a semi-organized update...
Saturday - Katy and I hit up Temple Street Market and The Lanes for some Christmas Shopping

Sunday - I went and jammed in Happy Valley with the crew, it was later than usual because of another monthly folk jam, this put me back in Pui O around midnight. I realized I didn't have my keys, having left them in the haste of leaving to catch the ferry, and because I had a thousand things in my pocket I didn't realize they weren't there until I got back.  Anyway, long story short, Jonathan wakes up and lets me in and then the next day asks Katy if it was all a dream :)

Monday - Up at 5am to check on my fantasy football team and then stumble out of bed to watch the games shortly after.  Katy is up getting ready and Jonathan is up soon after.  I watch all the games and then head to the post office in Mui Wo to send some "packages." I get home and take an awesome nap, then wake up and in my dreamstate I float down to the beach to meet the T.I. leadership to go out for the end of the year dinner.

The dinner ends up being one of the most authentic Hong Kong meals I've ever had.  Peking Duck, Freshwater Crab, Red Bean Soup, noodles, sticky rice, Grouper, Prawns (aka shrimp). I was glad I went and it was nice eating shellfish.

Tuesday - Not much going on, watched Monday Night Football (more like Monday Night Decimation) took a bath, played banjo, slowly catching up on my Blalock's playlists, cleaned the air filters in the air conditioners and dehumidifiers, finally found written evidence that Katy and I are actually married (knew it was around here somewhere...) This evening I'm meeting Katy and going to Ma On Shan for the night, her sister is coming tomorrow and she needs to get some things out of her room and I need to do my tax forms.

Practise Practise Practise 2

I went off on a massive tangent (justifiably of course) with that last post.  I was meaning to say that my season at TI is done with, my last camp finished yesterday and I won't have any more.  The season only has two weeks left for them and they don't need any additional staff.

So this leaves me at home practizing away at my banjo :) I've been jamming with a couple people and it looks like it will be a regular occurrence.  Last Sunday we played and exchanged songs.  I walked away with a bunch of mp3s of songs to work on this week: Red Haired Boy, Salt Creek, Sail Away Ladies, John Brown's Dream

Last Sunday's recordings:
John Brown's Dream
Red Haired Boy

As you can tell from the recordings, I'm with some pretty awesome musicians (Tanya and Worth).  I'm going to have to get my chops back up to snuff if I'm going to play with them.  It's awesome to have other musicians around that will elevate my own musicianship, give me a goal to work on, and a focus on the banjo.  I will have to dust off my old Sansa mp3 player to make more recordings, or i could actually use my birthday-present-mic with my iPod...

Now I'm going to let the songs sink into my brain and muscles and head to Mui Wo for cilantro (aka Chinese Parsley.... took us a while to figure that one out....) and bell peppers (or as the KiwiBrits call them, "capsicums")  maybe some tomatoes too.  Oh yea, and ingredients to finish my Irish Cream to go with my "Lake Champlain Sunrise" coffee

Peng Chau picnic and hike

More Pedal Kart Movies and Pictures Part 2

More Pedal Kart Movies and Pictures Part 1

KGV
Hong Kong 24HR Charity Pedal Kart Grand Prix in Victoria Park, Causeway Bay, HK

Crazy Haze Today...

The weather has been hot and clear for quite a while now, which is different than usual.  Well, the clear part at least.  I've been up to quite a few things lately and haven't done much updating, but here's an overview.

Last Friday I went to Macau to activate my dependent visa and to acquire some Portuguese egg tarts (probably the most important part of the trip)

I left Hong Kong around 1:30 I think on the Turbo Jet Ferry and arrived in Macau an hour later, I wandered around following a Lonely Planet guide to try to do a walk they recommended.  I took a bus to try to get to some place on the map, after a while I didn't really know where I was going, which was fine.  Then we turned a corner and I recognized a place that Katy and I had been to last year to activate my visa.  I hopped off the bus and saw the area where we had Lapsap Live In Macau on the one night long ago...
part 2 and part 3

I wandered around this place for a while searching for the place that I bought some amazing egg tarts last time i was there.  I walked and walked and never found the back alley place with the mouth burning tarts, but I did find some alternates that we ok.  I also found a Dairy Queen! In South East Asia! I thought I'd stepped through a portal back to the US for a second.  I bought a large chocolate chocolate chocolate blizzard and they served it upside down to demonstrate how thick it was.  It was so think it took me two hours to eat it in the 90 degree heat.


After DQ i walked more and then caught a massively packed bus back to the pier, it was a busy time so the sailing I wanted was booked and so was the next one after that.  So I looked around and bought a ticket from a different company, one that dropped me off in Kowloon rather than Hong Kong Island.

It was a comfortable ride and there wasn't many people on the boat.  The immigration lines were slow, but they activated my visa.  Actually, I opened up to the page and showed the lady specifically that I had it, she grabbed the passport and scanned it in her machine then asked "Do you want to activate this now??"
Me: "......"
Her: "....."
Me: "No, it's cool, I just spent $50 to go to Macau today so I could extend my tourist visa and work a job tomorrow....no need to use it really, I'll just see you in 90 days for another re-up on thee ol' tourist days stamp....It's not like I just showed it to you when I walked up to the counter and all..."

Actually that was pretty harsh, it was fine except that it was slowness I haven't encountered since being in the U.S.A.

After getting everything taken care of I caught the MTR up to a stop near Katy's parent's house in Ma On Shan and took a death bus...er mini-bus the rest of the way.  Katy, Jonathan, and I stay over Friday night and I caught a bus to Sai Kung Saturday morning with 3 egg tarts in hand.

I met the people I needed to meet on the pier and we headed out on a junk with 60 people looking for a good time kayaking (which I was leading), stand up paddle boarding, and banana boating.

It was a great day for weather and the clients were fine, quite a bit different dealing with adults and having an objective to see the coral.  I got to do some paddle boarding as well.  Overall great day, I hope I can get to do more stuff like this again.

After work I met Katy in Tsim Sha Tsui for our Date Night and we walk for a while :) actually a long while :)
Then had one of the best meals I've ever had here in Hong Kong, an 11 course Indian food "journey of flavor"

Sunday was the usual, except we were in Ma On Shan and didn't have to leave as early to catch the ferry, went to the service and then Simply Life for lunch.  Then came home and I relaxed as Katy and Jonathan went to scope out some additions to Jonathan's room here in Pui O.

Yesterday (Monday), I had a busy day of cooking, Katy and I bought tons of vegetables at the public market last thursday and a bunch of it need to be used up.  So i set off making bread, finished to half opened bags and busting open a third, then while that was rising I started in on some Guacamole, I only had one avocado, but it had enough green mush in it that it was OK.  Then I started baking the bread and got everything else ready in the frypan for when Katy and Jonathan walked in the door with Olive Oil and my latest addition to my curry arsenal  Tumeric.  Then I cooked up some chicken marinated in curry spices, garlic, and lemon juice and we ate until we exploded and our mouths burned off.

**As I was writing this I might have booked three days of work here in Pui O next week** Yay for freelancing!

Lost in the rain in Juarez And it's Eastertime too...

I put some audio clips in this post, but I'm not sure if they will work for everyone, play all at once, or do something else funky so let me know if it's messed up and i'll try to do something different with them.

Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues



I've played so much music this week. "The Lapsap String Band" practiced so much to get ready for our gig at the Turkish Restaurant in Mui Wo.

We've been "on tour" to various parts of Hong Kong, we took a trip up to Tong Fuk on Lantau last week and then to Lamma Island last Monday.

We have a pretty good deal worked out, we walk around or talk to some local people to find out where a good place to play might be. We go there and or a drink or whatever and we just "happen to have our instruments with us" then within 5 minutes of being there the inevitable question comes. "You guys playing somewhere?" "Do you guys know and Beatles/Dylan/Metallica?" or something along those lines To which we reply, "Maybe...we'll pick out a couple songs if you're interested" Then by that time the owner/bar tender is usually into it since 5-10 of his customers want to hear live music. So we sit down and play, while usually acquiring food/drinks from the audience.

Going to Lamma Island was pretty awesome last Monday, although it was a little challenging at first. I had to transport all our instruments to Central alone, so that meant taking a bus with a guitar strapped to my back, hardshell mandolin case in one hand and my hardshell banjo case in the other. So the bus pulls up and just my luck it's standing room only, haha. It was quite the operation holding two hard cases, keeping the guitar from falling off, and balancing myself on a seat. As I was falling all over everyone in the first two rows during the 10 minute ride to Mui Wo an older lady motioned to me to hold the mandolin so I gave it to her for the rest of the ride, it made things much much easier.

So I caught the 4:10 fast ferry into Central and arrived around 4:40 where I met Nate, James, and Bryan. We caught the ferry Lamma and had some dinner at an Italian place there, then talked to some people about where to go to find people that might want to hear some music. We ended at "The Island" supposedly where most of the expats hangout. Sure enough the usual plan came together and we were playing through their P.A. within 10 minutes of getting there. One guy came up and asked if we wanted a bass player, we said "sure" and he came back with his full size acoustic upright. Then the other Lamma Islanders that he plays with showed up, so there was another mandolin, a classical guitar, and a fiddle player. I guess they play Jewish blues music together once a week on Lamma. I had my mp3 player so I recorded a few of the clips from that night:

Red River Valley->St. Anne's Reel->Foggy Mountain



Wagon Wheel



Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad


Unfortunately the last ferry from Lamma is at 11:30 so we had to make a mad dash back to the pier to catch it. We made it with 3 minutes to spare.

The rest of the week consisted of finished up our second set of music so we could have two solid 45 minute sets of music.

We had our sound check on Thursday, the owner wanted to do it early so he could have an idea of the setup on Friday (not a lot of music played there comes from acoustic instruments). That went really well, it wasn't the greatest sound setup I've ever played, but definitely definitely not the worst.

I also went to the monthly full moon party that some of the locals put on. There's a bonfire circled with candles and a bunch of drums an rhythm makers lying around for anyone to use. I arrived a little later and there were 3 police officers there talking with some of the Cantonese speakers and they left after a little while, supposedly someone complained about the noise, which is surprising since it's a good 800 meters (meters?!? yea, meters) up the beach from where there might be people camping in the public site. Anyway, they "recommended that they put the campfire out" and that was it. Police are so much different here than in the US, I could just picture 5 squad cars showing up and hauling people away. After 20 minutes of them leaving the drumming started again and it was fine until I left.

The show on Friday went well, we showed up around 8, finalized our sound setup, and were treated to our complimentary Turkish dinner which consisted of a hot and cold Meze platter and a large lamb skewer. Pretty good food, although nothing compared to the Nepalese food I had last week.

We started off with a set of slow songs since there were still quite a few people still eating. Then took a break and then opened it up a little more with our second set. Before we knew it 11pm arrived, we could have stopped there, but instead decided to play a few more songs and we really let it loose. It was all a blast and we were paid $1000 HKD for our work. Hopefully we'll get a chance to go back and play again sometime before Nate leaves for Malaysia for the summer.

Tai Long Wan

We decided to go surfing over the weekend at a place in The New Territories on the mainland of Hong Kong. The three of us set out Saturday morning hoping to avoid the predicted rainstorm (up to 1 cm) that kept being pushed back and luckily didn't hit until today and it was very minor. It was a pretty nice day (in the lower 70s) as we caught the slow ferry to Central (damn you holiday schedule) . We ate a late breakfast at Subway and made our way to the MTR station and caught a train north off Hong Kong Island and into the mainland, then transfered to an eastbound train heading toward Sai Kung. We hopped on a mini-bus that brought to another bus stop where we were able to board a double decker that brought us the rest of the way to Wong Shek Ferry Pier (Seen in the background here, these pictures are from when we were leaving because I didn't take any on the way there...)

We asked around to see how we could get out to the Chek Keng Ferry Pier where we would then have to hike another 45 minutes to Ham Tin and finally Tai Long Wan (pronounced Die Long Wan, all T's are pronounced as D's in Cantonese). As we were looking at a map on the pier a lady who ran the shuttle boad came up to us and through the usual hand signal/pointing/broken Cantonese we were able to get her to bring us to where we wanted to go for $40 HKD each. So we were off.





We learned from the other few people before we got off the boat that we paid twice as much for the ride as they did. This happens so much, I like to call it Gweilo tax. I hope they feel real good about getting an extra $3 US out of some "rich" Westerners. The vast majority of people are really great and helpful, but the almighty dollar always wins out. And it's frustrating not knowing enough Cantonese to understand in these situations.

We arrived at the pier and started our hike in. All of the hiking paths in Hong Kong are actually paved with cement, brick, or stone. This is has its pros and cons, on one hand it's really good at stopping erosion and keeping people on the paths (nothing like a 3 foot fall into the jungle to make you stay on the cement).


We hiked along the sidewalk up and over the hill and down into Ham Tin and then Tai Long Won right after. There is a surf shop/gear shop/restaurant open on the weekends there.

We arrived at the beach and I was in awe of these massive waves and the beauty of this place. If it wasn't for the dozen other people and ton of garbage it could be one of those tropical island beaches everyone dreams about.











We got in around 3pm and went on a wood run then we went and had some food at the restaurant.















Then we returned to our site and set up our tents as we readied ourselves for surfing the next day. I used my knuckle striker and quartz and sparked a fire. It was so re-energizing being out there camping, I made a new rock sling and taught Meghan and Danny how to tie a monkey's fist knot. As I watched the sunset, for the first time in Hong Kong I really felt connected to everything, it's the same feeling that occurs when I take two steps into the Adirondacks. I really need to make a point of going hiking and camping more often without kids. It's hard to put the type of camping I like to do in the same category as T.I. camping, but that's another rant altogether.

















It will probably be hard for someone reading this to believe that I had one of the best nights sleep in Hong Kong out there, haha...

I was up and ready to go at around 7 so I got the fire going and boiled some water for some good ol' cowboy coffee, black as a moonless Adirondack night, with a handful of dirt and leaves just to make it authentic :|

We made our way back to the surf shop/restaurant and had a round of bacon, egg, and cheese, then rented 3 surfboards and we were back to the beach.

I don't really have a whole lot to say about the actual surfing. Except, surf paddling is one of the most exhausting things you can do. You lay with your stomach on the board and battle 4-5 foot crashing waves in order to get out past where they break so you can hope to catch one and ride it in. We had a few things going against us: 1) Beginners (me) have much better luck on long boards (unavailable), not the short boards we were on. 2) My surf paddling skills are not the most refined at the moment. 3) For some reason I can't keep gallons of sea water from entering my nose/ears/mouth/sinuses even though I try to blow out a bit as I dive under a crashing wave.

Anyway, long story short, I caught one wave and didn't even try to stand on the board, then couldn't get a wave after the second struggle back out into the sea. So, exhausted I stumbled back to the beach and met Meghan and Danny, also resting from the pummeling.



So we rested, read, then made some Ramen and then went out swimming a little later.

We packed up around 2:30, we felt some rain drops and my watch's barometer said the pressure was dropping fast so we decided to leave before the rain might come.





We thought it would be a two hour walk out, but only ended up being about 1:15 and we were pretty lucky that we cut out like 3 steps in the transportation by catching a Sunday only bus that took us right to an MTR station even closer to home than the one we arrived on. It still took us about 4 hours total to get back, it would have been less if we didn't miss the bus in Tung Chung by 5 minutes.

Overall it was a great weekend and a great trip, I can't wait to go back there some day.

This was a really long post, I usually like to keep mine short and sweet because I'm not sure how much people like to read these long ones. Anyway, thanks for reading if you made it this far.


Ahh, I can't finish this post without adding some of the usual randomness:
--T.I. gives us a tiny little tracphone and for me it's hard to hear and talk at the same time because the speaker is at my ear and the mic is like 4 inches from my mouth on the side of my cheek, so I'll listen and then speak walkie-talkie style into the phone, but that trips some reflex in my brain from my days on the radio at ALE and I start ending all my statements with "over" "I'm clear" and beginning with "that's a good copy." Back in the U.S. I would sometimes do that with voicemails.
--I'm either having an epiphany in my banjo playing or an existential breakdown; it's really not worth explaining, Austin if you read this please answer my IMs, lol...
--I'm going to use chopsticks alot when I leave Hong Kong, they're a pretty great tool.
--I really need to find an insulated coffee cup, I borrowed the one I have now and it's duct-taped all around the rim so it's sticky.
--Baseball season starts today, signifying that the long horrible winter is truely and definitely over, now I actually have a reason to mindlessly surf the internet.
--It was 66 degrees this evening and I had to put a fleece coat on because I was cold, what am I becoming?!?!
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