This year I was fortunate enough to spend my birthday weekend in beautiful Bangkok with my Mother. She had just concluded a 2-week sailing excursion in the Andaman Sea, while I flew down from Chongqing after taking the bullet train from Chengdu.
I had a great weekend and saw many beautiful things! And, of course, got many massages.
I just returned from a weekend of flights every day – Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Fortunately I’m back in Chengdu and sleeping in my own bed tonight! Here are some photos from the weekend:
Chengdu’s new airport terminal. As you can see, it is gigantic. All of this is new.
This hotel in downtown Beijing literally wraps around a stadium. My room was about a 5 minute walk from the main elevator!
A futuristic shopping mall in Beijing
On Friday afternoon I flew to Beijing to give a presentation at a mobile developers conference at the Shangrila hotel about iOS (iPhone and iPad) app monetization. Why’d I speak there? Our company, Tap4Fun, is officially the highest grossing iOS developer in all of China so far this year. Because of this, a lot of attention is on our development process and business model. We’re conducting interviews on a nearly daily basis (today CCTV was in our office filming). Exciting times.
Here are some photos from my day in Beijing:
Waited in line for 30+ minutes to get a taxi at Beijing International, the biggest airport in the world
The first thing I noticed inside the lobby of the Beijing Shangrila
Meeting with the designer of Jing.fm, a streaming music service that takes Pandora to the next level
Sitting at the front of the lecture hall
The conference featured three lecture halls roughly of equal size, hosting thousands of attendees
Speaking on stage at the conference, Saturday July 7th
Walking through Beijing International Airport and the line to catch a taxi
On Easter Sunday instead of painting eggs with my family, I flew down the curviest road in San Francisco on a miniature tricycle. I’ve been having a lot of fun recently, or else I’d say this was the most fun I’ve had in a really long time. San Francisco is a blast. Watch the video above to get an idea for what this annual event – titled Bring Your Own Big Wheel – is like.
Over the weekend, Jovian and I brought Disco Death to Kunming for the first time. It wasn’t without its complications (as we expected the first event at a new venue to be), but we had a good time and came back smiling. The eve
We stupidly waited until the last minute to book our plane tickets and ended up paying dearly for it. We paid almost what it costs to fly to Bangkok from Chengdu, and as expected, we weren’t able to recoup such a significant expense. We took the train back, which took 20 hours, but even that was a pretty good time playing Scrabble and watching the landscape whiz by.
In between going to Kunming and coming back, we had what felt like a 3 day vacation in tropical China. Kunming feels completely different from Chengdu, and it had been six months since I’d been there so it was great to return. We went to ??? and ran into many old friends – Nick, Shonny, and others. Oh, and we witnessed the final night of the Speakeasy Bar. For anyone who doesn’t know, that was the most notorious party venue in Kunming for years and years. I still can’t believe that it closed - that’s what’ll happen though when the landlord raises your rent from 5,000 yuan a month to 25,000. As expected, the last party was crazy.
The show that we performed on Friday was seriously marginalized by it being Speakeasy’s final weekend. Put simply, we were two outsiders competing with a large group of locals (3 bands and four DJ’s) at an infamous bar on it’s closing weekend. Also, their party was free, and ours wasn’t. Still, it didn’t completely bomb which is good. The event was at Uprock, which is certainly in the running for Kunming’s top party venue since Speakeasy is finished. The problem, however, is with the child-like owner who invites us to his club on Saturday but gets so drunk he has to be carried out before we even arrive. Putting my money and time on the line and doing business with someone like that always makes me nervous. My job now is to minimize his ability to compromise my goals in his own venue – even though in the end, what’s good for me is good for him as well. We’ll see how that goes.
One of the highlights of the trip, though? Boating around ?? (Green Lake) in Kunming. Honestly, this photo doesn’t even do it justice:
Recently business has started to pick up – after months of working on music production and developing guitar skills at home finally I’m getting calls. Right now I’m in Wuxi, in Jiangsu province very near Shanghai, and the day after tomorrow I return to Chengdu to do two shows (including the Hemp House 4 Year Birthday party which I’m looking forward to) and then off to Qingdao to play a 3-day music festival. Qingdao is one of the places that I’ve been waiting for an opportunity to visit for four years. Once I complete that goal the only significant city I haven’t been to in all of China will be Haerbin.
Here’s to completing your goals, no matter how long it takes.
The last 3 months I’ve been traveling every weekend – I’m thoroughly adjusted to my routine and recently it includes commute by airplane twice a week. I’m on tour with Chivas but I only do shows on Friday and Saturday, so I return home in Chengdu for the rest of the week.
Every Friday morning I wake up early and catch a flight to another city, almost always in central China (Xian, Changsha, Wuhan, Yinchuan, Guiyang, etc) and work for two nights. As you might imagine it’s not as simple as showing up, doing the show, and going home. Every weekend I play in at least two different clubs (more on extended weekends) and I haven’t returned to the same venue in six months. Each location is different – some are large bars, some look like Chinese opera venues, and some are mega clubs. Playing in such a wide variety of places has been good for me, I’ve learned to adapt to a previously unimaginable number of situations. Sometimes it’s great fun and everyone is drinking and dancing, other times I feel like a corporate pawn who collects the deer-eyed stares of hillbillys who’ve never seen a caucasian. More often than not it’s enjoyable and rewarding, from meeting friendly people at every stop who eagerly give me big smiles, cigarettes, and business cards, to drinking Scottish whiskey with locals who gush to me about the beautiful culture/women/food/lifestyle of their hometown. The worst part is the transit, but I’m getting used to that. I’m used to sleeping until noon on my time and waking up at 6am to catch a flight to here or there. Sometimes I spend 12+ hours in a car over the course of weekend, sleeping in the front seat, listening to MP3s, or watching movies on my laptop. I could draw you a map of the layout of half a dozen Chinese airports from memory.
What separates this routine from most is the stiff dose of unpredictability. I never know how the gig will turn out, but I often learn something new. Despite first impressions at sound check, I can rarely guess how the night will turn out with any accuracy. And when I think I can, I’m quickly proven wrong. The chance that I’ll stumble upon something outstanding that I didn’t know I was looking for is always in the back of my mind. With my American 9-5 routine in mind, all the chaos of what I do here is a blessing and exactly what I came here looking for. Of course, I wasn’t aware of that at the time.
When I get home on Monday afternoon I’m always exhausted. Three days on the road doesn’t seem like much, but I’m always happy to come home afterwards. I wouldn’t be happy to be constantly on the road for months at a time like I’ve been in the past. I really loathe the touring and living in a hotel life, as exotic and cool as it sounds.¬† So when I return home, my life goes somewhat back to normal. Yesterday I played on Xbox Live for the entire afternoon. The day before that I watched Hackers while installing OSX on my laptop (a Lenovo). At least twice a week I go to an American Tex-Mex restaurant down the street. And in between, I hang out with friends, play chess, practice guitar and piano, and geek out on the couch.
I arrived in Hunan a few hours ago and there’s some freak weather here – it’s 75 degrees outside and the sun is shining. I’m going to go walk around, find a restaurant, and order a local dish.
