Eastern Europe - Freiburg, Germany & Prague, Czech Rebuplic (Part 1 of 3)

"Why go to Eastern Europe?"

Heard that way too many times before we left for the trip. A better question is maybe, "Why not go to Eastern Europe?"

It is very inexpensive, the people in the tourist areas almost all speak English, the food is excellent, the beer is even better, there are many things you will never see in any other part of the world especially with the recent fall of communism, you get to see their personal views regarding the cold war, communism, the NAZI party, etc. I could go on, but Eastern Europe is an AWESOME place to visit, no question about it, I highly recommend it to anyone.

Strasbourg, France / Freiburg, Germany

Yes technically this is not Eastern Europe, but we needed to start our trip from Paris somewhere, and Charlene has family living in Germany, so it was a great place to start our trip. We originally thought we were going to stay in Strasbourg, France, but actually this was just the pickup spot from Charlene's cousin to get us and take us to their home in Freiburg, Germany (about 30 miles across the French-German border).

Freiburg, Germany was a beautiful area, and it still surprises me how much a lot of Germany looks like St. Louis, Missouri (minus the cathedrals and castles). Very nice open areas, clean, and lots or red clay brick buildings.

As you could imagine, the beer was great in Germany, the food was good with a lot of potatoes and an interesting kind of German pizza with no cheese (I forget the name of it, but it was pretty good).

Prague, Czech Republic

We then took a night train to Prague. We were lucky to find a Czech pub/cafe/restaurant a few doors down from our hotel (the building was over 500 years old). The food was excellent, excellent...and did I say excellent? The beer was also very good and everything was very inexpensive. Prague is an easy city to walk around everywhere.

There are many sites to see from castles, to bridges, to museums, to parks and just local restaurants and pubs. I finally got to try goulash, very good, highly recommended!

They also had a really cool toy museum with many toys from all over the world as well as toys from the "cold war" era.

I got to check out the Museum of Torture Instruments (no pictures were allowed inside). Three floors of torture insturments that were used throughout Europe for hundreds of years.

We took a day trip out to visit the city Kutna Hora that has some cathedrals and a very interesting "bone church". There are bones from over 40,000 people here. I had seen a bone church in Rome, but the design and scope of this church in Kutna Hora blew away the one in Rome.

We returned back to Prague later that day. The following day we went to the Museum of Communism. It is quite amazing to see the changes from WWI to WWII to the Communist era to the modern "post-Communist" era.

We then took a night train from Prague to Budapest, Hungary...which I'll cover in the next post.

Eastern Europe - Budapest, Hungary (Part 2 of 3)

Budapest, Hungary

We took the night train from Prague to Budapest and arrived quite early in the morning. From the train we took the subway. It was quite interesting, the subway cars in Budapest looked a lot like the subways in New York from the 1970's (think of the movie "The Warriors").

The food in Budapest was even better than the food in Prague. I got to try "real" Hungarian goulash which was excellent. 

We also discovered the wonderful spice Paprika. It is very similar to American BBQ sauce, with both a sweet and hot version of the spice. The beer in Budapest was even less expensive than Prague, about $1 US for a draft beer (yesterday in Paris I just paid $10 US for the same size beer in a pub).

We traveled to the main castle in Budapest and I got to meet a guy straight out of the movie "Highlander". He had an eagle, and for about $5 US I got to hold this huge eagle, it was actually quite heavy and felt very strong...then again it is an eagle, not a parakeet, so I guess it's not too surprising.

There was a creative businessman in Hungary around the time of the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. While most people were tearing down the statues of the Communist leaders, he thought to buy them and create a park where people could come and view the old icons. The end result is Memento Park. There are over 32 HUGE statues to check out in the park. Whene we got there, we were the only people so for a short time it felt like we were in some kind of modern day Mount Olympus.

The next day we left for Krakow, Poland...

Krakow, Poland & Berlin, Germany (Part 3 of 3)

Krakow, Poland

By the time we arrived in Krakow, Poland (on yet another night train) we were pretty tired. It was actually quite cold. That morning at 7:30am, it was (1 ºC = 34 ºF). We considered buying some gloves, but luckily the rest of the trip in Krakow, the temperature stayed above freezing. Very sunny and nice, but windy and cold. We ended up staying in a private room hostel. Private room, but public shower and toilets...hmmm not the biggest fan, but it was only two nights so it wasn't too bad. We got to "party" with a group of Swedish college art students, so my awesome idea was to draw pictures of each other.  My favorite was the drawing where I ended up looking like Cartman from "South Park".

On a much more serious note, we went to visit the WWII concentration camp Auschwitz, which is a little over an hour bus ride from Krakow, Poland. I didn't know what to expect, but it is pretty much incomprehensible seeing these things in real life.

It's one thing to watch a video, or old film footage, or read a book, but when you walk into a room and see 40,000 pairs of shoes (yes 80,000 shoes) or two tons of human hair that was cut off of women, your mind just doesn't work correctly to take it in. This isn't a recreation, these are the real buildings, barracks, fences, railroad tracks, gas chambers and crematoriums from the NAZI's in WWII.

The second larger part of the Auschwitz camp in Berkenau was destroyed quite a bit by the NAZI's to cover it up at the end of the war, but almost all of Auschwitz is still completely in tact. I think the impact is something that hits you much later after you leave. It is one thing to read stories, hear an interview or watch a documentary film, but after you actually walk inside a gas chamber where 1000's of people would die each day, it changes your perspective forever. It is not an easy place to visit, I haven't heard of one person visiting, that regretted going and wasn't moved my the experience.

Berlin, Germany

We took our final night train from Krakow to Berlin. A word about trains (both night and day travel) they suck. We both had to literally jump off the moving train in Prague (because no one told us to get off, so I opened the door and we both had to jump off or miss the stop). We almost had to share a night cabin room with three very sweaty, smelly guys in Budapest, luckily Charlene talked to the train steward and we got a private room (imagine a sauna...that's what it was like with those guys, horrific). Then in one trip we had a Canadian guy who snored so loud that I couldn't block it out even with my ear plugs, tinnitus and train noise....HORRIBLE. I guess one good thing is you can save a night in a hotel, but really sleeping well on a moving train that literally starts and stops every 30 minutes (much like a bus) is almost impossible. Plus it is almost cheaper now to just fly.

Oh yes, Berlin. I had been to Berlin ten years ago, and back then it reminded me of a Communist New York. Now it appears they are building up everywhere and there is quite a big art scene. We took a few tours of "East" and "West" Berlin, and it was fun, but really there's not too much to do. It is so big and spread out (much like Los Angeles) that it isn't very convenient to just "hop around" even when you use the subway.

We did the typical Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie sightseeing. Here's my "artistic" shot through a hole in the Berlin wall, with Charlene in West Berlin and me in East Berlin:

After almost three weeks of travel and not shaving, we took a train to the Berlin Airport and flew back to Paris...the noisy, dirty streets of Paris never felt or smelled so good!

I'd highly, highly recommend to anyone to check out Eastern Europe. Very easy convenient travel, amazing food and drinks at very cheap prices, a lot of things to see and just an overall great time.

Off on Eastern European trip

Well technically it's not "all" Eastern Europe, but a good chunk of our trip is visiting some Eastern European cities. We leave Paris today and will travel to:

• Strasbourg, France
• Prague, Czech Republic
• Budapest, Hungary
• Krakow, Poland
• Berlin, Germany

  

We'll be gone for almost 3 weeks, so I have no idea when I'll post again.

Au revoir!

Music homework

We'll, I've been studying harmony and composition for two weeks with my friend and musical mentor, Romanian composer Mihnea Brumariu. My latest lesson was to write the missing melody and add two addional harmonies to a musical idea that Mihnea gave me. Yes only 30 seconds of music, but I spent five days, countless hours, and some brutal "constructive criticism" to get the end result...which thankfully both Mihnea and I were pretty happy with:

Musical Mentor

At an open studio two months ago Charlene had met a composer from Romania, Mihnea Brumariu that is here at Cite Des Arts writing an opera. I didn't get a chance to meet him that evening, but we did see him a few days later in building at we talked for a few minutes. I was interested in meeting any musicians here in Paris, but to meet a classical composer writing an opera was quite overwhelming an intimidating. I asked a few questions and he said he composed using microtonal music. I was interested in hearing his music and learning about microtones so I got his phone number to meet in the future and speak about music in general.

Microtones could be considered additional notes "in between" the frets of a guitar, like bending a note slightly sharp, but not all the way to the next fret. You hear soul/blues/pop singers doing these "blue" notes (that's where the term "Blues" came from) to add some "soul" to the notes, also you'll hear them in the bent notes of blues guitar players. You can't play them on a piano, but you can play them on other instruments and with the voice.

Almost six weeks passed before we were able to meet, but we finally hooked up a week ago. He has perfect pitch, and is composing and writing the opera in his room with no musical instrument or computer, just a pen and paper! We listened to some of his music and he showed me some of his music scores. Some of the music was interesting to me because of the odd meter rhythmic groupings and polymeters so I got the nerve to play a few of the songs I had recorded that used odd meter and polyrhythms.

He said he liked it (that was surprising) so I asked him what was missing and he said harmonic structure. So to my great, great surprise he said that he would teach me harmony and composition every day. To say I was floored is an understatement. Unfortunately he is going back to Romania in two weeks so we will only have a short time together, but I'm trying to be a sponge and soak up whatever I can from his unbelievably kind generosity.

A funny story is that I couldn't think of any way to "pay him back" for his kindness so I got the only gift I knew he would accept, a few packs of Marlboro Red cigarettes (he smokes like a chimney). He laughed and accepted them, but said "no more gifts". The next day he gave me a piece of music he wrote for me as a "thank you".

We only have two more weeks, but he wants Charlene and me to come visit and stay with him in Romania. Opportunity came knocking, and I'm just really glad I was lucky enough to be there to open the door.

Open Studio - short film & jam session

We have met many people at Cite Des Arts from all over the world, but most people are only able to stay here for two months. Some of our friends are leaving at the end of March and we wanted to have some kind of party before their departure. Charlene's 40th birthday was on Friday, March 25, so we decided to have an Open Studio showing Charlene's short film 12 steps to success for Artists in Los Angeles as well as a jam session to "unofficially" celebrate Charlene's big 40.

The previous week I met Pasi Eerikäinen, an amazing violinist from Finland who is classically trained, but also plays in a Gypsy Jazz & Tango trio in Finland. Unfortunately Pasi was leaving at the end of March but we decided to try to pull off something for the Open Studio. It came down to learning two tango songs (by Astor Piazzolla) as well as four Gypsy Jazz songs (by Django Reinhardt) in a period of 5 days, with our first and only rehearsal 30 minutes before the Open Studio. Considering the circumstances, it seemed to go extremely well. All I can say is thank god for Pasi coming and playing so well, he made me sound 1000 times better with his brilliant playing.

Here are some videos from that night's "jam session":

Libertango - Astor Piazzolla


Oblivion - Astor Piazzolla


Nuages - Django Reinhardt


Minor Swing - Django Reinhardt


I think the Open Studio overall was a great success with the film screening, the jam session and just an overall great party (at least 15 bottles of wine, a case of beer, food, etc). Hopefully in the future Pasi and I can play again, because he's an incredible musician and a great inspiration.

Flat Stanley

My friend's son, mailed out Flat Stanley to me from Austin, Texas. He arrived here on Monday. My job was to take Flat Stanely around Paris and document the journey and then send him back to the Austin, Texas. Here's his brief, but interesting adventure in Paris:

Flat Stanley in Paris

Flat Stanley arrived in Paris, France on March 21, 2011.

He was a little tired from the long trip from Texas, but he was happy to travel to Europe. He got to meet Jim, and see his guitar and amplifier.

Stanley also liked looking out the window at the old church across the street.

Because he was so tired, and it was late, Stanley went to bed early. The next day Flat Stanley traveled around Paris. He walked around the river Seine and saw the French flag.

He wanted a “I ♥ PARIS” t-shirt, but it was too big so he couldn't buy it.

He then traveled to a very famous church “Notre Dame”. In French it means, “Our Lady”. It was a very big church and very old.

Flat Stanley left Notre Dame, but needed to go to the bathroom, so used a public toilet. It was outside on the street and he needed to pay to use it, but he had to go really bad, so he didn't mind.

Finally Flat Stanley made it home to Jim's apartment and was very hungry. He eat an entire pizza. After that, he fell asleep.

The next morning, Stanley got inside his envelope and went back home to Austin, Texas.

Flat Stanley had a very good time and enjoyed his stay in Paris, France.

New toys!

My parents are here this week and brought my electric guitar from the USA to France. I went out today and purchased a Vox Mini3 battery powered guitar amplifier as well as a Zoom G2 guitar effects processor (sorry but they had no Line 6 gear at the music store here in Paris). I wasn't planning on making or posting a video, but after two Kronebourgh 7.2% alcohol beers and well...you get a first take, improvisational, off center camera shot video of me playing electric guitar for the first time in 6 months, over a drum loop from the in the Zoom G2, played through the Vox Mini3 amp...ugly warts and all... here you go:

First jam session

Well after 5 weeks in Paris, I finally got to sit in and play at a jam session. What kind of jam session? Blues? Nope. Fusion? Nope. Jazz? Gypsy Jazz? Nope. How about jamming with two electronic musicians that use noise and sound as "music". Jonas Hummel from Germany uses radios and computers to control noises and sounds as a kind of electronic conductor. Ravi Vaid, from Switzerland uses samples, sequences and noises to create an electronic soundscape.

This was an open studio jam session here at Cite Des Arts where we, and 310 other artists live. I didn't have my electric guitar with me last night (I do have it today now that my parents have arrived visiting from the USA) so I sat in with my nylon string acoustic guitar. I'm not sure how to describe it, but we played for about 30 minutes and it was an interesting mix of radio electronics, sampled looped noise creating a kind of "drum loop", some outside crazy sci-fi sound effects and some atonal and sometimes tonal acoustic guitar.  Where does music end and noise start? I'm not sure, but it's an interesting subject to explore and experiment with.

Myself (acoustic gutiar) and Jonas Hummel (radios)

Ravi Vaid (electronics)

The best thing about going out to these open studios, is meeting other artists from all over the world. That night we met people from: Germany, Switzerland, Japan, South Africa, Argentina, Sweden, Tunisia, Russia, Belgium (and even some country in the South Pacific I had never even heard of before). I spent an hour talking to a young pianist from Russia who graduated from a top Russian music conservatory. Amazing, inspiring, humbling experiences to say the least.

In the next month or so, I want to start sitting in at the jam sessions at the clubs here in Paris. I'm working on about 30 songs now trying to get comfortable with them. The plan is to sit in, and play at each of these different jam sessions: Blues, Fusion, Soul, Funk, Jazz and Gypsy Jazz. I could literally go out every night for the next 5 months and have some kind of jam session to go sit in and play at, it's an unbelievable environment here...now I need to stop typing and go practice!

Cost of living in Paris

Well I don't know about "cost of living" but I couldn't think of a better title. We had heard that most things in Paris are much more expensive, so we brought a few things with us from Taiwan: batteries, tape, office supplies, etc. We get here, and things really aren't that much more expensive if you go to the right places. The current exchange rate for $1 Euro to $1 US is about 1.37. So $1.37 US = $1 Euro. Not horrible, so roughly $4 US is equal to $3 Euros. From now on $ refers to Euros.

The joke of "living off of wine and baguettes" is really no joke. Wine is extremely inexpensive here. There is very good wine that we get every few days that is $3 or less a bottle. Also baguettes are $1. I heard this might be mandated by the French government (not sure if that's true) but it is something way too good to pass up for that price. We must have eaten at least 15 baguettes in the past 3 weeks, and they are always hot and fresh from the many bakeries around town.

Junk food is really inexpensive here as well. Gummi bears (and many variations) are very cheap, like $1 for a big bag. A very large bag of potato chips is around $1 (imported Lays are more expensive). Chocolate chip cookies and crackers are cheap as well. The only problem  was trying to find some "Cheetos", they don't exist here. The closest thing I found was some "fromage" style things. Not 100% accurate, but good enough to fill the need I guess.

While wine is very inexpensive, beer is not as popular here and a little more expensive. They tend to sell either small bottles in a 6 pack (about 33% smaller than the normal USA bottle size) or they sell the cans in a larger size (about 50% larger than the normal USA can). I found a beer called Kongenbourgh for $1.09 that is the larger can size and 7.2% alcohol (most USA beer is around 5%), this seems to be working out well so far.

So in summary, these are the results from shopping in Paris:

INEXPENSIVE:

• wine
• baguettes
• mustard
• candy
• cookies
• potato chips

REASONABLE:

• beer
• cheese
• fruits & vegetables
• fast food (McDonalds, Subway, etc)

EXPENSIVE:

• soda
• meat & fish
• eating out at restaurants

Music in Paris

We have been in Paris for 10 days now, and in that time I have seen:

• An organ concert at Notre Dame Cathedral
• Rock band
• Jazz jam session
• Funk jam session
• Brahms piano recital
• Fusion jam session

And there are still a few more jam sessions I would like to check out (Blues, Soul, Gypsy Jazz, Bluegrass...yes even Bluegrass). There are some great players in Paris (especially the Jazz horn and piano players). It was interesting going to jam session in Los Angeles the past few years, because that's where the best musicians in the world live and play (and you never knew what famous musicians may sit in and play that night). The one thing that Paris has over Los Angeles, is that the musical environment is much more open. In Los Angeles, it is pretty cut throat and difficult to make a living as a musician, so people are friendly, but it's a strange relationship among musicians there...it's kind of hard thing to describe.

There are two clubs that are 5 and 15 minute walks from me that have the jam sessions, so in a few weeks after my parents visit and bring my electric guitar. I'll start sitting in and playing. I need to get my jazz/fusion/blues chops up to par because all I've been playing the past 6 months has been a nylon string acoustic guitar. I've got 3 weeks to get about 20 or so "jam songs" ready so I don't fall flat on my face.

One cool thing is that most of these clubs have the band underground in a "cavern". It really is like walking down a spiral staircase into a catacomb to watch the bands play. The two clubs I've been going to are Le Caveau des Oubliettes (The Cave of Dungeons):

And Cave du 38's Riv' (Cave of the 38's Riv' - I'm not really sure what this refers to):

The good news is the entrance is free to the jam sessions, the bad news, you're required to buy some drinks...oh the horror!!!

Paris

We left Taipei and arrived in Paris 30 hours later (plane change and four hour layover in Singapore airport...very nice and clean airport btw). Paris had the most efficient airport I have ever been through in my life. No custom declaration forms, no interview questions, no searching of luggage...just step up to the immigration window, give them your passport, they stamp it, gave it back to you, and you're allowed into France.

We were picked up by a driver the Taiwan embassy had arranged for us. He dropped us off to Cite de Arts which is located in the heart of Paris. We were then shown the room and it was, well...how do the real estate agents put it? Oh yes, cozy and charming. We're in Paris for 6 months, so I'm not going to complain, but let's just say we have a studio apartment for two people that needed a lot of cleaning before we felt comfortable settling in. We're also limited to a WiFi connection that only allows one person at a time to use. So you can't use two computers or phones connected at the same time, and it's a WiFi connection, so there's no way to use a router or use the laptop as a WiFi "hotspot" to bypass this problem. Again we're in Paris for 6 months so I'll keep my critiques short.

Today we walked to Notre Dame (above picture) which is only a 15 minute walk from our room. This was the second time I had been in Notre Dame, but it was even more amazing this time, knowing there was no rush or tour group holding us back. For the first time, I noticed the largest pipe organ I had ever seen in my life in the rear of the church. When we left, I looked on the church schedule and saw that every Sunday at 4:30pm there is an organ recital, so I know where I'll be this coming Sunday.

There are musicians everywhere in the artist residency as well as the many bars and clubs in Paris. As we were walking through the halls at the residency I heard some mind blowing piano playing. This isn't a conservatory, this is the place where the best players from the best conservatories come to stay and give recitals. I'm blown away. They only allow "professional" piano players access to pianos here, so I won't be playing piano for the next six months. After hearing the players here, I don't think that's a problem, I don't even know if I want to play piano anymore after just hearing these people practice.

The last thing I did was find a bar, Cave du 38 Riv' that had jazz concerts and jam sessions on Monday nights, it is less than a five minute walk from our room. I'm going to the jam session this Monday night to check it out (I have no electric guitar with me yet) but I wanted to see the level of guitar playing, so I went to a jazz show tonight. Well, I tried to go. I walked up to the door of the club at 10:30pm, the sign on the door showed the show started at 8:30pm, so I walked in and no one was there. Just a sign indicating the price, but I heard music from the band downstairs. I waited a few minutes, no one came, so I decided to walk downstairs to check it out. I walked down two flights of stairs and came face to face, stage-left with the guitar player in the band, who gave me a look of "wtf are you doing here?". I stepped back a little, then thought, "oh maybe you walk past the band to get into the club. So I walked up towards the band and saw an entire club full of people and realized there was no way to walk past the band and not disrupt the entire show. I walked back upstairs, waited five minutes, still no one came up, and then I decided to jsut leave. The guitar player was very good (kind of like Alan Holdsworth) but nothing like the skill level of the piano players I heard at the artist residency, so at Ieast I have some level of confidence left to go back and sit in and try my hand at the many jam sessions available in Paris.

Two days into Paris, and it's pretty interesting. I need to work a LOT on my French because there's nothing in English here. People are very friendly after seeing the effort to try to speak French. I mistakenly asked the woman at the Paris City Hall "est-ce que vous parlez Francais?" (Do you speak French? - when I meant to ask Do you speak English?). She just laughed. I apologized and then asked in French for a map of Paris they give out for free and she laughed again at my effort, but understood, and gave me the map and a bunch of other free stuff.

I don't have a big ego when it comes to music or language, but what ego I've got, is really getting crushed quickly. Tomorrow should be fun, we're taking the Metro (subway) to visit one of Charlene's friends. More chances to use my amazing French skills, I'm sure it will be and interesting adventure.

Off to Paris

24 hours from typing this post, we'll be on a plane flying to Paris, France. It has been an extremely fast 5 months in Taiwan. This last month has been challenging because I've been sick three out of the past 4 weeks with two different colds. I haven't been well enough to do as much work with Animals Taiwan and Harmony Home as I had hoped to do, but I'm very happy I got a chance to meet the people and work with two great organizations.

Talk about cutting it close, we rented out and subleased our apartment 24 hours before our flight leaves. We had three different people come and say they were interested and wanted to rent the apartment, and all flaked out on us, so we got extremely lucky today and were able to rent it our for the 6 months we will be in Paris. I thought Los Angeles had some strange, flaky people, but Taipei has even surpassed that.

As far as my Chinese, well, we went to Charlene's high school reunion party this past weekend and I was able to speak well enough to communicate with the the people there (who were "impressed" with my Chinese). I actually ended up having more fun hanging out with the kids playing with oranges and video games and let the "adults" talk about days gone by.

After studying Chinese for 6 months total full time in Taiwan and 18 months on my in the USA, can I speak Chinese?

I guess the answer is yes, I can speak and read "a little" Chinese comfortably. 我會說一點中文也會看一點中國字.

Am I fluent in Chinese?

Absolutely not, I'm lucky if I can carry on a conversation, but luckily being the creative person I am, I can figure out a way to communicate most things with the limited language skills at my disposal.

French?

Well I've been studying French on my own for the past 3 months using the Fluenz DVD course French 1, that I completed today.

Pas de probleme, je parle un peu Francais. Au revoir, demian Paris!!!

Aboriginal Taiwanese Tai Ya Tribe

Charlene and I traveled more than three hours by taxi, train and van ride to visit the Aboriginal Taiwanese tribe Tai Ya. The Aboriginal Taiwanese are like the Native American Indians in many, many ways: the original settlers of the areas, many native tribes that lived in the areas, foreigners came in and "took" the land from them, eventually the current governments gave them areas of land or reservations to live on.

The Tai Ya village is up in the mountains about an hour drive away from Taichung. They get mail maybe once a week and usually do not leave unless they have a job outside the village, or need to go grocery shopping. They speak their native tribal language, but almost all of them also speak Mandarin Chinese.

We were asked by Charlene's high school classmate who is married and lives this village, to come visit and do a "workshop". We were not quite sure what to do, but eventually we decided to make a short film involving many of  the school children in the tribe using photos, video, animation and music all created by the children. The theme for the short film would be 部落 夢想 家 - Tribe, Dreams & Home.

We arrived on Monday and began working with the children. Charlene took a group of kids and worked on cut-out animation, photography and video. I took another group of kids and worked on recording a Chinese song they wanted to sing, worked with percussion instruments, played guitar and recorded some sound effects.  I created a karaoke version of this Chinese song without vocals.  Then we recorded the kids singing over it and even added one girl's homemade percussion "shakers" over the song. In the end we finished the final edit of the short film 8 minutes before the film debut scheduled for 6:00pm Tuesday evening.

By 6:00pm the schoolhouse was full of children, parents and volunteers who all were anxious to watch the movie. We showed the 4 minute film a few times as well as did a live acoustic guitar version of the same song, and also a drum and dance version of another song. It was a great time and everyone was extremely kind and gracious. There is a sincerity and honesty about children that you just don't get with adults. Sometimes it can be frustrating and difficult, but it is something magical that we all seem to lose as we get older, so it's a pleasure to be around kids and experience such a special time in their lives.

Here is the film 部落 夢想 家 - Tribe, Dreams & Home:

After the show we took a van ride down the mountain into town, took a train, then a taxi and finally arrived home late Tuesday night. It had the feeling of being a secret agent, dropped into an area, sent to do mission, and then leaving mission accomplished. A whirlwind 30 hour round trip experience from Taipei, but something I won't forget for a long, long time.

Images in Taiwan

Charlene recently purchased a Canon EOS 550D camera. I'd never done any kind of photography before, but I figured I would give it a shot and see what happens. Here are 32 photos I took in Taipei, Taiwan. I created a video slide show and set it to the song "Rain" from my 2008 acoustic guitar CD "Acquiescence".  I was going to overdub some more tracks to the music, but somehow the simple one track guitar worked the best with the black and white photos.

I'll probably try to follow up this sequence, with a new set "Images in Paris" or something like that. In three weeks we're flying to Paris for six months...time certainly flies.

Happy New Year 2011

I swear I'm not drunk in this video...just a bit tired.

Here's to a good 2011 for everyone!

Harmony Home on Christmas

A few months ago, Charlene and I went to an outdoor Fire Festival in Taipei. There were many dancers and performers doing fire dances, but there was also a group soliciting donations called Harmony Home. It is kind of an orphanage for children born with HIV, and has been around in Taiwan for over 20 years. We donated some money but I really felt like I "wanted to do something". It's one thing to screw up your life, but to be born into this world without doing anything wrong and have a strike against you is pretty fucked up. Up until this previous week I was too busy with classes to find time to volunteer, so finally this week we were able to go visit Harmony Home.

I had sent them an application and my resume, and they invited us to their Christmas Party, and also mentioned about me bringing my guitar. Charlene went to buy some presents and I prepared some Christmas songs to sing and play. When we arrived, it was an amazing sight, many, many, many people showed up to the party. Actually quite a few Santa Clauses showed up as well bringing gifts. All of the children were extremely friendly and happy, there are roughly 40 children that live at this branch of the Harmony Home shelters. Eventually there was a small lull in time between opening presents, dancing and food, so I got my guitar out and sang some classic Christmas songs in English. They might not know all of the words, but certainly know the melodies. It was a really great time and I'm looking forward to going back to help out next week. I'll be bringing my guitar again. It is funny, the kids have more fun strumming and banging on the guitar than listening to or singing songs.

Some amazing news that we found out was that over 99% of the babies that are born HIV positive actually "defeat the disease" after two to three years. Something about the antibodies from the mother helps prepare the baby to fight off the illness once they are born. I'm not 100% on the particulars, but it is something like that. Whatever it is, it's really great news.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

聖誕快樂和新年快樂!