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Tuesday, January 10 We ended up making the 5 hour drive from Nashville back to Little Rock with a screw firmly embedded in the front right tire, which resulted in stops at every couple of gas stations along the interstate to ensure that a sufficient amount of air had not yet leaked out. So besides this inconvenience and the rear tire blowing out earlier on in the tour, things ran smoothly for the most part. It was lovely catching up with faces I'd not seen in a couple of years. Too bad though we didn't pass through the midwest as there were a handful of dear friends out that way whom I would have loved to have caught up with. From Little Rock, I made my way over to Vancouver, where I spent a week hanging out with relatives and attending the wedding of a cousin. At the wedding I served as an unofficial photographer of some sort, and those photos should hopefully make their way onto here at some point in time. It was a lot less stressful than my first attempt from a few years ago, as this time there were at least 4-5 others with similar roles. It was a rare and precious moment, to have so many members of our family gathered together in one place. I know my grandfather definitely got a kick out of having so many of his children and grandchildren around. He turned 94 the same day I turned 28, and it was just amazing to see a man his age still so full of life. During my stay at his home, he would cook bacon and eggs for my brother and I every day upon his return from his morning walk. He gets around the area on his own two feet and needs no help around the house. It was nothing short of inspiring to witness this and has taught me that at 28, there is still a lot waiting for me in life. Upon my return to Hong Kong, I spent the months of October and November making trips into China to play spot shows in the three major cities - Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. It was my first time to all three places so I lost no time in seeing as much as I could of these places with the limited time I had. I shot a number of rolls on those trips, but due to recent financial constraints, they are still sitting on a shelf waiting to be developed, along with 15 or so other rolls. Haha. In Beijing I had the pleasure of meeting and being treated to dinner by some guys from Tookoo, who describe themselves as China's first emo band. It was a real joy meeting people from another part of the country with a similar taste in music, and to catch a glimpse of how it is to live as musicians where they are. I hope to make frequent trips up there in times to come, to be somewhat involved with that they have there. Who knows, maybe I'll eventually end up living there, when Hong Kong's identity continues to be stripped away on a daily basis by greedy developers and the likes. October also saw the first show of THELOVESONG in well over two years. It's a wonderful project that my brother Ben started when I moved to Chicago many years ago and now I have joined in along with a couple of other dear friends. We've been having a lot of fun in the past few months with this and hope to get a lot more busy in 2006. Until then, you can hear some tunes on our myspace page. In other areas of my music life, I have finally begun to write (and complete) a handful of tunes under an undisclosed moniker. In a way they are what I wanted to do with Unwed Sailor after the Marionette record, so fans of Marionette or song Shadows off the For Jonathan comp may enjoy what I have to offer. I'm not sure where I want to go with this at this point in time. Ultimately, I'd like to see how I can incorporate my songs with my photos, to create some new kind of audio/visual experience. Speaking of my photos, 4 or 5 of them have made it into the Horizon book recently published by the Lomography Society. It's kinda neat to see my snaps within the pages of a book, and it brings me a significant amount of pleasure to be the only one from Hong Kong whose photos made the cut. At some point I'd like to also do more with my photos. Besides enjoying the photo-taking process, I might as well try to look into other uses of my photos. One idea I've started toying with is that of an Unwed Sailor photo journal. It will essentially be made up of the photos I've taken between 2000 and 2005: on the road, in the studio, etc. It was when I started touring with the band that I began to take an active interest in photography, so in a way it also serves as a timeline of what I have done with photography in the last five years and that it can hopefully illustrate how my understand of the art has changed/improved. There are probably a couple thousand images to choose from; that's going to be the hard part. I'll worry about the publishing/finances side of things later. This coming weekend will be spent in Toronto Canada, another place I've never been to, but thanks to music I'll have the chance to experience it for a couple of days. I think we're only going to up with three days at the very most, which isn't much when you take jetlag and the time spent at the venue into account. It'll be a nice little getaway though. If anyone knows of any good indie record shops and such, please get in touch.
Sunday, January 8 This has been, by far, the longest silence since the site came into existence. It's not that I've lost interest in keeping this site updated and such. The reality is that since my last posting, I've found myself increasingly absorbed in the 'real world', involved with bits and pieces of life that have no real need for computers and the internet, leaving me little time to sit in front of a screen to scan and upload the images; a shame actually as I do rather miss the process of sharing a glimpse of my life through these photographs and disjointed ramblings. To welcome in 2006, I've finally made the effort to upload a small batch of new photos. They were taken on the Unwed Sailor summer tour, and to make life easier for everyone, I have made the entire collection of images viewable on a single page right here. It make take some time on computers with slow internet speeds to download the whole thing so please be patient. Enjoy! |