"Brain Failure" is coming to town! One of my friends is spamming all his email list excitedly. This is the second time this infamous Beijing punk band coming US. I saw their last show in Berkeley two years ago and got very impressed. They were on stage with another all female Chinese punk band "Hang on the box". Only this time they are doing a more complete US tour in more cities.
Founded in 97, the same year I graduated, they have released a few albums in Chinese. A Japanese label signed them and support this US tour promoting their upcoming album "American Dreamer", due release on 4/26/05.
We got to the bar an hour late, then stucked in rediculous long line for another 20 min before we finally got in. The music has already started with defting drum, high pitch guitar, and singer's desparate voice. 90% of the audiences were white males, most of them with dyed hair, black punk jacket, jumping and running in circle like there's no tommorrow. Only a handful Asian faces, I knew almost everyone of them, hehe.
The music was cool, just the way I'd like it to be, fast, energetic, with implicit melody lines underneath. I felt the click when they were singing and shouting like typical Chinese teenage boys. I was jumping, waving, shouting with everthing I got. They were pretty comfortable with staging performance and did a good work keep the audiences with them. No matter what music you played, public performance is always the best way to improve your skill and put your music to test. Only if Chinese bands all have such performance opportunities to perform 300 days out of 365, we will start to see great band like U2 mushroomed.
40 min show was over before we knew it (there were three other bands playing at the same night but I got out a few songs after the next band started playing, their music kinda sucked). I had a breif talk with one of the band members, bought their upcoming CD as a souvnir and went ahead to a friend's drinking party till 1 in the moring. That's the life I am talking about.
Saturday, February 26, 2005
Monday, February 21, 2005
Working on president day
It sucked having to work on public holiday. What can I say, merciless Capitalism. It's been a quite wet winter so far. Storms continued hitting all California since late December. We had continuous rainy days for the last two weeks. Everything grey like the clouds, not a cheerful mood, I can't imagine what it would be like in Seattle, where it rains 200 out of 365 days.
I cheered up a little bit this morning when I was stretching my arms by the window. The rain finally stopped. Actually it was quite a scene out there. Some heavy clouds are moving inland, from the ocean crossing the mountain, rain comes with it, while the rest of the sky is shining. Like an old Chinese saying "东边日出西边雨" (sunny in the east, raining in the west). I took this picture with my phone, notice the heavy fog in the middle of the picture is actually a moving rainy zone.
A half rainy/half sunny day in the office
I cheered up a little bit this morning when I was stretching my arms by the window. The rain finally stopped. Actually it was quite a scene out there. Some heavy clouds are moving inland, from the ocean crossing the mountain, rain comes with it, while the rest of the sky is shining. Like an old Chinese saying "东边日出西边雨" (sunny in the east, raining in the west). I took this picture with my phone, notice the heavy fog in the middle of the picture is actually a moving rainy zone.
A half rainy/half sunny day in the office
Thursday, February 10, 2005
Be careful with your blogs
Be careful with your blogs, it can get you fired like this guy http://99zeros.blogspot.com. A former employee of Google, he was bragging about his day to day office life in his public blog. Unfortunately his comments went too far with google's business "secrets", finally cost his "could be millionaire" job. But hey, he's taking advantage of his 2-second fame by putting ads on his blogspot. He might become millionaire even faster like "William Hung" did. Who knows, it's such a crazy world! I don't give a fuzz about it but those who are still working, be careful with what you put into your blog and don't let your boss see it, there is probably no more fame for anyone who is stupid enough to do it the SECOND TIME. Be wise!
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Happy rooster year everyone
It's new year day today in Chinese (Lunar) calendar, the year of the rooster has come. A few of our friends got together on the new year eve for a nice dinner. We made some dumpling plus yummy hot pots whiling watching CCTV's new year eve show on the TV. It's the next to best thing than going back China and reunite with family and friends there. Got no holidays, no fire crackers, no thousands of people on the street here, the year of rooster still comes as it has done twice before. I wish all my friends a happy new year and "Kong Hey Fatt Choi".
Rumor says no one should get married in the year of rooster. Due to some complicated calculation of the Lunar calendar, there is no spring day for the whole year of rooster. It suggested a bad year for marriage and "all wives are to lose her husband if she dares to marry in this year". Silly maybe, but people are rushing into marriage all over China right before new years eve. Hey, who knows, better listen to it than risk it, isn't it?
Rumor says no one should get married in the year of rooster. Due to some complicated calculation of the Lunar calendar, there is no spring day for the whole year of rooster. It suggested a bad year for marriage and "all wives are to lose her husband if she dares to marry in this year". Silly maybe, but people are rushing into marriage all over China right before new years eve. Hey, who knows, better listen to it than risk it, isn't it?
Saturday, February 05, 2005
Digital Camera Review: Canon-SD300
We said good-bye to our three-year old Canon S40. By no means the old camera isn't good, we had some very good time using it, just look at thousands of pictures we took you will know. But we felt it is time to get a new and better one now.
There are plenty of newer models that provides better resolution from 5 up to 10 mega pixels. I am not too happy with their sizes however. As a family used DC for local trips and vacations, size is all that matters. Honestly, who can tell much difference of 4M picture with 5M one. The fact is a camera that can fit the smallest pocket of yours will save you a lot of trouble while traveling. So here comes my pick: Canon-SD300.
First thing first, the size of this camera is just amazing, the full body is even smaller than the size of my palm. Weight only 0.29 lb, it's even lighter than my key chain. Such small camera however, has quite a big LCD screen (2 inch), and loads of functions. It takes pictures up to 4.2M pixels, it has 3x optical zoom, build-in microphone, can take unlimited 30fps AVI video up to full capacity of the memory card. With build-in white balance setting of for sunlight / cloudy / night / indoor / sport / underwater shooting environment. On the processing side, it has Canon DIGIC II processor, which saves images in better quality; smart print bridge technology to directly print to a photo-enabled printer; some ad-hoc processing tool to edit images within camera.
Nothing is perfect though, a few of the "would be better" features are
There are plenty of newer models that provides better resolution from 5 up to 10 mega pixels. I am not too happy with their sizes however. As a family used DC for local trips and vacations, size is all that matters. Honestly, who can tell much difference of 4M picture with 5M one. The fact is a camera that can fit the smallest pocket of yours will save you a lot of trouble while traveling. So here comes my pick: Canon-SD300.
First thing first, the size of this camera is just amazing, the full body is even smaller than the size of my palm. Weight only 0.29 lb, it's even lighter than my key chain. Such small camera however, has quite a big LCD screen (2 inch), and loads of functions. It takes pictures up to 4.2M pixels, it has 3x optical zoom, build-in microphone, can take unlimited 30fps AVI video up to full capacity of the memory card. With build-in white balance setting of for sunlight / cloudy / night / indoor / sport / underwater shooting environment. On the processing side, it has Canon DIGIC II processor, which saves images in better quality; smart print bridge technology to directly print to a photo-enabled printer; some ad-hoc processing tool to edit images within camera.
Nothing is perfect though, a few of the "would be better" features are
- Flash: it's understandable that such slim camera cannot possibly have a powerful flash but still...
- Battery: It's said on quite a few online reivews that the battery don't last long. I bought one extra battery for shooting freely. :)
- Size: well, it's the two sides of Damocles sword, don't get me wrong, I like slim cameras, I just hate to see my figures look like overgrown carrots compared to those tiny buttons.
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