The Portfolios

I’ve been looking for a job about 2 and a half weeks, I haven’t got anyone yet, I’m a little worried about it.

This is my first time writing english in my family blog, my husband Rindy always bothers me to write something on our blog, so, here I am!

I don’t understand why people want to write blogs? I’m sure we have enough “friends” to keep our social activities going on in social occasions. So, why is that? Why do we need a blog? Why does everyone have to become a blogger? And must we share our mind with strangers in the whole world?

OH, got you! Because we’re lonely, we’re poor humanity, hypocritical, artificial, arrogant, mammonists…….So, we found a space–”BLOG” to continue our vicious and selfish desire in the fake world. Don’t deny the facts, try to grow up in this real life, move on, if we’re not trying to paralyze ourselves.

Anyway, it’s your right to live wherever. And I choose to look for a job, look for life, live in reality!

Spring arrived today with plenty of glorious sunshine, and we spent it on the lawn at the city’s biggest patch of green, Century Park. Way at the end of subway line 2, out in Pudong, this park is one of the few in Shanghai where people are actually allowed to walk and sit on the grass, and we took full advantage. Michael, Kadzue, Coley, Jeff, Charlie, Yoyo and I all sat on the lawn eating friend chicken and xiaolongbao and throwing the frisbee all afternoon. A perfect Sunday.

This is the cover of the first issue of Rolling Stone China (Guan Shi). The man featured is the legendary Cui Jian, the “Godfather of Chinese Rock.” All media references to Cui Jian inevitably bestow this moniker on him, to the point of ridiculousness. However, it is appropriate because he is basically, for China, a combination of Chuck Berry, Elvis, the Beatles and Dylan: he is “the man who started Rock and Roll.” The magazine itself features an interview with the man, who really hasn’t done much in the last ten years or so, but was definitely a bad ass back in the day, getting banned by the government, etc. He was eventually embraced by the Communists, and I believe he did a concert on the Great Wall. After the big story on the Godfather, the mag is mostly full of American pop culture, mostly translated from the American issue. U2, specifically Bono, feature prominently. A piece about “Renegades” has pages on Hunter S. Thompson, Mick Jagger, and Michael Moore. There are some pieces about Chinese artists, most of which I am wholly unfamiliar. And there is a piece about Rolling Stone itself, which explains the history of the magazine and shows a lot of old covers. All in all, it looks pretty cool, printed on big glossy pages like the American version. Will it sell in China? Who knows? Even though I don’t understand a word, I’ll probably buy it for the pictures. And if something looks good, I’ll ask Yoyo, “Baby, what does it say?”

Jeff and Coley throw some great parties, and this one was no exception. The picture on the left shows Jeff, who is from Orange County, CA, and recently was accepted to San Diego St for grad school. He will be leaving Shanghai, sadly, this summer to get his master’s in International Relations. To the right is Coley, his roommate, who works for Accenture on their project to reform the Shanghai stock exchange. And lastly is the famed Chairman Mao, who is a regular at these parties and always has a good time.

Yoyo’s best friend Da Hai was in town on business for a week and we got to hang out with him for a few nights. I wrote about Da Hai before here, he was the one who got Yoyo the modeling job. He is really a nice kid, though a little shy, and he had a tough time for a couple of years in Beijing before he found steady work. In pursuit of his dream to be involved in the fashion industry, he endured several years of design school with little support from his parents apart from tuition, during which time many of his meals consisted of nothing but a little dou ban jiang (red bean sauce) on white rice. Now he has a good job and is working his way up to the top of the Beijing fashion scene. Slowly but surely.

Georgia Sam has been doing a lot of gigs lately. We now have a residency at the Shuffle Bar, a relatively new place in a nearby neighborhood which used to contain our old favorite bar, Tang Hui. We are still waiting for Tang Hui to re-open after their unfortunate closing last year. In the meantime, Shuffle Bar will do. We have been helped out very much the last two weeks by friends of ours, mostly Sam Hooper (pictured here) of the Sam Hooper Band out of Boston. Sam and his band just finished up a five-month stay at the House of Blues and Jazz, during which time we all became friends, especially during Sunday night open jams. We got our gig at the Shuffle just as his was finishing, and so we asked him to come down, and he was happy to do so. Sam can really play the blues and it was truly an honor to share the stage with him on two fantastic nights.

The Rolling Stones are finally making their mainland China debut after many delays, and we have tickets! I successfully booked 23 tickets together for Yoyo and I and many of our friends. The show will be on Sat., April 8 at 8pm.

I cooked salmon for the first time and did a fantastic job if I do say so myself. Xianyi was very impressed and we had a lovely Saturday night in watching movies and drinking wine.

Hey, folks. This is my best friend Dave. He’s the man. This the most recent picture I have of him (that’s not his kid, if you’re wondering). Dave turned 26 on February 27th, and while I wrote him a quick birthday email on the day, I forgot that I’m supposed to be adding to this blog on a frequent basis, in case anyone is out there reading, so here goes. Dave has recently taken a job with a new band. He is a real showman, a frontman singer who really gets the crowd going. His current band, the Chicken Slacks Soul Revue, is really great, and you can check them out at www.chickenslacks.com. They have an album, Soul Stack, which you should most definitely buy, because it is packed with feel-good soul and funk, and half the songs are Dave originals. But Dave is moving on from the Slacks, and going to Soul City, which is a few steps above what the Slacks have been doing. Their website (www.soulcityband.com) features video clips of them appearing on ABC TV and pictures of them hanging out with Bill Clinton. So it’s a big, exciting move for Dave (whose stage name is actually “Big Daddy Dave.”)

Dave’s musical career began at the age of 9, when he told me that if we started a band together, we would be totally cool. We started that band, “The Street Boys” but never became cool. We were dorks. We used to run around behind his house and his neighbors’ yards, shooting each other with toy guns, wearing ski goggles to appropriate army masks… or something. We later changed the band’s name to “The Force” and gave a concert in my driveway, for which we charged our families $1 admission fee and had my sister Gia introduce the band as we emerged from the garage. Should I find those pictures, I’ll gladly post them for their humorous appeal.

While I have kept up my music on the side, Dave has been doing it full time. He attended prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, concentrated on voice (he is also one hell of a piano player, and used to play guitar, though he’s not been seen holding one of those for a few years now) and soon got started with the Slacks. He has remained in Boston, a town which he loves and which, incidentally, Yoyo loves too (we visited him last winter and had a great weekend watching a show of his, shopping on Newbury St, and ordering Chinese food.)

Dave is my best and oldest buddy and we can talk about anything together. Even when we lose touch for awhile, maybe a few months (it happens), when we get back on “The Buddy Train” it’s as if nothing has changed — because, of course, it hasn’t.

Happy Birthday, Dave.

Announcement: Yoyo is now a famous model. A few months ago, her best friend Da Hai, who has a job at the Chinese edition of Elle Furniture magazine and does a few things for fashion mags on the side, had the opportunity to pick an “amateur model” to be featured in the magazine Grace. So he picked Yoyo! She flew to Beijing back in January for a weekend and did the shoot, and the magazine has just hit the stands. She pre-ordered us 10 copies so we’ll be giving them out to a few friends and family. It is a fabulous 8-page spread and she looks totally hot. Maybe a little too hot. This is my favorite of the bunch. View all the pictures by clicking here.