Birdbath Radio lives!

We did our first episode of Birdbath Radio tonight. What a total kick in the pants! We played 10 songs, had 15 listeners from all over the world, got instant messages and emails, gave shoutouts to our pals, and acted like total dorks on the radio. The podcast is available here: itpc://www.eanh.net/birdbathradio.xml ...all you have to do is click the link and it should open itunes and subscribe you to the podcast (let me know if it doesn't). It's a bit big, so it will take a while to download if you have a crappy internet connection like mine (fix it Shelby!!!). We really hope that people keep listening in, because it sure is a lot of fun for us. The next episode will be broadcast from Camden Town London on Sunday February 2nd at 10 PM GMT (2 PM Seattle, 4 PM Austin, 5 PM NYC, 10 PM London, 9 AM Monday Melbourne, 6 AM Monday Taipei and Shanghai), but of course it will be available via podcast if you miss the live broadcast.

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Birdbath Radio

Reba and I are starting an internet radio station.

Yes, this is probably because we still don't have jobs and are bored, but never mind that now... :)

We're calling it Birdbath Radio, and it's going to be broadcast over the internet every Sunday Night from 10-11 PM GMT, starting this Sunday night.

This is 2 pm Seattle time, 4 PM Austin time, 10 PM London time, 9 AM Monday Melbourn time, and 6 AM Monday Taipei time (sorry Frank).

The links to listen to it are on my website www.eanh.net, but you can also get it directly from here:

windows media: http://eanh.net/birdbathradio.asx

real audio: http://eanh.net/birdbathradio.rm

itunes: http://ct5.fast-serv.com:9426/listen.pls

podcast: itpc://www.eanh.net/birdbathradio.xml

The format will be Reba and I playing whatever music we like, talking about whatever goofy subjects, and we'll have guests from time to time as well. I'm going to try to get Sasha to guest DJ a show in Russian, Mikhel a show in Estonian, Niall one in Italian, and Sally to do one in "English". They don't know this yet of course! You should be able to listen to the live broadcast via windows media player, read audio player, or itunes. You can also listen to it via podcast if you miss the live broadcast. The station is up and broadcasting now, running our ad for the upcoming show on repeat for now. We figure this will be a fun way to stay in touch with all our friends around the globe while goofing around with music, which as most of you know, is our favorite pastime.

See you Sunday night!

ps: Special request to techies: If you listen to the show, or even the spot that's playing now, please send me a mail if any of the links don't work or if it sounds bad or whatever. We're doing this on the super cheap (spent a total of 98 pence on the whole project up to now) so there's a good chance that I'll need to work out a few bugs.

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Home Again

Finally we are done with our big tour, and are back home safe in Oxford. Over the course of 6 weeks, we actually went all the way around the world! Athens to Rome to Oxford to all over France to Oxford to Florida to Seattle to Taiwan to Hong Kong to Shanghai to Oxford!

New Blog Entries

Here are the latest, as it turns out blogspot.com is blocked by the Chinese government, so I couldn't update for a while. Here is the Asia portion of our trip:

Taiwan Wedding

Taiwan Part 2

Hong Kong

Shanghai

New Photo Albums

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/eanhernandez

New Things to Remember When You Travel

All these lessons were learned the Hernandez way, aka the HARD way.

1. Never ever, ever ever ever, NEVER get on a plane to a foreign country without a pocketful of the destination country's currency. You have no idea if there will be ATMs, if they will be turned on, or if they will connect to your bank's network. :(

2. Pack light, and find out the weight restrictions on each airline you travel on. Otherwise, you will end up paying lots of money for each extra kilogram you bring. :(

3. Research visa requirements. Airlines won't tell you if you need a visa to enter China (for example) but the Chinese will be happy to charge you lots of money to get you a rush order visa. :(

4. Shuttle busses are BS. In almost every case, two people sharing a cab to the hotel is cheaper and way more direct than taking a shuttle bus. :(

Get the London and Job Show On the Road

And now, we have to get jobs and move to London. Our time of screwing off and sleeping in and not dealing with anything but lunch is over! It was fun, but now it's back to reality. What a year this has been. :)

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Shanghai

Stuff is different in China. HK is technically China, but really not at all. It's very different, much more western, and the Chinese government pretty much lets HK run under it's own system. We got our first taste of the less western China when we tried to get on a place at HK airport for Shanghai. It turns out that you have to have a visa to enter the country, and we didn't know this, so we had to go to the China travel agency in the HK terminal, and leave our passports for about 6 hours while they ran checks and printed a form to stick in our passports. This cost about 300 bucks, and we had to change our flights. So, we checked in our baggage, spent the afternoon walking around HK, and came back to the airport at night. The flight to Shanghai was pretty empty, and when we got off the plane, the security dudes were wearing those green and red army uniforms with the fuzzy Russian hats. We had to fill out a bunch more forms to enter, and had to sign something that said we didn't have fever, chills, rash or psychosis (really). Then, we caught a very long cab into town from a dude whose English consisted of "ok ok". As soon as he started the cab, a little video monitor in the headrest in front of me turned on and started running ads with cheesy techno music on repeat. WEIRD. The city itself is HUGE and very spread out, and seems to be perpetually shrouded in fog/smog. It was late at night, and deserted, so the scene was pretty spacey. When we got to the hotel, it was pretty empty too, but all done up in gold paint and gold colored marble... super fancy and gaudy. It was if the hotel was screaming, "THE PEOPLE HERE ARE RICH! MONEY MONEY MONEY!". We went up to our room, ordered up some beers, and went to sleep thinking "what an odd place this is".

The next day we got up late and called Ashton (another SBS MBA) to see if he wanted to hook up for lunch or whatever, but he was pretty groggy when I called, and he said he'd call back later. So, Reba and I hit the streets. What a difference between night and day in Shanghai! The streets were literally packed with people. Apparently it's about the size of New York, but it seems a lot more crowded. We walked around People's Park, went to the ancient art museum and then went to a restaurant in a mall down the street. It's sort of hard to describe how packed in and confusing and high energy everything is, there are restaurants and shops crammed into every little nook, and there are barkers on the street with microphones trying to get people to go in to their shops. To get to the restaurant, we had to go through a candy store that was literally swarming with people.

swarms!

Next we had a really tasty lunch consisting of hot pots and wacky iced tea drinks made from tea and taro milk. V Good.

the one on the left tasted like butter popcorn jellybellies

deep fried frog legs: tastes like chicken

After lunch we walked around a bit, but were just overwhelmed and went back to the hotel room. We got a call from Ashton later and met him for drinks. I now have to apologies for the fact that all of the remaining pictures up here are of food. Somehow Ashton managed to get out of being in any pictures, and we were just so blown away by the awesome food that we didn't really care about the site seeing stuff as much. Ling will understand!

Dinner With Ashton

Ashton went to SBS with me, and is living in Shanghai working for a retail bank now. He is really digging his time in China, and knows all the good spots in town. First, he took up to this Casbah style cocktail joint in the middle of people's park... this sort of gets at the heart of Shanghai for me. This is an old colonial building, built in a 1930's faux-middle eastern style for (ostensibly) Europeans to chill out and drinks swanky cocktails, but it's right in the middle of the communist's "People's Park", and instead of being all liberated for the people and being used as some ministry of culture or something, it's full of a cosmopolitan mix of wealthy people enjoying the night out! Contradictions and complications. Ashton took us to a restaurant called South Beauty, which is a high end joint in some old French colonial style mansion. Ashton is into hot and spicy, and damn was this stuff spicy! But it was GOOOOOOOD too! The best part was that the whole meal cost 800 Yuans, which is $90 USD, including a tasty Malbec and cocktails. Behold:

nice tame roast duck, not spicy

ground shrimp in mild chilies... a bit spicy

beef wrapped in thin noodles and cooked with enough chili to kill a horse! SPICY!

extreme closeup, yes that's all chili!

chinese desert, plus a little playdough doggie

After dinner, Reba went home and Ashton and I went out. We went down to an area called "The Bund" which is in part the old 1930's art deco building part of town, and also the swanky area for going out on the town. It's sort of amazing how MBAs can find the same sorts of clubs all around the world: swanky exclusive vibe, loud techno, all sorts of goofy cocktails, snobby looking chicks, and lots of dudes hitting on the chicks. I swear I've been in this club in London! :) Anyway, Ashton and I got some drinks and went out on the lanai, which had a weird nautical theme, probably because of it's view out over the Pudong river. Poooo Dong. I love that. The view was incredible, I didn't bring my camera, but here's a pretty close one:

developING world?

Apparently this area was all farms 15 years ago. Now it's covered in huge skyscrapers, one of which is not pictured here, because it's being built. I think that it's going to be another world record in height. The thing this picture doesn't really show is just how huge the city is, these kinds skyscrapers are repeated for miles around, marching off into the smog. Plus, it doesn't show the hundreds of of barges, container ships and ferries moving up and down the river 24/7. It was good to chill, catch up and talk about MBA stuff: economics, culture, business, and how hot the local chicks are. :) We got bored of this bar after a while and split for another similar bar downstairs, where we found a quiet-ish room to chat more and drink whiskey. One great thing about hanging with Americans: these people dig their whiskey. On the way out, we ran into a bunch of ex-pats who wanted us to come drinking with them, but we were too tired, and split anyway. Coming out of the building, I got into a totally weird developing world situation. Of course, I love this stuff. :)

3rd World Wackiness

There are beggars everywhere in Shanghai, and lots of them are really f-ed up looking, missing arms, burned faces, twisted feet, whatever. They also recruit their kids, some only 3 or 4 years old, to help in the begging. That really bums me out, and it seems to really piss Ashton off. I don't blame him. Anyway, on the way out to front door, some old Chinese woman with a three year old in one arm and a cup with some coins in it comes up to me and starts shaking the cup at me shouting "moneymoney, moneymoney"! Ashton just said "ignore her, dude", and I started for the cab. By the way, there are LOTS of cabs available everywhere all the time, this is very convenient, unlike in London. Next, as we move past the beggar, a (I think) Filipino prostitute comes up to us saying "you want massage in your room?" Shanghai can veer rather quickly from the 1st world to the 3rd world, and in this case, the volume of 3rd world creepiness pouring into our 1st world evening caught me off guard, and I was sort of speechless. I had my back to the cab, facing Ashton, with the beggar standing on his left shaking the cup going "moneymoney!" and the prostitute on his right going "I give you good massage!" and Ashton in the middle looking annoyed. It's times like these I wish I had a digital camera strapped to my head. We got in the cab quickly, and sped off to the my hotel.

More Food

Ashton recommended another restaurant called Tan Wai Lou at the Bund 18 building, which I think is in the same building that we had the clubby/prostitute/moneymoney experience in the night before. This place is so damn good, I seriously demand that all my foody friends go there. Really high end Cantonese style, with a bit of that modern Frenchy cooking school action. At the very least, Carl and Tim should send Stacie here!

After lunch, we went down to the river and walked around. Shanghai is not for the faint of heart, but it has a lot to offer. As with any foreign locale, it's best to go with a local, because there's just way too much to figure out on your own. So, thanks for that Ashton! Even if you don't know a local, I still recommend Shanghai, it kicks butt!

Shanghai Reebs

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Hongkers

Hong Kong, aka Hongkers, RULES. This city is just so cool on so many levels. First, it's got this great modern, super high density building style. I've never seen so many really tall really skinny skyscrapers. Something like 7 million people are crammed into this tiny area, and it seems that they're forced to build up instead of out. Super modern buildings with crazy designs, really good subways, immaculately clean streets, no smoking in any public space (not even in parks!) and what clearly must be a lot of money all come together to make a sort of Asian Manhattan. Second, there is a seedy, older, sort of trashy element reminiscent of sketchier Chinatown areas in the US. These areas have all sorts of little shops, dimsum joints, street markets, endless signage, packed streets with zooming trucks, etc. Cool! There is a weird third level to Hong Kong, which is the expat/ex-British Empire vibe. This is subtly visible across the city in the form of English street names, old European style buildings, restaurants and bars catering to westerners, and also by the high "whitey on the street" count: probably 5 to 10% of the people I saw on the street were white foreigners. These factors all blend in to make for a really interesting and diverse city, and I have to say, I'd seriously consider living here at some point!

digging some more harbor out?

crazy building style

Dim Sum, Hell Yeah

On the recommendation of our pal Ling Sung in Oxford, we went to Maxim's for dim sum. This food is pretty popular back in Seattle, so we're familiar with the experience and the dishes, but it was extra cool to do this in Hong Kong, watching boats come in and out of the totally packed harbor.

shrimpy porky whateverballs

Peak Train

One major feature of the HK landscape are the hills. The city is ringed in by very steep jungle covered stone hills, which the locals have diligently built up upon. In the 19th century, British colonials build a railway to go up these hills to some hotel they had build on top of one peak. I guess this was a pretty famous spot, and in world war two, when the Japanese invaded, the Brits put up a heroic style last stand there. The train still runs, and the only way to describe it is as a rollercoaster crossed with a tram. It climbs some 400 meters in about 10 minutes, and the view is pretty breathtaking. Of course, the HKers built a shopping mall at the top. :)

the ride up

view from the top

Mong Kok :)

Our neighborhood in HK was in a part of Kowloon called "Mong Kok". Naturally we had lots of fun with this name. Enough said.

Markets

Like lots of old cities, HK has various small neighborhoods given over to small shops selling one particular good. We checked out the bird market, flower market, and the fish markets. The bird market consists of lots of little stalls filled with all manner of tropical birds, including parrots, minah birds, cockatoos, cockateels, love birds, finches, budgies, and a bunch I don't know the names of. Wild sparrows are swooping in from everywhere to steal birdseed, I'm sure this place is a haven for avian flu. The guidebooks even suggest that you don't touch the birds. Some of the cages are very crowded, and the birds get crap and whatever all over each other, so the vendors wash them down, and then dry them out with heat lamps.

bird market

The flower market is about what you'd expect, a whole street of people selling different bright flower bunches.

flower market

We didn't get a good photo of the more interesting parts of the live fish market, but there are a ton of little shops with brightly colored fresh and salt water tropical fish. Little turtles, anemones, crazily colored shrimps, and even octopi are available as well. There must be some very hard core aquarium keepers in HK.

(live) fish market

The other fish market (dead) is for the kind of fish that people eat, but these fish make it to the market alive. The vendors keep big aerated saltwater tanks filled with still living fish. They then hack them open right in front of customers. It seems that it's desirable to buy 1/2 a fish that's been cut so that the still inflated bladders inside are showing. I watched a guy in one of these stands split a live two foot fish in two with a cleaver. Kinda gross.

(dead) fish market... apparently fishheads are hot here

Bespoke Tailors

We also went to a bespoke tailor's called "Jantzen" at Kaysa's recommendation. I got fitted for suits and shirts by a supergay asian dude with a bleached combover, a moustache, a burbury scarf, and an outfit that remedied me of long underwear crossed with a jogging suit. They measured me one day, and had the fittings read for the next. I could have had the suits the following day, but we were leaving and I preferred to have them shipped to Oxford anyway. For about $1500 USD, I got two custom suits, and five custom shirts. Being the drab dresser that I am, I chose black and dark green 3-button flat fronts with working buttonholes on the sleeves, though I did get some pretty groovy linings, again at Kaysa's recommendation. I got 4 plain white spread collar french cuff shirts, and 1 black one (friday night, all right!) as well. If I bought these all off the rack at Brooks Brothers, it would have cost about the same, maybe a little more. If I got these same suits and shirts hand made in London, I'd probably have to take out a mortgage or something. The jury is still out on the quality of the final product, I should know for sure in a few days.

Engrish

One of the great pleasures of far eastern travel is Engrish. This is where the locals have printed signs in the local language, and in (attempted) English for tourists, business travelers, etc. Apparently English really is the de-facto 2nd language to the world, which makes things nice for me since it's my defacto only language. Check out www.engrish.com for examples, here's our favorite one from this trip.

Langham Place Hotel

The hotel we stayed at was the Langham Place, which is a 5 star joint (for $200 USD/night!) attached to a super modern shopping mall. Gucci, Prada, Chanel, YSL, Rolex, Hennessey, Cristal, etc. are all very big brand names over here, and the locals clearly buy it up. Ashton says that this is typical in China, where people wear brands like badges to indicate status, even to a greater degree than in the US. The hotel itself was really great: kickass rooms, service, food, etc. We even got massages at their 42nd floor spa. That was a trip: getting a really brutal Chinese style rubdown with a view normally reserved for airliners and spy satellites. Chilling out on a couch in the "relaxation" room, drinking jasmine tea, and sporting my cozy robe after the massage, I sat and stared out at the buildings, billboards, cars, and trains below, all lit up like blade runner christmas, thinking: this city RULES.

Next stop: Shanghai!

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Taiwan part 2

After the wedding, Frank and June took about 30 of us on a bus tour of Taiwan. This is really the best way to travel, because there's lots of different people to hang out with, the confusing transportation in a different country issue is handled, and because you're with locals, you get to see stuff that you would never see if you just got off the plane and walked around. For me, the best part of this was trying all the different food (shut up Frank and Josh) because June and Bi knew all the best places and best dishes.

Night Market

After seeing a bunch of the countryside, we settled into a swanky Taipei hotel, and headed off to the night market. These things are pretty similar everywhere I've been: some ancient part of town with tiny little streets with lots of little shops selling all manner of goods, a ton of street vendors selling tasty/weird food, and LOTS of people. The Taipei night market is basically the standard deal, except there's more people. Basically, the whole night was a rock concert style pack-in with what seemed like all the Taiwanese people in the world. Frank, true to form, was concerned that we would get lost and wanted us to all stay together and communicate via walkie talkies. This was very kind, but we all snuck off ASAP, packed in, and had a blast. Sorry Frank! :)

night market Cory

night market Jill

night market Timmay!

night market E

One of the difficult things about documenting my various travels over here is trying to describe the food. There's a huge variety of flavors and combinations of flavors that I've never tasted before, and just don't have words to describe. That is, other than GOOD, or WEIRD, or GROSS, or KICKASS. I don't even know the names of this stuff, so pictures will have to suffice.

these are called whateverahoozis

these are squids on a stick, called somethingorotheraka

hotdog?

New Years

The last night we went to the Taipei 101 building, which is currently the tallest building in the world. This night was new year's eve, so the streets were packed beyond packed with people waiting to see the fireworks. Jill, Cory, Reba and I snuck in some Famous Grouse in coke bottles, and got nice and buzzy while we waited.

when dumbass meets dumbass and it's love

I'm a hit with the ladies, as usual

fireworks at the tallest building in the world

more fireworks

Aftermath

After the fireworks were over, we and 25 billion of our closest friends all tried to get on the subway. Put simply: this sucked. We queued up for hours just trying to get close to the subway entrance, all the time having to pee worse and worse.

packed in like (Taiwanese) sausage

As we stood in line longer and longer, I went from uncomfortable to twitchy. I started to sweat. All I could think about was peeing and how bad my bladder hurt. As more time went by, I went from twitchy to frantic. Finally, I grabbed Reba, told Wang Fu we were going to split and booked for the nearest darkened alley. As I pushed away into the crowds, Frank (Wang Fu) gave me a sort of disappointed/resigned look and shook his head. I'm sure he thought that our bodies were going to turn up in the river 2 days later. :) A funny thing about Taiwan is the contrast between the developed and undeveloped. Literally 2 blocks from the tallest building in the world is a two story, run down abandoned building filled with garbage. The shrubs in the front walk of this building had overgrown and provided a good deal of cover. Reba and I went in and let loose! As we left, some little kid was on his way in there as well. We smiled at his frowning father as we left, and took off for the cab stand.

Cab Stand, Yeah Right

So there wasn't a cab stand, but instead there were a billion people crowding the streets looking for a cab, looking for friends, looking for love, or looking for the Taiwanese equivalent of a kebab. We walked around in the crowds for a while trying to flag down cabs, but they were few and full. Finally, we came to a freeway offramp from which cabs literally seemed to be pouring. Kickass! Hundreds of people were lining the road waving down cabs, but there was no orderly queue. I'm sure that my English friend are gasping in shock as they read this, but it's true! Chaos at the offramp ensued, and we watched helplessly as cabs were grabbed with no indication of procedure. Taking my cue from my neighbors' bad behavior, I finally just jumped in front of everyone else and grabbed open a door. I stuffed Reba and myself in and gave the little hotel card (printed in Chinese) to the driver. This was a scary moment for two reasons. 1) the driver kept flipping the card over and over like he was looking for something he could read on it. I figured he had no idea where this hotel was, and we were going to have to get back out with the rest of the crowd and try for another cab. 2) I only had 1000 New Taiwanese Dollars, and had no idea if this was enough to get me back to the hotel. I immediately began prepping myself for the "this is all I have and this is all you're going to get" conversation. Stress stress stress!!!! In the end, the driver found our hotel and the ride only cost 300 NTDs. Phew! PLUS, we beat everyone else back to the hotel by an hour. Disaster averted, and adventure gained, not bad for a night out in a strange town!

The next morning, the bus took us all to the airport early, and we caught our flight to Hong Kong, aka Hongkers.

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Taiwan Wedding

My buddy Frank got married to his wife June several years ago in the US, and I think also did it in some other country as well. However, June is from Taiwan, and so they had to do it there too. We went to Taiwan to witness the big event this past weekend. Frank, June, and June's sister Bi set up a really fancy western/Taiwanese/musicpeople hybrid wedding at a spa resort in the Taiwanese countryside. Following the event was a bus tour of Taiwan, or perhaps more accurately, a restaurant tour of Taiwan with a few touristic stops thrown in between. :)

Day one was essentially travel overload followed by total physical collapse. We left my mom's house in Seattle at 7AM, caught a 2.5 hour flight to LA, transferred to a 14 hour flight to Taipei, were met at the airport by Frank (thanks Frank!) and then caught a 2 hour bus ride to the resort. I went upstairs and passed out cold. Door to door, I think the trip ended up being about 26 hours. Reminds me of that tour drive from Deer Lodge MT to Des Moines IA. It was our tremendous luck that Frank met us at the airport with a charter bus... otherwise we would never have made it.

Day two was the wedding ceremony, but we had all day to hike around and explore before the event, so we did just that, and ran into this cool hilltop shrine.

inside shrine

outside shrine

Also, Reba and Jill found a petting zoo, where there was a very friendly pig. This is a bit creepy actually.

friendly piggy

That night was the wedding. Eclectic is probably an understatement. June and Bi are very Taiwanese, but they are also very international and happen to be recording and performing artists, so there were a lot of different elements to the evening. Here's a brief overview in pictures:

The scene was gorgeous, on a lanai overlooking a jungly valley, the guy speaking is a Christian preacher

There was a quartet playing stuff like Pachabel Cannon, etc., but they were dressed as pink princesses

there was a very animated MC cracking jokes and quoting Eminen songs throughout the ceremony (she is my new girlfriend but doesn't know it yet)

The MC and some of June's friends did a dance routine that included ripping off their bridesmaid's dresses

there was a huge cake that they cut with a sword, and at 3.5 feet, the cake is taller than Frank or June

we ate all manner of special Taiwanese wedding food, this one is shark fin soup!

...and of course, our band, Tales From The Birdbath played. Actually, us playing at weddings is starting to become a fairly standard deal, even though we never write new songs, never play live shows, and never do any recording. In any event, it was really really nice of Frank and June to have us play, even though we are probably the lousiest band in the world. Apparently June's mom has given Frank a new Taiwanese name: Wang Fu Ran. I think this means "jerk who married a princess" or something like this. I'm into it whatever it means, as I really dig having a buddy who is a bald Italian guy from St. Louis named Wang Fu.

jeffy :)

Stay tuned for the next installment: days 3 and 4!

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