Kai Gerard in Full Effect!

Born at 8:53 am on Thursday 28 August 2008, Kai Gerard aka 陈凯 weighed in at 2.9 kilos and 50 cm long. A healthy baby boy is welcomed into the world!

Tiger Translate Vientiane II

08/08/08

In the venue by mid-morning, Don and Kevin got the visual side of things going while I burnt charcoal around the club to neutralise the skanky odour. The tech requirements for a VJ are tricky at the best of times, but we managed to pull it together even in a cowboy town like Vientiane.

Met up with Koflow and Shellsuit then headed to lunch which featured an awesome river fish, oily and delicious! Had an hour before sound check so took the guys to get a traditional massage - I tried out ear candling for the first time - good if slightly freaky. Sound check went well, the guys had a bit of time to chill before dinner at Sokdy and on-time!

Doors opened at 9pm and the crowd flowed in swift and steady. The great young crowd were totally up-for-it and lapped up the true school hip-hop served by Koflow, with a bit of Baltimore sound thrown in by Shellsuit. The visuals looked awesome and the entire place was pumping from start to finish, leaving one very happy Singapore crew!

Feeling the Flow

Thursday 7 August

After a month or so of planning, an early start got me to Changi airport along with DJs Koflow and Shellsuit, VJ Kevin Kong aka QWTY, and my old partner in crime, Don. A fairly smooth trip via Bangkok to Vientiane got us there in the early afternoon, checking out lots of great new acts for the London musical lineup en route.

Chowed down in the hotel, visited the venue for the following night's event, made some tweaks to the layout and met up with Leng, our local DJ and PR point man. After a little down-time I met up with the boys and we took a walk down to the Mekong River, this time fully swollen (as opposed to its parched state in May). Soaked up the river's vibe before proceeding to dinner at Kong View, a beautiful new restaurant also on the river's bank, serving a delicious selection of Lao food, the highlights of which were the spicy fish salad and super juicy chicken.

Following the very ambient and beery meal, we proceeded to check out a few clubs - Marina, D-Tech, Meena and Romeo. Carlsberg was counter-attacking that night with a nicely decked-out event at Marina, D-Tech was gearing up for a big bang the next day, Meena was pumping and we thankfully only scraped the surface of a bottle of Johnnie, while Romeo was the newest, biggest and highest potential of the lot for the next event.

Churchill Made Me Do It

Saturday 2 August

After some well-needed sleep I met up with Sayson and had a simple, late lunch of tom yam soup and mee goreng at the brand new Ritz Carlton. I had an inkling to check out the bar upstairs and was totally blown away by the incredibly cosy and authentic cigar and whisky bar named after Winston Churchill. I'd be baaack.

Checked out the China marketing head office (very nice) and went out with a cartonful of premiums, though not without sitting in the lobby for a while and eating the restrictive procedures. I still don't understand how the lobby guard let us out in the end, as we neither gave him money nor the signed form he had requested.

Dropped the booty at the hotel then jumped in a cab to Nitya's apartment over in Tianhe, chilled at their place for a while and sampled some random local beers from the convenience store - Zhu Jiang didn't make me want to wretch at all! After introducing them to Flight of the Conchords we all cabbed over to Zhu Jiang Xin Cheng, the brand spanking new area, where a friend of theirs was soft launching a smashing Indian restaurant, all built from scratch.

Following a bottle of SA wine and a Heineken there, we met up with Sayson again at the Churchill Bar, where I indulged in a rusty nail with great delight! The place had so much leather, so many cigars, and such great service - I think I really must be getting old. After a simple but yummy late night dinner I bid Nitya and Ashwin farewell and headed to a final destination, a local nightclub with Translate artwork up, a black guy rapping in Chinese, and lots of people drinking Tiger. That took me to the logical conclusion of another dawn cab ride home, a few hours sleep, getting back on the plane the next day and drinking my way back to Singapore. Healthy.

Tiger Translate Guangzhou

Friday 1 August

After a late night in Singapore punctuated by Geylang Claypot Rice with Jamie, Luke and Dawn followed by Tiger Translate's Future event in Zouk (featuring Li Qiu Qiu and Dexpistols), I took a four hour flight to Guangzhou, where I hadn't been since 2001.

Unlike a visit to NZ after a long time, everything had changed, to the extent that the city today was completely unrecognisable from my trip with Ben and Anchali in December '01. Massive, modern, shiny and grey, Guangzhou was at once the gargantuan and faceless beast that is Modern China.

Had a quick lunch with Sayson and got ready for the press conference in the basement of C:Union, a reggae bar that had been decked out with artwork for our event. Met the local artist Mee Wong who's responsible for some of the most saucy pieces in the collection, and was busy painting a semi-naked babe onto an old-fashioned bathtub - hot.

Managed to successfully field a few questions in Mandarin (with the help of a couple of Tigers) and then hung around talking to the musicians and the local team. Grabbed some spicy frog legs at a nearby restaurant together with the BAs from all over China. Feeling pretty low energy I willed myself into it as the doors opened around 8, and was totally blown away by the live performance by Beijing rock band, Muma. I read last week that the Beijing live music scene is now up in the top ten worldwide and seeing these guys perform, I could believe it.

Nitya, Ashwin and some of their friends turned up later and we hung out at the bar, also meeting some randoms including an experimental electronic musician from Denmark who had suffered a total nervous breakdown and never had to work again, his language partner, a fashion designer from Wenzhou, and assorted trading professionals from Syria, India and the UK. When the African came and they all started puffing at the bar, all I could think of was; Cosmopolitan? China? Wow.

Headed over to Nitya's friend's place to chill for a while (he gave me a gorgeous black and white printed sticker of Bob Marley for the new crib) then finished up the night with some crazy seafood done in a southern style. Got home around 5.30am.