Well I guess I won't be blogging every day of my trip. It's already day 3 and I'm just getting around to my first blog. But I've been busy, I guess.
I'm not gonna talk about the trip today, because I still want to talk about Jasmine coming to visit. So Jasmine is a friend from back when I worked at the Cheesecake Factory. She's also a big traveler, and like many people I know has said that she'd come to visit for years. I thought she actually would, since she travels so much, and now that she's a flight attendant she finally has! And she loved it. Obviously. Mostly cause my friends and I are awesome, but also because Shanghai is the best.
She came at a pretty great time, because the weather just turned warm and there were all kinds of events and stuff going on last weekend. We started out with a bit of karaoke, because you can't come to Asia and not do karaoke. That was our Friday night and pretty much destroyed her for Saturday. So we didn't do much on Saturday. But then we drank all day on Sunday at a Spanish food festival out on the terrace with wonderful tapas and a live band. It was a great day. I don't remember some of it. We parked next to the champagne booth and didn't leave for 10 hours. And barely ate. Whoops! But somehow that didn't destroy either of us. Champagne, I guess. Just one more reason to love it.
Then I had to go to Guangzhou, so she just hung out. Luckily I have some friends who were able to show her around because they don't have normal Monday - Friday, 9-5 schedules. So that was good. And my trip to Guangzhou was... interesting... I really didn't want to go, but we have this big customer who's buying a bunch of machines, so we had to go for this contract signing ceremony. Which also meant eating a ton of food and drinking a ton of baijiu every day. It also meant a Monday night at a Chinese nightclub with "company." And a night at the fanciest karaoke place I've ever seen, once again with "company." The company aspect is so awkward to me, and I usually pretend to just not speak Chinese. Couldn't do that on the 2nd night though, cause my colleagues and the customer were talking to me. But I got it into my head that the girl with me was a normal human who would not have to provide a full range of unwanted services, and who I could just chat with and play drinking games. So I did, and it was totally fine. And she was sweet. And I'm sure she appreciated not having some horny old man treating her like shit. So win-win, right?
Then it was back to Shanghai for a private dinner at my friend Jenny's and our farewells. Jasmine wanted to stay until Friday, but she had to make sure she was back by May 1, and since she flies standby had to leave on Thursday because all the flights from Friday were totally booked, thanks to the holiday weekend. But that actually kind of worked out, because I had tickets to see Wicked on Thursday night, so she would have been on her own anyway. And Wicked was awesome, as expected. It's the first time I've gone to see a musical in Shanghai and I totally want to do it more. They have more coming this year, too, I learned at the theater, so I'll definitely be going. The actress who played Elphaba was not a great actress, but she had a pretty incredible voice. And the Glinda was a bit annoying at the beginning (which I know is the character, but different annoying, not character annoying) so I didn't really like her, but then she grew on me and by the end I thought she was pretty great. Made me go and listen to the soundtrack the next day though, cause it's been a long time since I've listened to it.
But we're not listening to Wicked today. Today we're going to start going through a few songs that I've been wanting to share. The first one comes from Brasstronaut, and it's called Hawk. This is the opening track on their newest album, also titled Brasstronaut, If you go to Spotify it seems to be their only one, but apparently they've made much more since forming back in like 2007. Anyway, it's a pretty good album with some awesome instrumentation. They do a pretty awesome job of mixing classical and modern instruments. Anyway, we've got some pretty awesome Jamiroqui vibes on this track.
And then there's Mesita. The tie-in here is that both Brasstronaut and Mesita have great opening tracks on their latest releases, so for Mesita we're listening to Compliments, the opening track on his newest EP, Mall Music. But that's about where it ends. Mesita kind of reminds me of Beirut, not because of how he sounds, but because of how he picked a random name for himself and then does absolutely everything by himself. His music is much more straightforward than Beirut, though. Pretty solid all around, and definitely worth giving a listen to his back catalogue. Nothing stood out to me as much as Compliments, but it made for a few good hours of background music while I was at work, with a few ear-catching moments. Anyway, here's Compliments.
I'm not gonna talk about the trip today, because I still want to talk about Jasmine coming to visit. So Jasmine is a friend from back when I worked at the Cheesecake Factory. She's also a big traveler, and like many people I know has said that she'd come to visit for years. I thought she actually would, since she travels so much, and now that she's a flight attendant she finally has! And she loved it. Obviously. Mostly cause my friends and I are awesome, but also because Shanghai is the best.
She came at a pretty great time, because the weather just turned warm and there were all kinds of events and stuff going on last weekend. We started out with a bit of karaoke, because you can't come to Asia and not do karaoke. That was our Friday night and pretty much destroyed her for Saturday. So we didn't do much on Saturday. But then we drank all day on Sunday at a Spanish food festival out on the terrace with wonderful tapas and a live band. It was a great day. I don't remember some of it. We parked next to the champagne booth and didn't leave for 10 hours. And barely ate. Whoops! But somehow that didn't destroy either of us. Champagne, I guess. Just one more reason to love it.
Then I had to go to Guangzhou, so she just hung out. Luckily I have some friends who were able to show her around because they don't have normal Monday - Friday, 9-5 schedules. So that was good. And my trip to Guangzhou was... interesting... I really didn't want to go, but we have this big customer who's buying a bunch of machines, so we had to go for this contract signing ceremony. Which also meant eating a ton of food and drinking a ton of baijiu every day. It also meant a Monday night at a Chinese nightclub with "company." And a night at the fanciest karaoke place I've ever seen, once again with "company." The company aspect is so awkward to me, and I usually pretend to just not speak Chinese. Couldn't do that on the 2nd night though, cause my colleagues and the customer were talking to me. But I got it into my head that the girl with me was a normal human who would not have to provide a full range of unwanted services, and who I could just chat with and play drinking games. So I did, and it was totally fine. And she was sweet. And I'm sure she appreciated not having some horny old man treating her like shit. So win-win, right?
Then it was back to Shanghai for a private dinner at my friend Jenny's and our farewells. Jasmine wanted to stay until Friday, but she had to make sure she was back by May 1, and since she flies standby had to leave on Thursday because all the flights from Friday were totally booked, thanks to the holiday weekend. But that actually kind of worked out, because I had tickets to see Wicked on Thursday night, so she would have been on her own anyway. And Wicked was awesome, as expected. It's the first time I've gone to see a musical in Shanghai and I totally want to do it more. They have more coming this year, too, I learned at the theater, so I'll definitely be going. The actress who played Elphaba was not a great actress, but she had a pretty incredible voice. And the Glinda was a bit annoying at the beginning (which I know is the character, but different annoying, not character annoying) so I didn't really like her, but then she grew on me and by the end I thought she was pretty great. Made me go and listen to the soundtrack the next day though, cause it's been a long time since I've listened to it.
But we're not listening to Wicked today. Today we're going to start going through a few songs that I've been wanting to share. The first one comes from Brasstronaut, and it's called Hawk. This is the opening track on their newest album, also titled Brasstronaut, If you go to Spotify it seems to be their only one, but apparently they've made much more since forming back in like 2007. Anyway, it's a pretty good album with some awesome instrumentation. They do a pretty awesome job of mixing classical and modern instruments. Anyway, we've got some pretty awesome Jamiroqui vibes on this track.
And then there's Mesita. The tie-in here is that both Brasstronaut and Mesita have great opening tracks on their latest releases, so for Mesita we're listening to Compliments, the opening track on his newest EP, Mall Music. But that's about where it ends. Mesita kind of reminds me of Beirut, not because of how he sounds, but because of how he picked a random name for himself and then does absolutely everything by himself. His music is much more straightforward than Beirut, though. Pretty solid all around, and definitely worth giving a listen to his back catalogue. Nothing stood out to me as much as Compliments, but it made for a few good hours of background music while I was at work, with a few ear-catching moments. Anyway, here's Compliments.
No comments:
Post a Comment