The Music Never Stopped

I must say I've never been so busy in my life. Playing music has always been more of a hobby than anything else but lately it's been a very time-consuming second job. Last weekend I played two gigs and when I look at my calendar for the next couple of months, most weekends seem to be already booked. I think my fingers are going to fall off.

If the playing wasn't enough, my friend and bandmate Paul and I are also organizing a music festival in May. It's a charity event for our friends in Varanasi, India. Initially, we were going to just have a sort of party with a few bands but it ended up turning into a big festival with 15 bands. I will certainly keep you posted on that.

Militant Hippi at a bar called Groovecity last Friday night.

Here's a copy of the poster for the music festival I'm doing. It's called Basic Aid.

Spring Scream

Every year, there is a big music festival in the south of Taiwan called Spring Scream. I played at it last year and it was awesome. This year I was lucky enough to play at it again - this time in two different bands. It was also a four day weekend because of a holiday. It was great to get out of the big city.

This is a shot of Militant Hippi. We are kind of hip-hop, reggae, and funk with a bit of blues and rock.

We played early (around 5:00PM) but there was a good crowd there.

One of our songs requires back up singers. There's Lindsay in the middle.

The Militant Hippi girls before the show. Also note the cabin. The festival was held on this resort with three hundred cabins. There were six stages. Even a pool, though I never went swimming. That's our cabin right there.
The third day of the festival, the other band I'm in played. We are called Faye and the Slacks. Faye is a singer-songwriter. She's great. She has her own cd and everything.This shot was taken early. Before it started raining.
There was a good sized crowd for this show too and they stayed for the entire set, dancing in the pouring rain. I must admit, that feels pretty good as a musician. If people stay in the rain to listen to you, you must sound alright.
This was taken the night of the Militant Hippi show. Perhaps very late at night.

One More

Some of you already know but for those of you who don't, Lindsay and I are staying another year in Taiwan. We were going to move back to Canada and I was going to go back to school but getting into university was tougher than I expected. At least next year I will know to apply to more places. Anyway, we will be back for the summer and look forward to seeing everyone.

Here's a picture of our school at night. Out of my three years working there, I've never been there at night. This was taken after our New Year's party. It looks quite nice all lit up.

Taipei

Well, the trip is over. You spent your last ten days on the beach and you have a pretty good tan. You take a train to Bombay and go for a beer at a bar called Leopold's while your girlfriend does a final round of shopping (hasn't she already bought a million things?). You are very tired and when she comes to get you, you have another hour you could spend in Bombay but instead, you both decide to go to the airport early. It is the worst traffic ever and it takes two hours. You get there and wait in long lines because of heightened security since 9/11. Finally, you get to your gate and open your daypack. There is a bottle of water in there. You had forgotten about it. But it's half full and went through two security checks and an x-ray scan. You wonder how this can happen in one of the largest cities in the world, yet in Moncton, New Brunswick, security took away your grandfather's shoe polish. You think either Moncton Airport has a terrible problem with terrorists, or too much time on their hands.Then you hop on Thai Airways flight 634 and wave goodbye to India.

Goa - Part 2 (Palolem)

Like I said in the previous post, Lindsay and I wanted the end of our trip to be relaxing. India is great in many ways and bad in many ways. Either way though, it's always crazy and never relaxing. Until you reach Goa. A perfect way to end a trip through India.

We stayed almost the entire time in the southern beach of Palolem. From what we read and heard along the way, this was the nicest beach and just what we were looking for. There is a big rave/techno scene in Goa and also rich fancy resorts. Palolem is just a cool, mellow beach. The food is great and there is some live music. It wasn't really different than any of the beaches we had been to in Thailand, Cambodia or Sri Lanka but it was perfect. It had bacon and eggs for breakfast and steak dinners and carbonaras for dinner. Though we ate great Indian food for three weeks, a little change was welcome.

This is a shot of the beach looking north.
Here are some cool cabins up on a cliff. We hiked through here but didn't stay.
This is Rosa, one of the beach vendors. There are many beach vendors and they are all kind of annoying and are persistantly trying to sell you things. Rosa was persistant but not really annoying. We ended up becoming friends with her. We saw her everyday, ate dinner at her parents house and even took her into town one day to buy her a few little gifts. A local woman entertaining tourists for donations. She would go down the beach, setting up her highwire act every fifty yards or so.
Lindsay standing on some rocks. This is in Patnem Beach, the next beach over from Palolem. This dead sea turtle washed up on shore one day. It was huge.
Here's the cabin we stayed in.

A cow walking past said cabin.Fishermen out on a cloudy day.

This is Rosa with her family. We ate dinner with them one night. It was an interesting experience. They all live together in this little room. They eat there together and sleep there together. There's five of them in the picture but I think there was another two kids somewhere. The food was good but the spiciest food I have ever eaten. The dad said (not in English. Rosa translated), while laughing at me that spicy food makes you tough. I was dripping in sweat and drank about two litres of water. I guess I'm not that tough.

After dinner.

Sun setting in the Arabian Sea.

Goa - Part 1 (Anguna)

I always thought Goa was a beach. Or perhaps a city with a few beaches in its vicinity. What I learned in fact, is that Goa is a state, albeit a very small one. We wanted the end of our trip to be relaxing. Sightseeing is great and all that but hanging around a beautiful beach in the sun doing nothing but swimming, reading, eating and drinking is pretty good too. So we wanted to make sure we chose the right beach/village to go to.

Anguna wasn't it. Instead, we ended up going to a cool place called Palolem in the very south of Goa and didn't leave for about ten days. Though I've titled this post 'Part 1,' our Anguna stop was simply a day trip we took one day. They have a very cool market there every Wednesday. We had known about it, as it is quite famous in the area. Anguna beach. Nice but wait till you see Palolem.
Here's the market. Actually, this is only a small part of it. The market is huge. For those of you who know me well, you know I can't stand shopping. But this was different. I might have shopped more than Lindsay (or at least comparable). You can basically buy anything here and the haggling is great (you get very good at haggling in India). Lindsay bought some cool things. I bought many cheesy t-shirts.
Lots of jewelry.
Lots of spices.
Lindsay with some vendors.
We rented a scooter and drove the 2 hours north to Anguna. It was insane. Indian drivers are crazy. This is a billboard we saw on the way. I love it. Only in India you would see this. Is there anything missing from this picture that, I don't know, could reinforce the message they are trying to convey?

Kerala - Part 2 (The Backwaters)

This was definitely one of the highlights. I had read about the Kerala backwaters before and knew we had to do it. It's was out of the way (thirty hour train ride from Bombay) but well worth it. Basically, the backwaters is a water system (some of it canals) that stretches for miles and miles through the southern part of the state of Kerala. At first I thought it was just through the forest but these rivers and canals actually go through villages. For some reason, this made it even cooler.

We rented a houseboat with a Swedish couple we met in Alleppey and we cruised the backwaters all afternoon, slept overnight on the boat in the middle of a lake and cruised back the next day. It was extremely relaxing and absolutely beautiful.
This was our boat. It had two bedrooms and three crew members (one cook, two drivers). The food was excellent too. I don't know what something like this would cost in Canada but it was quite reasonable. We were treated like kings and queens. That's our captain. Notice he is using a pole. The boat (and look at the size of it) was man-powered - only two men and two poles. This not only made the cruise peaceful and quiet, it was also a lot better for the environment. These waters are getting quite polluted from all the boats.

A couple of guys fishing in the lake.

A woman walking along the river.

One of the canals. You can't really see, but there are houses on both sides. It was like going through a neighbourhood in the suburbs, except the streets were canals.

This is the Swedish couple, Hannah and Martin. Very cool people which made the trip even better.

Sunset over the lake.
Sun almost down. By this point, we are anchored on the lake, having drinks before our dinner. It was paradise.

Kerala - Part 1 (Alleppey)

After Mumbai, we headed further (or do you say farther? Or is there even any difference between these two words? I never know.) south to the state of Kerala. It was nice to get away from the big cities. We stayed in a place called Alleppey - a nice little town with two canals going through it. Didn't do a whole lot but the next day we rented a houseboat and cruised through the backwaters (see more on this next post).

It was a long train ride. Close to thirty hours.

Just like Mumbai/Bombay many of the cities go by two names. Alappuzha is the same as Alleppey.
Here's one of the canals in Alleppey. In my mind, canals make cities beautiful. Alleppey is like an Indian version of Amsterdam (minus the drugs, prostitution, rain and bicycles. Okay it wasn't like Amsterdam at all).A stone mermaid on the side of the canal.