TheNHBushman.com

Photo by my sister Nancy

You know what to do!

Shot in a Tainan parking garage.  You know what to do!

Video by MJ Klein

Hui-chen and I decided to travel to Bade, Taoyuan and see our old friends Mr. Sun and Mr. Lee (aka Paul and Lee).  Now for some reason, it seems that whenever we go back to that neighborhood, something weird happens and it’s not the fault of our friends.  A fight will break out among some gamblers or a drunk person will start bothering us.  Well, something did happen and it was in the latter category this time.

We all went to a quiet little karaoke place to relax with some good food, drink and songs.  I had my video camera with me and I was videotaping Paul and Lee singing some songs when all of a sudden, some drunk woman came in, went over to Paul and smacked him while he was singing.  Then it got worse from there!  So, naturally I made it into a feature video, and now you may enjoy it for yourself!  Here it is:

Krazy Karaoke from MJ Klein on Vimeo.

Enjoy!

Video by MJ Klein

My brother was goofing around in my sister’s swimming pool, and I just happened to have my video camera with me. The following is what I shot. Please note that this is the first publicly released movie that I shot using the new Glidecam Pro 2000. Clearly I need a great deal more practice using it! Enjoy the movie!

Mr. Ed from MJ Klein on Vimeo.

We haven’t had one of these for awhile, so here goes!

Photos by Huang Shao Mao, Hui-chen and MJ Klein

This article has it all - music, drinking, food, and babes!

Introduction

I am producing the Fong band’s new recording sessions. This is the first production gig I’ve had in Taiwan, and I hope to get more. I’ve really missed producing and it felt great to get back into the studio, although these days “the studio” is a lot different from the 2″ analog tape and huge mixing consoles I’m used to.

In the past, given my considerable experience, I sometimes have performed on records that I’ve produced. This is nothing unusual, and in the case of the Fong band sessions, I played the backing guitar parts, mainly because it would be faster and much more consistient. It remains to be seen whether either of the two guitar players will add some parts to the recording, but at this writing, I personally played all the guitar parts. Needless to say, I won’t be doing any singing on these records because the songs are in the Thai language. I’m sure that I could learn the phonetic pronunciation and fake it but there isn’t any need for me to do so. These guys can sing quite well and we used 3 of them in a “gang vocal” configuration that you’ll see later (with photos taken from video stills).

So I hope you enjoy this article about what we did over the weekend. I enjoyed doing all these things for sure!

Bryan Chen, owner and engineer of Wellrick Studio

It was a weekend full of music and fun. It all started out on Friday (which was a holiday here in Taiwan). First, it was guitars, guitars, Burns and VOX mayhem and more guitars!

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April 1, 2008, HUKOU TAIWAN

Taiwan blog The New Hampshire Bushman in Taiwan, today introduced a policy to help defray administrative costs.  This policy would be the first of it’s kind anywhere in the blogging world.  From April 1st, the blog would charge readers NT$5 to reply to articles with their comments.  When asked about the impact of such a policy on readership, and in particular comments, blog owner MJ Klein had this to say:

“It costs money to run a blog.  Our readers know that.  It’s all about time, and how best to manage our limited time.  Creating quality content takes time and our readers would prefer to have better content in the long run. At first we’ll lose a few, but we’ll gain more with better content.”

In order to comment to articles, readers would have to setup an account on the blog and then pay for credits which would be used each time a reader left a comment on the blog.

“We realize this new policy is controversial.  We realize that some people will be put off by this policy and may refuse to comment.  However we believe that this is the future of blogging,” Klein said.

Those responding to this article will be charged NT$5 for each comment.

Recently, Mark went to the US to take care of some business. While he was there, he blogged on the size of fountain drinks at a gas station on the way to Boston. Mark says:

I’ve been living abroad for a while, and it’s given me a slightly different view of stuff at home than I’d have if I’d stayed…. I’m used to the large size [drink] being 22oz or something like that. Even drinking the second biggest size drink I saw at the gas station left me feeling like I’d just put my pancreas through a strainer. I mean… who drinks half a gallon of soda in one serving? Seriously…

I talked about that article with my friend Mike back in New England and he told me about some giant sized portions at some local restaurants. Mike got some shots and the story behind these monster dishes for us. Are you ready for this?

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My very first Taiwanese friend was Mr. Chen Shao Yeou. Mr. Chen worked in a Chinese restaurant in the town where I lived at the time. I met him while working in the restaurant as one of the food preparation chefs.

We lived together in a big house for the workers. This is where I first began to learn Chinese, by associating with speakers of the language in close quarters. Over time I helped quite a few restaurant workers improve their English vocabulary too. One fellow asked me to read the entire contents of his English study book into a boom box cassette recorder so he would have a native speaker reference to listen to. It was nothing more than simply reading columns of words and it took about 30 minutes. Well worth it.

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My father was known at “Mr. Fixit” because he could fix just about anything. When my family first moved into our new Florida home in 1959, my father went about building things. First he boxed in the ugly heating oil tank that was hung from the ceiling in the garage. He then made a storage area below it. That wasn’t enough so he built a full length counter in the garage, and provided us with a lot of storage space. Then he walled off the garage about ¼ way from the entrance and built himself an electronics workshop. Building things came naturally to my father and I’m happy to say that I have inherited his ability. So when I brought home the discarded remains of a wooden go-kart from down the street, my father went to work on a plan to rebuild it.

My father and I together in 2006 (age 83)

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