TheNHBushman.com

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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Our family was pretty much your typical traditional American family in the 1960s I would say. My father was a Honeywell engineer and he worked across the bay from us, in Tampa. My mother was an RN and also a professional singer (more on that later). My mother mostly sang during week nights, and worked during the days on Saturday and Sunday at a local MD office. So Mother was home during the week when there was a knock at the door. It was “Mr. Ray” our neighbor behind us.

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Photo by MJ Klein

Does this mean that if you stay in this motel, you’ll be some kind of movie star? I sure hope not!  I like the look of this ad.  We may go check this place out sometime.

It brings me great pleasure to introduce this new series on TheNHBushman.com – Stories From My Past. I’ve been wanting to do this for some time as I frequently tell stories of growing up as a child or young adult to my family and friends who urge me to write about them. So, this is the first attempt at doing so, with this first articled entitled, The Trick.

I grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida, the eldest of 4 children. Behind me is sister Janet, followed by sister Nancy, and then brother John. Naturally being the eldest sometimes made me a target as the other children felt it necessary to “take me down” from time to time. Often that involved some kind of a trick that would point blame, and therefore The Wrath of Mother down upon me. Kids are always playing these kinds of tricks on each other, and this has not changed over thousands of years. Our family was no different, at least in that regard.

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