Death, 3xMVs, Bangkok Checkup, Gigs, Wedding, Pop Stars, Pizza & Lemonade..

Haven't blogged for ages so I thought I would do a quick round up of my life in the pass few months or so. It has been an exciting and very sad at the same time. Sadly, two of my very good friends passed away in 2010. My dear friend Colette whom I have known for many many years. We used to snowboard and wakeboard together all the time. She had surcome to cancer after a year of treatments. Another one of my best friends, Justin, a very talented film director who was also on AnD as an artist passed away suddenly while playing tennis in China. We also used to snowboard together and saw each other at least once a week. I was the first to receive the news and had to the terrible job of passing the message on to his wife. It was certainly one of the most difficult things I had every done in my life. He leaves behind his wife and 2 beautiful children whom are now my god children. We had shared many good times and adventures together and I miss them both very much. Early last year, I decided to move from our Causeway Bay studio to Chai Wan which is a little further east of HK. LIttle did I know it would be a move that would take over a year to complete. We are now at the last stages of building our biggest studio yet in Chai Wan. At 5400sqft, it is double the size of our old studio and it will be the best studio we have ever built. We have been building for 8 months and with good reason. Everything is hand made by some of the best most specialized builders I have ever seen. This is the 5th studio I have been involved in building so I have seen many builders and designers.  We will have 4 control rooms and 2 recording rooms, 1 large and 1 small. The basic idea of a studio is a great place to work and produce music and very importantly, a well controlledrecording environment. Generally this means very quiet rooms. All our control rooms are designed to be the most accurate listening environment. All our rooms are floated on rubber to stop vibration of the building or exterior noise. We have 15 layers of material between each room not including air gaps. We have 3 layers of glass between each studio and control room. Each layer is of different thickness to filter out different frequencies. Our air cons have been treated so there is minimum noise from the fans and air outlets and inlets. We have triple layer windows with tinting to for insulation. We have purpose made magnetically sealed dual acoustic doors for most of the rooms. I won't talk about our wiring and other boring stuff but I will say, one of the most important part of our new studio is a fully functional kitchen with a professional dual pizza oven and BBQ area. I am also hoping for a table tennis table but that will have to wait. we hope to move in within a month or so. FIngers crossed. We also recently show several music videos. The first was with Janice for our song called Wonderland. It was shot by our friend Ah Mo and Wy. This video should be out very soon so stay tuned. Janice also asked us to appear on her music video.  Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcU1qE8Czh0&playnext=1&list=PL7E5C5B5EDE973DF0 We then shot another music video with another good friend of mine, a director called Eric Hu. I used to go to school with Eric. He should the MV for our album titled song called "Bring It On". I got to play the drums on the MV as I did on the actual track. This MV will also be out soon !  After we shot that MV, I went to Bangkok to get a health check. This was the second time I have been there for a health check. I think the term is medical tourism. Basically if you get a full check up in HK, it costs around HK$13,000. In Bangkok's Bunrungrad Hospital which is the only US accredited hospital in Asia, it costs HK$3,300 for the full medical. So even if you add flight and hotel, its about same as doing it in HK except you get to have a nice weekend in Bangkok. I am happy to report that my health is good. So I rewarded myself with a couple of Singha beers right after my medical. We also rehearsed like crazy for 2 concerts. 24K with the band Kolor and our very own Moov Live for 1 hour on NOW TV. We will be releasing a DVD of our performance with our new album. I got to play guitar for both gigs. It was great fun as we had a incredible band with Jun Kung on drums, Fergus on keys, Ray Vaughan on bass, Eugene Pao and myself on guitar. DJ Trix on the decks. We also had Janice do a song and our homie KZ doing a new song with us and last but not least, Daniel Wu on bass !!This is the pig we sacrificed to the gods before the gig. It was yummy. We were also asked to be part of the Double Parks' 10th Anniversary celebrations. It kicked off with a photo shoot then a party and a book launch. Yet another music video was shot by another great friend of ours, Mr Wing Shya. He shot our MV for our song called "Fashionista". This was a crazy shoot with 12 models, 5 locations, lots of costumes but it was really fun and we can't wait to see the result. Also out soon, here are some pics. I am now working on a new movie score and got to work with HK pop idol Mr Aaron Kwok. It was my first time with him and I am happy to report that he was actually nice to work with. For yet another session, I got to work with a famous radio DJ called Lo Fu... (spelling probably incorrect). She was a lot of fun and delivered exactly as I wanted very quickly. In-between, we had a couple of hotpot dinners and even a wedding.  Yes, our very own Ghost Style got hitched !!! I won't show pics of it as I am not sure he wants me to but here are some pics of us at the wedding. Walking with Dinosaurs show was great. My son loved it. Also tried a new pizza inspired by the Nancy Silverton's Mozza's pizza I had while in LA. Its fennel sausage with spring onions and red onions and it worked !!! Well that's about it for now... until next time. I was also lucky enough to go to Niseko for some snowboarding with some of my buddies. We were all close friends of Justin and Colette and we all missed them. My friend's widow said to me, "If life throws you a lemon, you make lemonade".... I am very proud of her. Live for today, learn from yesterday and hope for tomorrow.