Catching up

Finally, starting to catch my blog up.......it's always busy but when you are not feeling well it's hard to keep up.  Btw, Pat or Raffi do you guys know what's up...takes way too long to upload pictures...sometimes even after an hour nothing happens.....but of course that's tech always be-

hind demand.......lol.  Anyways, before I started off for San Luis Obispo last week, it was time for lion dancing.........Jason and I were off performing with Corey and the Kei Lun Martial Arts Group at the Hilton Hotel for the 41st Silicon Valley Conference.......guess they are trying to figure out where things are going too!!  Keith and Greg brought their lions to dance.......Greg's is Dragonfly......so named because on top of his lion there is instead of the usual rooster...Corey added a dragonfly....it is a beautiful purple lion that Corey painted and design for Greg.....we gave it to Greg as a wedding present.  Corey and myself are firm believers that you should always present lion dancing at it's highest level and you have to use good looking unique equipment.  In keeping with this, every lion we dance is unique in color and design, and the music the best........often when Jeff C. is available you will hear some of the best lion dance music........he is a professional musician....so often he improvises and mixes beats and even different genres of music....and we use not just Chinese precussion instruments but western too.....so the sound is very different from the often monotonous Chinatown beats.  Usually, when I play I like to use 5-6 different gongs.....and cymbals at once.......it gives the dance a different dramatic quality. 

Jeff C. is our drummer, he use to play for Golden Lions in the old days....nowadays he's a professional musician....adds a lot to the drumming as he changes beats and styles.

Keith's Lion greets the audience at the Hilton Hotel for the 41st Silicon Valley Conference.

Our host for the event with the Kei Lun Lions.

A close look at Dragonfly...hard to see the dragonfly on top as it snapped in half during the performance......Greg you are too powerful...haha.

After that it was off to visit my good friends Liu Yu and Norman P. whom I have known since forever.  She was originally, from the Jiangsu Wushu Team, and Norm from Roger Tung's LA Wushu Team............which goes way back...since most current wushu players don't even know that such a team use to exist!!  That's for another time tho......haha.  Liu Yu has a Wushu Taiji Center in San Luis Obispo and every year she has an open house to share what their students do with the community....it's a great event with lots of Wushu, Taiji, and lion dancing.......and most important great food!  She invites every year different Wushu schools from the Bay Area and LA...........so often it's a chance for me to catch up on what's going on in Southern California.  This was my tenth year performing there...so she gave me some Fans she had made in China.......she knows it's one of my favorite weapons.......the fans she made were quite special.....as they are reinforced with aluminum for strength and coated with two layers of nylon ........that's so I won't break it.........I already bent one with snap of my wrist!!  Thanks Liu Yu!  Anyway had a great time performed the Chen Taiji Ruler and Fan for them.  Jason then performed the Chen Taiji Broadsword for everyone....after that it was eating time!!  Then hung out in the jacuzzi for an hour!!  It was great to have a chance to relax........especially since my cold still had not gone away...and it still hasn't!

Norman and Liu Yu run the San Luis Obispo Wushu Taiji Center.  The Open House this year coincided perfectly with World Taiji Day...so we celebrated it too!

Ok, cya all gotta run out and have lunch.........oh and this is weird, I complained at the beginning of this blog of slow upload times....I had spent yesterday trying to upload unsuccessfully.....so just now it was fast...wtf..........probably just my luck.....love tech when it works....lol!!  Bye!