Washington DC

The trip to Washington DC was a quick one, but nonetheless a fun one.

We took off from Chinatown at 6pm and arrived there at 11 something. I was staying in the same room with Aaron Shragge the trumpet and shakuhachi player. He's cool, looks like a zen monk with that bald head that he shaves frequently and he does raga with his voice, trumpet, and shakuhachi whenever he has time.

Oh he's a vegan too.

We went to 7-11 after we arrived to look for some food and went to bed after we bought the stuff.

The sleep was brief as we musicians had to wake up at 7am. Aaron woke up at god-knows-when and was starting to do his raga, so naturally he was the one who woke me up.

We went to Kennedy Center that's located next to Watergate. The stage people were pretty nice to us, and since we stepped in, we had a 10-hour day. That was one of my looooooooongest day in my life. Sound check, lighting check, position check, rehearsal, all ran simultaneously. Yuki did some beautiful job on the backdrop behind us, bravo for that!

We were almost dead when we got back to the hotel, but we didn't just stop there. Aaron went out to have Ethiopian dinner with Akim (the Funk Buddha), Akiko (the Funky Geisha), Kai-Ti (road manager), Rain (the video camera guy), Kak Miranti (Balinese dancer), Peter (laptop DJ), and Myla (dancer cum Akim's lady). As for me, Hypno (aka Tommy Chan, my Chinese comrade who does body-popping) called me up to chill in his room with Baba (Israel, MC and beatboxer).

We watched some stuff on the TV and on his laptop too. Apparently his laptop is connected to his home TV cable box, so he could ACTUALLY WATCH HIS SUBSCRIBED CHANNELS in his hotel room, pretty sick ain't it? We watched some Reno 911 too, which made us laugh our asses off.

Later I went on to Peter's room (after they came back) to chill with them, had a few hits which didn't do anything to me, talked some shit, had a cultural interaction with Akiko, see Akim stressing out...etc...

The next day was the performance day, we didn't have to get to Kennedy Center until 11am. So it was quite a relieve for us (why the hell do you think we can chill so long in the previous night, hm?!).

We played two shows, which was extremely well-received. Both shows were full (well, of course, it's partly because it's free...). Akim, Aaron, Angela (aerialist) and Anasma (bellydancer and body-popper) did a short strolling session outside the hall in between shows, too.

We had this really sweet and funny girl Jacqueline to be our caretaker, bringing us food and shit, running around to make sure we're fine. Later after our conversation, I got to know that she's an Indiana U grad who studied piano performance. She said she might move over to New York, having the urge to perform chamber music. I wish her good luck, and hope to see her in the City!

After our shows, Akim and Baba did a really fun (but too short) beatboxing workshop. They taught people the fundamental idea of how to beatbox and it was fun. They even invited all the audiences to dance together, there were a couple of 2-yr-old tiny kids who joined in too, it's soooo funny and yet so cute!

I was planning to stay on for the night and leave the next day. But it seemed like nobody wanted to stay long in DC, most people wanted to leave. I figured I wouldn't have time to visit places in DC the next day anyway, since the bus leaves at 11.50am. So I gave up and followed most people to go back to NYC.

All-in-all, this was a fun experience and definitely a memorable one. This is the first time ever I get to play in such a classy place like this without playing classical music. I hope more will come! And I certainly hope they will come soon...