Not By the Hair on my Chinny Chin Chin

About 5 years ago, when I was living in Japan, I decided I would let my hair grow out to about shoulder length. I thought it would be good to have a change. Plus, it just seemed like a part of the island lifestyle. It was a bit of a slow process getting it long enough. There were several phases involved: 1.) time for a haircut phase, 2.) awkward, goofy looking phase, 3.) your hair’s getting long phase, and 4.) comfortable with my long hair phase. Phase 2 is the toughest and, unfortunately, longest phase. Anyway, after 5 years, I decided that it was once again time for a change. Enjoy the photos.

                Before                                                After

The Difference

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Sassified Sushi Singer

The Rocky Mountain JET Alumni Association (RMJETAA), which I am involved with, had its annual Sing Into Spring event last night. The event gives people, including former and future JETs and friends of JETs, a chance to sample the flavors of raw Japanese cuisine and then demonstrate their vocal stylings, usually after imbibing generously. I spent the months before the event in much anticipation as I hadn’t partaken in karaoke since I had returned to the US. My excitement to get my sing on was mixed with a bit of anxiety because I knew that karaoke in the US was not quite the same as in Japan or China. Japan and China take it upon themselves to protect innocent bystanders from the screams and yells of ordinary people trying to make, or at least imitate, music by enclosing the would-be singers in a room that could well become their own audio prison. In the US, however, karaoke is set up in an “America’s Got Talent” atmosphere where singers perform for, or force into submission, the entire bar. I had sung US karaoke once before in Florida. I was there to introduce a couple of friends of mine who were both musical artists and somehow got pulled up to the front of the restaurant to sing Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way”. I learned quickly that singing in the car with the radio does not always equal being able to sing a song on your own. In Japan, I was a big proponent of karaoke, always joining friends and colleagues at the karaoke box. I was looking forward to reliving my karaoke experiences

in Japan here in the US. I hoped that they would have some of the Japanese songs that I knew, so that I could spread a little bit of my nostalgia to the people in the audience. I was relieved of this hope by Jessica Oppenheim on the way to the event, when she informed me that most karaoke djs don’t have any Japanese songs. After drying my tears, I started the car and continued down the road, which I am sure made the line of drivers waiting behind me on I-25 very happy.



Jessica getting down

This year’s Sing Into Spring was held at a quaint little place in Denver called Sushi Hai. Leading up to the event, I wondered what the Hai in Sushi Hai meant, and after spending the evening there, I still don’t know what it’s supposed to mean. Anyway, the restaurant has a nice atmosphere and even gives an air of prestige, and no not the Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale type, to those who enter as their entrance signifies that they know the geographic location of the restaurant. However, finding the restaurant is not the entire trick. Navigating the labyrinth that composes the full restaurant/bar to find your friends is the icing on the prestige cake. The RMJETAA function was strategically located in a VIP-like section of the bar around the billiards tables and in front of the restrooms. This location must have been chosen to ensure that any people desiring to attend the event who got lost in the labyrinth would find it upon locating the restrooms. The “VIP” area was also strategically located slightly above the rest of the bar no doubt so that we could look down on the masses of people trying to fight their way in, if we so chose. Ok, maybe it wasn’t that prestigious, but it was a great choice of venue.



Can you find the VIP in this picture?

Several trays of sushi and sashimi supplemented by edamame, gyoza, and tempura were elegantly laid out on a table for people to drool over until the invisible barrier holding them at bay was removed by RMJETAA President, Stephen Cacciatore, who opened the ceremony with a brief explanation of the event and a thank you to the attendees (I would love to give a detailed description of the sushi and sashimi, but whether it was due to the low lighting, my place near the back of the line, or the dizziness caused by my severe hunger pangs, I can’t really remember too much about how the food looked. I can verify, however, that it was delicious). Once it was clear that it was open season on the food, the people lined up to set the Guiness Book of World Records on how fast they could make several hundred dollars worth of sushi disappear. Thankfully, especially for the people at the back of the line, RMJETAA collected $5 from each person attending so that more sushi could be ordered if the initial offering was insufficient. This was inevitable, but Jessica was able to fend off the hungry hoards long enough to put in the second order.

Sushi wasn't the only thing on the menu

By the time the sushi was gone, half-empty stomachs and pints full of ale had put most people into the mood of carrying on conversations with people they knew, and even people they didn’t know. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw it. The bar staff were setting up the karaoke booth. The time had come. I managed to procure a karaoke book of songs from one of the billiards tables. Unfortunately, it was organized by song title, so I had to arrange a trade with another table that had a book organized by artist. They had a list of demands, but I promptly ignored it, took their book, and deposited mine. I think everything happened so fast that they didn’t realize how they had been duped. Back at my table, I scoured the pages of the book looking for a song that would please the crowd. Celine Dion? No, this wasn’t the usual Japanese crowd that would be transfixed by the Canadian diva’s lyrics. Oasis? No, there weren’t any Brits that would appreciate it. Michael Jackson? I didn’t want to find out if anyone would appreciate that. I finally settled on Hootie and the Blowfish, which was my warm up at karaoke nights in Japan. The song doesn’t traverse too many octaves, which makes it easy on the vocal cords. I quickly jotted my selection down on a slip of paper and handed it to the karaoke dj. She informed me that my song was about 20th on the waiting list. I was shocked, but I’m a patient man, so I grabbed a seat and prepared to wait it out. I passed some of the time by playing billiards with Sam, some of it playing games with my used chopsticks, and most of it by cheering on my fellow karaoke-ers. A trick I learned in Japan was to cheer and whistle for people singing when they were struggling or their sound was getting lost among conversation. Apparently, this is one of those things that is trans-cultural as it seemed to spur others in the crowd to do the same and encouraged the singers. As the night wore on, people from the party gradually made their way out of the bar in groups of twos and threes. After saying goodbye to a few of the people that I came with, I realized that I was one of the last people from the party left to uphold the RMJETAA reputation, luckily for those who left. When I checked with the karaoke dj, my song had jumped from 20th to next in line. The people who left had either just missed out on the greatest performance of their karaoke lives or had just escaped with their eardrums intact. The rest of the night was a combination of karaoke songs and dj grooves that turned the bar into our own private dance party. As I walked out of the bar and into the light of a new day, the bar staff said, “Thanks for coming”, but in my mind I heard “Arigatou gozaimasu!”

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Friends With Girl/Boyfriends

I recently went to see a concert here. It was at a nice, small venue, called the Walnut Room. Very intimate setting. It reminded me of the Metro in Chicago. It was a great place to see my first live show back in the US. It’s set up in a very interesting way. There is a bar with a patio out front. The live venue is in a back room, behind the bar. It gives it an almost underground feel, like you’re a member of some secret society just because you even know where it is.

It was quite the coincidence that I even found out about it. I was surfing the net looking for live shows in the area, and the name of the artist, and the fact that she was playing the next day, caught my attention. Her name is Meiko, an obviously Japanese name, that is normally pronounced May-koh. For some reason, she has changed the pronunciation to Mee-koh, but has kept the spelling the same. Apparently, she is one-fourth Japanese, which explains the name. According to Wikipedia, she and her sister took on Japanese names when they were young to connect with their Japanese grandmother on their mother’s side, and only realized after quite some time that they were mispronouncing their names (her sister calls herself Keiko, which she pronounces Kee-koh). I spent the entire concert wondering if she even knows what her name means in Japanese. It’s hard to say with any accuracy without seeing the actual Japanese characters, but the most common characters for women with this name are:

The first character means bud or sprout, the second means cloth or clothing, and the third means child, so together, they can mean bud cloth child or child of the budding cloth or simply bud. The nuance behind the name is likely that the child is like a flower bud that has yet to bloom into a beautiful flower or the child is like a piece of fabric covered with bud designs, which would likely be considered a beautiful piece. Anyway, after she had my attention, I had a look around and found some of her songs on the web. I listened to a few and, being quite entertained, I decided to check out the show.

The opening act was a pleasant surprise. It was a band named Cory Chisel and the Wandering Sons. They were excellent, definitely worth a listen if you get a chance. They had a pretty wide array of songs, ranging from upbeat and funny to heartbroken and crying on the floor. A few of the songs also had a spiritual undertone, making reference to some of the minor prophets. It was nice to shake Mr. Chisel’s hand and give him a verbal pat on the back after the show.

Meiko was also great. She reminded me a lot of folky, female singers that I have enjoyed in the past, like Jewel, Sarah Masen, and Jessica Riddle, so it was somewhat of a trip down Amnesia Lane only better. Arguably Meiko’s most popular, but definitely favorite, song is one called “Boys With Girlfriends”.

It’s a song about a good friend of hers who basically ended their friendship because his girlfriend was jealous. I’m sure I could scour the internet and figure out who this guy is, but suffice it to say that he is still involved with her music, either in the band or on the tour, because she kept making references to him all night. She even played a couple of new songs, one was called “Good Looking Loser” and the other was called “Real Real Sweet”. “Good Looking Loser” came off as a bit of a cut on the guy who she used to be friends with, calling him a good looking loser and saying that she, Meiko, was the one who got away. The other new song was a vengeful dirge focused at her ex-friend’s girlfriend. The theme of the song is basically that every time he wasn’t physically with his girlfriend, he was “with” Meiko and he was “real real sweet”. Essentially, the song plays on the girlfriend’s jealousy and aims to confirm that all her jealous intuitions were right. Before Meiko played it, she prefaced it by saying that it was all untrue and just a way to get back at the girlfriend for ruining their friendship. Meiko spent a good part of her energy at the show on this lost friendship. It got me thinking about friendships with members of the opposite sex and how romantic relationships with people outside the friendship affect the friendships themselves.

From my experience when you are involved in a romantic relationship, any friendships you have with members of the opposite sex outside that romantic relationship put a real strain on the romantic relationship. The strain is caused by jealousy which is rooted in doubt, doubt that the person with the friend is fully devoted to the romantic relationship. When the person in the romantic relationship with the friend is confronted by the strain that s/he is causing, s/he has two choices: 1.) don’t change anything and let the strain take its course, likely ending the romantic relationship, or 2.) end any and all friendships with the opposite sex that are causing the strain and give the romantic relationship a real chance to thrive. Option 1 is the right choice if your friendships mean more to you than the person you’re romantically involved with. However, if you really care about the person you’re romantically involved with and you think that s/he might be the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, option 2 is the choice that makes sense. If you want to really give the romantic relationship a chance, you have to do what you can to relieve any stress on the relationship. Relationships are about compromising, meeting in the middle. It’s not always about what you want, but what “we” want.

Of course, standing on the outside as the friend, it can be very difficult to understand and deal with. It’s natural to feel like you’ve been betrayed or the girl/boyfriend has brainwashed your friend into ending your friendship, but the truth is that we, as friends, are angry and jealous that our friend has chosen them over us. This is the point when we usually complain to other friends about how this friend is “throwing away our friendship for someone that s/he hasn’t known for very long”, “that person just isn’t right for them”, and “her/his girl/boyfriend shouldn’t be jealous”. We try to gather support for our side of the argument, but what we fail realize at first, and sometimes second or third, is that romance sometimes requires taking risks. Of course our friends don’t know if this person is the one they will spend the rest of their lives with, and the relationships don’t always work out, but if they don’t take the risk, they will never know. It’s difficult to get to a point where we understand and accept it. Sometimes we have to experience it from the romantic side before we truly get it. It may not be how it should be, but from experience, my own and others, I can say that many times this is how it is. The only thing we can really do is to recognize it and support our friends in their decisions, even if we disagree with them. The world isn’t perfect and neither are the people in it, so while we can dream about an ideal society, we still have to live in the real world each day.

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Back At It

I have been slacking on keeping up with this blog. For a while, I was very focused on working on the look of the blog and didn't take any time to actually write anything. You may or may not have noticed that most posts are summaries on the main page that you can click on to read the whole thing. That took me a couple of weeks to work out. After I achieved that tremendous goal, I researched a way to reorder the posts so that they would appear from oldest to most recent rather than the opposite. As you can see on the main page, I am still researching that one. For the time being, I have moved the archive list to the top left of the main page to act as a table of contents where you can see the posts from oldest to most recent.

As for the Australia job, if you have checked the Greatest Job website, you already know that I did not get it. I didn't even make the top 50. Oh well. It was still a great experience making the video, and success is a journey, not a destination. I have quite a few more interesting things to write, but I won't get into them tonight as I am completely exhausted and have an early flight to Arizona tomorrow morning.

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Making Trax

I went to a gay club with a few friends last night. It was definitely an interesting experience. The majority of the people there were men, but there were quite a few women there as well. The most striking thing about it was how open and almost forced a lot of the physical displays between people were. Oddly, or not, the only same sex physical displays I saw were men making out and dancing closely on the dance floor. There were some women dancing together, but not overly close, and they weren’t doing anything that you wouldn’t see girls doing at any other club. The way the men acted really made an impression on me, though. They acted a lot like men at any other club would act except that they were hitting on other men. There seemed to be a definite pattern: spot a guy they were interested in, move in and dance close to him, if he accepted the advance then start kissing hard, continue dancing, and end by taking off their shirts. The last bit may have had something to do with the fact that there was some kind of special promotion at the bar for a company that made underwear. By the end of the night, a lot of the guys weren’t wearing anything but underwear. I think a lot of straight people feel uncomfortable even thinking about being in a gay club. I guess it’s because they are worried that they will get hit on by members of the same sex, but after my night at this club, I can say that it’s unlikely. I didn’t get hit on by any guys, not even once. Neither did the other straight male friend that went with us, and neither did either of the straight girls for that matter.

After the initial feeling of oddity at seeing male couples being physically intimate passed, I started wondering why these physical displays seemed so forced and kind of unnatural, and when I say “unnatural” I don’t mean in a Biblical sense, but in a social interaction sense. It kind of felt as if they were trying to put on a show and go out of their way to create these physical displays. Then, I realized that most of them must spend a great majority of their time repressing their feelings and emotions and that places like this club were places where they could release all, or a lot of, their pent up tension. This got me thinking about how society and even more importantly the Christian community treats gays. I can’t remember any specific situations where I saw people at church interacting with someone who was gay, so I guess I can’t say for sure, but the general attitude of people in the church seems to be very harsh toward gays. Not necessarily to the point of committing hate crimes, but definitely to the point of taking a very strict, hard-line approach toward them. It almost seems like many Christians view homosexuality as some kind of ultra-sin, something almost unforgivable. The Bible lists homosexuality with numerous other sins, including: adultery, idolatry, greed, and sexual immorality. However, a lot of Christians seem to be more willing to accept people who have committed that latter than the former. What I mean is that people in church seem to think of sinners of the latter sins as people who have lost their way and need some direction to get back on the right path, but homosexuals are sinners who are going to hell, as if there is no hope for them. Perhaps it’s the uncomfortableness that they feel when confronted with homosexuality that causes them to react this way, and not all Christians share this same attitude, but the truth is that the Bible lists all those sins together, equally. It doesn’t make any special reference to homosexuality as being worse than the rest, and I think it’s important to recognize this because if we don’t, we will continue to drive gays away from the church and away from God. When I asked a gay friend of mine if he wanted to go to church, he just made a “teh” sound and said, “Heck, no!” as if he would never even consider it. It may have something to do with experiences he has had with the church in the past or it may just be his own pride, but it’s obvious that he would feel as uncomfortable in church as most Christians would feel in a gay club, and that’s not what church is meant to be like.

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The Greatest...Video?

Well, the video submission deadline has come and gone, and I got mine in just under the wire. I had a couple of iterations at the developmental stage of the video concept. At first, I thought I would start off with my qualifications, in bullet point format, and no name and then cut to a video from my high school football days (that's American football for anyone outside the US and Canada). In the video in question, our team was kicking off, and I sped down the field and made a flying tackle of the ball carrier. Just after the tackle, the cameraman said, "Is that Fabrizio? Fabriziooooooooo!!" I thought it would have been an interesting way to start off the video, a real attention getter. The main issue with that concept was getting the video from VHS to digital format. I only had access to one VCR, and it was hungry.

After that fell through, I re-read the application requirements: must be entertaining and engaging, tell why you're the best person for the job, and demonstrate your knowledge of the islands of the Great Barrier Reef. Ever since I was in uni (university for North Americans), my roommate and I would sing along to songs and change the lyrics to reference people in the room or situations at the time. When I moved to Japan, I found my true calling in the karaoke bars. There was no mistaking the lyrics at these places. I could sing whatever I wanted, and there was no annoying musician reminding everyone that what I was saying was not exactly the original. While I was in Miyako, I wrote a tribute to the island to the tune of Kokomo by the Beach Boys. I call it Miyakomo. If you want to know how it goes, you will have to sneak in to a karaoke session with me sometime. Anyway, I was trying to think of something that would be entertaining and engaging for the audience, and I thought that the creativity of Miyakomo would work well. The only problem was that Miyakomo really didn't have any relevance to Hamilton Island or Queensland. On the night that I re-read the application requirements, I went to bed straight after reading them, so I couldn't sleep because I kept trying to think of a new concept. That's when it hit me. I wanted something about Queensland, and I remembered a song by Dada called Dizz Knee Land. The chorus of the song is "I'm going to Dizz Knee Land!" I quickly realized that this could easily be changed to "I'm going to Queensland!" The tune was catchy enough, so all I needed to do was come up with the verse. I also tweaked the chorus a bit to make it more appealing, "Let's go to Queensland!" After that, I went right to sleep. The next day, I did some research and chose some key places and sights in Queensland and the Whitsundays. I reckoned that I could start the song from the broad perspective of the state of Queensland and then zoom in to the Whitsundays and Hamilton Island. If you're curious, the lyrics are below:

Brisbane, Gold Coast, Great Barrier Reef
Let's go to Queensland!

74 islands in the Coral Sea
Let's go to Queensland!

Diving, turtle, bird, and whale watching
Let's go to Queensland!

Heart Reef, Hill Inlet, White Haven Beach!
Let's go to Queensland!

Here's a brief breakdown of why I chose these lyrics. Brisbane is the capital of Queensland, so it's an obvious starter. The Gold Coast isn't exactly near the Whitsundays, but it's not far off, so it shows movement from Brisbane toward the Whitsundays, which are on the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). That's the first verse.

The Whitsundays are a group of 74 islands in the Coral Sea, enough said.

Being on the GBR, diving is a given, and there are quite a few opportunities to see turtles on the GBR. I saw several when I went diving off of Cairns a few years back. The portion of Hamilton Island that is a National Park, which takes up about 70% of the island, is great for bird watching. Whales also migrate through the area in mid-winter, which is exactly the time the position starts. Whales migrate past Miyako-jima in winter as well. I never got to go out on a boat to look for them, but I saw them from the shore once. That's one thing I would have liked to have done while I lived there. Anyway, since July is when the job starts and is the ideal time for whale watching, I decided it was also the ideal addition to the verse.

The last verse is a smattering of famous sites in the Whitsundays: the heart-shaped reef, Hill Inlet and White Haven go together as Hill Inlet is at the northern end of White Haven Beach, and no trip to the Whitsundays would really be complete without visiting White Haven Beach as it is most likely one of the most famous beaches in Australia, or at least in the Whitsundays.

That's the explanation of the lyrics. I won't bore you with the details of the 20+ takes on the recording of the audio for the video, but it was all done right here on my laptop using the microphone in my headpiece for talking on Skype. I shot the video completely on my own which meant doing several takes to make sure that my head wasn't cut off during filming, and then I edited, cut, spliced, and overlaid the audio on my mom's desktop using the software that came with her video camera. It turned out alright, but I would have liked to have the sound match with the movement of my lips and hands a bit more.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my Queensland music video. If you haven't seen it yet, you can check it out here.

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The Greatest Job in the World

About a month ago, a friend of mine sent me an article titled "The Greatest Job in the World". I had told him that I was going to be leaving my job and the China/Hong Kong area, where I had lived for about a year. I think he sent it to me as a joke, but as I read the basic job description in the article, I began to get very excited about it.

For those of you who don't know, the job is caretaker of Hamilton Island in Queensland, Australia. The main purpose of the position is to promote tourism to Queensland. According to the article and the website (www.islandreefjob.com), the job responsibilities include snorkeling, scuba diving, exploring the surrounding islands and other islands on the Great Barrier Reef, and basically spending time walking the beaches, swimming with the fishes, and being an ideal tourist. The caretaker is also responsible for keeping the world up to date on her/his activities by blogging, interacting with media, etc. It sounds like a bit of a cowboy job, but I'm sure that there are a lot of other responsibilities involved. Being a tourism promotional model isn't easy, at least I don't think it is.

The excitement that the article spurred within me got me searching the information superhighway for more, well, information about the job. I found another article in which someone from the Queensland government was giving some tips and advice about applying for the job. She said that due to the demand for the job, there would be an insane amount of applicants; however, anyone who has a degree related
to environmental studies and has any experience living in a similar place will automatically be in the top 25% of all applicants. Now when I read this, I got really excited because I have a degree in Forestry-Recreation Management, and I lived in Miyako-jima, Japan in Okinawa for 5 years. Miyako-jima seems to be
Cape Higashihennazaki,
Miyako-jima, Japan
very similar to Hamilton Island. It is located at 24 degrees latitude, so it has a similar climate, it is 300km from the mainland of Okinawa, so it is isolated, and it has some of the most beautiful beaches I have ever seen in my life. It has a population of 50,000 people making it a bit more populated than Hamilton island, but still fairly small as far as populations go. On top of that, while I was living in Miyako-jima, I had a role on a weekly local TV show on the island. The show was news-based, giving local news, but the unique point was that it was almost entirely done in the local dialect, not in Japanese. My role on the show was to have the woman teach me the local dialect. It would have been
challenging being on a TV show that was in Japanese, but it was even more challenging as I didn't understand what was being said most of the time. Still, it was a lot of fun, and I did learn quite a bit of the local dialect. I was surprised at how qualified for this job I really was. When you happen onto an opportunity like this, you have

Volleyball at Maehama Beach,
Miyako-jim, Japan

to take a shot. That's why so many people are putting in applications for the job. When you're actually qualified for the job, it's a no-brainer to put in for it.

When I tell people that I am applying for this job, they always have the same reaction...a chuckle and smile, then when they see that I'm not laughing, they ask, "Seriously?" I reckon that most people look at putting in for this job about the same as buying a lottery ticket. The reward is amazing, but the odds of receiving it are slim and none. At last check, there were about 6,000 applicants on the website. I reckon there will probably be somewhere around 10,000 by the cutoff. If I am in the top 25%, as the woman in the article stated, that would make my odds of getting the job about 1 in 2,500. That's better by far than the odds of winning the lottery. Plus, my video application should shove me out a bit further toward that top percentile. Queensland will choose the top 10 candidates by May and fly them out to Hamilton Island for interviews. The website also mentions something about possibly taking part in challenges, etc. It makes it sound a bit like Survivor to me.

Well, for those of you interested, I will be posting more info about the making of my masterpiece of an application video later.

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