It was a quite extraordinary sight, with the throngs corralled into various zones, each of which seemed to handle a different stage of the purchasing process. There were clowns and live music to entertain the waiting Apple fans as well as free McDonalds meals to sustain them in what will surely be a long night of waiting.

With that said, I’m going to write a dull and pointless blogpost.

I love the word lassitude and probably don’t use it enough. Lassitude means weariness, tiredness and a lack of energy and also implies an inability to focus or concentrate. Lassitude describes the office worker’s inability to complete a Friday afternoon’s work and also the muddled fatigue that can grip us in the first days of a much anticipated vacation.

And, lassitude describes the way I feel about Hong Kong right now. I could blame the oppressively humid summer weather (it’s been 30C and raining for most of this week). But, it’s not that simple.

Last year, when I came back from my summer break I was deeply discontent. Granted, that was an exceptionally long and pleasant summer break. Two weeks in London, plus trips to Paris and Yorkshire as well as two weeks in Adelaide. It was an overdose of the kinds of art, music, food, theatre, shopping and outdoor activity that I love, while spending time with family and friends.

From feeling overwhelmed by choice and social interaction I came back to the reality, in Hong Kong, of having almost no friends, very little social network and few communal or recreational options. Most of of things that made me want to “get out of bed in the morning” were not based locally. I was fed up with living through the internet.

So, I made some choices and changes and underwent a year of refocussing. Coming back to Hong Kong this year, after my summer break I was not friendless or network-less. But, neither was I overwhelmed with a sense of being “home.” Things are better but they are still, well, flat.

I’m accustomed (or, is that resigned) to a pattern of life in Hong Kong. The daily frustrations and irritations are, in the greater scheme of things small and familiar and I’ve grown to depend upon, if not necessarily need some of the comforts (including the excellent underground system and the much loved City‘n Super food store).

But, comfort and convenience is not inspiration and motivation. I’ve met some westerners who claim that Hong Kong offers them the perfect lifestyle, but without exception those are folks whose lifestyles I don’t care to emulate (or, I end up questioning the truthfulness of their claims). More realistically, every city is a set of contradictions and compromises that we must try to navigate.

This week, having walked passed the long queues of folks waiting to buy an iPad (they officially went on sale in Hong Kong this week) I was reminded that as a semi-geeky tech-head living in Hong Kong is not that dissimilar to living in Delhi (but, with better postal services and no problems with tax and duty). I’m gearing up for the second half of the year and all my hard-drives, ram, guitar strings, light-boxes and bags will be coming from the US. Same goes for software and sample libraries.

None of which gets in the way of enjoying my days or being productive through the week. By contrast, I remember all the days I lost in India to power and internet outages (not to mention all the other daily technical and personal catastrophes). Neither have I forgotten the way London’s fickle public transport often played havoc with my commutes and commitments.

Years ago I was enamoured by the idea that our location in the world would matter less and less, that we could “tele-commute” to our “virtual” office from anywhere in the world. The joys of call centres aside, I’m not so sure about that idea anymore. I don’t need to work in what most people imagine a professional music studio to look like in order to compose music. But, living without a vibrant musical community around me has been tough.

This is a hoary problem with little resolution in sight. I’m not moving yet and not all that sure where I would like to move to if the opportunity came up. I’ve got a model that seems to work for life here in Hong Kong.

Of course I’ve done lots of planning for different cities where I might set up (and where rents and technical costs would be lower). I’ve also got some crazy dreams for moving to remote and less technically apt locations.

But, for now, those are just dreams. What I really have to do is get up every morning and go to work – again and again and again. That’s why that word lassitude comes to mind.

However, the G4 won’t run the current versions of the audio and image editing software that I use. On my recent trip to Adelaide it was frustrating not to be able to fully edit photos till after I returned home. With trips to Taiwan, India and Japan coming up in the next few months I’d like to able to develop and post more photos while on the road.

My initial thoughts were to opt for a super-powerful 15inch MacBook Pro (the 17 inch MacBook Pro is so large that it doesn’t qualify as portable). The latest revision, with the i7 processor is an impressive beast that, with the appropriate upgrades to RAM and hard-drive, has the potential to perform solidly as part of a Digital Audio Workstation.

However, the key function driving this purchase is photography, not audio. Moreover, when I’m on the road the audio work I do is simple, basic and honestly not all that processor intensive. I tend to work on ideas and fixes more than composition and mixes.

Travelling also highlights the issue of portability. While the 13.3 inch Macbook Pro is significantly less powerful, it is quite a bit smaller, lighter and has longer battery life. Sadly, the smaller Macbook Pro does not have the option of a 7200 RPM drive (de rigueur for audio), but I can upgrade to an SSD drive for better speed and lower noise. Expensive, but tempting.

So, as I did with the 12inch PowerBook, I’m again going for portability over power. Hopefully the 13.3inch Macbook Pro will make it a little easier for me to write and edit photos on a mountain range in Kashmir or a cafe in Kyoto.

“Friendship is devolving, in other words, from a relationship to a feeling—from something people share to something each of us hugs privately to ourselves in the loneliness of our electronic caves, rearranging the tokens of connection like a lonely child playing with dolls. The same path was long ago trodden by community. As the traditional face-to-face community disappeared, we held on to what we had lost—the closeness, the rootedness—by clinging to the word, no matter how much we had to water down its meaning. Now we speak of the Jewish “community” and the medical “community” and the “community” of readers, even though none of them actually is one. What we have, instead of community, is, if we’re lucky, a “sense” of community—the feeling without the structure; a private emotion, not a collective experience. And now friendship, which arose to its present importance as a replacement for community, is going the same way. We have “friends,” just as we belong to “communities.” Scanning my Facebook page gives me, precisely, a “sense” of connection. Not an actual connection, just a sense.”

It is easy to assume that our definition of friendship only started to change with the advent of social media (like Facebook, Twitter, etc). However, William Deresiewicz’ excellent piece, Faux Friendship, in The Chronicle of Higher Education outlines the ways our understandings of friendship have transformed, from antiquity, through the renaissance, into modernity and up to the present day. At each stage of history, what friendship meant described not only the way people treated those they knew, but also the relationship that groups of people had to society as a whole (and the political ideas that drove those societies).

“Finally, the new social-networking Web sites have falsified our understanding of intimacy itself, and with it, our understanding of ourselves. The absurd idea, bruited about in the media, that a MySpace profile or “25 Random Things About Me” can tell us more about someone than even a good friend might be aware of is based on desiccated notions about what knowing another person means: First, that intimacy is confessional—an idea both peculiarly American and peculiarly young, perhaps because both types of people tend to travel among strangers, and so believe in the instant disgorging of the self as the quickest route to familiarity. Second, that identity is reducible to information: the name of your cat, your favourite Beatle, the stupid thing you did in seventh grade. Third, that it is reducible, in particular, to the kind of information that social-networking Web sites are most interested in eliciting, consumer preferences. Forget that we’re all conducting market research on ourselves. Far worse is that Facebook amplifies our longstanding tendency to see ourselves (“I’m a Skin Bracer man!”) in just those terms. We wear T-shirts that proclaim our brand loyalty, pique ourselves on owning a Mac, and now put up lists of our favourite songs. “15 movies in 15 minutes. Rule: Don’t take too long to think about it.”

So information replaces experience, as it has throughout our culture. But when I think about my friends, what makes them who they are, and why I love them, it is not the names of their siblings that come to mind, or their fear of spiders. It is their qualities of character. This one’s emotional generosity, that one’s moral seriousness, the dark humour of a third. Yet even those are just descriptions, and no more specify the individuals uniquely than to say that one has red hair, another is tall. To understand what they really look like, you would have to see a picture. And to understand who they really are, you would have to hear about the things they’ve done. Character, revealed through action: the two eternal elements of narrative. In order to know people, you have to listen to their stories.”

As much as I enjoy services like Twitter and remain committed to blogging, the idea that we might be letting Social Media be the primary way we understand ourselves troubles me. At our best we are far more interesting, complex and contradictory that a database impression might suggest and our potential is far greater that what pure consumerism can allow.

This photo is a snapshot of the pre-holiday chaos that reigned in just one of my CD storage spaces. I have CDs in two places in my apartment, some in short term storage and quite a few in long term storage. It’s a crazy, messy and yes, chaotic way to live.

I’m quite fond of the word chaos. It implies disorder, randomness and confusion. However, in mythology, chaos is often the first step in the creative process. Great things happen when chaos is shaped into a form and becomes reality.

For me, having a substantial music library is important, personally and professionally. I love listening to music, finding new music, comparing different versions of the same tunes and developing playlists for any and every occasion (from CDs for holiday driving to mixes for everyday commuting). Moreover, I believe that listening carefully and attentively to a wide range of artists, as well as digging deep into your main genres is as important to a musician’s development as time spent in galleries for an artist or books read for a writer. Having a good music library is like digging yourself a deep well of inspiration and ideas.

However, this unformed mess of discs and cases repels me. To make matters worse, living in Hong Kong I simply can’t afford the shelf space to have the collection organised properly. For a while now the answer has seemed obvious – digitise my music library into something like iTunes, throw away the cases and just keep the discs and booklets in archive folders (which can hold a few hundred discs per folder/case).

Currently I encode my CDs as MP3s at 320kbps, which is a comprise I decided on some time ago. However, the costs of storage have dropped dramatically in recent years. So, whilst encoding CDs in .WAV format was prohibitively expensive a few years ago, now a 1TB hardrive, which is enough to hold over 2000 CDs worth of material encoded in 44.1k 16bit WAV, is available for less than $100US!

I never loved the CD format. I grew up with Vinyl and Cassettes and it took me a long time to, reluctantly, switch to CD. Despite the hype (and obvious lack of noise) I thought those early CDs sounded like rubbish and comparing the CD versions of some of my favourite albums with their Vinyl equivalent was enough to douse any enthusiasm for the format. In the end, I was left with no choice – the music industry stopped releasing new Vinyl.

There’s a kind of nostalgia that held me back from a purely digital music library, not just for Vinyl, but for the old album artwork that I loved so much. In fact, it’s probably fair to say that my eye for colour, typography, graphic design and even photography was largely developed through all those hours spent pouring over album covers.

Programmes like iTunes are cool as is being able to make music selections from anywhere in your house using an iPad-like device. Moreover, being able to store a whole lifetime’s worth of music on a few hard drives (and eventually, on one device) appeals deeply to my aesthetics. But, something has been lost. Looking at that little album cover image on an iPod, or even a larger image on the screen of my Mac can’t even be compared to the feeling of holding a Vinyl album cover in your hands.

All of which is a reminder that, for me at least, music isn’t just a product, a sound that buy as scratches on plastic or bits on a disc. Rather, music is about the relationship we have with a place and sometimes with a time in our lives. That’s why playlists matter – we want to experience places and times in our days differently. That’s why music libraries and collections matter;, they are like a biography of our lives, our changing tastes and even our travels. And, that’s why the way we store our music sometimes raises more questions than it answers.

That said, Adelaide has one ace up its sleeve in terms of food – the charming and historic Adelaide Central Market. The oldest part of the current complex was built in 1900, but, the market’s roots stretch back to January 1869. The large, covered and comfortably spaced central area has stalls with everything from fresh produce (a lot of it organic and regional), seafood, cold meats, cheeses, through to cakes, coffee and speciality shops (including several Asian stores). My parents go there to buy their cold meats and Yerba Maté and I always make a pilgrimage to the Smelly Cheese shop, which has the best selection of European cheeses I have ever seen in Australia.

Unlike markets in most other cities, Adelaide Central Market is, as the name implies, centrally located – a short walk from the business district and near the heart of the city. The market has ample parking as well as being serviced by the excellent Adelaide Tram system (free within the centre of the city, with a $2 park and ride option from the edges of the city).

“Get out of the Supermarket whenever you can.” Michael Pollan, Food Rules

While nowhere in Adelaide ever feels crowded, the Market always has a vibrancy and buzz. Partly that is because local office and retail workers rely on it as a cafe and eating destination. Also, Central Market is popular with families and given the issues Australia is now facing with obesity (Obesity is now more deadly than smoking), it is reassuring to see young kids shopping with their parents among the fresh, regional and seasonal produce!

There are a lot of photos from the trip to sort through, as well as some blogposts to finish on Adelaide Central Market, the Rail Museum and the coastal cycleways along Adelaide’s Northern Beaches. In the meantime, here are a few photos from the trip.

Funny as that put down was, it was also disappointing. For one who was, perhaps, Australia’s most visionary and Asian-oriented of leaders, to not foresee how Darwin could have become a truly Asian gateway city (with some planning and commitment) is almost indefensible.

However, there’s also an unpalatable element of ingratitude in that statement. It’s all too easy to cast cultural aspersions from the lofty comfort of a luxury airline seat.

That fact was not lost on me as I sat down to write this reflection, in seat 1A, en route from Sydney to Adelaide. Having enjoyed a snack in the Qantas Platinum Lounge at the Sydney Domestic Airport, then being shown, by name, to my seat (Frequent Flier privileges), I’m now cruising comfortably, enjoying a drink and awaiting my poached salmon meal.

Who am I to criticise anyone?

Every time I come back to Australia I find it hard to really unwind and relax. Of course, it’s great to see family and wonderful to enjoy the fresh air and open space. But, the popular culture and politics form a more than distracting backdrop.

In the recent Monocle Quality of Life survey, Sydney was described as a city that “…ebbs and flows like the Tasman Sea.” An apt metaphor for a city that oscillates between the breathtakingly beautiful and engaging and the gratingly bad and off-putting.

Some may say that kind of oscillation, between good and bad, is true of every city, which, of course, is a facile oversimplification. Far more revealing is what those oscillations reveal about ourselves and the cultures that live with them. As Australia faces an election to fought, more on less, on the same issues that dominated politics here thirty years ago, as more an more Australians obviously and visibly lose the battle against obesity, as crime and violence continue to increase, it feels on the one hand that the oscillation is really more of a slow downward spiral.

Then again, reading the nearly excellent Creative magazine and the spectacularly sharp Habitus and Audio technology magazines reminds me why Australian design and business ideas are so influential around the world.

There’s a kind of romance in travelling, in being a global nomad. You get to fall in love with, or be seduced by new places, or at least, to explore their charms. Of course, as feelings harden it can become hard to feel that first rush of passion.

Being in London this time last year I had a great time, felt very “at home,” yet was troubled by a lot of things (from crime, to infrastructure, to the over-sexualised popular culture). By contrast, Paris, a city I have never lived in, just won me over. Living in Hong Kong makes me constantly think I’ve spent too many years in Asia, yet I can’t wait to go back to Tokyo!

In a way, the object of my animus is not simply Australian culture, but the present state of my peripatetic lifestyle. I feel no great desire to “settle” in any one place. Yet, I look upon another international move (an inevitability from Hong Kong) with a mix of dread and longing.

Four years in Hong Kong have taught me that what some people prize about that city doesn’t matter much to me and that some things (like cramp living space) will be an eternal frustration. Despite that, this has been a productive year, I’ve finally managed to build a small network of friends and acquaintances and the small patterns of day to day life in Hong Kong are convenient, comfortable and familiar.

Is that enough?

Is there anything more depressing than getting sick in the middle of a vacation? Probably, I suppose, when one tallies up the full breadth of potential human misery it may not rank all that highly. Still, there is a special kind of disappointment when one looks forward to a holiday for months and months, only to be struck down with a nasty cold in the middle of the break.

Maybe it was bad planning, having left my best winter clothes in Hong Kong storage, or maybe it was the record breaking chilly winter here in Adelaide, or perhaps just bad luck. Whatever the reason, I came down hard with a virulent cold – the whole deal – shivers, blocked nose, snarling cough, soreness and trouble sleeping.

OK, I was also getting far too little slumber, what with all those world cup matches to see. However, I flatly and resolutely refuse to accept that played any role in my demise.

Accepting some small level of personal guilt in being rundown probably extends beyond packing, clothing and getting a good night’s sleep. It’s been a wild start to the year, with long working days stretching into very late nights. As I struggled to awake on those cold mornings I also had to acknowledge that, in a very deep way, I really needed this break.

Apart from sleeping and watching football, I’ve also been doing a lot of cooking, a decent amount of writing and a serious amount of photography. In fact, I’ve been taking around sixty photos a day, which doesn’t sound like much in this digital age. However, I’m taking a lot more time over each photo now (including iPhone images, like the ones in the gallery above). I’m also starting to think about how this collection of photos I’ve taken in Adelaide, over the past few years, might come together.

In fact, as I look back on this sojourn, I find the best moments have been the ones where expectations on what will be achieved in the day are low, items on the agenda few and multitasking is nowhere to be seen. Solace, where I’ve found it, has been in taking things one at a time. Maybe, it’s because I’m resigned to the fact that I probably won’t shake this cold until after I return to Hong Kong

A few weeks ago I made some predictions about who would make up the quarter-finalists,

“…my pick is that Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Serbia and Uruguay will make up the final eight.”

OK, so I got five predictions right. Sadly, Chile didn’t win their group, so Spain drew Portugal. Brasil were too strong and too disciplined for Chile, but I wonder what a Chile versus Portugal match might have looked like. Italy, of course, massively under-performed and so we have Paraguay one stage further than expected. Serbia also disappointed, which gives us the pleasure of seeing Ghana with the chance of being the first African team to make the semi-finals.

Before the tournament started I predicted an Argentina versus Netherlands final. That’s still quite possible, though Brasil are playing better football than I expected and could well win out tonight. If they do, then I suspect they will be too strong for Uruguay, who will end Ghana’s run. On the other side of the draw, I’m still backing Argentina to make the final, overcoming Germany and Spain en route to the final.

That would leave us with Argentina versus Brasil in the final, with both teams coached by former world cup winning players.

Long bike rides are a good time to think and with such a wintery bite in the air, it’s best to have something substantial to ponder, lest one’s focus become too tightly fixed on numbing extremities and solid winter clothing left in storage back home.

So, I’ve been pondering how one approaches the question of decorating a home. My habit (or vice), when travelling is always to wonder what it would be like to live in a place, or maybe to buy a holiday home, or pied-à-terre. I figure it’s nice to dream and, to be blunt, buying a holiday home in Adelaide is a lot more affordable that, say, doing the same on Martha’s Vineyard.

At the risk of making a grotesque oversimplification, I figure there are at least two ways to approach decorating a home. To borrow some grandiose religious language, you can either build a temple or a monastery.

A monastic approach means the home becomes something of a retreat, or sanctuary, a haven from the outside world. Monastic homes, may be simple, plain, welcoming and often warm. They invite an inward journey and demand little of those that visit them. In a lot of ways the very clean, light, generic approach to contemporary design is often monastic in nature.

A temple, by contrast, is more of an expression of a single identity. It serves to reflect, outward, the personality and maybe the life of the people who live there. Temple homes will be more demanding, maybe even more aesthetically challenging, since they are not neutral, but take a position in contrast to the world.

I don’t necessarily feel that either is right or wrong. However, to have a coherent and consistent design, it makes sense to follow one or the other approach all the way through. Perhaps you can apply both approaches to different parts of a home, but my guess is that would require a very unconventional piece of architecture.

This idea crystallised while looking at Erik Spiekermann and Susanna Dulkinys home, featured in Dwell magazine. This home is a reflection of a number of powerful ideas (and clever solutions). Perhaps not the kind of space I would want to live in right now, but, I would like approach creating a living space with that level of boldness and conviction.

And, that sense of confidence is attractive to me because I find myself increasingly wondering how confident people are about the spaces they create for themselves. Having moved and relocated so much over the last twenty years I’ve been constantly setting up homes, across four continents. So the sense of compromise, of settling with things that do not work well seems foreign to me.

That is probably my way of concluding that when I next set up a home, it will be more of a temple than a monastery.

It’s great to catch up with family, watch the world cup matches, cook great food and go for long bike rides in clean fresh air. I’m reading some good books (the new one from Anthony Bourdain and Julia Cameron’s The Sound of Paper), taking a lot of photos and enjoying a chance to put the hustle and rush of 2010 into some perspective.

This week I’ll be shooting some photos along the coast here, showing the great cafe culture along the northern beaches of Adelaide. I’ll also be visiting the fantastic Adelaide food market, which is also a great story in and of itself. I’m still checking my schedule to see how many winery visits I can manage.

I’ll also be tinkering with some amplifiers, playing some guitar and doing a little painting. Add a few long walks and it is pretty much the perfect holiday.

Our self-definition (the real us, rather than the fantasy we wish we were) flows from what we do and the people we are in relationships with. When that doesn’t change much, there’s little reason to revisit the definition. However, last year I made some decisions to change my work and networks and that has brought a lot of change. So, now I’m having to revisit quite regularly the question of who is asking to work with me and why people are coming to this blog.

So, I’ve pared back the about me page and re-edited the pages about my music and photography. I’ve added a small gallery of photos to both, as well as a SoundCloud player to the music page. Please take a look.

I’ve also added a new page, focussed on my writing. When I started blogging, back in 2001 I was primarily a writer (as an academic and researcher). These days I describe myself as an essayist and increasingly I see writing as an adjunct to music and photography – secondary but still important. The following is from the writing page and summarises some of how I approach writing these days.

“I’ve been blogging, on and off, since June 2001 and consistently on this site since October 2004. The inspiration to get into blogging came from reading academics and religious thinkers who were using the platform to spread new idea to readers in a faster and less mediated form than what print journals and magazines could allow.

Although a lot of blogging was (and to some extent continues to be) of the dear-diary type, it was pretty clear, even ten years ago, that serious and professional writers were using this platform in a revolutionary way. Everything that has come since those days, from Web2.0 to Web3.0, with social media, mobile and tablet computing thrown in represents a radical change to the publishing landscape for writers of all types.

My chosen form is the essay. With my background in philosophy, religious and cultural studies, the essay became a natural way to express my ideas. While essay writing transfers well to the blog format, it is also telling that many of the magazines that remain as standard-bearers for the print-format, such The Atlantic, The Economist, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Monocle and Vanity Fair are bastions of the essay, in both short and long form.”

So there you have it – music, photography and writing. That’s my answer to the big ugly question – so, what do you do?

Group A
France played one of the most memorable World Cup matches I’ve ever seen, a torrid Semi-Final against West Germany in ’82. And, of course, they won in a memorable final in ’98. However, this side will probably resemble, more closely, the disappointing team of ’02, who failed to get out of the group stage.
Mexico are a talented and tactically adventurous side who often dominate their region but can’t always transfer that form to the World Cup stage. However, I expect them to make it through to the round of sixteen.
South Africa as the hosts will have tremendous support. But, their form going into the tournament suggests they will struggle to give their fans much to cheer about, once the opening rounds are complete.
Uruguay struggled early on in qualifying but came into their own over time. My feeling is this tournament will be one for playmakers and pure strikers of the ball and Uruguay have both. The draw, in the knockout stages could favour them as potential quarter finalists.

Group B
Argentina are the enigma of the tournament. A stunningly powerful and creative side. But, with Maradona as coach anything – and, I mean anything – could happen. Still, I’m going to pick them to make it at least as far as the semi-finals and maybe, just maybe, go all the way.
Greece will be a tough side to beat, but I’m not sure they have a winning formula. Still, in something of a weak group, they will probably make it through to the knockout stages.
Nigeria have historically been one of the strongest and most attractive African sides. But, they are a weaker and less sophisticated proposition this time. If they manage to beat Greece to second place in the group, that will be as far as they go.
South Korea are the strongest of what is a weak batch of Asian nations. An energetic side who will run and run and run, then leave after their three group games.

Group C
Algeria are a side that are being overlooked by a lot of commentators. But, I expect may cause some headaches for the other teams in this group. They won’t make it to the next stage, but they could well pull off an upset.
England are a team I’d like to see do well. But, I’m not sure how far they will go once they make it to the knockout stages. Injuries and an unbalanced squad will be their undoing.
Slovenia are a side that I expect to play very defensive and tight football. They may just make it through to the knockout stages, which for them would be quite an achievement.
USA only really play well when they attack, which could be their undoing given that the smaller teams in this group can play patient football. But, if they take their chances, the US will, as I expect, make it through to the next round.

Group D
Australia did well in the last world cup to make it to the knockout stage and push the Italians in a tough match. Sadly, this side is slower, less creative and less attack-minded than the team from four years ago. A hard fought but early exit awaits the “Socceroos.”
Germany will miss Ballack in the centre of the park but will still have enough firepower to make it through to the quarter finals.
Ghana will also miss a key (Chelsea-based) player-maker in Michael Essien. Still, they are an exciting team who will push their opposition hard, though maybe not hard enough to win through to the next round.
Serbia strike me as one of the most defensively solid teams in the tournament. They should make the knockout stages, but I doubt they have the goalscoring prowess to go far.

Group E
Cameroon are a side that can play electric football on a good day, but may well lack the discipline to get the results needed to make it through to the knockout stage.
Denmark are my pick to take the second qualifying spot in what could be the most lopsided group. They have a good squad, can control the game and win while playing at a slow tempo – something that might be handy at altitude. Don’t be surprised if they make the quarter finals.
Japan are a team that will prove that good players can’t overcome bad tactics. Poor qualifying form will translate to a bottom of the group finish.
Netherlands are a sharp side that some smart pundits have picked as a potential dark-horse. My feeling is this side will be every-bit as exciting as the great squads of ’74, ’78 and ’94 and should make it to at least the semi-finals.

Group F
Italy will start slow, score a lot of goals, knock Brasil out, reach the semi finals, send their fans crazy and be hated by everyone else. Business as usual really.
New Zealand have done well to make it this far. However, that will be cold comfort every time they pick the ball out of the own net – something they will be doing a lot.
Paraguay are one of my favourite South American sides, largely down to their “Christmas Tree” formation. Deadly on the counter attack and agonisingly hard to break down in defence, they will make to the next round at least.
Slovakia are able to play stylish football and with a youthful squad they may surprise some. Then again, they may not. The order of matches favours them, but I doubt they have what it takes to score against two of the best defensive teams in the tournament.

Group G
Brasil will, thanks to coach Dunga, be playing an uncharacteristically pragmatic brand of football at the tournament. Still, they have enormous goalscoring potential across the park and plenty of potential stars. It will take a big team to undo them.
Cote d’Ivoire were my pick of the African sides till the freak injury to Didier Drogba. They should still progress, but might struggle to get beyond the first knockout stage.
North Korea play a brand of football that is hard to love, unless you like robotic predictability. They will scramble and fight and worry about what awaits them when they return home after the group stage.
Portugal have great players but will not match the results of recent tournaments. Christiano Ronaldo will have to do a lot to help lift his side to the next phase.

Group H
Chile have their best squad since ’98 and, thanks to Bielsa, their best tactics since they hosted the finals in ’62. Stylish and deadly on the counter-attack they are the pick of a lot of analysts to stage an upset or two.
Honduras have suffered some brutal defeats on the world cup stage. They are now a stronger and more well disciplined side that can play attractive football. However, they will still struggle to win a game.
Spain are many people’s favourites to win the tournament. They have a staggeringly strong squad and in Del Bosque, a coach who knows how to win. They will impress early, but injuries and fatigue will mean they might struggle in the knockout stages.
Switzerland don’t always have the goalscoring flair to match their otherwise solid form. An unfashionable side that will play well, but leave early.

Tactically, I think it will be a fascinating world cup. Whereas recent tournaments have favoured 4-4-2 and 4-5-1 formations, this year we will see more sides playing variations of 3 at the back and also the now popular again (at European club level) 4-3-3. Then, of course, Brasil will be playing their crazy 2-2-2-2-2 system with different emphasis down each flank (because they can).

So, who will make the Quarter Finals? Well, my pick is that Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Serbia and Uruguay will make up the final eight. Going beyond that, I’m going to stick my neck out and predict an Argentina versus Netherlands final.

Of course, the likelihood is that, in a few weeks, I’ll look back on these predictions and wonder what kind of lunacy had overcome me. That’s what I love about football. After all the predictions, analysis and thinking the game still takes us by surprise again and again.

In that spirit I’ve been working on this kind of crazy tune, Golaso. Hope you enjoy the World Cup!

Golaso (version2) by fernandogros

For me, the calendar flipping over to June reminds me that I arrived in Hong Kong four years ago and left London for Delhi 7 years ago. Both those moves were major upheavals and the more I look back on them, the more surprised I feel at the way things have turned out.

It has been a busy and rewarding year thus far. I’ve managed to progress on almost every project I set for myself. In some areas, things are moving much better than I had hoped. However, one thing still hangs, annoyingly over my head. I’ve yet to finish my album! The track below is a first take for what will be the last track on the album and I offer it as a token that, yes, I’m still recording material.

Lucidity by fernandogros

It’s part of my nature, maybe a weakness and a strength, that I find it hard to finish things when the next steps are not in place. So, mentally I’ve found it impossible to finish the album without a plan for releasing it. That’s part of why creating SoundWallah was so important to me – it was a way to create entities for publishing my songs properly and also for creating a record label.

June also brings us to the 2010 FIFA world cup. I’m doing my best to avoid the folks who suddenly become experts about the beautiful game when a major tournament rolls around. This will be the eighth world cup that I have fanatically followed. As usual I will be cheering all the non-Brasillian South American teams, especially Chile who have their best squad in years (but face a very tough draw).

I’ll also be travelling to Australia to visit family, breath some fresh air and hopefully take a lot of photos. I feel a lot more connected and content in Hong Kong than I did a year ago. But, I still find myself needing breaks from this city. I’m looking forward to taking some time away from my desk to listen to mixes, re-edit some work and just be outdoors.

When I return from Holidays it will be a very busy couple of months. Then, in September, I will return to India for the first time since I left, on a photographic tour. It’s turning out to be quite the year, actually.

What may surprise some music fans is that a lot of the acts featured had made it to the conference with the help and support of the national (and sometimes regional) trade commissions. This was particularly the case in terms of the Australian and Canadian performers.

It just wasn’t possible to get along to watch everybody. Still, here’s a rundown of all the bands and artists I did manage to see.

Altan Urag opened the conference in spectacular fashion and by the end of the conference had secured a deal with BMI! Hailing from Mongolia the band is supported by the South Gobi Mining Company, in the kind of deal that is more common in the classical music world, than the pop and world music scene. They mostly play adapted traditional instruments, but with loads of distortion and effects and combine throat-singing with western dark-metal singing to create a bend of music that is more like melodic metal than typical world music fare.

BEILEI was a singer I managed to see twice. A substantial R&B vocalist performing with a guitarist and turntablist, she sung solidly in both English and Mandarin. I was particularly impressed with how soulfully she sang in Mandarin, especially in set I caught on the final night.

Guarav Bangia has a wonderful voice and cool stage presence. Indian pop culture is globally prominent right now, but there is a surprising lack of live artists who can perform the marvellously eclectic music of Bollywood live and take it globally. Sourev has the talent to do that.

Dappled Cities are a very hip, stylised post-new wave rock band from Australia. As with a number of other rock bands in the showcase, there were strong 80s BritRock influences (early U2, The Smiths, The Cure, Simple Minds).

DD/MM/YYYY were one of the big hits of the conference. An inventive group, who describe themselves as art rock, but for me they felt more like grungy prog rock – and I mean that as a compliment! They had some great riffs, compelling, if anarchic stage presence and delivered solid sets on repeat nights.

Dira is a great soulful singer from Indonesia who sung a convincing set of jazzy pop in the showcase and also performed a wonderful duet with Jason Mraz during the conference.

D.O. is a freestyle rapper from Canada who brought a lot of fun and positive energy to his sets, delivering great vocals and improvised rhymes. D.O. holds the Guinness world record for the longest freestyle rap.

Delhi2Dublin were one of the acts I was keen to see well before the concert started. Blending Bhangra, Celtic, Techno and Breakbeat, they have loads of style and confident onstage delivery. Their fusion has huge potential not just to fans of electronica but also to massive Indian diaspora worldwide (especially second generation kids) and to music fans in India as well, were there’s a fast growing youth market for non-Bollywood music.

Elyzia were one of the more interesting bands of the showcase. Hailing from Singapore, they moved between metal and hard rock while retaining a good melodic sensibility (and some craziness, including lots of bass wah!). I’d like to hear more from them.

Galaxy Express just kept gathering momentum across the three nights they played. Hailing from South Korea, they were described as psychedelic rock, but that doesn’t do justice to their range and outrageous onstage energy. Crazy, over the top and everything you could want in a power rock three piece they were loads of good fun.

Inward Eye are a band I only managed to catch for a song and a half, which was a shame as what I heard left me with the impression of solid song-writing, great feel and pure rock performance.

Jully Black was another big hit of the showcases. Already a mature performer, she really warrants broader attention and publicity. Her acoustic set during the conference left the crowd demanding an encore (thank you to MC, Celina Jade, for bringing her back) and her performances with a band over two nights were even more captivating.

Kris Lau was billed as dark folk, though her performance was something I would have described as inventive acoustic pop (though maybe in Hong Kong pop carries the wrong connotations). Reminiscent of Angie Hart, Michelle Branch and even singer and Jonatha Brooke, I was impressed by both performances.

Li-Tong woke up the first night of showcases with a barnstorming performance of Listen from the Dreamgirls (a tune made famous in the film version by Beyonce). Originally from Holland and now based in Shanghai, she has a tremendous voice and polished stage presence.

Marsha Yuan gave us a set of introspective and engaging pop. I have to be blunt – it’s a mystery to my why material like hers (and also Ms Lau’s) is not more popular in this city.

Pesawat are an accessible indie rock band from Malaysia with a strong melodic sensibility and confident onstage presence. As I understand it, they already have quite a bit of success in Malaysia and I don’t see why they couldn’t grow a big following across Asia.

REDPOLL was one of my favourite bands of the festival. An inventive pop rock combo from Singapore, with a lot of texture to their music and a cool 60’s beatnik meets beach boys vibe that won me over.

Sasi The Don delivered a very entertaining brand of dancehall and contemporary reggae. Malaysia might not be the first place that comes to mind when you think of Reggae, but it makes a lot of sense that this kind of gentle, beautiful, fun and provocative music would bear fruit in SE Asia. I’ve been playing his album a lot in the days following the conference.

Shairah, a Canadian singer/songwriter/producer was one of the performers I made a point of seeing twice. To me she seemed most at home with R&B but could clearly perform in a number of different styles.

26 are a very well developed, alternative rock band from Australia. They also brought the 80s BritRock influence to the stage, but with a more raw, provocative and occasionally political edge. 26 are also a brilliant example of an independent band who produce and distribute their own music and have, through blogging, mp3 downloads and podcasts, deepened their fan base.

Of course, there were a lot more good acts that I can’t report on. In particular Moja from Japan and Drawn from Bees from Australia attracted a lot of positive comments. Please leave a comment if you managed to catch any of the bands I haven’t reviewed here.

Finally, here is a gallery of super grainy iPhone images,

One of the cool things to emerge from last week’s MusicMatters conference was a small network of people keen to join in setting up a Logic user group right here in Hong Kong. I first started talking about this in late 2007, though back then there wasn’t much interest. However, in recent months, I’ve sense more desire for such a group. Moreover, as Apple about to open a proper Apple Store here, it seems like a good time to act.

If you are based in Hong Kong and keen to find out more, you can join the mailing list here.

I’ve been watching with great interest the way Logic Pro User Groups operate around the world, especially in Los Angeles and New York. These groups are not just a good way to find out more about the software, they are also a good platform for building the local music scene and negotiating good relationships with product manufacturers and local distributors.

It looks to me like there is enough momentum in Hong Kong for such a group to get off the ground, maybe meeting quarterly. Going forward, my goal is to encourage creative musical collaboration, improve the landscape of Logic Pro education in Hong Kong and help develop the music scene here at all levels.

If any or all of that interests you, then please get in touch.

“Music has always been social. Music is probably the most social object there is.” Daniel Elk, Spotify

The conference involved two nights of artist showcases, two days of seminars and a further two nights of public artist showcases, with the conference taking over four venues in Hong Kong’s popular Lan Kwai Fong district (more on the bands and acts in a later post).

On the whole, the sessions and interviews were solid, informative and optimistic. It was great to hear direct from people in the mobile industry on how new technology and platforms are changing the way music is sold (while providing one of the most profitable channels for distribution). It’s not just about music sales, as 19% of smart-phone apps downloaded are music related. Moreover, there will be 10 billion internet connected devices by 2015.

“Living room, TV and connected cars offer music producers huge opportunities going forward.” Rob Lewis

Some of the panel discussions were lively, with genuine differences of opinion expressed on tackling piracy (the ISPs versus the lawyers) and on the future of live music promotion (the 360 degree labels versus the agents). The latter is an area that will only become more contested as Apple seems sent to move the iTunes store into ticket sales. The former was a reminder that it may be getting harder, not easier to break peer to peer and illegal file-sharing programmes.

“Consumers will pay for quality of service.” Michael Nash

I was surprised not to see representation from music hardware and software manufacturers. Increasingly, tie-ups with software makers are an important source of revenue for artist (like the Native Instruments deal with Alicia Keys) and artists in Asia are strategically well placed to work in the developing sample, loop, app and hardware markets.

The only real disappointment was the social media panel. When the moderator asked if anyone was not on Facebook I made the mistake of putting my hand up. A cute joke was made that Facebook was “…on something called the Internet” and I should look it up. Cheap laughs for all, but the reality is that whilst Facebook is still massively popular and growing fast, there are serious concerns about privacy and interesting trend away from the platform for creatives and executives alike. Moreover, while the panel was triumphantly suggesting that we are now talking about strategy and next year we might be talking about metrics, services like Soundcloud, Bandcamp, Tunecore and Topspin have moved beyond metrics into real working models for social media promotion and sales. That the panel didn’t cover that, or even worse – some dismissed SoundCloud because it was “poorly” integrated with Facebook, was surprising, to say the least.

“Social media doesn’t just equal Facebook” Paul Wong

As someone constantly frustrated with the Hong Kong music scene it was illuminating and also disheartening to hear some research statistics from Synovate, on local youth attitudes to music. Only 45% of local youth say they “love music,” by far the lowest score in the region and significantly far below the levels of music-loving countries like the Philippines, South Korea, Indonesia and India. Perhaps slightly more heartening is the statistic that 70% of youth surveyed here see brand tie-ups and endorsements as OK for artists. However, Hong Kongers are extremely resistant to paying for music and also very concerned about privacy, being unwilling to trade emails or consume ads in exchange for free and legal music.

There were great discussion on the music industry in China, South Korea and Vietnam. But, the panel on India’s music industry most caught my attention. Legislatively, India is making itself a lot more attractive, with lower entertainment taxes, better publishing protection and an increased focus on anti-piracy. There are so many opportunities, Weddings, for example are a 10,000 crore, though largely disorganised business. India is also such a complex market. On the one hand, digital music sales are almost exclusively sales to mobile devices. On the other hand, the government is rolling out 700 new FM licences in the next six months, which just shows how under-developed communications are in third and fourth tier cities. India is also, through it’s film industry becoming a significant entertainment exporter. Currently, Indian films account for 17% of cinema takings in the UK.

The closing session of the conference was a Q&A session with Jason Mraz. I have the say the guy not only has great talent as a singer, songwriter and performer, he also has a stellar attitude and work ethic. In was an inspired choice to have him close the conference, because he’s an artist that not only has paid his dues, he’s also been very smart with using online tools like blogging and leveraging his popularity for good causes. During the interview, he credited encouraging and supportive school teachers and also the musical community he found after moving to San Diego for his development. I can’t help but wonder if that sense of appreciation and thankfulness is also connected to his good attitude and the gracious way he handles his success.

“Understand what you are really really good at doing, them amplify that”. Terry McBride on artist authenticity

I’ve already arranged my schedule to attend the conference in for next year.

Photography is a very popular hobby in Hong Kong, there are a number of good, locally based photographers and the market for Fine Art photography is developing steadily. Moreover, the city was once known as being a great place to buy camera equipment, though that is less the case these days.

My brief is to write about photography and photographic technology. I’m not an expert and don’t plan to write like one. This opportunity has come in part because my portfolio has recently expanded and there is growing interest around my photographic links here and on Twitter. Although I’ve taken photos since childhood, the length of time I have taken this seriously can still be measured in months and weeks, rather than decades and years. So, I’m humbled and excited to be part of this project.

I won’t be cross-posting the articles from HKPhotographer.net on this blog. For me, they are separate activities. This blog is personal and non-commercial whereas writing for HKPhotographer.net involves being part of a commercial venture, just like writing for a magazine.

In time, I will create an identity for my photographic work, not unlike what I’ve done with SoundWallah. Something more developed than Flickr and more tightly focussed than the photographic posts on this blog. I’m not ready to do that yet, but it will happen before the year is out.

I can recall, back in ‘96 being advised to “put nothing on the internet” because “you never know what people will do with it.” It seemed odd advice at the time, since clearly, posting stuff online was not all that different to speaking in public, or putting words in print. Choosing to not publish online was simply a form of retreat that only made sense if you planned to have no public voice. You could only be a digital hermit if you were, in fact, a hermit in real life.

Interestingly, a similar piece of simplistic advice is now being dished out, not by the technological luddites, but by the evangelists of the new digital reality – anyone who really wants privacy should stay off the web.

Those of you who love the English language have probably spotted the flaw in that piece of reasoning right away – privacy, is not the same thing as anonymity.

You can, of course, be private without being anonymous. That’s the cornerstone of most social relationships. We don’t announce every detail of ourselves to everyone we meet. We practice different levels of disclosure (or what we might call intimacy) with different people at different times. We don’t have to retreat from society in order to maintain some level of privacy in our day to day existence.

Many of our social conventions, from how we expect to share important news about our life, through to who we expect see on our doorstep when we collect the mail are built around understandings of privacy. You could go so far as to say that privacy is at the heart of love – we choose not to crush, embarrass or distress those close to us, even though we know many uncomfortable truths about them.

Online applications work best when they help make established patterns of human interaction more efficient. Twitter and LinkedIn are good examples of this, as was Facebook in its early days. It is perhaps revealing that these applications grew fast when their interfaces were simple.

Ambition was behind both Facebook and Google’s privacy faux pas. As Facebook has tried to ramp up its offering, to capture everything and anything worth sharing, so too it has built up a worryingly large database on each user, which they hope to be able to sell to marketers. Google had a good idea with Buzz, but misread the how and why of people’s structured social relationships.

Privacy, is not the same thing as secrecy and it’s real world analogy is not anonymity and seclusion, but control and respect. In human interactions this involves a “choosing not to.” Out friends choose not to make us look bad, even though they know things about us, our past and our mistakes that could be embarrassing. We hope that our friends and family would respect the way we are trying to present ourselves to the world.

Privacy in social interactions exists at this intersection, between the control we try to have over our lives and the trust we need to put in others in order to be able to function without fear. Privacy is a problem online precisely at those points when we lose control over how we can present ourselves (what I call our digital destiny) and when we cannot trust the behaviour of others online; be they fellow users or the gatekeepers to shared information.

Control, trust and the nature of social interaction is a more fruitful debate than privacy. For me, privacy on Facebook stinks, but that isn’t the main reason I quit. What stank even more, for me, was the way people were behaving. There was a private yet public aspect to relationship status changes, soliciting for work/contacts and collapsing the past with the present that was, well, creepy. Foursquare was a cool application, but aspects of the game violated what, for me are norms about social behaviour in public spaces that I rely upon in order to live, work and socialise.

The web works because we love to share, we love to socialise and we love to gather. When the web works best it helps all those things happen not just in cyberspace, but in the real world. The debate about privacy is ultimately about that – a better interface between what keeps us sane and healthy in the real world and online tools to help us live that real world experience more fully.

Of course, there is some potential merit to this kind of thinking, when a country is trying to “sell” itself. National tourism campaigns can benefit from developing a strong brand identity. Moreover, it is tempting to think that all government departments should align themselves with the national “brand.”

Except that governments are reflections of society, of people, not just of business interests. Moreover, a society is, in any meaningful way, far more complex and far less malleable than any brand could or should hope to be. It is one thing to sell a version of the country’s identity to tourists and potential investors. It’s quite another to pretend that everyone in a society fits a neatly packaged social and cultural stereotype (or that they even should).

I was wondering about this while filling out a Passport renewal form in the Australian Consulate office here in Hong Kong. Comparing my experience this morning, with pervious experiences in London and Delhi made me wonder: Do Australian Consulates and High Commissions have a brand?

The Australian High Commission in London, at the turn of the last decade, exuded a kind of swaggering cultural confidence. The offices were comfortable, almost plush (more like an airport business lounge than a stuffy government department). It was easy to feel an expansive sense of the country’s culture; from newspapers, to magazines, to art. For me, that connection was even more vivid, having experienced events at the intersection of that Commission’s and the Robert Menzies Centre for Australian studies at King’s College London. From presentations of ballet, to film, music, or poetry there was a sense that Australia saw itself as self-assured and “world class.”

Delhi was an altogether different adventure – the high Commission felt more like a bunker, with a siege-like defensive approach that reminded me of bank branches in the 70s and 80s (“young man, why are you making this withdrawal”). After a two hour wait for completion of a simple process, I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.

Again my experience of cultural events connected to that High Commission bled into my “brand” experience. Speaking to an officer of that commission at an exhibition of Indigenous Australian Art was representative of a number of encounters in those years and a moment I’ll never forget – one that reminded my of my trouble associating with the Australian “brand.”

“I’ve always felt like an outsider. You would think that having lived nearly 28 or my first 30 years in the same city (and close to 20 of those years in the same house) would have given me a strong sense of local identity. However, having been reckless enough to spend the first two years of my life outside Australia, it didn’t matter what I did from that point, I would always be an outsider. This point was driven home to me within a few weeks of arriving in Delhi. I met an Australian at a Gallery opening and by way of introductory conversation, we shared part of our life stories. After finishing my account, the Australian said to me “so, you’re not a real aussie then?”

Here in Hong Kong was a different experience again. The Consulate was clean, efficient and almost friendly. It definitely felt like an “Australian” space, but one that was neither expansive, nor defensive. Again, the experience seems to connect with the kind of cultural events I’ve seen in the city – solid, but with neither the swagger of London or the antagonism of Delhi.

Of course, it’s easy to think these three radically different experiences point to some kind of branding failure. Certainly none of those vignettes would give a full, true and accurate picture of the country. However, taken as a whole, without trying to force a reconciliation of the contradictions they represent would, for me, give a pretty compelling picture of of what Australia is like.

That’s the problem with nation-branding. Brands are partial (and often fictional) narratives. Like photos, brand identities are compelling as much because of what gets left out of the frame as for what gets put into it. Countries are infinitely harder than products to shape, describe and frame with any real honesty.

If, perhaps there is a deep value in the whole notion of nation-branding it is connected to G.K. Chesteron’s thoughts about travel,

“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.”

In this sense, some branding/re-branding efforts can appear very shrill, like Hong Kong’s claim to be “Asia’s World City.” Take, for example, the claim that,

“Research also showed that the top five core values associated with Hong Kong were progressive, free, stable, opportunity and high quality, while the most commonly perceived attributes were cosmopolitan, connected, enterprising, innovative and leader.”

Some of that may be true But, in the past few months I’ve had conversations with a number of people running quite successful businesses in Hong Kong who would question most of those “values and attributes.” The problem is you can spin those words into any number of stories that may, at best represent the viable aspirations of this city and, at worst, be pure fiction.

Perhaps that’s why the great global cities, the ones that fire our imagination really don’t need branding at all – New York, Paris, London, Tokyo, Rome. Sure, some of these cities may have problems that need addressing, but their qualities speak for themselves. Experience them and you need no explanations.

Of course, that takes time, because I cook from first principles every time, so dinner always begins with cutting vegetables, trimming meats and washing salads. I’m not a fan of pre-prepared sauces and it takes an effort for me to even walk down the frozen food aisle.

This past week I’ve cooked at home every night and all the meals were prepared from scratch. The challenge for me is that I can’t spare more than an hour a day to prepare these meals, so even if it takes longer for the meal to cook (as with the Tagine below), the preparation and attended time in the kitchen needs to stay within sixty minutes.

Monday night was Swedish Meatballs (beef and veal), from a recipe in Jamie Oliver’s new book, served with Mashed Potato. Turned out quite a bit nicer than the IKEA version, which has to be said, is a favourite with a lot of people I know. All those years, the ingredient I had not been able to pick was the Allspice in the meatballs and in this version, the Cranberry and Blueberry sauce was a real treat.

Tuesday night was Lamb Tagine, adapted from a number of cookbooks. I often compare the way different books approach a similar dish. That can be a good way to find small variations or combinations, which in this case included pomegranate syrup and green olives. For a few years now I’ve preferred Moroccan Barley Cous Cous, which for me has a more fulfilling and nuttier flavour.

Wednesday was a simple pairing of Fishcakes and Roasted Cherry Tomatoes. All too often the tomatoes we get here in Hong Kong are not fully ripe, so the best thing to do is apply some heat, to bring out the flavours. Not having an oven I’ve adapted to grilling them in our small microwave/griller on a lowish heat for 30 minutes. The fishcakes were a traditional recipe, with tinned tuna, mashed potatoes, lots of herbs and a good dollop of mustard in the mix.

Thursday was Scallop and Asparagus risotto. I could only find very thin Asparagus from Thailand, which are not my favourite. So I reserved the tips (they cook very fast) and sliced the stalks finely, frying them along with the onion and celery. The fashion in restaurants is to pan fry the scallops and serve them whole, which does taste good and showcases the shellfish. However, I prefer to dice them, not too finely, and drop them into the ristotto towards the end of the cooking, just before the asparagus tips. If you get the timing right, the scallops will still be moist and tender, but without the fried edge (and you get more scallop flavour in the rice).

Friday was Pork in a Japanese Ginger style, with Pimentos and Sesame Rice. I don’t cook Japanese food all that often, which is surprising, because many of the dishes are simple and relaxing to prepare. This dish was a case in point; if I knew what I was doing I could have made the whole thing in around half an hour. That said, I’m not into cooking in a rush.

Saturday then saw me not cooking, but watching the great Antonio Carluccio cook at the Mandarin Oriental here in Hong Kong. I first remember watching Mr Carluccio on the SBS channel in Australia and still recall being given one of his cookbooks back in the 90s. Actually that book has travelled with me from Sydney, to London, then Delhi and I have it with me here in Hong Kong.

In person Mr Carluccio was affable, funny and honest. His approach to Italian food is simple, but not simplistic and invites you to create meals that are elegant without becoming showy. What I’ve always loved about his food, both in his cookbooks and in his restaurants, is that there’s no flavour confusion. Every dish has a reason for being, has a centre and requires very little explanation.

Sitting in the class today gave me some fresh ideas and reminded me of a lot of things I’ve tried to cook over the years. But, perhaps more importantly, it reminded of the importance of food, not just to one’s health. Food is central to our being; it is a delight that can be connected to so many other pleasures in our existence and also a comfort amidst the sorrows that life can bring us. Therefore, it is only fitting to cherish every meal, to savour every mouthful and to delight in the touch and smell of every ingredient and every dish we encounter.

That said, I made an exception for the opening of the Monocle pop-up store, in the Pacific Place branch of Lane Crawford. I was delighted, upon arriving to see a neat set-up for a live band – whoever this band were, I thought, they were ready to sound good at a modest volume level.

However, my heart sank as the band walked past me. This wasn’t a local, Hong Kong group. Speaking to Tyler Brule, Editor in Chief of Monocle a little later confirmed my suspicion. They had flown the very excellent Immigrant’s Bossa Band in from Tokyo for the night. In fact you can read about the night on their blog (or if your Japanese is as non-existant as mine, you can just look at the pictures). To make matters worse, Monocle’s recent Hong Kong city survey made no mention of the local music scene – a glaring omission compared to their reviews of other cities!

When I arrived here in 2006, the local music scene didn’t inspire and I made the decision not to look for live opportunities. Moreover, in the first year or so I had a number of bad experiences and decided to focus my work online. However, I’m increasingly keen to get back into live playing and in the last year I’ve reconsidered my stance on local work and collaboration.

Which leads me to why, on a late Friday afternoon I was walking into Lan Kwai Fong, the popular entertainment district in Hong Kong (and easily one of my least favourite parts of the city). Red Bull were organising an event focussed on encouraging the local music scene (as part of the Red Bull Music Academy), bringing together an insightful panel of active, locally experienced DJs and musicians. The discussion soon turned to the challenges facing musicians here.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle facing Hong Kong is a lack of live music outlets – rents are astronomical and few venues are committed to live music (Spike HK has an excellent post on this here ). For example, compared to most global cities, Hong Kong is unusual in not having at least one well established, decent-sized Jazz venue.

It was surprising to hear the panel suggest Hong Kong needed better music journalism. Sure, the main local newspaper, the South China Morning Post is a disappointment. But some of the magazines, such as BC, HK magazine and TimeOutHK all have supported local showcases with regular features.

I wonder if the obstacle may have more to do with the quality of local music publicity. Quite a few festivals, local acts and smaller touring concerts don’t seem to be supported by sustained and strategic media campaigns. Moreover, few local acts or venues have compelling, regularly updated websites.

At a number of points in the discussion, the panel came back to the need for better promoters and managers. Certainly the shape of the music business today demands a new kind of music manager. The digital revolution and the collapse of the old music record business presents a lot of opportunities for musicians who are willing to be entrepreneurial. It’s pointless to follow the approach that bands and musicians took when I was a teenager!

I was encouraged to hear some of the panellists suggest that local musicians raise their sights and not just focus on being “big” in Hong Kong. It will help any band or musician who wants to break out internationally to focus on doing something fresh and original, perhaps collaborating across musical genres.

It was surprising to hear no mention of the role of record stores and musical instrument stores in supporting the local music scene. Historically record stores have been a focus of attention for music fans and musicians alike (in Sydney Bluebird records played that role for the jazz community, utopia records for the heavy metal crowd and Red Eye for independent music). Moreover, musical instrument stores can support local artists, studios and performers in both casual and formal ways.

It was also surprising to hear no mention made about the effect of corporate entertaining. Massive entertainment budgets can sometimes mean well paid gigs for musicians, but they can also distort the local music scene, putting some of the best gigs behind a wall.

Personally, I’d like to see more cross discipline interaction in Hong Kong. Although music venues are expensive and sometimes uncooperative, there are a lot of other creative spaces in this town. For example, there are a lot of great photo studios, which makes me think about Chase Jarvis’ live music photoshoots. There is a lot more scope in this town for enterprising partnerships that support more than one artistic platform.

I’m cautiously optimistic that live music could continue to slowly improve in Hong Kong. Musicians have it within their power to improve their online offerings, to work harder on original material, to collaborate more widely and generally be more professional. But, that will only change things up to a point. Without changes that make it easier to open larger venues in a wider range of districts, without better publicity to get information about artists out to the public (and to other artists) and without more local businesses willing to build partnerships with musicians things will not change in a hurry.

Moreover, the market itself might resist. The irony is that although those elaborate openings and the whole culture of Lan Kwai Fong are bathed in loud music they are, in fact, anti-music.

In a couple of weeks the Music Matters Conference will take over a number of bars and clubs in order to showcase 40 live acts from around the world. Personally I think it is the boldest and most important cultural experiment I’ve seen in my nearly four years here in Hong Kong. Can it help start the music? I don’t know, but I hope so.

As my mentioned in my last post, my new company, SoundWallah, is active. I’d love to say that the offers and new projects have come flooding in, but, of course, that is not the case. Still, there’s lots of small things to be taken care and plenty of planning and “outreach” to do.

Last Friday I went to a music industry event organised by the Red Bull Music Academy, here in Hong Kong. It was very interesting and there will be a blog post soon on that and some of the issues it raised for me about the Hong Kong music scene. Later this month I’ll be at the Music Matters conference, which is a heavy duty industry conference with some serious names from around the world.

Also last week, I also attended an event called Web Wednesday, which is a monthly gathering for “…Digerati who work in (or are just curious about) the Internet and digital media.” Yeah, I know. The gathering seems to mostly attract people from the IT and Advertising worlds and I think it has played a role in fostering community here in Hong Kong. It doesn’t really scratch where I itch, but this month’s speaker, Siok Siok Tan, made an interesting presentation on her documentary film about Twitter users.

On a more relaxing note, I took in a wonderful concert by Dame Emma Kirkby with the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong. Delightful music played to an appreciative and focussed audience. In a way I felt chastened, because my not-infrequent rants about the local music scene all too often fail to note the excellent classical music that is regularly on offer here.

Last week saw me receive a photo credit and quote on AOL’s Daily Finance site. OK, it is a tiny picture, but I’m really appreciative of what is my first photo placement outside Hong Kong. On the recommendation of a friend I’m taking a good look at Lightstalkers, a site that seems to fit very well with where my photography is heading.

I’ve just finished reading Making Ideas Happen, which is a handy book. Its not unlike GTD, but repackaged for creative types, with lots of good examples in a fresh, easy to follow style. Off the back of that book, I’ve joined the Behance network, as a way to showcase some photographic work and I’m also looking at Photoshelter as a way to develop a post-Flickr photo gallery.

Also, I’ve been asked to write for a new Asian photography website. I’ll make an announcement about that in a couple of days. The site is starting small, but I’m very exited to be involved. I’m also well into planning for my first trip back to India, since leaving in 2006, with the Lumen Dei photo tour. I’ll get to see Delhi and Gurgaon again and also travel with the tour up to Srinagar, Lamayuru and Leh, visiting country I did not see when I lived in India.

Savannah College of Design have opened a campus in Hong Kong and I’ve been looking seriously at their MFA programme in photography. I’m keen to keep developing my photographic skills. But, I’m not sure if this is the right time for me to dive into that sort of a programme. I will, however, be diving back into another Berklee course, this time on Music Marketing with the Topspin platform. In the meantime I’m topping up my knowledge of Kontakt, from Native Instruments and Melodyne, from Celemony with some new excellent MacProVideo tutorials.

It’s a real thrill and privilege to be attending a cooking school with one of my heroes, Antonio Carluccio in a few days. In the last twelve years, rarely a month has gone by that I haven’t prepared something from one of his cookbooks and his Caffè in Market Place was one of my favourite restaurants when I lived in London.

Finally, I’m doing some final planning around a summer break back to Australia over June/July. It’s become something of an annual ritual to enjoy the winter down under and visit family (beaches, wineries and long bike rides also have their charms.

I’d like to introduce you to SoundWallah, my new music production company. I’ve rolled up all my activity in composition, scoring, arranging, sound design, mixing and effects into SoundWallah. This project has taken a lot of time over the past five months and was the logical next step in my (long) transition back to full-time music.

My hope is to keep SoundWallah focussed on both simplicity and quality. I’m thankful for the excellent design work of Kris Morris at TooMuchGravy. Kris really meet the brief perfectly for a logo that was both elegant and evocative and has given SoundWallah an excellent visual impact as a fledgling “brand.”

The name, SoundWallah is inspired by the ‘wallahs of India – ChaiWallah, FlowerWallah, CableWallah. These guys overcome tremendous limitations and often display breathtaking ingenuity in delivering the products and services. Watching and talking to these wallahs, I learnt a lot about commerce, capitalism and creativity. It’s amazing and humbling to see what can be achieved when people’s need to sell outpaces their fear of failure.

The name SoundWallah brings my passion for sound and music together with a desire to deliver and not be held back by technical limitations. Being a musician in the digital age brings tremendous global freedom, to work and ship via the pipe that is the internet. But, that can also cage us, as new technologies develop and as we try to master all the tools available to us.

SoundWallah is about trying to simplify delivery. The internet is intricate and complex, but perhaps it is also as simple as a rickshaw – a tool for carrying goods, and at some times of the day a place to lean against and have a chat. The rickshaw analogy extends to thinking about the road, about journeys, about the ultimate question – where will the music take you?

The creation of SoundWallah is not going to change this blog. I don’t like it when people’s blogs become covert marketing campaigns. I have made small changes to some of the relevant about me pages. I will, occasionally blog about SoundWallah projects (like my solo album!). But, for the most part SoundWallah related stuff will just be a subset of the music posts regular readers are used to seeing. For anyone interested in finding out more about SoundWallah, there is a website, a twitter feed and soon, a mailing list.

Finally, I’d like to say another big thank you to my friends and family for their support, encouragement and patience. I’ve been slow to deliver on a number of projects because I couldn’t get my head around the commercial side of things. It’s one thing to have some good ideas, it is quite another to create the structures that will allow those ideas to become reality.

I’ve played musical almost all my life. But, SoundWallah is a biggest commercial, emotional and physical step I’ve taken towards publicising and selling my musical ideas. I hope you’ll join me on the road.

With Daytum you can collect data and organise categories to track patterns in your life and work. One thing that interested me was to see exactly how my days pan out between my three main activities – music, photography and writing.

This graph made me realise a few of things. Whilst I tend to think of the blog as my only regular writing platform, things like developing a new business and pitching for new work means I spend a lot more time writing that I had previously thought. Second, although I think of photography as a side-interest, doing shoots and field assignments takes far more time than I had initially imagined and going forward I need to allow for that.

Finally, I decided up front not to include guitar practice and work on my album in the music hours. Unfortunately, that skews the figures. You could interpret those numbers to suggest I work about eight hours a day, five days a week. The truth is that I work closer to nine hours a day, seven days a week. From next month I will restart that data set to get a more accurate measure.

Daytum is also great for facing brutal truths, like how much time I (don’t) spend practicing guitar everyday.

That number is not too bad, given that I don’t count every minute spent playing and recording in that measure, only dedicated and focussed practice time. Still, my goal is to practice seventy five minutes a day, seven days a week and I’m a long way short of that.

Part of being more productive, for me, is a commitment to be healthier. I see cooking healthy meals at home as playing a big role in that.

Depending on where you live, that contrast might not seem all that impressive. But, remember that here in Hong Kong a lot of people hardly ever eat home cooked meals (or don’t cook for themselves) and that my kitchen is a mere 2.5mx1.8m.

So, although I don’t at home as often as I would like, I do get to enjoy a diverse range of cuisines.

Finally, it’s fun to just track something random, like shoe colours worn.

For me, Love of food and love of travel traverse each other. There is so much joy to had experiencing new smells and tastes in distant places. After all, it is one thing to eat Indian food, quite another thing to eat in India!

Moreover, I don’t believe you can really understand a country, or its people until you eat amongst them. Food is just so basic, not only to our survival, but also to our socialisation. What we eat and the the way we eat it reveals so much about us.

And, food is central to my own sense of identity. There is something about me that is essentially “American” in the broadest, continental sense; a product of the New World, a child of modern patterns of immigration, almost genetically cosmopolitan and progressive (South America was fusing cultures long before it was fashionable).

So I was excited to participate in a Mexican cooking school at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel here in Hong Kong. Our teacher for the day was Ignacio Granda from the Mandarin Oriental Riveria Maya hotel in Mexico (here for a two week showcase of Mexican food). I was a more than willing student as we watched and discussed the preparation of Ceviche, Guacamole, Tortilla Soup and Garoupa with Zucchini, Blossoms and Mint Essence.

As with the Chilean tasting meal I wrote about in 2007 (A Taste of Chile) my main interest was in the way traditional dishes have been developed, not so much for the palates of those in other countries, but rather for the contemporary sensibilities of local, emerging consumers.

Hence, I enjoyed talking with Chef Granda about the evolution and modernisation of Mexican cuisine. Sadly, Mexican food is often misunderstood, with many people confusing it with Tex-Mex. Real Mexican food has the potential to be the next “big thing” in food fashion (hip and contemporary Tacquerias, or Taco stores have been a big trend in New York for a couple of years now).

The lunch following the cooking class was easily the best Mexican meal I’ve had in Hong Kong. Perhaps that doesn’t say much, given the options that exist here. But, it was simultaneously reassuring and disappointing that when I tried to book for dinner after the cooking class, the final three nights of the showcase were booked solid. Clearly there is an appetite for Mexican food in this city.

At this stage I should point out that I was a guest of the Mandarin Oriental for the cooking school, along with some other bloggers and food journalists. This was my first such “freebie” and to be honest, I would have been happy to pay for the privilege (as I did for the Jordi Rocca dinner recently and will soon for a cooking class with Antonio Carluccio). It was revealing to me to meet some local food journalists and watch their responses to real Mexican cuisine.

I mention that because there is something of a storm in a teacup here in Hong Kong over the “place” of food bloggers. Suffice it to say that the main agitators seem to food journalists, PR agencies and a small number of restauranteurs. It’s a controversy I’ve already touched on with two quite lengthy pieces (here and here).

This present uproar in print journalism and publishing is not unlike the tempest that consumed the music industry. The internet will disrupt any business model that does not treat end users or consumers as customers. The publishing world, for example, doesn’t see readers as customers. Their customers are newsagents, bookstores and advertisers.

The internet, via blogging and social media doesn’t work that way. Consumers start talking to each other and soon carefully crafted personas, sales pitches and the so called expert opinion of those who are not really all that expert all gets broken down. Naturally this is threatening to anyone who is used to controlling opinion or unaccustomed to being spoken back to. The shrill defensiveness of some journalists and blog-critics right now resembles the clamour of church leaders to the early waves of ecclesiologically-critical blogging nearly a decade ago.

But, there is something else these critics of blogging don’t understand – love.

To put it more clearly, they don’t seem to understand that someone could write and maintain a blog for the love of it (in the old sense of being an amateur).

This is an amateur blog. I’ve never accepted payment for anything written here and never will. I’ve accepted a handful of free books and this two hour cooking class for free – all with no guarantee that I would write anything (or nothing) and with a clear agreement that what I write might be critical and negative (if you have the stomach for some proof, check out my four-part review of a theological text, here).

But, this blog is not amateur in the sense of being haphazard. Every post goes a series of drafts. I’ll admit there are the occasional spelling errors, but most print newspapers and magazines are guilty of the same (and worse!). I’m not a trained journalist, but I am a trained (and published) writer. The main subjects that I blog about, music, photography, religion, popular culture are ones I have formally studied.

My journey to writing about food is a little more meandering. I grew up in the kitchen, learning to cook from watching my mother and grandmother. After school I worked for a couple of years in a luxury hotel, which opened my eyes to the world of professional kitchens and catering. I then worked for nearly a year in a pizzeria. These days I still cook regularly and take in cooking classes when I can (recently in Chiang Mai and HaNoi). I also love to read about food, not just cookbooks (I have shelves of them), but also more studious fodder like In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, Building a Meal by Herve This and On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee.

Having said that, I don’t want to buy into the bogus idea that your qualifications, or who writes your cheques should determine your worth as a writer or thinker. There is a lot of wisdom to be found in domestic kitchens around the world from people who have no greater qualification than a lifetime of cooking for their families – far more than that which flows from the pens of some fashion-following food writers.

That is because food is never just about commerce (selling advertising, shipping produce, appeasing landlords) and shouldn’t be reduced to that. Food is fundamental to civilisation. I never make a final decision if someone really is trustworthy, or a friend, till I share a meal with them. I do my best to treat every meal as significant and important, even when I’m alone. Looked at across the breath of human history this is not an unusual stance to take. If it seems odd to place such importance on a meal, then it is only because our expectations of food and the place it plays in our life have been so diminished. That’s a problem that really does deserve our attention.

How wrong I was.

With film, images had to be developed, into negatives and then prints. The images that come straight off a digital camera (especially if you shoot in jpg format) are ready to go, in a sense.

But, developing with film was never just about rendering the image in a usable form. At the processing stage a lot could be done, to crop the image for better composition, to adjust the colour balance and compensate for the exposure, either across the whole image or in selective parts of the image. Chase Jarvis posted an image, on his blog, from photographer Richard Avedon with the instructions he gave to lab technician on how he wanted the image to be developed.

Moreover, each brand and type of film brought something to the final image, in terms of colours, grain and light balance. I think that’s part of why there is such a trend now towards Lomography and iPhone apps like Hipstamatic. There’s something about straight from the camera digital shots that can look very clean and clinical.

My workflow for developing images is pretty simple (perhaps appropriately so). I check white balance and overall exposure and adjust the light curve, fill light and recovery. Then I clean up any major dust marks and look for small enhancements in exposure (maybe adding more light to someone’s face, or dropping down the brightness of the background sky). I like to add some vignette to pictures (darkened corners), especially if they have been cropped.

One thing I try to avoid is aggressively boosting colours. Having grown up watching my father adjust televisions, I’ve learnt that hyped colours soon lose their appeal. A lot of photographs I see on the web from amatuer photographers have really aggressive colours that sometimes kill the interest (and dull the light and shade in the image).

Anyway, this is all a steep and challenging learning curve for me. There’s still plenty more to learn. Below are a few images that apply some of these ideas and concepts.

Click on photos to enlarge

Mama Rosa by Brian Blade – This was my favourite album of 2009. Blade is mostly known as a jazz drummer, but this vocal-oriented album steps into different and very original territory. It might best be described as post-gospel, this moody, haunting and wonderfully atmospheric album (produced by Daniel Lanlois) lingers in the memory and demands repeat immersions.
Standout track – After The Revival

Carnaval So Ano Que Vem by Qrquestra Imperial – Inventive and original are not the epithets we normally associate with a Hotel houseband, but Orquestra Imperial are unusual in a lot of ways. This dynamic, fun and inventive set invokes not just the classic sounds of Brasillian big bands, but also the way their music was referenced in a lot of North American popular and film music.
Standout track – Me Deixa Em Paz

Monk by Peter Bernstein – One of the freshest and most highly respected Jazz guitarists around, Bernstein is also solid improviser and recorded this album with the minimum of digital interference and enhancement. Astute and luminous playing from one of the compelling improvisers in modern Jazz.
Standout track – Pannonica

Careful What You Wish For by Jonatha Brooke – Everything that makes me a fan of Jonatha Brooke’s rock/pop singer-songwriting is on show in this album. Insightful lyrics, solid arrangements and consistently engaging vocals.
Standout track – Keep The River On Your Right

Emergence by the Roy Hargrove Big Band – Hargrove is an extraordinary player but his albums haven’t always reflected his talent. However, he shines in this release fronting a big band with some wonderful arrangements.
Standout track – Mambo For Roy

Get Lucky by Mark Knopfler – Not the best album of 2009 but easily one of the best sounding. Knopfler has built a studio full of classic and collectable recording equipment and, not surprisingly, this album contains some of the best guitar sounds I have heard, ever. Also, thankfully, Knopfler gives us some of the most clever and well constructed songs he has written since disbanding Dire Straits.
Standout track – Cleaning My Gun

Disfarmer by Bill Frisell – At his best, Frisell is one of the most expansive and original jazz guitarists playing today. This album sees him back in “Americana” mode, where he works themes from traditional and folk music into his compositions. Mysterious, filmic and slightly nostalgic this is unsettling but rewarding music.
Standout track – Little Girl

The Fall by Norah Jones – For her second album Jones has taken a edgier, earthier direction and the result is what may well end up being my favourite pop album of the year. There are some great players and solid production helping compliment Jones’ clever song-writing.
Standout track – I Wouldn’t Need You

Piety Street by John Scofield – When he decided to make a blues album, rather than revisit familiar material, Scofield chose instead to mine the Gospel Blues heritage. Here he channels everything from Jimmy Smith style jazz-blues, to Staples Singers’ vocal gospel through to contemporary jazz-blues like Robben Ford and the Yellowjackets.
Standout track – His Eye Is On The Sparrow

Aocana by Ojos de Brujo – Their recent performance in Hong Kong just confirmed for me how hot, dynamic and original Ojos are. This album is full of energy and verve and, quite simply, lifts my spirits every time I hear it.
Standout track – Donde Te Has Metido

Mar Dulce by Bajofondo – Gotan Project are better known, for fusing tango with electronica. But, I turn more often to this album, the music is more diverse, orchestral and less geared towards “club” sounds. Helped along with vocal performances including Elvis Costello, Nelly Furtado and Santullo on the standout track.
Standout track – Ya No Duele

Kinsmen by Rudresh Mahanthappa – The phrase Fusion Jazz often sends shivers down my spine. Often what gets fused are the worst and most ponderous sides of the genres in question. So, perhaps it is better to call this a Jazz album with an Indian accent, than a fusion album. It’s also a good idea to call it one of the best and most original recent Jazz sets from an up and coming star player.
Standout track – Longing

Funked Up by Candy Dulfer – To be honest, I hadn’t heard Candy play for a long time, before seeing her, in 2002 playing alongside Maceo Parker with Prince. I was floored by her stage presence and energy. Right now her playing is hot, funky and very unencumbered. Funked Up is my favourite Candy album. Lots of fun.
Standout track – CD101.9

Maldito Tango by Melingo – Some of my favourite Tango tracks feature a vocalist backed by a small quartet and this is the format that dominates this album. When other instruments appear they are sometimes expected, piano, vibraphone or percussion and sometimes surprising, fuzzy basses and guitars. This is moody, prickly urban music that is reassuringly distant from the cliched versions of the Tango genre.
Standout track – A Lo Magdalena

City That Care Forgot by Dr John – I don’t much like the phrase “living-legend” but it is an apt description for Dr John. A prodigious musician’s musician Dr John is also an embodiment of the musical spirit of New Orleans and this album finds him lamenting that city’s fate after hurricane Katrina. This is a nostalgic, expansive and at time vituperative album.
Standout track – We Gettin There

En Este Momento by Claudia Acuña – Chilean jazz vocalist, Claudia Acuña here focussed on a more distinctly LAtin American selection of songs. In particular, she pays homage to the late, great folk singer Victor Jara
Standout track – El Cigarrito

Joy by Phish – On the one hand, I constantly meet people who have never heard of Phish. On the other hand, their concerts sell out almost instantly, they front enormous summer festivals and have a huge community of fans who share and debate their music online. For me, this is their most solid studio album and a great place to start if you are wondering what Phish is all about.
Standout track – Ocelot

La Radiolina by Manu Chao – grittier and more rock oriented that Chao’s earlier albums, this disc has a solid groove and vibe helped, in part by the reuse of ideas, themes and motifs. This is entertaining, sunny, pan-Latin American music with a sense of humour.
Standout track – La Vida Tombola

In a way this is a follow-up to the post I wrote last month on gifts and business cards. Those nice Moo Cards are still my social object of choice for introductions in most situations. Giving people the choice of an image to take with them is a mutually rewarding experience.

But, these new cards and, dare I say it, the brand they carry are the logical extension of the last six years of musical endeavour. I’m cautiously optimistic about where this is all heading. It makes more sense now to put a lot more work out in the open and to pitch more directly for new opportunities.

Of course, that also implies a lot more focus, fewer favours and a bit more “brutal truth,” when explaining what I will and will not do.

It also means, for those of you that have been waiting a while to see this, the release is much closer for…

That’s only my draft artwork at this stage. More importantly I have an assembled list of songs and a full mixing direction. I’ve engaged a mastering engineer, commissioned an essay for the album booklet, drafted a photo collection for the bonus material, developed an offer page and low-key marketing/distribution plan and will be sitting for a photo-shoot this week. Amazingly, this big, lumbering, sometimes overwhelming project is finally coming to fruition.

OK, so that might not seem so amazing to new readers here. But, if you’ve known me for a while, you’ll know that putting music under my own name has been quite a journey, culturally, emotionally and spiritually. Some bad musical experiences early on really knocked my confidence and I got into the pattern of being excellent under someone else’s name.

Things have changed now (about time I can hear some of you cry) and interestingly enough, I don’t just feel more freedom, but also the added responsibility has made me more humble about my limitations and how much I still have to learn about music and music-making.

I became an expat in early 1999, upon leaving Sydney for London. However, the question of who is, or is not an expat only became interesting for me after moving to Hong Kong in 2006. I never thought of myself as an expat in London. I had almost no Australian friends, and adjusted quickly to life in the UK. Given a different set of circumstances I could imagine having settled there.

In Delhi, expat identity was a fairly clear-cut issue (though that is changing now). Moreover, very few expats stayed in India longer than four or five years. The ones that did didn’t think of themselves as expats.

But, in Hong Kong I soon met a number of people who had been here five or ten and sometimes even twenty years and still considered themselves expats; even though they didn’t always have a plan to move onto another post or return to their home country. Not infrequently they had few local friends, and sometimes limited interest in local customs or the local language.

Then, there were others who were quite assimilated, with a good grasp of language and culture and a real love for the city. Yet, they also referred to themselves as expats and as I came to know the city more I realised that they were viewed as expats by the “local” population.

Both kinds of “expats” didn’t fit my preconception; I’ve always viewed the idea of expatriation as part of a process, with repatriation being the expected corollary.

The term, expatriate, comes from military, commercial and diplomatic postings, where people were sent “off-shore” for a term. Even when the postings became serial, there was still a notion that someone’s final roots and allegiance were in their home country. The expatriate was always expected to repatriate (even though many, in practice retired on foreign shores).

Such expats still exist. In fact, expat life in Delhi was dominated by these kinds of postings. It was normal to meet people for whom Delhi was simply another assignment in a long career of vocational travel and relocation.

Of course, not everyone fits that bill. Some people accept a one-off overseas posting as an opportunity to develop their career, prospects or experience. Others simply set out, with an open future looking to find themselves, encounter knew things or just “see what the world has to offer.”

For each set of people (and those who don’t quite fit neatly into any such category) their different expectations will supervene on their perception of Hong Kong. That’s why I maintain that what Hong Kong has to offer a mid-life vocational expat is quite different from what it might offer a mid-20s person setting out to “see the world,” or, for that matter, an early 30s person on a short-term contract looking for opportunity and personal wealth.

But, coming back to the question of what is an expat, it makes little sense to define someone who has chosen to leave their home country, with no expectation of returning and who has set themselves up in Hong Kong for the long term as an expat. Such a person is an immigrant. Legally and culturally they would be defined as such in most countries of the world (especially after five years).

Of course, whether they would be accepted as such in Hong Kong is an altogether different question indeed. The word expat gets thrown around in this city as a way to describe someone based on their ethnicity, regardless of what their actual cultural and emotional connection to the city might be.

In fact the picture is not even that simple, since ethnically Chinese folks, raised overseas, be in America, Canada or Australia are often also treated as foreign as well. It’s a volatile anti-cosmopolitan cocktail.

Moreover, there is another discomforting side to this. When I’ve talked to some Hong Kong expats about their relationship to the city, their views on local culture and so on, they sometimes betray an alarming ignorance of the journey many immigrants go through in their home country. Having grown up as a classic third-culture immigrant kid in Australia I’m sensitive to the criticisms that were often made in that country about immigrants – especially when they did not “assimilate.”

But, for many folk labelled as immigrants in a country like Australia, their long term future is not a settled thing. They might be looking for new opportunities, better work, a safer or more pleasant environment – but, they might also harbour hopes or dreams of one day returning to their home country, or maybe moving onto another country with better opportunities. They are, in effect, more like many of the expats in Hong Kong that might appear on a superficial analysis.

This isn’t just an issue of semantics. Hong Kong’s prospects as a global city are tied to its ability to sustain a cosmopolitan society. That isn’t just good for the Hong Kong economy, but also for it’s cultural and creative engine as well. As long as people’s status in the city is assumed to depend more the colour of a person’s skin, or the country of their birth, rather than their commitment to and passion for the city, then Hong Kong will never really manage to be a cosmopolitan society and will always choose, instead, to mire itself in post-colonial resentment.

The owner asked me to take a few photos as they were due for a visit from the New Zealand trade commission. This was unlike other opportunities I’ve had and so it made sense to take on the challenge for the sake of experience. We talked and agreed a couple of setups and ideas before the day.

As happens, things didn’t go according to plan. The delegation was larger than expected and the locations and transitions didn’t occur as we had anticipated. Moreover, there was another photographer there, contrary to what I had been told, whose behaviour was, well, surprising. I can tell what camera and lens he was using because I got plenty of photos of them. Next time, I’ll know that waving your gear in front of the other guy every few seconds is normal professional behaviour.

Anyway, I’ve included a few of the more interesting shots below.

My goal was to capture a sense of political occasion; the feeling of engagement, debate and discussion. I was hoping to make the framing a little cramped, warm and emotional. I hope at least some of that came through in the images.

I love the cool mornings that open up into warm afternoons in spring. I love the way autumn days close in as the sun recedes into an amber bloom. I love the carefree looseness of a summer’s day, especially by a good beach with fresh seafood for lunch. I love the briskness and clarity of a sunny winter dawn. And, truth be told, I also love being braced against a cold, grey winter’s evening – if no other reason than such days have yielded me some of my best writing.

Of course, the question does sometimes come up, why live in place like Hong Kong if I don’t love the climate? Why not just leave? Being as polite as I can be, I think that is an asinine question really.

I can still remember the first time I was hit with the “if you don’t like why don’t you just leave?” question as a teenager. The answer was, quite simply, contained in my young age. It really wasn’t within my power to “just leave.” Now as an adult it still bemuses me when people ask that question as if everyone has the freedom to just pack up and move simply because they don’t love the climate. Commitments, be they family, or work often tie us to less than ideal locations – sometimes for a season, sometimes for longer.

That said, climate is far from the most important issue when deciding a place to live. When I moved from Sydney to London in 1999, the climate wasn’t even a consideration. London’s summers can be fickle and her winters can be bleak, but that never really entered my mind when thinking about the move. There were other far more important considerations. The same held true when moving to Delhi and again to Hong Kong.

And each city has it’s good and bad days. Many non-Australians seem to envy Sydney’s climate, with good reason. But, I can remember many unpleasantly humid summers and the winters, especially when they are wet can also be rough, particularly since a lot of homes are not well suited to cold nights. By contrast, London’s weather is the butt of many jokes, but I recall some glorious spring and summer afternoons, with the long twilights illuminating what have to be some of the most beautiful city parks in the world. Most people focus on the gruesomely hot summer in Delhi. While the winter months are their own kind of cold, still horror. Yet there are beautiful spells of dry, warm weather in Spring and Autumn that would surprise many.

On the subject of surprises, I’d like to clear something up on the Sydney versus London comparison. Both cities, have roughly the same statistical average, in terms of rainy days a month in summer – eleven. Moreover, Sydney has, on average nearly twice as much rainfall in the months of January and February as London has in the equivalent months of July and August.

As for Hong Kong; the city can be glorious on a clear sunny day. However, in my years here, those glorious days are rare. Every winter has shown a lot of grey days, the rain is frequent and can close in days on end, even during the summer and when the clouds don’t darken the skies, the pollution often does.

Not that any of that really matters too much. When I think about the cities I’d like to live in after Hong Kong, be it Copenhagen, Tokyo, or Barcelona the climate really doesn’t top the list of what I find attractive. The culture, the food, the people, the infrastructure, the sport, the history and the freedom, these are the things that capture my imagination.

Given that in February I made some very positive comments about the iPad I thought I should explain why I won’t be jumping on the iPad bandwagon just yet. There are three main reasons,

1. To go forward with photography I need a portable computer that can develop photos in the field. One day the iPad will be able to run something like Lightroom or Aperture to develop RAW images. But that day is not upon us yet.

2. A large part of the appeal of the iPad resides in reading news and magazine content, but current subscription proposals are costly and restrictive. In time, I believe these prices will drop and access will open up. But, for now that dampens the appeal.

3. The iPad has huge potential as a music creation and control device, but the software for doing that is still very first generation and if I’m honest, I don’t have the time right now to be testing that sort of thing out. Of course, this will change, fast.

I can imagine myself picking up an iPad in the near future – maybe towards the end of the year. But for now, it makes more sense to put some money behind a new MacBook Pro and set that up for travel photography and maybe some new music writing projects later in the year.

Metropolis, Fritz Lang’s 1927 masterpiece, is an example of this. The film presents us with a vision of the future, but populates that future with social struggles and iconography that map out the ideologies at work in 1920s German society. Metropolis draws on everything from Romantic religion and Maryology, through to political philosophy and revolutionary class warfare.

A few weeks ago I was able to attend the Asian premiere of a newly restored version of Metropolis, complete with footage found in Argentina in 2008. This screening was supported with a live performance of the original score (played by the Hong Kong Sinfonetta. It was an extraordinary opportunity to see this work on the big screen in as close as possible form to the way it was originally intended.

Metropolis, like many Science-Fiction films has at the centre of the story an idealised woman. In the opening scenes, Maria appears, almost miraculously, in the playground of the wealthy in her simple peasant clothes, surrounded by poor children, proclaiming a message of hope and justice that is in every way reminiscent of that other Mary, the mother of Jesus.

The theme of romantic religion as an exilic refuge from the alienation of urban life runs through Metropolis. Maria preaches in a space that is simultaneously an underground cathedral, replete with crucifixes and an warren of caves (with empty icon-less frames) reminiscent of the desert fathers.

Once Maria is captured (after a chase where cruciform lights follow and frame her), we see her shape transplanted onto the robot. Now the two Marias, the virtuous and sacrificial Maria and the evil and hyper-sexualised Maria are at war, much like the two halves of the madonna/harlot stereotype of womanhood. The split also allowed the film-makers to explore some deeper concerns at work in the society of the 20s.

“…its central figure, named Maria, is split into (physically identical) good and bad forms. She is a human being magnified by fantasy into either angel or demon. In a sense, the occult project of Metropolis may be to separate, hence ‘save’ the Madonna from her Jewishness, a move that both anticipates the National Socialist destruction of the Jews and replays Christendom’s too -frequent amnesia regarding Christianity’s Jewish roots.” Paul Coates, Cinema Religion and the Romantic Legacy, pg110.

A not dissimilar kind of idealised woman is at the centre of Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (the first screening of a local Sci-Fi Sundays series). Rachel is a robot, a replicant in the language of the film who at first is unaware of her true identity. She also embodies the duality of sexual allure and innocence, of salvation and social peril.

“We encounter the same motif of ‘subjectivization’ of a cyborg in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner, where the hero’s android girlfriend ‘becomes subject’ by (re)inventing her personal history, here the Lacanian thesis that woman is ‘a symptom of man’ acquires an unexpected literal value, she is effectively the hero’s sinthome, ‘synthetic compliment,’ e.e., the sexual difference coincides with the difference human/android.” Slavoj Zizek, Looking Awry, 173.

Like Metropolis, Blade Runner uses a future city as a way to explore present day concerns, about genetic technology, globalisation, post-capitalism and neo-colonialism.

Moreover, Blade Runner is an extended reflection on what it means to be human. The main character’s name, Rick Deckard, is play on Rene Descartes. As the film progresses we start to wonder if Deckard himself might not also be a replicant, the kind of android he is hired to hunt. How would he know, that is, or is not human?

Each encounter Deckard has with the replicants raises this question – what does it mean to be human, what is the difference between us and them? Is it physiological, does it have to personality or memory, or social responses, or might it have to do with mercy and compassion?

Science-Fiction’s ability to entertain these kinds of questions is what keeps drawing me back to the genre. My favourite Science-Fiction films, like Alien, Blade Runner, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, Logan’s Run, Solaris, The Matrix are invariably films that wear their philosophical curiosity on their sleeve.

And, in the end, that is always far more interesting to me than the gadgets and technology.