Pencilgate

As I left the school for a well deserved break, it was about 12:30 and I had yet to eat lunch, I came up the teaching director of the school shouting at someone in her office. While this might seem a common occurrence at most school, it isn’t at ours. I have never seen the TD shouting at anyone. The school is a family-owned affair. The TD’s sister is the manager, the grandmother and great-aunt also work there and all of the kids go to this school.

DJ Bone @ The Wall February 24 2012

DJ Anthony giving it a go before DJ Bone

As usual, the good techno events tend to be on Fridays. I have no idea why, but it makes for an eventful Friday, especially since I was teaching 11.5 hours that day, which included being part of my school’s speech contest. I was pretty tired by the time I got home at 9PM that I went to bed almost immediately, even with a Starbucks Venti Caramel Macchiato, ingested only a couple of hours earlier.

Leopard Night @ Show House, Taichung, Cookie, Kolette, Salamander, Spykee, Mykal

Leopard event flyer

When a friend mentioned that there was an event in Taichung, a city to which he had just moved to, I jumped at the chance to go there. Even though I’ve been in Taiwan for a while, I haven’t seen much of the island. That being said, after having worked most of the day on Saturday, I took the 8PM HSR to get to Taichung. Before the event, we went around the Feng Shia nightmarket. I don’t mind nightmarkets, but I don’t really like the big crowds. After we had eaten, drank a Red Bull at 7-11, we were on our way.

Erol Alkan @ The Wall Taipei, Renaissance Man, Rory Phillips 02/10/12

Erol Alkan flyer

When a friend mentioned that Erol Alkan was coming to town, I knew I had to go. I arrived at around midnight and found that the main room was almost already full. Rory Phillips was playing a sort of disco beat, and it wasn’t bad. I met up with some friends and we spent the night having fun.

The main event started at around 1:30AM and I was pretty amazed at Erol Alkan’s mixing skills. Electro is a good for tricks of all kind, and I wasn’t disappointed. He even played a remix of Metronomy. The place was packed. The event wasn’t cheap either, at $1,400NT (~$48 USD). The stage was set against one of the side walls. Ironically, it didn’t reduce the dancefloor’s capacity.

Renaissance Man’s style starkly contrasted with Erol Alkan’s, and he basically emptied the dancefloor. People just left and went home, which is what I did as well.

Cloud No. 5 @ China White BunjiBeat, Yoshi, Stanley, PIP & Kay

Cloud No. 5 flyer

This was one of the first electronic music events of the year in Taipei. Since it happened at the tail end of Chinese New Year, I was hoping that people would actually come back out and naturally they did. I arrived at around 11PM after arriving by taxi at China White, a restaurant that has these nights a couple of times every year. The place is pretty small, and there were some foreigners there, but who were a bit disruptive on the dancefloor. I quickly moved away from that.

The People’s Party @ Legacy Metronomy, The Naked & Famous, Bombay Bicyle Club, The Jezabels

Promotional flyer for the People's Party

It took me a while to find the time to write down my thoughts about the People’s Party, which happened @ Legacy in Taipei, Taiwan, on the 11th of January 2012. I had bought my tickets the week before, but had been planning to go to this concert for weeks, as soon as I heard that Metronomy was coming to Taipei.

In 2011, Metronomy quickly became one of my favorite bands, as I listened hundreds of times to their latest album, The English Riviera. I listened to some of their earlier stuff, but We Broke Free, The Look, and Corinne were listened to countless times and made it into my five-star playlist on my main computer.

John Digweed @ Club Myst

John Digweed @ Club Myst flyer

When I learned two weeks ago that John Digweed was coming to Taiwan, I knew that I would go see him. Sasha and Digweed were some of my favorite DJs back in the day, before I started spinning some hard techno myself. Still, even if Digweed doesn’t rock my boat anymore, since it was on the weekend and it was progressive house, and I knew that it would densely packed with girls, I took a co-worker and we jumped onto the Bedrock bandwagon. The event was scheduled to start at 9PM, so we took our time and wandered around in Xinyi. We had some drinks and food before making our way to the club. I couldn’t find out much information about Club Myst, but from what I did, it was on the top floor of some building. I knew it would be a less underground event than last week at The Wall.

Scooter Commuting Vista

Scooter Lights

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Taipei, on the bottom of Fuxing North Road. I was stopped at a light and waiting for it to change. It was nearing to the end of the count. As usual, more and more scooters and cars tried to get through before the lights changed to red. This was on a Saturday, so traffic was somewhat light compared to the rush hour. The light changed, and I was ready to go, when I saw that more scooters were trying to get through. Some of them thought that they could go through the light, but obviously couldn’t. Traffic started moving, and one girl was driving too fast for her own good. She tried to turn away from the traffic, but hit another scooter. Then she hit the pavement. She was wearing a helmet, but it wasn’t a full face helmet. Luckily she wasn’t going too fast. I left to run my errands.

Stuff like that happens all of the time in Taipei. People aren’t careful enough when riding their scooters and rarely wear enough protection. These things go fast. My new scooter reaches 110 kph, pretty quickly.

Matthias Vogt @ The Wall Taipei

Matthias Vogt flyer

It’s been a while since I went out, and there was an upcoming techno night at a Taipei club, I decided to go out. Unfortunately Cio D’Or had cancelled, but there was a replacement DJ, also from Germany. To be fair, I have gone out a few times in Taipei, but not much over the last few years. I have always liked hard techno and minimal techno, ever since my DJ days, but when you get extremely busy and tired, it’s hard to find the time. Lately I’ve been pondering more about this and decided that  it was time to check out the scene in Taipei.

Bhutan

The Himalayan Mount Jomolhari

The Paro Taktsang Palphug Buddhist monastery

The Paro Taktsang Palphug Buddhist monastery