This year’s headliners features some of the best and brightest in Jazz. Tony Bennett is obviously one of the highlight and will be closing the festival this year. If you’re looking for some retro funk, don’t miss Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings. Grandmaster Dave Brubeck and awesome saxophonist Sadao Watanabe will be making an appearance as well. So get your tickets today!

Strangely the one performance I’m looking forward to the most (and thus, has bought a ticket to) is the British Jazz pianist / singer Jamie Cullum. I’ve bought his past three albums, and so far they haven’t disappoint. I find his style in jazz so interesting and different (to the point where sometime it offends some jazz crowds) that I even wrote a final paper on his performativity to jazz and popular music in my fourth year course Music and the Body.

I was wondering when he’ll come to Canada again, I told myself I’d go see one of his concert if he does. I estimated sometime next year on his next album tour, but the announcement that he’ll be playing the TD Toronto Jazz Festival at the end of June got me all excited. I’ll be with good company too — Heather, Dan T. and my sister Anna so far has told me they’d accompany me to this performance. If there’s anything to look forward to this summer for me, it’s the night of June 30th.

With that, I leave you with Cullum’s ‘These Are The Days’ from his earlier album titled Twentysomething. Enjoy!

These are the days that I’ve been missing,
Give me the taste, give me the joy of summer wine.
These are the days that bring new meaning,
I feel the stillness of the sun and I feel fine.

Sometimes when the nights are closing early,
I remember you and I start to smile.
Even though now you don’t want to know me,
I get on by, and I go the extra mile.

These are the times of love and meaning,
Ice of the heart melted away, and found the light.
These are the days of endless dreaming,
Troubles of life are floatin’ away like a bird in flight.

These are the days
These are the days
These are the days

I thought you said our love would last for ever
Believing that the tears would end for good.
I told you that we’d get through any weather
Maybe that didn’t work out, but we did the best we could.

These are the days that I’ve been missing
Give me the taste, give me the joy of summer wine.
These are the days that bring new meaning,
I feel the stillness of the sun…and I feel fine.

Personally, I’m very intrigued by this project. Spidey is one of my favourite super hero of all time, and I’m sure putting him in the world of musical probably upsets a lot of people. But here’s what I have to say. Spider-Man has always been about a regular kid turned heroes, lessons about responsibilities and power, and of course, romance. If all these doesn’t equate to a good story for a Broadway musical, I don’t know what will.

Okay, so there’s lots of other elements to it, that said, I’m even more interested and excited to see how it will all work (or not work) in the end. How will they create the effect for Spidey swinging through NYC? Battle scene? Villain? I’m sure these are some of the biggest questions on everyone’s mind, and it will be magnificent if they can pull it off. Besides, it’s Julie Taymore at the helm, so that at least should give you some peace of mind.

It’s been a while since I had time to just sit down and reflect to myself — The end of November and all through December of 2008 was quite a crazy one for me. Lots of things happened in the short amount of time span. That said, I’m quite glad to finally sit down and be able to blog again.

First thing first, got to update everyone on my west coast trip. I just finished the first half of the Seattle photos today, they take a while to go through, above’s the teaser photo. Once I have them all updated, I will definitely do a complete report with photos. Until then, feel free to explore through my flickr, or to my twitter to get a micro update of what’s going on in the life of Tim Lee.

The past week was quite the eventful one indeed. First, as said last post, I was invited by my friend Dan to go up to Montreal to attend EA’s release of their new game “Boogie Superstar”. The event was pretty cool, with lots of food, EA staff, and enough Boogie Superstar running for everyone to give it a try. The whole evening I was speaking to programmers, designers, project managers, and marketers, making me feel like I should’ve gone into Computer Science or Business, since being a Bio-Med guy there seemed pretty out of place.

Boogie was actually quite a fun game, but it was clearly targeted to the teeny-bopper crowd. I won’t lie though, I did enjoy the game when I was playing it, and I can see kids getting excited over this game. There were plenty of food to go around at the event, and we event got a tour of the studios (no photography allowed, obviously), as well as some great swag — a free t-shirt and a copy of NHL ‘09! Sweet!

The next day we explored downtown Montreal for a bit, then went to Science Centre Montreal where I felt right at home. I was especially ecstatic when I got to try out an interactive game where they translate your alpha and beta brain waves into kinetic energy to move a little ball. The objective of the game is to win by moving the ball to your opponent’s side by thinking really hard. That said, I had a disastrous lost my friend Dan since I found the whole thing very amusing and could not concentrate hard enough to win this battle of the minds.

On Friday, some of the East-coast ex-Disney cast members came up to Toronto to see High School Musical 3 (what else?). I was intrigued as to how the movie will do on a theatrical level. The last two was acceptable for a Disney Channel movie, but way too cheesy for it to make it in the theaters. I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the movie. Granted, there was obviously some very cheesy moment that almost made me spew the coke I was drinking through my nose, but over all it was a pretty well enjoyable movie and a fitting end to the High School Musical series if you’re willing to look past some awkward dialogue and cheese. The gang then hung out after for some desserts, a great time, as always.

The next morning I crawled out of bed to go to the gym at 7:30 in the morning. Both my trainer and I gave each other the “This is way too early” face. You know it was too early when the gym hasn’t even officially opened. That said, I found the silent atmosphere a pretty good place to work-out. In the afternoon, I went to watch the Sound of Music at the Princess of Wales, it was shorter than I thought it would be, but it was delightfully done, and every moment was filled with fun. Props to the actors and actresses playing the Von Trappe children, way too cute. In the evening, I went to Heather’s place along with my sister Tina and friend Raymond to chill in Heather’s hot-tub. Makes me want to get one in the backyard, hmmm, hot tub.

And that was that, a great way to end October, I’m looking forward to what November will bring.

I pretty much just had the most jam-packed weekend of my life! The weather was fantastic, people were out and about in the city, I got to spend time with both family and friends, nothing gets better then some quality time with friends and fams!

Friday night I had the pleasure of attending the Luminato Festival kick off at Dundas Square, it was quite the crowd. I loved seeing people dancing and jumping to some quality music, and it was great to be downtown on a Friday night, the city was just bursting with life! First Nova Scotia’s East Coast New World Orchestra sizzles the floor with their regional folk music that made everyone danced (or at least, tapped their feet).

The dancing continued with a lindy-hop swing dance lesson, I’ve never seen so many people dancing to swing

Then, the fantastic, Grammy winning Count Basie Orchestra blew the night away with their smooth and swin’in jazz. I still can’t believe I heard them for free at a spot right in front of the stage. This was followed by the brilliant 14-years-old Nikki Yanofsky who wowed the crowd with her strong vocal work. I still have “Ol’ Macdonald had a farm” stuck in my head (in a good way).

After all the festivity was over, I ran into my high-school buddy Tim Chong and we had Pizza together and catch up on some good times as well as discussing good o’l photography, it was definitely a fantastic night all around.

Saturday a bunch of us celebrated Howard’s 22nd birthday with a dim-sum lunch, the food was quite delish, and then we went crazy and played mario-cart and smash brothers for the rest of the afternoon. In the evening, my family and I went to see “Evil Dead — The Musical”, which I think everyone in Toronto should go see because it was freaken hilarious. The one-liners and slapsticks were dead on, I don’t think I’ve laughed this hard in a long time. It does use a lot of fake blood for effect though, so those that don’t really like seeing blood might want to skip this one for that reason. Seriously though, if my mom enjoyed it, you will enjoy it too!

Sunday morning I went to see Heather play some tournament baseball with the Lion’s club. They didn’t do so well, and I wasn’t the lucky charm I thought I was. Nevertheless, it was fun being there watching a supporting a friend and enjoy the outdoors and tanning in the sun. In the afternoon I drove to Waterloo to have all-you-can-eat Sushi with Scotty, and then visited Alex for a quick chat (which usually lasts around an hour or more, so much for “quick”).

Jam-packed but fun weekend!? I think so. My cousin is visiting TO next week, plus gatherings here and there, this is going to be a fun summer!

I found this CD when I was shopping around Taipei, Taiwan. The album, Let’s Start From Here was featured in the store, so I took a listen, and I was Pretty impressed. The voice of 王若琳 (Joanna Wang) was absolutely beautiful, to a point where it was a bit commercial — not necessary a bad thing. Nevertheless, the music presented here managed to captures senses of smooth and funky jazz. Instead of using big orchestra, sound samples, and lots of other noise that usually occupies a pop or rock album in Taiwan these days, 王若琳 instead opt for a small band, presenting a more intimate, and almost romantic take on jazz and pop — a rarity these days.

“Let’s Start From Here”, a fitting title to begin the album, a calm piece that talks about taking a chance and starting a relationship, a smart idea, as the soft background provides the perfect stage for 王若琳 to present her beautiful vocal. “Lost in Paradise” immediately provides a nice contrast to the album opener, offering a more flirty side of things (not to mention a fantastic Sax solo by Fabian Lim), as with “Bada Bada”. “As Love Begins to Mend” turns up the soft-rock side of things, and then of course, “Lost Taipei”, my favourite track, turns up the smooth jazz machine and offers a very romantic view on Taipei with the well written lyrics.

The album did feel a bit like it has lost its steam towards the end of the album, perhaps due to multiple slow ballads and blues being put together side by side, a better arrangement of the album would have upped the energy that it needed by the end. As well, the mediocre cover of David Tao’s “I Love You” seemed almost forced and was painfully out of place in the album. Nevertheless, tracks like “For No Reason”, “Stages of Flying” truly reveals 王若琳 as a poetic and fun artist.

Let’s Start From Here is a very solid debut from 王若琳, if you like smooth jazz, and other artists such as Vienna Teng, then you definitely will like 王若琳. I for one am very glad that something different has finally appeared in the music scene in Taiwan, and let’s hope 王若琳 continues to grace us with her wonderful music in her next album, whenever that may be.

Let’s Start From Here
Giving up, Why should I, Have come too far to forget
Beautiful, Just got lost, Somewhere along the way
So much was missing when you went away
Let’s start from here, Lose the past, Change our minds
We don’t need a finish line
Let’s take this chance, Don’t think too deep
All those promises we couldn’t seem to keep
I don’t care where we go, Let’s start from here.

Standing here, Face to face, A finger on your lips
Don’t say a word, don’t make a sound, silence around us now
Even when you were gone I felt you everywhere

Let’s start from here

I’ve neverbeen the one to open up
But you’ve always been the voice within
The only one for my cold heart

Let’s start from here, Lose the past, Change our minds
We don’t need a finish line
Let’s take this chance, Don’t think too deep
All those promises we couldn’t seem to keep
I don’t care where we go, Let’s start from here.

Lost Taipei

Rain-drenched roads, Matching steps
Let-down hair, And someone’s laugher too

City lights, Oh the city sighs
Then loneliness, Lingers in the air

And so it’s said that I left my heart,
I left in a lost Taipei with you
Neon signs and midnight rides
The curve of your smile kisses joy
The curve of your smile kisses joy

Flowers bloom when you play
Can I have your autograph or something like that?
Come on, Come on Flowers bloom when you play
Oh don’t be so stingy now, I want it on my wall
Come on, Come on

Mothers weep, Lovers meet
Don’t make a sound, Close the door behind

Aimless souls, Oh wondering feet
They won’t go home, Waltz into the night

Come on, Come on, Flowers bloom when you play
Don’t be so stingy now, You know I want it bad
Yes you know that

I’ll be raising cattle, And then some sheep

Play the conga, And then some sleep

Ahh, finally an update. Sorry it took so long. Things have been pretty hectic thus far, and has prevented me from having the time to sit down and go through all the photos I’ve took, and really, without photos, there really isn’t any point in talking about my trip to Taiwan. Let’s get started, shall we?

I arrived in Taipei at 6:45 Taipei time after a grueling 19 hours of flight, plus an hour at Anchorage. My trip from Boston to NYC was successful with no delays and engine breakdowns this time. I did have to taxi my way to Laguardia airport to pick up my luggage, but that’s another story for another day.

First thing on the agenda, as set by my sister Tina, was to go visit the elementary school: 金華國小. Unfortunately, all of my teachers has now retired, so I didn’t get to see any of them. My sister’s school music teacher was still there however, so we went to visit her. Some of you have already seen a similar photo from the same angle from my trip to Taipei three years ago. Taiwanese schools are huge. There are around 10 classes for each grade. Note that the building wraps around to where I’m standing, it’s a big school.

Now that visitations are over, time for some great food. Behold, Beef noodles! A staple Taiwanese food if there ever was one. This one is from 永康牛肉麵, which is a pretty famous place. It was pretty packed at lunch time, on a weekday too. We shopped around for the rest of the day, and then headed home for a good night’s rest. That night, I battled bravely and managed to eradicate 4 mosquitoes, which caused me considerable damage — 5 humongous bites (one bite was 10 cm in diameter) that itched like crazy. One mosquito was unfortunate enough to be caught in a pretty darn good slap. It was a good slap alright, I accidentally put a little hole in the wall when I swung, I was really angry at the time. Ooops.

The next day we visited the beautiful campus of National Taiwan Normal University (Don’t ask me why it’s called “Normal”, I would never translate it that way), it’s best known for its Teacher’s College (Heather!!!). In fact, the name 師範大學, contains the character “師”, which means “Teacher”. Here’s a statue of the funding father of Taiwan, in which is re-decorated in a very tasteful way to celebrate the University’s Drama Festival.

At night, my sisters and I met up with Anna’s friend Amanda for some more shopping and catchin’ up. We decided to get our fix of $120 NT (= ~$4.00 CND) Steak and Egg and Pasta, which comes with all you can drink soup and tea. I devoured the thing in seconds, and probably drank at least 10 bowls of soup, it was so good, I’m drooling just thinking about it.

Taiwan is a fantastic place to be. The city is amazingly beautiful. I feel grounded when I visit, as if I took out an old box from the attic that contained childhood, and everything comes pouring back, the little things I use to enjoy as a kid, the frustration and the satisfaction of killing those darn mosquitoes, the great food, the funny aunties and uncles… it’s very distant, yet very familiar.

When I returned to Toronto, I felt discombobulated. There was a day when I feel like Toronto was my vacation, and my home belonged in Taipei, it was a strange, and scary feeling.

Taiwan update continues tomorrow, you can get a sneak peek by going to my flickr! Enjoy.

First, Wong Fu Productions came to visit the Boston College campus. Pictured here is Wong Fu Productions with the Chinese Student Association of Boston College, who coordinated with Wong Fu for a campus tour. I personally enjoyed the event, first, I got to meet tons of new people that goes to Boston College, and they are pretty fun people. Second, Wong Fu guys are actually quite down to earth, and pretty fun to hang out with. Ted an I had a conversation about Nikon and Canon dSLRs, and Brian, Wes’ brother and I had some conversation about Origami and the MIT campus. Third, it was pretty cool to get some insight with Wong Fu about being Asian American film makers, it was quite an interesting event, not to mention the exclusive dinner I got to go to at Eagle’s Deli, which by the way, has the meanest burger ever (Appropriately titled the “Godzilla Burger”):

The next day is the celebration for APAHM (Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month), an event called “Know to be Known” ran by the AHANA (African-American, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American) group at O’neill Plaza on the Boston College campus.

The event was a celebration, but most importantly, it was a chance to advocate through demonstration for an Asian and Asian American Studies program at Boston College. From what I’ve learned, recently the administration there decided to cut a lot of classes that deals with Asian and Asian American studies, and the minor program it has in place only has two or three classes available (not really a minor if you can only take 3 classes!) Asians accounts for 13% of the student bodies on campus at BC.

I was pretty inspired by the whole movement. I’ve realized that I’ve taken Toronto and Canada’s multiculturalism for granted. It seems, at some part of the world, even in a city as vibrant as Boston, there seems to be some sort of discrimination towards certain races. It was amazing to see all these students fighting for their right to learn about their own culture and heritage.

I did not stay for the entire event however, as I had to take the T and head over to the airport. The T was surprisingly simple to use for somebody who has never taken the ride by themselves. As the Delta plane took off for NYC, I’ve come to realize that I’ve fallen in love with the city of Boston, something I didn’t quite expect. The only reason Boston is on the top of my list is because my cousin, Brian currently lives there. If it wasn’t for him, I would’ve probably never feel the need to visit the city. Nevertheless, I’d definitely recommend a trip to Boston to anyone, it’s a city full of rich history and brilliant cultures, something not to be missed. Place I have to visit next time: MIT, Harvard Campus, Bunker Hill, and some sort of museum, since all I’ve really done is walked by them, but never actually ventured inside.

Hello from Taipei, Taiwan by the way, today’s day two of my visit, tons to do. I’ve already have had quite an adventure on day one (complete with an hour long battle with four mosquitoes, which I’ve successfully managed to eradicate). Visit to Taiwan is always filled with visit with families, some I haven’t seen in almost 11 years. More update later.

Oh yea, to see all of the photos I’ve managed to upload so far, head over to my flickr, and as usual, comments are always welcome.

Catching a flight out of Toronto at 6:45am in the morning is sort of interesting, going into a vacation on two hours of sleep is a very weird experience. I was tired, yet excited to be traveling once again, not to mention giving my D80 a good workout. My cousin Brian was gracious enough to allow me to visit him in Boston despite it being the end of his senior year, a very busy time as we all know. Nevertheless, he’s been an awesome host so far, and Boston is just one fantastic city.

When I arrived, I was shown around Boston College, where Brian currently is completing his commerce degree in finance and accounting. The campus is gorgeous, it sits on a huge hill, so you get a great view when you’re on the higher side. Spaces between buildings are aplenty, the buildings themselves is huge, and of course, being a US college, they have their very own jumbotron-ed, gated, and box office equipped stadium for College football (BC is with the Atlantic Coast Conference), complete with a huge gym that spread across several buildings (as oppose to one for Guelph…). With that comes prices I guess, they pay up to $49,900 a year for tuition, including residence and meal plan!

For lunch, we went to Anna’s Taqueria on Harvard Street for the best tasting quesadillas and burritos of my life. These things are huge, fresh, and fills up your stomach till you burst. Pictured are Brian’s house mates Rich, and Wells enjoying their drinks and super quesadillas.

We then went for a ride around the Downtown Boston area, the city is just full of energy, the buildings themselves tells the story of Boston, filled with historical buildings, the architectures are easy on the eyes, and enough to get you to go downtown for a stroll any day.

The local bar offered some time for me to just sit and soak up the atmosphere, their local brew, Samual Adams has now become my favourite beer, granted, I don’t drink that much, so I haven’t tried out too many brands. The city was just hustling and bustling on a Friday afternoon, makes you feel so alive. A note to the wise, always bring your passport to the bar when you’re traveling, your local license probably wouldn’t work, thank goodness I was smart enough to bring it along with me before we headed out the door.

For dinner, Brian and I went to the Cheescake Factory. The portions were HUGE, and the desserts fill two pages of the menu printed on a very small font size. The food was of course, delicious, and both of us had to bring home our food. The evening finished off with a friendly game of beer pong (We are in residence after all), followed by a midnight snack, where Brian and I both breathed in our leftovers from the Cheescake Factory and some more cheesecakes. A fantastic way to end a fantastic day.

Today’s day two, apparently Brian’s got a lot lined up for me, more updates later.

Anyways, thanks to my friend Dan Hadi, I’m now addicted to Battlestar Galactica. We were in a conversation about soundtracks, actually, and he told me that BSG had a pretty good soundtrack. At first I was all “Are you serious?”, but I decided to watch the show one night anyways because the mini-series was up on Space, and now I’m totally hooked, and not just cuz Grace Park makes my motor rev.

The space battles are pretty fun to watch. Firstly, they’re realistic, because the sounds are muffled, as they would be in airless space, which adds a tension to what’s going on. ‘Realistic’ because the dogfights are tactical in nature, resulting in some spine-tingling aerial maneuvers by Captains Apollo and Starbuck, like Apollo’s last-minute saving of the day in the original mini-series, when he took two Cylon missiles off the civilian passenger ship he was escorting. When the soon-to-be-president asks “Where the hell is our escort,” and the camera switches to a first-person view behind the missiles, and Apollo comes in fishtailing with his thrusters’ heat signature attracting the attention of the missiles that were heading for the passenger ship, it makes for thrilling viewing.

The panic and tension that occurs every time yet another cold, calculating, roving-red-eyed cylon ship appears is only part of the fun. There’s the complex relationships between Captain Lee Adama and his father, Admiral William Adama; the silent agony of President-by-default Laura Roslin — who it is established early on in the first few minutes has cancer; Gaius Baltar, who may or may be mankind’s worst nightmare, or ultimately the key to their liberation; Kara Thrace, the woman whose nickname is ‘Starbuck,’ flipping the script since the original series’ Starbuck was a man; likewise, the new ‘Boomer’ is Sharon Valerii, another woman taking the place of the original series’ male counterpart. Each one of these characters is complex and deep, and each has secrets that are slowly revealed throughout the course of the series, making for great drama in addition to the great action.

The show also deals with some controversial politics. An episode featured humans as suicide bombers against the cylons, who’s the bad guy now!? What does it mean when your friend you’ve known all your life realized that he/she was a Cylon? The depth of exploration in social issues and implications on BGS is really what makes this show worth watching (And I haven’t even delve into the religion aspect of things yet).

As for the soundtrack, yes, I agree with Dan, it is quite fantastic. I especially like the mini-series, instead of opting for bombastic scores in the style of John Williams, it follows the style of Tan Dun (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon) and uses a percussion driven score that creates quite a contrast and ample of tension with the action on screen.

I’m in the process of finishing up season 3 and Razor at the moment, obviously not going too well with the whole crazy week and exam thing, but I will definitly catch up this summer. Seasons 4 premiers tonight for those of you that follow, if not, start watching! It’s one of the smartest show on TV in the midst of all these reality shows.