Sometimes lemons do become lemonade. I was forced to leave China for visa reasons, though I have now procured a new Chinese visa here in the State and I will be returning to Shanghai after Chinese New Year. Packing an apartment, booking an air ticket, not to mention picking up a beautifully hand tailored silver suit, within 24 hours is bizarrely game show-like to say the least. But on the lemonade side of the coin (if we can mix metaphors), I was able to record with three high school students from a prestigious performing arts high school in Houston. The clip is them working out the part and me forgetting to turn off the camera. So there is an extra two minutes of dark (literally) conversation. I hope everyone enjoys this!
Opened in 1978, All About Travel is located in the Oklahoma City area. We are a
family owned and operated company that has strived to provide our clients with the highest quality of service for more than 30 years. Our agents can arrange all your travel needs from the individual hotel and/or car reservation to an around the world cruise. Nothing is out of reach.
We can help plan your honeymoon, your destination wedding or the much needed getaway for two. Don’t forget about your business, we can handle all the travel needs for your company as well. Anything from an airline flight and hotel for a meeting or all the planning needed for your next company-wide seminar. We can arrange hotel space for all attendees and meeting rooms for all purposes.
Our agents travel to many destinations on FAM trips (Familiarization trips) these trips are designed by tour operators and cruise lines to make certain that travel agents are up-to-date on popular destinations and cruise ships.
So the next time you need to, or better yet, want to travel…Let us help, it’s what we do.
‘The assignment was to video a day in your life. My thought was that this would be a great way for the students at Gezhi (where I teach part time) to have something to show their host family when they went to America. Bella, who is one of my most talented students, put the soundtrack of the class singing to this film which was a huge hit with her classmates. Everyone LOVED it!
Opened in 1978, All About Travel is located in the Oklahoma City area. We are a
family owned and operated company that has strived to provide our clients with the highest quality of service for more than 30 years. Our agents can arrange all your travel needs from the individual hotel and/or car reservation to an around the world cruise. Nothing is out of reach.
We can help plan your honeymoon, your destination wedding or the much needed getaway for two. Don’t forget about your business, we can handle all the travel needs for your company as well. Anything from an airline flight and hotel for a meeting or all the planning needed for your next company-wide seminar. We can arrange hotel space for all attendees and meeting rooms for all purposes.
Our agents travel to many destinations on FAM trips (Familiarization trips) these trips are designed by tour operators and cruise lines to make certain that travel agents are up-to-date on popular destinations and cruise ships.
So the next time you need to, or better yet, want to travel…Let us help, it’s what we do.
Opened in 1978, All About Travel is located in the Oklahoma City area. We are a
family owned and operated company that has strived to provide our clients with the highest quality of service for more than 30 years. Our agents can arrange all your travel needs from the individual hotel and/or car reservation to an around the world cruise. Nothing is out of reach.
We can help plan your honeymoon, your destination wedding or the much needed getaway for two. Don’t forget about your business, we can handle all the travel needs for your company as well. Anything from an airline flight and hotel for a meeting or all the planning needed for your next company-wide seminar. We can arrange hotel space for all attendees and meeting rooms for all purposes.
Our agents travel to many destinations on FAM trips (Familiarization trips) these trips are designed by tour operators and cruise lines to make certain that travel agents are up-to-date on popular destinations and cruise ships.
So the next time you need to, or better yet, want to travel…Let us help, it’s what we do.
We are happy to be receiving updates from Tyson while in Shanghai. He is offering us a hotel review here. Meade is working towards what many Chainsaw Kittens fans (new/old) are looking forward to, a new album. At the very bottom you will find other links regarding this project. We will be updating here with his progress on the album, as well as his reviews of some of the local places he visits.
Hello Everyone!
For the last week, I have been staying at the Rayfont Hotel in the South Bund area of Shanghai while I sort out my long term living situation. Fortunately, I found a two bedroom apartment on a leafy lane today that is near the school where I will be making the record. Incidentally, the school is on the Fudan campus. Of course, none of that has anything to do with this review of the Rayfont Hotel. To say it is cheap to stay in Shanghai is an understatement. I have been paying approximately $31 a night for my room which is clean and fairly modern. The video review will show you what I mean. If you would like suits, shirts, dresses, or whatever hand tailored, the hotel is next to the fabric market. It is a short taxi ride to Yu Garden and Xiantindi. It is a 15 minute walk to the metro which will take you all over the city. And, you are situated just steps from an old neighborhood where the locals live the same as they have lived for a hundred years with the exception that now they have mobile phones. I hope you enjoy the review. I will be updating you on my progress with the album frequently! Rock on!
Opened in 1978, All About Travel is located in the Oklahoma City area. We are a
family owned and operated company that has strived to provide our clients with the highest quality of service for more than 30 years. Our agents can arrange all your travel needs from the individual hotel and/or car reservation to an around the world cruise. Nothing is out of reach.
We can help plan your honeymoon, your destination wedding or the much needed getaway for two. Don’t forget about your business, we can handle all the travel needs for your company as well. Anything from an airline flight and hotel for a meeting or all the planning needed for your next company-wide seminar. We can arrange hotel space for all attendees and meeting rooms for all purposes.
Our agents travel to many destinations on FAM trips (Familiarization trips) these trips are designed by tour operators and cruise lines to make certain that travel agents are up-to-date on popular destinations and cruise ships.
So the next time you need to, or better yet, want to travel…Let us help, it’s what we do.
On July 20th I did a write up on Oklahoma’s native rocker, Tyson Meade and
shared his Kickstarter project that will help him record his project in China. Today we bring you Tyson interviewing Haffijy in Shanghai. I will let Tyson take it from here…
This is Tyson Meade. Many years ago, I had a somewhat wild band called Chainsaw Kittens. We toured with artists like Iggy Pop, Janes Addiction, and P.I.L. (sing the Neil Young line here This is the story of Johnny Rotten – Johnny Rotten, Rotten Johnny). And bands like Smashing Pumpkins, Counting Crows and the Flaming Lips were our contemporaries. Incidentally, the Flaming Lips recorded one of my songs!
Now that I am older, I am trying to age gracefully (if that is what you want to call it these days). So I am recording an album in China with students. Oh yeah, I have been a teacher for several years now. My students are not music students. My main area of expertise is preparing students for study in America. To be honest, I had no inclination to do music again. I thought it was a great life as a younger man but not as an old codger!
However a few years ago, I met a young Chinese man (who was all of 16 at the time) by the name of Haffijy (which is his English name). He plays violin. He is one of the most talented people I have ever heard. HE should be heard by a LOT of people. Because of him, I am recording again. The following is an interview that I did with him regarding the album we are about to record!
Incidentally, I would like to thank All About Travel for sponsoring my air ticket. They are helping to make this happen. Periodically, I will be sending updates of my progress and I will be uploading videos that show life in China as I live it. Stay tuned and stay in tune! This is going to be really cool!
On July 20, 2012 I published a story about Oklahoma’s native rocker, Tyson Meade. Tyson will be embarking on his recording journey at High Schools and Universities in China soon, as we will be flying him to Hong Kong next week. We are looking forward to updates on his recording project to share with you. A little more than 2 days are left on Meade’s Kickstarter page. We are happy to share that his goal has been met. However, recording an album, producing an album, and paying musicians can get costly. Any additional funding will be helpful. To be a part of this recording project, visit Meade’s Kickstarter project.
On June 19, 2012 I shared with you about our client Mary Lonergan. She had her artwork splashed on a 9 foot by 12 foot billboard in Art Takes Times Square.
I will soon be publishing an interview with both Mary Lonergan and Tyson Meade.
To add to this, I recently entered some of my travel photography in a photo contest. It’s the One Life Photography Competition. If you note the first image at the very top with the arrow, this was actually taken in the Dokumentation Center in Nuremberg. The images include California, Oklahoma, Nova Scotia (Peggy’s Cove), and Las Vegas. To vote for my portfolio you have to be logged in and you know your vote counted when a number appears under the ‘COLLECT ME’ button.
While at the Arcadia Round Barn I took some video and will be posting about the barn with my short documentary and photos.
I will also share with you my trips to California, Las Vegas, and Canada as well. I have some great images and video to share.
Oklahoma’s native rocker, Tyson Meade of Defenestration and Chainsaw Kittens fame is recording a new album.
Meade has spent the last five years running a boarding school in Shanghai, China.
Tyson has been home, in Oklahoma, the last couple of months. While in Oklahoma he has been performing in order to raise money for his upcoming recording project. Tyson recently played to a packed house at The Chouse in Norman, VZD’s in Oklahoma City, as well as Dwelling Spaces in Tulsa and brought back lots of early 1990’s memories to his friends and fans alike.
The last time his band, the Chainsaw Kittens performed was in 2009 at the first annual Norman Music Festival. The band stopped performing full-time in 1996.
Meade walked away from a full-time career in the music business in 1996 (just briefly popping up here and there since that time) after feeling like his creative well had run dry. “I had lost my inspiration to write songs,” he explains. “Maybe the fire was gone. Maybe I no longer thought of the process as being inventive or mysterious. Maybe I thought I was no longer doing this for the purity of music. For whatever reason, I stopped writing music.”
For a complete change of focus and pace, Meade began teaching grammar to international students at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City. Shortly thereafter, Meade relocated to China, a country whose culture had always fascinated him. He settled in to a college prep position teaching at a boarding school and was eventually appointed Dean of Students there. He was incredibly moved by his experience as a teacher and slowly the desire to play and write music returned. One of his students in particular, a boy called Haffijy who played violin, was especially impressed with his teacher’s musical past. “I played Haffijy some of my songs from my music days and he quickly wrote parts for them,” Meade recalls. “Not only did he write parts, he played with such love and honesty that I was touched immeasurably. Birds chirped in some sort of Far East Disney way.”
Meade was eager to explore a further musical collaboration with Haffijy. “I became very curious as to how he might score a song still in development, one that I had no preconceived notions about, one that I had just written — though I had not written any songs in some years at that point,” Meade says. “I was now driven to write a song.”
The result was “Stay Alone” (listen here: http://tysonmeade.bandcamp.com/), which became the catalyst for the entire China project. Meade played the song for some of his Western music friends, including fellow Norman-based, alt-rockers the Flaming Lips (who covered the Chainsaw Kittens’ “She’s Gone Mad”), Jimmy Chamberlain of Smashing Pumpkins, Maria McKee, and Other Lives (Meade has previously collaborated with Other Lives’ Jesse Tabish and the Flaming Lips’ Derek Brown on a project called Winter Boys). After hearing “Stay Alone,” these friends became interested in being a part of this unique, cross-cultural project and have agreed to contribute to this record as well.
All About Travel has teamed up with Tyson to share with you his progress while recording the new album. We hope to share with you some video and photos as the process is underway.
We will be flying him from Seattle to Hong Kong next month to start his project.
Tyson Meade @ Dwelling Spaces in Tulsa – July 19th
Opened in 1978, All About Travel is located in the Oklahoma City area. We are a family owned and operated company that has strived to provide our clients with the highest quality of service for more than 30 years. Our agents can arrange all your travel needs from the individual hotel and/or car reservation to an around the world cruise. Nothing is out of reach.
We can help plan your honeymoon, your destination wedding or the much needed getaway for two. Don’t forget about your business, we can handle all the travel needs for your company as well. Anything from an airline flight and hotel for a meeting or all the planning needed for your next company-wide seminar. We can arrange hotel space for all attendees and meeting rooms for all purposes.
Our agents travel to many destinations on FAM trips (Familiarization trips) these trips are designed by tour operators and cruise lines to make certain that travel agents are up-to-date on popular destinations and cruise ships.
So the next time you need to, or better yet, want to travel…Let us help, it’s what we do.
A Lofty Retreat From Sweltering Shanghai
Only three hours from Shanghai, Moganshan is home to a handful of resorts that build upon the natural beauty and intriguing history of this region… New York Times
The Best New Hotels of 2012
41 reporters roamed the globe, bedding down-anonymously-at 172 new hotels in 49 countries. Their mission? To discover the best in the world… Conde Nast Traveler
Destination: Hong Kong
A city of contrasts — skyscrapers and lush Victoria Peak, six-course degustation menu and food stalls — Hong Kong doesn’t skimp on excitement… IndependentTraveler.com
Sail away on the African Queen of movie fame
The iconic vessel from the Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn film “The African Queen” has been restored for use a tour boat in Florida… Seattle Times
Opened in 1978, All About Travel is located in the Oklahoma City area. We are a family owned and operated company that has strived to provide our clients with the highest quality of service for more than 30 years. Our agents can arrange all your travel needs from the individual hotel and/or car reservation to an around the world cruise. Nothing is out of reach.
We can help plan your honeymoon, your destination wedding or the much needed getaway for two. Don’t forget about your business, we can handle all the travel needs for your company as well. Anything from an airline flight and hotel for a meeting or all the planning needed for your next company-wide seminar. We can arrange hotel space for all attendees and meeting rooms for all purposes.
Our agents travel to many destinations on FAM trips (Familiarization trips) these trips are designed by tour operators and cruise lines to make certain that travel agents are up-to-date on popular destinations and cruise ships.
So the next time you need to, or better yet, want to travel…Let us help, it’s what we do.
Anje Vela
All About Travel
All About Travel 