Live in Hangzhou

Yup... still in China... still not doing much, well, not doing much about the movie- that is. We are finding things to do to keep ourselves occupied. I've been reading the news a lot and trying to write a few script ideas when I have the patients to force myself to stay off the internet.

Let's see, what are some cool thing's we've been doing. Oh, we've been going to a jazz club we found called J Z Club. It's great, they have some cool live music and food and drinks. We see a lot of gringos there and have made friends with the band. We went on Friday because it was Carlos's(the drummer) last night performing before he moves on to Hong Kong. The place was packed and there was good food, great music, good company and we had a lot of fun.

If anyone ever travels to Hangzhou, I highly recomend it: JZ Club, No. 6 Liuying Road, Hangzhou China, Tel: 0571-8702 8298. There is also one in Shanghai, as well. http://www.jzclub.cn/

Yesterday we went to a silk market place... it's a long road with shops that sell silk goods. It was cool, we ended up buying some gifts for people back home, it was fun barganing with people. We also went to a "small goods" market where you buy different bags and clothes and pretty much anything you want. It reminded me of the market we go to in San Salvador.

Oh, we also went to a Hangzhou soccer game at Yellow Dragon sports area! The team is called Greentown(?) and our friends we met who work at the Regal Victoria hotel(where we are supposed to be shooting) took up to a game. The seats were great seat, right by the goal at field level! But the stadium wasn't even 1/2 full, plus it was raining- but I bought a jersey and scarf and we had fun! We(Hangzhou Greentown) lost, 0-2 but we still had fun watching them. Rob and I think we can maybe get summer jobs as ball boys or maybe even as back up players on the team! hahahaha But I think as it gets warmer we'll be going to more games. The stadium was really nice, it looks huge from outside... seemed a little smaller once we got to our seats, but it was really cool to see a game live. However, Rob and I were a little disappointed and frustrated with the high amount of theatrics some of the players did with some of the falls. It was funny, as soon as the stretcher team ran out on the field the player would get right up and start to play again... but it did make up a little frustrated.

And in other news: there has been a slight(and most likely temporary) break in The Great fireWall of China. Wikipedia and BBC news are 2 of some of the few websites that have been opened up to the chinese internet surfer... this has been done mainly to allow people in China to comment on wester reporting. I figured it was pretty significant if you follow that kind of stuff... so I decided to document the historic occasion:




You can see all my pics at: http://www.flickr.com/gp/15005161@N06/JxK637

PhillM tip-of-the-day:
Contracts are a great thing to write so that you minimize the things that are "assumed". It is always good to write down the conditions to a job, bot to protect the employer but especially the employee!