Friday night at the Tim Hortons Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival was crazy hot. I had to do a lot of running around because I decided to take some photos of The Beaches playing and then rush to my lion dance troupe for the opening ceremony. I definitely was in a sweaty mess.
I’ve been hearing good things about the Toronto female indie rock band, The Beaches. Their music is like glam rock meets new wave and just having a good time. It was a short time checking them out but they’re just wonderful. The band opened up Mia Rae and Mother Mother.
Onto the lion dance performance, it was different than the previous years because we were part of the parade of champions led by the RCAF Pipes and Drums. At least it was time efficient for us to start lion dancing right away than to wait for the speeches.
It was crazy and fun Friday night to be at Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival. The concert lineup is the best there is with Canadian content and it’s totally free.
Happy New Year and apologies for the sparse update on the blog. It’s been a quiet December and start of January.
On Saturday afternoon, our lion dance troupe had the opportunity to perform inside Rideau Hall, the Governor General’s residence. The event was part of The Governor General’s Winter Celebration. There were winter activities for the families to enjoy. There were horse sleigh rides and various embassies from other countries to show what winter traditions they showcased.
The lion dance was there for the Embassy of the People’s Republic of China and it was nice set up to Chinese New Year coming up. It will be the year of the monkey.
Our performance was inside the ballroom at Rideau Hall and there was a good crowd checking out as well as the Governor General, David Johnston who also brought along his dog. It was a fun time to be inside a marvelous building and it’s rare to be inside Rideau Hall.
After missing out on last year, it’s great to be back for Friday night’s opening ceremony of the Tim Hortons Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival. The opening ceremony began with the bagpipers marching and leading the dragon boaters to the main tent. Following the speeches was the lion dance.
Prior to the lion dance, I had a chance to check out Kalle Mattson as they were one of the opening act for Hey Rosetta, the headliner for the Friday show. It was definitely a fine Friday night to be out anywhere in Ottawa.
I can’t wait to check out The Acorn, The Rural Alberta Advantage and Dan Mangan + Blacksmith at Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival for Saturday evening.
As usual, you can check the photos over at Flickr by clicking HERE.
Gong Hei Fat Choy! This year’s lunar new year celebrations is quite late. This year’s animal is quite confusing as it’s either year of the sheep or goat. I’ll leave it either way.
As usual, it’s great to go out and lion dance at various places. The first stop was at a public school and kids were excited to see the lions and take part in it. What was surprising that some of the kids knew their animal that they’re born in. I was able to take some photos from the event. Then my lion dance troupe did five other events and they were at a bank and several retirement homes. It was great to see some of the guys again for the performances.
You can check the photos over at Flickr by clicking HERE.
Posted below are a few silly photos during the performances. I got several lion dance performances to go. Have a Happy Chinese New Year!
Pssst, February 20th is my birthday!
Photos from the February 22nd lion dance at T&T Supermarket. Click HERE.
It’s that time of year where I get to celebrate Chinese New Year and have fun, eat a lot of food and perform. It’s the year of the horse this year and its symbol this year is the wood and it brings some energy and clashes, according to The Independent.
As usual, for myself, it’s a busy time where my lion dance troupe have a lot of performances on Chinese New Year. The first day was hectic as a few of the members went to CTV Two for the morning show (CTV Morning Live Ottawa) and you can watch the clip over at the link. I appear in it and mostly smiling at times in the background.
Other performances done on the first day of Chinese New Year were at a retirement home, Algonquin College, RBC Royal Bank and ending it off at a private school in the Rockcliffe area.
You can check out the photos from below. The main photo was taken at Algonquin College and used The Impossible ProjectColor Frames Edition. I’m continuing to shoot on instant photos.
There will be a some posts on upcoming performances. Stay tuned to it.
All I have to say is Kung Hey Fat Choy! Happy Chinese New Year to everyone.
It’s been several years that my lion dance troupe went to Pembroke for Chinese New Years celebration. A bit of a scary story getting to Pembroke was experiencing a slight white out conditions from the blowing snow. It was like a thriller movie and quite scary going through it. It’s funny how my dad was driving quickly during the brief treacherous conditions, one of my family friends who was driving behind text messaged to slow down and not knowing it was my dad who drove.
I know Chinese New Year doesn’t start until February 10th but the Pembroke community did it a week early. As usual, the crowd enjoyed the performance and there was food.
The newest edition to the troupe’s instruments is a slightly small but brightly looking drum. My thought was that it sounds very hollow but over time, the sound should improve from drumming a lot. There will be getting used to the new sound.
It was great to see some of the lion dance crew and will be seeing more of them in the days to come when Chinese New Year arrives.
Don’t forget to check out the photos.
Black Friday is usually a big deal in the United States but it has been catching on in Canada. Let’s say that it was a eventful day as I tried to get a new laptop at the Apple Store but they did not have the right model. In a way, Black Friday in Canada was a dud as I did not get anything that was worthy of a great sale.
To forget about the unfortunate event, I had the opportunity to go to Magpie Jewellery in Westboro for Arts Nestat night. It was organized by Creative Mornings and part of Support Local by Apartment 613. There were local designers, local musicians, and an artist.
There were free food in the form of tacos by Taco Lot and cupcakes! Plus, there was a free swag bag included at the event. All in all, being at Arts Nest certainly erased the frustration from shopping early this morning for Black Friday deals.
I did not to stay very long but got to take photos and a few are posted on my Instagram.
Hope you have a great weekend. Continue reading →
It was a great opportunity to attend the newly managed Ottawa Folk Festival as the new location was down on Hog’s Back Park. The new site was enormous and accesible compared to Britannia Park, the old site to Folk Fest.
What I enjoyed about this year’s Folk Festival was that several CKCU-FM hosts (including myself) got to introduce some of the workshops in the daytime.
The Folk Fest lineup pretty good as my favourite bands and artists like The Rural Alberta Advantage and Basia Bulat attended for the first time. This leads to the Basia Bulat interview, as I was able to conduct on the final day. Aside that the final day of Folk Festival became cold and very windy, I was able to do the interview. It was great to see Bulat as I haven’t seen her for a year and missing out on her concert back in March. Hope you will enjoy it.
This ends the summer festivals in Ottawa and it’s nice that the Ottawa Folk Festival ended on a positive note.
On the radio show, there was a lot happening like the top 10 countdown, the countdown to Pop Montreal, a wrap-up to Ottawa Folk Festival and the final U2 Summer Shoutout Challenge.
The playlist for the August 31st show is at this link.
The Wild 10 Countdown entry is at this link.
Lastly, this is getting close to a brand new season, hence this entry as being preseason. Season 7 on the blog is soon. The new season of WildWorks on CKCU-FM will be on September 14, 2011.
Summer Related Entry
I forgot to mention about the link from Local Tourist Ottawa about the magic of community radio in Ottawa. Click at this link. Thanks to guest editor (at that time), Hilary for convincing me to write something up.
Audio/Podcast – Updated for September 7, 2011
The September 7th radio show. The playlist is at this link. The countdown summary is at this link.
Press play to listen.
August 31st radio show. Press play to listen.
The Basia Bulat Interview at Ottawa Folk Festival.
For the first time in awhile, there was no rain at the Ottawa Dragon Boat Race Festival. It was just a nice sunny day and I thought it would be a very hot but the winds helped cool the climate. Enough weather talk, it’s always a privilege to perform at the Dragon Boat Race Festival. As usual, it’s always good to have Max Keeping introduce our lion dance troupe and for the first time, Carol Anne Meehan, was the co-MC with Keeping. I think she enjoyed the lion dance performance.
Prior to performing, I had a good walk around at the festival (in Mooney’s Bay Park) and to my amazement, it was packed with a lot of people walking around checking out the vendors.
Since 1993, the festival has really changed a lot with bringing charitable organizations to the forefront and I think for the past few years, they’ve added the concert series and unfortunately, I did not get to see Jim Bryson perform because I had my dad around and I didn’t want to wait until 4pm. At least I got to see Spartacat (The Ottawa Senators mascot) after concluding the lion dance performance. Aside from that, I got a free deodorant at the festival.
Overall, kudos to the board of directors and staff of the Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival for making the event fun, passionate and successful.
Don’t forget to check out the photos from the lion dance performance.
Due to a slight delay on not posting up Wednesday’s radio show right away for the blog. The reason was that the playlist for the November 24th edition was being incomplete. It was the on-air studio’s computer causing itself to restart and I had my entries from the top 4 songs and the second hour to be gone. You can check the countdown at this linkand the playlist is now posted up at this link (via CKCU-FM’s website).
On the show itself, I had a surprise guest on the show as I predicted of hosting on my own and almost having a trainwreck. My co-host was unavailable due to being sick and tons of assignments.
In the second hour of the show, I finally decided to play Hallelujah for the fourth time as I was slightly pressured to play the original version of the song.
The interview I aired was Nat Baldwin in the band, The Dirty Projectors. This was considered my second music interview who’s not from Canada. With Baldwin, what interested me to interview him was that he collaborated with a well-known band, Vampire Weekend. For Baldwin, he was on tour for his solo music. It was a great opportunity to interview him and I should thank, Adam Saikaley (host of CBC’sBandwidth) for putting on the show at Raw Sugar Cafe.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a photo of Nat Baldwin for this blog entry.
Without further ado, you can listen to the November 24th edition of WildWorks on CKCU-FM.
Press play to listen.
The interview with Nat Baldwin
Press play to listen or download it.
WildWorks 