Family guy with 3 Daughters, Digital Guy, Wine Community Leader, Runner in Singapore.
The trip we have all been waiting for. We head to Japan and will be at Osaka and Kyoto. There will be lots of sightseeing, shopping, food and cultural immersion.
Rather than doing a big blog post, I’ve been journalling our journey in Instagram instead and here is the full collection of our best photos.
Till the next trip.
Was in Shanghai for a week for work and really wanted to get some Jazz. Firstly went to The Jazz bar at Peace Hotel as it was at The Bund and my colleagues and I wanted to go there anyway to check it out.
Oh man… The Jazz Bar’s Old Jazz Band was really old. Kudos for playing live music for so long, but it was not something I had in mind. Thank goodness for a soulful female vocalist that saved the night with classics from Old Shanghai Jazz. I could see quite a few senior ladies really enjoying themselves and dancing to the music up front and that brought a smile as I could sense the joy they had.
In short… its kinda old for me… I’ll skip it.
A friend of mine then recommended a place called Heyday. I looked it up Baidu (because no Google in China) and the web design / look and feel was right. It had that 20s Art Deco feel. Yes we had to check it out.
We went on a Saturday night not expecting much but we were just blown away. The Pianist from Israel, double bassist from Korea and drummer from Brazil were out of this world.
The vocalists were also superb. Song after song, solo after solo, my feet can’t stop tapping along and you can see from the crowd, cheers and applause, it was a great night. The musicians gave their all, cracked jokes and really engaged an interactive audience.
I put together a short footage to capture the feel of Heyday. Too wonderful.
THIS PLACE IS MAGIC! If I wanted to open the bar, this is it!
We stayed till the bar close down. TWICE. It was that good. I was there 20th May 2017 and again on 23rd May.
It was a really good night and I think I’ll have to come to Heyday again whenever I come to Shanghai. Everyone needs to go to Heyday.
Heyday Jazz Lounge
50 Tai’An Road (near Xinguo Road)
泰安路50å·ï¼Œè¿‘兴国路
P: 6236-6075
W: http://www.heydayjazz.cn
F: https://www.facebook.com/heydayjazzshanghai/
I had the privilege to attend the by invitation only StreamAsia 2014 unconference which happened at the Berjaya Langkawi Resort in Malaysia.
Named by WIRED as ‘one of the world’s best tech conferences’ and described as the ‘Bilderberg of Advertising’ by the Guardian, Stream is the WPP unconference.
The key of any unconference is participation and I went prepared with a bunch of carrots and Makey Makeys to share how easy it is to connect the real world with the digital world. I represented VML Qais at this event, so was really looking forward to get to know more people, what better way then with carrots right. :)
But before we started the whole event, there was a minute of silence as everyone is still shocked my the tragedy of MH370.
On of the first events was the Gadgethon. Individuals each had 2 mins to demo a cool gadget and of cause I used it to demo the Makey Makey carrot piano setup and also marketed my unconference segment which was on another day.
There were some real cool stuff shared. Robotic arms, Smart homes, an remote droid thingy, etc.
The main meat of the unconference happened in tents on the beach. How awesome is that. Marketing professionals talking about really current issues and challenges faced by brands and marketers. There were also some really future thinking topics like how will online advertising be like in 10 years, many industries were covered, from Hospitality to Kids. Here is Jason Oke facilitating the discussion on Click Fraud. I also attended a session where we talked about the idea of reality TV funding our first Mars colony before Nasa can.
All these were done in berms, flip flops, shades and a coconut in hand. How classy.
There were lots of cool gadgets displayed at the Tech Lab which allowed everyone to get some hands-on. I think there were easily about 15 items on display including the Oculus Rift, Cubelets, many many different kind of mobile phones especially affordable smartphones from China, Interactive Digital Kiosks, an Instant Instagram photo printer and more.
I setup the Makey Makey to allow people to play Pac Man and Tetris. Here is a video of how the 5 player Tetris turned out. Real fun.
Finally I managed to try out the Google Glass. Its really cool, but I feel the technology is still very rough. Can’t wait for it to be mainstream.
Managed to get a demo of the Xbox One also from someone at Microsoft. I have to say the capabilities of this console is quite amazing and the amount of stuff it can sense is just jaw dropping. If I tell you It can sense your heartbeat would you believe me?
There was also lots of opportunities for individuals to showcase their other talents. There was a band, an Opera singer, Powerpoint Karaoke, cooking and of cause drinks as well.
One of my favourite photo of this trip would have to be this one where I used some luminous paint and wrote the event’s hashtag #StreamAsia on me hairy leg lol.
It was an awesome experience and I manage to have real interesting conversations with many new people. An amazing feat as I do feel this is not what introverts do. Hope to get re-invited to this inspiring event.