This is how it starts, Steve (Barco Ninja) calls me up and says “are you available for a job in Tianjin leaving on the 18th”, I say, “yeah maybe, which month”, Steve says “next week”, “hmmm, OK”. I spend 48 hours at home in Newcastle, get my visa sent away which was amazingly sorted and processed thanks to the help of Ana from th ephilharmonia, it was then delivered via taxi/courier in my passport to the airport (Heathrow, where we all meet outside terminal 3), I feel like a bit of flash tosser but i have a silly grin (more than usual at the same time!)haha!
Allot has gone on in the past week (and a bit) which is cooking loads to document! So due the volume of stories I’m only gonna blog some of it. Im out here in Tianjin working for the Philharmonia as part of the team installing re-rite. The last time I did it was its first ever appearance, in the barge house, london, over 2 years ago, exciting!!
Ana, Steve, Dicky, Ash, Graeme and myself check in, go through airport security and get on the plane. Steve is sitting in front of me, so now is ideal to stick things to his face, Borg, Barco Ninja.
We pass the 9 hour journey the usual way by falling asleep with mouth open, grunting, waking again, reading, watching half a film. Eating the standard airline food, and contemplating turbulence. We land, get picked up by our card and are transported from Beijing to Taijuan. Being in the worn timezone and jet lagged everything is both weird and amusing! Like this far east Tesco for example, of course everyone wants a Tesco whether they like it or not!
We finally got to our place of residence for the next week and a bit the Tianyu Hotel, in the habit of taking a picture of every room number of every room i have stayed in for the past 18 month, this one was room 402! I had recently been presented with the challenge of drawing a hidden comedy cock in every hotel room i have stayed in and this one was the first i had been in after been presented with the challenge. I can neither confirm nor deny that I took the challenge
The hotel was ok, the rooms and building were just like any other, but going down for breakfast for the first time we had all sorts of chinese food, had only had chopsticks to eat it with, New, Different and brilliant!!! Ontop of that, the words on the carpet in the lift had changed! It was now Saturday and didn’t we know it!!
We got a taxi to the venue, which when Ana Steve & Graham did the site visit was still being built, this time when there was + Dicky, Ash & Myself, it was still being built! Still, its a pretty impressive building and is called the Grand Theatre Tianjuin, below is obviously a night time photo, it diet look like this during the day…….
From Saturday onwards we began installing, projectors, screens and what we could* and continued like that for the next could of days, one memorable mealtime was when we left the venue and ventured across the road to a Chinese caffe, for dinner. It was great! there were picots on the wall! so via the great medium of universal sign language, we pointed at beef noodles and indicated a quantity with our fingers. We are so local, and we ate like kings!!
The days continued on as normal, rigging projectors, installing cables, asking for stuff, asking fro stuff again and general rigging. Most memorable things happened out of work via the journey to and from and when we went for an evening meal!
Katie Melua may have been semi right about Beijing when talking about bicycles, but she failed to take into account Tianjin, there are lots. And lots and lots and lots, and the same for cars, big cars small cars, tankers. In-fact theres lots of everything, its a big city, but back to bicycles, this guy is cool#, he had LED rope light on his wheels.
It may have been this day when we came across the rewrite poster for our instslation, its always good to see, and looks ace with the chinese text!
One evening we went to a German restaurant, after overdosing on chinese food during the day, it was great, they also made us drink allot of german beer, and then we went fishing by the riverside. Steve managed to catch a Graeme on then bulbous end of his rod which was quite impressive!
Im not sure which part of the past week it was but we were lucky enough to be walking past a hole outside the venue and managed to catch a glimpse of the April Tianjuan Pohkanouki race, it was short lived but we were so lucky to see the bit we did, I managed to get a shot of how excited we were whilst standing on one of the many Pohkanouki viewing platforms in and around Tianjuin.
So there you have it, an entire blogpost about he job I’m working on in china without any useful information! For some actual details click the link:> re-Rite. If your around, go and see it, even if you have no interest in music it looks pretty!
*Signifies a longer story…….
#”Cool” (check out the inverted commas)ª, signifies I like it, not necessarily popular.
ª = Signifies sarcasm, its very rare that I use sarcasmª