因为在神没有一件事是不可能的

Yesterday ZouNan and I went out to a park. It was raining most of the time, but it was still fun.

While we were eating we remembered there was a heavy metal show in a small venue at 8:00. We figured we would just bum around downtown until it started. I probably wouldn't have brought my camera to the show if I had gone home first. I'm really glad I brought it though. Despite getting slammed into a wall and stepped on several times I still got some decent shots.

Here's a preview of what you will find on my Flickr page. Give it a look.

I finished recording my second Chinese song. Zou Nan helped me out a lot with the lyrics. It has an English name because it's way more catchy to say "I'll never do that" in English than Chinese.

It's a song to a girl that has been hurt over and over again. It's about seeing her pain and promising that you'll never do that. It's difficult the translate the verses for me, but the chorus goes something like this:

I don't want you to feel like you're alone
I'll never leave you by yourself at night
I can't believe the other guys that lied
How can they sleep at night knowing you cried

It sounds better in Chinese... hehe

Anyway, give it a look and tell me what you think!

I'll Never Do That

Well, the guitar club I was going to do got turned into band club. Not the geeky band club you might be thinking of. I'm talking about drums, bass, vocals, distorted guitars, the works.

Everyone wants to be there. They were all helping each other and teaching each other new things. They are all so motivated that I don't have to do hardly anything. It's fantastic!

Well, I re-recorded 美梦 (sweet dreams) because while in Japan I played around with a ukulele (thanks to Izak). This song fit so perfectly on it that I had to lay it down. I recorded the ukulele track in Japan and finished it up back home. I'm very proud of this song. The lyrics, instruments, chords... everything. It just seemed to fall into place.

Tell me what you think!

I did it.

I bought a cajon.


Unfortunately this means I'm going to have to leave my cheap guitar in Okinawa.

I doubt I can carry on my cameras, a guitar, and a cajon.

I don't care about the guitar, but this makes me a little sad because of the art on my guitar.

That said, I bought this guitar for about $60 in order to have a guitar I can drop and not care about. You can't see from the picture, but it had quite a few dents and scratches.

So whoever I give it to must do one thing: not care if they hit, drop, scratch, or damage it in any way. I'm going to make sure they do this by forcing them to drag it on the street for a few seconds before I let them have it. It's going to be so much fun.

I wrote a new song last night. It's called Dream. The quality isn't fantastic, but it's not too bad either.

I've been trying to get more creative with my chord progressions in recent songs.

There are several other songs that I haven't recorded since The Color of Love. Sometimes I get in the mood to record and just lay down my most recent song.

Let me know what you think.

It is the day after thanksgiving. It is also the day to start listening to Christmas music. So why don't you pep up your playlist with happiest most upbeat version of Winter Wonderland ever recorded?

As you all know I was asked to play guitar at the school festival. The art teacher was taking some photos and he told me that a couple were put up on the school website. He has a lens I'm totally jealous of. So beautiful, this lens is. These are the first pictures I have of me playing guitar. I'm glad they're nice

I wrote a new song. It's called The Color of Love. I'm really really happy with it. You'll notice it has drums and bass to accompany the chord changes I'm so terribly proud of.

I should really write more jazz songs.

I mentioned last week that I was going to a music competition on Friday night. It went really well. We played two songs. And places in second among 16 other people. Not bad. There were nearly 1000 people there. And they all loved it. I felt famous. There is something about 1000 people screaming I that could really get used to...

A friend of mine took some video but then her camera died. I really wish it would have lasted through the whole song because we ended with a really cool guitar solo. I might do this song at our school festival. I say might because I don't want to hit my guitar like that again. There is a crack that is getting worse so I need to be more gentle than I have in the past... I only have one or two sentimental possessions, and my guitar (custom made for my Dad and passed down to me) is one of them. I couldn't live with myself if I hurt it any more.

Here is the short clip of What Will You Do:

I recorded a couple of new songs. One is called Falling. It's pretty long as far as my songs go. About 5 minutes. It really really needs a full band though.

The other song I recorded is my first attempt at a singing Chinese. It's called 美梦 (meimeng = beautiful dream). The second verse is in English because it was really hard to try to makes sense in Chinese. I even got Dream Star (a Chinese friend of mine) to help me and he couldn't figure out a way to make it work.

Basically it's just a sweet, childish, love song. Give them a listen when you have a chance.

EDIT: For some reason the characters for 美梦 didn't upload, so it's the file with no name (.mp3).

I just have to say that Lucky by Jason Mraz is one of the best songs I have heard in a really long time. The lyrics, melody, harmony, and music all are so perfectly put together. It's amazing. Go listen to it.

I've recorded a couple new songs recently. You can listen to it on my drop.io page.

One is called Being Here With You. One of my coworkers, Kevin, wrote some lyrics for his wife and never had anyone put them to music that he liked. I figured I would give it a go. He was really happy. He said I hit it dead on.

The other one is called You. I'm extremely happy with how it sounds.

Give them a listen and tell me what you think. What you really think. I'm trying to work on improving my song writing so critique is greatly appreciated.

I'm a big fan of drop.io. It has to be the best, easiest, coolest, file sharing program ever. I put the music I recorded recently up there. (Seeing as how my myspace music page vanished randomly.)

I also recorded another song today called To You. It's good and noisy. Like everything else I record it needs work. I never seem to finish a song. You can definitely tell who I've been listening to recently by this song. (If you know who they are...) You can listen to it here.

It's not often that I can thank G-d for what He's doing inside me right now. Maybe I'm alone in this. I can't really say what He is doing right now. Maybe I will think He is doing one thing but then a few weeks later I look back and realize I was way off base.

I especially feel like that recently. I couldn't put my finger on it until today when I was thinking about it at work. It seems like He does things so backwards sometimes. So much so that I have to look back to see what is going on.

Maybe I can't see Him right now, but I can see what He's done and know He's continuing on. In what way? I don't know, but I know it's good because he is pretty much epitome of good.

Here's a song I wrote a couple days ago. I knew I had to record it right away otherwise I wouldn't be inspired enough to do it later. It's called Yesterday. It needs a little work, but it's the first song I've written recently that I'm happy with.

I made a myspace music page in the hopes that it will keep me recording. You can listen to it here.

I play a game with some of the 5 year olds I teach. I give them different commands (run, walk, jump, ride a bike, sleep, eat, etc) and than yell out freeze. The first one to move gets knocked out and the game continues. The winner gets a sticker. heh

Sometimes I have to say freeze over and over before they stop. Not because they don't understand, but they just don't want to be still. They want a different command.

I'm so much like that. I can be still, but I don't want to. I can imagine God's frustration with us when we are running, eating, working, and generally living life while He is saying over and over, "be still!"

So the other day I went to the beach to be still.

"Be still, and know that I am God"
Psalm 46:10

• I rediscovered how nice it is to have complete peace.
• I read and I prayed. And it was good.
• I learned that Simon & Garfunkle is fantastic photography music.
• And I found an excellent coffee shop.

That is effectively what my iPod Nano has become. I don't know how it happened but at some point last Tuesday I must have bumped into something very hard. Hard enough to give my iPod a big dent right below the screen. So now when I turn it on the screen is completely white.

On the bright side of things (other than the screen) I had it set to shuffle songs. So now I have about 7GB of music on random.

It makes for some strange mixes. I would never have listened to Damien Marley back to back with Norah Jones, Tom Waits right after Phil Wickham, or Simon & Garfunkle sandwiched between Bjork and Prince.

His new album is a bit different than his previous style. Which is something I am very thankful for. I can only take a whiny lead guitar, a high voice with too much vibrato, and the same blocking and chord progressions in every song for so long.

Wickham still shakes his voice a bit much, but who would blame him? It's his signature.

Overall is a great new album which I would recommend to anyone who liked his old stuff, but want something a little different.

What's really strange about this album is that I couldn't find the torrent anywhere but on a Chinese site. Hey, I'm in China. It's a little hard for me to buy it. Even if I could buy it in a local CD shop it would be pirated anyway. I'm sure Phil doesn't mind.

I got back from Jinan on Sunday night very very late.

First off, I'm very thankful that I live in Yantai.

When I woke up in Jinan my whole body ached. I've never felt this kind of ache before.

Like poison.

Only after I got back to Yantai and woke up here ache free did I realise it must have been from the pollution. In Jinan I really couldn't see very far.

And I though Yantai was bad. I used to laugh when people said Yantai was clean, I will laugh no more.

Other than that the traffic was intolerable and there were too many people. There's nothing that can be done about that though.

I also learned that I must never ever get stuck to the left of the highest person at the dinner table. That person would be the honored one or the one paying for dinner, etc, whatever. If he likes to drink, you will drink. And you will drink a lot. I'm not sure why, but I could hold it better than him so I didn't get drunk. Maybe because I was eating a lot hoping that I wouldn't end up on the floor! To be completely honest and real, I didn't drink a drop too much. Actually I filled my glass with tea before he could top it off again. And he was too lost to know it wasn't beer. heh heh heh

I also acquired an erhu. I think I mentioned that though. I'm getting better!

This crazy journey I'm on is nuts. I don't know where He's taking me, but I love how He is getting me there! Why He loves me so much I'm not sure, but I do my best to pass it on.

PASS IT ON! HIS LOVE IS TOO GREAT TO KEEP TO YOURSELF!

(photos will come soon, I'm still working on getting internet in my apartment.)

Last night I hung out with a bunch of construction workers in front of the building they are working on. The one who plays erhu let me try. The people who say it's so hard should try upright bass or violin. Within 5 minutes I was on my way to playing a real song.

Soon enought I'll have one of my own.

What made it so easy was that the hair on the bow is threaded between the two strings. So to play the lower string you press in, to play the higher string you push out. So much easier than trying to get the correct angle down!

I love this place.