picking up where i left off...

Okay, so my plans to blog often on my trip in Asia didn't work out that well.  I hafta say though, I didn't expect it to be that busy!  Other than in Hong Kong (my first time around there), I rarely had time to just sit and surf, or do things like update my blog.  Boo, cause there are so many details about my trip I wish I had documented in my blog so I could remember 'em.  There were just too many bizzare/cool things that transpired...

Let's recall...

My purpose of getting out to Asia was to take a better, closer look at the industry there to see whether or not I could feasibly work/live there.  And while I am not suggesting by any means did I feel like the red carpet was rolled out, I learned enough and saw enough reason to justify my scooting out that way - hopefully at some point in 2009..

Depsite my senility setting in, I'll attempt to reco-blog about each city I was in in a separate entry starting from where I left off...Reco-blog - you like that - I just made that word up.  It means: blogging about things that happened in the distant past (recollections) as opposed to really recently, like what happened today.

The last thing I remember blogging about was a play - Love Letters - that I was going to do in Beijing that would have me staying there for 2 extra months.  Well, let me tell you.  What a semi-fiasco that turned out to be.  No hard feelings, but after I went back up to BJ from HK, prepared to stay for 2 months, on the first day of production, the producers told everyone that they hadn't decided anything and that they were going to postpone the show.

What. 

Okay, see, I ain't a local and so, I didn't have that time to kill, sitting around, and living my life.  I had to move on.  I was on a mission and I did have things back in the States I had to get back for (I was willing to rearrange things for it though)...Long story short, I learned a lesson in how business can be handled in China (I was warned many times over), and after a 2 day retreat to Beijing, I returned back to HK to continue my trip.  I did manage to see a dear old friend who'd just moved to Beijing on that return.  I also met a couple of Asian-American actors who live there now and got their experiences firsthand, so I try not to see it as a complete loss.  (And I even went to French Night at ChinaDoll - a hip club (who knew so many French folk lived in BJ?)  No, in fact, upon returning to HK again, interesting stuff happened - stuff that wouldn't have happened had I stuck to my original itinerary and not gone back to BJ.  I was supposed to have been in Taiwan already in fact.

I got back to HK and headed up to Guangzhou with some friends to catch an NBA preseason game that was being held there.  What a crazy experience that was!  We saw the game (crazy seeing two pro teams go at it on Chinese soil with thousands of Chinese fans waving these clapper things), missed the last train back to HK, and basically stayed up the entire night until the first train out in the morning.  We decided to go to a 24-hour spa, after eating at a 24 hour seafood joint where we saw the most random things ever (alligator heads, water roaches - see accompanying photos) to hang out, and as nice as the foot and back massages felt, I must say, it was an excruciating night because we tried to stay up the entire time.  I'm too old for that.  I got about 1 hour of sleep before having to head out to the train station only to find out the first train out was sold out.

What. 

We got on the second one and it was completely lights out until we got back to HK, which unfortunatley was only about 1.5 hours away.  About the only time you'd wish a train trip was longer than it was.

Anyway, I got back to HK, and running on a few hours of massively interrupted sleep, made a meet n greet with an agency that would ultimately agree to take me in!  I don't know exactly what it will all mean or how it will play out in the end, but it's a starting point.  I'm officially working with Starz People there now but given that I'm not exactly in HK or Asia yet, it's a wait and see approach for me.  Wait to see how it works.  Starz reps Maggie Q and Daniel Henney, and while that could mean nothing to the rest of the talent who works with an agency, I figure it's a good place to start.  Reputable -- and, as they told me, they don't require me to be fluent in any Chinese dialect!  (That was an issue in Beijing after meeting with agencies there - my ABC Mandarin stunk and likely wouldn't fly in the market there).

And so there you go, my trip back to BJ turned out to be for naught, but because it shifted my travels, it afforded me the opportunity to a) see the game and alligator heads in Guangzhou, and b) get with an agency in Hong Kong.

Everything works out the way it should? 

Maybe.

I was on a flight to Taipei just hours later...

Oh - remember how I hated Hong Kong cause of what my friends did to me?  This was just the start: