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Music With a Message: A Brief History of Protest Music in North America

Scratch Magazine June, 2004
Music has long been used by the poor and oppressed to lift spirits and communicate messages of social change. From the African-American slaves of the deep south singing soulful, subtly rebellious, gospel hymns, to Zach de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine belting out “We gotta take the power back!” [...]

Thank You and Goodbye

Xpat Magazine March, 2008
I’m sitting here at my desk gazing out the window, trying to put to paper some kind of goodbye letter for my last issue behind the wheel of Xpat. But as I reflect on my time working on Xpat, and in Taiwan, I’m filled with a single emotion: gratitude. So, instead [...]

From the Desk 07.09

Xpat Magazine September, 2007
Most recent athletic feat undertaken by Taiwanese ultramarathon champion, Kevin Lin: Running 6,920 km across six countries, and the Sahara Desert, in 111 days
The average distance run per day: 62 km
Total number of Taiwanese to play Major League Baseball: 4
Number of Taiwanese MLB players, present and former, of aboriginal ancestry: 2 (Chin-Feng [...]

Change

Xpat Magazine September, 2007
I pen this letter from a remote stretch of shore on Kootenay Lake, an enormous, unmolested body of water hundreds of kilometers long, slung in a deep valley in British Columbia’s Rocky Mountains. As a child I spent countless summers running barefoot through these cedar forests. Today is the first time [...]

The Top Twenty Bizarre English Names in Taiwan

Xpat Magazine June, 2007
At least once in their career, most English teachers in Taiwan stand in the unique position of naming children, or encountering a Taiwanese person, young or old, with a desire to assume an inappropriate English name. Sometimes kindie teachers, spurred by lack of sleep and unmetabolized alcohol, give kids wacky names for [...]

The Taiwan Angels’ Tour for Toys: A Lesson in Perspectives of Poverty

Xpat Magazine June, 2007
“Some of these kids are really poor,” Robert told me. “Some don’t even have shoes. If you see it you might cry.”
I was in the Cosby Saloon in Tainan talking to the owner, Robert Lo. He stood behind the bar with his back straight and his chin up. His black shirt was [...]

From the Desk 07.06

From the Desk 07.03

Xpat Magazine March, 2007
The definition of ‘Lookism’: discrimination against or prejudice towards others based on their appearance
The average hourly earnings of men with “below-average looks” and “above-average looks” compared to the national average in North America respectively: -8.9% and +5.4%
The average hourly earnings of women with “below-average looks” and “above-average looks” in Shanghai: -31.1% and [...]

A Kiss from Kiki

Published under the pseudonym Salvatore Paradisio
Xpat Magazine March, 2007
“…there’s so much beauty in the world. Sometimes I feel like I’m seeing it all at once, and it’s too much. My heart fills up like a balloon that’s about to burst. And then I remember to relax, and not try to hold on to it. And [...]

Deep Nightclub Review

FYI South February, 2007
Ryan Lu has brought South Taiwan many firsts. He was Taiwan’s first graffiti artist. He was one of the first skateboarders (and has subsequently achieved legendary status). He opened the first pop art clothing store, 420, and now he has brought Tainan its first authentic hip-hop club – Deep.
Deep, [...]

Fusion Groove Lounge Review

FYI South December, 2004
The unique design of this ultra-modern club highlights it as a diamond of the Tainan club scene. Floor-to-ceiling mirrors give the main floor the expansive feeling of a big city super club like Luxy or Ministry of Sound while the dark color scheme and tastefully dim lighting of the loft-style lounge [...]

A Year of Firsts for Tainan’s 6th Annual May Jam

FYI South April, 2005
What’s New?
Now in it’s sixth year, Tainan’s annual music festival, the May Jam, is expanding in all directions. This year’s May Jam will feature a host of new attractions such as: multimedia releases and international musical acts, as well as drama, comedy, and drumming.
So that no one, even those unable [...]

Extreme Theatre in Kaohsiung

FYI South February, 2005
This ‘extreme’ sport trend is ridiculous. People do the stupidest things just to call them extreme; like the attention desperate weirdoes of the Extreme Ironing Bureau who travel the globe ironing their slacks in exotic locales.
The ‘extreme’ label has degenerated into little more than a last ditch attempt for social outcasts [...]

Pure Music: Shining Radio

FYI South Magazine March, 2005
Purity
I hate North American radio: that stream of shallow, repetitive pop songs that assaults you in every mall, barbershop, and restaurant. College radio too. Every DJ wants to be Howard Stern or Happy Harry Hard-On, they talk too much, and the music sucks. And, in my opinion, there’s [...]

Fire Dancing in Tainan

FYI South January, 2005
Eight hundred years ago a mammoth bird called the Moa roamed the island of New Zealand. The Moa (cousin to the ostrich) could stretch up to 3.5 meters tall and weighed more than a small cow. They were slow, stupid, and tasty and thus rapidly hunted to extinction by the [...]

Southern Taiwan’s Live Music Scene

Cover Story, FYI South March, 2005
The title of this article is misleading; it’s a ruse to lure people in – the bait of an insidious reader trap. This article isn’t about southern Taiwan’s whole music scene. It isn’t about most of it, or even half of it. This article contains information pertaining [...]

Brazillian Jiu-jitsu in Taiwan

FYI South, Compass February, 2006
When Royce (pronounced ‘Hoyce’) Gracie stepped into the octagonal cage in 1993 at the first ever Ultimate Fighting Championship agianst Ken Shamrock there was no question who would win: the bookies favored Shamrock to take home the gold, Shamrock had wrestled his first opponent into submission is less than two-minutes, [...]

Music Night at the Greek

FYI South November, 2005
The last Tuesday of every month the upstairs of the Greek Restaurant undergoes an incredible metamorphosis—at six o’clock in the evening it’s is the same comfortable, dimly lit dining room as usual, with perhaps, a few Taiwanese diners enjoying a quiet supper. Around eight-thirty the first foreigner climbs the stairs, looks [...]

How to Apply for a Permit to Climb Yushan

Xpat Magazine December, 2006
The Rundown
There are two permits you must apply for in Yushan National Park – a park entry permit (which is issued by the park) and a mountain entry permit (which is issued by the police).
First you should apply for the park entry permit. Yushan is a very popular destination, and [...]

From the Desk 06.12

Xpat Magazine December, 2006
The fastest elevators in the world : Taipei 101’s high speed lifts, which travel at 17m per second
The world’s tallest building : Taipei 101 at 509m tall
The world’s largest proposed building : Burj Dubai in Dubai, UAE, expected to be completed in 2008, will be 800m tall
Price of a new Triumph Rocket [...]

The Tale of the Exploding Whale

Xpat Magazine September, 2006
On Jan. 29, 2004, the largest whale ever recorded in Taiwan exploded on a busy Tainan city street drenching cars, storefronts, and bystanders with rotten blood and entrails. It was awesome.
Two weeks prior to this event, a boat struck the whale, severing its spinal nerves and rendering it paralyzed. During the following [...]

From the Desk 06.09

Xpat Magazine September, 2006
Tyco executive Dennis Kozlowski’s brother-in-law’s defense for an extravagant bachelor party held for his son with Tyco company money: “It wasn’t like a three-ring circus…there was only one dwarf.”
World Record for the longest “midget toss”: 11 feet 5 inches1
Event at which the record was made: British Midget Tossing Championships 2002
Penalty in Ontario, [...]

From the Desk 06.06

Xpat Magazine June, 2006
Volume of soft drinks consumed by the average North American in 1999 : 48 gallons
Top grossing soft drink company in the world : Coca Cola
Number of human rights violations against union members, including unfair dismissal, abduction, torture, and murder, alleged to have been committed by Coca Cola in Columbia by a 2004 [...]

From the Desk 06.02

Xpat Magazine February, 2006
Taiwan’s religious affiliations: mixture of Buddhist, Confucian, and Taoist 93%, Christian 4.5%, other 2.5%
Population of China: 1.3 billion
Worldwide Membership of the Catholic Church: 1 billion
Number of Asian conversions to Catholicism since 1978: 54 million
Nicknames earned by Pope Benedict while working for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (a descendant of [...]

From the Desk 05.12

Xpat Magazine December, 2005
Speed of winds from hurricane Katrina (mph): 160
Speed of winds from Supertyphoon Haitang (mph): 145
Proportion of New Orleans underwater at the time of writing: 80%
Largest case of genocide in history: the destruction of the Native American community — between 2 and 100 million people exterminated
Number of people killed in 9/11 attacks: 2992
Number [...]

Ultramarathon Man: An Interview with Kevin Lin

Photography courtesy of Kevin Lin
Xpat Magazine December, 2006
When Kevin Lin, a postgraduate student and Taiwan’s most famous endurance athlete, agreed to an interview with Xpat I was stoked. Kevin is an internationally renowned ultramarathon champion. He races distances measuring in the hundreds of kilometers through extreme climates such as deserts and arctic snowfields. He was [...]

Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art

Xpat Magazine June, 2006
In Xpat’s never-ending endeavor to bring you cool, cutting-edge, flip-your-wig-back art, we present this interview with Taipei’s Museum of Contemporary Art. MOCA is one of the most progressive museums in Taiwan supporting innovative and unusual art from sculpture to multimedia to interactive installations. We recommend stopping by. You’re guaranteed to see at [...]

The Exploding Dog: An Interview with Sam Brown

Illustrations by Sam Brown
Xpat Magazine September, 2006
I first found the website www.explodingdog.com because my roommate had a hilarious wallpaper on her laptop of a stick-figure hippo and I asked her where it came from. Explodingdog.com is a “semi-collaborative” art project in which random visitors send Sam Brown captions for drawings and he draws them and [...]

Ol’ Georgie Boy: An Interfaux with George W. Bush

Artwork by Steve Williams
Xpat Magazine September, 2006
*All answers are true George W. Bush quotes. A complete list of ‘Bushisms’ available online at www.about.com.
Xpat Magazine: How did the political forecast look the day you were re-elected?
Georgie Boy: There’s no question that the minute I got elected, the storm clouds on the horizon were getting nearly directly [...]

My Pop

Published under the pseudonym Salvatore Paradisio
Xpat Magazine June, 2006
My pop, or my pappy as I like to call him, had open-heart surgery last fall. He had, not one, but two triple bypasses. Then, about a month ago, he returned to the hospital for a pacemaker installation.
During his latter visit to the hospital he didn’t hear [...]