After my appearance on CBC TV's The National, of course there are things I wished I could have said.
“Todd – tell me how Gung Haggis Fat Choy has expanded,” asked Peter Mansbridge.
actual said – “The dinner has expanded to expecting 700 people this year.”
should have said – “We are expanding beyond the dinner event into mainstream events. We have been invited to be part of the rejuvenated First Night Vancouver. This will be an incredible event in downtown Vancouver's Theatre District, held at QE Plaza, CBC Plaza and Library Square. Performing with me will be Silk Road Music's Qiu Xia He & Andre Thibault, Dragon River Shadow Puppet Theatre's musicians Karen Wong & Zhongxi Yu. We will be creating a family oriented show of audience singalongs, cross-over music, story telling – all celebrating Scottish Hogmanay and Chinese New Year on First Night.
We will have the 2nd annual Gung Haggis Fat Choy World Poetry Night at the Vancouver Public – a free event of music and poetry featuring poet Fred Wah – a Governor General's Award for Poetry winner. This is done in partnership with the World Poetry Series at the Vancouver Public Library, organized and co-hosted with Ariadne Sawyer and Alejandro Mujica. We will also be featuring musician songwriter Joe MacDonald, poets Dugald Christie and Shirley Sue-A-Quan. And I, personally, will perform one of the songs I have written for a planned Children's album of songs celebrating Gung Haggis Fat Choy – incorporating Scottish Hogmany, Robbie Burns Day, Chinese New Year and Multiculturalism or Interculturalism.
We are creating the inaugural SFU Gung Haggis Fat Choy Highland Games at Simon Fraser University – and event to draw on SFU's adopted Scottish heritage and the large Asian student population, to bring the university population together for a series of intramural fun & games + music performances.
Terry “Bear” Varga – owner of Bear Kilts, was very happy – nay – extremely happy, that I was able to mention “This kilt is a Maple Leaf tartan, just made by my good friend “Bear” at Bear Kilts, in the short time I had speaking with Peter Mansbridge. This also rated a mention on the web forum X Marks the Spot – a web site about everything KILTS.
And my website! Peter, www.gunghaggisfatchoy.com is getting thousands of hits now, and growing so fast. I have now decided to use my blog to document and record Asian-Canadian and intercultural events in Vancouver, as I can attend. I just reviewed the Vancouver Opera's production of Madama Butterfly, as well as a small community event, Harry Aoki's First Friday Forum. All are important to the intercultural and cultural fusion dynamics of Vancouver. There are many websites that list events, but very few that actually provide reviews. So that is what my goal is, to share how engage in intercultural multicultural Vancouver, by sharing my personal adventures and events.