Music / Band Interview Questions: DIY (DO IT YOURSELF) FORM
Because we cannot meet with everyone out there and do Interviews I am posting a template online for any local band or musician to fill out. Please take a moment to fill out our form and repost it as a blog also fill in your profile page and post some tunes.
We will then do our best to print as many local music and band interviews monthly!! This is just a start.. you can ad your own questions.. and answers and then post them on the site! Have Fun and spread the word!
1. Type of Music: 2. When Was the Band Founded? 3. Names and Instruments: 4. Occupation: 5. Tallest & Shortest Musician: 6. Where did you guys meet? 7. How long have you been together? 8. Show Calendar: 9. Favorite Musicians / Inspirations: 10. Albums and Songs: 11. Shout out to the community: 12. Dream Come True: 13. Best Show: 14. Worst Show: 15. Most fun you ever had during a show: 16. Favorite Local Place to Play: 17. Other Favorite Local Bands: 18. Anything else you want do with your local fame and fortune: 19. Other Questions we missed.. fire away!!
change the way you look at traditional media. Side effects may be a higher expectation for real content and less BS. You may begin to realize how valuable your attention really is and take better care of who you lend it to!
So I was googling images for Withams Truck stop and this comes up..? LingCars.com
This is an interesting way to sell cars:
Interesting name Ling, where are you from?
I'm Chinese, from Chengdu in the People's Republic. I married Jon Valentine in 1997 in Helsinki. I was in Finland doing a Master's degree (in Finnish!!!), when I met Jon. He's English. He said Valentine is a Scottish-Jewish name, but he's from Yorkshire. He talks rubbish...
These days I am full-time LINGsCARS business owner and I specialise in supplying new UK Contract Hire, PCP, Lease cars and Lease Hire cars and vans.
Do you still visit China?
Yes, my family is mostly in China. My mum and dad still live in Chengdu, Sichuan, and I go back at least once every year. China is coming on, you know. Although the political situation is rotten, it's stable and my family have a good life. My mum's a famous dentist, and my dad used to work for the government in the Environmental Service, but he's retired now. My sister Shan works for the Sichuan Poverty Relief Office, but in the Cultural Revolution, she used to be a red guard! I'm too young to have been involved in all that rubbish. China's quite polluted, and not as green as the UK... plus there are so many people everywhere there. Life is more pleasant here...and I've been naturalised now. I guess that makes me Chinglish. I am a successful immigrant at least. I did it legally, and I have succeeded. That puts a smile on my face.
Where did you learn your contract hire car sales skills?
My husband set up Caledonia Contracts, then established Arena Contracts in London before he went to work for himself. He was very successful, so I learnt the business and took over the reigns. I must say I'm better at it than him. The key to this business is efficiency. This means that I give a very good personal service, I have very few overheads to add to the cost of the cars, plus I have a fully computerised system that I built myself. Computers are my hobby. I live on the internet. I consider myself to be the equivalent of Ryanair, in the Contract Hire business. In January 2006, FLEET NEWS, the car fleet operator's trade newspaper said; "(Ling is...) contract hire's Ryanair". LINGsCARS.com gives better service than larger, posher businesses, but I have lower overheads, offer cheaper prices and do more business; and the end result is that people can rent exactly the same cars for less. I spend a lot of my time finding the best deals in the UK, then cutting out most of the larger companies' costs so that my cars are the UK's cheapest.
Will you expand LINGsCARS.com?
I have plenty of room for expansion. I am certainly not fully utilised with the level of business I am doing at the moment (between 50 and 100 cars per month). My investments in the business go into efficiency savings instead of staff. Many larger companies do what I do, but with many staff shuffling paper backwards and forwards. I strive to do everything right first time, too. That's my trick to running this business at a good profit whilst undercutting everyone else. It's so simple, but it seems many people want to build organisations of dozens of people instead of doing the job themselves. If the right person came along, then I would consider taking them on.
Who are your suppliers?
Oh, I use many large motor supply companies, and I make them compete for my business. You see, they know that they get pre-screened, computer generated information that enables them to do their jobs so quickly and easily that they seem willing to pass more of their savings on to me. It's amazing that many companies in this business still work with illegible, handwritten, incomplete and incorrect information on paper forms and they pass this amongst themselves until they have generated no end of problems. My system is as perfect and as simple as I can make it, and I seem to reap the rewards. My customers get the savings I make passed on to them. I often make my money out of bulk business bonuses that mean that I don't need to make 1p on the cost price of a car. So simple, but so hard for other firms, it seems. Am I giving away my secrets? I'd better stop...
Tell us a bit more about yourself?
I grew up in China, did my middle school and managed (very difficult, my mum pulled strings) to go to uni in Jinan (Guanzhou) and did Organic Chemistry. I was punished in uni because I wouldn't do the morning PE regime. Then I went to Finland because it offered free MSc courses. I arrived in Finland alone with very basic English and stood crying when I arrived at Helsinki airport in January 1997, but survived. I studied wood chemistry (in Finnish!) but flunked it - what a surprise! After marrying Jon and battling with the UK Home Office to come to the UK, I did my Master's in Environmental Quality in the UK at Bournemouth. I learned a lot about data and information processing and efficient use of tools, and I use these skills in LINGsCARS.com, if that doesn't sound too ridiculous. It's quite true.
What does "PMH" in the old "PMH Contracts" stand for?
Oh, this is a bit of a story, but briefly... I helped to set up Porritt Motor Holdings (then CarShock car supermarket chain) with Mike Porritt and my husband Jon. I ran all the contract hire for PMH Ltd (Porritt Motor Holdings). Then I told Porritt I wanted to run my own business (Chinese are good at that you see), and he agreed. So I left, and I established PMH Contracts in 2000, but I kept the name of Mike Porritt's business because it was there, and because I had an emotional attachment to Porritt and his work ethic.. Sadly, CarShock has now ceased trading. I do my best to carry on the tradition of offering the best value cars in the UK. I rebranded to LINGsCARS.com in September 2005 because PMH initials don't mean much to anyone. Hmmm...
Are you the only Chinese in the UK Contract Hire business?
Yes, I think so. I've never met another. Do I get a medal? I'll keep the red flag flying in the motor trade. At least people remember me because of it, but actually I'm quite proud to be Chinese, if not proud of the Chinese government. I tasted tear gas in 1989, although in Chengdu not Beijing. There was much more happening than the Tianamen stuff. One day things will get better, it's actually much better now but still frustratingly "controlled" (anyone been to China will know what I mean), and I hope I'm doing my bit for Anglo-Sino relations. A shame there are no Chinese vehicles to sell in the UK (yet! They are coming soon now Nanjing Automotive has bought MG Rover), but then everyone would moan about having to pedal them along, ha ha.
What's your character like, Ling?
Oh, I'm hotheaded. I get angry easily and then I shout. You don't want to make me mad. Sometimes I have to really hold myself back if someone is rude or loud on the phone. Occasionally a customer can be really offensive, you know how things happen sometimes - maybe they are having a bad day and then I spring some bad news on them like a delay in car build time at the factory or something. I have been known to tell someone never to ring me again, but that's very, very rare. Racism never bothers me, and it's very rare, or maybe I never notice it. I really can't understand people that are so politically correct that they think you don't have a racial identity. I'm quite proud my skin is yellow and my eyes aren't round. Over one billion of us can't be wrong, eh? You should hear how in China we describe English noses, and anyway all the British look the same to me - that is a Chinese joke by the way. I only ever swear in English, not in Chinese. My mum's doing; polite Chinese girls don't swear, you see. - Re Posted from LingCars.com
Part of my plan for 08 is that I would like to see us here on LocalsGuide begin to create one of the best collections of Local Music, Bands, and Artists available for the Rogue Valley on One Website.
My goal is that we take the approach that when people enter LocalsGuide they can find what's hyperlocal and native to our valley.
... obviously the current music available on the site is not local, but it is fun.. so I am working on a blend between both. Really just a sorting issue.
I am probably going to devote a page to this in the Jan issue and welcome your feedback and comments.. even your help.
The bottom line for me is this.
If you came up to me on the street and asked me about Local Music.. where you could learn more about it, certain bands.. I would want to easily say.. just look here! and bingo there would be the best collection of music locally avail.
LocalsGuide..
You need a guide... and were local so let us help you!
Please help spread the word to invite your friends, and have them begin to fill in their profiles.. Anyone wanting tickets, willing to write review.. or having any experience or ideas on how to bring a sustainable long term plan in to play... step forward.
It was a crisp Thursday morning like many we’ve had recently, when I headed out the door to meet with my friend Fayegail Mandell Bisaccia. We had been talking off and on for a few months about getting together to discuss her new book, Dancing in My Mother’s Slippers: A Journey of Grief and Healing. Her book is an account of her grief and healing surrounding the death of her mother. It is a journey of sorrow, mindfulness and well-being. Walking into Case Coffee Co. a few minutes early, I reviewed my short list of questions. My experience with grief is minimal. When it has come up in my life, I’ve usually packed it away as quickly as possible, rather than laying it out on the table for exploration. This day, however, would be different, because I was going to explore this vast frontier with Fayegail. Naturally, I had an internal resistance to this kind of exploration. It’s similar to asking someone to write an article about happiness or sadness. How can anyone really capture and bring back the essence of these experiences? Fayegail would be my guide into the exploration of grief, healing and presence. If it weren’t for my complete confidence in Fayegail, I might never have taken advantage of the opportunity to glimpse the role grief plays in our day-to-day lives. When Fayegail arrived, she greeted me with a warm hug, a bright glow and a beautiful smile (which you can see on this month’s cover). After she got settled, I asked her about the inspiration behind her new book, and what her goals were in creating it. The book describes Fayegail’s journey from the time of her mother’s diagnosis, through the last year of her mother’s life and the five years until her father’s death. The book is about mindfulness, and about staying in the moment. It calls us to notice the familiar and unfamiliar experiences that come with grief, and to accept them without judgment. Fayegail wanted to share a model for a mindful grieving process. She would like for us, as a nation, to think and talk more about the grief we live with on a daily basis. For her, it’s the “little deaths,” the small and not so small losses in life, which prepare us for the “big deaths,” the deaths of people we love. As I reached forward to check that my audio recorder was capturing our conversation, I pondered the idea that all these cumulative losses over a lifetime prepare us for the eventual big deaths. Fayegail was not talking about the distress associated with grief, as I had originally expected. Instead, she told the story of how grief had become a part of her life, and how she had been profoundly changed in the process. Starting to glimpse what Fayegail was talking about, I asked her how she addresses death in her book. “I wanted to write a book about my day-to-day experiences, what it was like for me to go through the process of losing Mom, grieving and healing. I wanted people who are grieving to read the book and identify with what I’d written, and know they are not alone in their experience. I wanted them to know that grieving is a universal experience.” I thought about what Fayegail had said earlier, about wanting us as a culture to think more about grief, and asked her what she feels is not happening in our culture with regard to grief. She said one of our culture’s biggest challenges is our denial of grief. Essentially, people can be walking around in a continuous state of grief and not realize it. Grief comes not only from losing someone to death. It can also come from all the losses we experience over time. Our pet dies, our library closes, our friend betrays us, we don’t get the job we want, our lover leaves us, our house burns down. All of these are occasions for grief. Our days are full of losses. Even when we do experience a death, the structure of our society doesn’t give us time to grieve. We take only a day or two off work. We’re afraid to make the people around us uncomfortable. Often we are told to get over it, or that time will heal. My attention was drawn to the idea of a nation in grief. With all the war and atrocities occurring around the world, how could we miss it? Our denial discourages us from acknowledging our grief. I felt like I was missing something, so I asked her to describe the symptoms that point to a culture in grief. “Extreme fatigue, anxiety, anger, aggression, impatience, poor self-concept, self-pity, sadness, anxiety, self-doubt, inability to focus or to make decisions. Grief is not a negative thing; it’s part of the flow of life. But when grief tries to express itself and we shove it back inside, our resistance throws us off balance. Our resistance can make us suffer.” Fayegail said that if we leave room for grief and allow ourselves to experience it without feeling embarrassed for doing so, it helps us live a more balanced life. If feelings of grief are not aired, we can be harsh, violent, lethargic, depressed, unmotivated, unsympathetic, unsupportive of others. Our health can be affected. Many people self-medicate with alcohol, drugs, overwork, busyness as way of escaping these powerful emotions. When we pay attention to our grief, we live in the moment. “Life is a procession of emotional states—laughter, tears, anger, passion. We need to remember that we do not stay stuck in one state of being. Once in a grief group, someone brought cookies and milk as a way of honoring her mom. We laughed and shared memories, and all the while, the grief was right there. At that moment we were laughing. Moments later, we were crying. If we watch closely, we notice that our sadness flickers in and out, and that other feelings are present in the spaces in between. Knowing this can be a tremendous relief. A lot depends on where we put our attention.” I asked Fayegail what we can do in our daily life to deal with grief. She suggested taking a walk, talking things over with a sympathetic friend, working out, seeking professional help, meditating, practicing mindfulness. Sometimes traditional gender roles cause men and women to grieve differently. A man might dig a garden or fix something or solve a problem. A woman might talk with friends, share fears, focus on the emotional needs of people she loves. We must emphasize that these are stereotypic roles, and may be very different from what any particular man or woman experiences. Everyone grieves differently. There is no “right” way to grieve, just as there is no magic length of time to grieve. It’s more critical that you do it than how you do it. Bringing grief out into the open helps to prepare us to go on with our lives. We will never be the same person again, but grief can take us by the hand and slowly prepare us to re-enter the stream of life. Doing our grief work enables us to relate with our loved ones in a new way, even after death. It can help us discover a new richness in our time of transition. It was at this point in our conversation that I realized that grieving is the process of living through these experiences and letting them go. If we don’t allow the natural process to occur, grief will shake us up until we have to pay attention. Our culture’s intolerance of grief sends us the “GET OVER IT” message. But this isn’t about the culture’s acceptance of our grief; this is about our own opportunity for personal growth and transformation. We need to notice our own expectations—of ourselves and others. When we begin to recognize how we grieve, we begin to experience a fluid state that is our natural response to living in the moment.
To learn more about Fayegail Mandell Bisaccia and her work, or to buy a copy of Dancing in My Mother’s Slippers: A Journey of Grief and Healing, visit her website at GriefandHealing.net. She also writes a blog at TheWeaverbird.blogspot.com. Visit with Fayegail at the Book & Author Fair, November 17, 10 am to 4 pm, at the Rogue River Room in the Stevenson Union on the SOU campus.
We are working on an update for our new site which should launch within the next month.Here is a list of a few features that will be coming, but what we really want to know is what you all want to make the site better.
The Mummies of Guanajuato are a number of naturally mummified bodies interred during a cholera outbreak around Guanajuato, Mexico in 1833. The bodies were mummified due to the air and weather in the area.
Due to the ferocity of the epidemic, more cemeteries had to be opened in San Cayetano as well as Cañada de Marfil. Many of the bodies were buried immediately to control the spread of the disease; in some cases, the dying were buried alive by accident. As a result, some of the mummies have horrific expressions attesting to their death in the tombs, though most expressions became fixed postmortem.
The first mummy was put on display in 1965. It was the body of Dr. Remigio Leroy, currently on display at the Guanajuato Mummy Museum. This museum, containing at least 108 corpses, is located above the spot where the mummies were first discovered. Numerous mummies can be seen throughout the exhibition, of varying sizes. This museum is known to have the smallest mummy in the world, a fetus from a pregnant woman who fell victim to the disease, also mummified. Some of the mummies can be seen wearing parts of their clothing from when they were buried. The bodies were removed from the crypt when their family members stopped paying upkeep. However, the law was changed, and bodies are no longer removed from their resting-places for this reason.
Often time when eating out I find that the customer service is actually what makes or breaks an experience for me. Lets create a list of some things we can offer as recommendations in our "Customer Service Manifesto" for our 2007 Restaurant Guide.
Here is a start with something I think:
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Incorrect Food Orders (Fault of the Waiter or Waitress)
When this happens it should be expected that your meal is given a top priority to be fixed and replaced as soon as possible. (Recently we had an incorrect order of not receiving a side salad with a slice of pita.. it took nearly 20 mins to replace. I could have walked down to the kitchen and made it myself. What is this type of service telling you as a customer.. Tuff Sh*T...
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Writing Down Orders - (Forgetting Orders)
I have one thought here, which is request your order be written down if you have any doubt that might not receive what you want. (More thoughts would be appreciated)
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Overly Attentive Staff - (your job is to make sure the customer is being helped and comfy.. not to be continually in their space and interrupting their meal)
To much attention can kill a deal.. for example... on Refilling water.. just do it 3 times max.. then bring out a carafe of water to set on the table.
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HOW IS YOUR DINNER?
This question personally drives me nuts.. because it opens the door to a lot of answers..
well, not as good as last time, or simply anything..
Are you prepared to fix something if you ask this question.. How about a question like is there anything else I can get for you?
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