Date: 04/27/2002
Time: 6pm
Location: Shinkuchan Live House
Do you know what it feels like to be on stage, when hundreds of people in the audience are watching your every single move?
Do you enjoy to be the center of attention, to perform at your best, to amaze the crowd with virtuosity?
Rob did. This was his journey into rock music…
Back when Rob was near the end of his junior high school, age 15, he and a group of childhood good friends since elementary school were in a math class together. It was no ordinary math class. You had to pay to enroll. Well, you just have to pay to be in the class. It was one of the thousands of “cram schools” prevalent in East Asian societies, a remnant phenomenon of Japanese education philosophy which prioritized test taking above anything else. Like many other cram schools, it served as more of a social gathering place for students than where serious learning actually occurred. During breaks, Rob and his friends would walk to a nearby 7–11, chatting and joking along the way. It was a stress reliever in a monotonous life in which there were few extracurricular activities. As they entered the 7–11 the guys frequented, James noticed:
“Hey Rob, look at this music magazine!”
The part that caught Rob’s eye was this male baby floating in what seemed like swimming pool water, with a dollar bill dangling in front of him. This was funny, shocking, and thought provoking in a way. Rob had had a penchant for comics. He used to draw his own comic series during elementary school with characters based on his classmates with a sci-fi twist, and he solicited extra school lunch chicken nuggets that way because some of the boys cared about their image that much. They would bribe him to get a better portrait.
Nevermind by Nirvana would turn out to be Rob’s gateway into Rock and Metal music. Technically, Nirvana’s music was grunge, a protest to the glam/hair metal genre that ran its course during the early 90’s. Rob didn’t learn about all different genres in rock and metal until much later. In fact, there was this whole world of Metal he hadn’t even heard of as an adolescent at first.
The anger, the beating, the constant 190–200 bpm riffing of Thrash Metal.
The fluid, bright, neo-classical influence of Speed/Power Metal.
The growl, dark, sinister themes of Melodic Death Metal.
Finally, the dazzling technical virtuosity of the guitar Gods, ranging from Jimi Hendrix, Randy Rhoads, Joe Satriani, Steve Vai, Eddie Van Halen, Yngwie Malmsteen, Paul Gilbert, John Petrucci, and his Brazilian guitar hero with whom Rob shook hands at a clinic in Taipei in 2009, Kiko Loureiro.
The world of Rock and Metal music opened Rob’s eyes and infused him with raw emotions which energized the young man’s otherwise dreary life.
On a fateful day in 2000, Rob picked up his first electric bass. It was by an ignorant mistake…
Ivan and Rob were not really close. At least for the first twenty years of Rob’s life, Ivan had been somewhat inaccessible. The circumstances were not ideal, of course, for a father and a son to spend so little time together as they had during Rob’s childhood. It wasn’t Ivan’s fault. As a young man entering the workforce, Ivan chose to return to his hometown Kaohsiung to be close to his parents, one of whom was diabetic and the other a housewife. Ivan was the eldest of four siblings: him, his sister, and two younger brothers. Growing up in poverty taught him many things. It molded Ivan to be resilient, responsible, unwavering, and relentless. It also taught him to be cautious, observant, and some might say, a little bit cunning.
The following story showed the audacity of Ivan during his career in the Taiwanese public sector. There is a saying in Chinese called “delivering a false imperial edict,” meaning someone delivers a false order on behalf of the emperor, often in his/her own interest. It is a way to benefit oneself pretending to have authority from the higher-up or management level. It is at best unethical and at worst unlawful. However, if nobody catches you, the white lies certainly serve a purpose as proactive initiatives.
Would you do such things? Some people never will and are never smart enough to. Or they despise it out of moral righteousness.
Not Ivan. He was the kind of man who would fight to protect his family and friends. He would challenge the injustices as he saw fit and exert himself for the greater good. Telling white lies was a means to an end as long as he had the confidence and planning that the “embellished/distorted truths” were foolproof.
The year was 1983, a simpler time when the economy was booming to the point people said “world currencies flooded Taiwan.” Ivan had worked at Kaohsiung City government for seven years then, searching for the next leap in his professional endeavor. He thought education would be just that logical step to advance. By obtaining a Master’s degree in Architecture, he would increase compensation and with his architect license he could open his own firm. Money, power, and autonomy were among the top of his lifetime goals.
Ivan and his two colleagues who were his college classmates met with Kaohsiung City Mayor before departing for graduate school. Ivan created three Leave Without Pay that kept not only his but also those two colleagues’ job tenures so their pensions would still accrue when they came back after their Master’s degrees. The mayor of Kaohsiung City never said they could have Leave Without Pay explicitly but Ivan delivered a false imperial edict to a sub-division chief who ranked higher than him, resulting in savings in pension more than NTD$810k for each person over the course of their career in the public sector. That was 1983 dollar, equivalent to over NTD two million adjusted for inflation in 2020!
Ivan was proud of it and yet for 37 years he didn’t brag to his friends about what he had done for them. He kept his mouth shut even though those two classmates of his would have certainly appreciated Ivan’s good deeds.
This trait of not seeking credit and affirmation passed onto Rob in some sneaky ways. Although Rob had been too passive most of his lifetime, he exuded glimpses of audacity like Ivan did in rare occasions. The Bao family was legendarily stoic for thousands of years, despite the occasional rebels who incited revolutions against the status quo. Those rebels were cursed.
The curse manifested itself for a few Bao men. The curse of eclipsed suns and killer mages. Bao Zheng made a deal with the Devil in exchange for vanity, stardom, intelligence and wealth for generations during the Song Dynasty.
Not even love could save those cursed men from their fate. The Bao men juggled destiny versus serendipity, treating women as fickle and disposable. Was it true love or mere lust?
All Rob knew was he feverishly loved to play the game. The game of pursuit and conquer, of women’s hearts and bodies. Was he cursed or destined to be manipulative?
(To be continued… Click here for the next episode.)
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