Carnival Blog

When I was told back in September I would be going to Carnival I couldn’t believe it, carnival is suppose to be the number one festival and this year I would be a part of it…wow. As time went by I didn’t think too much about it until we went to Brazil, for the first time I experienced their traditional music called Samba in Sao Paulo, and it was love at first sound. Samba is a type of music, played in Portuguese, by 5-20 people performing in a band and they all play together while the whole crowd sing along. When I saw this for the first time I was amazed, however it made me think that if Samba had such a deep influence on its people, then what did Axe music (Axe music is the type of music played in Salvador) have for the 1.3 million people celebrating carnival together in Bahia?

On the first day of carnival we were greeted by the Smirnoff team, who looked after us during our stay in Salvador. Now, as you may or may not know carnival is said not to be the safest place in the world, however, I beg to differ, because at no place or time did I feel uncomfortable. Then again I did have a team of bodyguards and well-experienced people to accompany me from start to finish. We were briefed on what our five-day forecast would be like and every now and then people would just start clapping, smiling, high-fiving each other, and making sounds of extreme joy. Not only were we to be at carnival but we also had the best team in the world looking after us - Smirnoff. Smirnoff was one of the major carnival sponsors, and everywhere I looked people where enjoying its purity with a mix of tropical fruits.

One of the things I loved about carnival was the T-shirts we were given, every day was another colour with a different design. Luckily for us, Smirnoff had a room with five local designers to customize our t-shirts for us. So if your T was a bit too big, or you wanted it to have a little more action to it all you needed to do was go to the 6th floor and you had a room of people ready to make your ideas into a reality. There are shirts for every Camarote and every Trio. A Camarote is a club, which over looks the carnival on both sides of the street, and a Trio is a band playing music on top of a massive truck with people dancing inside a rope barrier following the truck. So you have to picture thousands of people wearing different colours in trios or in a Camarote all dancing to the same song. You also have all the other people celebrating carnival in the streets around the entire city. While I was experiencing this I had this sense of overwhelming joy that I have never experienced in my 24 years of existence. Unfortunately I really believe that nothing I will ever experience in my life after this festival will add up to its expectations the same way carnival did. And if anyone were to ask me what was the best of the best parties I have experienced while travelling the world? I would undoubtedly have to say ‘carnival 2008.’

Carnival is a massive festival on a global scale, but what makes is that much better is that it goes on for five days. You know that feeling when something is over and you wish it were just the beginning? Well carnival left me with that feeling, but at least I felt like I really got to experience it because it seemed to go on forever. Every night was a different party with different people singing until the very ends of the night. I don’t think my experience or words can justify the feeling of being at carnival it’s just one of those things you have to be there to experience.

One night, Smirnoff gave Kung (Thai Ben) the opportunity to play his famous drum and base set at a Camarote called Espresso 2222 for an hour. Now it might not seem to be a long time but playing at one of the best Camarote’s in all of Bahia during the biggest festival known to man is a big deal! He played his heart out, and the crowd loved him so much that they talking about his performance for the next couple of days. For them it was a really good performance but for me it was something more than just that. This was a good friend of mine from the Smirnoff 10 playing in front of a massive crowd of people from all over the world… and I have to say I was proud of him. ‘That’s my boy’ I said…’that’s my boy’.

A couple weeks prior to carnival I started doing a little research of my own and tried to find some famous axe players to listen to before carnival, so that way I could sing along with the people. When I was back in Sao Paulo I was so jealous watching everyone in the clubs singing with the samba players so I promised myself that I would at least try to memorize something for carnival. So I login on to my youtube account and started looking, unknowingly I came across the famous axe band Chiclete com banana and immediately I fell in love. Now you try memorizing a song in Portuguese because I did and its not that easy, but if you play the song enough and learn what it means in your language then it starts to all sink in.

When the Smirnoff team told us we where going to be in the best trio carnival had to offer I was curious to find out who it was. But when they said it would be Chiclete com banana I was in complete shock. The band I had been listening to for the past month trying to memorize their songs was going to be playing with me for four hours while I danced my way across the carnival avenue. This is the part where I look in my Canadian thesaurus for words to describe inexplicable joy. Joy: thrill, joyfulness, elation, bliss, enjoyment, pleasure, happiness and delight. 1.feelings of great happiness or pleasure, especially of an elevated or spiritual kind. 2. A pleasurable aspect of something, or something that is seen as a source of happiness. I hope that helps you better understand how I felt during my time in the trio…because it was complete happiness. It is one thing to watch the trio and it is another thing to be inside of one. Four hours of walking and dancing down the carnival avenue watching everyone inside and out side the ropes dancing is an amazing experience. There I was in the best of festivals looking up to the sky dancing as hard as my body would let me with a feeling that left me completely satisfied, nevertheless wanting it to last forever.

We had a lot of media converge during the carnival. A photographer was with us every night, a journalist followed us everywhere we went and for some of us MTV South Africa filmed our adventures with their team not forgetting internationally known rapper HHP. One night at Camarote Do Nana the local media along side Smirnoff Ice asked us to sing a song for them on television, so I tried my best to memorize the song and I think I did a pretty good job. But when Takashi had to sing he repeated the word beleza over and over which was quite funny. Kung on the other hand made a song of his own called…” beleza…obrigado… denada…”. Everyone and I mean everyone started to crack up in laughter including myself, so Kung I give this one to you. Well done.


Alongside carnival we had daily activities. One day we went to a place about 2 hours outside of Salvador called Pojeto Tamar that is an organization dedicated to preserving the population of sea turtles. It was really nice to see a city built around this preservation that really cared about the future of sea turtles. It is now a major tourist attraction for the general public. Another day we went to my favourite restaurant called Boi Preto Grill with almost everyone from our hotel where we talked about our lives and our experience in the carnival.

All in all carnival was so much more than just a festival, it was the people at Smirnoff looking after us like we were their own, it was the South African team who where extremely entertaining, Harry from Ghana whose most famous slogan was “ more fire” if you’re reading this Harry you are the man, and you made that carnival that much more enjoyable, the Smirnoff Ten who I know everyone loved, the street people, the camarote, the trio, the daily, activities the media and most importantly all that music we heard over and over and over… Gosh now that I think about it, it was quite the experience… Carnival you have captivated my heart and left me with a feeling that I hope this blog can describe. Special thanks goes out to everyone who made this possible.

Smirnoff Experience Shanghai

So as you all may know Smirnoff is having four major global events in four major cities all around the world tracing the brands history. This was the second major global event and was held in Shanghai with a line up of high profile acts: Hard-Fi, Tom Middleton, and the DJ, Sasha. These were three major performers all doing something a little different trying to be as original as possible to entertain the massive crowd that showed up. Hard-Fi played side by side with the Shanxi drummers and they showed the world that anything was possible. Here you had an indie band from England playing side by side with a Chinese drum orchestra, thanks Smirnoff for bringing the world that much closer together.

The venue had a drink line up that should have made it to the book of world records. They had a combination of ingredients you could combine to make a total of over 1300 different drinks. That’s a lot of combinations… personally I was having an alcohol free day so I made myself a virgin honey, watermelon mango drink and it was absolutely delightful. It always seems to amaze me when I see a wall lined up with bottled water that comes together to be one massive Smirnoff logo. Whenever I usually go out clubbing and I have a couple of drinks I didn’t use to think about getting myself some water every now and then, however after being a part of Smirnoff for as long as I have I have come to the realization that we all need to drink in intervals and make sure we are getting our share of H20.

Ben and I took the role of being directors for our Smirnoff Experience music video so I spent most of the night interviewing people about how they felt during the night. I got to interview Cia from South Africa, a VJ from Changdu and a lot of really happy people in the crowd. One thing that really made it all that much better was while I was interviewing someone my creative director hit the switch and snow started to fall from the sky, it was truly a magical experience.

While I was taking a break from work I had the opportunity to see Hard-Fi play up close and personal – I’ll be honest with you… I never really liked indie music, hell I didn’t even know what it was until Stephanie Prentice and her lovely mp3 player showed me the way. Seeing Hard-Fi for the first time play live was all too nice for me, I have never been to concert before this Smirnoff trip so every chance I get to see a live performance I take it all in. Plus I enjoy dancing to indie music now… lol. The DJ, Sasha was off the hook! And if anyone sees the footage from the cameras all you can see is me in the front row with Takashi jumping up and down loving the music, letting it consume our bodies, and just dancing our hearts out. All in all the Smirnoff Experience was one original happening event I can’t forget, I’m so looking forward to the next one in Paris.

After the event, Smirnoff held an afterparty at a really, and I mean really, nice venue in Shanghai called The Wall. I know I wrote about a club called Muze II before but this club outdid them all, it had everything I wanted and more - the people, music, and overall look. I didn’t get to stay there for that long because I had a long day of filming, dancing, and running around everywhere but I made sure I danced myself until I couldn’t dance no more….

Shanghai with MTV

For the past three days we have been working with the MTV team from Japan to create something new for the Smirnoff team. We were split into two teams and were asked to make videos that showed us having the maximum amount of fun while being in Shanghai. My team consisted of myself, Thai Ben, Akona, John and Audette. Five vs. five. It’s not the first time the Smirnoff Ten have been split, however it is the first time we have been asked to compete against each other in a competition that was being televised for MTV Japan.

As we were asked to say our final goodbyes the remaining five felt this sense of closeness towards each other, knowing we needed to do everything and anything we could to outdo the other team. I think the team did really well, we brainstormed and came up with a lot of really good ideas and put them all on paper. We called ourself “Made in China”.

We came up with many good ideas and we decided to go with a dance off. It was to be a short under 10 min production with various characters like ninjas and pandas, all fighting each other to become grand champion. After realizing they simply couldn’t outdo each other, they combined forces to take out the grand master played by Thai Ben. It was a really good idea and it worked really well.

What amazed me the most is how efficiently a group can work under pressure. We had three days to complete this film and we needed to shoot all our shots, act, digitize, improvise, add music, edit and re-edit. Five people working together for a common goal proved to me that we could do anything we put our minds to, and most importantly provide good content.

All in all the film was a huge success, however we still didn’t take home the gold, as good as our video seemed to us the voters simply liked the other video more. They showed more of the city where as we acted in a movie with the city in the background…ahh well c’est la vie!

Shi Bow and thoughts…

I guess yesterday day was on of those days where you ask your elf is this is really happening? There I was in the cold snow, it couldn’t have been more then 5 degrees. I found myself in this little town where I was literally the only foreigner I had seen in the last 6 hours. Shi bow is the name of this hidden market town which translates as ‘Seven Treasures’. It’s not your typical tourist place like the Yuyuan Garden. If anything it was the opposite - instead of attracting all the tourists of Shanghai, Shi Bow is a market for the locals. As I walked down the main market street I could see endless colours; most of them red, decorations, and loads and I mean loads, of typical Chinese food. The locals greeted me with ‘Ne-How’ which means hello, and smiles that made me smile more then I could have thought. Even though we couldn’t communicate, that head nod or handshake, gesture or smile made it seem comfortable. I don’t know about you but when I visit a country or city the first thing I want to do is visit the main attractions or as I like to call them the mountains and the stars of our cities… you see a couple of hundred years ago they use to use astrology and geography to tell themselves what direction to go in to get to their destinations. Mountains were the cities landmarks and meeting points, but now buildings, sport arenas, bridges, monuments etc… are what differentiates one city to the next. A perfect example was when we went to Australia, the very first thing I wanted to do was run to the Opera House or see the Harbour Bridge, and when I go to India I hope to see the Taj Mahal, you get the point... This city was no different. I got to see the TV Tower, the finance centre, central Hyatt and the Wai Bai Du bridge, take a couple of pictures of them, learn the history and story behind them and I was good to go. Going back to my main point, these places that define cities is where the media is most focused on, however if you truly want to see a city you need to go out and do some explorations for yourself. If it wasn’t for a job I had with the Shanghai Media Network for a local show called A Tail Of Three Cities I would have never had the chance to see what I did, and Getting to see the town of Shi Bow really gave me the feeling that I was in a completely different place and time. This job showed me a different side of Shanghai I am glad I got to see.

Monica, Justin and I

While I was in China I had the opportunity to see a good friend of mine called Monica. Now it wasn’t on the happiest occasion but we made the most of it. She was going with her boyfriend to Singapore and they decided to take a cab ride around Shanghai while they where waiting for there connecting flight. However fate had its own plans and Monica forgot her purse in the cab which yes… had her passport inside it. Argh! Imagine that you stop off to see a city thinking ‘let’s maximise our time’ and you forget your passport. On a brighter note this meant that I got to spend 4 days with a friend I hadn’t seen in a while. We went to the market where I have to tell you I was…what’s the word I am looking for…you know when your arghh…how can I say this without it sounding bad? Okay, I was amazed but with a kind of shock. Five floors with about thirty by thirty aisles and I would say thousands of stores on each floor! It took us about an hour to just go down one aisle it was just impossible to see the whole thing. The market was amazing.

Monica’s brother Justin ended up coming to see her for the last week that she was there. As an older brother he didn’t want to leave his baby sister all by herself in a country at the other end of the world. I admire that; it made me think about my sisters and how far I would go for them. Having Monica in China with me was so good, I can’t stress on how good it felt. Seeing a friend after three months of not seeing anyone I knew helped me reflect on this beautiful project I am a part of. I guess when you tell someone else what you’re doing that’s when you really get to understand your feelings towards your work.

We all went out to a club one night called Muze II. Finally, not a hole in the wall, don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind clubs that are simply good for its music but I need to party in a club that was designed to be a club. That’s more of a personal preference and that’s why I loved Muze II so much, this club was HOT. The people were really dressed well, the club was amazing to be in and looked like someone designed it from top to bottom, the people were friendly and I could see a lot of foreigners mingling with the locals. One of the things that I liked the most was the music!!! Finally some hip hop and r &b, I have been hearing the same music for the last two countries so to hear a live performance sung to the room by an American gentlemen and Chinese women was completely appealing to me.

Besides the nightlife and everything else, I got to see the Yuyuan Garden, which is something I highly recommend if you’re in China and the Jade Buddhist temple.