June 25th, 2008 pkuan
There’s a new DJ at the the Venetian Macao’s Bellini Lounge, DJ Kamikaze
Catch DJ Kamikaze at the Bellini Lounge at The Venetian Macao, from 10pm most nights until late.
Read on to find out how he got his name, and why you should check him out behind the turntables, but steer clear if you ever see him behind a scooter.
Stefan Hensel, 28 aka DJ Kamikaze
How did you get your DJ Name?
DJ Kamikaze: In Germany the word for cat is “Katze,” I was 16 and had a scooter and accidentally
hit a cat, which caused a bad accident. So my friends started to call me “Kami-Katze,”
because I was driving like a kamikaze.
How and when did you start DJ-ing?
DJ Kamikaze: I started buying records when I was maybe 14 or even a bit earlier.
One Saturday a few years later when I was around 17, I think, a friend dragged me to replace a DJ who called in sick for the night. The club owner straight away booked me for the whole summer….
What made you leave Germany and where else have you worked?
DJ Kamikaze: I left Germany because of a nice girl, but travel back at least 3-5 times a year.
I have played all over the world, actually. Apart from Germany, of course, and the rest of Europe, I hold a regular DJ residency in Moscow. I also created my own DJ party events called “Just Bananas” in Shanghai and I get booked all over Asia and parts of the United States and Australia as well. Expect for Africa and South-America, I guess I played all over the world.
What’s your first impression of Macau?
DJ Kamikaze: I like it. Compared to Shanghai it’s small but much friendlier and more relaxed. The Food is very good and I love to wake up and have a dive in the pool.
Have you played in a casino before?
DJ Kamikaze: Actually yes, I’m from Germany’s most famous Casino-Town, Baden-Baden and was once invited to play there for a corporate event.
Describe your DJ-ing style?
DJ Kamikaze: I grew up listening to all kinds of music; Rock, Pop, Techno, Grunge, also Reggae and Classical Music. Now I try to mix and blend all the music-knowledge in the HipHop-DJ mxing style and drop in unexpected songs or songs you haven’t heard for a long time. Just playing the hits is too easy.
What are your musical influences?
DJ Kamikaze: My sister, she bought a lot of CD’s when I was younger. But of course nowadays other DJs, my girlfriend, just people around me showing me stuff on their iPod.
What are your proudest musical achievements?
DJ Kamikaze: Hmm, back in I won Germany the JUICE Magazine Mixtape award 3 times in a row
(http://www.juicemagazine.com).
I was also the first one to do a Mash-Up* CD back in 2000 when no one did that kind of style.
For me it’s more the small things. Like when I play at an empty club and after I finish the place is pumping. As I said, it’s more the small things….
* (“Mash-up” defintition from Wikepedia: A mash-up is a song created out of pieces of two or more songs, usually by overlaying the vocal track of one song seamlessly over the music track of another…Mash-ups are incredible fun and a fascinating way to reexperience some of your favorite tunes.)
June 18th, 2008 pkuan
Japanese superstar magacian Cyril Takayama recently visited Macau for the first time to film his 14th 2-hour television special for Japanese network Fuji TV. Cyril, who has a Okinawan father and a French-Moroccan mother also found time to throw a private magic at MGM Macau, where it seems he charmed most of the female audience.
Although he performed some fancy tricks at the Ruins of St. Paul, Leal Senado Square and Á-Ma Temple, he stuck to the basics at the gathering.
He didn’t perform his levitation or hamburger trick but depite only using a few rubber bands, coins and cards, the handsome magician, certainly had the audience eating out of his hands.
We’re sure Cyril has an affinity for Macau, since it was in the original casino town of Vegas where he first caught the magic bug. He was 7 years old when he saw a guest magician leviate a woman and cut himself in half. It’s all in a day’s work for Cyril who is known for making magic cool in Japan, and achieving the type of heart-throb status usually reserved for pop stars in the process.
He’s certainly come a long way from a teenager who couldn’t afford a meal to someone who can turn a cup of coffee into coins and pull a real hamburger out of a menu and take a chomp from it, only to replace it in the menu, minus the bite.
We’re wondering if he had the chance to make it near the casino floor because he sure would have had the surveillance team in a tizzy. For a guy who can swallow a coin, only to slit his arm with a box cutter and pull the coin out of the wound, making certain cards disappear and reappear is child’s play.
We’re not sure whether it was the magic, his good looks, charm or a combination of all 3, but Cyril certainly looks like he made quite an impression on its Managing Director Pansy Ho.
June 17th, 2008 pkuan
Hello! The name’s Mini from sunny Singapore and I’m guest blogging to return Su’s hospitality on a recent trip to Macau. If anyone’s heading up there, look her up for free flow of tequila and tomato juice.
I never thought camouflage was my colour but I must say, the war game fatigues at Fisherman’s Wharf suited me to a tee. Uh huh, the casino tables aren’t the only places in Macau where you can make a killing.
At this facility, imaginatively called er, War Games, you can make like Saddam Hussein (pre-capture) and go to war. In our case, we split into two teams for the epic battle of the roses and the thorns. Three against two - all is fair in love and war, boys.
The set-up resembles the town of Al-habrazar in Iraq. Okay, I made that up, but the low houses have bullet holes in the walls, there are bombs lying around and the piped music is er, some man wailing in Arabic. It’s eerily effective as it makes you think of beheadings and bearded men crying “Allah is great!”
Like real desert stormers, you have to suit up - fatigues, face mask, vest, knee and elbow pads. You also have to watch a training video before you are issued your weapon: A pellet gun that has two modes: shotgun and machine gun.
The nice men who run the facility didn’t behead us. Instead, they gamely acted as marshalls to organise four rounds of games. The first two were called Shoot The Living Daylights Out Of Your Favourite Friends, as that was what we did. The third round was There She Blows, where teams had to defuse bombs in each other’s territories. Actually, all we had to do was to find the bomb without getting shot but no harm in using some imagination. The last round was Flag Runner, where we had to invade and capture the other team’s flag. Disclaimer: I made up the names of the games, but I intend to propose their use to Stanley Ho, who owns Fisherman’s Wharf.
In all, the whole experience is akin to the childhood game of catching. You dodge in and out of cover a lot, taunt your enemies when they can’t get you, and then cry when you get shot. *sniffle*. Be noble and abide by the code of honour. That is, surrender willingly when you get hit. (But make sure you switch to machine gun mode and spray a few rounds of pellets in wild, dramatic fashion first.)
Oh, before I forget to mention, the girls won! So much for having gone through military training guys! Woohoo!
Recommended for: Rage-o-holics who need some form of release, bored (or broke) gamblers and George Bush (both of them).
Till my next trip to Macau, so long!
June 5th, 2008 pkuan
The largest gaming industry event in Asia opened on Wednesday at the Venetian Macao. It was held in an exhibition hall, and no surprises what it looked like…
a casino floor
The 150 exhibitors were hawking all sorts of products, ranging from automatic card shufflers to robotic card dealers and portable gambling sets (kinda like a PSP). But the most shiny and prominent toys had to be the slot machines.
Not that they weren’t exciting. We were oohing and ahhhing over Star Wars and Indiana Jones. The shiny new machines looked more like video games or pinball machines rather than your typical run of the mill pokies machine.
The folks behind the Star Wars version even brought in some Storm Troopers and Darth Vader himself to spice things up. There might not have been hot models like you find in car shows, but it was amusing to see all the folk in suits queuing up to take a photo with Mr Vader himself. For a minute I felt like I was in a theme park, rather than a serious gaming industry event. Guess, it’s all about playing, and adults are just kids at heart.
One other thing that caught my eye was the robotic croupier. Don’t get excited – they aren’t dapper Jude Law droid similar to the version in A.I. Called “Robotic-arc type” and manufactured by Bingo Times, a Taiwanese company, it’s just a white robotic arm with a metallic pincer and suction cap at the end to pick up and show the cards.
So much for personality. These guys deal out hands for Black Jack, Poker, Mahjong and a bunch of other games – simply press a button and switch the mode.
So what is the difference between having a robotic dealer compared to a human one? The vendor looked at me like I had asked him a stupid question that didn’t deserve an answer so I hazarded a guess.
“It works out cheaper in the long run huh?”
To which the vendor responded with a nod – yes.
My next obvious question – so, how much does one of these fellas cost, and where are they being used at the moment?
The answer? Cambodian casinos, and about US$100,000 per pop.
According to CNN, the average wage of a Cambodian is US$350 a year. Which means that a human Cambodian Croupier would have to work about 285 years before making up the cost of a robotic croupier. Although I’d minus off a bit for the cost of long service awards every 50 years or so.
Another booth run by Cantor Gaming showed off mobile gaming options. For hotel guests who simply can’t tear themselves away from the casino floor, they can now have the convenience of playing wherever they are using a handheld device called an eDeck – which is either a tablet PC or PDA. Guests can use the eDeck to log in to their own account to play Baccarat, Roulette and Black Jack anytime and almost anywhere. The device is linked by a wi-fi network to a casino server and the location of the device monitored through the wireless access points on the casino grounds. After you check out, you return the device and settle your bill – just like you would for the mini bar.
They also showed personalized consoles – similar to those seen on massage chairs and airplanes. According to Cantor, these are designed to be used in public areas of the casino – “including the pool deck, bars and convention centers… excluding parking facilities”.
So obviously it’s okay to be gambling in the midst of applying your suntan lotion out by the pool, or sipping a martini at the bar or pretending to take notes at a convention. But you’ve obviously got a problem if you’re itching to place your bet while parking your car.
