The Twilight Report

missing you

Tue, 13 Jan 2009 14:47:00 GMT

(...)

Talking

Mon, 30 Oct 2006 03:42:00 GMT

This morning I was talking to e on the phone, and she told me that after seven months down under I “have a slight accent.” This made me happy, although I doubt I would fool any Australians. This and the call directly proceeding it to Joe (to plan Project NYE2006, wherein my friends are coming to visit), was the first time I had talked to anyone in America since I got here. I finally bought myself a calling card, and it costs me like 4¢ a minute, which is less than it used to cost me to make a long distance call in the US. That is shocking.

Australians no longer sound that odd to me. I expect when I go back to the states that Americans will be the ones to sound odd. Not my friends though. e and Joe don’t count because they just sound like e and Joe, not like Americans, since I know them well. It’s only American strangers that I expect to sound funny.

Today I went to the coast and took a walk along the ocean. It was nice, and it sort of reminded me of February 2005, when I came to Australia for a visit and had this strong desire to just stay after spending a few days in Sydney and Collaroy by the beach. Although now I have a bit of a sunburn, which is no good.

2005

Sat, 31 Dec 2005 20:23:00 GMT

2005 was supposed to be the year that Decepticon's attack Autobot City on earth (as chronicled in The Movie. I took this as a sign that it was time to quit my job at The Company and go back to school and study computer graphics and distributed computing and maybe one day get a job at Pixar. I still think even being a "lowly" system administrator at Pixar would be a fun job. Being a software developer for the rendering farm would be awesome.

Appropriately enough, last Thursday, the last Thursday of the year, I went to the MoMA with e and they had a special exhibit on the art of Pixar. Most of what they showed was models and sketches that were made before anything gets done on the computer. Seeing the artists' names and countries of origin clearly labeled by each piece, one is reminded that computer animation is not just a form of entertainment, but also an art form. It's fascinating to me, because I have always been passionately interested in the interaction of expression and technology.

Highlight had to be seeing the early sketches of the Edna "E" Mode character from The Incredibles, who has been my favorite Pixar character since I saw the movie because of her energy and humor. I had one of her quotations engraved on the back of my iPod to remind me that "I never look back; it distracts from the now." In the gallery e told me she was her favorite character, to which I responded, "really? Me too."

Anyway, 2005 is coming to and end, and Unicron never attacked Cybertron and as a result, the Decepticons were not driven off as was for told in The Movie, and I'm not going back to school, just yet, but I am on my way back to Australia. (many more words and things...)