Monthly Archive for April, 2008

Day 11: Settling in

Published on Saturday, April 26, 2008

Home is where the ‘puter is, and it’s in Shanghai.

The air­port by my place seems to have dif­fer­ent lev­els of traf­fic every­day. The nois­i­est days were still the first two days I ar­rived. Since then there’s gen­er­ally been only a few not­i­ca­ble fly­bys per day, and not all of them were loud.

With the noise mostly gone, there are just two other ma­jor an­noy­ances. First, the shower area is tiny. Second, I have to use three dif­fer­ent keys to get into my apart­ment. I’ve pretty much got­ten used to those though.

There’s a Tesco su­per­mar­ket just a few min­utes walk­ing dis­tance from where I live. The place is huge and they sell every­thing. I’ve been go­ing there nearly every­day for stuff like in­stant noo­dles and power strips. The place is ridicu­lously packed on weekends.

Still no in­ter­net. Hopefully will be in­stalled next week.

Day 3: I’ve moved to Shanghai

Published on Friday, April 18, 2008

Well I’m in Shanghai now.

I was wrong, the place I live isn’t that iso­lated. There is a metro stop nearby, though that line doesn’t con­nect to the rest of the metro sys­tem (yet). And ap­par­ently there’s an air­port very close by be­cause every few min­utes a jet­liner flies by over­head. My apartment’s right next to a su­per­mar­ket and other stuff, so there’s al­ways a bunch of peo­ple around. It sort of re­minds me of Mos Eisley from Star Wars, with all the planes and weird people.

Anyway, I’ll write more af­ter I’ve taken some pics, and when I get in­ter­net at my place. Could be a while.

Day 0: Goodbye everyone, everything

Published on Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Seven hours un­til my flight.

My place in Shanghai will be way out in Minhang District, at some­place not even on maps of Shanghai. It’s part of Shanghai, but no­body knows it, and I bet no­body wants to live there. (Kind of like what Stockton is to the Bay Area.) The Shanghai Metro goes every­where in Shanghai, but not my area. I’ll be way out in the cor­ner, away from every­thing. Remember those pic­tures of Shanghai with the gi­ant sky­scrap­ers and su­per malls? Yeah. Not my area. Oh, and I just found out my place won’t have internet.

Seven hours for me to change my mind.

Moving in one week

Published on Monday, April 7, 2008

One week to go! I started pack­ing to­day. Gonna have two large checked bag­gages and two carry-​​ons.

I’m bring­ing some of my stu­dio equip­ment with me to Shanghai. If my com­pany ends up get­ting me a 2-​​bedroom apart­ment (be­cause 1 BR apart­ments were all out last time they checked), I’d like to use one of the rooms as a ghetto stu­dio. If I get a 1-​​bedroom then, I dunno, maybe I’ll sleep on the sofa. Or maybe I won’t have a stu­dio room. Or maybe I’ll have the stu­dio stuff in my bed­room around my bed. Seems a lit­tle creepy that way though.

Actually I don’t even know if I’ll have a bed, or any fur­ni­ture. I didn’t ask, and I never looked in­side the build­ings. (The out­side looked re­ally nice though.) I just as­sumed the place would be fully fur­nished. All I asked was will I have in­ter­net, but my con­tact at the com­pany doesn’t know yet. There bet­ter be internet.

The TSA is gonna go through my checked bags again. They al­ways do. (They leave a note.)

Blue Dawn Studios staff

Published on Thursday, April 3, 2008

I took some pho­tos of the Blue Dawn Studios staff last week­end. They do video and photo cov­er­age of events, and have funny names like Andrew Ho and Wilfred Poon. Jeffrey Kou’s name is bor­ing. They’re based in San Francisco.

Go see the rest and larger ver­sions here on Flickr.