sketches - March

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Thursday saw a brief clearing of my mind that was enough to give specific directions to the artists on the "level that is way behind". By Fridays review, we had managed to pull our asses out of the fire enough so we didn't look like total chumps, again - the AD was happy, so we are happy. We still missed the mile stone with Saturdays final review of the week, but I think we'll be able to meet it with only a few days of work, and not a few weeks like the last time. Even the artist are happier for that. A comment of "That was a miracle" was made by one of the project managers described the situation perfectly, and now my mind is, again, enveloped in deep fog that will require sleep to clear for Monday's continued direction. Hopefully we'll nail it by Tuesday so we can continue forward. To give some perspective, several people actually did not go home for two days before Fridays art review.

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It's 1:20am and I've been here at work since 8:30am of the 20th. The first day back in the office, the 19th, was a tough one. My mind was totally i a fog and I could not think clearly if my life depended on it. I sure didn't want to be here, but with another mile stone three days away, I was not happy, and was quite annoyed at the artist for this one particular level. Let's just say that this level was, and is still my bane, and a total pain in the ass. Now it's 2:17am and I am totally out of here, but need to be back at 8am for an art review with the Home Office.

Be seeing you

030608
Well, this is it. The last day, yet again, before I leave for the far outer regions of where I call Home. The brain is still a little slow and on idle, so we'll see how I fair on Wednesday when I go back to work. Two and a half months left, woohoo! Also, I went sketching again with a friend at the local Borders. Now back to cleaning the house.


031008
I flew back last Saturday so I can be back in time for a co-worker's wedding yesterday. It was a good excuse to come back and enjoy the clear blue Sky's over California, and the comforts of home that I always miss. Also, the road trip that I hope will unwind my head so it does not bust with anger and frustrations of work. The next two months are the final gauntlet months for this project, and will test my patience and endurance before a final crunch back here at the Home Office.

030308
It's been a really busy two weeks since we miss a very important mile stone, and sadly, one team still didn't hit it tonight. This is quite a blow and doest not give the Home Office a very warm and fuzzy feeling inside - they pretty much yanked the last level from this place and that's going to be very bad for the senior management team here. I felt pretty bad for the lead of that art team, because he tried really hard to get all the issues done by tonight, but with lack of experience, there's nothing I can do. Even with the associate AD here to help with the overall look, it's been slow going. At least the AAD implemented some processes that will help in the long run. Although I was happy that the last levels were pulled from the schedule, here, something I requested months ago, but never taken seriously, so I can't say that it's all Shanghai's fault, it was every body's fault. This is the new frontier of game development for this corporation, and there's no going back, so we have to make this work for all future projects.

Still haven't had a chance to do any sketches, but maybe that will change with the shifting of my production work to the art team, so I can concentrate on their progress for the next three months. I can't believe that it's almost over. I have to admit that it will be sad to leave the artist that I have worked with for the last five months, but i do miss home and can't wait to sleep in my own bed this Saturday. Then I get to play dress-up for a co-worker's wedding and then a nice road trip with some other friends later in the week.

And finally, as no. 6 would say,
Be seeing you

sketches - February

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Had a restful nights sleep the other night and had a really great dream, but like all dreams, the details are slipping through the fingers of my mind. All that's left are small flashes of interesting events and the overall feeling, oh well.

We had an art review yesterday over the internet through this program call WebEx, which is really helping out on the communication side of this whole "outsourcing" move in the games industry. The reviewer is now in Beijing and will be here next week. WebEx allows the connection of many computers through a broadband connection where one can share ones desktop for all participants to see, and also have direct "annotation" abilities for people to make marks on documents or pictures without being in one location - very cool! Where was this six months ago? Maybe I would not need to be away from home? Probably not! I miss painting and working on boxes and driving at night to relax my mind during stressful times. I'm such a whiner

This weekend is supposed to be the end of the Chinese New Years celebrations from what people are telling me, there should be a lot of fireworks and celebratory activities going on. The coworker in Beijing was awestruck by the amount of fireworks going on last night as that city seems to be celebrations early. His comments over the phone were about how loud the fire crackers were and how long it's been going on, and how he was a little scared because it sounded like a war zone outside his hotel

As always, I can only update the blog and not able to see it - this is reduclous!

021708
Friday was a major milestone that this studio had to hit, but didn't. Now everyone is scrambling to meet it by Monday, meaning my ass is sitting here in the office with everyone else to answer questions, trouble shoot build errors, give art direction, etc, etc, etc. I think I will need to hit a local bar and get pissed, but not too pissed for tomorrow is a work day. As for my own work, obviously, I'm not too into it for the moment, otherwise I would not be blogging in the middle of a "work" day:p

The weather here for the past two days has been very nice. I was able to walk to work today without zipping up my jacket - I'm guessing the humidity must be pretty high, but it's also pretty cold for there are still small piles of ice left over from the snow storm a few weeks ago. Today is also the day that a friend fly back to SF after cutting his trip short. This was due to an unexpected break-up of his relationship here, and there was no point in staying any longer. I feel kind of bad for him because he thought this might be the one.

021508
The flight back to the country that's not my own was actually not too bad. With the plane only three quarters full, I had the middle seat empty next to me - thank goodness, I actually had elbow room! The ride back into the city from the airport was also quite interesting. Every so often, amateur wireworks could be seen at the sides of the freeway, and the roads were noticeably clearer of the usual traffic congestion at the city limits. Within the city, one could hear bangs and rattles from people setting off fireworks for the New Year. Unlike the US where the New Years festivities only last for one day, here it's a whole week! Every day, on my way to work, I can hear and see people setting off fireworks on the streets of Shanghai. I am totally amused and amazed to see long bandoliers of fire crackers, a hundred or so feet long, exploding six feet into the air and sounding like a machine gun as the sounds echo through the streets. It must have been crazy on that first day of celebrations with the streets covered in a blanket of red firecracker confetti!

As for work, well, it's work. I'm getting extra crispy. Enough said.

020808
Tomorrow I leave for another tour of duty at the office across the sea, so I've only been back a week, and let me tell you, it was a good week - I miss home! I am finally able to, actually, get some quality sleep, and a whole weeks worth at that. I guess I just don't feel comfortable sleeping far away from home. Then again, on the down side, I was not able to make the progress on the area of the game that I wanted to finish up this week. Oh, well, I guess it is going to be a lot of overtime to get it all done by end of this month. So, until next time - be seeing you.

020308
It's good to be back home again after another month on foreign soil. It appears that I have missed a huge storm that caused all kinds of power and water supply problems in the region, hopefully it'll be straightened out when I fly back next week. In the meantime, I have been throughly enjoying sleeping in my own, comfy bed - it has been a while since I really had a good nights sleep. Also, it ws great to get together with the goobers for a night of BBQ and RPG fun.

sketches - January

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Looked out my window this morning to see what appears to be rain. What was unusual was the fact that the parked cars below had a light covering of snow. when I left for the ten minute walk to work, I find that the rain is actually light hale and my walk to work was through slushy ice. By lunch time the hale had turned to heavy snow for about fifteen minutes, now all the roof tops of the city looks like a winter wonderland. Crazy.

012708
The weather here is quite cold of late, it snowed all day yesterday! From what people are telling me, it hasn't snowed like this for over six years. Yesterday was also the only day that I had to get some shopping done before I leave for the bay area next Friday. Got two stone pots, one for K-bong and significant other, and one for the goober for his b-day. Picked up a bronze Buddha head for myself as well as an old clay tea pot. There were more I wanted to pick up from this one table of dealers, but the owner was not there. I'll have to check again some other time. I want to take a ceramics class and make my own, one of these days, when this project is over. Back in the office today, since people are working over the weekend because they're taking vacation, starting next week, to go back to their families to celebrate Chinese New Year. I think the office will start to get empty by the end of next week.

011408
Well, I just can't keep this daily sketching going anymore, not because I don't want to, because I just don't have the time any more. Being on this, supposedly, "four month" tour of duty for the company, has turned out to be quite taxing on my personal life - I'm in a perpetual crunch mode for the next six months, and my tour has been extended to the end of the content creation here across the Pacific. I am also not a happy camper for the moment because I'm just recovering from a case of food poisoning. I think it was the cold vegetable dish that did it while doing some training up in Beijing for an outsourcing partner - no more uncooked food! I am burnt, and I want to go home, dam it!


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And another year ends, how sad to see it go. I hope this year will be a better one for everyone, who knows? Seems like some of us have had a hard ending and are still uncertain as to what's going to come next. Big congrats to some with new buns in the oven. This has been a great week of rest and relaxation for me, but it is way too short. For most, tomorrow is the first day of work, no big deal, except I won't be driving, but getting on a plane to my cube across the sea, fun, fun.

a sketch a day - December

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Last week was just pure crazy as Murphy turned his ugly head and stamped my forehead with his name. One thing that has always been a pain working in Shanghai, is the fear that the Home Office checks in a broken build, because that means there's a good chance that we could be shut down for a day, and there's no one around who can fix it. There's no way to verify any new work, and so people are forced to slow down within an all ready tight schedule. Not fun. If last Thursday was any indication of things to come, we're going to be in a worlds of hurt. Here's a brief description of the things that went wrong;

Wednesday morning:
Went into the office and started syncing all the new data for our build from the Home Office. A few minutes later, one of the artist raised his hands and indicated that his, proprietary Maya tool for our complex pipeline, is not working. Oh, what could that be, pray tell, let me take a look? Anyway, to make a long story short, I tried a lot of things and finally tracked down the reason - broken code from that morning's check-in by the Home Office. As artists started to come in, more of them had broken tools - this is not good; the TAD is off to Beijing setting up another studio, and I'm no tools expert. The only thing I could do was to revert some of the tools to the previous day and hope that nothing breaks because of it. That got six of the artist going by that afternoon, but only one had other problems and could not be fixed until the next day. One of the artist here checked in some broken data at the end of the day, causing me many hours looking into the problem. i didn't get home until midnight.

Thursday:
Went into the office and find out that the link that was sent to me the previous day was the wrong one, which explains why it didn't work. Th rest of the day was spent on fixing other issues. Another day gone.

And, so I have had no time to do the daily sketch and have mist a few.

Be seeing you.


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This has been one hell of a long week, so long that it feels like I've been back for several week because I can barely remember what happen, except that I have been work super long hours and didn't get home til midnight on Wednesday. I have also been working the past two days, that is the weekend, playing catch up for all the missing work that I've miss last week. Am I having fun, yet? I think not. I just want to zone out and do nothing for a month!

a sketch a day - November

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Well, it has been an absolute bliss to be home and relaxed, if only for just half a week. Now it's time to go back to the grind that is Shanghai.


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This week went past, way too quickly. Just when I'm settling down and relaxing, I'm on my way again. A scheduled Sunday flight will have me landing Monday evening. This time I'm taking the guitar with me, so I don't get totally bored sitting around the apartment after work. I hope I don't get any jet lag like I have this trip back. I usually stay up throughout the entire flight, reading a book. This way, when I get back to shanghai, I'll be good for a few more hours, and then it's off to a good night sleep and be ready for Tuesday long work day. Just lovely...


112307
Today is a good day. It's a good day because the sky was clear, the air is clean and the temperature was just right. Got the house vacuumed and dusted. The filter for the fish take was cleaned, and I got to go do one of my favorite pass times, which is sitting somewhere with a friend sketching people. We met at the Great Mall in Milpedas, and sat around an indoor fountain. The place was crowded and dense with people doing their holiday shopping. But it was not as crowded as some of the malls I went to in Shanghai. And today is a good day because I finally got a really good, good night sleep! Too bad I can't have more days like this:-I


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111907
First day back at the office and nothing gets done due to the mess that is my new location. Yes, indeed, I was moved while I was away from the office. Nothing was set up properly and setting things up again was not on my list of "fun things to do". I can feel a vein popping while crawling under the desk sorting out the spaghetti of wires. I am not liking it.


111807
The concrete jungle. That's how I would describe what Shanghai is like. It's not like Los Angeles or New York, where high rises mark the heart of the city, and one can see where it is at any given distance. Nope, there are so many high rise buildings in Shanghai that one looses sight of any one landmark building as little as three miles away. So it's good to be back home and have ample view of the sky and the quiet of the burbs, hahaha. So this week will be a nice break before the need to go back and run with the fast paced life that is back in Shanghai. Some things in Shanghai that I do find nice are the fact that one don't need a car to get around the city. The subways are clean, efficient and can get you just about anywhere within the boundaries. The taxis are everywhere and are pretty affordable. Convenient stores are practically on every block and stays open late into the night.

Today is the first time that I went sketching with a friend at the local Borders since I left on my tour of duty. The Goober came along too, as we were hanging out and catching up earlier during the day. The store was pretty crowed so finding a seat was hard to do, but once we found one, it was not too difficult in finding subject matter for the sketching exercise. Since I didn't find a lead pointer for the drawing utensil I'd normally use, I had to use a .5mm mechanical pencil - don't much like sketching with those, because there's just not enough character in the lines drawn. I must try and find a place to do this when I get back to Shanghai. Tomorrow is another work day and lots of things to do at the office.

be seeing you.


111707
With my arrival at eight in the morning with very little to no sleep on the plane, I busied myself with necessary shopping for the depleted drugs to take back for the next rotation next Sunday. I wanted to get as much of the shopping and prep work done so I don't need to worry about it at the last minute, which seems to always be the case. Tomorrow will be a round at the big box store for needed towels and foods that are non-existent, rare or too expensive on the other side of the water. Since the apartment I stay at has no dryer, typical, I've decided to pack more camping and hiking attire so air drying would be faster after they are washed - not having a dryer for laundry sucks!


111607
Today was the last day of work for me at the office before I fly back to the Homeland, and wouldn't you know it, right before I was about to leave the office, all hell breaks loose with some of the check-ins that people are doing for the environments! The artist were in a slight panic as they got error message after error message in the build log for the sections that they were working on - this is the day they have to submit their work for review from the home office, and nothing gets checked-in that has errors. I grimaced. I have the other half waiting in the car at the apartment to take me to her place so I can get dropped off in the morning for my flight back. Needless to say, she was not happy that I had to stay for a little bit. Forty five minutes later, with most or the errors trouble-shot and fix, I ran out the door with a request to my fellow adviser, who's also here on an extended tour of duty, to help them with further errors. He graciously agreed and that was that. Next weeks submission should be interesting, for I will not be around when they do their submissions. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.


111507
While on my way back to the office from lunch one day, I've noticed that someone was making a delivery of some food. A security guard was talking to him and I can hear him telling the delivery guy that he needs to take the service elevator, the ones that are located at each end of the main elevators to the upper floors. These "service" elevators are about half the size of the main ones and can only fit maybe four or five people comfortably and are lined with ugly ass brown particle board.


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I've been burning the candle on both ends and it's beginning to show. twelve to fifteen hour days for the past four weeks, though fun, has been showing at the seems by the appearance of the dreaded sickness - the COLD! Nothing I can do except take the effervescent cold preventatives that is rapidly being depleted. I must remember to buy more from the trip back to the homeland this Saturday!


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Saw these little round piggy speakers for mp3 players and the like, in some of the small shops in the subway, and had to get one, hahaha. They are just too cute, hahaha!


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Wow, what a long ass week, practically "Working from seven to eleven, every night. Really makes life a drag." No time for anything except work and sleep.

A few items of interest;
A friend was here for a week of vacation from the States, and we went to a restaurant called "People Restaurant" with one of his local friends. This restaurant was pretty interesting outside and in, because the entrance didn't have a recognizable entrance for a restaurant, it was more like a night club. The entrance was set inside a dark alcove with a small, logo light shown at the base of the stairs, which were also lit much like stairs in a movie theater. At the top of the landing were six, about eight inch cylinders set about a foot deep, clustered in a square pattern much like a telephone key board, back lit and on the wall facing the stairs about four foot off the ground. There were no vi sable "doors" that one could identify or see, because there were no other lights. The friend's friend then stuck his hand into the cylinders in a random pattern, and all of a sudden, we heard a motorized whirling on the wall to our left as it slid open like a sliding glass door. We went through to a dimly lit reception counter. After confirming our reservations, we were than escorted to our table on the third floor of the restaurant. I told that the drinks at this restaurant were pretty good and was know for it. I don't doubt it as we went pass the bar that ran the entire forty or fifty feet along a back wall. while waiting for the menu, My friend and I asked for directions to the rest room. we were then given instructions to them on the first floor. When we went into the hall that was supposed to house the rest rooms, all we found were three steel doors that reached the eight or nine foot ceiling. I tried all three knobs only to find them locked. "Closets", I thought. we tried several other doors in the opposite side of the hall only to find a broom closet. Again, we asked a waitress, and again she pointed us down the same hall with the three doors. This time, as we tried the door knows again - nothing. I then heard a door squeak and turned around to find my friend with a surprise look on his face with his hands on the cracked open door that hinged on the door knob side, what the hell? This was confirmed as I pushed on the opposite side of the door knob, that was interesting, so i go in. Inside was lowly lit, I could barely find see anything except a vague reflection from the basin counter - what the hell? I tried grope around the wall around the door for a light switch only to find none - again, what is going on? What kind of restaurant is this? "Oh, well", I though, I guess I'll have to take a piss in the dark??? That blows. As I engage the sliding lock on the door, the lights go on! Now that's pretty cool! Seems like a pretty good gimmick to get people to remember this restaurant, for they sire did their job with me, hahaha.

As for the food; the portions were a little small, but tasty. we had two stew-like dishes that were served in a paper bowl, heated from the bottom with alcohol burners. The egg plant was excellent, and so were the roast duck. We also had a bottle of California Zinfandel. Good food, good times. Now that you know about this place, I sure you'll probably want to try one when you visit Shanghai or Taipei.

Be seeing you.


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