I am alive! (and back in the States)
20 Aug
Actually, I’ve been back since April 25th. I’ll bet you’re surprised to see me in your feed readers, huh? Well thanks for hanging around. What happened to May, June, and July? Let’s do a little illustrated recap, shall we?
Japan
My trip to Tokyo was fun. It was great bonding time with family. Most of my time was spent eating food. Oddly enough, I really liked shopping at their 7-Eleven. I feel like their quality of food is so much higher at convenience stores in Japan than here in America. I mean, how can you compare bento boxes with corndogs?
The weather was mostly gray and rainy while we were there. Our gaijin-house was across from the Yanaka Graveyard, which was so beautiful in the gloomy weather. It sounds spooky, but it was one of my favorite places to be. It was a serene place to collect your thoughts and just be in peace.
The language barrier was really tough for me. I truly regret not learning Japanese before going. Every exchange longer than 1 minute made me feel like a disrespectful imbecile because I couldn’t comprehend beyond the basics. I hope I didn’t offend anyone too much. I tried to cheat my way through it by throwing a Japanese accent on everything (ie. ‘box’ becomes ‘bock-su’). *sigh* It was a great experience though, and one I’ll definitely remember always. (A few photos are on my Flickr)
Pixelodeon
What. A. Blast… ! Pixelodeon, for those of you not in the know, is a new, annual weekend-long video festival. It was also a chance to hang out with some of my favorite people. I met new faces, and people I’ve been wanting to meet forever.
Check out more photos here in the Flickr Pixelodeon pool.
Sweet new Macbook Pro
On June 15th, I got a 2.4Ghz Santa Rosa 15″ MacBook Pro! It’s deliciously fast, and has enabled me to partake in iSight daily self portraits. It did give me some kernel panic trouble a few weeks ago, but the Apple store replaced the logic board and it’s good as new again. Comparing the horsepower of this thing to my [old faithful] G4 iBook is like comparing a Z3 to a Civic… or something like that. This should be motivation for new video posts eh? *wink*
John persuaded me to try World of Warcraft, and I really like it a lot; it runs beautifully on the MBP. If you’re ever hanging around on the Cenarius server, I’m a Draenei priest named Caliani. (get it? california annie?! I’m so clever it hurts)
JETSET Show
I have been working with Rick (who is now a part of Smashface, congrats!) on segments for JETSET. You can watch the first piece here. I love working with such creatively strong people, woo hoo! Before that, we did some bits for Cyworld.
I guest-hosted NoodleScar Daily during Queen Week! I love Bonny, Lan, and Vu, and I had so much fun hanging out with them. They’ve got a hilarious daily show that comes in easily consumable 30 second chunks. :) Vu also took some really fantastic photos of me!
Other bits and pieces
John and I went to San Diego and saw Shamu and all his aquatic friends. I went to the Tofu Festival in Little Tokyo where I ate till my little tofu-loving body couldn’t handle it anymore. My favorites were the pad see ew and the tofu tostada (I kid you not!). After that, I saw Paul perform (he was so good!) at the Temple Bar, where I danced with Ace and Tyson (two thirds of Elastic Illusion) and felt really uncoordinated. Tonight I will be eating dinner with my mother and sister. I guess that’s all for now.
Yipee I’m back!
