Hindsight

Driving back to San Diego was an invitation into the worst air quality I have ever experienced. Obviously because of the fires.

The San Diego news broadcast above was not comforting. If you look at the center of the image where “Mira Mesa” then you’re looking at my current homestay. The fires were occuring all around. Around noontime this is what the view looked like from Mike’s balcony:

The air quality was horrible. The smell of smoke. Burnt and suffocating. By the time I was done with the workday (I work night shifts for now, around 4 to midnight), my eyes were red and stinging. Even from inside our building.

The drive home was nice. But the air was still thick; I could tell from the streetlamps that smoke was still heavy.

The word yesterday was that weather might be better today. Something about a marine layer or what not. In any case, I woke up today and was finally able to open the sliding door to smell the air. From the apartment, it seems fine.

It’s unbelievable. The damage the fires have caused is unsettling. Over 1,000 homes destroyed in San Diego county.

It was interesting yesterday - the news ran stories where people who lost their homes blatantly lashed-out at the media. I don’t recall seeing any new stories in L.A. broadcasts where reporters would actually say “They are mad at us for not reporting things better”. I could be mistaken or uninformed, but that was a bit surprising, in a good way.

Mike was catching his usual dose of WWE on TV. An added plus was the spattering of game commercials for games like Tony Hawk Underground and Super Mario Advance 4 (essentially “Super Mario Bros. 3″ ported to the Game Boy Advance, with some extras).

I was really entertained by the commercial. First because it is supposedly filmed in Japan. Second because it’s got schoolkids doing cool acrobatics. Jumping in various gaming fashions (we discussed how one boy did a flip jump quite similar to Metroid Prime character Samus Aran’s moves), running atop commuter trains. I like how it’s put together.

AdTunes.com reports that the song used in the commercial was Mayumi Kojima’s “Hatsukoi” (First Love).

You can see/download the commercial at Nintendo’s site:
http://www.nintendo.com/news/news_articles.jsp?articleID=9036

Images from today on my way back from La Verne to San Diego via the 15 Freeway.

Television “coverage”.

To say that air quality has been poor is an understatement. This afternoon the ash was coming down with slightly more frequency than it did in La Verne, where things are calming down, fire-wise.

I have yet to move into the master bedroom of an apartment with Jerry, my roommate-to-be. I’m approved to move in on the first of next month, so it’s just around the corner. I contacted him and it looks like Encinitas (my future residence) is in a safe spot, further north and west of all this fire choas. It’s unreal to see a news graphic of Southern California to see fire icons from one area to another.

Noon on Saturday: the sky was still blue, but smoke was creeping in.

Noon on Sunday: copper/orange sky.

The wildfires are everywhere, with an emphasis on “everywhere”, in Southern California.

My Saturday was not so relaxed. The morning consisted of getting my car jump started, driving back home to La Verne, noticing the copper sky and then realizing that fires were breaking out all over southern California, and spending the rest of the day fixing my nephew’s PC and cursing over setting his computer over wireless network.

Today, Sunday, seemed a little better. Daylight savings time ended, allowing me an extra hour to stay up and tend to my web hobbies.

And then I popped in “Lily Chou-Chou no Subete”, or “All About Lily Chou-Chou“. A film by Shunji Iwai.

I’ve not seen Iwai’s previous works, but I can relate to this one on several levels.

“All About…” revolves around the world of Japanese junior high school students. The bullying, confusion, peer pressure. And a few other Japanese JHS phenomenon. Well, mostly the darker side if it exists in the kids’ lives. On top of this is the connection of every character to Lily Chou-Chou (Riri Shushu as pronounced by the cast). Her music creates a web (pun intended) of interaction between everyone. The film ends in an anti-climax which I found satisfying. But that’s just me.

I wanted to see this film when I heard about it sometime a year and a half ago. Recently it showed up on eBay: it was officially released in Hong Kong. I got my hands on a region 3 copy. The transfer is a little dim, but generally acceptable. The subtitiles are pretty decent - I never found myself doing any major double takes trying to re interpret any badly translated text

Because a lot is taped on school locations, I found myself nodding or smiling when I saw something familiar. Namely, a rebellious school kid here and there, or the uniformity of the gym (I really do think that most school gyms I’ve seen in Japanese junior high schools look exactly the same). So those who have had some experience seeing school life in Japan will see glimpses here.

Opinions are mixed. Still…

For a film that is full of sadness, it was extremely uplifting for me.

I’m afraid I don’t have any pictures to show today - I’m logged in at my friend’s iMac. Actually, I’m staying at his place since I cannot move into my apartment yet.

My new job is interesting. Interesting in that it’s a variably different experience from my former testing with Squaresoft (now Square Enix, USA). I’m not at liberty to go into details, so I will just say that I’m enjoying it so far. It’s good to be working again, in the sense that I can start covering my bases, financially. Of course, the work is fun also.

Last Saturday I spent all day at my sister’s place to fix my nephew’s, JJ’s, computer. I ditched efforts after running some diagnostic software on the hard drive - at that point the drive made enough noise to creep anyone out. It’s being sent back to Western Digital for a replacement.

That same evening I was uploading files to my new web host. As I mentioned before, this hindsightproject.com domain is now hosted at 8-95 Internet Services. They had a two week special going on that I took advantage of.

A few hours later, Frank tells me about Surpass Hosting.

I ended up signing with them for jameswong.com. If I’m happy with them, maybe Surpass will host all my sites. My primary concern was bandwidth. And at their pricing plans it was a bit hard to resist. We’ll see how it pans out over the next month.

Sunday I’ve done little. I woke up, ran some small errands and drove back here to San Diego in the evening. It’s back to work on Monday.

On Tuesday, I begin working a night shift. 4:30 - 12:30. It looks like I’ll be resuming my “post-Japan” sleeping schedule for maybe a month or two.

More to come.

Tomorrow will be the first day at my new job. It’s been two months since I’ve worked in any capacity - I’m thankful I’ve found something.

I’m headed down south to San Diego to stay with my friend tonight - apparently I can’t move into my apartment until next month, so I’ve been offered a place to crash on weekdays while I make this transition. Have laptop, will travel. Have games, will travel.

I am switching to a new webhost in the next few weeks. If you come back and things have vanished, chances are I’m working on a fix.

Well, here we go. See you in a few.

The first: October 7, 2003. Huntington Beach, California. Foggy drive home. The second: Yesterday.

A few weeks ago I would open the front door, looking at the ground to see if packages had arrived for things I won off eBay. Such hasn’t happened now and soon I won’t have this sort of view. Wednesday I start working.

I’m listening to “Kaihukusuru Kizu” from Shunji Iwai’s film “All About Lily Chou Chou”. I dug it up from the mp3 folders because it was used in “Kill Bill”. I had a feeling I’d heard the song before last Friday when I watched the film. “Wait a second,” I thought. I know that song…

I never got to see “All About Lily Chou Chou“, but I will soon.

Last night I thought about things that would keep me busy once I start working. That is, aside from work. I thought about my fantasies of playing the drums or writing more for future video projects. And I really need to attend to both of those somehow. Such thoughts got me out of a rut that I was in yesterday - I was at my cousins’ housewarming party that eventually turned into a gathering for their friends. In a few hours the place was filled with everyone around my age. Lots of great looking girls and their boyfriends. I left early feeling lonely and having nothing in common to chat with. Most attempts to talk lasted but a few minutes before fizzling out. I felt sad.

It is a little past two months since I left Japan. I’ve gained weight, naturally - no more walking and sitting in a car does not make James happy. But c’est la vie here in Southern California. Taking up rollerblading suddenly seems very, very attractive.

I am not sure how I’ll feel in a week. I certainly won’t be starved of work or peace. But I would like to see where else my curiosities with creativity take me. I’m optimistic, for once.

I must be the only person I know who didn’t like “Kill Bill” as much as everyone else.
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One night I was surfing away and I stumbled upon Wikipedia. I heard this term “wiki” before but I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it. Perhaps another cute name that ran along the tech-oriented terms “Unix”, “root” and whatever else avid computer freaks like myself knew or used in our daily lives.

So I look up Wikipedia and I see that I can change any of the pages anytime I want. As if I’m given full control over that page with my own free will. This seemed unreal. Utopian and utilitarian.