Ethereality News & Weblog

News:
I’ve been getting emails for years about my Melancholic Princess painting. Apparently, some person bored out of his mind decided to make up a urban legend around my painting and started passing it around. I’m pretty sure it started in China, as the earliest email I got about the urban legend was from China a few years ago. Recently, I’ve been getting emails from English-speaking people about it, which means this whole idiotic ordeal has reached the western hemisphere. This is an example of one of the links people are passing around in forums.

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Kitty Cat Diary updated:

After we settled down, I promise I’ll start shooting more “serious photography,” instead of keep on posting my casual “bad photography.”

Weblog:
This teenager in India has been emailing me nonstop everyday with tons of very basic questions about 2D and 3D, and I tried to help him with the time that I have. When I finally had to tell him that I’m too busy to cater to his every whim and wish, and pointed him to cgtalk.com for his future questions, he decided to call me names. It boggles my mind how ungrateful, rude, and selfish some people can be. When I was growing up, there was nothing like the internet available, but everyone learned anyway, because we were passionate, hardworking, and resourceful. Now, with this amazing learning tool called the internet, the overall IQ and motivation of young people seems to actually drop to alarming levels. Maybe back then the unmotivated and dim-witted ones just never had any chance, so no one noticed them anyway. Now they can jump online to annoy and terrorize others with their presence.

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Elena and I have been contemplating the idea of putting a GPS navigation system in our car. We have terrible sense of direction and get lost all the time, so a GPS system would save us a lot of wasted fuel from wandering around. Some models are really fancy, doing crazy things like language translation and millions of point of interest for visiting Europe. We just want a simple voice guided system with auto updated correction if we veer off the planned route, but it appears that’s only available in the higher end models–which always includes a lot of stuff we don’t need but will pay for anyway. Of course we could just go on relying on mapquest.com and printed maps, but dealing with them while driving is just such a pain, and often you have no place to pull over for a long stretch.

Weblog:
I’m a huge zombie fan, but I have to say, I’m completely underwhelmed by all the zombie games that’s been made thus far–including those still in production. Why are they all focussing on endless carnage, as if the only thing that’s compelling about the zombie genre is the blood and gore and the severed body parts. That’s like saying the best thing about thrillers is the gunfights. Totally, and completely missing the point in my opinion. I have a zombie game design that I’ve been working on, and it’s exactly the kind of zombie game I would pay good money to play. I want to talk about the design in detail, but you never know–it just might get picked up by a studio one of these days. So for now, mum’s the word.

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Elena got sick after we arrived in the States–her immune system finally caving in from all the stress and sleep deprivation before and during the move. I seem to be fine thus far–which is miraculous, as my immune system is about as strong as an eggshell. But you know how it is–the moment you make mention of your state of good healthy, some unseen force off somewhere will say “Oh YEAH? We’ll see about that!” Screw knocking on wood–I want to take a baseball bat to the cantankerous fucker.

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It’s a really strange feeling–finally being back in the States for good. I told Elena just yesterday that I kept feeling like I might get yanked the thrown back into China any moment. It’s a subtle and unexplainable fear, which has no real justifiable source, as my life in China was far from being hard. In fact, I lived very comfortably–broadband internet, expensive restaurants, tons of DVD’s and video games, and lots of freetime to work on whatever I wanted. As long as I stayed at home, life was in fact, quite peachy. I think it really comes down to the overall quality of life. In China, the environment as a whole is far worse–the government, the media, transportation, lack of global awareness, social inequality, corruption, environmental pollution, insane traffic, low moral standards, lack of education, dirty streets, rampant poverty..etc–it creates a sense of oppression that weighs heavily on your spirit. The minute I was back in the States, I felt like my soul could breathe freely again. As much as the people running this country can be real assholes, I love America and all that it stands for. Most people will never understand that feeling until they’ve lived in a country that does not hold dear the value of freedom, justice, and equality.

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I mentioned about the bad power supply last time, and I did get it replaced. It’s sad that I know more about putting together computers than the guys working in the computer department of Circuit City. I mean, I’m about as un-techie-like as one can get, but even I know how to put together a computer correctly and troubleshoot hard drive booting sequences in the bios. I ended up turning one of their computer on display into a little DIY station and took care of everything myself. Sales guys would walk by and see me ripping out the peripherals of one of their computers and ask “Um.. do you need help?” It was kind of funny, in a pathetic way. Anyway, a brand new 400 watt juice machine is now powering my workstation. Sometimes simple things in life are worth celebrating.

News:
Elena and I are now in Sunnyvale, California. The family friends we’re staying with already have broadband connection setup (and compared to the cable connection I had in China, theirs is blazing fast), so I’m actually typing this on my own desktop workstation (which was taken apart and flew with us on the plane). However, for some reason my powersupply isn’t powering any of my hard drives, and I had to use an external power connector to power the hard drive with Windows on it. Unfortunately, everything that’s important are kept on the other hard drives (I never store anything important on the OS drive, in case I have to reformat and reinstall the OS), including all of my works, email archives, pictures, mp3’s, videos..etc. Tomorrow I’ll get a new power supply and see if that changes anything.

Weblog:
We survived the trip, coming out the other end of San Francisco International Airport with only sore shoulders and backs, a throat infection, and sleep deprivation (children who won’t stop crying or shut up throughout the flight). Our luggages were overweight–all of them, but no one charged us any penalty fee–locally or internationally. We felt blessed.

While on the plane, we watched every movie they showed, because we couldn’t sleep with the spawns of Satan crying non-stop anyway. Watching Kingdom of Heaven for the second time made me like it even less than the first time. During some parts, it felt like Ridley Scott was bored out of his mind–as if he was just going through the motions. Seeing Bourne Supremacy for the second time also wasn’t as fulfilling as the first time (although it’s still a good movie). Seeing it the second time, the handheld cam and the quick cutting got a bit annoying. It’s a style of photography that’s overused these days, and when most people use it, they almost always overdo it instead of using it in appropriate amounts and during appropriate times.

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Tomorrow begins a long string of things I need to take care of–get car insurance, a cell phone, replace my workstation’s powersupply, change of ownership for my car (my dad is awesome–he’s got an old Acura in great shape he’s not using, so he just hands it over to me. Saves us the headache of going car-shopping)..etc. I also need to teach Elena how to drive (oh joy!)–which probably won’t as scary as many think it would be. I’ve taught ex-GF’s how to drive in the past, and I managed to get through each time without exploding with impatient anger–which I’m sure some husbands/boyfriends would find impossible. I’m pretty mellow when it counts.

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While looking at a bunch of concept art a few days ago, it occured to me that as amazing and imaginative some of them are, on their own, they collectively convey a singular notion, and that is “what if?” Presenting the “what if’s” is what good concept art should do, and the answers to the “what if’s” are the stories the concept artworks support–be it a screenplay, a video game, or a comic book. Inevitably, the what if’s are never as exciting as the answers, because our curiosity is only satiated by answers, not questions. I think that’s precisely why I’ve always been a storyteller at heart and an artist second–the story is what engages my emotions and intellect.

Weblog:
Wow, I didn’t think I’d have time to write more entries, but now that our stuff’s been taken to the docks for shipping, I’m kinda left with not much to do. I’ve already applied to the first round of job listings, and I’ve double, triple, and quadruple checked my portfolio, resume..etc. I suppose I could comb through all the game, film, and other CG-related companies and apply to the ones that are not actively hiring, but my experiences from the past tell me that’s a really long shot. Usually if a company isn’t actively hiring and your stuff gets filed away, they almost never remember to look you up once they have a vacancy–they simply put out another job available entry in industry job listings. I have heard of cases where someone got dug out of the files and contacted months or even years later, but I need a job now, not later.

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While packing, Elena and I painstakingly marked all sides of boxes containing fragile items with “Fragile!” and “Computer!” in both Chinese and English. Elena even drew a wine glass on all the sides (which I thought was cute, because I’ve only seen her draw once in the five years we’ve been together). Unfortunately, after the movers moved our boxes out of the apartment, she called me to tell me to abandon all hope that our fragile items would be handled carefully (she rode with the movers to my mom’s house to pick up some stuff). Why? Because the movers were all illiterate.

You might think that’s funny if you live in a developed country, but in a country like China, illiteracy is a very real social problem; the number of illiterate people in China is astounding. We’ve had two housekeepers that were illiterate, so my requests for them to try to cook western styled food from cookbooks got a good laugh out of Elena. However, it was my turn to laugh when she needed to have the housekeeper pick up some items from the supermarket, because a handwritten shopping list is out of the question, and reading the list orally only ended up with the housekeeper remembering things wrong. One of our housekeepers even lost her life’s savings because she was illiterate. Since she couldn’t read or write, she was afraid of going into a bank to start a savings account, so she just kept all of her money in her house. Recently, a fire destroyed the side of the house where the money was kept. Needless to say, she was devastated. We asked her why she didn’t have someone help her open up a savings account, and she said she was trying to save up to a whole number before putting it all in a bank. That’s another social problem I see a lot in China–people here lack common sense compared to the average person in developed countries. It’s the combined result from lack of education, lack of positive social climate, lack of fair opportunities, and the rampant corruption that keeps the poor and the rich well seperated. The poor remain illiterate, uneducated, and operate their daily lives with lack of efficiency and progress, while the rich sit at home watching their giant screen TV, surfing the internet with broadband, and eat at 5-star restaurants. China’s got a lot of social issues that would require a few more generations to sort out before they could even come close to being considered a developed country.

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I told Elena some time ago that my favorite item on the menu of her restaurant (she co-owns a Cantonese styled restaurant) is the roasted duck with plum sauce. So for the next week, she kept bringing home roasted duck (although they forgot the plum sauce once–which should be a crime punishable by law), except that chefs in China tend to use cheap low-grade kitchenware, so their blunt crappy knives always shatter the bones and I’d have to watch out so I don’t break off a tooth as I make way through the duck while spitting out little bone fragments. Eventually, I just told her to bring home whole legs so I could hold on to that sucker and tear through it with my teeth the way “war generals of the Roman Empire would do so during a feast” (those were my exact words). She conceded to my request. Now there’s no more tiny bone fragments; the general is pleased.

News:
Elena and I are packing up at the moment, ready to move back to the States (California). I’ll be taking apart the computers soon, so this might be my last entry for a while. If things go smoothly, I should be back online in a couple of weeks.

Weblog:
This is going to be my last entry from China–Elena and I are probably on the plane as you read this, heading home to California (home for me, but for her, it’s a new adventure in a foreign land). Fortunately, she’s already been to the States once a few months ago, and it left a really good impression on her. As far as I can see, her only problem now is the language barrier, which will take care of itself just like it did for all the other immigrants (well, the ones that bothered to learn English anyway). We’ll be staying temporarily in Sunnyvale, then move to wherever my next job will be at. Life will be hectic for the next few months. I’m kind of dreading it, but it’s about time I moved on to the next phase of my life–whatever that means. I don’t even feel like I’ve completed the current phase, but I guess that’s how it always feels–that life moves at its own pace and you can only keep up.

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In July I’ll have to fly back to Asia again, as Singapore’s CGOverdrive 2006 has invited me to be a guest speaker. I’ll be doing a workshop on digital painting that’ll last an hour and forty-five minutes, and although I’ve decided on the content of the workshop a few times, I keep changing my mind. If you were to hypothetically attend, what would you like to learn from me in an hour and forty-five minutes?

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While packing, I realized that I have about eleven hard drives that I’ll have to put into a carry-on bags (I do not trust that they’ll be fine in the suitcase if I check it in at the airport). I’ll also be transporting the motherboard and the two optical drives in the carry-on bags as well (not to mention my Canon 1D MKII, flash, and four lenses–although the lenses will probably be in the suitcases to be checked in). The computer case, keyboard, mouse, Wacom tablet, LCD monitor..etc will go in two seperate suitcases–I’ll make sure they’re well padded. I transported my workstation that way when we moved from Malaysia back to China two years ago, and it was certainly heavy and painful. I can’t think of a better way to transport my workstation safely though. No way I’m going to trust anyone else with over one terabyte of data. I’ll need to have a fully functional workstation as soon as we step off the plane so I could get right back into the swing of things, so shipping by sea if not an option. I don’t trust the cargo loaders anyway. My other machines will be shipped by sea as I don’t need them as much. If those get trashes, I won’t be as devastated.

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A few days ago, Elena told me that while helping her sister move, she saw an entire box filled with handbags and purses. I thought she had pointed that out in order to justify her own obsession, explaining that “all women are the same–I’m not the only one.” Then I found out everything in that box were hand-me-downs from–get this–

…Elena.

This woman has given away more handbags and purses than she owns–boxes of them (counting her cousins, aunts..etc), and she has the audacity to buy more?

I looked at her coldly and then said with a calm voice, “If I ever see you come home with a new purse again, I’ll break your legs.” She saluted me, grinned, then turned on her heel and walked out of the house with her little skirt flapping behind her. (She was mimicking me. I often respond to her naggings with a salute, do a military styled heel turn, and then head back to my studio.)

I don’t know how it is with other women (and I can’t remember much about my ex-girlfriends), but Elena ranks handbags and purses on top of her girly fancies list, then comes shoes, clothes, and finally cosmetics and beauty products. She used to own a cosmetic shop and have used just about all the brands or makeup, perfume, lotion..etc, so they no longer interest her. She’s got lots of clothes she’s never even worn once (and she feels slightly guilty about it), so she’s got pretty good self-control when it comes to clothes. Shoes are more of a practicality issue to her, as she hates shoes that are uncomfortable to wear, so it’s rare that she finds a pair that’s both attractive and practical. But when it comes to handbags and purses, it’s like something in her brain just switches off (or clicks on, depending on your perspective), and her eyes would light up like the Neko Bus in My Neighbor Totoro. I suppose it’s kind of cute to watch her lose her cool like that, as long as she has no plans to come home with a LV bag–unless it’s a knockoff. She gets the real ones as gifts from admirers and rich friends/relatives sometimes, but they don’t seem to excite her as much as when she finds them on her own. My Kitty Cat is strange like that.