back from sunny places
Well I’m back from Palm Springs with an actually tan. I can’t believe it, but I guess UV rays really do get you browner than direct sun rays.
I headed out on Friday morning with Marie to Caliente Tropics Hotel in Palm Springs. We thought it would be cool to stay at something very kitsch and ridiculous… and also a little cheaper than $400 a night like the Viceroy or Parker. Though we learned a lot of lessons on this trip and may reconsider how/when we plan such an outing.
The weather was an unfavorable 65 degrees average the entire 3 days we spent out at the desert, and yes, there was even rain. This goes along with my philosophy of when there is a possibility of shitty outcome, even at the slightest, it will occur the 4 times a year I decide to take a day off.
Nevermind that, we decided to drink. And that we did! We met up with Levon and Melissa on Friday night for dinner at a local Mexican restaurant. Filled up on guac and chips … and a watermelon margarita the size of my face. That done me good… and we decided to wander around in Palm Springs banging night life. And so we trekked, and learned that apparently Palm Springs has an immense gay community. Now when I think of Palm Springs, I think of the 90s and Steve Sanders and Kelly Taylor. It was the high place to be when you were a kid in high school. Then somehow, it reverted to being the old person place it was always known for.
We spent about 2 hours drinking on the swingy chairs at Azul Tapas bar. Marie even rand to the the restroom and noticed that there was drag show going on. None of this seemed strange to us. No large groups of women were present either. Finally, the next day Levon realized it was a gay bar. Strangely, we were right at home regardless.
The rest of the trip was spent at places where there kids our own age (and sexual preference) like the Viceroy’s Citron bar and the Parker for brunch on our way home. It just goes to show, no matter where you are… friends help you have fun, and neglect to realized you’re on a lesbian trip.
work and stuff
You know, I hate to blame my lack of activity on work, but I’m going to blame it the after effect of work on my brain and body.
I travel, I do meetings, I set up more meetings , and I process things for future meetings. Then I come home the next day, load up my email and read more emails asking me to set up more meetings. It’s really a never ending cycle, but there are moments where I stare at the blinking voicemail light on my phone and think “fuck it”. Then I realize if I don’t answer that now, then it’ll turn into a screaming person on the phone.
Honestly though, work has been eerily satisfying. In that way where I feel like I’m contributing on a bigger level, in a way where I feel like people are being helped, kind of like a bigger helping feeling. Yeah, that’s it.
So lots of people have no clue what I do. And honestly, I don’t have the typing power to cover it on this blog. But look at it like this, I work for a company that develops cutting edge high end technology for 3D animation and visual effects in film. This company is comprised of under 50 people, and I help most of those people, our R&D team mainly, try to understand what our customers , the FX artists and technical directors, need in production of really terrible high budget movies that milk our paychecks and make us feel unfulfilled in the end.
Yeah, I enjoy it. Because the only thing more amazing than listening to endless technical meetings discussing pixels and rendering power, mico-polygons and and dynamic simulations … is learning this is all because Mr. Un-named Fancy Director wants to see it just a little different when the jeep blows up on the mysterious alien planet.
It’s all a part of life’s work.
in Deutschland
Ahhh, jetlag … can anything be any more useless in life? On my second day back from German, I crashed out at 8pm and woke up at 5am. I am officially on my grandmother’s schedule.
Stuttgart was an amazing city, highlights including the land of Porsche and Mercedes … and naturally, all things German like beer. Though, I’ll tell you one thing that really annoyed me about this trip. I arrived on Saturday night, after flying next to about 9 Greek people from Los Angeles who ignored me the entire time while they shouted over me the entire 11 hour flight. Also, I had a lovely 7 hour layover in Frankfurt airport, which was mostly used to sleep. And after a good night’s rest, I decided to go shopping on Sunday, trying to make use of my only free day the entire trip. This was useless, because in Germany NOTHING is open on a Sunday. Even more shocking, people still go out. Weird, I know.
The FMX conference was pretty interesting, far smaller than anything like SIGGRAPH. It was however lacking in many things as well … such as say… air conditioning. Hosted in the Haus der Wirtschaft , the building used to be an old stock exchange place. Loads of cool marble all over the place, and where I stood it was roughly around 90 degrees.
Apparently, in addition to air conditioning, elevators and anything besides 7 flights of stairs are also considered a German cultural barrier. Who knew?
And now for your viewing pleasure, a very brief video of the techno klub place the FMX party was held. The same party that was held about 8 floors down below, like a friggin’ German bunker with no ventilation, thousands of computer graphics nerds with no deodorant, permitted smoking, and contained mostly people over 6 feet in height. Asides from having Gulliver’s Travel syndrome, I felt uber Euro cool!
FMX Party in Stuttgart Germany from Leyla Tirgari on Vimeo.
