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man against time
2006-05-25 02:53:23
The actual work part of what I came to China for is now done; the software is all up to date and the machine is happy, so now I have only a very limited number of remaining objectives and a large pile of yuan that I'd rather spend here than convert back. I'll be back on Saturday night, and may go to AniBo on Sunday as I'll still have the next day to recharge before going back to work. That said, I don't know quite *why* I'd bother going, as there's nothing in terms of new releases that I couldn't get here in Beijing for much cheaper, and I'd basically miss everything except closing ceremonies. I've got no CDs/DVDs to hand out, and it's not like the video I sent, not being likely to win anything, will actually be in demand. It'll probably be a game-time decision, and if my brother suggests something else compelling Sunday morning that doesn't involve riding on trains, I may just pull out.
While I have source available and an idea, it probably will not turn into an AMV while I'm still in China. Tonight I have a bunch of stuff to do, and tomorrow I'm going to be at the Great Wall and Ming tombs all day and will probably have little genkisa left for wrestling with my editing environment, which is clunky and laggy on this laptop. There's a couple more series that I'd like to pick up before I leave, in addition to the one that I found that hasn't even been fansubbed yet, but the first priority in that regard is finding a cheap piece of luggage to move all the junk I've picked up here into, allowing me to use my original carryon as originally intended. I packed light to force a quick stay, but reckoned without selection, price, and natural packrat tendencies, and there is little space in my current bags.
--Kai out
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on this winding road
2006-05-22 22:10:50
I'm officially in-country till the end of the week, but I hope to avoid work for the end of it -- Great Wall on Thursday and flying home Friday sounds pretty good, and then I can dodge jetlag by raising hell around AniBo in my new silk jacket. I also picked up some source for future projects; I think one of them is out in the US already (and if so will be rebought), but the other is not, and the three discs involved cost me about as much as 2 boxes of pop-tarts. Video quality, while not great, is still workable, and I've cleaned up stuff that looks much worse. Probably not going to go in for series, even though they're highly available; I just don't have that much space in my luggage, and the prod quality on Chinese bootlegs is nowhere near even as high as HK. The packaging is obviously stolen materials from various sources, shoddily assembled into stuff that in total effect is so skeevy that you really want to disinfect yourself after opening the package.
Despite this, the grocery store has a fairly large video store plugged into a side room full of this junk. It is just a different country over here, with a different standard of living, and if someone tried to charge 120 RMB ($15) for a movie, the only ones willing and able to buy would be the ones who are going to run it through their pirate operation and sell copies for 10 RMB. Until the economic conditions in China improve, the piracy problem is not going to improve either, a problem that runs through the whole of the developing world. As soon as people get access to commodity TVs and DVD players -- and the prices on these, really, are in freefall -- they want to be able to fully participate in the world media culture, for a cost of entry that scales with their lives. Hollywood can't provide that (yet), but the gangsters can; end of story.
--Kai out
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freedom wash over them
2006-05-20 12:03:58
I had some time around touristing today, and also had a single episode of Elfen Lied sitting around, so I did another Graveyard entry. This one, if it ends up as an extra, will not appear until the full video using the song involved comes out, which will be at least a month, maybe two.
I did go to Tiennamen Square, but I did not write Nevermore lyrics on anything. There were far too many army people around for something like that.
--Kai out
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technical matters
2006-05-16 04:44:02
Due to being behind the Great Firewall of China, I'm not able to answer email on the .org contact address until I get out of the country, whenever that is. Anyone who needs to contact me can use the PM on the forums or my other addresses if they happen to know them.
If you're in Kowloon and want to throw away a huge-sounding number of HKD on anime/manga junk, hit Comic Focus in Haiphong Road. Their selection of manga (in Chinese) is titanic, they've got a good deal of merchandising junk that isn't available elsewhere, and they may even have some legit releases in their DVD section. I was kind of pressed for time and already spending 200HKD on manga, so I didn't go looking in...even on bootleg I'm not sure I could've stopped myself from buying everything Adachi they may have had. Better in these situations to just not go in the room, rather than agonizing about self-gratification versus actually supporting creators.
--Kai out
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and everything is nothing
2006-05-14 08:46:58
Work on videos is suspended for at least the next week, maybe longer. If videos age out, I will not be able to reupload them. And there's the chance that I won't make it to Anime Boston.
This is because I'm in China; technically, I'm in Hong Kong, but this is still really part of China, and if all goes well I'll be headed to Beijing tomorrow. This is for work, though, and I'm dead tired from like 17 hours in the air yesterday, so my opportunities to do anything but work and sleep will be kind of curtailed.
--Kai out
JOURNAL: Kai Stromler (Kai Stromler)
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