Peaceful Rise

I'm too tired to spend much time writing about what I've been doing, but here are some pictures that Dagan took of the alleys we dressed last week for a day of shooting. (This is not real snow.) It's fun working on the set and following the team around. It's like being in a making-of like you'd see on a DVD. I'll hopefully get back with more pictures and more to tell later. I think basically you will all have to wait until the movie comes out and I can watch it with you and ruin it with my commentary.

I've been looking at a few odd jobs on the classifieds on That's Beijing, and I had a phone interview with some guy from an online clothing store for a position for "Procurement Specialist" which I think must be a scam, because he didn't call me back after I explained my confusion about how there's actually nothing for sale on his website. I also met with Carl Crook, who is in fact a really interesting guy, but didn't have any particular ideas about jobs for me. And I had a little translation deal which I lost when I was undercut by a poor Chinese person. This all turned out for the best, though, after I met with some friends I made through the hiring I had done for J&J. Like I mentioned before, everybody in this circle of film people knows each other, and these friends had happened to hear that they were short a translator on The Kite Runner , and suggested that I give this girl Sherrie a call, who was working on the movie and I had called in to ...

I quit my job. This is all I have been talking about lately so I will just sum it up briefly. On Saturday I went to my boss' place to put in some extra hours and mark up the script for VFX and SFX. This was to be the beginning of my long-awaited training. But the producers were coming in the next night and there was a lot of preparation that had to be done, so I actually spent the entire day fussing with my boss' little notebook computer to get the new schedule and translate and send it out, along with a whole bunch of little emails. I did this all sitting across from her in a coffee shop with an unstable internet connection, while she sat there making phone calls and lecturing me off and on for how poor suited I was for the film business. She insisted I work in front of her that day, because she said I would waste time making mistakes and asking questions if she wasn't there. It was so tedious to work on her computer with no mouse, no Chinese input, and unstable inte...

... is a translation for a colorful Chinese phrase for "rumor." Below is an interesting article which states that after the ongoing battle between Jackie Chan and Jet Li for the coveted role of "Monkey King" in this movie, with Jet Li coming out as victor, it turns out that actually Jet Li will be playing an entirely different role of a bad guy. What's more, according to a "leak" from "inside sources," Peter Jackson will direct the movie: http://stardaily.com.cn/view.asp?id=214187 Considering I just read the latest version of the script which came out on Tuesday and I'm currently dealing with hotel arrangements so that the producers and director can meet with people in Beijing next week, I'm either completely out of the loop, or this news is a bit off the mark. And I don't even know where they get the numbers about the movie's investment and Jet Li's profit share... Anyway my job can be pretty interesting sometimes, and ...

http://www.foxnews.com/wires/2006Aug01/0,4670,JackieChan,00.html Also, I just got a fat wad of cash today. So I guess I'm keeping afloat. It kind of distresses me when I think of my income in terms of the number of things I could buy in a month. Like, I can get 200 blocks of sharp cheddar, or 300 iced coffees, but I can't have both. Really my two big worries right now are buying a visa (once I figure out what semi-legal channels I can go through) and buying insurance at the end of the month, which will probably eat another large chunk of my precious American money. To cope with these problems, this Saturday I plan to go with Geoff to bar which has all you can drink for 50 RMB before 5pm or something like that, after which I'm going to go to some random guy's housewarming party where I will charm every stranger there with my drunken antics.

Let's see, what have I been up to. I am getting tired of posting to a blog site which is banned in China. I thought I might try switching back to my old Livejournal account, since I saw how good the picture capability was at Jenny's blog , but I couldn't find a feature to post updates to a listserv, and I don't have a camera anyway. Yes, I've been feeling a bit poor lately since I had to pay for six months worth of rent up front, and I have been spending money on random things that my apartment needs. I bought a wireless router so that I wouldn't have to drag this ethernet cable all the way into my bedroom, but I still can't configure my wireless card to work under Linux so it's a waste of money for now. I could go and buy a wireless card that works under Linux, but actually what I really want is a Macbook. I think my boss should buy me one, or at least buy one for the office for me to use, but I think she would find this humorous. She wishes I had a...

Well, I've been doing all sorts of stuff at work, but what I spent most of today working on was translating the storyboards for this advertisement we're doing for Furongwang cigarettes. It's amazing, I have always believed that advertisements are bullshit, but now that I am taking a hand in producing them for cigarette companies, I really see that in fact they are total bullshit. But man, do I want to start smoking Furongwang... Mou took me to a meeting with their company on Tuesday. She said that it was for me to learn something, but I think it probably had something more to do with her liking to have handsome foreign boys accompany her on business events. We sat on one side of a conference table in a dimly lit room (we turned the lights off so we could show our presentation), and the cigarette guys sat on the other side, chainsmoking Furongwang cigarettes. It was hypnotizing. The boss kept smoking these things, kind of gazing off into the distance, and telling us ab...