Musings of an Idiot

It's sunday and the days are flying past real quick. Thursday was fishing day and Tina/Chris - Lance's parents took Lance, Max, Kyle & me fishing in their boat and it turned out to be an awesome day and an awesome experience even though we didn't catch any legal fish. None of us caught any fish whatsoever except Lance who managed to catch 6 but unfortunately all of them were undersized, so had to put them back into the water. It is illegal in NZ to catch fish which are below the legal size and if you do take them into port then the fisheries department can impound your boat, your vehicle, your house and even put you in jail- so people don't do it. On the trip we saw a few penguins, a sea horse, Lance spotted a shark and all of us spotted a nudist on an isolated beach and we also saw a bird with a big fish right in it's beak while we had no luck catching anything. It took me a while to get used to the different kinds of fishing rods and I got my line all tangled up a couple of times and Chris helped me out. After the long and unsuccesful fishing morning, we decided to stop over at a bay to have some lunch and it was a beautiful spot. Kyle - who is a chef/cook by profession cooked us some fantastic lunch and it was one of the yummiest pastas i've ever had. All in all a very enjoyable experience and something I wouldn't mind doing again at some point in the future again and maybe next time I might even catch a fish.
I came in to work on Friday to find that Brendan has left me a guest pass to Big Day Out and it was exciting holding it in my hand - lots of people would kill to have a free pass to the event and here I was holding it. Big Day Out is a huge gig where international and local bands play to music fanatics and it is eagerly looked forward to year after year. I was feeling a little feverish and considering that it was a very hot day I decided that maybe it was best for me not to go. Jo is a music fanatic and she also rented out my room when I was away travelling, so it made her a prime candidate for the ticket. I rang her up and asked her if she wanted the guest pass and she was thrilled. In a way it is bad of me to just pass on a guest pass that was given to me but by the same token I did not want to waste the ticket and for me the gesture of someone actually giving me a free pass for helping them out was more important than the pass itself. You might think I am mad but to me it made perfect sense and so I went home instead to the BDO.

Buying a standalone flatbed scanner has proven to be such a pain but thankfully it is a thing of the past now. I wanted to buy the scanner on the 10th but it took me till Friday evening to finally get my hands on one. I also managed to get a good deal by simply asking for it {I got about 30 bucks off the retail price}, just shows that you've got to ask for things otherwise you might not get them. Armed with a Canon Lide100 scanner I promptly went about scanning the polaroids that I had snapped. I am pleased with the scanner and I am pleased with the polaroids, so I was a happy man. I had problems uploading the photos to the image gallery on my website so I have uploaded them to my flickr account. Con the airport photograph to check out the polaroids from thailand and click on the car parking photograph to check out the polaroids from india.





Later in the evening, I decided to cook one of the thai dishes I had learnt in Thailand and went to the local asian supermarket and found all the ingredients I needed except for a stone grinder to crush nuts and stuff, so I went and bought a mixer/blender. The dish turned out fine and was edible - I think I used 1 tablespoon too much of palm sugar and so it was a little sweeter than I anticipated but it was pretty close to how it should taste. I wished there was a gas stove in our house because cooking on an electric stove is not the same.

I am working over the weekend,so don't particularly have any free time per se but I did have the first acting practise session of the year. I was doing a scene with Zoe with Caren directing the scene but then I had a brainwave and asked Caren if she wanted to play the part that I was doing and I would direct them instead to which both Zoe and Caren agreed. So I went over yesterday evening to Caren's place for the first read through to check out the dynamics of the scene coming about through the change of gender of one of the characters and it was awesome. It totally changed the scene and it was a good read through. The light in Caren's room is awesome and I took a few photos - there are some classic ones in there but I can't put them up as I have only permission from Caren and Zoe to put only a couple of them up. So here you go.


Our house now has a professional sized table-tennis table. Lance bought it off an auction website and got a real good deal for it. So now our lounge is occasionally turned into a table tennis room whenever we feel like playing. It is slightly inconvenient moving things around but still heaps of fun when the table is actually out like last night where Lydia's friends came over and we were playing it in between eating and talking.

After work I wanted to just chill at home but Ainsley called and we went to the tennis courts to have knock about the balls a bit and now I am home ready to retire for the night. I have got lots to do before things even vaguely get on track with all the things that I've planned to do this year but I am still enjoying the challenge of it all.

Till later,
Amit

The workshop was really beneficial as it explored how we could add sub-text and meaning to scenes without beating the audiences to death with the obvious, by doing simple things. There were about 22 film makers in the room and it was great sharing the creative space with everyone. The difference between a selected participant and an observer was that the selected participants put some scenes from the script up for workshop - they were projects that were in the advanced stage of development or fairly further in their writing stage. While the participants had some projects in development but not to the point where they were ready to be workshopped. Other than that it was all the same and it was a great platform to discuss ideas. There were so many points in the workshop where a simple sentence from someone would trigger off a thought process about my own film and I would quickly note it down before I lost the chain of thought. This workshop couldn't have come at a better time - I picked up so much from the workshop that I am going to try and implement in the next draft of 'REJECTED'.

Overall I am just about recovering from the workshop period but still feeling really elated because of all the ideas and creativity bouncing around in the ether. I'll sign off for now.

Till later,
Amit