Bionic Teutonic

Lots of things going on these days. I’ve just started a new job, which is step two of the changes I wanted to make in my life this year (the first being moving in city). The job is going to be a change. It’s enough of a pay jump that I think I’ll be able to save enough to go back to school in a few years without going massively in debt or having to eat top ramen. It’s also going to be a lot busier than I’ve been used to. I have a target number of billable hours per week that I need to hit, which means no slacking. I’m feeling good about it now though. After having a few days to get my bearings, I feel like while I have a lot to learn, the job is very doable. Oddly, after I got the job offer and before I started, I got really nervous and sort of panicked about leaving Speakeasy. I convinced myself somehow that they were going to find something in my background check they didn’t like or somehow decide that they had changed their mind and no longer wanted me for some reason. Rationally, I knew everything was going to be fine and that I already had the job, but somehow I was feeling a bit like I was a fraud. It was one of those things where you feel like you are play-acting the role of a grown-up and that someone at some point is going to go ‘Hey wait a minute! They just a kid pretending to be a responsible adult!’ The emperor wears no clothes.

I got my new tattoo yesterday!  I put some pictures up on Flickr. It’s a bit flakey and sensitive at the moment, but I think it turned out really well. I’m trying to take really good care of this one, putting lots of lotion on it and such. I got it done by a guy named George Long at Laughing Buddha, whose work I really liked. It’s a bit of a trick to get a tattoo to actually look straight on an arm, with all its curves and concave areas. He did a great job of adjusting it by hand so that it looks good regardless of the angle. He also designed the clouds behind the sanskrit and I’m really happy with the way they look.

We had a great time at Harbin last weekend. I couldn’t get any pictures really, as cameras are not allowed there (I guess they don’t want you taking pictures of all the naked hippies but we rocked it. It was really nice to have some time to just relax and catch up on sleep. We spent a bunch of time in the pools and had a really great time hanging out with our friend Rara and his fiance Jumana. Rara and I spent a morning in his studio on Saturday. I got him to play guitar over a track I’m working on and we also just geeked out on music, discussing ideas and techniques. It was nice to have somebody to shoot the musical shit with again. I’ve been missing that for a while. Harbin itself is beautiful. It’s located in a really beautiful valley just north of Napa and we got to take some really nice hikes in the surrounding hillsides. The resort is surprisingly big actually. It’s so spread out that you only rarely get a sense for how many people are there at any one given time, but there were probably several hundred guests I would say. I was looking forward to doing yoga in the mornings, but the yoga there was sadly very much on the new age tip - not so much on the physical practice.

This weekend I’m getting a new tattoo. I’ve been wanting another one for a while and I had a consultation this week, so I’m all set. I’m getting the ashtanga yoga mantra Loka Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu in devanagari sanskrit around my arm, with some stylised clouds behind it. It means may all beings find peace and happiness, which I like. Plus devanagari is beautiful.

OK, I’m officially Apple’s bitch. To go along with my new laptop, I just went out and bought a new iPod video the other day. I love it. I know that there are other mp3 players out there, and I even bought one a while ago, but they don’t interface with iTunes and they are always somehow a pain in the ass. My iPod however, is loaded with music and I’ve been listening to it non-stop. My only complaint is that I’ve been swapping music with some of my co-workers, and they make it such a pain in the ass to do this. The thing that pisses me off about all the copy-protection shit people try and implement is that I’m going to get around it anyway (it’s not that hard), and it makes things a pain in the ass for both legitimate uses as well as illegal uses that should be my own business anyway. It’s like trying to ban blank tapes back in the day (which the music industry did try to do). It’s stupid and only serves to make me angry. I’m getting and sharing my music anyway. </rant>

Ariel and I are leaving for Harbin tomorrow. Looking forward to lots and lots of relaxation. I’ll post pictures when I get back.