Funny video..

This video was taken on Nanjing road when Terrie was here. We were headed for the Bund and we passed this shop that had these crazy dancing dolls.

1 Day ....

So opening ceremonies is tomorrow and the smart chinese have done it again. Apparently they are locking down the entire site DURING the opening ceremonies. I am not sure who is going to be able to see the 100,000 shells that they are firing off.

Anyways, the last couple of days have been a blur to me. I have been going into work in the afternoon and staying until 4 or 5 in the morning. Its kinda spooky getting a cab that late at night. We have this one remaining bug that is haunting us. There is no simple solution for it and everyone is scratching their heads. We do know what the problem is, but fixing it will be tricky.

Yag is giving out the Tshirts tomorrow to everyone and the fisher team is prepared to all wear them as well. The image above is the little cards that we are printing out to go with them. Sam our CFO is onsite and he wants to do a video interview with me. He is really impressed with the work that I have done, but I am not satisfied yet. Once we fix this last issue then I will be happy.

Nate also missed his flight becuase he was sent the wrong itinerary. He will be here tomorrow night. He has come out to help with our issue and to help Tom out.

I saw some of the parade float vehicles today that they will be doing at the expo and they are really funny. All plastic and everything shakes around when the vehicles drive around. I will post pics soon.

Thats it, im tired and hungry. Its 5am.

3 Days - Birthday!

As I was getting up to my room after one of the longest days at work, I thought to myself I just dont have the energy to write in the blog. I got into the room and dropped my bag, and started emptying out my pockets. Something caught my eye. I looked at the table, and what to my wondering eyes would appear? I really nice little cake with happy birthday on the top! I was really surprised. I am not sure who was up to this, Terrie? Yag? Someone back east? It had to been someone I know since it was one of my favorites, tiramisu. It was actually excellent. I am saving the rest.

Just thought I would let everyone know my little delight today. I did get home at 430am.

Whoever got this for me, thank you.

jason

4 Days ..

Not much to report today. We had a pretty smooth operating day. We actually had public in the pavilion for the first time. I sat in the control room and didnt even think about listening to the crowd responses. Not many issues with the system. I was working with Taras online to see what he thought and sent him all the log files. We had some good chinese food for lunch. I got fried rice. It was really tasty. Not as good as Terries abolone fried rice, but still pretty good. I actually forced myself to finish the tub of rice. Then for dinner, which I thought I wouldnt even be hungry for I went and got two personal papa johns pizzas. One for me and one for Casey. I took my leftovers home. Tomorrow is my birthday and Yag already knows. It was in her calendar. Maybe we can leave early.

I plan on buying the rest of the lasers for my friends tomorrow morning. I am not going in until 1pm.

Also some recent pics of the BGA in action.

9 Days to 5 Days..

Sorry I havent written lately. I have been spending the last few days with my wonderful wife. I was so happy to have her here. Nothing is better than coming home to her and giving her a kiss. I remembered the feeling from Macau. We had a great time together in Shanghai although the problems I had at work. We went to a couple of nice dinners, and of course she got to see the pavilion and expo site. She actually saw a lot more than me. I havent been able to make it to the other side of the river yet. Thats where all the big pavilions are. On saturday before she left we went to the Bund and then to the WFC. We took the Bund Sightseeing tunnel. Where the say things like "massive magma" and "meteor shower" totally out of context. And not to forget those inflatable people in the middle of the road where the tram cars run. It was interesting. Also the World Financial Center is really cool at 450 meters and its glass floored observation deck. We also ate at the top of the Radisson which has a revolving restaurant. It was cool to see the city at night. Lastly we took the maglev back to the airport. Its amazing how fast it goes at 430 km/hr or 267 mph.

Thats it. We are going into full swing for the Expo and Nate is actually coming back. He is going to pick up where I left off.

Ill find out shortly that my wife made it back safely. Its amazing how time flies, but I was watching her flight. I love you honey.

10 Days - Hmm.. Tuesday

So Im not sure what happened and why my count is off, but I will try to figure it out later.

Terrie is here and we got invited last night to go out with the management team. I thought it was Korean BBQ, but it was infact just japanese food. We all had a good time and Yag was with her husband, Andrew, as well as Casey. Tom and Casey worked a really long day previous, and got home at 430am. So I wasnt surprised that Tom didnt want to go.

I ate octopus. And I got Terrie to as well. It was actually pretty good. Casey has had it before where it is still alive, and trys to crawl out of your mouth, and the suckers get stuck in your mouth. Not an experience I want to have.

Tonight I think we are going to to the supermarket and finding somewhere to eat. I think we are going to plan on Korean BBQ tomorrow night with Yag and Andrew.

Some other info. The problems that we have been having with the BGA, seem to be resolved, but the verdict is still out. I am testing as much as I can to see if the jitter comes back.

We also had soft opening Monday, and everything went really well. I made a small mistake, but we recovered quickly. Casey also helped me find and solve the problem. Lastly, Papa Johns is open!.. Along with the UFF (uncle fast food) in our pavilion. There is also a gift shop in our pavilion. I will try to pick up some stuff.

Thats it for today.

14 Days - Terrie is here!

So this is bittersweet that my wife is here. Just as we are having some major issues with the system. It will be a couple of long days onsite. Tomorrow is soft opening, in the morning too. I wasnt aware that it was in the morning.

Terrie made it fine, she was really tired. We went out for a nice italian dinner. I was craving it for a while. It wasnt exactly maggianos, but it was pretty good.

Ok not as much time to write since so much is going on.

Jason

15 Days- The Beret will be squashed

So we have come up with names for the artistic crew here onsite at the BGA. Which by the way everyone calls them producers. Not exactly what I think of a producer. Usually producers are the money people, that put up the money to put on a show. In this case they are actually the creative directors. Anyways, the couple, which are the ones responsible for "some" of the Beijing olympics, are really not good at coordinating anything. Also everyone is afraid of saying anything to them. Yag calls this the emperor complex. Sometimes I will ask my translator Mike to find out when the next time they want something run. The next thing we know mikes boss is there yelling at him, and asking him why we would ask such a thing. Truthfully I was asking because the motors overheat when they sit there servoing. Anyway the guy we call the Beret, because he always wears one, and the woman I call "the quack" because she always makes these loud bird sounds when she is directing the choreography. The third guy we call BB, for bossy boss. He really likes me, but can be difficult to deal with at times. There is a lighting director as well, but I feel like he knows his stuff. It was interesting to hear what Beret said about timecode. It really gave me the sense that he had no idea what it does, or what its used for.

Terrie will be on a plane in a couple of hours, so I am really excited. I already started stocking up on food and drinks for her.

Tomorrow before she arrives I have to go to the jobsite briefly to make sure everything comes back online after the power is restored, and then possibly pick up the tshirts I designed for the project. Then its out shopping for food and I think more lasers to finish that order.

One last thing that I thought was funny. How much gasoline can you stomach? I was going through security to enter the expo site and I had a half drunken bottle of tea. The officer actually asked me to take a drink of it. So then I thought, if it was explosives, how much could I stand? Im sure there are some incendiary chemicals that are not poisonous. Maybe alchohol?

17,16 Days - nothing new here.

Not much to report here in Shangai. Still utter confusion with programming the show at the BGA. We still havent synced anything with timecode, and the directors wonder why the show looks different each time. There is no one running this operation so things are chaos. We are getting these dinners (chinese bento boxes) which consist of some kind of meat with bones, rice and this nasty egg custard, which is not sweet. It looks like yellow jello milk. Anyways we showed the system to one of the big owners tonight and I think he liked the BGA, but was not to happy with caseys system, specifically the mirrored ball. We think it is going to be cut. I am excited that my wife will be out here soon. I have been working 12 hour days, and its putting a toll on me.

Thats about it. Time for me to go to sleep so I can work another Sunday.

18 Days - Still cold - No passport!

So today we had to go down to the visa immigration building to get my visa extended. Normally we just get a flight out of the country and when you re-enter, your visa period resets to 90 days. The head office at FTSI was insistent that we try to do this the cheaper way. Well it didnt turn out to be cheaper. We ended up wasting 4 peoples time today for about 5 hours. One of them was the general manager of Murayama. He had to be there because the visa people needed an official business declaration letter, which he wouldnt let out of his possession. So he waited with us along with a translator Yag and myself. The visa extension by itself costs around 140 dollars. We now have the take the GM of Murayama out to dinner and I have to go back to get my passport a week later. Yes, they took it from me. I was pretty pissed. A flight to Hong Kong or Macau would have cost around 200 dollars. Plus it would have given me a day off. The whole reason for doing it this way was to prevent me from going anywhere since this weekend will be hell. This weekend will be the third week in a row without a day off. I may have most of monday off, not sure yet, and I have off the Saturday when Terrie is here.

On a good note, Johna-son told me that Terrie will be an invited VIP guest to the soft opening of the pavilion. Its hard to believe we only have a few days until soft opening and the show still isnt complete. We haven't even programmed the system for timecode yet. Audio tuning hasn't taken place. A lot of work yet. If I were the director, I would be crapping in my pants at this point. My new favorite motto: "The people here are stupid and illogical, nothing I say or do will change their idiotic ways of doing things".

19 Days - Wednesday Frigid!

My feet are icicles. It is so cold outside it was hailing and snowing when I took the cab in. Also, its windy. Its that kindof wind that occasionally takes your umbrella, the really annoying wind. Things are not going so well at the site. The client seems to be unhappy with the performance of the system, mainly how often balls will drop from their knot. We always designed the system knowing that no person would be underneath it, and now they have totally changed their plan without letting us know. There would have been several things done differently. Too late now.

Anyways tomorrow morning we are going to some office to try and get my visa period extended. Im not sure how this will go. I know that Mclane tried this and couldnt get it to work so he had to leave the country. Thankfully he was able to go to Macau and help out the team over there.

Saturday I will go shopping for food and supplies for when my wife comes out. I am looking forward to her coming here. It will be fun.

Thats it for today.

20 Days - Tuesday .. its cold again!

I woke up and looked at the weather report and it looks brutal outside. Its very windy and cold. So cold that I might have to switch back to my heavier coat.

When I got onsite they had switched the security screening to yet another location. I felt like a cow walking through the corral. There is a queuing area that has unusually high rails, to make you feel like livestock.

I arrived at the pavilion and things were the same. A lot of people just sitting around. The directors finally showed up at 420pm. I made sure to look at my watch when they walked in, hopefully they noticed me doing so. They requested that I change the content in the three slots we have available so I took care of that.

Not much else going on except Yag got a call on the way back to the hotel that a ball fell and got tangled. I offered to go, but Tom is much more experience with the hardware side of things. Yag called me and explained what happened. Not a big deal. I hope the directors saw what happens when a ball falls, hopefully realizing that dancers on the stage without hardhats is a bad idea.

I worked on a longer video for the shop tonight that has a lot of the timelapse photography. Well see what everyone thinks. I usually dont get a response, but hopefully this time I will.

Thats about it for now. I hope to go shopping tomorrow night and stock up on some food and snacks for my wife. I am excited she is coming. And thank god they are not sending me to vietnam to extend my visa. Somehow they got their information wrong at the shop and almost sent me there. Thankfully Yag got the paperwork completed so I dont need to go anywhere.

21 Days - Monday..

I was excited because this morning I went to pick up the proof of the tshirt design. It came out pretty nice except for the artwork on the sleeves. I think the font is tricky for them to print out. I resubmitted the graphics and they should have them done in a week. Getting the sizes straightened out is tricky. The sample he gave me was a 58cm, which falls under the category of an asian xxl. According to US and UK standards it would be an XL. So when we hand out the shirts, we have to be very careful on the tags to get everyone the size that they need.

I got to the site and of course nothing was happening. The directors showed up and we did two "dog and pony shows". They didnt get very far at all. Our translator finally asked them if they need to change content and they said no. So I left when the rest of the crew left at about 615pm. A short day for me, but Yag thinks that things will get bad here shortly when we add additional systems to show control.

It wasnt very warm today, mostly foggy and dismal. Getting through security was surprisingly easy. I think of it like the TSA, at every airport, you get different screenings, even though its an organization that should work the same everywhere. So here it can be as bad as opening you laptop so they can verify its real, to just waving you in.

Michael brought in kumqwats today. They are interesting. I wish they had no seeds. They would be easier to eat. They are strange, to eat the whole thing. I ate a couple of them. I think the skin is the best part.

I also shot some video of caseys rig. He likes the fisheye lens. I posted a video. There are two balls hanging from three winches each. One is a mirror ball the other is a LED ball. Most of the banging sounds are coming from construction. You can see that its tricky to move the balls around without the lines touching.

22 Days - Sunday, supposedly a day off..

I was actually on call today. I had decided that I wanted to go to the cybermart to pick up the first round of lasers for Keone and Mclane. I didnt want to get all of them in one shot. I was pretty sucessful. I cannot prove the actual power that they are rated for but I got a total of 6 lasers. Keone wants 6 himself and Mclane owes me the one he lost, plus at least one or two for himself. So I will have to go back for 2 or 3 more. It was really nasty outside today, very rainy and windy. I didnt want to go back outside. I was glad I didnt hear from Yag yet,but right as I was thinking that the phone rang. It was Yag. She said that I need to go down to the site. We went over what I was going to do and what they were doing. I felt pretty confident I could take care of things pretty quickly. When I got onsite it was a totally different story. The content guy was playing games, and the lighting guys were fixing another light. I got angry quickly. I called yag and told her what was up. She got things taken care of and I left in a couple of hours. It was raining very hard when I left, but I was thankful I could leave. I would have started punching the wall with my bare fist. I took the subway back home and when I finally got home my jeans were soaked. I relaxed and ate half the papa johns pizza I had left over from the night before. I also got a tea latte from starbucks which helped me calm down.

Yag wanted me to go with her to the tea market, but I told her I was too worked up to go out, plus I was starving and wet. She bought me a very cool tea maker. It has two fluid compartments. The top one has a strainer and a button to release the water into the bottom chamber. You put your tea leaves in the top chamber and fill it with hot water, then you let it steep, then dispense the tea into the bottom chamber. The best part about it is that you can keep on brewing tea using the same leaves. They say that more flavor comes out after a couple of brewings, plus you can run cold water over the leaves the clean them the first time. I think its pretty cool. Also at the tea market they have thousands of teas, and they almost force you to taste them all. The hard part is finding what you like. Most of the time chinese tea is made in a cup and they just put the bare leaves into the bottom of the mug and add hot water. Yag says this is very different than Japanese tea, where you dont ever have the leaves in your mug.

Thats about it for today. I am excited about tomorrow, I get to pick up the proof tshirt I designed.

23 Days - Saturday..

Today was a pretty quiet day. I got a call in the morning from Yag explaining to me that the gate we normally use to get in is now closed. So she told me where the new gate is and that there are long lines. It took them an hour to get into the expo site. When I got there I saw the lines and it took me about 45 minutes to get through. They were very slow. The actual expo security is now running things and they are just getting ramped up.

Onsite things were very quiet in terms of programming. They were doing work on the ceiling so lighting covered all their expensive lights. That meant that the directors couldnt do much. Michael overheard them saying that they think they should call it a night if they cant work. We found out that they were not making any content changes so I was able to leave. I stayed for a bit and video'ed caseys system.

I find it really strange that the owners want me to teach them how to re-program the system. We repeatedly tell them that this isnt a teachable thing. There isnt enough time. Im pretty sure that the years of many peoples experience made everything work. They also expect to take down the system and reinstall it somewhere else as long as we provide them with a list of tools. They are totally forgetting about skill and technique. The really funny part is they keep asking the same question and we always give them the same answer. The people here are stubborn and resilient. Another example was one of the content girls monitor was having a problem. It continuously displayed the onscreen menu. They just worked around it. How annoying would it be to have this little menu keep popping up while you are working in the middle of your screen? It was simply that something was pressing the up button on the front of her monitor. But "they" just keep plugging away. Another guy was trying to hang a speaker nearby. He needed to get up to an area of the overhang near the ceiling. So he starts by stealing one of our chairs. Standing on it, he realized it wasnt high enough. He then proceeded to steal one of our tables and put the chair on top of it. So now hes working standing on a chair thats on top of a table. "They" scrounge for anything to get their job done. There is no organization and no thought. Their only solution is to keep throwing more people at any problem. Sometimes I wonder about the integrity of the building. I wonder what kinds of corners they cut in the steelwork.

Another good note is I got my flight back home. I am glad, but at the same point pissed at my company. They do not have me flying back business.

Jason

25-24 Days , long programming..

So when this weekend rolls around I will not have had a day off in about 3 weeks. They are trying to get me some time off, but we are working long days of just sitting around running the show for lighting. We have not even started show control yet.

A picture of the swarovsky crystal wall that is behind the BGA area. They say there are 30,000 pieces of crystal there.

They started running fireworks tonight when we were in the building. It was pretty darn loud. I attached a pic of them as well.

Not much else to say.

Jason

27-26 Days - more programming

Today was an extremely boring day. So boring that my butt was hurting just from sitting in the chair so long. I got the kindle reader for my computer and bought a book. I was pretty close to halfway through it. They lighting guys were having lots of problems, although it just seemed like a brightness issue on one or two of the fixtures, which shouldnt have stopped the programming. We sat for 6 hours while they swapped fixtures back and forth. Assembled the scaffold and took it down several times.

Mikes cousin came and sat with us. He didnt speak much english but he did bring us dinner. Yes, dumplings again. They are pretty good. But we didnt really have enough to fill us all up. Later on I got hungry again. There is this assistant to the director. We are calling him BB, for bossy boss. Michael realized that he likes us since we are doing everything we can to help out. So he asked him for some food and he brought over a whole bunch of snacks. We got some oreos, and these chinese version of a WHOOPIE PIE!, yes, really. They were pretty good and I stashed a couple in my bag for emergencies. I will take a picture of one when I eat it.

Thats about it. The proof of the tshirt is done and I am excited to see it.

28 Days - The producers like me..

Another boring day spent on site sitting at my table waiting for the producers to ask me to run the balls. They really respect what I say. They said I was very professional and they like my style. They know that I understand what the system can do and they appreciate my input. They are extremely spontaneous on what they are programming. They jump around to any of the 5 sections of the show and we constantly have to remind them that only 3 slots available at one given time and if they want one swapped out for a different part it takes time. Its funny how they keep on asking for the same thing and we say no every time, except they just get more angry each time they ask.

The picture above is without any video running. There are a total of 18 moving video projectors. You can see two of the large beasts on the right side of the pic. Some of the content is amazing while most of it is easily distinguishable as computer generated.

I am very excited for my wife to come out. I have been adding things to the list.

Congrats to my wife for getting the new job.

29 Days - confusion times 10

Yes, I didnt believe it could get any worse but it has. It seems that the designers are purposely not telling our client what they are doing because they want them out of here. I dont know exactly why. So I end up sitting at our table ready to run shows without knowing how long I will be sitting here. The company they are trying to sweep under, ADK, are working hard, and I think they do a good job.

I heard that I will be staying to the 24th, and I am going to be taking two days off so I can be with my wife when she comes out.

There is still a chance that I will leave on May 2.

Jason

30 Days - even more confusion

I sat around for hours today waiting for the "directors" to show up. They were supposed to be in at 8pm and were just a little late. We had no other tasks. I worked on getting the panelforms finished up and tested some new content. Yag was able to get us dinner just as the directors walked in. So we couldnt eat just yet. I got the panelform feature that I wanted to work, but its got some more things to get it perfect. Not much else going on excep utter confusion. I hear the chinese client doesnt want ADK (chinese contractor) in the picture anymore. So we work for Murayama, who works for ADK, and ADK works for chinese client (16 companies). So one of the 16 companies is "tellhow" and they want to work with us directly, putting ADK out of the picture. All very confusing.

We are working tomorrow again late. They setup 6 computers with 6 artists to start working on content for the video on this show. I was impressed about that. Tom was eating his dried plums.

Thats it for today.

31 Days - confusion..

Wow these people have never orchestrated a show like this. They have no idea what they are doing. There is no lead on anything so its always a fight. The owners have the most pull but dont understand what is needed to make everything work and their priorities are all weird. We found out that the creative directors are showing up tomorrow night at 8pm to start rehearsals. Nothing is programmed yet, so I dont understand what they are going to look at. The only thing that is partially done is the content for the BGA. So far Yag is saying that I am leaving no earlier than the 24 of April, but my ticket has not been changed yet. Meanwhile the audio and lighting system is in shambles. I just dont know how they are going to pull it together before opening. We also heard that 1/3 of the pavilions will not be ready for the grand opening. Very embarrassing.

Every day we walk into the unknown.