Elections, a 700$ Premium, and Pizza – our first month.

I wrote this last night and didn’t publish it. Sometimes it’s better to read things over again. 🙂 But then I figured, what the heck. So here you go. 🙂

I will say this in advance: I should not be writing blog posts after a week of long hours at work, sleep deprivation through evil tooth fairies, moving into a new apartment, and having more wine than an empty stomach should be exposed to. But hey, in for the dime, in for the dollar, as they say. You can’t expect us to be at our Sunday’s best behavior for 8 full months, can you? 

It took all of two weeks to get into the first crunch time at work. Let me rant a little bit, here, if I may? Movies might have been art once, but that doesn’t apply to the big ones, anymore. Certainly not the kind I usually work on (because the ones that still have some sort of art in them usually put their focus on story instead of computer hocus pocus). Instead, movies are a money-printing machinery for greedy buggers, who set a release date years before there is even a screenplay. (I’m not even kidding.) That doesn’t leave much margin for scheduling, does it. And of course, there needs to be a trailer, as well. So, in a bit over a week, we have to deliver a few shots for this said trailer. That ‘mile stone’ was well known and planned for, of course. (Not that anybody told ME about it, but that’s another story.) But the producers of the show, in their eternal wisdom, have decided that they want to see a rough version of dozens more shots in advance. Like, on Monday. So now the whole bee hive is abuzz with activity, and we are working overtime and weekends, in order to fulfill the wish, while at the same time trying not to get behind schedule for the shots we have to deliver next week. Sounds somewhat irrational? Welcome to the magic world of the movies. Considering what it is we’re creating – pure ‘circenses’, no ‘panem’ – it just doesn’t seem to be worth all this stress. So the movie will bore audiences to death two weeks later, who gives a damn? But no, hundreds of people risk their very health, just so the big picture can have its grand premiere. Thank God it’s all so jolly fun, otherwise one might become a cynic.

I’m not working today, though. No, sir. Today, we had to move out from the old place and into the new one. Remember? The one I liked so much and then kind of didn’t like so much, but we’d already said yes, so now here we are. The apartment isn’t that bad. It’s bigger. Brighter. Has more space in the kitchen. A dinner table that almost deserves the name. This apartment’s a sub-lease, meaning that the guy who rents it will be away for a few months and is sub-renting it to us for the time. Sounds familiar? This guy rents the place for 1400$ a month. We’re paying a 700$ premium for, in his words, the luxury and comfort of a fully equipped kitchen, modern furniture and all that. The apartment is very quiet, he says, at night you can hear the waves of the English Bay. Also, there’s no draft, because the windows are shabby, but they’re not THAT shabby. He says.
Well, it turns out, a fully equipped kitchen doesn’t come with pots or pans. Or spoons. Or a measuring cup. Or anything you could make coffee in. His hearing must also be seriously impaired, because he mistook the hissing of the buses’ hydraulic brakes for waves. At least his metabolism seems to be great, because he doesn’t feel a draft, even if this draft would probably be able to extinguish a storm lighter on a mild day in early fall. And then huff and puff the three piglets’ houses into a rubble, all without ever breaking a sweat. It’s not that the apartment is really bad. It isn’t. It’s the missing bang for all the buck that I’m complaining about. Oh well. At least we got the Lorax as a welcome present. And I can ride my bike to work. And there are no bears in the neighborhood. There’s something for everyone, see?

Today’s election day in Poland and I am happy to announce that Gaga has done her duty and cast a ballot. As she said in her last post, they seem to be taking democracy seriously here. What polling station in Germany was ever open from 7am to 9pm? Now let’s just hope the rightwards trend that seems prevalent in all of Europe these days doesn’t continue in Poland and that Gaga’s vote has done its part. I have to say, reading the news from back home is quite troubling recently. But maybe I’m only reading the bad bits. Am I?

Addendum: Ah. No. Poland is screwed. Imagine the AfD doing a merger with the NPD and some Christian fundamentalists, and then winning an absolute majority in both Bundestag and Bundesrat. That’s what just happened in Poland. Not being there and seeing it only from the outside feels even worse.

Now to the important bit: we had Pizza today (because what else would one eat while trying to move into another apartment?) and Albert did not give us a second of quiet until we finally relented and gave him a piece. Which he devoured. And then demanded more. Yep, our not-even-one-year-old eats Pizza now. Let’s just hope that there was at least some milk in the cheese, and that the spinach had ever seen a ray of sunlight before being thrown on the thing and frozen to death. 🙂

Also, we made it through our first month here. Brief recap?
Vancouver is a really big city. I’m not a fan of really big cities. But it does have some appeal and I’m quite sure that, once we get a chance to explore the surroundings a bit, we will find most beautiful places. Canadians are mostly really nice. Vancouverites have a reputation for being rather reserved and rude. If that’s true, than Germans are a people of introvert sociopaths. Daniel, who was at Pixomondo before, arrived here two weeks ago and helped us with the moving, put it quite fittingly today: ‘Back home, when a stranger talks to you on the bus, you go and sit somewhere else. People will pretend you don’t exist, even if they’re literally standing on your feet. It’s nice that here, there is this unwritten rule that you simply acknowledge other people, and that you’re friendly to them even if you’re having a shitty day.’ I guess that’s the essence of it. And it goes a long way.
Work? Feels a lot like work. 🙂 The first two weeks were a very good experience. It’s been a long time since I head a real 8-hr-day. Then this special-producer-screening-and-trailer-delivery thing started happening and dampened my good mood somewhat. Let’s see how things develop.
Riding a bike? That works well. I could get used to that. Dairy products are crazy expensive. 1 liter of milk will set you back 3-4 $. But that’s probably the way it should be. So far, the experience doesn’t live up to our heightened expectations. But it’s also nothing to complain about, even if I just wrote 1200 words that might suggest otherwise. 🙂 There’s good food, too. And good wine.

Yeah. Where is the rest of that wine?