November 2007

Had to update my “Alien Registration Card”.
I look French. Don’t I look French? I think I look French. Like a Frenchman.

I’ve had this reoccurring nightmare for years now. My neighbors must be sick of my screams. It’s pretty simple and it goes like this:

I wake up in my bed. It’s at night, but the streetlights makes it possible to see that all the furniture’s (and clothes dumped on the floor) are in the same order as I left them before I went to sleep that day.

I’m lying down in my bed but can’t move no matter how much I try.

Sometimes it’s the knob on the door turning, sometimes it’s the window-panes sliding, but a person always does enter. And it’s always too dark to see its face.

I try to get up and do something about it but my body never moves, ever.
He comes closer and all I can do is panic.

That’s when I scream.

That’s also when I finally move, but, for real. Really waking up. It’s so freaking chilly to see the same clothes on the floor as in the dream when I do.

I get this dream a few times a month.

Anyhow. Something must have happened since the dream changed for the first time yesterday.
Everything is the same, the person came in through the window and moves in towards me, but this time he’s not heading straight forwards me – this time he passes by with a few steps. He looks back at me and for the first time I could actually see his face, thanks to the streetlights outside.

It’s no one I know, btw.

Young Japanese though. Previous tenant? No wonder the rent is so cheap for this apartment, in this area.

Getting back to why I am here, Japan, (or at least the reason I came the first time); design.

With all the Geisaing and sayonaras (including springcleaning. Autumncleaning) behind me what’s left is a fresh feeling of whatever comes from here will be new.

Well also what’s left is my ads (and gradwork. And work).

But all wasn’t 100% fresh. My closets only have clothes that are year’s old, pants that are too big, so on.
I went shopping and it felt great. Got a compliment right away first day wearing the stuff.

Anyhow,

Had a re-look at my ads so far. For the first time I notice that I’ve really got some good things going. And when a designer is actually satisfied with his/her work it’s a very very good thing. Felt great.

Contacted some people in the industry and slowly start setting up some meetings, and they’re happy to see me.
Felt great.

Good friends are planning to come back to Japan next year and we’re already planning for fun.

On top of things I just finished structuring the layout of how I’d present my stuff at the gallery in Harajuku come early next year. Felt great too. It’ll be sweeter then cheap annin-doufu.

Jonas might (I hope) set me up with some of his music for the exhibiton. Greatness.

Linda, whom I’ve never met, told me I looked “rugged”. First time I heard that. Pretty great.

Daniel, my French (and designing) friend is leaving Japan (not great) but for what seems to be one of the most awesome jobs (great) – and I’m happy for that.

Gyama, for some reason, feels even more of a brother. We talked about me applying for Draft (the company, not the army) so we’d work together. That’d be great too. I’d make him mask images and color correct them for me until he’d choke!

Generally, stress is finally starting to ease back to the levels where they’re actually useful and not disparaging. Great, great great. Life is good. Design is good.

Greatness plentiful abound. What am I still doing inside wasting time writing my blog?

That’s right. Later dudes & Bettys.

The long weekend of sleeping outside in plastic tents for Geisai for about 3 hours a day, plus the trip to Yamanakako right after with only 2 hours sleep (okay, an extra hour or so in the car. And of course that sleepless day of 10 hours work that same day topped off with what was suppose to be a meeting at the university for another few hours really had me…a bit worn.

While the above isn’t really related to the actual work I’m doing (that is so time-consuming) I’d like to repeat what was previously stated: I’m busy. I time-manage. Barely. And I’m back now, working at the ad agency while working with my personal work while working on a grad-work.

Here’s the ice-frosting on the time-cake –or– signs of obsessivity bordering to mad scientist-like yahooness:

I’ve created a monster.
My own time-managment software monster:

(…looks pretty innocent for a monster though)

Getting slightly fed-up with scheduling in Excel (I’m not going anywhere near Microsoft Project. I heard PMs hate the thing) I made my own thing. The biggest nuance about Excel was that it actually stole time whenever I had to rearrange tasks. To put it in more ‘mad scientist -like manner: it didn’t map relations between tasks, and thus wouldn’t move stuff around coherently. It all had to be done manually – copying/pasting away precious time. Oh, preeecious.

Nor could it predict delays or automatically fill gaps. Or help when I were synching availability with other people – couldn’t see what could be moved around, schedule-wise, to fit dates that suited everyone trying to decide where to have a dinner after Geisai.