Post'd

Yay, Shanghaiist published my mini-article about Friday night! I had a really good time. Before the show I downloaded my camera's user manual and did a small bit of research about shutter speed, aperture size, and how those apply to pictures. (Who'd have thought reading a manual would be so useful??) I think this research helped because my pictures turned out pretty good. I now better understand the tradeoffs between long and slow shutter speeds and how those affect my camera.

I did some quick 'net-research on shooting in nightclubs, and everyone seems to agree it's super-difficult to do it well with just basic gear. I mean, it's easy to get cool pictures I guess, but what I'm interested in also is super-clear shots of specific people, such as the DJ. That can be tough depending on if/how the DJ booth is lit and how far away from the DJ I am. And it was tough to get so close to Sven because the dancefloor was packed, but I think my pictures came out decently. Like many things in life, taking pictures is all about trade-offs. Haha. I will probably upload larger images to flickr, so watch out for those.

After the show, Tim and I went to this place called City Diner, a 24-hour cafe that serves American food. I had a triple-decker French Toast sandwich. I kid you not. As soon as I saw that menu item I was like "That's genius! Why haven't I seen this in America before??" Very awesome. I'm totally going to lobby Kerbey Lane for that menu item.

Oh, and it SNOWED yesterday. Pretty hard and all day long. Only a little bit of it stuck to the ground. But it was beautiful. And I got a haircut, which didn't seem to result in the disaster I'd expected. I didn't even tell the guy what to do or attempt to explain myself - he just went to work and it ended up looking halfway decent, I think.

I figured now that I have flickr, I might upload pictures that I've taken over the past couple years. For example, I have hundreds of pictures from my trips to Miami and the Bay Area that I really should upload. I also have tons of pictures just from parties in general. Maybe I'll do that now before my tutor comes over :-)

This upcoming week is interesting because I have to work Monday - Sunday, haha. It's because the Shanghai office gets Monday - Friday off next week for the Chinese New Year. People have explained it to me a couple times but I'm still not 100% sure why it's that way. I think because Monday and Tuesday aren't official holidays but the office is closed anyway, so we have to work two days to make up the hours? Oh well. I have a party to go to on Saturday night, so we'll see how effective I am on Sunday morning :-)

The cool thing also is that I can go see the Super Bowl, which is showing here at 7 AM on Monday February 4th. Because I don't have work that day I can wake up ass-early and go watch the game somewhere. Still haven't figured out where yet, but I've seen many places with ads for their Super Bowl TVs or whatever, so that'll be cool. I'm also scouting the best locations for watching fireworks - so far I've been told the Bund, Century Park, and People's Square are good places to go.

It looks like a surprisingly clear day today, which means it might be time for some sightseeing!