j * m e

[Downtown with Bno]

Cherry Blossoms!

Bno and I having Megabite pizza. Sooo goooood.

On Davie St.

[3 Shot]

James and I drove all the way to Burnaby to get gear and drove all the way back to Surrey to shoot. Originally our plan was to shoot the cherry blossoms. However.... all of them are gone!!!!!!!! =( Makes me sad. They're so pretty!!!!

We had to resort to other things for our project. He decided to film this slug.

[I found more cherry blossoms up in Burnaby that are in full bloom]

[Shooting]

In Cinematography class; lighting

I kinda wish I had more shooting days. We have a course this quarter where we shoot something every week. I still feel like it's not enough though.

Kirsten on camera

[Spies]

I have yet to start up my photography portfolio. Have been meaning to send out pictures to be printed. But I guess as each day passes it's been growing. Maybe I'll upload to flickr first.

[Jammin']

Brandon's uncle has a huge warehouse out in Ladner. The guys were thinking of turning it into a place where they can jam. I thought that it'd be pretty empty and they could set up their stuff in there. But man, it was filled with tons of junk. Tons and tons of old treadmills. There was a trailer in there. There was tons of stuff. And in the far corner, there was a drum set. Brandon set up his amp. And eventually, his uncle came by with his bass amp. Dustin was on drums.

It was SO loud. I couldn't hear anything. I was freezing my butt off that night too. The weather man (who is never right about the weather) said it was gonna be SUNNY and WARM. So silly Jamie went and wore board shorts. Yay me. I looked cool in the day time. By night, I was very cold.

So yea. The guys are currently still trying to finish their songs. Eventually, we will start planning a music video.

[Badminton Reunion]

It's been ages since I picked up my badminton racket. I kinda wish that I had time to go out to the rec to play. Need to schedule my work better! Things seem to pop up days before and I end up having to reschedule many things. Wish I had more time!!

Sylvia is back from Alberta for goodz. All of us hung out at Peter's. Caught up with old times. It felt just like before. Like nothing has changed.

Diane has a really funny picture of her and Sylvia which I took on her camera. Unfortunately I don't have it yet.

Part of the reason we had this get together was also to celebrate Raf's birthday. He just turned 20!

Can't wait for my birthday!

[Wii Madness]

My dad

Ever since Joey started going to her friends to play games on the Wii and coming home with lots of exciting stories to tell, my parents thought it'd be something fun to get. My aunt and cousin brought their's up here over Spring break and we were all pretty amazed by it (esp my mom). We've had it for about a week now and at first I didn't really find it all that special. I think it's growing on me. Tennis is QUITE fun.Yesterday I played with my mom and Brandon. My arm was so sore by the end of our session. And not just my left arm but my right as well coz my mom's QUITE dangerous when you play a sport like that in such a tiny room. Yes I got SMACKED with a Wii controller! Imagine being whacked by a tennis racket!

[Jmerz + Sushi = >={ ]

Jmerz no likey sushi. However, Bno says I need to eat it coz it's healthy. And I guess it is. But gah! Jmerz no likey seaweed.

I got terriyaki sushi rolls and yeesh. I didn't like those either. Brandon ended up eating my share and I ate 6...gyoza. =P

[71st Annual Washington State Open]

Yessss. Something to look forward to. After the first trip down there to compete, our group agreed that this would be the one time of the year we'd all get together to play this tournament and hang out. I wasn't planning on going this year coz of school. However, I have found a way! I will be needing to shoot a documentary for my cinematography class. Mwaha! Maybe Piotr Mazur will answer some of my questions! =P

Been collaborating with James here. We've done a couple projects together.

Things have been HECTIC the past... actually.. today! Well the entire week's been pretty crazy. I got to hang out with Brandon lots this week. He's been having dinner over here lots. We've been working on a radioplay that I have to do for my sound design class. I didn't like the idea of it. However after Brandon forced me to write my script and let me record his voice, I got interested in it. I spent the last 10 hours at school editing it. After going through all the sound effects and stuff and messing around with the pitches, I fell in love with it. =P It's not perfect yet and I think I could re-record the narration (I got Joey to read lines for m) but it's due on Saturday so I have absolutely no time to do anymore.

I think my brain's gonna explode soon. I think I believe I'm superwoman coz I'm actually squeezing in this entry at a time like this. Here's the list of things I have to do in the next 2 days:

-Transfer money for gear rental
-Find out when FH graduation and Dry Grad are
-Work on Olaf's birthday video
-Shooting "Less is More" assignment tomorrow
-Edit "Less is More" on Saturday
-Fix levels and add music to Radioplay tomorrow
-Gather video clips of projects for Open House on Saturday

Rob caught me in the hallway today. He asked if I wanted to earn monies on Saturday. My answer. YES! He said all I have to do is showcase my work for the parents and students who come by for the open house and explain what I've learnt and stuff to them. 15$ an hour to do that for 4 hours. Sure why not!

I will also be getting more shifts next week for work as one of the girls is taking 3 weeks off. I told my supervisor to use me as a standby from now on and I will get a second job. Still have my heart set on doing odd jobs here and there. However, I can't start that until I finish all my major school projects and until I finish my business card and demo reel.

Other things on my agenda:

-Watch Harold and Kumar and Iron Man with Bno
-Pierce ears
-Diane's birthday video/dvd
-Hogen's birthday video/dvd
-Clear hard drive
-Buy myself an aloe vera plant
-Start making more friendship bracelets again
-Burn all photos onto CDs
-Start photography portfolio
-GET NEW JOB

Oh I have lots more on my mind.

[Candy for Breakfast]

Brandon's off school for the next 2 weeks. He starts summer school right after and will keep going until the end of summer for "normal people".

Since I haven't had any work, it's given me a chance to spend more time planning out my projects. I have a radio play due this weekend and Brandon agreed to be my voice actor(s). =) We'll be recording tomorrow.

This was our first attempt to make pancakes weeks ago. We mixed.. flour.. egg.. milk.. lol. It didn't work. It tasted like goo.

He came over this morning and we made pancakes. =P. I decided that since it was too much work to make pancakes from scratch so I got Aunt Jemimah's Mix! =P Her pancakes are so fluffy! Mmmm. We made about 10 and each one had a different topping. =P There was syrup, nutella, peanut butter, butter, icing sugar, chocolate chips, strawberries.

One thing we forgot was honey. But I don't know about honey and pancakes. =S. Gasp. Omg we forgot jam too. But we had strawberries.

Surprised I didn't feel sick after. It was quite gross. Pancakes and that much sugar in the morning.

We watched the UEFA soccer game today. Brandon was so excited and he wanted me to watch it with him. The match started at 11:45. Chelsea vs Liverpool. I'm not the type of person who is crazy over sports matches. The only sport I've ever been into was badminton and I never really watched matches on tv or on youtube. So whenever there's a hockey game on or something, even though Brandon knows I wouldn't have seen it, it's like he has this hope that maybe I did. When the soccer match started, he looked at me and said.. Ok Jmerz... What teams are playing? Who are we rooting for? What colour are they? What is this game!?!? Lol. He made me dress in all black to watch it.

I had to start writing my script for our radio play so I did that while we watched. I'm getting him to be 5 different people.

The game went on and on and liverpool had one goal for most of the game. Brandon was obviously very into it. He started getting kinda disappointed near the end coz Chelsea still hadn't scored a goal yet. When he thought the game was over with 2 seconds left, the ball bounces off some dudes head and into the goal. Lol Liverpool scored the goal for Chelsea. Brandon thought it was magical. He went crazy when that happened. Lol. After being in school for 2 and a half quarters, I've learnt that everything in the media is somehow planned out. Even reality tv shows are planned out.

[Be True]

Everything around me connects. I get stressed when I fall behind. I fall behind when I don't look after myself. I don't eat properly which means I'm not looking after myself. I get lazy which also means I'm not thinking about the consequences. I'm not letting myself take breaks. I'm letting myself take too many breaks. I allow myself not to care at times and simply just live and put my worries aside which results in MORE stress.

A few months ago, I picked up the Yoga Journal and found it quite interesting to read. I believe the reason for picking up that copy was coz I had been really sick and it was sickie after sickie and my immune system was just a wreck.

I thought that maybe I should take up yoga. And well, my schedule is busy enough. I hardly have enough time to stop to think. Lol. How am I supposed to sit in a room and stretch AND think.

What I found was pretty interesting. Reading the articles made me feel good and it taught me what to think and how to deal with my feelings. Now I'm no -Yogi- as they call them, and I don't do yoga stretches like those crazy people in the magazine do. One of my -to-do-before-I-die activities is to really get into yoga. Seems to be the -in-thing nowadays. =P

[Madness]

My internal clock has gone nuts. I've probably mentioned before that because of my strange schedules, I don't make sense of the days anymore. I don't feel Mondays or Fridays. Weekdays are the same as weekends. There isn't a weekend (break) to look forward to like back in highschool where Saturday and Sunday are the days where you just chill and do whatever you feel like doing.

Nowadays, my brain's scattered all over the place. I'm not sure if it's normal for someone like me to be thinking like this. I'm not even sure if I can explain the way my brain's been functioning in words. I don't even know if I could express it any other way. I've still been doodling whenever I'm on the train or trying to kill time. My drawings are all the same nowadays or follow the same theme.

All I know is that tonight is the first night in a long time I've been able to sit here and blog about these thoughts. I do believe that I work well under pressure. My brain seems to be a lot more alert when I have tons of things to do. The past few weeks have been kinda down as work has pretty much completely cut me off hours. I don't know what administration is doing. Ever since our initial manager left her position, everything just kinda sucked. I sense lots of favouritism going on. I'm probably just being a grump.

I still have the same goals as I've had when I started school. I guess my ambitions have been growing slowly as each day goes by and as I start learning more and more about what I can do.

I've started work on my -real- business card. Thinking of putting up an AD in the village to see if people want a videographer to shoot their parties or events. We'll see what I can do with that or if anyone in Fraser Heights does want a service like that. Everyone at school seems to be able to pick up all these odd jobs here and there. Part of me thinks, hey you're just a student..how are you gonna execute what a professional videographer does. And well, I think, anything is possible. And the only time I'm failing is if I give up. So I'm gonna try anything and everything I possibly can.

[65 Days of Static]

In Sound Design, whoever wants to bring in tunes can share their musical interests with the class. There are only a couple guys who have brought stuff in. So far, we've heard some really good stuff. But today, I fell in love with this band, 65 Days of Static The song I like is The Fall of Math. Defnitely how I feel right now.

[Pentax K1000]

Have yet to see how the first roll turned out. I will next week though!!

[Visual Communications]

We shot a Mis-en-scene in class today. It was all planned out in a matter of minutes. We screwed up the first take right from the beginning coz Pablo started laughing. James and Warren were just so convincing. They were beating the crap out of each other. There were a bunch of people playing frisbee. They dropped everything and watched these 2 guys throw punches. 2 guys even went up on the hill to see if they could do anything. Everyone in the cafe was looking. Ah funny.

[Joey vs Joey test]

Ever since Ben played both roles in his dialogue assignment, I've been wanting to try it out. I finally got Joey to act for me. We went out today and shot a couple things. So I have some footage to play around with. This is the test for what we had in mind. We shot sort of a conversation as the final. Still working on it. Maybe I'll get it done by tomorrow.

[Happy 'Birsstday' Olaf!]

My mom was asked to be a photographer for her friend's friend's birthday party. She asked me along to go get some footage. We've never formally shot a party or an event before so she was all over the place. I think we went in there like the S.W.A.T team or something. Cameras wrapped around our necks. Camera bags looped everywhere. Tripod... video.. second video.. camera... second camera. It was a mess. We weren't organized. My mom used my camera and snapped pictures for the first hour or so. Eventually she switched to video. So I thought it'd give me the opportunity to get some pictures with my dad's SLR. So I put away the handy cam, take out the camera. And this german guy (it was a german birthday party) stands up for no reason at all and screams..."HEHYYYYYYY". And I'm like. NOOOO we didn't get that on tape! It was so random.

Over all I think we got quite a bit of footage and pictures. It was a really dark restaurant so photos and video.. well.. not tooooo spectacular. I had to turn on the night vision thingamajig which made everyone look like ghosts. But at least you could see them.

We were in that little restaurant with maybe 36 Germans, 1 English man, and 3 Canadians. I loved it. German's such a crazy language! They'd all stare at us. And speak uber (hah German!) fast. The only words I understood were, excuse the spelling, "shaizah" and "vhat". And I guess Happy Birsssthday. I don't know if it's just the way they say it or if it really is their word. Or are they just like other languages who mix English in with their speaking.

We were there for about 3 hours and by the end of the night, I was pooped. I smelled like smoke and these crazy people were drinking so much. When we were about to leave, Olaf comes up to me. He goes (in his thick German accent) "Jehmeh...come!" He grabs my arm and leads me around the corner. I was like.. um should I be afraid. He brings me to the back and points at the bar. And says.. "drink!" Lol. I was like.. yay! no! lol. Then I think he got kinda sad coz he thought I didn't want to accept his gift when really I meant I'm under aged and can't drink. Not til June!!

[Cherry Blossoms :D]

Brandon and I agreed that Burnaby is the "transition" city. Surrey is nice. Downtown Vancouver is nice. And in the middle, there's Burnaby, very grey. When I got off at Brentood Station, it was hailing. I really like the skyline though. The tall buildings.

The past couple of days, the weather's cleared up and it's already starting to feel like summer. Yesterday I believe we peaked 21 degrees. Pretty darn warm for Spring.

These are the cherry blossom trees by IBM by my school. I never really noticed that these trees are everywhere.

I got myself a Pentax K1000, second hand. We used these in school. Very sturdy camera. Lol you could kill someone with it, really. I've snapped about 15 pictures. I figure the first few are gonna turn out horrible. But I'm sure it'll allow me to learn how to use the proper f/stops and shutter speed combinations. Digital cameras do it all for you. It's kinda like how I forced myself not to use an eraser by drawing with pen and only pen. Eventually, I got more and more confident and now... lol I don't like drawing with pencil. But yea.. at least I don't always feel the need to use an eraser coz that drives me mental. Hating what I draw and erasing it over and over until the paper rips.

[Where in the world is Osama Bin Laden?]

[Baraka]

Watched this in Sound Design. Awesome film.