f.blog

i ended up celebrating till 4am on thursday the gay marriage decision… the castro was closed down to form a huge impromptu party where everyone descended to dance and drink!

i love this city and what a wonderful day to commemorate.

today is one of the happiest most important days of my life. it is the beginning of a future that promises to bring fair rights and liberties to other gay men and women in california, and indirectly across the nation.

thank you san francisco, and thank you gavin newsom.

Gay Marriage Constitutional!

coming to a disney park near you…

Wall-E Spotted in LA! from Blink on Vimeo.

so i am finally writing something again. a bit ironic that i only find space to write an update on my fmx trip as i travel crammed in a huge airplane at 38,000 ft two hours away from san francisco.

the last couple of days in germany were definitely the busiest. from meeting a ton of new people, to my talk early in the morning, everything was fantastic. i will definitely repeat the experience next year and i’m hoping that fmx becomes an annual thing, we’ll see how it goes.

so either way, there i was at 10am speaking to a pretty packed room. not a lot of people, but still quite a crowd considering the night before it was the official conference party and i only went to bed at 330am. was fine, i didn’t really have a voice but managed to talk away the whole time and answer a few questions in the end.

right after the talk, we ended up doing a q&a panel with all the other pixar representatives so that students and other professionals could just sit around in the same room and ask whatever they’ve always wanted to ask about working at pixar and doing what we do. it was a great idea. we have never done such a thing and i definitely hope we consider doing it again in the future considering how good the feedback was.

the rest of the day was spent seeing some other talks, talking to more students, and just lazying around trying not to fall asleep.

of course, this being the last day in germany we couldn’t miss going out again, so there we were at the bars as usual till late. i think i slept two hours before having to wake up again to catch the tgv to france.

so before i go to the paris chapter, i just gotta say germany is awesome. everyone is super nice and friendly and helpful. i had a bit of a hard time with food, as i’m vegetarian and i don’t think they know tofu exists.

the funniest thing that happened this whole stay was when we went to this turkish restaurant that was recommended to us by one of the cute guys from the hotel. so we’re sitting there and we keep asking for hummus. and they keep bringing everything else but hummus. including fries. and we ask for more hummus. and they bring more fries. and we start getting pissed. and bitchy. either way, they even come back to us and ask us “so… do you want hummus?”. and of course us incredulous, are like, wtf, we’ve been waiting for that hummus since we got here. so we said yes, and sat patiently to see if we got hummus this time. and a huge plate of fries later we just laughed and gave up on the stupid hummus.

well, forward a couple of days and we’re having falafel with a friend of ours who is german. and we’re sitting there and one of us goes to the counter to ask for fries. but the guys don’t understand and she just shouts out “POMMES”!! i was like… wait. what did you just say? POMMES!!!! so in germany, you pronounce “pommes” as “pummus”. which is remarkably similar to hummus. but it means fries. and “hummus” in germany is pronounced as “hou-mus”. so basically everytime we asked for hummus in the turkish restaurant, they assumed we were asking for fries. so they kept bringing us fries. i never ate so many fries in my life.

back to the tgv. fast train. sure. what a dump of a train though. super uncomfortable. i think i never did so much gymnastics to be able to fit in that chair and fall asleep. but there we were in paris three hours later, which is pretty impressive if you ask me. and paris. what can you say about paris? it’s simply beautiful. it’s what london strives to be but doesn’t quite get there. or something like that. it’s gorgeous. super friendly people, clean, just about perfect.

we stayed in this awesome little hotel in the st germain neighborhood. great thing. basically the two evenings we were there we just bought a ton of wine, baguettes and cheese and stayed in the little outdoor patio they had filled with couches just talking and chilling out, the woman from the front desk was possibly the nicest person i ever met while traveling. she joined us for wine, and recommended us better wine and baguettes for the second day. the real french kind. she also reserved a restaurant for us in the coolest little neighborhood ever, a mix of st michel and st germain, where there’s a ton of people on the street eating, playing music, etc. apparently it’s one of the artistic neighborhoods of paris, where in one day in june everyone just sits out and plays music.

loved walking around after the wonderful dinner we had. we somehow ended up in the seinnes at night and on the only pedestrian bridge there, that becomes this huge party hangout at night. apparently because now you can’t smoke in bars, everyone just goes to that bridge and sits drinking and doing picnics and smoking. literally the whole bridge was packed with people singing, getting wasted and dancing.

what a perfect way to end the stay. as that wasn’t enough at exactly midnight the eiffel tower became this huge sparkly light show, i can’t even describe it.

so yeah, with a smile i’m sitting here now almost at home. happy that i’m getting home and happy that i had such an unforgettable experience with friends that are fascinating and incredible. i couldn’t ask for more.

yeah so apparently i’m a bit of a douche and forgot to bring an adaptor to charge my camera battery. which means no more pretty pics to look at.

fortunately my goddess almighty and friend neneh has fabulously lend me hers so i can now charge my juice and get ready for another extravaganza of photos once i get my ass to paris.

so since last time things i’ve seen and done:

1. mercedes museum

2. cemeteries
3. conference
4. lots of food
5. lots of fun

that’s pretty much it. since the conference actually began i’ve been tired again running around talking to people and trying to be helpful. conferences are fun, but they’re definitely exhausting. today i ended up going to this centuries old cemetery and just sit there looking at the tombstones and relaxing.

not sure if it’s the imminent surroundings of death, but it really relaxes me. it’s kinda like forcing my mind to come back to earth and nature and re-attach with the rest of my body. who knows. i’m a freak, that’s probably what it means.

so everything is ready for my talk tomorrow, which should be fun.

and apart from that, i just want to sleep. paris will be great. but i miss home so i can’t wait to go back and be in my own bed.

oh and ps. apparently i eat a lot compared to everyone else in the group. everyone keeps making fun of me of the insane amounts of food i’m constantly eating.

and another day begins, having breakfast at 6am as i can’t even sleep to save my life. so we decided to start walking as soon as everyone else was awake.

right outside the hotel, we noticed posters all over the place for this club next door called The Gay Mafia. great. apparently the gays are all over the place here. oh and also found out, and this is for woofie, that the main leather bar of the town is called The Eagle. nice.

there’s a rock climbing gym nearby and also this crazy furniture store where i wanted to buy everything.

we keep walking and we go into what apparently is a typical pedestrian street around here, full of little cafes and restaurants. this is great, i love stuff like that where you can just chill outside sipping a cappuccino and enjoying a relaxing time with friends.

walking around a bit further, we came up to this really old church. beautiful. i tend not to like churches as they depress the shit out of me. but somehow this was actually a gorgeous one! really old stone building with beautiful stained glass work inside, i loved it.

and right behind the church this great small farmer’s market set place. they mostly sold flowers and jam. so gorgeous. and the people are the sweetest thing ever, not sure why germans have a tough rep.

and of course, being americans we had to have a mandatory photo opp in front of starbucks. we also bought just before the TGV tickets to Paris. we’re leaving from Stuttgart on thursday morning and arriving in paris three hours later on the 250 mph train. i. can’t. wait.

then there’s this enormous park that covers most of the city and what a beautiful place. we walked it from one side to the other. it has some old ruins in the middle that were transported there sometime a few centuries ago. and a crapload of flowers. i was so relaxed.

and that’s pretty much it. after all this walk we ended up at the famous zoo where the polar bear was born and it made me so irritated that all these animals were jam packed in cages that i couldn’t even go in. we ended up taking the train back to the hotel where i worked out at the gym for an hour, to avoid falling asleep.

then it was wine night. bought some 2 euro wine bottles and sat down with a couple more folk from pixar that arrived last night. ended up going to this awful greek restaurant where the food was great but the waiter was the most retarded asshole you could possibly imagine. i wanted to kick his ass, and i’m usually very patient with people haha

so there you go. day 2 is over. day 3 is just beginning. more pics to follow.

oh and here’s the info on the FMX presentations (yeah, i’m actually here for work). with my bio and stuff:
FMX Talks

so here’s me waiting happily for my first flight in this trip… i was flying on BA from sfo to london heathrow’s new terminal 5. things went super smooth. fortunately i didn’t have anyone sitting next to me on the flight so i could actually fall asleep. and yeah, tylenol pm mixed with alcohol do wonders for that.

i am now in my hotel in stuttgart and it’s great. the town is ultra clean and super quiet. full of smart cars everywhere which i take as a sign that i should really sell my mini once i get back. but either way, the germans are clean. and apparently they trust people cause i can open the giant massive window on my hotel room and jump out of the window if i wanted to.

it also has a gym, a pool and a sauna. the receptionist dude already took the liberty of very happily letting us know that the pool is open 24/7 and we can go skinny dipping after 1am.

nice.

I’m doing a talk on Wednesday at the FMX conference in Stuttgart. Flying tonight to London on BA, connecting to Stuttgart. Then on Thursday I’m taking the train to Paris and chilling out for a couple of days, before flying back to SFO.

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