The weekend started in the pub, one of the English guys here is leaving soon so we all went out to celebrate. This is the first evening we’ve been to the pub since I got here, they’re like techies everywhere, not the most sociable bunch. A very peculiar evening, there was lots of drinking going on but while all the Europeans were getting louder and louder the locals seemed to be getting quieter and quieter. Not sure if thats just normal or they were wary of their Finnish boss being there, or what. The pub was a ‘traditional English pub’ run by a mad Canadian, it was nearly as plastic as some of the pubs back home but it didn’t seem to matter so much – the plastic was for show, it was never going to be a real pub.
As the evening went on I got pounced upon by a Finnish doctor whose husband was distracted by the dartboard. She seemed lovely but absolutely insisted I go and stay with them when I visit Finland next…are all Finns like that? Or did I get an extreme one? All of a sudden everyone else had gone home and it was just me, my boss (line, as opposed to team) and his boss left. Some scary things were said which it would be imprudent to repeat here.
Yesterday I finally got a DVD writer – I’d kinda thought I was only going to get a CD writer but the price difference was small enough that it was worth getting the better drive. Of course, I’d forgotten that the software was going to be in Japanese, so if anyone out there has a copy of ULead Moviewriter or VideoStudio can you guide me through the buttons I need to press to write a disk? Just the positions of the buttons, not what it says, would be most useful. I think I’ve got the idea for writing a data disk, but I’m not sure its all correct yet…must pick up some English writing software while I’m back in October (unless anyone can suggest a sensible download, less than a couple of megs worth).
To go with the drive I treated myself to a couple of DVDs, Jam Films (which is a collection of short films, I’ve watched a couple of them, they’re brilliant so far, but I don’t understand them yet), Le Labyrinthe D’herbes (which has a cover surreal enough to make me want to buy it, no idea what its like) and Sigue Sigue Sputnik live from the venue just down the road (which is a sputnik gig, in Japan).
Today I went over to Roppongi again, after the guys on Friday said that I should like it I thought I’d give it another go…Paradise Towers a go go, I was expecting an eight foot high Bertie to pop out any minute. Its another of the office block/shopping centre crossbreeds, but this one is bigger and better and more audacious than the others, partly because its still new and the fountains still work but mostly because its got an apparently random distribution of corridors which are in no sense alike from one floor to the next. The whole place was made that extra bit spookier by the top of the tower disappearing into the clouds.
And now, I’ve got some video editing to do if I can figure out how to convert .vnt files into something sensible – they seem to be give-or-take base64 encoded .3gp files, but with some odd head stuff. I bet its syncML or something, isn’t it?
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