Paraphrase of the Day:  “Traditional farming methods use 10 times less water, 10 times less energy and produce 5 times as much biomass per acre as does modern mechanized farming.”  — Vandana Shiva

Back at kung fu practice today, after a week and a half off due to a bout of sickness.  In the beautiful world of crazy coincidences (and also in the world of there are no accidents) one of our Shi-Bo just so happens to be visiting the Bay Area and just so happened to be out walking at night last Tuesday and just so happened to cross the road in front of the kwoon and just so happened to see the class practicing Sun Style Tai Chi and chose to come in and watch.  And, since she is our Shi-bo, she trained with Sifu and our Shi-Gong Sun Jian Yun a decade ago.  Really awesome, she’s staying here for a couple of months and will be joining us for classes and already she has been an outpouring to couple with Sifu and provide observations and illumination.  She only speaks Mandarin, which makes for some fun listening, observing, and waiting for one of my classmates who speak Mandarin to translate for me…

I bought the soundtrack to Wall-E (DRM-free digital music, woo!).  Very interesting soundtrack, very different from most other soundtracks.  There are some 38 tracks on the album, and each cue is very short, most only about a minute or three.  Which, in thinking about it, makes perfect sense, given the mostly dialogue-less nature of the film — the music is what does some of the speaking.  Each cue truly does relate to a scene or chapter in the film.  Very nifty, and cool for the great musical range of the many cues, including a couple (EVE, and the sort-of reprise in Define Dancing) that are truly very beautiful and instant shiver-material.

Railway tracks have a particular smell to them, it turns out.  Maybe it’s the (probably nasty) oils they put into the ties to weatherproof them.  Discovered this today while walking home, and interestingly I found it a pleasant smell, likely as it brought back many pleasant memories from my youth.

A couple of weeks ago I bought six copies of The Art of Possibility, and gave a copy to each principal and each associate in the office.  The office manager saw me do this, and we had a small conversation and I’m now scheduled to introduce it to the office as a whole tomorrow at the staff meeting.  Ordinarily I think I would hide out and not tell anyone about this, so that if it doesn’t turn out no one would know.  But here I lay it out, I’m brining what’s in this book to the office, and taking on altering the disempowering conversations that are inadvertedly created on a daily basis.  And out of seeing those conversations return our work and our environment (and most importantly our experience) into the realm of creativity, inspiration and excitement.

current possibility:  living life full out

On the photo below, point to “away”:

Midway through the film, I thought to myself “Self, you’ve nearly forgotten that you love power armour! Rock on!”  (’course some readers of this blog may remember one Champions character named Cyclone… built, um, insanely as he was…)

[The mini review: good fun dialogue, good wry humour, some interesting character dev, very nice f/x, would've really sung with a much stronger cast of villains and a strong villainous plot to give more impetus]

Two weekends, two animated features seen. Last weekend I went to see Kung Fu Panda, and last night was the opening night for Pixar’s WALL-E. Two very, VERY different films.

Perhaps spoilers.

When I saw the first trailers for Kung Fu Panda, I didn’t exactly have the greatest feeling about it. I feared yet another parody martial arts film, made further worse with added pop-culture references that Dreamworks tends to use everywhere. I figured I might well have to give it a pass. As it turns out, that’s not what it was. At all.

“I wasn’t interested in making fun of them, because I really think martial arts movies can be great films, they can be as good as any genre movie when they’re done properly […] Let’s try to make it a real martial arts movie albeit one with a comic character and let’s take our action seriously.”

So is quoted the co-director of the film, and thank the stars for it. Rather than make a parody movie, this is a straight up fun martial arts flick much more in the vein of Drunken Master (or even Fong Sai-yuk). Its humour comes from within the story, not just from outlandishly exaggerated antics. The pokes to certain conventions are similarly within bounds. And for me that was the key — they may have tread the line, but they never did cross it.

If there is an award for “blatant abuse of slow motion oh my gods don’t stop its too funny,” this film would be a shoo-in to win. I will never look at using chopsticks in quite the same way again, ever. “Also, I may have stopped his heart.” A good number of clever dialogue bits delivered with great timing and voice changes. A great and wise master. And then when you get nothing, you catch a glimpse into what is a very deep well.

The martial arts action itself was pretty good in the wuxia tradition. The co-director’s quote is accurate, they did take their action sequences seriously. They did a pretty good job of infusing each animal with their representative style (though I did catch Tigress in a crane stance once). The image of Tigress in a black tiger claw move is one of my fav still images from the film. And Po’s use of his, er, physical features in the final showdown was predictable but so well integrated into the overall sequence (and also it didn’t dominate as his only thing) that it didn’t detract.

Special mention has to go to both the introductory sequence and the incredible credit sequence. The former exudes nifty shadow-puppetry stylized style, while the latter for its beautiful technique of heavy layering (scenes, Chinese characters, graphics and more) where each layer is a 3d object of its own. Taken together its one long unfolding scroll, very impressive and downright beautiful in its own right. Huge kudos to them for that.

So a film I enjoyed a good deal.

Then, there is WALL-E. I’m afraid I’m going to have to use superlatives to describe this film. I almost can’t describe it; it so doesn’t to fit into any typical film categories. The first thirty-odd minutes is without dialogue, and is a story told more effectively than a 100 page novel full of words and exposition. The rest, while perhaps somewhat more conventional, masterfully unfolds. This is Art of a very high degree. There are tonnes of beautiful moments in this film, and that’s not necessarily talking about the high degree of technical beauty and 3D mastery (of which this film possesses in totality). To give such emotive ability to two very physically limited characters is in itself a feat. To have a movie with a not-so-sub-text not be or become THE text is also a feat.

My mantra has humorously been “Pixar can do no wrong”, and all of their films I’ve seen have not only met that bar, but often vaulted over it. This is one of those movies. Pixar is never afraid to reinvent what they are doing, they’ve never succumbed to making movies only one way (some specific way they know to be financially successful). And they have huge cajones — even after making a film with a rat and food mixing together in Paris, they make film where half is arthouse-like and told all through visuals and actions.

Yes, I am in awe of this film. There are moments of humour, moments of beauty, moments of homage, and moments of transcendence. And it too has its own quite amazing ending sequence, a mosaic and cave-painting-esque style (which in itself serves as a sort of epilogue, nicely done) that later turns into 8-bit sprites. I’d pick out bits to highlight but I’d end up with too many bits.

And the animated short at the start of the film (Presto) was an amazing homage to old-school animated shorts a la WB and funny as all get-go.

Masterpiece. That terms been floated around by many a reviewer with reference to WALL-E (this one doesn’t use that term, but says many good things), and I will enthusiastically add my name to that list. Awesomely done, Pixar.

One thing I am having difficulty being with is when people use wild inaccuracies and untruths in their ‘arguments’ for or against something.  Along with hyperbole, ad hominem statements et al.

I love that I no longer need ‘unwinding’.

I love that I’ve gotten the secret to not needing to unwind is to not get wound up in the first place.

I love that this leaves me free to do things I enjoy and enjoy them fully, immediately, with no need or purpose of ‘relaxing’ or ‘de-stressing’ overlayed.

I love the energy that leaves me with.

I love that I don’t have to put up with, handle, or cope with things anymore.

I love that I’ve become more in touch and not detached.

I love that I learned and developed this and that I’m not some unique fluke in this way.

… and this may be obvious, but if you do some no-handed kip-ups, and you don’t do them very often, you should expect sore neck muscles the next few days…  (totally worth it, though!)

A great week at work, veryverybusywithlotstodo andohwehaveanewhireandIneedtotrainherwithbrandnewmaterial andbythewaywehavetomeetwithalltheseusersanddolayoutsanddesignthemandrunthembythePMatStanfordtoo andohdon’tforgetthoseothertrheeprojects andyouneedtosetyourselfupatyournewstationafteryourmove. Feels good to be in action.

And speaking of action, getting back into Kung Fu after a week ‘off’ is always amusing — the ancient Chinese addage of “miss one day, lose three days” certainly applies… it takes me a few days to get back up to speed. But back up to speed I am now, after a week and a half of class, teaching, working on the new sooper-seekret set and a good chunk of climbing (more on this in the next paragraph). On friday for our practice, Evan and I went to the volleyball sand pit where he works and practiced Tai Chi on the sand. Two things: one, sun in the late afternoon is H O T ! ! (we ended up wearing our socks) and secondly, it is a very interesting experience. It really was great to work on the spins in sand, there’s much to be gained when you can spiral into the depths if done non-optimally. As I practiced this morning I could tell I got something from that practice, and I think I’ll suggest we do that again sometime soon.

For climbing we visited the Sunnyvale gym — my last outing there left me none to impressed.  The owner of Coyote’s in Ottawa made me wonder if it was due to the fact the gym at that time had just opened (so in a flurry of rapidly putting up routes the routes were somewhat bland).  While the geometry certainly will never be back up to par with their old Santa Clara location, the climbs were pretty good this time round.  Certainly good enough for my forearms to feel it for the next week — something about 60′ high climbs, I think.

I also has me a 4e core book set, and have been reading through those, we played in Eberron last week for the first time in a while, haven’t seen Kung Fu Panda yet (and have heard it is worth seeing), been playing in new-found freedoms, thinking I’d like to seek out some new music (any suggestions anyone?), starting to work on the Northern Shaolin book again, got some car repairs/maintenance done, waiting for my camera back from a repair under warranty, and I could use to schedule some time to do a bit of cleaning up in my apartment.

Paraphrase of the Day to end this post:

“It’s like those fish at the bottom of the ocean — you bring them up and pow, they would explode.  But they never notice the pressure, they’re born into it.  We’re born into some things, and some other things and pressures end up being constant as well, so much so that we don’t even notice we have it.  When they’re removed, all of a sudden we have this experience of ‘wow’, we didn’t even realize what we were under or that there was some other way to be.  I guess that’s similar to the expression ‘weight lifted from one’s shoulders’, suddenly there’s an expansive feeling.”  — Unknown

I so wanted to go to Expo 86. I’m not sure exactly what it was really, but I became quite enamoured with the fair back then (collecting all manner of info and images, best I could in the days way-pre-internet) and would’ve totally loved to head out to Vancouver to revel in it. 22 years later this past week I hit up Vancouver, certainly missing Expo 86 but revelling nonetheless in what I got.

I spent most of the weekend, and indeed the impetus for my trip, in conversations with basically Socrates, Sartre, Heidegger, the Buddha, and a host others wrapped up into one. Needless to say, it was quite the transformational and profound weekend that, to quote Anton Ego, “… rocked me to my core.” It was like stretching the frame larger for life. And humour too, apparently, we were laughing so hard way too often throughout; fun, frivolity with intention and diligence all at once.

During one of the breaks, I had this most extraordinary moment; I don’t even know necessarily how to describe it. Walking back from the waterfront, just being present to the surroundings, there was this literal instant where all of a sudden WHAM, it was like every single building was perfectly in focus, and every colour was vibrant and separate from every other colour, and every other element was separate and distinct from every other element, the sky behind an intense blue backdrop, and the air itself had a crystal clarity. It literally stopped me in my tracks. And then it was gone, and the image was just in my memory. Wow, intense and cool and definitively unexpected. (And who’d've thunk it would occur in Vancouver rather than at Wudangshan or Shaolin…)

Vancouver itself was a pretty cool city, a mix of west-coast flavour (that I know of from Seattle and SF) and Canadian-ness. Right from the airport, which was even pretty nice, perhaps understated vis-à-vis the more grandiose airports but interesting and unfolding in the vertical section/axis: double and triple height spaces opening upwards, walkways playing overhead coupled with dynamically placed building elements (such as the lights) and with one area overlooking another overlooking a yet third area. I found it served as a nice introduction to the city.

The downtown area of Vancouver, especially by the waterfront, is awash in new construction and projects, most of which are condo towers. I had read years ago how Vancouver’s residential quarters were notably successful due to tight control by the planning department and I got to see why and how. Every building engages the ground plane explicitly, and not simply by some rectangular plinth and a straight storefront window system but by designs that could well have been independent buildings. Many of the condo towers actually had what could be described as townhome units surrounding them. Couple in some pretty great gardening/planting and pedestrian access, what was developed is a very strong, engaged and inhabited groundscape. The towers themselves were also fairly varied and with some aspect of sculpturalness to them. Not a bad job at all.

I organized a visit to Granville Island (which, ironically, is not an island anymore) and it was great for me to wander around, both because of the high adaptive re-use content (Granville used to be an, and actually still has a few, industrial area) but also for the bohemian and eclectic feel of the site, with studios, an art school, galleries, diverse shops, and, of course, the market. I so do love urban markets, and many cities have one (St Lawrence Market, Pike Place Market, Reading Terminal Market (my accidental discovery of which I still smile at), etc) and it creates such an awesome heart to a city. This one is a bit removed from the city centre proper perhaps, but with watertaxies readily available that might not be such a big deal. And certainly it had all one could expect from a market, with farmer’s booths galore and great food abounding.

Also checked out Stanley Park (and got to hear the 9 o’clock gun downtown one evening, which was quite interesting), and I got to wander around Canada Place, which was, of course–hooray!, built for Expo 86. And saw the new Exhibition Centre expansion, which without its skin reminded me of the Canadian War Museum but turns out isn’t by the same architect (and the renderings seem less impressive). One super large fully-planted green roof, though, which is remarkable! I also wandered over to check out Safdie’s Vancouver Public Library. I wouldn’t call it one of his more successful buildings; the concept is interesting (if a bit to literal in its inspiration of the Colosseum, not sure why he kept some of the more literal elements rather than being simply informed by them) and there are some nice spaces within (the ring of desks along the outer wall separated from the stacks by an open atrium most notably) yet they remain just that, spaces here and there. The outer plaza also seems oddly blank (literally a sea of pavers — an attempt to draw people into the interior public court?).

My travelling companions, some of whom were visiting Canada for the first time, were duly impressed with the city, loving the city for its friendliness and cleanliness. The scenery was also great, with snow-capped mountains in the distance even as we basked in the sun (well, one of the days) by the bay, float-planes taking off and with each day a different type of clouds playing with those mountain peaks.

The coolest of the coolnesses, however, bookended the trip. I so love it when the universe organizes itself like so. Arriving in town, I went to dinner with a great close friend of mine from Ottawa/Uni who just so happened to be visiting Vancouver at the same time. Was awesome to catch up with her and just walk around and talk and see her baby boy. Near the end of the trip, I headed into a nice little café/bar/restaurant to give the waiter something, and mentioned I would be returning to Vancouver next year on my Halifax-to-Vancouver trans-continental rail ride. The waiter points to the only other patron in the restaurant and says, “Wow, crazy coincidence, for this guy here is about to get on a train to ride to Halifax.”

I walked up and gave the rail traveller a high-five.