Evacuation

So around 6:00pm on Friday afternoon I was making dinner and I heard a sound in the apartment I've never heard before. It was coming from a central speaker in the middle of the living room. I then thought, "is that the fire alarm?"... indeed it was. I turned off the stove, went to my room and was trying to grab all my recording gear and my camera. I then heard people yelling down the hallway to evacuate the building so at that point I dropped everything and grabbed my cell phone and my wallet.

Taking the stairs down 16 floors wasn't too bad but as I got down to about the 3rd floor I could smell something wasn't right. As we exited the building we saw white smoke coming up through the vents and walked out through the lobby down the steps in the picture above. Firetrucks were on the scene within minutes and everyone was pouring out into the streets. I waited for a bit to see what was going on but obviously with all the commotion no one had any answers. I didn't want to wait around so I walked back to school to wait it out.

I returned back to the building at around 11:30pm and security said it was ok to go back in. There was a distinct chemical odor but I never felt sick or nauseous. My room mate came in shortly after and everything seemed fine. About an hour later we heard the alarm go off again but then it quickly went off. We were wondering if we should get out but we didn't hear anyone leaving the building so we turn on the TV to the front entrance camera and saw no one exiting and that people were actually coming back in.

We thought everything was back to normal and called it a night.

So Saturday morning I wake up and go to school (as usual), but then I run into my room mate in the hallway and he says they had to evacuate the building again! We got in touch with our landlord and found out they were having a meeting about the situation at the Sheraton adjacent to our building. We walked over to our place and it looked like a scene straight out of I Am Legend or Cloverfield. There were even more firefighters, Haz Mat trucks, TV crews, and anyone closer to the building was wearing a gas mask. Uhh, not good. At least they were grouping us floor by floor so the firefighters could go into our apartments to grab "any essentials". At least they were nice enough to grab my laptop.

So for right now, I'm staying with a classmate who lives 2 blocks away. Hopefully they'll clear everything and we'll be able to go back in tomorrow. At this point I have no idea. I'll keep you all posted. For now, I'm ok so don't worry.

Here are some articles on what happened:
CBC News link
Vancouver Sun

Quick Break

So I'm just about to end week 3 of Term 3. The assignments and projects are nonstop and things are only getting tougher. In a couple weeks I need to come up with an idea for what will end up being my final project for the course. We will need to pick an short film or animation in which we to the entire Sound Design for.

In this term we get to collaborate with some of the Term 6 Foundation students to essentially be Sound "mentor" for their final projects. I'm helping a student with a movie trailer so hopefully I'll be able to get the final piece and show you guys what I've been up to all this time. Then we will be working with some of the Film Production students where we'll be doing production recording for their projects also.

We're also getting more exposure to sound in Video Games. I never realized how much goes into designing sound to make a game seem flawless. That's what they keep drilling into us here at school, "If you do your job right, no one will notice". It's a thankless job but someone's gotta do it.

So I was lucky enough to catch up with some of you over the few days I had back in DC. It was great to see everybody but the visit was too short. I have another 5 days off in October and the next long break will be the last 2 weeks of December. As you can see it's hard to find free time to keep taking pics and keep things updated, but I'll try so you know how things are going up here.

I was so excited to meet Dylan for the first time! I'm sure he's grown already since this picture.


it was great seeing you :)


see ya when I see ya! btw, who's coming out to Vancouver, eh?

updating soon...

Yep, jumped right into term 3 without skipping a beat. At least I was able to fly back home to DC over the short break to see family and friends. I'll try to update asap!