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!

Where did July go?

I can't believe how fast this term is flying by. We just got through a rough week of 9am-8pm classes, on top of that trying to fit in time for all of our editing projects due at the end of the month. At least next week we'll have a bit of a breather. They slammed us with classes this week so they've adjusted next week's schedule to be a lot lighter, only 4 out of the usual 10 classes (whew). That should give us time to catch up... I hope.

I'll try to keep up with the blog, I really haven't had time to take any pics... I've been in touch with the 19W crew and wish continued success with everything so far, way to go GDE! Ghosts Don't Exist available on DVD September 7th (order your copy now at Amazon). hehehe

Best news of all though, Congrats again to A&E! and shout out to my new Godson Dylan!!! Maybe mommy and daddy can fly me home for the baptism :) Seriously though, I wish I could be there I can't wait to see him! I miss all of you guys.

I'll try to update soon with some new pics.

The Food so far...

So aside from making instant noodles, pasta, and brown rice every other day, rest assured I do get out every now and then to eat real food. A while ago a really good friend of mine was nice enough to take me to the Summer Night Market in Richmond, BC. It was great to get out of the Downtown area, I can't believe I'm used to city life but it is nice to get out every now and then. Richmond reminded me of California because it's all flat and all you see are mountains in the background minus the palm trees.


So the Night Market is a big event where vendors come out and sell everything from clothes to iPhone accessories, just what you'd expect at an Asian market. The main thing is the food though, too much to choose from and it's all cheap! We had some pork dumplings, some weird shrimp and seafood batter covered things, fish balls in curry sauce, grilled squid, and of course bubble tea. There were so many people that by the time you finished one thing you better be in line for the next thing because it took 15-20 minutes to get it. I hope to get back there before it ends.


So did I mention the sushi? Man, there is so much sushi here it's not even funny.


One of my classmates from Seattle knows all the best Japanese joints to go to up here so one night we went to a place called Zakkushi. A small hole in the wall place but really, aren't those the best places? It's a Japanese tappas bar with Sapporo beer on tap. Yeah needless to say we drank more than we ate but it was a great time and the food was delicious!


On another day a couple of us went to a place called Benkei Ramen. Now when I think ramen, I think the little packet of instant noodles that you get for like 3 for a dollar. But this place was amazing. I usually don't eat soup on a hot day, but this hit the spot. And for $8, you can't beat it! I'm sure we'll be back!


Last but not least I finally made my way back to Granville Market to get that funky pasta. It's great because they make it fresh and it's a quick meal. The yellow and pink ones are filled with butternut squash and the green and pink ones are spinach and portobello? Mmmm...mmm...good.


All for now, hope everyone back home has a fun and safe 4th of July!

Enjoying the break

I walked over to Granville Island today to try to get some recordings on the H2s we were given. Our only assignment over break is to record anything and everything hoping to get some usable sounds for editing. It can be any type of Foley sounds like footsteps or chewing, to sound effects like a car going by or a water splash. I had recorded some awesome sounds of my friend's hockey game but later realized I recorded it at the wrong sample rate so I can't use it.... oh well, lesson learned--always check your gear before recording!


There's a Jazz Festival going on right now and I got some cool recordings of a guitar player just jammin' away at one of the docks and I had a perfect recording of a jazz piece, up until one of the festival officials said I couldn't record it. He made sure it was erased off my H2... maybe I'll go back tomorrow and hide somewhere so I won't be so obvious.


Hopefully the weather holds out this week. I can deal with the weather here, it's still in the 60s-70s, not like back home where I hear it's in the 90s...hahaha!

I just realized that I think this will be the first 4th of July that I won't be in the US. Up here they have Canada Day which is going to be celebrated on July 1st. I'll have to try to find a good spot to catch some fireworks up here. I also looked into obtaining Canadian citizenship. Don't worry, I'm not moving up here yet. I have to have a job offer to expedite the process but since I can't work while I'm in school, I can't even apply anywhere yet. Let me just get through the school year first and see where it takes me. I'm still waiting for the rest of my (ahem), "grades" to be posted, but so far so good. There's always room for improvement right?

Hopefully Term 2 won't be as stressful as Term 1... who am I kidding? Bring it on!!!

Ray Beckett visits VFS

The Sound Design campus had an extraordinary experience when Ray Beckett paid us a visit last week. It was such a privilege just to meet him and sit in on a lecture prepared just for the Sound Design students, but then we found out that he was going to accompany us to do some field recording! We were able to ask about his experience while working on The Hurt Locker and he gave us some great tips on how to "open your ears" when recording on location. It was exciting to hear him say how lucky we were as students today to have all this portable technology available when recording. Speaking of which, we received our portable Zoom H2's and now we have to start building our own personal sound libraries. (Here's the link to the VFS Article)


(Ray giving us a presentation on his recording techniques, and later speaking about working on The Hurt Locker)

So along with meeting Ray Beckett, yesterday was the last day of Term 1! There was a bit of stress trying to put the finishing touches on the end of term projects, making sure you covered all the details but I think we all did ok. I was thinking of flying back to DC for the Summer Break, and I was really considering buying the ticket Monday (6/21) for $600, but when I checked the price the next day, it had jumped up to $1100! So yeah, I won't be back this break. So after a morning of backing up our projects and all our files we wanted to keep, we were pretty much free to do what we wanted. After grabbing a bite to eat, some of us went to our classmate's flat to finally kick back and relax after a stressful first 8 weeks.

I'll post more pics and I'm sure I'll finally have time over break to go over some of the places I've had awesome food!