An Update

It has been a week now that I have been back in China, and things seem to be getting back to normal, whatever that is. I come here to work then travel to live life. Somehow that just does not feel right. I need to find a balance. Right now I am trying to change my lifestyle a bit. It has been about 8 months since I quit smoking and I rarely get cravings anymore. I have just put it in my mind that I am done with that part of my life. And to be honest it actually feels great to be a non-smoker. The next logical step for me would be to tackle my issues with drinking. I have no intention of getting on the wagon for good but I do want to cut down for a while, live healthy for a few months and possibly bring myself into some form of healthy conditioning. This means staying off the bottle and quite possibly even hitting the gym. This no doubt is going to be an extremely boring few months for me and anyone who is miserable enough to want my company. Because without the booze, I become like that guy from ‘Friends’ who USED to be Fun Bob. I am Dull and Depressing Avi. I will be the first to admit that I like my drink a bit more than other but contrary to what some of my acquaintances might say. I am NOT an alcoholic. Nonetheless the time has come to don my armor and battle some demons.

To keep my mind occupied I am reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel for the second time. It is a mammoth book but I am enjoying it just as much as I did the first time. I need to get my hands on some new literature; I have this book in mind The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I am pretty eager to get at it. On the movie front I watched American Gangster which fuckin awesome. I would dare go step out on a limb and say that this could be the Godfather of this generation. I love the fact that the director took his time to develop the story and did not rush to any conclusions, but in this day and age a movie as slow paced as The Godfather would not stand a chance. Nevertheless American Gangster in an entertaining and well paced film that I thoroughly enjoyed. Performances by Denzel and Crowe were off the hook. In upcoming movies I got my target set on Stardust which is written by Neil Gaiman and ofcourse Beowulf, which Gaiman also has a hand in.

My attention has been turmed away from writing and blogging recently because I have been working on the film from my Brazil vacation. I have promoted myself from using Ulead 11 to Pinnacle Studio which has loads more features. I am still not very happy with the image quality of the final renditions of my clips. Ideally I would like to get my hands on a Mac and see what I could do with Quick Time. There is still so much more to do on that front but I feel I need t distance myself from the project a bit to lend some originality to the work. I have so many concepts in my head that I am just not able to translate to the film. Apart from that the obsession is starting to get in the way of my work, the real work that is, the stuff that pays the bills. So that brings be back to balance. And how I need to find some. Mahalo.