It's from a news story in September 2007 about a rescued baby macaque that made friends with a white pigeon in an animal hospital in China. Although I think the photo is cute, multiple people who have seen this image on my computer have commented that it looks scary. It's probably the monkey's eyes, or its alien-like face, which I can understand.
To clear things up, this is my interpretation of what the photo expresses:
Does that help? Or is it just the idea that's frightening?
It's been a while since I last updated, probably because not much has been going on. Just normal school stuff.
So far, his school year has been fun and happy. I live in Okada (my freshman dorm), and spend a lot of time on school projects (I'm a product design major), and a lot of time with my taiko friends. This year I'm one of the administrative directors of taiko, which means I get to reserve retreat houses for the weekend, make sure meetings are efficient, etc. It's a lot of fun, and the room I share with Vicca has become something of a hub for taiko people to pass through and hang out. I've been documenting of some of the ridiculous and awesome things we do in there, including but not limited to studio photoshoots of our stuffed animals, decorating the walls crazy, and making bananas sing.
My favorite class this quarter was the product design class Formgiving, which was basically intro to industrial design. We had three projects, the first of which was to pick a famous brand, analyze it, and design a hammer in its style. I took Vicca's suggestion and chose Bang and Olufsen, makers of high-end speakers, phones, and TVs (you may have seen their stuff in The Devil Wears Prada, or The Dark Knight). My rendering looked like this:
And my sculpted model (my first attempt at carving anything) didn't turn out as well. I'm going to sand off the paint and refine it when I get the chance. I've named him Sparky.
My second project was to analyze the design language of a famous designer and to make a functioning pen in his/her style. I chose Joerg Gaetjens, who applies a witty and useful sense of humor in his product designs. He was kind enough to e-mail me some of his insights and opinions on design when I asked him, and the resulting pen looks like this:
The idea is based on the observation that a lot of people, even adults, chew on the tips of their pens, which end up looking mangled and gross. This pen maintains a refined/professional appearance and comes with replaceable tips, allowing the user to maintain presentable-looking pens, to not have to give up their pen-chewing habits, and to have some degree of customization in what shape/color tips they choose. Kind of silly, but I thoroughly enjoyed making it.
My third project was to design a lamp in my own style (which was very hard to determine), a lamp that displayed some magical quality of light. I went with a bedside nightlight that could glow as you stroked it, kind of like a pet rock that responds to touch. It received critical reviews at the presentation, but I still like it. Its name is Bruno:
Other highlights of fall quarter, senior year: - taking classes that actually interested me: color, formgiving, Japanese, and The Designer's Voice: a class that helped product design seniors like myself deal with figuring out what to do after college. - somehow very undeservingly getting As in those classes! - catching up with some friends I made 2 summers ago as an intern at Lunar Design, Sasha, Jonathan, and Wenson. - taking a Charleston dance class in Palo Alto - having lunch with the professor who taught the class, Robert Powers, and finding out that he worked in product design until his late 20s when he discovered ballroom dance! I guess it's never too late to start over if I stick with this major. - getting to see The Matches perform live in San Francisco! They have great energy, and are quickly becoming one of my favorite bands. - visiting my friends Victoria, Melissa, and Evonne at Berkeley for pumpkin carving - getting mildly addicted to the Twilight series. I still prefer Harry Potter. - starting a list of things I want to do before I die, which includes many whims such as learning how to play all the instruments of a traditional rock band, and living in London. - discovering Red Mango frozen yogurt in Palo Alto, yum! Taiko went there for our end of quarter dinner:
I've been spending winter break doing a lot of stuff. I drove from San Diego to LA on Dec. 12, to visit my friends who are still working at Imagineering, to see my friend Chris' grad show at Art Center, and to see Bernadette and Teo, the owners of the house I lived in over the summer. I've also been preparing to apply for jobs, rereading Harry Potter 6 & 7, catching up with high school friends, and writing a taiko song for our spring concert in May.
I am taking suggestions on what to change the name of this blog to, as "Janet in Japan" is no longer appropriate. I can't think of anything though. "Janet's Mundane Day-to-Day Life" doesn't quite have the same ring to it. Post me any ideas you have in the comments, I'd appreciate your help.
Hello, it's been a while! I finished up my internship at WDI a couple weeks ago, and it was an amazing experience overall! I can't believe how much they spoiled us interns, and I made some great friends along the way. The Stanford Engineering Newsletter recently published an article about my experiences with Disney this summer, which you can click to enlarge it to a readable size:
Some highlights from the summer:
- Living on my own for the first time. I stayed in a little house 15 minutes from work, and also close to some great shopping/dining areas. - Visiting Disneyland 7 times for free! We got to tour some of the rides at 4am and learn about how the park was designed. - Meeting all the amazingly brilliant and kind people at Walt Disney Imagineering - Getting into swing dancing! A surprisingly large number of people swing dance in Pasadena, and we had weekly outdoor swing dancing with a live band on Friday nights. So much fun!
Anyways I've been in San Diego these past two weeks, finishing up a paper from a class I took in Japan last quarter. On Sunday I'm driving back up to the Bay Area with my aunt, and I'll be hitting the ground running with taiko performances and schoolwork. I'm really looking forward to my last year at Stanford. Hopefully I'll have enough time to savor every minute even with the stresses of campus life.
Yep, I have left Japan...for good this time (well, at least for a good while =) ). It's time to change my blog title... neh, maybe later.
I've been living in Glendale for the past three weeks or so, interning at Walt Disney Imagineering, which has been a dream! Really really busy, and a little stressful, but still! A dream! Every day is a lot of fun, even when it's stressful, and everyone there is extremely nice.
Me wandering around the studio lot with some friends (also interns) after the intern screening of Wall-E:
And no Disney internship experience would be complete without research trips to Disneyland! Me sipping a Dole Whip Float before the Tiki Room:
This is my second experience working full time, and it's quite exhausting! But on the weekends I've taken the time to take a surfing lesson (my first attempt, and I suck, but it's still a lot less painful than snowboarding and skateboarding), to start a library account (to research for my STILL unfinished term paper on geisha), and to visit a friend at Caltech, who showed me their AWESOME STEAM TUNNELS. They remind me of Rome's catacombs--an underground network of hallways full of pipes and hot steam and awesome graffiti / murals / sets built by former students there, and it's full of interesting stories of past pranks, a walled-in skeleton, and a 3D crawling maze built of plywood and whatnot. So cool!
The ironic thing is that I have yet to try steam tunneling on my own campus. Maybe that'll change this year (senior year).
Anyone who reads this, let me know what you are up to (summer is when I have more time to keep in touch with old friends!), and if you're in the LA area I'd love to meet up on the weekend! I'm here til August 30th or so.
I just got back to Japan from a magical two weeks in L.A. spent exploring behind-the-scenes at Disney, meeting some legendary imagineers and some future ones, making great friends, getting VIP treatment at Disneyland, and in general having the time of my life. Who would have known that entering this competition would have taken me on such an adventure? We didn't end up winning, but it didn't matter because in the end we all felt like winners. The grand prize was a 10-day trip to Disney, and that was already won! Plus, I ended up with my dream-internship, and my partner Kay got offered one as well with ride engineering! Who could ask for more?
It's always been my dream to go into Disney's animation studio, and not only did we get to go in, but they showed us awesome stuff on their upcoming films and sent us away with bulging goody-bags of souvenirs to take home!
And the best souvenir of all was my own name tag, fashioned to look like those of Disney cast members. The Disney freak in me got all giddy when we were walking through Disney's California Adventure and got asked by guests where the nearest bathroom was. They thought we were real cast members, yay!!!
My partner Kay and I got to preview California Adventure's soon-to-open attraction, Toy Story Midway Mania. You should all go after it opens on June 17, 2008 because it was really fun!
Kay and me in front of Disney's corporate Team Disney building. I remember seeing this building as a little kid and have always wanted to come back again. This time we even got to go in and check out Disney's archives!
We got to explore Hollywood Boulevard, during the premiere of The Love Guru. Some of us got up-close glimpses of Mike Myers and Justin Timberlake! But I was even more excited to find one of my heroes on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Disney really knows how to take care of their guests. And I just can't wait to go back in a week to intern! It's all happening so fast and everything's so exciting!
Okay all, I've arrived back in the States, after a surprisingly enjoyable trip home. I actually had conversations on the taxi and the plane that weren't awkward and boring, so the time went by fast.
To update those of you who are confused as to why I've come home from Japan early, it's kind of a complicated situation. I got into the final round of the Disney Imagi-Nations Design Competition (for theme park ideas), which is something I've been working on for about 9 months, so I'm skipping 2 weeks of school in Japan to give a presentation to Disney and to see what the Imagineering studio is actually like.
After my two weeks here in CA, I'll be flying back to Japan for a week of final exams, researching geishas and hostesses, and closing ceremonies; and then I'm coming back to L.A. for a summer internship with Disney! Then I'll get to see if Disney really is my dream-workplace as I've always believed. If it's not, I can move on to finding something that works better; and if it is, well maybe I'll finally be on my way to deciding what I want to do with my life. In my opinion, something that important is worth the inconveniences that I'm going through. I really do think it'll be a worthwhile and very purposeful experience for me. I'm actually happy and excited to see what happens.
Hi all, Sorry it's been a while...my new laptop power adapter just arrived in the mail (thanks Mom and Dad!) so I have computer access once again.
So here's the update: two weeks ago was the start of Golden Week, a one-week long vacation from school during which most SCTI kids went travelling around the country. I went with a group of 9 people (the number actually varied throughout the trip as people joined and left) to Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands.
Some highlights from the trip:
My first bar experience and first cocktail drink (blue moon) in Nagasaki. The drinking age here is 20.
Finding a beautiful deserted beach after taking a ferry to a small island off of Nagasaki.
Taking hot volcanic sand baths at the seaside in Ibusuki, followed by an onsen (Japanese bath house)!
Playing with sparklers and fireworks at a beach in Beppu!
Meeting my host brother and his dog in Hakata, where he treated us to world-famous Ippudo Ramen.
It was a fantastic trip. Now that I'm back, I have to start working hard to prepare a presentation for Disney, while also juggling increasing amounts of schoolwork. At least I have my computer back though!
