Floods, locusts, fires, plagues - you name it, we have almost every biblical disaster there is. No angel of death yet, but I look forward to that. My first born son you say? I'm single with no children - stick that up your pew. The floods in Brisvegas were amazing - I managed to ignore them for a few days but was truly astounded by their magnitude - it was like watching a train wreck in super slow motion. What we are left with is several people dead and a huge repair bill. Of course at the same time there were mudslides happening in Brazil, where 300+ people were killed, just to keep things in perspective. Not to be outdone, Victoria is also having a number of floods. Unfortunately I think the public interest in floods is waning - sorry Swan Hill, we just aren't that interested any more.Several billion dollars is the estimated cost to fix up Queensland, which sounds like a lot - I think I heard Kevin-oh-seven mention 1% of Australia's GDP. Still, compared to other natural disasters, it's not so bad. The city of Kobe was practically rebuilt from the ground up after the 1995 earthquake. 6434 dead, USD$102.5 billion repair bill. Again, perspective. Makes you wonder what will happen when The Big One finally hits California. Lets hope that doesn't happen in May-June this year when I will be over there.
On Friday night, I saw The Fighter starring Christian Bale and Marky Mark. I am no fan of boxing, and while I dont dig on the subject matter, I realise that I can still love a film about boxing if it is a good film (Raging Bull is a great example). This however was not a great film. I think the story was an interesting one - particularly the complex relationships between the family members, but watching the rise to World Champion play out was as boring and predictable as Rocky. Another reason that I find it difficult to warm to this film was Christian Bale. He did a reasonable job of playing his character, but I cant get past how much of a twat he is in real life. That should have no bearing on whether the movie is a good one, but for me I'm sad to say it does. Just like I could never enjoy a film starring Denzel Washington.
On top of everything else, I had seen True Grit only a few days earlier and thought it was a great film - good story, amazing characters and performances - so I couldn't help but compare the two. Apparently The Fighter is getting good reviews, but then so did Titanic.
I have started playing around with some game dev tools for os x. Nothing too involved yet, but I'm excited by the idea. I have a bunch of ideas for interactive pieces, but I'm wondering how far I will get with limited programming skills. In other news I'm still not quite sure where I am going to move to. I basically have till June this year to find a new place to live. I'm going to try and hook something up via an E3 Visa in the US (SF maybe), or the UK. I would still really like to move to Japan too, but have pretty much decided I dont want to teach, leaving me with very little other options for work there. Either way, now that I have completed my degree and have a pretty good pedigree of experience, I'm hoping I can get out of Melbourne for at least a couple of years. It's pretty exciting actually.
In the meantime, I'm working a lot - which is ok I guess. I'm enjoying it at the moment at that is the important thing.
