Dennis's Blog

San Francisco is a nice place. It is big, cool and has a lot of nice people around. To me, it still feels kind of abstract that I'm here, after hearing about this place from everywhere on the internet. There are things i enjoy and things I dont everywhere I go, and this is probably no exception.

Over here, I have gotten to know many people. The lecturer teaching gamification, the people working around 1Light Media, and the various people working at the studios we've been in. They've all been super nice and taught me a lot of things about the industry and the life around the workplace. After hearing all the stuff from them, it somehow makes me want to go out and see how its like to work in a studio. The Disney Museum highlights that, the videos diaries and stuff there show the career location like a family, where people get together and make something they enjoy, and it somehow earns them a living. Its magical, because these people have had their ups and downs in life, finally reaching a place where they enjoy the company and effort of everyone around them.

Scenery is something I appreciate a lot. I have done numerous paintings of mountains and trees around the world, despite not having been there. But actually being at the place makes everything different. When I'm there, I sometimes feel like sitting down and just drawing the view, to feel how its like to sketch something like that in real life. An area that was especially poignant is the pillars at the Palace of Fine Arts. The pillars there are so huge, you feel dwarfed. You wonder how long it took to build this, how long it took to create something so gigantic from scratch. The carvings around are like pieces of art and they look the same, corner to corner. Nature brings us wonders, but the scenery men carve manage to rival that immensely.

This is an odd fact, but that wasn't the best thing about the museum of fine arts. The best thing was watching the birds on the roof, watching the swans in the lake. These kind of happenings open your eyes to the world. Even on man-made structures, animals are adapting to the environment. They are leading whole lives, dependant on the artefacts from another species. You see birds building nests on the pillars, and you know that the place is not just another tourist attraction. Its a home for the animals, harking back to olden greek days, or roman empires, where living things that weren't human roamed the land and far outnumbered everything else.

However, after all this, what I'm feeling is a humid melancholy. The orchestra plays a slow, dark piece, the area around looks pitch black and I'm slowly walking into the darkness. As I go closer, things nearby light up. They look faint but I grab them by instinct. Some things I grab vanish as I touch them, others stay tangible as I tuck them into the abysses of my mind. But after a while everything disappears. Everything fades to back, and I get worried again, disappointed and sorry. But I keep grabbing because I hope. A hope that something I grab won't disappear, something that will stay with me for the rest of my life. And so the music continues playing, on and on into oblivion.

This is skipping a few days, but I want to talk about the mansion of Napari Bhandari. The first thing I saw when the bus reached was trees. This is a very natural environment, with forests stretching far far away. It is the home of a very rich person, someone who decided to live with nature and be at peace with it. So I got my hopes up, and walked quickly up the slope near to the mansion. The place was huge. Huge empty rooms with the simplest of decorations(a carpet and paintings!!! And some necessary chairs!). It looked good, but it also looked hollow and empty. Not exactly the kind of design I would have wanted but oh well.  The thing that struck me was that its the design of a very traditional person. No abstract ideas, no hobbyist intent. Just a normal home with the regular paintings. But as you go in, as you walk further to a path up the mountains, you see deer. It was nice to see deer, you rarely get deer at your backyard. And walking up the path felt so different, like something from a dream. I wanted to stay up there and not get down, but my heavy bag and all the people jostling permitted me otherwise.  And now we come to the meat and bones of the event. We have the talk between our host and us. He described about how he got into this position. I was a little bored during that time because its a lot of the same old same old. But then his wife came down. She talked about how people should do what they wanted, and about how she respected her husband for going with his beliefs. She continued with super interesting stuff like how americans treated asians at that time. And this was in stark contrast to what the guy said earlier about success being important, checking how many people wanted to start their own companies, talking about infulfilment if you're not your own boss.  I disagree slightly with that. To me, its alright if you think that your boss isn't doing a good job and you want to start your own business that succeeds. But its not a pedestal of greatness everyone should stand to. There are religions around centred around living without material needs, and not everyone is lucky enough to get rich. I'm sure that many people have spent entires lives trying to start non-working companies, with some successes and many failures, and not all of them are happy as a result too. It also feels so robotic, especially compared to what Walt did where he tried to maintain one company and make everyone feel at home there. Part of me is probably too stubborn to believe that that's the way to attain success. When I entered the house, one of the things I wondered is how he spent his time. If you live in the mountains, you'll probably have to take up some relaxing activity like painting, or photography, or studying animals, or taking long walks, or maybe even singing in the trees to while your time away. But the person in that house looked like he was more fond of the city area, talking to starting entrepreneurs and retelling his old tales of battle. He didn't strike me as the type to live in a mountain, so I shot that question at him. The well-read guy talked about asking questions for fun, and I thought why not?  The result was an interesting dynamic. The rich person was thrown off by the question, while his wife intervened. She had a really nice story about how her son helped her fight cancer, and how at the end, she made the decision to live by the mountains to be closer to god. They had a small fight midway, where the wife finished what she wanted to say then walked off and all was well. From there, I guessed stuff like how the man of the house should be the one talking so he hates being interrupted, how his wife might have been the one who wanted the house and he became lonely so he invites people to come up, how the wife and him might not have gotten so well together since she was mostly metaphysical and he was very technical etc(theres probably more i thought about but eh it wasn't the healthiest relationship). The thing is, everyone probably hopes for some closure to their lives. The rich want to end it by spreading their knowledge, by ending it with numerous inventions as a result as your expertise. Meanwhile the not so rich want to have children, to pass on their life knowledge to them and slowly watch them grow up. But some people get fulfilment a lot faster than others, and that makes me sad a little bit. After a horrible shitty childhood I end up here. I've always wanted to escape to the mountains when times were hard, to just live and be free of worries. And a rich person has all that but he doesn't really treasure it? I felt a little bitter from that(and their selective hearing, not understanding my second question again and etc etc). All in all, it was a fruitful and interesting trip. It makes you wonder, how long such mountain homes will continue to exist, as people demand for more comfort and land. Its a really beautiful home, and it will be amazing to see two people live and support each other living in the wilderness. I feel slightly bad for having such a negative first judgement but ehh this is what I got. If any of my points were wrong or misread feel free to disagree and debate, if these kinds of opinions are bad maybe i'll take it down. It just feels good to let something out that probably I'll never be able to talk about here O_O