animation I made for the National Taiwan Museum

End of the first month

So, more than a month has passed since I arrived at Taiwan, and most of the people I meet or other friends who I occasionally talk to online mostly ask me these kinds of questions:

How long are you staying?

Currently, I really do not know, since after this internship I want to fix my Chinese as much as possible, so I might stay a few months. My dad wants me to go to a private school because their semesters last a month and the transportation is more convenient. My sister (who went there before) told me that it was kind of full of kids and I might not like it (because I don’t really like children) but dad later told me that she had been there in the summer, and the possibility of kids being there in September was less likely. I heard that Shi Da’s Mandarin Training Center was good, but I will have to walk more if I go there, and the term lasts 3 months (although they have 3 week express programs from time to time) so I don’t know yet.

How is the weather in Turkey?

Four seasons (the easiest way to talk about it, actually)

What did you major in and how do you know all these stuff?

I majored in something called “Visual Arts and Communications Design” which is more like Graphic Design + Art. I took more classes so I could learn more, and I do all sorts of things like video editing, 3D modelling and animating, game design, illustrations, graphic design and I know how to work with more traditional mediums like watercolor, acrylic, oil painting etc. No, I don’t know how to describe my job, but I want to design games in the future.

Do you like Turkish food better or the food in Taiwan?

Taiwanese food rules.

Do you return to Taiwan often?

This is my fourth time.

So what have I been up to? I went KTV’ing twice, went to Transformers 3 and Harry Potter 7 1/2, Transformers was awesome but I prefer Harry Potter in the form of ink on paper. Went clubbing once. went to Dan Shui (淡水) which made me miss the seaside, been to night markets four times (didn’t buy or look around much though) in total, accidentally bleached my dark clothes while I was staying in the dorm (I stayed there for one week and then moved to my grandma’s, the cockroaches in Taiwan are humongous, 7 cms in length) so bought a couple of new tshirts, bought a Nintendo DS lite just today (it’s red) and worked a lot (4-5 videos rough cutted a bit, made an animation and started another, shot footage for the museum shop video, started editing it, made Paiwan tribe glass bead illustrations, helped fixing a logo, helped out taking photos for an environmental workshop which started today and will continue tomorrow etc.), started reading One Piece the manga (after 15 people insisted I should) after the first few pages, I was saying why didn’t anybody tell me this was about pirates? I frikkin’ love pirates!

Plans for the two weeks coming up: Going to an anime convention on Saturday, going out shopping on Sunday, Going to line up for Rainie (singer, actress, pretty famous here and I love her) autograph event next Sunday ^^

In the beginning

Fresh new blog with a fresh new start. (old blog, not recently updated but will be updated soon: http://berrinsun.wordpress.com/) I recently graduated, and my student years are over, for now until I plan of going to a graduate school if I do (kindergarten: 3-5, elementary: 6-10, junior high: 11-13, high school: 14-16, college: 17-21). My birthday is 22 June, so 3 weeks ago I celebrated my 22nd year on wednesday, graduated on saturday and packed my suitcases that night, got on a plane heading to taipei on sunday and spent the week tagging along with a group of people I just met, travelling  Taiwan (台灣) got fed by the government for a week (they paid for food, drinks, lodging and travel expenses for the whole week for over 270 people, and the last day ended in a 5 star resort!), and then started my internship in the National Taiwan Museum (國立台灣博物館) office.

I haven’t started the “What am I doing with my life?” phase, maybe it’s because I have a rough plan, even though there are some (large) gaps. It feels awkward not being a student anymore, having to pay full fare entering museums, riding the bus or the metro. Wasting 20 years of my life working for school, now I have to work for myself, although I have been kind of prepared to working for myself (doing painting, illustration, graphic design, animation, game design, coding and 3D stuff) for the past 4,5 years, trying to gather a portfolio. It’s nice being capable of working with different mediums, and I want to redo my game, Traces of Alvilda from scratch, once I organize my computer and get rid of some of my old work clutter.

Current plans are to finish this internship doing as much work as possible (one animation down, another animation project and a flash game + website advising project on the way.) I’m having a lot of fun working here and the people are great and I guess I’m happy, although I realized for myself that working doesn’t really allow people to have free time for themselves (I knew that already, but it seems much more real now). It’s not my first time working, but I guess this is the most serious one among all my other internships or freelance work. I also recently discovered that I don’t really feel the need to procrastinate while trying to get work done although I procrastinated my way through school.

The food in Taiwan is as great as usual, the weather is hot and humid but it doesn’t really bother me as much as it did previously (my last visit was about 3 years ago). Current plans for the next few months are: finishing the internship, starting to take Mandarin lessons (my reading and writing isn’t really good), getting a Taiwanese citizenship, doing a tutorial about my graduation project game Traces of Alvilda and making the project open source (because people won’t share how to make multi-level games with the engine I used, so I guess my code will be a bit of help for people just starting ActionScript3), later redoing my game from scratch (I’m thinking of redesigning it as an RPG-style isometric perspective game with more complicated mazes with multiple floors maybe I’ll give a shot in vector instead of bitmap this time using papervision as a 3D engine), redo the typeface I was working on in the fall term (the W, V, M and N are too clumsy) and giving a shot making lowercase letters, expand my watercolor and ink skills, rearranging my CV and portfolio again and starting applying for jobs. Also I plan on hiking a lot and KTV’ing (karaoke) with friends as much as possible ^^