My new job.

Here’s a hint as to what I’ve been doing for work this year,  it’s very exciting.Dylan.   

Trip to Beijing, China.

Remember when I said I was going to China and didn’t end up making a blog post about it?  Well it turns out people actually DO read my blog, as I’ve been harassed to put the photos up on my blog.  So here they are.  I went to China with my Mom from Nov 8-Nov 14, only 6 days, but it seemed like much longer.  Bearing the short visit, we did mostly touristy things, and a TON of shopping.  Everything is SO CHEAP there!  Fake, but cheap.  Jeans are like $9, watches $15, cashmere sweaters $25, shoes $15, the list goes on.  We had to buy 2 extra large suitcases just to fit all the stuff we bought into it.  It’s really sad to think, I spent as much on this trip, for 6 days in China, as I did on my trip to LA, in 2 days.  The moral of the story is:  Asia is awesome.  And dirt cheap. Here goes:This is the Summer Palace, like everything in China, it was MASSIVE.  We were there for a couple hours, and didn’t even explore 1/4 of it:    This is the Temple of Heaven, it was the first thing we visited.  The colors are incredible, and it was the only day that we had blue sky all week:  Now, the Forbidden City.  Again, this place was huge.  There are over 9,000 rooms in the Forbidden City, there was so much history and so much to see, it was very interesting:    This was the Great Wall of China, bet you couldn’t figure that out.  We walked for a long time, and went over about 7 trillion stairs, it was tiring carrying my 40lbs camera bag, but totally worth it: THIS IS HOW YOU GET DOWN FROM THE GREAT WALL!!!  It is a giant slide!  You go down on it, and it’s like a bobsled track.  You’re on this little buggy, with brakes, that rolls down the mountain.  And yes, this is seriously like going down a mountain, on a bobsled.  It went very fast, and would be so totally illegal in Canada:   On the last day, we ate some weird stuff at the appropriately named “Night Market”.  We ate:-scorpions-starfish-sea horses-”dog” so he said-octopus   Thanks,Dylan.   

Sigur Ros Acoustic Set and Heima premiere pictures (November 3, 2007 at UCLA, Los Angeles, California)

So on Thursday night, I checked the website of what might be my favorite band, Sigur Ros (www.sigurros.com) and they were having a contest. The first 50 people to email the website would get tickets to see the premiere of Sigur Ros’ new movie, Heima (www.heimafilm.com), and whaddya know, I won.

I got the email and pretty much though “ugh. That would sure be cool, but as if I can get to Los Angeles by tomorrow..”, and I proved myself wrong. I bought my tickets at about 5pm on Friday, worked the Oilers game from 5-11:30, then drove to meet a friend and pick up my passport, which was in Calgary. I got home from said rendez-vous at about 4:30AM, and got to the airport at 4:45AM. How’s that for “on a whim”? I left for LA at 6:40AM, arrived at 1:05PM, got to my hotel, rented a car, and drove to UCLA.

UCLA is HUGE. It took me quite a long time to find the venue. First of all, I didn’t actually know where it was. It took a couple very expensive long distance phone calls back home to get people to check my email, and some Sigur Ros websites to get me some details (Thanks Sterling). I got my info, and got to the venue with a couple hours to spare. These couple hours gave me time to ask around, and find out that I was actually ALLOWED to take my camera in, which was awesome news. I was at the front of the line all day because: 1) I was the first to realize how to get guest list tickets (no thanks to the people “organizing” the show) and 2) I flew TWO FREAKING THOUSAND MILES for the show, and people respected that . After being moved around literally about 6 times by the people running the event (They had no idea what was going on), I got in only to find out that the first 6 rows were reserved for “VIP”. Whatever, I was close enough, and I wasn’t going to let a bunch of students on a power trip ruin my trip (Sorry, if you’re reading this and are one os said students, but get real, it was horrible.)

Anyway, enough ranting, here are the pics

If they look uninterested during the q&a session, it’s probably because they were. The girl who “hosted” it was obviously not very aware of Sigur Ros, pronouncing their names wrong, and pronouncing “Sigur Ros” 3 different ways throughout the course of the night. She also referred to Georg as the “bass” player, pronounced like the fish.. he later clarified that he prefers haddock. They were pretty lax, but still told some jokes and were pretty light-hearted. It was great.

Sigur Ros was amazing, Heima was AMAZING. I got misty eyed twice during the showing, which I won’t admit to friends, but I’ll admit here, because I’m sure they won’t read all of this It was COMPLETELY worth every penny, and I glad I took my flight down.

Thanks,

Dylan

Los Angeles Pictures

I went to Los Angeles this weekend, look up for the full story.  Here are some photos NOT from the concert.  Sorry they’re not super interesting, they’re mostly landscapes, because it was my first time visiting LA.  It was great.

This is the view the houses in the hills get:

Arclight Theatre:

Amoeba music:

Capital Records building:

HOLLYWOOD sign in the hills:

Sunset Boulevard, where I spent the entire day:

Amoeba again:

Some little shack:

Beverly Hills Hotel:

Thanks,

Dylan.