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Archive for the 'Work' Category
04 12th, 2008
Coming soon (ish)
01 18th, 2008
Chris was invited in early December to give a talk at a conference on 3D and visual effects technologies, put on by the local university here. Although he was first told that he would be speaking in front of 500 people in Spanish for an hour, and he had only 12 days to prepare a presentation, they ended up moving the conference to January 17-20. With a sigh of relief, we promptly got caught up in all our holidays travels, so we got back to Cusco last Sunday (January 13th), with only a few days left for him to prepare. Luckily he had written and translated about 2/3 of his presentation, and was set to spend the week working on his slides and the other 1/3. That was until we received a phone call on Sunday night that they wanted Chris to come to a press conference on Monday morning. And so it began. A press conference and three tv interviews—it turned into quite the publicity circuit. The conference organizers were really pushing his name and credits when trying to get people to come to the conference. They said that if it is a success, they want Chris to put together a proposal to teach a few different classes at the university. He is thinking right now of doing a two-month introduction to Maya in February and March, then doing more intermediate and advanced stuff when we come back at the end of May. We’ll see.
The press conference was a bit overwhelming, since they said his name every other sentence and he had no idea what they were saying about him. He sat in this big throne next to the university president and conference organizers and I sat off to the side and supplied him with words every once in a while. He ended up explaining to the audience what movies he had worked on and what he would talk about at the conference. Afterwards, a bunch of reporters took statements from him (basically wanting him to invite people to the conference) and one took a video of me answering questions about his motives for being in Peru (that was an awkward question to field, since the university is making it sound like he is here just for them…INVITADO CHRIS PAUL!!!!).
The first tv spot on Monday night was a little rushed, but Chris did really well and they showed his tank and some of his other work too. (Our friend Mario sat next to him and helped him understand the fast-talking tv host.) Besides Chris, they have been interviewing the conference organizer and another invited guest from a Lima 3D company called Peru3D.
Tuesday’s spots were slightly more difficult because Mario couldn’t be there. The early one was hard because they asked such vague and general questions that Chris had trouble coming up with interesting answers (even in English). That was about five minutes. The second spot was much better: a longer interview with a nicer host. They showed Chris’s reel in full and gave him an opportunity to explain it (which he had prepared notes for in Spanish). And they asked everyone for general words and Chris had time to look to me for guidance on what to say while the other two were answering. He froze a bit at the end, but it came off well overall.
At the conference on Thursday there were only about 150 people, but Chris’s talk got such good reactions (he fielded about 10 audience questions and then had about 4 people take their pictures with him), that he was asked to give the same talk again on Friday. They rearranged the schedule for him to speak again, and said that they were sure more people would now come when the word was out by word of mouth. He was awesome: he had them clapping for him from the beginning when he asked them to be patient with his Spanish, and everyone seemed to enjoy the slides and film clips he showed.
Go to this website and click on the DIGITAL RAYMI link (ver notas) and see how they have advertised Chris (unfortunately, all the press misspells his name as Christ).
PS: And from this link, you can see the commercial work that he did as a result of some contacts he made at this conference.
svgallery=Chris_interview
01 17th, 2008
In the second week of December, one of the other volunteers at the center I work at had the idea to bake loads of cookies to sell in the streets for Christmas. Coinciding with our excitement about having an oven, she and I spearheaded buying ingredients and throwing several baking parties at our house. Our poor oven held its own, although since there are just three general settings (and no temperatures), it was a bit of guesswork at the beginning. We used up a whole balloon of gas in 9 days (there are supposed to last for months), but I guess that is what happens when you have the oven on for four hours a night! It was fun having other volunteers over, and everyone got into the spirit, making their favorite kind of cookies from their country. We had no-bake chocolate peanut butter cookies, regular chocolate chip cookies, sugar cookies from Denmark, coconut cookies from Germany, banana bread…we all subsisted off of broken cookies for a while, but we also sold a few thousand cookies and made a significant amount of money for the center.
Every year in Cusco on December 24 there is a big fair called Santurantikuy that is held in the main plaza. People come from all over Peru to sell handicrafts, food, and general supplies. Many of the volunteers also dressed up that day and went out into the Plaza selling cookies. The goal of the sales was not only to have fun and make a bit of money, but also to promote the project and the restaurant that is attached to the project. In that we were also really successful: the restaurant reported making three times the amount of money it usually makes in the weeks following our efforts.
The Christmas season also saw us attending tons of parties. Although, many of these parties were also “workâ€: they were parties that we were throwing for the kids in the project. We were also preparing the kids to do presentations on what they had been learning about December holidays around the world. One group presented on Hanukkah, another on Chinese New Year, another on Pongal (Hindu), another on Christmas in Russia. We had a series of events at the restaurant and at the school where they presented their plays and we gave them treats, gifts, and clothing. We also had a party for the volunteers, and we attended a party for another friend’s project. We did a gift exchange and we received some movies and candy and a beautiful scarf.
As some side notes: Sometime in the middle of December, we went to a futbol game, where we got poured on! There are photos from that attached to this post too. Also some photos from New Year’s Eve, where a bunch of us went to the Plaza and tried to avoid getting hit by fireworks.
svgallery=Cookies_and_Parties
01 17th, 2008
Whew, time is flying by, and we have not updated our blog for over 6 weeks! Instead of writing one long post with every detail, we are going to post several different summaries of what we have been up to, and that way we can include some pictures with each post too. So our lives in a nutshell:
- Early December, we moved to our new apartment! (“Our apartment” post)
- Christmas season in Cusco was very hectic, both with work and parties. (“Cookies and Parties” post)
- Kathie and Silas (Chris’s mom and brother) came to visit from December 24 until January 10. With them we traveled around the Sacred Valley, to Salkantay and Machu Picchu, and to Arequipa and the Colca Canyon in the south. (“Christmas and Travels around Cusco and the Sacred Valley” post, “Salkantay and Machu Picchu” post, and “Arequipa and the Colca Canyon” post)
- Chris has been working all this week on a conference he presented at on Thursday. There has been publicity and hype galore. (“Digital Raymi” post)
See the following posts for more information!
11 28th, 2007
We got back yesterday from five days in Lima, where we had Thanksgiving lunch on Friday and presentations on Monday with the Fulbright Commission.
We spent Thursday afternoon running back and forth to the computer store that will send Chris’s busted power cord to the U.S. and then send us a replacement cord. Everyone keep your fingers crossed on this one! We also ended up at a grocery store that looks like Whole Foods, where we drooled over the cheese selection but just had to buy New Zealand cheddar because that’s what I was really craving. (Its hard to get cheese variety here.) We were all set to have a dinner of bread and cheese when some other Fulbright fellows knocked on our door and invited us out to dinner with them. Friday we met more of the fellows at the lunch, but were surprised by how fancy the meal was and how many other random people there were: dignitaries from the embassy, past Peruvian fellows, business people somehow affiliated with the Commission. Friday afternoon we spent hanging out and then out to dinner.
Saturday we had planned to travel but got a late start so instead went to the Anthropology Museum and to see a movie (Beowulf). Saturday night we had dinner at an overpriced Mexican restaurant but we were pleasantly surprised to get chips before our meal (we are having trouble finding tortilla chips, or tortillas at all for that matter). Sunday we went to the Plaza de Armas (the main plaza) and went on a tour of a church with catacombs and to the Inquisition museum.
Monday was five hours of presentations on our various research, with discussants from anthropology, mining, and economics. The afternoon was again spent hanging out and eating dinner with all the other fellows.
We are happy to report that returning to altitude after only being gone five days was uneventful. We have a meeting today to sign a contract for our new apartment…we are supposed to be moving next Friday.
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