Sabbatical

Wow, it's been too long.

I have not been traveling into Hong Kong much lately, and the Great Firewall is strong as always, but I managed to connect.

While my last post may have painted a distraught and frustrated picture of my life out here, there is more to it. Yes, everyday we work hard to try and make something of ourselves out here, and yes, things don't materialize the way you'd always like them to, but we are far from feeling defeated. TWC is taking on a whole new life, and I cannot discuss much about the details, but the way business is done out here has required us to tweak and modify.

On a personal note I am beginning to resign myself to the fact that I will never be able to escape my artistic side, however unpolished it may be. I had a mentor in high school who pulled me aside one day after a classroom critique. We were nearing graduation and I had a brush with a full on final project failure when a 6 foot sculpture I was making began to fall apart due to poor engineering foresight. Long story short, i spray-painted the abomination, carried it around campus and took pictures of it... artsy pictures, and handed in a photo project instead of a sculpture. How I got the grade I did is beyond me, but my teacher thought it was commendable. He told me that despite my best efforts I would be making art my entire life, and not the art that some consider sports radio, or deception, or statistical modeling to be, real art, which is scary. Real artists study art, live it, make careers out of it, and very few are successful. It is an extremely competitive field that discourages scores of less-than-exceptionally talented young artists from ever considering an art school or graphic design major. I may be naive, or just dumb, but that's always been my take, art isn't worth the effort to make a career out of it, it should be a hobby.

My lack of real world experience out here has relegated me to art. Websites, logos, brochures and the dreaded powerpoint presentation are my new 9-5 routines. I cannot say that I don't have an opinion since I consciously used the word relegated in the previous statement, but i am apprehensive about the tone it may set for me out here despite the fact that I enjoy a small bit of it. How it will affect my China experience will remain to be seen, but it's paving a new path out here, one that I am walking down without bias hopefully.