November 26
The past few days have been good. I’ve entered into a abnormal sleeping cycle, which was precipitated by staying awake until 4am one day because I couldn’t sleep. This, combined with no classes to go to resulted in a shift in my sleeping period from the usual 1-2am -> 8-9am to something close to 5-6am –> 12-1pm. I don’t like it very much and will try to end it tonight.
On Wednesday morning Eddy, Helene, and Marion left for their one week trip to Russia. They are going first to Stockholm, then a ferry across the sea. The corridor has been more quiet because of their absence. On the other hand, the rest of us are doing more things together, just a bit. Pablo had his family visit and Amalia went to Barcelona and Madrid for a few days with her boyfriend. The best part of their trip? The sun. :)
On Friday night I watched Sleepy Hollow with Frieder and Christian. In my mind I thought it was better, but now it seemed over-the-top in too many places. Tomorrow we will go see Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire at the cinema. It will be a busy day: Frieder and I will go visit the Christmas Market at Kulturen, then from there go to the Lund Giants hockey match against Astorp, then we’ll meet Laure, Lishuang, and Christian for dinner, then see the movie. Busy, but a welcome change.
I also haven’t been eating much these past few days, but together with the help of Mom I made vegetable biriyani. It does the body good to have some familiar spices and food in you, and it was the most filling meal I’ve had in a few days. Christian is a remarkable chef, and made some Rötwein Kuche, or Red Wine Cake. He used the shape of a bundt cake, and it came out truly extraordinary. Not overly sweet, with a hint of cinnamom and hazelnut. And made with 1/8 litre of red wine, of course. I have the recipe, don’t worry.
It snowed here yesterday, and while the snow was not heavy it continued to fall for many hours. Today the ground was still white. In two days time it will likely disappear. The AF-Bostader (the care-taker for Delphi) also put up a large Christmas tree in the central courtyard and put white lights on it. It adds a very pleasing touch to the area. At one point, I saw the tree shaking violently and discovered that some drunk people were trying to topple it over. Frieder and I ran out to the balcony but when we got there they were already running away.
Progress has been made on the movie, though it has been slow. The key trouble has been the opening title sequence. It seems easy, but we’ve had great difficulty getting it to a point where we feel satisfied. Eventually we decided to re-cut it and insert some more footage, and I rendered what should be the final version earlier. Frieder also noticed that movie studios also have a logo animation that plays before the film starts. On a whim, we did a Google search for images relating to ‘Delphi’ (the name of the studios and the housing complex where we live), and found a picture of a three columned structure at the real Delphi site in Greece. Add a 15 minute dash of Photoshop and we got this:
Not too bad! Much time has been spent now in finding a nice logo animation.
The big things still left with the movie is 1) the sound mix; that is, balancing the dialogue, source audio, added sound effects, and musical score 2) the subtitles; which still need the Japanese from Yuko and proper syncing 3) the DVD production of it.
We’re targeting the 2nd week of December as the premiere.
That’s mostly it for now. Oh — next Sunday Frieder, Christian, his friend, me, Laure, and her boyfriend will be going to the FC København vs. Viborg football match! I’ll post about that later.