Tripping through the Balkans (pt.2)

The distance between Podgorica and Tirana is 130 kilometers, which is roughly 81 miles. Back in LA I can travel this in little over an hour; it's a different story in the Balkans. It took almost 6 hours on bus and all I kept thinking about was this.

I arrived in Tirana 4 days ago and in the course of writing this entry yesterday morning, two exhausted Aussies walked into the hostel and naturally we began to chat. 2 hours went by, we spoke of our travels and I found out why they were so exhausted. It turns out that they had just taken a 24-hour bus ride from Athens to Tirana and as our warm homecooked breakfast - omelets, fresh cheese, peach marmalade and toast - was brought to us, the look on their faces was priceless.

I began to tell them about Tirana and how originally I was going to spend only a night but then I told them how thankful that I didn't. I told them that the city is small, very walkable, nothing really that'll blow your mind; not so quite like 
Podgorica but in the same neighborhood. Having said that, again it all comes down to the people. It doesn't seem like it at first because frankly they're also looking at you in the same manner but the Albanians and Albania is still getting warmed up to tourism, which is why its such a great & exciting time to be here. People are very inviting if you give them a chance and that's what I did and what I'll continue to do.

As I begin to wrap this entry I sit on the top balcony of Sunny Lake Hostel, sipping some warm joe, seeing another beautiful sunrise over the mountains.

The location: Ohrid, Macedonia. The journey to this place involved another bus ride (not so long this time) to podgarec, then hopped on a cab to the Albania-Macedonian border where we literally walked across, and then finally waited for a city bus that took us through the mountains and finally here in the early evening.
 From the little that I've walked I can only use one word to describe this place, mystical: the lake, the mist, the thick green algae on the shore, the strewn and abandoned boats laying side by side, the tall mountains in the back, yeah mystical sounds about right and today I'll get to see the full extent of it. 

I had no idea that this trip was going to bring me through the Balkans but that's the beauty of traveling with a blank boarding pass. God is good and I'm very fortunate to be having these moments, 

God bless!

bangalore to los angeles via hong kong

today is tuesday

november 24th, 2015

im currently debriefing inside a starbucks a few blocks from home after a long long day of traveling from bangalore, india back to los angeles, california. 

the day began yesterday but technically yesterday is still today from the point from where i started.

ok,
moving forward...or backwards? 

bangalore time: monday nov 23th

we hopped on a cab at 9pm monday night. 2 hours later, after a bloc of akon and eastern european dance music along with close calls dissecting through the horrific evening bangalore traffic we made it to the airport. it was 11pm and the flight to hong kong was scheduled at 1:15am the next day.  

hong kong time: tuesday nov 24th

our flight landed at around 10am and the connecting leg was scheduled at 1:35pm. we walked around the airport for a bit and grabbed some some iced tea/coffee along with some pastries and waited for the flight. we found a good spot with chairs down at arrivals and relaxed a bit. the exhaustion was beginning to show in brianne's hair and eyes and in me through my speech; i tend to slur and not make cohesive thoughts when i dont get enough sleep.
we got our seats late so we had to move fast. when we reached the gate i noticed that boarding had just begun. we took a breather and i looked at my boarding pass, seat 72E, the middle seat at the last row on a boeing 777-300ER. i dreaded the flight at this point, which was estimated to take a little over 12 hours. before take-off, as i sat on my seat, i said a quick prayer to my Maker and off we were.

los angeles time: tuesday nov 24th

we landed at around 9:35am that same day, 4 hours before our flight took off. i got around 4 hours of sleep on the flight, not nearly enough. my shoulders were soar, i felt a bit groggy but we were back. i got home at 1pm and what was to be an hour nap became five. my shoulders didnt hurt as bad and the warm white chocolate mocha that sits comfortably in my right hand is taking a little of the edge off. the journey back home was long but when youre traveling with good friends while make new ones, there is nothing else id rather be doing. 

now back to the grind. i think

monday was a pretty crazy day

my alarm went off at 4:00am but i snoozed a few times; i rolled my eyes, i didn't want to start the day. my flight to jfk was scheduled at 6:59am and there were two airport shuttles from downtown montreal that i could take: 5:01am or 5:31am. i knew it'd be risky but i went with the 5:31am not truly knowing how much of a risk it'd actually be.  

along the way these were some of the challenges that i encountered:

the shuttle was 10 minutes late 

my metro card for some reason wasn't reading but by thee grace of God the driver let me on

by the time i got to the american airlines counter, i was late for international check-in

the check-in lady must've felt sorry for me because the next thing i know she hands me a boarding pass and tells me "give it a shot, but we will not wait for you" that was all i needed. i thanked her and bolted towards the gates. i thought i had things in the bag but i quickly realized that it wasn't going to be that easy.

US customs and immigration is done at montreal airport so when i got to security the line was out of control. i was about to throw the cards and give it up but then i realized that there must be a global entry line somewhere! or not. 

i frantically looked but nothing, no signage, nada. i approached a security agent and asked him if there was a global entry line, he paused, my sphincter tightened, and then he slowly pointed. directly behind me, a few yards away, right next to the crew-member & airport employee line there was a sign that read global entry

my heart lepped. and yet again global entry saves the day. i've had global entry for a little over a year now and its probably one of the best $100 dollars i've ever spent. seriously. seriously seriously.

it was 6:25am when i got my customs slip from the kiosk and it was 6:35am when i got past the CBP officer. i was greeted by the pre-boarding announcement when i reached my gate. it was a sweet sound. there were so many variables in play that had to go my way in order to get where i was at. not just at the boarding gate but in general. a few minutes later i was given my seat and a moments later i was sitting in 18a waiting for push back.

i wish i could say that that was it but my day had only just begun. from new york i flew to san francisco and from there finally to seattle. it was long long day but thats the kind of job and life i signed up for. wouldn't have it any other way. God bless!

untitled denver project: week 2

it was a thrilling week 2 for the crew of the untitled denver project; specifically for sound. we filmed at this dive bar called the nobb hill inn right on the footsteps of denver's main drag: colfax ave. it was a big challenge trying to record clean audio being that the bar's front door, which leads directly into busy colfax had to be open. this among other factors had me rubbing my eyeballs deep into the farthest corners of my skull. it was a constant battle between myself and noisy colfax but in the end i was able to pick up decent dialogue from the lavs and make it work.

recording location sound in denver right now is a pain in the ass in general though. i've been out here for 2 weeks and this whole city is pretty much under construction, which means noise, lots of it. but thats the job we sound mixers signed up for and even though we can't control all of these external forces, sometimes we can work around them and if we're lucky we get great sound.

we filmed at nobb for 2 days, then we moved and filmed at l'eagle, a marijuana dispensary and grow room in the outskirts of denver. the location was also a bit of a challenge but nothing compared to nobb hill. the a/c was turned off but the fan would not stop...i got room tone and made sure i pointed my shotgun away from the vents and pressed record. 

after the shoot, the owner of l'eagle gave us a tour of her garden. she was lovely and spoke with a true passion about her bussiness and to break it down, l'eagle would be pretty much the pavillions or trader joes of weed; everything is organic and takes longer to grow in order to get the best out of the plant. she showed us the baby buds and the process of placing rfd chips on every plant to mark them as inventory for the goverment; crazy stuff. the whole time i felt like we were going to get raided by either the goverment or the cartels hahaa

the story itself also took a turn, which was a good thing for the movie. our main character was becoming somewhat predictable/stagnant and our directors were having none of it. things got dark and uncomfortable on-set and as i watched the action unfold in the monitor and while i heard my raw mix of the arthur, mike and nathan, i knew that we had captured something magnificent. these 2 guys are really something, they're amazing to work with and im so blessed to have been given this chance.

i'm excited and nervous about week 3. the story is about to change and i honestly dont know in which direction. 

well, here's to making movies and storytelling! 

portugal: oporto & lisboa

porto and lisbon. lisbon and porto

its been over 2 weeks since i've been back from portugal and yet i can still taste lisbon's warm gooey nata cakes from pasteis de belem,

porto's perfectly balanced dark and sweet galaos from nata,
and the deceptively strong port wine pretty much everywhere portugal. 

for far too long portugal remained on my top 3 countries to visit and for reasons unknown it remained this way. there is so much to say about tiny portugal and yet alot of its beauty i feel comes from what is not said. its hard to explain portugal's charm and beauty and i wish i could be more objective but something ethereal dwells here, something rare that only a few cities have:

havanna, cuba
belgrade, serbia
essaouira, morocco
montevideo, uruguay

well, myself along with 3 friends finally decided to tackle portugal.
our first stop: porto


we landed early in the AM and after a rookie mistake on my part (forgot my passport in the seat-front pocket of the plane...palm to the face) we were off. we took the metro into the city which only took about 1/2 hour and one transfer.



it never fails when you hit that moment as you're riding the escalator up from the metro when you tell yourself "ok, i'm finally here!" as if the beginning of your story was about to fade from black.

daylight and broken clouds greeted us but just like that we were finally in porto. it was late in the afternoon. it took us a minute to figure out our bearings but when we did we quickly found our way to our hostel. we stayed at this place called tattva and it was probably one of the best hostels i've ever stayed at. the staff was friendly, the rooms were exceptionally clean, and its location leaves you minutes away from pretty much everything. also a big shout out to andre, the tattva hostel worker who treated us like royalty and made me tasty mini pancakes every morning.

we gave porto 3 nights. in that span we took a walking tour and learned a bit of porto's history and its rivalry with lisbon.

scoped out the beutiful duoro river
enjoyed fransiqueñas and late late night bifanas
rented a car and followed the yellow signs north into spain and visited santiago de compostela
took a train and visited guimaraes, the birthplace of portugal and enjoyed my first galaos.








our stay was short, too short. i felt myself dragging my feet as we walked to porto's train station.
our next stop: lisbon

we took a morning train and spent the ten extra euro to ride first class; fancy us. it was a quick 2-hour train ride that included a 6-ounce cup of coffee and great views of portugal's countryside.




lisbon's metro took about the same as porto's and with ease found our way to lisboa central hostel.
ok, so i'm starting to think that this might be a portuguese thing but hostels in portugal are on point! to be fair though i've only stayed in two.

lisboa central hostel was a slam dunk for all of the reasons of tatva but not when it came to pub crawls. i felt bad for barbara - our pub crawl group leader - and there can only be two possibilities that would account for such a bad pub crawl and before i even get into it, how do you even mess up a pub crawl?!




its kind of like messing up making a burrito, although someone has made me a crappy burrito before so i guess i get it. so this how i see it, either barbara has no soul who could care less about us and the pub crawl or she was completely out of her element stuck with this hostel duty that by the look of it was very awkward for her to do; i went with the latter. i found myself getting mad at barbara at times for the awkward situations she placed us in, but then i would get sad for her and just smile.






the next morning was much better. we took a walking tour through old lisbon and the following day we took another one through alfama. i like walking tours, they're a neat and fun inexpensive way to learn the history of a city, its neighborhoods and the people that live in them.
i took a strong liking to alfama.

sleepy alfama seemed so separate from lisbon. from the alfama side you get a nice view of lisbon and the praça do comercio (commerce plaza) where all of the ships would dock and unload/load cargo back in the days of exploration. the weather in lisbon couldn't have been better.


we also went inside some extravagant and significant churches, most notable the church of nata cakes AKA pasteis de belem. we heard horror stories of the notoriously long lines but i think we only waited 20 minutes max to secure the goods. the nata cakes from this place are supposed to be the best and prior to this, we'd had a few and they were all good in my own honest opinion so when i took my first bite, it didn't taste new; it was simply damn good!

the last night we finally were able to squeak by and find seats to enjoy some fado at this place called a tasca do chico. the previous night we tried getting seats 1/2 hour before but the place was packed. this time around we got there about an hour before and we still had to wait to get a seat. seeing fado performed was a great experience and had i drank another glass of port wine, i too would've broken out in fado.

so the portuguese have this word
called"saudade"

our walking tour guide tried to explain and he even asked a random man in alfama to explain it also. what i took from it was this:

its that foolish longing for something or someone you know you'll probably never get back. its the feeling you get inside your bones when something subtle like the scent of a flower, perfume or shampoo rocks you in the most awful and at the same time wonderful possible way. for a moment, everything stops and pains from the past resurrect but not enough to open any stitches.


...so lets just say that suadade and myself are familiar with each other.

i got a bad case of saudade the following day as we packed our stuff and headed back home. we weren't even out of the hostel and already i was beginning to miss portugal. 

out of all the western european countries that i've traveled to portugal is probably my favorite.

its been over two weeks and i miss portugial, did i mention that?