Obviously I'm not in a position to talk that much about the details of working at Radical. They're nice-seeming people, and I've got a phenomenal amount to learn in the near future, which is entirely fine as (a) I operate best when confronted by far too much information for one human being to absorb - that's exactly the amount I've trained myself to internalise - and (b) it'll keep me off the streets. And, as we also discovered this week, there are plenty of things on the street to distract us if we aren't careful. So, I'll trim the details in this public blog, and the Posse will get more details offline.
One thing I can confidently say about Radical is that they know how to make work fun. This is actually counterproductive for anyone like me who has, it turns out, spent some years working in an atmosphere of fear and stress. It means I'm sitting there wondering when the whip is going to land across my back, as opposed to how I've been operating for years, which is to feel confident that I'm working fast enough and hard enough to avoid the whip. The point appears to be that there is no whip, at least not at this point when we're in preproduction for a new game. The office is littered with couches and game consoles, there's a sizeable research library, and the kitchen / recreation area is epic, no other word for it. (The blog TARDIS will mention this with appropriate awe and wonder when it visits September 2006.) All the food in the kitchen is free. And there's tons of it. They talk of "the Radical fifteen", the way college kids talk about the "freshman twenty". I have to watch out for that, as my bellybellybelly is quite large enough already. However, I'm very tempted by their enormous bowl of fresh bread.
After only a week there I haven't actually done anything useful, but I have notched up a personal first and created a 3D model of something (specifically a hammer) in a modelling package. I never got around to learning how to use 3DS Max at Creative Assembly; I came to 3Dness generally late in the day and was quite timorous about my overall comprehension levels. However, I'm now convinced that it's a lot simpler than I used to worry, and I intend to make a lot more of my opportunities this time around. Thus: 15 minutes of Maya experimentation a day. And Panda made a hammer. Look, it's my hammer:
(I'm not going to post up the egghead with a face which I made. It's just the wrong side of cute.)
I didn't manage to get many pointers about the social whirl at Radical, since I was too busy sitting there fretting that I wasn't working hard enough. More on this next week, as I'm sure there are social things to do, and the guy who sits behind me has already scored some serious welcoming points by chatting to me about comics now and then.
In short, therefore, Panda is basically happy with the initial impressions of his new job, with the proviso that the whole being-in-Canada thing is playing silly buggers with my head and I can't be sure what I think about anything just now.
So instead let's talk about our life outside of my work, where I can be somewhat more decisive in my feedback.
On Monday night I had a huge headache and to be honest I think both of us were wondering why in heaven's name we were here. So let's skip that. Decisive, perhaps, but not exactly uplifting. And Sarah, out strolling somewhere, took this picture, which I'm too scared to ask her about:
Tuesday was much more like it. I remembered to listen to my MP3 player - having loud music in my ears is always a booster - and my trip to and from work was that much more fun for it. I was positively bouncing by the time I got to the library to meet Sarah for our first cultural experience: a presentation about world music and jazz improvisation. Vancouver Library runs a sizeable programme of free talks, and we lucked into a winner for tonight. Four musicians spoke briefly about their views on music and improvisation, and we heard three improvised pieces. The first was remarkable; the second had at least one great moment but was slightly iffy, and the third was mostly just plain iffy, but that's what you get for improvisation. I was tempted (but too timid) to ask in the subsequent Q&A session what the panel thought about the idea of recording improvised pieces - along the lines of someone's observation that the first poet to write "lips of coral" was a surrealist, but the second one to do it was just a hack and a plagiarist - so I'll ask you instead: what do you think about improvised music and the recording of same? Sarah was also most impressed, and the speakers managed to sell us on the idea of a 90-minute improvised concert taking place at the start of March, and they had discounted tickets at the front table, so that's another entry in our diary. Dear me, we'll be exhausted at this rate.
After the talk we went looking for a restaurant and settled for an Indian just up Robson Street. The food was delicious; Sarah had a biryani, I had a korma. However, we both had upset tummies that night. We suspect it was just from the richness of the food... let's be honest, English curries are generally so grim that the shock of tasting a properly-cooked one could easily be as upsetting to badly-detuned gastric systems as badly-prepared food is to a happy intestine.
Wednesday. Another library talk, but much less interesting this time. The Romance Writers Of America organisation has a Greater Vancouver Chapter, did you know that? And five of its members came along to talk about their work. This presentation was blessed by a tramp type who heckled, interfered, and eventually blew his top at a security guard, earning himself an instant eviction, which wasn't too much of a shame. The speakers were a mixed bunch, the highlights including the first woman, who surveyed the breadth of romantic literature while managing to project an aura of being mortally offended by the existence of anything that wasn't pure old-fashioned romance ("You even get male-male relationships! But the market is very small! And that's not what I write at all! Not that there's anything wrong with it!" - come off it, you don't bother saying "not that there's anything wrong with that" if you actually believe it). I'm not sure why I wanted to go along to this one, unless it was some long-submerged desire to finish off the Mills & Boon novel I started writing back when I was 23 and bored. Not a real winner.
Wednesday's restaurant - the library talks run from 7 to 8:30, so there's plenty of time to get stuffed afterwards and still be home early - was a steakhouse called Moxie's, just off Robson Street. Sarah had been convinced she'd located a pasta place for me, but it turns out it no longer exists, or something. After trogging up and down Robson on foot and on the bus, we got bored and went for the next place we saw, hence Moxie's. I was a bit taken aback by the staff dress code. I haven't been in many restaurants where all the waitresses wear little black dresses. It was a little weird, but as usual (Sarah would say) I apparently chatted up at least two of them. The beef vindaloo was excellent and Sarah's steak was done just right. All this plus definite smiles and hair-touching from "the lovely Rachelle". I suppose we'll have to go back to this one, if only so Sarah can try this:
"O'Zimmerman", that well-known Irish name.
Meals in Vancouver are checking in at about £25 for the two of us, which seems reasonable enough.
On the way home we walked past a clothes shop which had been invaded by little red pigs. No, seriously...
Of this, really, men will know nothing, and if they're sensible, they won't ask.
Thursday we were tired so we stayed in, had pasta, and went to bed at eleven. However, while I had the excuse of being tired from working, Sarah's excuse is a little more convoluted. For today, between 1pm and 3pm, The Bunny went to a choir rehearsal in South Granville. It was the first rehearsal of the "Afternoon Delight Choir" Spring season, and overall, I gather, she liked it a lot. The choirmaster, Ieva, runs three choirs in all, and one of them meets Wednesday evenings, so we're both going to that one next week. The other members of the choir with whom Sarah chatted were amazed, or possibly appalled, that we're hitting Vancouver this hard and this quickly. Most of them didn't know that the library hosts all these free talks, for example, and as for the thought of joining a choir within eight days of arriving in the country... well, this country will learn that the Jaysmiths, when they promise to hit a country, aren't joking.
And tonight we've also stayed in, chilling with laptops and one eye on the television, where we saw an exceptionally early episode of Roseanne and some MTV. More pasta, and, god, who are these people I'm seeing on MTV? I can assure anyone reading this back in England that if you think there are some talentless bimbettes trying to look like grown-up R&B divas on television over there, Canadian MTV (which I presume is a pickup from the US version) runs videos from ten times as many who are clearly considered not good enough for export but quite adequate for domestic consumption. I was listening to Ciara's debut album on my MP3 player today; honestly, she can dance, but that's all. Considering I listened to Beyonce's B'Day earlier this week, I'm surprised Ciara hasn't just melted in embarassment. It's not like she even puts on tap shoes and dances loudly in the studio for the microphones to pick up (a quite pointless strategy adopted by the occasional Broadway cast recording album). No, Ciara's only virtue is that she moves okay in videos. Steer clear of any alternative. (See also the Pussycat Dolls - who are a quite frighteningly well-organised franchise, did you know that?)
Another update on Sunday after we've had another saunter around town. I'm really looking forward to this dance show tomorrow night. Anticipate a strained attempt to describe it after the event.
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