Bondi Beach

Following our short visit to the Sydney Opera House, my uncle took us to lunch over at Bondi Beach. Located 7km from the city center, Bondi Beach is a very popular beach that reminded me of beaches in La Jolla where I grew up. I don’t think I ever appreciated how amazing La Jolla was until I came back to San Diego during my college summers. Seeing the Pacific Ocean open up as one exits Highway 52 is a lovely and amazing sight. I do wonder what it would be like to live in one of those houses just on the waterfront. Would I become desensitized to the view over time or would I remain captivated everyday with the brilliant blue sea?

Read the rest of this post and see the photos »

Sydney Opera House

Before our screening at the University of Sydney, we spent a few hours in the morning and afternoon doing some sightseeing. At the Sydney Opera House, we had a good view of people climbing up the Harbor Bridge. That might be a fun thing to do when we are back in Sydney next weekend. The Opera House was as striking up close and personal as it was in the photographs and videos I had seen of it prior.

The city of Sydney was very beautiful and very racially diverse. In many ways, Sydney and Melbourne remind us of the San Francisco Bay Area where we are from. The ocean’s right there, and nature is just a short drive away from the city centers. Great food from nations across the globe are present too. We could certainly see ourselves living in Sydney — or at least visiting it again!

Check out some photos we took of the Sydney Opera House.

University of New South Wales Screening

Rae at the University of New South Wales

We had a screening at the University of New South Wales yesterday afternoon. Thanks to Professor Haiqing Yu who set up our first screening of Autumn Gem on international soil! We had mostly academics and professors at the screening, and this led to a very good discussion about how best to promote and distribute our film to educational markets. We’re beginning a big push to get Autumn Gem in 2011, namely because it’s the 100-year anniversary of the fall of the Qing Dynasty. We’re betting that many people will be wondering, “What was the role of women in the early 20th century?” We want the answer to be to watch Autumn Gem!

Before the trip, I was thinking about leaving the laptop at home and bringing just the iPad to run our Keynote presentation and present the movie. I’m glad that I didn’t, because I needed the MacBook Pro to interface with the projector in the Robert Webster Building. The resolution was locked to 1280 pixels wide, and I couldn’t find a way to change that from the projector control panel. The iPad’s VGA adapter outputs at 1024×768, so everything looked stretched on the screen. Switching to the laptop and setting the resolution to 1280×768 fixed things. The takeaway from all of this? Always bring a backup!

Read the rest of this post and see the photos »

Arrival in Sydney

The flight from SFO to Sydney took fourteen hours. For me, that time went by quickly enough, since I was asleep for eight of those hours. Rae didn’t not fare as well, but she has been able to rest at our lodging for the evening. We’ll be heading out to the University of New South Wales in a few hours, as we have a screening today at 4:30 pm. And so begins our first international tour of Autumn Gem! We have eight screenings in thirteen days in Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra.