So, I'm Seven Lions fan, and figured it would be interesting to see his friends play at Mezzanine, but honestly it was very much a mixed bag, both in music type (a bit all over the place, including the crowds, some were rowdy), and DJ'ing skills.
Seven Lions wasn't technically on the schedule, so we didn't have an expect him to play a lot, but were hoping for at least 1-2H, and in the end, it was only 30mn, which was disappointing.
A few pictures:
Finally, Seven Lions came for a quick tease around 01:00 and went to hide again :) The guys who were playing there (not even sure if they were actually playing), didn't mix anything. It was just a track after another with no transitions whatsoever in between. Sigh...
Finally, he took over the decks at 01:15, for some nice tracks and proper mixing. It was quite nice, but way too short, especially with some of the substandard DJs that played just before:
π
2019-11-23 01:01
in Clubbing, Dreamstate, Festivals
Dreamstate in SF did not happen this year, which is unfortunate as two dreamstates are better than one :) , that being said we still had Dreamstate Socal, which only got better this year. This year was my 3rd Dreamstate Socal, and my only regret was not having started to go earlier.
Dreamstate Socal at the NOS in San Bernandino has a lot more room than Bill Graham in SF, which allows for multiple stages (4 of them 2 years ago, and 3 these last 2 years). To be honest, 3 stages are enough given that each timeslot often had multiple DJs I wanted to go see. The big change this year was the much better psytrance stage, which accompanied with the great DJs, gave lots of opportunities to listen to good psytrance.
So, psytrance, I know, it's a bit of a niche market, but with some DJs like Astrix, Vini Vicci and Blastoyz, I've grown fond: high energy triplets grow on you, especially with so many psy remixes of great tracks. If you want a sample, see Blastoyz at this year's transmission:
Anyway, back to Dreamstate Socal, great production this year, more DJs than you could see and enough eye and ear candy to fill two great nights:
welcome back, we missed you
The decors were great and the VIP areas were shiny:
If you didn't bring your own lighting, they had you covered:
Closest to the entrance was the well improved psytrance stage (the sequence). The visuals were fantastic:
And the vision, the indoor venue, while too small for the crowds, had fantastic lighting and lasers too:
there is no such thing as too many lasers
woot!
but getting in at times, was 'challenging', some likely got in after the set they wanted, was over :-/
The Dream (mainstage) was quite well done too:
of course they also had a few lasers, because why not? :)
For the LED/tech nerd that I am, it was great to see more people with LED panels, some were able to use some of the code that I published online and make their own improvements on top:
well done Rory
nice improved animations on Denny's totem
nicely done, not easy to make a good gif in only 64x64 pixels
and even without LED panels, there were other nice totems:
So, let's go on to the DJs for Day 1:
unfortunately the DJ lighting was busted on day 1 in the sequence, so you couldn't see the DJs
it had been years since I last saw Johan Gielen in 2004, sweet!
I do hate tall flags though, they've ruined so many of my pictures
30X zoom taken from pretty far in the crowd, hence slightly grainy
Haliene came to sing with Ferry, but unfortunately she was not high up and didn't get to sing much. Give her a higher stage to stand on next time
and Aly and Fila to close the night
Day #1 Video Summary:
The next day, we had a meet and greet where many artists were nice enough to come see their fans. Thanks to Rachel for getting me a spare ticket after mine was invalidated:
After a bit of rest before the next big evening, came day #2:
cool outfits
hard to capture persistence of vision on camera, but nice when it works
sweet
psyduck is overlaoded
Then it was time for some tripets, vini vici and blastoyz, and they were both great:
7 lions even came to say hi
I went back to catch the 2nd hour of Above and Beyond, which I had found a bit disappointing the last times I saw them, including ABGT 350. They were however excellent this night:
that was indeed my thought after the gorge and ABGT, but they made us wrong this time, thank you
I finished the night with Abraxis. Seven Lions didn't mix dubstep in like I was hoping for, but it was still an enjoyable set:
still poor lighting on that stage, sorry
and just like that, it was over, after 18 incredible hours
Day #2 Video Summary:
Also, those 2 days was one more chance to complete my DJ and Trance singers picture collection :)
Thanks to my friends who were there to share the evenings with me and Jennifer for joining me:
Palau was one of the major diving destinations that we hadn't hit yet, so it was time to fix that. We found an 11 day tour on the Siren where a group of Russians booked the boat, but ended up having an unused cabin, which worked great for us (all trips of more than 7 days were otherwise full when I looked). As a special bonus, they wanted to start one day early, so we ended up with an extra day on the boat (11 days instead of 10).
The day prior, we did a kayak/snorkling tour with Sam's Tour.
After the boat, we did a Palau land tour, also with Sam's tour
We were familiar with the boat as it was mostly identical to the siren we took in the Philipines. It's a nice and spacious boat, but has a moronic design where the saloon roof is so low that it's mostly impossible to spend a whole trip without hitting your head badly on it. I did so in the previous trip, and after 9 days of avoiding hitting my head, it happened again on this boat too. If only I could have 2 words with the lovely person who thought it made any sense to build a boat that way...
Anyway, while the boat is not as big or nice as the now defunct Waow, it comes as a close second. The staff was fantastic and the boat amenities were good, Even if we got the smaller cabin #1, it was still bigger than at least a portion of the dive boats out there.
The Siren was a bit unusual in Palau as the seafloor was such that the boat could not anchor close to the dive sites (either it was way too low, or too high for the boat, making it likely to hit coral). This did translate into sometimes long skiff rides (15mn was typical, with a few that were 20 to 25mn). I was not a big fan of that as we spent many hours on those skiffs over the 10 days, but it was unavoidable for that boat and location. On the plus side, some of the skiff rides were scenic and the skiff divers were good:
they were well equipped, better than my handheld garmin I logged all the dives with :)
For diving, I had my trusty RX100M5, but found out with great chagrin that the CCD on the camera had been damaged by lasers in Prague and now had visible purple dots on all my pictures. Because I like to be ready for failures, I had just bought a diving case for my RX100M6, but it was a terrible case with so many problems, and to make things worse, my RX100M6 grew a fault where its lens could not retract anymore without my pushing it. So, I had to turn the camera on on the boat, close the case, and make sure to keep the camera awake so that its 30mn shutdown timeout didn't trigger. If anything went wrong, the camera stopped working for the rest of the dive, so I ended up diving with both cameras with an this self built setup (yeah for zipties). When the camera with a non damaged CCD but damaged retraction mechanism, failed under water, I switched to the 2nd camera that took pictures with some purple artifacts on them (better than no pictures at all):
Anyway, let's look at the diving pictures:
first day was a wreck dive in murky water
Day 2, we stayed in the lagoon, due to bad weather and dived more wrecks:
And finally we were able to navigate to the south/west area where most of the nicer dive sites are located and the water wasn't as murky:
But rain didn't stop and hit us randomly most days, it was the first time I got to see such hard rain on the surface from underwater:
Sires Tunnel was a cool dive, especially as I like caverns:
we found a nice leopard shark down at 45m
While Yap is supposed to be known for mantas, Palau's German channel has mantas, although we only had good conditions one dive, the other dive had horrible visibility:
lots of other fish
red snappers eat plancton just like the mantas
They have a local friendly napoleon fish, called Al:
Other nice fish could be found, and of course plenty of sharks:
beautiful Orang Outang crab
Blue holes had fish swimming upside down in the cave, as they often do
Blue holes also had a huge barracuda
always nice to see an octopus hunting for food
this is how it tastes rocks for good, also amazing to see how stretchy that 'skin', is
I think that was a leopard shark I found sleeping under a rock
German Channel had something I had never seen before: gobis that were looking out for 2 shrimps that worked together:
Another unusual thing we saw was a shark missing its top fin:
The area had lots of holes and caves, and my favourite was likely Virgin Blue Hole:
Jennifer found a fire coral in there
deep holes that you could explore
nice crocodile fish
nice school of humphead parrotfish
Al came back to see us
The last day of diving, we went to Jellyfish Lake for a snorkel (you can't dive there as the water below 15 meters is quite dangerous to living organisms, but it's perfectly safe at the surface. The many jellyfish are non poisonous as they have lost the ability to sting because they have no predators (the lake is separated from the ocean by porous rock, which allows water through, but no organisms). It was super cool to play with the pretty jellyfishes:
we got dropped off
short hike to the lake
and then time to get in the water
that is the 2nd kind of jellies you find in the lake (much less common)
there are a few other fishes in that lake
and I found this single invasive crab
A few videos of fish:
Giant humphead parrotfish:
Back in the Korror lagoon, we did a wreck dive (Ijn Iro), but the water quality was pretty terrible:
top mast
Our last dive of the trip was Chandellier Cave, which was 5 different caves you could get to with short dives:
Outside the cave, we found a rare (for the area) sea snake, and nice mandarin fish:
We also did a fair amount of night dives and got lucky on some of them:
lots of plancton
This squid was a lucky find, it stuck with me because it loved my light and used it for hunting:
Normally squids run way like this:
biggest nudis ever
interesting shrimp with long arms
manta shrimp that dug itself in the ground
Basket star, a very interesting organism:
Dmitry who oragnized the trip for the Russian group, nicely lent us discreet blue lights that show off some proteins at night. Very cool to see with that:
lots of baby manta shrimps liked my light
found more squids, but those didn't like my light and swam off
Of course, we did a lot of diving (32 dives out of a possible 34 if we had missed a couple of land excursions), and the main land excursion was Peleliu.
The land tour in Peleliu where US Marines landed to kick out the Japanese that were there. Sadly they were well equipped and fought to the last one, infliciting significant losses to the US. Taking the place over too 74 days instead of the planned 4 days. The island has left over Japanese buildings, tanks, and amphibious vehicles for the beach landing:
found a nice hermit crab on the beach
also, plenty of small ones
runway that the americans wanted to capture
lots of crickets in the caves
thousand man cave was last on our tour
they drunk lots of beer
lots of bats live in there, now
one of the caves' exits
That evening, we also had fun on a nearby island we got dropped off at one evening:
easier to take pictures of the moon when not on a moving boat
One of our last days in the area, we had a nice BBQ on the small island:
Thanks to the nice Russian group that we shared the boat with, it was nice to chat with them and learn more about Russia. They were also all good divers, so it was a great to dive with them:
This was not our first time in Micronesia, we had been to [Truk Lagoon|perso/diving/post_2018-12-01_Diving-Truk-Lagoon-with-Truk-Odyssey.html] before, but first time in Palau, which is another world top diving destination. In the process we got to learn about the country too, which used to belong to Germany, then Japan (peacefully), and less peacefully during WWII.
The US liberated the country in a bloody battle at Peleliu, and eventually Palau opted for independence from the US and became a young republic 25 years ago. There are lots of signs left that this used to be a US territory, including the use of the dollar, gallons, NOAA weather station, and more.
On our first day, we did a kayak/snorkel tour to Nikko Bay with Sam's Tour
the tour did include visiting a japanese outpost
On our 2nd day, we boarded the Palau Siren for an 11 day diving tour of Palau. During that time on the Palau Siren, we had a half day Peleliu tour, which recounted the history of the US landing to liberate the Island from the japanese.
Unfortunately, the Japanese were well equipped and fought to the last one, infliciting significant losses to the US. Taking the place over too 74 days instead of the planned 4 days. The island has left over Japanese buildings, tanks, and amphibious vehicles for the beach landing:
found a nice hermit crab on the beach
also, plenty of small ones
runway that the americans wanted to capture
lots of crickets in the caves
thousand man cave was last on our tour
they drunk lots of beer
lots of bats live in there, now
one of the caves' exits
After our time on the Siren was over, we had one more day in Palau before flying out, so we took Sam's Palau Cultural day tour of Palau. We learned more about how Palau became a county with many states within it, and a bit about how it's ruled.
We saw the nice Nikko hotel before leaving for the day:
We then arrived to a cultural house where state leaders gather to conduct business
Next, was a hike to a waterfall:
the japanese built a train to shuttle out the boxite they were mining
and eventually we arrived
jennifer found a small snake on the way back
On the north side of the island, they have some monoliths that are around 2000 years old:
they also had yummy young coconuts
Last stop wsa the new congress that had just been built, partially financed by Taiwan and the EC. It looked like a mini Washington DC and was very pretty:
Even though Palau is not that big, each state within it, has its own license plate and while they drive on the right as per US influence, most of the cars also have a steering wheel on the right (wrong side) because they are second hand from Japan:
And that was it for Palau, it was then time to go to the airport and fly home
We had a 7H layover in Taipei on our way to Palau, so I figured it would be more fun to spend a few hours in Taipei than just burn all that time in some lounge. Because we landed very early, we first headed to Bitan in New Taipei and its suspension bridge, an area that Jennifer went to with her parents when she was a kid.
China Airlines business was nice, but hard to get with miles (sadly we were not able to get it in the other direction):
After landing in Taipei, we took an uber to new Taipei City bright and early, but the small shopping street by Bitan suspension bridge, was already open for business.:
enterprising people were swimming in the river in lieu of jogging
I had a hard time believing that it had been 5 years since we visited the Google Office in Taipei 101, but sure enough, it was. I was a bit sad that we went through so much of Taiwan then, and didn't get to visit all those HTC now Google offices, which weren't part of Google back then.
As part of a 7H layover in Taipei on our way to Palau, I figured it'd be more fun to spend a bit of time around Taipei, than to spend the 7h getting drunk in some lounge, so we took an uber bright an early to New Taipei City/Bitan.
Then, we went to visit the couple of HTC buildings there. They were very empty when we arrived as we got in before official work hours:
ZXG88 is a big building, although either all floors were not accessible to Googlers or not part of Google
The HTC buildings didn't really have snacks in microkitchens during HTC days, and still don't today, so people brought their own
badge scanner inside the walls, first time, this faked me out as I didn't know where to badge since the reader wasn't visible
I hope the safety nets were only there to catch stray objects that might fall
5mn away was the Gigabyte building that has a small google presence on 3 floors, mostly wireless hardware testing from what I was able to see:
we mistakenly entered the gigbabyte lobby, the Google entrance was around the corner
it was still early in the morning (engineering hours-wise), so the floors were bone empty
lots of testing equipment, including this bad ass shielding room
After being done in New Taipei City, we went to Taoyan City, 45mn away by uber, somewhat in the direction of the international airport:
likely for historical reasons, there is a 7-11 inside the building
the google building is next to the HTC lobby
nice decors, but the first floor was also the only place where guests were allowed without written prior authorization
the upper floors were mostly seas of cubicles and not that interesting for guests anyway
nice view, lots of scooters
Jennifer made do in the café while I quickly walked the upper floors
big café, the only google café we saw in the 4 locations we saw
the gym was also quite well sized and equipped
Last, and in this case also least :) was RNGAN68, which was easy to miss, even when in front of it:
it's a very small building with a few testing labs and no pictures allowed
3.5H, 4 new building locations, a bit of a travelling, but interesting to see. Definitely better than just aimlessly spending time in a lounge.
