This is a recounting of my journey to get my visa to the U.S..
I started looking for an immigration lawyer in August 2017, my visa was validated on February 2019 so the overall process took about a year and a half; but the holdups were not necessarily where you would think they were. I think when it comes to immigration, each case is very different and my case is definitively not a “normal case”; but I think I learned a few things along the way which I’ll try to share here. Note: The E2 visa went through drastic changes this year, please check with a lawyer before doing anything drastic. Fitzcarraldo
A movie where real life insanity transpires in the movie. Reading about the production of the movie felt like... watching the movie... Great piece of art, absolutely unique. I wish Fitzgerald was not holding a mirror showing a grotesque but very real reflection of my own soul... The Great Hack Interesting to watch a documentary that have nothing to show. Because the topic is Data privacy, they end up showing people moving from one place to another. The topic is an interesting one; when not muddled by the character dramatization those documentaries tend to lean into. Private Data ownership is mentioned and I think it is really the way forward on this. You can't control data; it is too easy to copy and transmit and once you know something it is impossible to "unknow" it. Data propagation is such an entropic process that there is no "rolling back" and building mini data fort knocks is doomed to fail in my opinion. People owning their data is the way forward; both economically and in term of responsibility. Should everything be shared and propagated on the Internet? I don't think so, but I think we should all be ready that it might happened. In that aspect, I really like the story of Jeff Bezos Attempt blackmail. Somebody stole picture of a naked Bezos with his girlfriend and thought that information had great value so he went and blackmailed Bezos. What Mr. Amazon did in response is that he just described the pictures publicly and by doing so remove all the value of the stolen pictures. And everybody went... ok; no big deal. If we educate ourselves about consumer bias, and marketing technics, our consumer data become less valuable. If we learn to accept all the quirks and weirdnesses and come with being part of the human species, our privacy data become less valuable. If we keep tabs on the Politics and spend the time to elaborate an opinion, our geopolitical data become less valuable. People say in the documentation that the rate of data today is higher than Oil. I think it is overinflated and that it is in our hand fix it. And yes, our data should belong to us, and if somebody want to use my data, I want a slice of the pie. A second skin to connect to the digital world.
https://www.interestingengineering.com/wearable-second-skin-device-could-facilitate-human-to-machine-communication If you have not be living under a rock for the last few years you have at least heard about Escape Rooms. They typically work as follow: a group of people enters a physical room and they have a limited amount of time to solve puzzles and manage to escape the room. Escape rooms have traditionally had fairly poor stories, based on a handful of slightly antiquated tropes: Bank Heist, Hoodini, Sherlock Holmes, Haunted Houses, etc… But somehow they have been increasingly popular in the last few years, so the question is why? What makes Escape Rooms so attractive? To answer this, we need to ask ourselves: what is the story actually told? I believe the real story, the one that matters, the one that makes people keep coming back is not the one drafted in the room. It is the narrative that the players are creating together trying to solve the room. Let see the difference: Here is a typical Escape Room Story (which I think can be found in about a hundred rooms across the States): Sherlock Holmes is trapped by Moriarty in a distant, unknown location. He needs you to find a necklace hidden in his office to save the day and also himself while you are at it. He left clues and cryptic instructions in his office for you, his trusted “lieutenants”, to find the necklace. As you enter the office, you look around and see a locked desk, a bookshelf with 3 books on it and a bizarre looking clock. So you come in, solve the puzzles, find the necklace and save the day. Now this is what an inner story of a player would look like: You solve that clock puzzle quickly, but then there is Steven, your childhood friend. Lovable guy but he is a bit of a bully and as usual he pushes the group to do thing his own way. You hate when he does that, so with Jenny, your girlfriend, you start your own little investigation on the side. Somehow that doesn’t go as planned, the discussion turns sour and you start arguing pretty badly, names are called, old grudges resurface… and when you think your couple is about to end, you hear a click and you realize that you miraculously solved the puzzle by fidgeting with it! Great. At this point, time is running out though, Steven had made a bit of progress elsewhere but it is not looking good. Then something happens: 5 minutes before the end, Bob, bob the dreamer you call him, who hasn’t spoken a word during this whole time and was just looking around, chimed in and give you the final solution! It’s a miracle. You grab the necklace and sprint out of the room as the clock runs out and save the day! So you can see that your personal story isn’t really about Sherlock Holmes, it is about you and your friends. It is filled with personal emotions and at the end you learned a little bit more about yourself and the people around you. And yes, that inner story is still fairly simple, but what is important is to see the perception shift; how suddenly you are not too concerned on how Sherlock can communicate with you while being held prisoner but more about how to create interesting dynamics between the players. Our first reflex when designing an Interactive Experience is to turn toward the storytelling tools we know: Books, Theatre, Movies, etc… but when doing that, the linear structure and projection based storytelling (the fact that I’m telling the story of somebody else for you to project into) are colliding with the core of this new medium which by essence put the players at the center of the experience. Instead we should focus on players inner stories:
By accepting that real-life interactive experiences such as escape rooms are part of a new emerging medium and that by essence that medium creates different stories with a different language then instead of seeing the medium as a limitation one might be able to catch a glimpse at the vast ocean of extraordinary opportunities lying in front of us. What happens when a Neural Interface company buys an IP for remote control based on hand movement?
All I can see is myself imagining a vegan banana squirrel flavored ice-cream and having it delivered to my doorstep with a snap of my finger? Let's see as CTRL-Labs scooped the Myo Armband IP. “A missed opportunity”
Reception at the location was a bit underwhelming, we were left to wait in the middle of a crowded waiting room without much of instructions on the modality of our next steps. After that slight awkward moment, we were attended for and after a concise introduction were ushered in the Bunker. Looking around the room, I love the set dressing, the props are real and the room does look like a official bunker office from the cold war. There is a bit of an off-beat, not too serious spy atmosphere (the Fox leaving a "spy note" behind , the fox inserted in old war picture on the wall) but as often, the storyline is rapidly forgotten to let the spotlight to our favorite device: the coded padlock! The room is full of them. It is really a pity that the realism of the prop dressing doesn’t carry over to puzzle, with plastic clue sheets hidden everywhere in the room. A lot of one-off - no lead-in - What in the Hell moment down to sometime quite ridicule extent. Let’s put it that way, in more than one instance, I felt more like a high-schooler than a spy. Crypto puzzles make send for spy games, school math problems don’t. We couldn’t finish the room, I don’t even think we came close. The staff showed little compassion, and no debrief - I like when the staff goes over with us the last puzzle so we can see the end of the room when we fail - and we were back on the street after a quick picture. Overall, the bunker feels like a room with so much potential that gets muddled by underwhelming, frustrating puzzles. Rating: 3/5 “Such a good looking set..." 60 out staff, friendly and competent looking, started us out on one of those sleek escape room for dummies videos. I understand the need of those as escape rooms are quite a new concept and there are still a lot of new players out there. But since we mentioned it was not our first, they could have spared us. I always find those videos distracting from the experience. But in any case, after that underwhelming introduction, we headed to the room. The intro briefing was clear and polished but again missed a ‘je-ne-sais-quoi’ of enthusiasm and passion. The quality of the room is impressive; it does feel we are inside a ship. The props, walls, doors, everything has the heaviness and texture of the real thing. I am getting excited again. I don’t really feel the ship is sinking though (not a lot of ambience in the room). In the first room, the game attempts at a storyline - not forced, but through text and context which sounds interesting - those are the one I like the best; and i’m ready to get more of it. Unfortunately it is completely forgotten halfway and the game become a bit lazy from half way on with gamy-puzzly bits and bobs. Overall the puzzle were on the easy side, with a few “What in the hell” moments but up to a reasonable level; most of puzzle do make sense in their context; it just that the context runs a bit thin toward the end. Hints were given freely in a very straightforward, atmosphere breaking way; at the end, the staff usher us out after a quick picture the usual way. We did finish the room (quite early at that) but we didn’t get a great sense of achievement out of it. Obviously lot’s of time and care has been spent on that room. It shows in the overall quality of the props and the set dressing is quite impressing and worth a look. It is too bad that the same care has not extended to the design of the puzzles and the atmospheric of the room. My Rating: 3/5 "It is just a room, 4m by 4m, we are 6 in there and we have 30min. to get out... not much clue to go on, we will be able to out-mind the Room? [28 minutes later...] We reach the last puzzle, the countdown has started... we all are frantically fidgeting the clues we gathered, the panic is rising, ideas are shot left and right.... nothing seems to work... Final signal... We lost, defeated by the Red Room... So close..." The Red Room is said to be one of the best escape room in Tokyo, and without spoiler I can say that it probably is. It is short though and I wish SCRAP would avoid the cheap commercial trick of proposing a time extension against an extra charge at the end of the allocated time... They big enough to be above such practice.
In any case I warmly recommend it! My Rating: 4/5 "Who killed Elizabeth Killingworth?... The six guests sit around the massive oak table in the kitchen of the Killingworth Wine Estate are throwing accusing glance at each other. Gathering clues and talking to each other... Will they solve the mystery of tonight?... One of them is the murderer..." We are trying a slightly new twist on the murder mystery party formula. Each player are receiving a notebook with the information of the character before the night so that they can study and prepare the party at their convenience. Each player have secrets in their notebooks, information they don't want to share. But they also have clues which used on the right person, force them to reveal their secret.
We already did 3 run of the first prototype, every time tightening the plot, making the system more understandable and accessible. So far we have been receiving some pretty positive reviews! Next objective is to create a storyline that fit better our new system. |
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