Manila, Philippines Maps Are Working!

For the first time since pretty much forever, I’ve got my maps page working properly. Thanks to the propellerheads at Google, I can now update it quickly and easily as I move from place to place. I’m even able to put a little dancey guy icon on there to indicate where I actually am right now.

The momentousniciousness of this may be lost on you, so let me explain: my site is called "Where the Hell is Matt?" It is now possible to discern an answer from a site that implicitly promises one.

Yes, I know there’s no 2007 map yet. Get off my back!

I’ve been working on this a lot, which is one of the reasons I haven’t slapped a journal entry up in a while.

Another reason is that I have started editing the next dancing video. After months of stalling, I immediately entered the editing trance. Hours and days went by while I toiled in various hotel rooms. It’s a shame, cause I’m hardly getting anything out of the places I’m visiting. This isn’t an ideal time, but my mind is simply elsewhere.

When I picked the takes I wanted and dumped all the footage into the editor, I had an initial cut of 90 minutes. That’s a feature length dancing video. After considerable futzing, it’s under 5. I’m keenly aware that one can only watch bad dancing for so long before it wears thin. I figure I’ve got another 30% of the clips still to collect, so it’s going to be a struggle to keep that number down.

I hope to snap out of this mode in a few days and, in the meantime, at least get some small sampling of the Philippines.

I got recognized today in the Hong Kong airport. It was a guy who saw me on Japanese TV last week. They had me wearing all my luggage on the show, so I imagine seeing me fully laden is what clinched it for him. This doesn’t happen very often — maybe two or three times. I was in a pissy mood because they were making me produce a hard copy of my flight out of the Philippines before they’d let me on the plane. Smile for the camera and CLICK.