In my taxi from Charles De Gaulle Airport on my way to my hotel, I saw the most unexpected thing: we were driving through a tunnel that was also a runway on top!

I drew the above quick sketch that night in my hotel room (which is why isn’t very good) but I am afraid I didn’t capture the reason why I found the scene amusing.

Aside from the fact that an airplane was overhead, the airplane was one of those short, fat ones. Kind of like a cartoon in a way. It was just putt-putting along minding its own business as traffic was flowing underneath.

A few nights later, my and my friends were in a cafe and not being used to cigarette smoke since none of us smoke, the air was pretty choking (one of my friends noted that the tobacco they use is different).  But that didn’t prevent me from wanting to smoke like the parisiens! I know it is strange, but it is probably the same phenomenon as “When in Rome, do as the romans do”. I’m more of a cigar and cigarello man myself but I decided it was best to spend my money on clothes and CDs.

And boy did I ever! When I got back, the customs agent didn’t beleive I spent that much money in only a week. I replied, “I went nuts on Champs-Elysées”.

Technorati Tags: Paris

Back from Paris and what a beautiful city! I was in a day dream the entire time. There is so much to see (and eat. Oh how I love the cheese!). Miraculously, I managed to find some time to pull my eyes away from Paris, its sights and stunning women and do some drawing.

One thing which surprised me was seeing everyone carrying baguettes. I drew a scene with some of my carton characters walking around Paris carrying baguettes and Franky Banky just dawning on the fact that everyone in Paris carries baguettes.

I didn’t bring any pencils with me on my trip as I thought they were banned from airplanes. So it was a challenge for me to draw exclusively in ink. This was a quick sketch done in my hotel room at night after yet another day of sight seeing with my friends.

Speaking of which, another reason for my trip to Paris was meeting for the first time, my penpal from Indonesia. We first met through the mail when we were 15 (many, many moons ago). Of course, we moved onto e-mail and now we chat on IM.

I will write more about meeting up with my penpal in a future post. Along with more of my sketches.

For now I leave by saying that I agree with the Parisiens; baguettes are delicious and really light. No wonder French women are thin!

Technorati Tags: Paris

Imagine how much drawing can be done in such an art-rich city like Paris! I will also be participating in the 14th Worldwide SketchCrawl and what a perfect day, too– most of the museums in Paris will be free of charge so even if it rains, I have a cheap alternative!

While in the city of lights, I plan on recording a few shows of my upcoming podcast. Details on that later…

Technorati Tags: Paris, SketchCrawl

CostPerNews, a blog by Sam Harrelson, e-commerce consultant, mentioned TwitterSpud in his post entitled TwitterSpud: Micro-Narrative and Marketing?.

Read my enthusiastic reaction on my Twitter Spud site entitled Twitter Spud is micro-narrative and marekting. I am so happy– my first blog mention!

I got a little nostalgic and thought back to my kindergarten days when my super hero was Mighty Mouse by Terrytoons. I remember that I didn’t understand why the characters would sing opera. And I didn’t even like opera. But I still enjoyed the cartoon.

The ones below are from a cartoon that I remember well. A girl is singing on stage about bells ringing as she puts on a demonstration.

She does the same when Mighty Mouse rescues her.

Do you remember how they’d use the same sound effects for splashing water, falling into water and water in general? Or that sound effect of a crowd cheering? I wil have more framegrabs in future blog posts.

Technorati Tags: Mighty Mouse, animation, cartoons, Terrytoons

I’ve completed phase 1 of the redesign of TwitterSpud which includes it’s own blog. From now one, I will blog about TwitterSpud there.  And here, I’ll just mention when I have a new post there :)

Today, I made 2.  The first stars Mitch Joel offering marketing advice in an e-mail and the second stars Rob Clark of theelusivefish.com in what I call Battle of the Twitters!.

Technorati Tags: Twitter, TitterSpud, Mitch Joel, The Elusive Fish, comics