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Friday, October 8, 2010

California Diary: Mickey Mouse is my neighbour!

I am writing to my own blog after a long time! I have been in California for about 15 days now. Came for doing estimation and "upstream project work" (means work done before the software development begins.

Over last 15 days I have wondered around the city without much of planning. Had some excellent time with my colleague discussing Hindustani Classical Music that too at times as odd as 3 O' Clock in the night sipping cans of beer.

We walked down to Disneyland one afternoon. We did not enter the park but had good time in the shopping mall near it. Enjoyed coffee sitting at a table on a sunny afternoon. Even bought a book about Walt Disney and his life. Seems he had heck of a time building his company and his entertainment park. Someone asked him "Why do you want to build an entertainment park? They are so dirty?" Walt's reply was "Mine won't be!"

I must say I am astonished to see the sheer amount of logistics involved. The area around the park is full of hotels and eateries. The place is packed on weekends! There is a bus that picks up guests from our hotel every 20 minutes of so. We can walk down to the road near my hotel and see the crackers bursting at 9:30 in the evening. The cracker show goes on for 15 minutes and it is worth a looking at again.

It is amazing to see the kind of ecology that Disneyland has built around itself! Hotels, restaurants, buses, bookshops, toys, everything!

Walt Disney has directly influenced the employment of thousands! It must not have been easy for him.

I was going through the Disney books explaining how to sketch their characters and the amount of detailing they have done is amazing! Call it as their "Style Guide."

Walt said, I never worried about the money. I was worried if there were no ideas. He has literally built the park over years putting pieces together. He would even wear old clothes and supervise the work of carpenters. When someone got irritated they would look at him and say, "And just who do you think you are? Walt Disney?"

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