Jaded

© Joselito Briones

This is one of the photos I took in Chinatown last monday. I took several, the old lens of the OM-1 SLR proved very useful in doing this kind of photography (very shallow depth of field).


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You like apples?

© Joselito Briones

This is a photo I took from Cesar's backyard.


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Linked Arms

© Joselito Briones

This is one of the photos I took during the Carnival parade in the Mission District.


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Masonic Hide and Seek

© Joselito Briones

This is a photo I took at the Masonic Center a few days ago, when Ate Uding and Kevin went there for their citizenship ceremony.

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Carnival

© Joselito Briones

I went to San Francisco today to watch and take photos of the Carnival parade in the Mission District. I also went to the "Bullet Art Festival" in Octavia and Hayes, but other than the funky headgears which are basically snap-on hoodies (they're really just hoodies, no sweater nor jacket attachment) and cute t-shirts and grocery bags, there wasn't much to see there.


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Pancakes

© Joselito Briones

I can't remember when the last time was when I had pancakes this way, but it surely brought back memories. For breakfast today we had pancakes topped with sugar and drowned in condensed milk. Have you tried pancakes this way?


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Patio's new chef

© Joselito Briones

We dropped my parents off to the airport to check their luggages in. Their flight was cancelled. Supposedly, the plane that they're gonna be in didn't arrive from Manila today. Philippine Airlines. They were giving hotel vouchers to anyone who needed to stay in the city before the rescheduled flight tomorrow. What's very disturbing though, is that, even as my parents paid penalty fees to have their flights rescheduled for today, Philippine Airlines isn't offering compensation fees to the passengers who are involuntarily rescheduled for tomorrow. Go figure. If you want your flight rescheduled, you have to pay, if they reschedule your flight, you get nothing. NADA. Lesson learned: fly with other airlines.

After checking in the luggages, we went to Patio Filipino for dinner. Cesar works there. We had the usual goodies, plus one, the very tasty Paella done by their new chef Lavinia (photo, above). She was imported by the restaurant from the Philippines, where she was a chef for one of Manila's leading caterers, "Mingoy's".


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Solitaire for two

© Joselito Briones

Whoever invented solitaire should be given a Nobel Prize or something.

Now that my parents are both retired, it's one thing that keeps them interacting together, keeping them sharp. They bicker over every game, who gets to play it (they only have one deck), and one almost always tells the other how to play it properly. To comic effect. Presumably so, because I always hear them laughing so much whenever they play solitaire together.

I took photos of them at Cesar's backyard, they're going back to the Philippines tomorrow.


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Golden Friends

© Joselito Briones

My Itay's down with a cold today, so I ended up driving my Inay to Hayward, close to where I lived when I moved to the U.S., to visit her friends before she goes back to the Philippines again. It was a beautiful afternoon, in one of those days when I wonder why I ever left California. Light refreshments included Vietnamese-style roast pork sandwiches and fresh fruits.

It must be one the best things one can wish for in life, having friends to be with and chat about nothing in particular.


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Mint

© Joselito Briones

Two new Americans. Mom and son. It's Ate Uding's oath-taking today for U.S. citizenship, and Kebbs being a minor, he automatically became an American citizen too.

The photo above, taken shortly after the ceremony, would've been much better in color, only I forgot to reset the ISO setting of the camera after using a high value indoors, so the noise was just too much. I thought making it toned monochrome would look better.

Yep. I'm back in California, pigging out with my mom's home cooking. She made oxtail Kare Kare yesterday.


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Japanese in East Village

© Eric Olivarez

I didn't have anything planned yesterday. Eric and I ended up going to East Village, just to walk around, and take loads of photos, like the past couple of days. We had lunch at the Japanese hole-in-the-wall that sells octopus balls, in 9th Street. On the same street, we passed by Hoshi Coupe, the place where I used to regularly have my haircut, and decided to have one before flying to California today. It turned out that Regina, my usual stylist, doesn't work there anymore. A girl named Miki did my hair this time, and she did it really well. The photo above was taken by Eric.


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Comically interwoven lives

© Joselito Briones

It's raining here today, so Eric and I decided to go see a show in Broadway, with Jane. Unfortunately, the shows we wanted to show weren't available on a discount at TKTS, so we decided to watch a movie instead (yes, we're THAT cheap). We saw Spiderman 3. It's as comic-y as anything can get, silly plot, silly acting, but very expensive execution and special effects. The sandman sfx was really good. We watched the movie in Astoria, in Queens (Steinway). After the movie, we went for a coffee (starbucks, photo above) and then dinner (pizza, quesadillas, mozzarella sticks, ribs, etc.) around the area from the cinema, spending about 4 hours just sitting and eating and chatting and laughing.


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Stop!

© Joselito Briones

It's come to a full stop. The iBook I brought with me for my travel this time died. Just like that. Kaputz. What does that mean? I won't be able to process and show you photos I take regularly. Not until I get back to Germany. After a month. Until then I'll have to just show you oldish photos.

Photo above is one such photo. This is a broken pedestrian traffic signal, taken in New York during my previous visit.


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Carrie lives here

© Joselito Briones

Eric and I were walking around New York and taking photos yesterday when, just when I was done taking photos of a neighborhood, an older man, probably on his way home, carrying grocery bags, told us that the actress Sarah Jessica Parker (that's) Carrie Bradshaw to you) lives on this particular house (photo, above).

Today we went to Century21 and DSW for bargain shopping, unfortunately I wasn't very much into it because I had a headache. It didn't help that it was dark and drizzling the whole day.

We then went to a computer repair shop in Elmhurst, one that Eric knows to ask if they could repair the notebook, unfortunately, they said they also need time to at least diagnose the computer, time I don't have, so we didn't leave the computer there.

In the evening we just stayed in, even as we were planning to go out with Jane.


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Hi from the Apple store

© Joselito Briones

Hey there Jimbo - am right in your 'hood today, and I'm sending it straight from the Apple Store in 5th Ave., not far from the place in the photo above, taken last March. The hawks in the photo, Pale Male and his companion are celebrities, of course, they've caused so much press coverage a few years back when the owner of the apartment whose balcony they decided to nest on tried to evict them.


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Happy Mother's Day

© Joselito Briones

Lea. Norie. Uding. Julie. Neh. Ludy. Dory. Deleng. JL. Christa. Mari. Silke. Cyntch. Christie. Marijune. Aling Pasing. Oni. Anna. Maricel. Weng. Ching. Vroni. Hana. Diana. Arabella (soon). Claudia. All mom's.


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And Mandy's out

© Joselito Briones

Heidi Klum finally said bye bye to Mandy last night in "Germany's Next Top Model". Yes, she with the long face is auf-wiedersehened last night. Did you see her do the pret-a-porter in the catwalk? She can definitely work at Hooters. And the paparazzi photos! Disaster. It was also obvious she was the least physically able among them. Couldn't run on the beach, couldn't do the superhero shoot, etc. Fiona on the other hand... first to finish the beach lap, and instead of stepping on the casting agent like Mandy did for the photoshoot, she carried him! I am so loving Fiona now. Too bad all the drama was done by Barbara (she's looking better and better! Her catwalk walk was so off though, like she's avoiding dog shit on the floor she was walking on). Next week maybe. At the end of last night's show, it was cut off just before Heidi talked to Fiona and Anni (she with the bad skin), and I assumed it was to auf-widersehen one of them, even after Mandy has been ousted. Nobody got eliminated last week, see, so they were supposed to do away with two models last night. I'm also taking Hana off of my predicted winners... not only is she the least thin among them, she's also the shortest. She's got really beautiful face, but her teeth are just off. So I guess now it's up to Fiona and Barbara...


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To the devil, you say!

"Spring in Upper East Side, Manhattan"
© Joselito Briones

You notice that new logo on the upper right corner of this page? That's what's new. I've taken so many photos and I've decided to offer some of them for sale for commercial purposes. I'm trying out iStockphoto. It's a slow process, it takes their staff about a week to review a photograph and approve it for inclusion in the portfolio. It's a good thing, probably, at least they're screening carefully.

Now about your photos. Don't worry, I'm not including personal photos. Although am not really sure what non-personal photos are, I'm sure I know which ones are personal. Pictures of friends are definitely personal, I'm not including them even though I have a signed model release that says I can. Well, unless you're an attention ho' like me and you write to me saying you don't mind if your photo is plastered everywhere. Once I put it out there though, there's very little I can do as to control how people use it. Your photo may end up in an advertisement showing the wonders of life, or it may be used to endorse laxatives. Hey!

Anyway, if you just want to have a print of your photo, I'll look for website I can upload high-resolution versions of "friendly" photos, so you can order directly from them.


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Kastanienallee

© Joselito Briones

This is a waiting bench in Kastanienallee, the heart of the "happening" scene in Mitte, in Berlin. I've got an overflow of photos now, so you'll be seeing a lot more of less-than current images. I'll be going to the US pretty soon, so it'll really stack up even more.

I'm trying a new way of putting up the pictures, using automated scripts, because it's getting difficult to update my photo website due to the sheer number of photo. I got a freebie gallery template from the internet and used it for testing: click here for a compilation of all the photos I've uploaded so far. What do you think, go this way or stay with simple html?


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Summer in the city

© Joselito Briones

Not quite, but almost. These people are obviously eager though. The photo is of the man-made beach along the river surrounding the Museum Island in Berlin, one beautiful, sunny day. The building in the background is the newly re-opened Bode Museum.


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The Brandenburg Kiss

© Joselito Briones

And today's theme: cheese! Can you get any more cheesy than this photo? I doubt it.

I've been to the Berlin three times the past year, and every time I make it a point to go to Brandenburg Tor to take pictures, but it was always raining the past couple of times that I was there. This time around finally there was sun! And what did I get? Not a photo of the gate, but of these lovebirds. Oh well.

Btw, do you know the couple? If you do, you can ask them for me if they object to having their photo here. I'll take it off if they do. Or if they want a high resolution copy, I can also send them one (the faces are actually recognizable in the high-res version).


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Knut Impressed

© Joselito Briones

Berlin's current biggest attraction, no doubt, is Knut the Eisbär. The baby polar bear born December, 2006 in the Berlin zoo is a superstar. He even has a website. His official showtime is limited only to 2 scheduled hour-long playtime with his caretakers. Nevertheless, people (and kids) from everywhere stood in long lines just to see him. People visit Berlin just to see him.

It was the perfect place and time to observe kids. I was particularly struck by the display of determination of the boy, who couldn't have been more than 10 years old, who was in line just before me. Discouraged by the long line for Knut (this was the second line, the first long line was outside, just to enter the zoo), the father tried all the tricks in the book to persuade him to leave the line and to just go with him, the younger brother, and the mom, to see something else (penguins!). When the father failed (to his credit, he was very patient with the boy, even as it was obvious he was also concerned about the younger son missing the other attractions), the mom tried too. Didn't work. She ended up handing the boy a cell phone, so they can walk around the zoo without him. What's most striking was, the boy stood his ground without being a brat about it. No tantrums. Whenever the parents tried to offer something new, he just nodded his head no. In his eyes you could see that he was being saddened everytime he had to say no, but he was firm about seeing Knut. Half an hour later, when it was already obvious that we were gonna make it after all to the last few minutes of Knut's appearance that day, the mom, impressed, rejoined the boy in the line. Then the younger brother did. The boy was obviously proud and excited, and just before we entered the gate to Knut's viewing gallery, he tried hard to persuade his father to join them to see the baby bear. Unfortunately it was the dad's turn to be proud, who stayed behind and watched from just outside the gallery.


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P.S. No, pictured, top, is not the same kid described above.

Keb

© Joselito Briones

Today's Keb's birthday, one of my nephews in the Yay! Area in California. He's the one on the right (on the left is Omar), and this photo was taken a long time ago. It's particularly noticeable in this photo the compression artefacts that I mentioned to you before (especially around the eyes and on the skin area in general), the thing that is introduced whenever I upload a file to Picasa. I guess they've gotten cheapo and want to save some space, hence the compression.


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Sony Center, Berlin

© Joselito Briones

This is as touristy and disneyfied as any place can get, the Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz, Berlin, and this particular roof structure has been photographed gazillion times before, but since I was just another tourist that day, here it is. The rest of the photos I took in this recent Berlin trip are about the same, tourist traps and all, so don't expect anything profound the next few days.


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