alteration shop

Photo:  Joselito Briones

this here is the alteration shop where i bring my trousers for length alteration.  it's on the same street where i live, on a narrow alley.



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going to california

well, not yet. just found the vid and thought i'd share it.
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riding for the feeling

,

"in conclusion... leaving is easy
when you've got someplace you need to be..."
- bill callahan

hmmm.  lately these letters seem to be like a countdown of some sort, don't you think?  give me until first week of september and i promise i'll snap out of it. in the meantime here's some more depressing sad music.


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the box

i know, end of january is still quite far away (that's when i'm supposed to move to california) but i don't know - somehow the ritual has begun.

for one i've started sorting my clothes.  the ones i won't be using anymore goes in the box.  my favorite items go in the box.  things in the apartment that i know i won't be using anymore for the rest of my stay here in hong kong goes in the box. i've also started buying things that are common in hong kong but hard to find in california.  those go in the box.  books i've read go in the box.  i don't think i'll be doing any more photo shoots in hong kong, so my studio lights went in the box.

the box goes to the philippines.  from there the contents will be resorted, and only the "musts" go to california.

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king prawns

unlike their much smaller cousins who were jumping all over the place when i passed by the fish market tonight, these king prawns were already swimming in ice water.  i bought them anyway because they were so big (that's a proper sized fork for comparison) and they looked so yummy. i was gonna throw away the heads because of that gooey yellowy heart-attack stuff that's in there but i didn't. between that and the massive earthquakes i felt in my heart after drinking the long black coffee that i got from pacific coffee (i don't know what the hell they put in the coffee - 5 espressos?), i was desperate to run in bowen road again.  only there's a typhoon signal no. 1 hoisted, so i just stayed in and waited to see if i was gonna fall into a coma.

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yellow clams

these clams were different from the other batch in that these are prettier - the shell and the meat are yellowish, and the brown lines on the shell make for a pretty pattern.  they're more lively too.  when i bought them they were spitting water at unsuspecting passers by at the market.

things were kind of decided for me:  i had half a day-old baguette that won't be any good at all tomorrow, so i thought i'd make some soup to dunk it in.  i was thinking maybe cold tomato soup, but when i passed by the market i saw these pretty clams so i thought, well, clams in soup, maybe asian spicy style. but the stall where i buy herbs was out of cilantro, so i bought broad-leafed parsley and dill instead, and onion.  when i got home i found out that i ran out of chicken stock, so i just dumped half a bottle of white wine in it.  i really should learn how to cook properly.

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get your own ewan mcgregor now! cheap!

who knew he's for sale? and for cheap, supposedly.  but then what's cheap for them is probably still not affordable for me.  and anyway i don't think i'd want to own ewan. i mean he looks good and charming and all, but i wouldn't know what to feed him, really.  tho from the persona he projects onscreen he looks like a very good-natured low-maintenance guy, so maybe it isn't so bad. nah. i can't even keep cacti alive for a long time, much less an ewan.

the screen shot above was from an ad in sfgate.com.  clearly the advertiser just scans keywords in the article (the article was about a new ewan mcgregor movie) and tempts reader to buy it from its website for cheap.  stupid bot. 

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victimless dinner

last night's dinner wasn't as much fun.  the squids (HK$20, am enjoying how cheap and fresh food here is) were already dead when i bought them, so there wasn't any of that splashing thing. no silent screams, either. ah well.  and anyway even if they were still alive in the market they'd have died when i left them outside my door when i left to get emi's (girl who cleans my apartment) copy of my keys because i locked myself out.

this one's a quickie. as soon as the squid was cooked (on a really hot pan, about 3 minutes, probably less) i just tossed it with some rockets (HK$15 for a big bunch). so nice and summer-y.

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my guests tonight: clams

they were just huddled there together, a bunch of big clams, in a bowl, in the fish market, looking bored, a tag of HK$20 (US$2.50 - supah cheap!) dangling on the side, so i thought i'd bring them home and make their lives a bit more interesting.

so yeah, when i saw my pot with stock and mixture of herbs already steaming, i let my freshly washed guests  dive in (ok, i slid them in) and covered the whole thing.  they must have felt very much at ease, because when i removed the cover a few minutes later they all really opened up to me.  we had so much fun. by "we" i meant "i", of course.  they were already food at that point.  

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soho extension

this is a few blocks from where i work, the photo was taken a few months back, you can tell because people in it are wearing coats.

rene phoned just before i left work to say he was standing somewhere here and would i like to have a drink so we did and we had beer and pizza and watched people passing by and calculated the time it will take for this area to get cleaned up like the main stretch of soho and how it won't be good because then the place will lose its character and after a few drinks decided that we should go out more especially now that i've made plans to leave hong kong.

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micachu and the shapes

while searching for podcasts about san francisco, i came across this npr's sxsw podcast of micachu (from 2 years ago! how did i miss this? she's adorable) and ended up downloading everything micachu from itunes and watching everything micachu on youtube. i'm hooked.

if you go to her rough trade records website there's free download of her songs.

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hello mr. dinner

first this pretty thingy trashed my kitchen by doing the flipping thing of his tail, splashing water all over the place.  then we had a staring contest (i lost).  then i gave him a bath of hot oil with minced garlic and ginger and rosemary.  then he was dinner.  yum.

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btw, his hot tub was a brand-new le creuset cast iron pot.  how i spoil my crustaceans.

cooking something

passing by the fresh fish market on the way to and from work everyday, it's taken much restraint on my part to not binge on home-cooked seafood.  my apartment is so small that the whole place would smell of cooked food if i did any cooking here.   now that i'm only gonna be here half a year tho,  i've given in.  i don't care about the smell anymore,  i'm gonna try every single thing that the fish market has to offer.  starting tonight.  :)

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I'm nervous.

 
i always am when making big decisions.  in about half a year, my job commitment here in hong kong will be over.  when that time comes, i've decided i'm moving to san francisco.

it's scary.  yet another start.  i don't know how many i've had.  i'm tired - of moving, of starting over, of being nervous.  it's scary because i've ran out of the thoughtless bravado of my younger days that made me plunge head-on to "adventures" like this, and fantasies that i'd hoped such move would make real. it's scary because i can still remember how rough it was the first time i moved to the bay area, at the height of the dot-com bust, and i can't imagine the current economic situation to be any better than it was at that time. it's scary because i feel too old to be starting again, even though i've wrestled with this terror when i left berlin two years ago.  it's scary because i don't think i can do another move if this doesn't work out.


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