Saturday, June 02, 2007

Take me to the ballgame

© Joselito Briones


From Mountainhouse, we dropped by Kev K's apartment to bring him some pizza, then to back to San Lorenzo to pick up Kebbs and Noel. Today's itenerary: a baseball game.

© Joselito Briones


The match was between Oakland A's and Minnesota Twins, in Oakland Coliseum. Not much seemed to have happened. The more interesting aspect, of course, was the audience. Three kids sitting next to me made running commentaries on every player, every play, every past play that reminded them of the current play, cheered and booed both teams at the same time, sang with every song played, and called every food vendor that went past. And yes, at the end of the game, I found out that very few people go there to actually watch the game. It's more like an excuse to pig out on junk food. People didn't seem to mind bingeing on junk food, because unlike vegeing out at home and consuming the same huge amount of junk food and beer, their excuse here is that they're actually participating in active sport. Never mind that the participation is limited to cheering and jeering. And sitting on their collective asses, not too different from watching the game on TV at home. Even the parking lot was a big venue for barbecue parties. We had our own share of food: popcorns, hotdogs, nachos, etc.

The highlight of the game had to be the fireworks afterwards. We had to wait more than an hour after the very brief game to watch the fireworks, because the game ended way before it got dark.

Seeing the news on TV when we got back to San Lorenzo confirmed my feeling after the game, judging from the cheers of the crowd, that the local team won.


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Norie and Dave and Ginger and Meynard


© Joselito Briones


Photos above taken at their backyard (Ginger and Meynard's).


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Friday, June 01, 2007

Mountainhouse

© Joselito Briones


I thought I'd spend the night at Norie and Dave's, in Mountainhouse (photo, above). I took the BART to Pleasanton, then Norie picked me up from the station. Dinner was at a Japanese place in Tracy.


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Thursday, May 31, 2007

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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Wednesday, May 30, 2007

You like apples?

© Joselito Briones


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


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Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Linked Arms

© Joselito Briones


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


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Monday, May 28, 2007

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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Sunday, May 27, 2007

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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Saturday, May 26, 2007

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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Friday, May 25, 2007

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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Thursday, May 24, 2007

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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Wednesday, May 23, 2007

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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Monday, May 21, 2007

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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