We ♥ Shopping

© Joselito Briones

Kebbs, Ate Uding and I spent the whole afternoon shopping in downtown San Francisco. We went to Saks, Neiman Marcus, Macy's, Zara, H&M, Lacoste, and Urban Outfitters, looking for a plaid jacket for Kebbs. I don't know why, he suddenly thought it's the perfect thing to wear for his promotion ceremony (he'll be in grade 9 next school year). To his disappointment, we didn't find one. I guess he'll just have to wear something else.

He also decided that the medium-sized t-shirt that I bought him after he helped me take photos last week is now too tight for him, so I bought it back from him. The fact that something that's too tight for him fits me should be for me either a source of pride, or shame, I can't decide which. So yeah, now I have a t-shirt that says "NERD" in front and "booger 69" at the back. Hmmm.


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What protein do you want with that?

© Joselito Briones

Loads of food today. Noel made bulalo (beef and marrow soup) and bought a huge fried fish, and fresh lumpia (my mom's favorite), and Ate Uding made Maja Blanca (a corn-based custard). Yummm.

Norie and Dave dropped by to pick me up, they've decided to treat me to dinner. I don't know why. Am not one to say no to food. So, hey. We went to PF Chang's, a Chinese Restaurant chain. Food was not authentic, but good. Ambience was a bit off, and waiters were very cordial. Our waitress in particular was all smiles, too bad we put her under very defensive mode when we all laughed when she asked, referring to the fried noodles, what "protein" we wanted with our noodles. I don't know, was it too much to ask to be asked if we wanted pork, beef, chicken or shrimps? Oh well.

Right after the dinner we passed by some new housing development in Hayward. Norie and Dave are looking to move again, because of the constant heavy traffic that they experience every day on the way to work, from Mountainhouse.

Right after viewing the houses, I drove to San Jose to meet up with and take photos of Alex (above). I got there quite late, it was a good thing that the sun sets so late these days. The photo above was taken past eight at night already, in front of a parking lot.


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Target

© Joselito Briones

Today's one of those really really hot day. Kebbs and I went to Target to get some groceries, and toiletries. Ended up getting a really chea jersey pyjama bottom, too.

Photo above is in front of Target's old location, I took it while walking towards the BART station last Friday, on my way to Norie's.


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Zac and Vicki

© Joselito Briones

This photo is from the same session as yesterday's, of Zach.

Watching the TV channels that Kebbs watches, I learned a new word today... "vommenting". It's a cross between vomitting and commenting, or vomitting comments. Kinda like what I do here sometimes, I guess.


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Vicki and Zac

© Joselito Briones

Kebbs helped me take photos of Vicki and Zac today. We did the shoot in Buena Vista Park in San Francisco. We went shopping for him afterwards. He got one t-shirt that says "NERD" in front and "booger 69" at the back, and another one that says "Yes, it's really me!" Photo above is of Vicki.


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Great Mall

© Joselito Briones

I thought I'd go to Great Mall in Milpitas to go bargain shopping. I ended up with: 2 Incotex trousers and 2 polo shirts for Mati, one t-shirt, belt, and hoodie for me.

The photo is not from the mall, it's from Montgomery in downtown San Francisco.


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Have a laugh

© Joselito Briones

Another photo from last Monday's walk-about in Chinatown.


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Craisins

© Joselito Briones

It just looked interesting, so I took a photo of it, in Chinatown last week. It turns out this is dried cranberries, also known as "craisins". It's supposed to be good for you. Whatever.


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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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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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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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