revit rendering study

one of the main advantages of revit over autocad is instant visualization.  basically you can work with the visuals at the same time you're doing the planning.  this one was a preliminary "look" study of a boutique hotel, rendered natively in revit.  i read somewhere that there's a (3rd party?) rendering function that uses cloud-accessed files, but i don't think that's a particularly good idea for now, because basically it means you'd be limited by your internet connection.  it's bad enough that so many things can go wrong with windows while doing a complex rendering, and the occasional power failure, with cloud computing you'll also have to worry about internet connection.  soon maybe, but not tomorrow, and definitely not today.

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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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mini mango (pahutan), and silly things

when i was a kid i loved toys that looked nothing like the real thing.  they can be the ugliest one-color plastic toy car with nothing but air inside - two pieces of thin molded plastic halves with untidy joint right in the middle, or a teeny weeny solid plastic gun no bigger than a coin, so small and unrecognizable in shape, never mind in details, that one couldn't really make out what it was until one saw on the candy wrapper it came in that indeed it was meant to be a toy gun.    it made me feel special that adults had to create something especially for my kind, the child whose only source of spending money was the occasional spare change from my mother's pocket.  i thought, how nice of these people to try to amuse me with these silly things. of course even at such a young age it occured to me that they were what they were not because of purposeful design but because they had to be the cheapest possible product  that can be wrapped with a piece of candy, but why spoil romantic notions with practical ideas?

it's somewhat the same way with the tiny mangoes (pictured above, Mangifera altissima, or simply "pahutan" where i grew up) that i found in the market today.  i loved these when i was a kid.  i'd bite a small bit from the pointed end and start peeling the skin off like a tape going round all the way, then pop the whole thing in my mouth (about the size of a sushi).  the pit is very thin and i used to bend them in my mouth because small as they were, they were still a considerable chunk in a child's mouth.  my mom used to bring some home and make a big fuss of how special these are.  i, of course, believed her.  it made me feel special that there was a mini version even of this common fruit, something specifically for me.  until of course i was older and she kept buying these, at which point i realized that  she was buying these for herself.  and of course at that age i was already well aware that not everything was about me and that adults enjoy their own special things, too.


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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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jane's visit

photo above is of jane and me, taken at the rooftop of my apartment here in hong kong.  remember her?  she always puts me up at her place whenever i visit new york.  she's the bestest.  she dropped by last week on her way back to new york from the philippines.

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jogging path in bowen road, hong kong

it's gotta be the age.  sometimes i wake up really really early (4am) and there's just no going back to sleep no matter how much i try.  yesterday i tried something new.  instead of trying to sleep i got up and went to bowen road for a run.  i just walked from my apartment (about half an hour), about an hour's worth of jogging and walking (about 8km total, return), then another half an hour's walk back to my place.  

photo above is sunrise in wan chai as seen from numerous lookouts along bowen road.

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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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AutoCAD for Mac is a keeper

i finally got to download the free trial version of AutoCAD for Mac and was impressed by it.  used to be that i kept an extra windows-operated machine just so i can use AutoCAD, but now I can finally say bye bye to the stupid thing.


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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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eddie vedder's "ukulele songs" released today

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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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my prettiest pair of shoes

just felt like wearing them today.

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otamatone - my latest must-have useless toy

i don't even know how it works really,  most of the instructions that came with it are in japanese. i just pressed buttons and squeezed the mouth and it made a sound.  maybe it's pre-programmed.  maybe i'm just a musical genius. of course it's preprogrammed with tunes.  but really, some enterprising young hongkongers saw a prime shop location and decided to rent it for a couple of weeks to sell something done cheaply at a premium price. in any case it's a waste of money - therefore, fun. otamatone. revival.






anyhoo. i bought one in blue because the pink one is just too obscene.

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Vanishing Point: How to disappear in America without a trace

weirdness!  i was walking down hollywood road trying to digest my lunch when i came across this  exhibition space called "experimenta".  among the exhibits is a map showing locations of usb drives embedded on walls throughout china where supposedly, one can upload or download info (supposedly to hide from the censors) from the usb drives. very spy-like and too gimmicky.  the person manning the space, a susanne burner, then explained the other things on display, images downloaded from the internet and reinterpreted, and spliced together videos from youtube.  my first question of course, was, "is that legal?" either she was really clueless or she just didn't care.  she then showed me this pamphlet (photo, above) that she was selling, which she says she downloaded from the internet and reprinted to sell, and isn't worried about copyright issues because she says even the original author doesn't identify himself. i haven't read it but from skimming through the pages it looks like it's a how-to manual on how to disappear a la jon krakauer.  i'd have preferred if, instead, it's a how to on disappearing from the radar of the numerous websites making money selling personal information of people without consent. the scums.

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one shoot down

finally finished processing all the photos from this shoot (october 2009, lifestyle, indoor and outdoor) in san francisco. there's a couple of unprocessed videos from this shoot but those would have to wait. 

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citi ad

eric seems to have a knack of spotting in newspapers random photos i've taken.  last time he spotted a photo i took of jorma (in a new york daily),  this time it's an ad for citi, in philippine daily inquirer.

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a little boat trip to picton, new zealand

this is what you see when you take the ferry (huge, more like a ship) from wellington to the south island. amazingly beautiful. the color of the water was just insane.

oni and libs (above, posing as honeymooners) took me on a ferry ride (their treat, yay!) that day to show me the beauty of their adopted homeland.  oni's brother-in-law, ronald works for the ferry company, food on board was his treat (double yay!). he also gave us a tour of the bridge.

 the small town of picton, gateway to the south island of new zealand and the ferry's destination.




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the libunaos

 © Joselito Brionesyep. that's a roasted pig's head right there. there was another pork dish (inihaw) and pancit. all made by libs, yummy food from the heart (and in the pork fat's case, straight to the heart) - libs said he woke up early to prepare all of it, he had to, as i arrived in wellington airport from sydney late morning and he volunteered to pick me up. i had not seen him for a few years but it felt like just a few months since i saw him and oni.  all this time i assumed it was oni who was in charge of the kitchen, tho in hindsight i can see how it turned out to be libs (tomador - necessity of pulutan, makes sense).

  © Joselito Briones

 the occasion? marielle's birthday, and oni and lib's wedding anniversary.  the whole family was there.

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fine dining by the quay

 

on top of marco's list of "splash out" restaurants - harvey and i went to one of sydney's finest dining places - "quay restaurant".  great-tasting innovative food (and so pretty!), great service, awesome view.  we had a 4-course meal. well worth the price tag :)

either harvey was already very drunk (they also had an excellent selection of wines) when these photos were taken or he really didn't want me in the pictures, but i guess it worked out for the best :)

Quay Restaurant
Upper Level Overseas Passengers Terminal Circular Quay West
Sydney 2000, Australia

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i ♥ bondi

beach day. yay! sydney's pride - bondi beach. beautiful.

had to go there ahead because when i phoned harvey when we were supposed to meet up he told me he was still in bed and very much hung over.  i made the mistake of taking the slow way (bus, went through several residential districts, was good to see them tho) so i wasn't there long before he showed up. we had lunch at "north bondi italian food". good food, good ambience. and the staff - beautiful.


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