wisdom of dick

record early wake up time of 2:30am.  dick once told me that old people always wake up early because they're afraid they might not wake up at all anymore.  i don't know about that, because i know i woke up remembering that i have ice candy (you know, frozen flavored liquid in plastic container - bah, i'll show you photo tomorrow) in the freezer, and i wanted some right at that moment. and anyway he's in his mid-30's, what does he know about being old.

well, one can only have so much ice candy so early, so after a few i decided to run. it was already 4am by the time i got there.  i saw a few old chinese men in their standard gear of white vest, khaki shorts, black shoes and high socks - , doing their tai-chi thing, some carrying radio, walking the path alone - but they kept disappearing.  i mean, like, one would say "good morning" in cantonese to me and i'd say the same as i pass him, but if i look back he's gone.  what's weird about it is that one side of the path is high retaining wall and the other side is a steep fall.  and this happened a few times.  creepy, no?  i decided either they fell and rolled down all the way to causeway bay or, more likely, they can walk through solid concrete retaining walls.

when i reached the end (same as the beginning, it was a return run) and i stopped, i felt very woozy. woops. (uh-oh, the vanishing old men are after me!) feeling dizzy combined with being hot from running and soaked all over is really bad.  i sat down on a park bench, took deep breaths, and it took a while before i felt ok again to stand up.  went to the street (magazine gap road) and waited for a taxi. none came. strange because there's always taxi anywhere in hong kong at anytime. after waiting for sometime i got dizzy again, combined with some rumbling in my belly, so i went to the toilet in the park nearby and let one rip. or two. ok, a few. then i felt REALLY better.  how was i to know that this dizziness thing was just a massive case of fartiness?  i blame the ice candy.  well i can't really because they were good. when i went back to the street there were plenty of taxis but by then i'm pissed at them already for not being there when i needed one, so i walked home.

i usually go back by the central escalator, but this time i thought i'd go a different way.  down to garden road, by hong kong zoo and botanical, between government house and u.s. consulate, ice house street, then queens road. lined along the sidewalk of an entire block in queens road were people manually sorting freshly unloaded newspapers, literally doing inserts. (photo, above). 

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al molo

very nice italian restaurant - the name's "al molo". saw it when i took photos of that yacht the other day and decided to go in.  ended up doing a 4-course meal.  :) (i was very hungry!) not cheap tho.  raw oysters for starters (french -  if anyone tries to make you feel guilty for not consuming locally-sourced food, carbon footprint and all that, take him to this restaurant and feed him french oysters), a glass of sauvignon blanc, hand-made pasta with mushrooms, sea bass fillets, some dessert with a name that i think translates to "granny's cake", and a double espresso, plus tip, amounts to HKD 950.  was yummy tho, and the staff were nice. i'll be back.


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tûranor planet solar in hong kong

not sure what this was but it sure was more interesting than the light show yesterday. i googled it and turns out it's some solar-powered german-built yacht that intends to go around the world, currently in its hong kong stop.  tûranor planet solar. here's their own website.

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hong kong's symphony of lights

i found an unused hong kong ferry token among my coins, probably from when jane visited, so i took the ferry to tsim sha tsui and watched the light show.  it was bleh.


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eta: someone told me that this used to be much better, with a lot more buildings participating.  too bad i never saw that version.  still, i think it would've been much better had don dorsey done it.

what can you buy for $20

as an experiment, i invited my nephews and nieces (and kids) to submit a gift wish for the early christmas celebration - with the condition that it should cost US$20 or less, and that if i can't find it in the price limit, they'll automatically get PHP50 instead.  you should've seen the list they made:  lens for a digital camera, wrist watch, desktop speaker with subwoofer, and the one that takes the cake, a complete kitchen package from ikea. well that one's from my youngest sister, and of course she'd pay for it, but i'm in hong kong and she actually expects me to put the whole thing, cabinets and all, in one door-to-door box.  between her and my eldest sister who thought up the early christmas celebration, i wonder why i bother making up fictitious characters for stories.

anyway, kids today have a very grand idea of what a gift can be, and no idea of the value of money. no one asked for a certain book, or cd (i suspect they all just download anything they want), or any traditional toys, or some special food, or something really basic, like a new pair of socks. sign of the times? i remember when getting ANY sort of gift was a real treat - now it has to be branded products and electronics, and only the latest ones will do.  in a way i guess it's also a good indicator that all the basics are well provided for.  now that's really something to celebrate.


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early christmas shopping

norie, my eldest sister who lives in california, decided she wants to celebrate christmas in september in the philippines (and why not, right?). so we'll have a reunion/christmas party.  i expect lots of food and noise and fun.  photo above is from last year's christmas eve party games.  there'll be a hired band for the party so there'll be lots of singing as well.  in the past it's my nephews and nieces who make up a band, but now two of them have moved to california. we'll also have an exchange of gifts, that's why i'm going christmas shopping this weekend, in the middle of august.


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i'm stuck.

remember how i said i'm on to my next screenplay?  well i am. only i'm stuck.  how does one write dialogue for an old and grumpy italian-american male and a young black female? i've got the whole story  (another short one) and even camera set ups but i can't put words in my characters' voices.  most of my adult life i've taken pride in understanding most english accents to a point where i can actually ignore them and focus instead on the message, and now it's come back and bitten me in the behind.

hmm.  skip and move to another one?

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eta: photo above has nothing to do with this, of course.  i just wanted something to link to my photography page and this is the only photo i have with an italian-ish and old-ish-looking guy (character i have in mind is older).

the next day

i know, it was photo overdose of this place from yesterday. i just thought i'd put this one up, taken early morning of the next day, because that lone figure in the water may or may not be me bathing in the buff.

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long ke wan, sai kung

i had a great time in long ke wan (photo above - click for full size, a panoramic view taken from the hill as we walked from east dam of high island reservoir).  it was peaceful, weather was cooperative, water was clear, sand was fine, company was most agreeable. perfect weekend getaway. and right here in hong kong!

ok, so let me back track.  after visiting sai kung town, we took a taxi to the east dam roundabout of high island reservoir, passing by west dam (we asked the taxi to stop so i can snap the photo above and below).  in most websites you'll come across, the trip is usually described as a bus ride plus a three-hour hike. but we didn't go for the hike, we went there for the beach.  HK$ 6 for the bus plus a three-hour walk in this heat, or a HK$110 (including tip) taxi ride? was really a no-brainer (although we did see health nuts who did the hike).

photo above is the east dam of the reservoir where the taxi dropped us off.  from there it was another 20-30 minutes of walk (steep climb and descent) to get to the beach.  considering we were carrying our camping stuff and photo stuff and 16ltrs of water between us (ok, we over estimated. we were able to use up just more than half of that), it wasn't exactly easy.  no wonder there were so many boats there - it's still the easiest way to get there.

when we finally saw the place (photo, top) from the hill, and heard the voices of people having fun, the effort was really nothing.  first thing we did was look for a nice place to set up the tent (i bought one instead of sleeping bag - turned out to be a good decision). photo above is also a panoramic view from where we stayed - click image to enlarge.

by late afternoon most of the boats have left and we shared the whole beach with only two other groups of campers.  the water was nice and warm. it was most relaxing and i just couldn't get away from it. it was already very late when i dried off.

by sunset we already had a nice fire going (we brought our own charcoal, huh!) although it was really only for effect, as it was really warm, with only very gentle breeze. we didn't cook anything either.  we had bread and fruits and nuts and german sausages. 

we stayed out most of the night, lying down on the straw mattresses, watching stars and chatting and listening to iTunes.  was surprised how long the battery lasted when the screen was off, even if the speaker is on full volume.  there was no signal from my phone service provider ("3") so i didn't mind just using it as a radio.  the tent on the photo above was the one i bought in mong kok. 

all images taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II  and panoramas stitched with Adobe Photoshop Extended CS5.

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sai kung town, hong kong

following charlie's (ms. p. in disguise) suggestion, i finally got to visit sai kung town.  well i'm sure i've visited 20 or so years ago when i lived in hong kong the first time, but during that time all towns' names sounded the same to me so i can't remember any of it.  this time around, dick, an old friend (in this picture, my nephews, two of whom are now married, were actually watching him do silly things to amuse them), came along.  photo, above, shows a fishing boat selling fresh seafood at the pier.  dick was amused when one of them got indignant when a customer offered her own bag to put her purchased fish in, saying (dick's translation): "oh please, i provide special plastic boxes for these".

the town center has narrow passages and seafood restaurants similar to those in lamma island's fishing villages, but this one, being in the main island, also has the usual chains of groceries and shops as anywhere else in hong kong.  being favored by expats, it also has some of the shops they frequent in central/soho.   

as this was just a stop before going to the beach, we didn't spend much time here.

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mong kok

just about anything can be found cheap here in mong kok. the visit tonight was to get a sleeping bag. been waiting for weather to clear so i can go to sai kung's long ke wan.  i wanted to go for the beach, but it turns out the place is also good for camping, so what the hey, might as well spend the night. hope the weather stays good.


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wga

hihi.  i've registered a screenplay at the wga :)  on to the next one!

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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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facebook's desperate measures

for such a big company that boasts of gazillion-dollar value, facebook's latest barrage of feature impositions really come off as desperate.

there was facebook mail - which just turns itself on if you try to go to your messages (as in site messages, not facebook mail). what's up with that?  they introduced a feature that they know no one will like so they have to make it default?  there's also automatically the "archived" folder. excuse me, but i don't remember archiving my old messages. i deleted them. yes i did. and now they show up in the archive folder. WTF???  is this the privacy that facebook has promised? that if you delete content it's gone?  i deleted my old messages long time ago and now they're in my archived folder???  they were supposed to be gone, why were they holding on to these personal messages?  oh yeah and from the archive folders it takes 3 not-so-obvious steps to delete them again.  that is, if they really actually delete them.

then there was the chat thing.  i turned it off last year.  it was supposed to remember that it's off.  suddenly yesterday it was on again.  automatically. so i say no thank you and turned it off again.  then i thought i'd change the setting just to be sure.  turns out when you click on the chat status (where you access your setting) you automatically turn your availability on again.  whatever happened to announcing in the log-in page that they now have these "cool" features?  my guess is that either they know that these features aren't cool enough for account members to actively turn them on, or that they really are, indeed, desperate for member activities. (new york time's "tech talk" podcasted that millions of north american members are no longer active users)

it may not be just deleted messages that facebook "archives" for future use.  i once deleted an old account - email addresses, friends associated with that account, etc. and created a new one with a different email address.  after about a year i created yet another account, using the email address of the account i've deleted, to anchor a (professional) profile page to.  i still have my usual networking profile, so this one was an extra. i didn't "friend" anyone with this,  i made the privacy setting so that no one can send me friend request, nor find this account thru search.  so tell me -  how come facebook had been suggesting me to "friend" all these people that were associated with this email before?

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first draft is done

welp i'm finally done with the first draft of the story i was working on.  it'll need quite a bit more work on the dialog but it's mostly all there.  i tried to steer it away from any existentialist crap but somehow a bit still sneaked through.  i guess i'll just have to be more vigilant in keeping it out.

(photo above was taken at the same place, next day)

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lamma island

am not sure anymore if i bought a new pair of beach shorts so i can have something new to wear when i go to the beach, or if i go just so i can justify buying a new pair of shorts. hmm. anyway. i did the buying and the beach going. this weekend's destination was lamma island in hong kong.  i took the ferry to yung shue wan (photo, above) which is a village full of seafood restaurants and stores selling beach items and knick knacks.

i already had breakfast (the flying pan, they made my breakfast right this time)  so i went directly to the beach (hung shing ye beach) which was small but nice and clean and with beach facilities.  the big let down was the view of the power station looming over the whole scene like in a sci-fi movie. by lunch time the place was getting crowded so i walked back to yung shue wan for seafood lunch.

after lunch i did the family trail (about an hour), scorching heat just after lunch time, so i decided to go through public showers (literally) when i passed by hung shing ye beach again and did the trail while dripping wet.  was very nice that way.

 walked all the way to the second beach, lo so shing beach. the lo so shing village was nice. i bought an ice-cold drink from an old man by the trail and sat there drinking under the shade of a big flowering tree. butterflies and gentle breeze and all.  another old man at the next house was slowly peeling sweet potatoes in his veranda.  i spent the rest of the afternoon at the beach, reading. the water wasn't as clean as on the other side.

i took the ferry back to central from so kwu wan (photo, above), another village full of seafood restaurants.


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bowen road at night

i know, i know, the photo quality is absolute crap, but this was taken with 3g iphone (hey, it still works!). anyhoo. this is what bowen road looks like at night.  scary no? the typhoon warning finally let up.  i was too lazy to do anything but forced myself to run.


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saturday, july 2

i did exactly the same as last week with the running thing, so i thought i'll just add it here.  well except that this time there was this (south asian? middle eastern?) guy who was just there smoking pot at the end of the path, in the dark, with a few bottles of beer.  and walking back to my apartment i passed by this small indian hole-in-the-wall, "indian village", so i tried their chicken briyani, even tho i've had dinner, even tho it was already very late, even tho i was soaked in sweat, and even tho i thought it cancelled the whole running thing.


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shoot and then focus?

in case you haven't read about this, there's supposedly a new camera called lytro that lets you focus the photo after taking it (in the example above, from their website, click anywhere on the photo to see how focus shifts). i said supposedly because they're keeping mum on the details. there isn't even a physical description or photo of the camera (surely if they're just protecting the technology, it's not something that can be stolen from showing what the camera looks like?).

what do you think? i'm doing the wait-and-see.

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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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hotel room drama

this photo was taken spring last year, in villa sassolini, in italy's tuscany.  i'm showing this because i liked this room so much (this is actually a huge living room adjoining wil's bedroom - this was the only unit with such a room, with a long communal table in the middle which we used as our very own hq in the hotel) that it inspired me to write a short story that the divas are helping me turn into a short film.  they will play themselves, of course, and hopefully we'll be able to find someone to play a character that michael would've been able to do (he has since moved to thailand).  anyway, knowing these strong-willed divas who'd insist on what they want, i won't be surprised if this ends up nowhere.  the least i can do is finish the script, then i can at least declare that i did something.

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connetable tinned sardines in mustard sauce

i was intrigued when i saw this in the market. i mean, i've always seen tinned sardines in olive oil or tomato sauce but this is the first time i saw one in mustard sauce. the brand is connetable and the product itself is called "les fillet de sardines, moutarde a l'ancienne" and i really liked it. it's got a very rounded creamy taste, very nice mustard flavor but without the kick (and i actually like the kick so i put a bit more moutarde de meaux when i ate it). i ate half on a slice of whole wheat bread and the other half i tossed in with mesclun salad.

i'm always on the look out for good tinned/bottled food because it's always nice to have a fall-back food in your cupboard that you actually like.  Even if you don't eat it often, it's just waiting there and you know you'll enjoy it when you eat it eventually. kinda like the mini wini.

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first beach day this year

the other night i rented "the endless summer" from iTunes, and it made me want to go to the beach. not to learn how to surf, you crazy?  just to go to the beach.  so this weekend i did just that.

woke up mid-morning.  had breakfast at "the flying pan" where for the last three weekends i've ordered the same thing (spanish-style egg white omelette with smoked salmon, wheat toast, fruit bowl, orange juice, long black coffee) and left tip, tho not customary here in hong kong, just so they'd remember me and my order, but they always manage to give me a wrong omelette anyway (once with egg yolks, once plain - without the things that make it "spanish", and once without smoked salmon).  i'll give it one last time next weekend and if they still don't get it right, i'll just make my own omelette breakfast.

i asked rene, benj, and josen to come with me to the beach but they said they'd rather go to a soho bar to drink the afternoon away, so i went by myself. dumped everything in my tote (photo, above): my big-ass towel, pretty floral shorts, sunscreen, sunnies, and most important - a nice book to read (isaac asimov's "the complete robot" compilation).  took the mtr in flipflops, got lost in shaukeiwan, especially after asking locals who pointed me at the wrong direction, then finally got to the minibus (craziest drivers in hong kong) that took me to shek-o beach.  my first time going to this beach - really nice weather, and rather crowded so i just went and stayed in one end.

i had a ticket for "x-men: first class" in the evening so i didn't stay in the beach very late.  movie was great. it wasn't until the movie was over and i was brushing off popcorn from my shirt that i realized i locked myself out from my apartment yet again. (i was in such a hurry from getting home from the beach to going to the moviehouse, while being on the phone with rene and benj who were still drinking in soho and asking me to join them, that i forgot my keys again). so i had to go to emi to borrow her copy again.

when i finally got in i got an email notification from iTunes saying there's a new doctor who episode that i can download. yay! only it turns out it's just a teaser.  new episodes won't be availabe until fall.  sigh.

anyhoo. i love my color today.  next time i'll try a different beach.


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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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