Monday, July 04, 2011
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.
XXX
Saturday, June 25, 2011
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.
XXX
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.
XXX
Thursday, June 23, 2011
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.
XXX
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
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.
XXX
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
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.
XXX
Monday, June 20, 2011
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.
XXX
Sunday, June 19, 2011
first beach day this year
the other night i rented "the endless summer
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
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.
XXX
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.
XXX
Friday, June 17, 2011
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.
XXX
Thursday, June 16, 2011
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.
XXX
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.
XXX
Thursday, June 09, 2011
victimless dinner
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.
XXX
Wednesday, June 08, 2011
jane's visit
XXX
Tuesday, June 07, 2011
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.
XXX
Friday, June 03, 2011
my guests tonight: clams
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.
XXX
Thursday, June 02, 2011
soho extension
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.
XXX
Wednesday, June 01, 2011
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.
XXX
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
micachu and the shapes
Monday, May 30, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
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.
XXX
btw, his hot tub was a brand-new le creuset
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
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. :)
XXX
Sunday, May 22, 2011
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.
XXX
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
otamatone - my latest must-have useless toy
anyhoo. i bought one in blue because the pink one is just too obscene.
XXX
Saturday, April 09, 2011
Vanishing Point: How to disappear in America without a trace
XXX
Saturday, March 26, 2011
one shoot down
XXX
Wednesday, March 09, 2011
Monday, March 07, 2011
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.
XXX
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.
XXX
Sunday, March 06, 2011
the libunaos
© Joselito Briones
the occasion? marielle's birthday, and oni and lib's wedding anniversary. the whole family was there.XXX
Sunday, February 27, 2011
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
XXX
Friday, February 25, 2011
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.
XXX
Thursday, February 24, 2011
fratelli paradiso
lady (in blue and black dress, above) as she was approaching the restaurant, to a staff: "can we sit on that table?" - *lifts baby girl out of trolley*
friendly staff: "sure. let's just put this trolley here. a bit windy today. use it to stop the door from banging"
lady: "oh, here. use the girl instead"
as per marco's suggestion, i tried their calamari salad - was a little too salty and too much anchovy (i assume that's what's in it) on the sauce/dressing, but was just perfect with a basket of bread and 2 glasses of white wine (can't remember what it was, just remember that it was local, and good)
Fratelli Paradiso
12-16 Challis Avenue
Potts Point, Australia
(not to be confused with Fratelli Fresh)
XXX
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
qvb
just posting random stuff - queen victoria building in sdyney - high-end mall - very pretty inside.

XXX
Thursday, February 17, 2011
manly beach on a cloudy day
just in case you're wondering, the photos i've been posting are not current (taken a few weeks ago) and not in order. i just post them as i see them while organizing my files. this one's taken in manly beach in sydney.
XXX
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
drinks by the opera
what's a trip to sydney without checking out the opera house, right? harvey and i went to opera bar for drinks (great view, very noisy tho) before going to longrain (super yummy food, but no pics, sorry. was too busy eating). we were gonna go to quay restaurant but they were all fully booked already so we made a reservation for the next night instead.
above is sydney's skyline as seen from the opera.
XXX
Saturday, February 12, 2011
bills famously fluffy eggs
fluffy indeed. and yummy. unfortunately i wasn't able to take more than a few mouthfuls - what they forget to warn you about it is its lactose content. it must've been at least half cream as i was still burping lactose the next morning.
bills
433 Liverpool Street
Darlinghurst, Australia
XXX
Friday, February 11, 2011
little pockets of happiness
***
i was apologetic for having fallen asleep because well, in fact it wasn't my bed. it wasn't even my house. why are all these people here discussing business ideas while i was sleeping? i got out as soon as i could, put my outdoor clothes on, and started running. only my spirit was running faster than my body so i decided to walk instead. after walking for some time i came into, with college students behind me (they don't look american, i must be in europe), an open but empty chapel, sun setting on the opposite direction of where i came from stuffing every corner of the wooden structure with golden light. someone behind me said that the rhythm of the interior is like that of a carpark, with communal tables instead of pews. any other day i would've reached for my camera and start clicking away. but not today. i climbed on top of a table and jumped from one to another. a band started playing a song that could've been a keane song. we all sat down to listen. at the end of the song the lead said it was entitled "cathartic", and i smiled because i knew the song. then he did the tongue thing that the band "kiss" does. as an encore, he lifted his t-shirt and showed the very big tongue on his belly button do the same. he then went around with a very small pouch, collecting donations. he said they're trying to save up for a trip to new york. i gave him all the coins i could fish from my pockets, some of which fell on the ground (the pouch got smaller) and i had to help him pick them up. the student next to me didn't have any coins, when the singer stood in front of him with his money pouch open, the student lifted his hand and used his pointer finger to pet the singer's chin, just below his right jaw. i was thinking - i am so banking this in my little pockets of happiness.***
this is what i get from taking cough medicine before going to bed. even in my dreams the medicine-induced euphoria is pretty tame (and lame).
photo above is of kleber from a shoot in beijing late last year
XXX
Thursday, February 10, 2011
sicky, sick me
my tear ducts got leak! at first i thought it was just what i was watching. but then who cries watching "doctor who", right? (i was watching the last christmas special. why does it take so long for the next season???). i mean it's great and all and i enjoyed it, but something to make me cry? i don't think so. a little experiment then. i played several other shows and movies and found out that even the silliest comedies made me cry too. my eyes never had a good cleaning as yesterday and today.
how do i get all these time to waste on a silly experiment? i had to call in sick yesterday. cold and flu symptoms. head, nose, throat, joints - name it, it hurts. am still not feeling well so i'm staying in today as well. all i want to do is stay in bed under the blankets. i won't be surprised if it's also the cause of the easily-induced saline water inundation of my usually very dry eyes. i sure do hope so.
XXX
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
g'day for a walkabout
harry's cafe de wheels
sydney, australia
XXX
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