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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