champagne dom pérignon, vintage 2000

ha! i'll finally get to pop this baby.

am having friends over for dinner sunday night and we'll get to enjoy this. was also thinking of making mulled wine but maybe i's a bit to much. we'll see.  i just thought maybe it's a good idea because it's supposed to be a pre-christmas meet-up and it's gotten sorta cold and all and it's gonna be outdoor (rooftop of my apartment).  anyway, someone's taking care of food, so i don't have to worry about that.  i announced in the invite that the dom pérignon champagne will be served at exactly 7pm to entice everyone to come on time :)


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jane, ruth, and eric in astoria park

random photo time! reminder of good times with friends in new york.


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rowing team photo series

i've had this series of rowing photos in my hard drive for a while and has already amassed tons of dust that i've decided i should put them all out before the year ends. unfortunately all the indoor shots, including the one above, can't be used as royalty-free because i wasn't able to obtain a property release for the boathouse.


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weta cave

 
these are photos are from the weta cave, from when i visited wellington.  just posting now because they're doing a new movie, "The Hobbit".  weta is the production company co-founded by Peter Jackson, famous for "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, "King Kong", "District 9",  and weta cave is a mini-museum at the corner of the workshop.  it's actually quite small, a sort of mom-and-pop gallery/store with a video room.  it would've been much more fun to see their actual production room and meet the people who do the awesome visual effects and characters. photo above is of the life-size model of gollum, from "lord of the rings", displayed in the mini-museum.  don't know which character or from which movie is the one below, but he sure is scary.

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congee

Photo:  Joselito Briones

this is the congee place on the street where i live - always useful on those days when i just want something quick, hot, and filling.  everything they sell here is basically starch - from the congee (rice porridge), fried noodles (chow mien), rice rolls, deep-fried bread sticks, and deep-fried bread sticks wrapped in rice rolls. so basically if you wanna catch up on carbs (after all the time that you've been on a carb-free diet), you can have the bredsticks wrapped in rice rolls, dip it in congee, and have fried noodles on the side. must-try.




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i was going for the white horse

but then all i had was a wide-angle lens and the horse was across the puddle. bah.


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skull biker and his harley

no idea what this was all about, just saw it while doing a walkabout sunday night in central.


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peel bar, hong kong

this was a few weeks ago, i meant to show it to you but i got too busy i forgot. pictured are benj, ogie, and rene. we went to maxim palace dim sum place in city hall, and afterwards we went to this bar, peel at the corner of peel and elgin streets in soho. jomel joined us for dim sum but left early because he was dj'ing in this same bar later that night. anyway, it was still early and there was nobody else there, but mikee, the guy in charge of the place was so much fun.

this is what it looks like inside. we were told this is gonna close early next year and move to a different location.

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floating village, siem reap, cambodia

still in cambodia, this is a series of photos i took of the floating village in siem reap. you can either scroll down to see the rest of the photos, or click on the first photo to launch a slide viewer.

i spotted a striped snake in the water, and one of the houses shown above keeps several alligators, and as you can see from one of the photos, they use the same water to bathe.  i had a coffee in the community shop, by the time it occured to me that they might have gotten the water from the same source, it was already too late to cancel it, i didn't want to embarass the shop owner.  anyway, it was safe, they must've used bottled water.

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me in angkor wat

photo: charles george

charles took this photo in angkor wat, cambodia. (he did the post-processing too)


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tourists watching the sunset from bakheng hill, cambodia

the highest elevation among the temple groups around angkor wat, this was the best place to watch the sunset


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sunrise in angkor wat, cambodia

woke up extra early for this and it was truly beautiful, unfortunately there were scaffoldings (photoshopped out of this photo) so i didn't bother to do proper photos of it.


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this is charles doing his best robert mitchum impression

he also did an impression of smoking marlene dietrich and bette davis, but let's stick to this one.

we spent the whole day walking about so we decided to do an evening dip in the pool.  prince d'angkor hotel in siem reap, cambodia.  the staff are sooooo nice (well, the cambodians in general) and helpful.


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