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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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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