la sunday - church and old town pasadena

had to wake up early around 7 sunday am, in order to grab a bite to eat (donuts and juice to go) and meet up with ap at his friend j's place. we separated so that ap could spend some qt with his bud. the plan was to get there early, since jy had another church meeting, and meet up with them to go to j's church - first evangelical church, glendale. i got to j's place in glendale around 8 (which was really pastor john and evelyn's place).
when i got to the house, everyone was just waking up. i got a chance to play with their 5 year old son, josh. pretty cute kid. taught him that his foot is the length of his elbow to his wrist.

while waiting, i had an intersting conversation with ap. we were thinking about the roots and origins of the big "mega" asian churches. how they've grown. the culture. i theorized that those mega churches, tended to have asian-american or chinese-american roots. abc foundations. many of these churches are in so-cal, and in the burbs. the asian churches up north tended to be a little smaller and have origins with obc ministries. probably also cuz sf (and similar places) were a conglomerate for early chinese. scbc started off as an obc church, but has it's english (abc) side now surpassing the cantonese side. layman is an asian-american church. scbc's late late can practically be considered an asian-american church. the asian-american ones with abc origins tend to have more a more modern worship service.

we followed j to church and went to sunday school around 10:45. it was a slow manuscript study of how mary and martha attended to jc differently when he visited. only 4 verses covered. pretty slow study. some no-brainer questions were asked, like who were the major players? (uh...mary, martha, jesus?) the study leader didn't seem to establish a solid direction early on (altho...it was an inductive manuscript style) everything seemed to really go slow, until then end, when it really picked up. i was pretty tired for a bit, but i thought i lasted. it wasn't until we were out the door on our way to service that ap told me that i was asleep for half of the sunday school! and that i did the fishing head nod. aye carumba, i was so embarassed after the fact! i thought i had fought it pretty well, too. he and j also said that everyone in the room had noticed. (yet no one woke me up!) it was really tough for me in the room, the heat, poor air circulation, minimal sleep the nite before, combined with a sluggish study. that combination always points to a sleep disaster for me. sigh...it would have been better if i had just gotten out of the room. ah well...i don't really know anyone there.

service was pretty good. i enjoyed the worship. they sang this really great song, forever (by chris tomlin). the chorus is pretty simple and the crowd seemed to really get into it whilde paising god. (afterwards, i suggested this song for our lumps retreat.) the message was on noah and was acoompanied by really awesome multimedia stuff. the church also had a pretty good set of materials for the congregation.

as part of the church hospitality, they acknowledged the new people here (ap and me) as well as the people leaving for whatever reason, praying for them silently. i thought that was pretty cool, unifying the body. i also noticed that even tho we were recognized as new people, that very few people came up to us on their own out of generosiy or hospitality.

cheesecake fatory

after church ap and i went to hang in old town, waiting to meet up with jy for lunch. we ended up eating at the cheesecake factory.

the drive home

we started to head back north at about 3:30. i drove while ap caught up with friends on the phone. i briefly talked to al, who i havn't talked to in ages. i'll have to look up al next time i go down. i drove to kettlemen city, where we met up with m and l at in-and-out. i hopped over to their car and pretty much slept most of the way back. and thus ends this road trip to la.

la saturday pm

picking up from the la weekend...

citywalk

i hung with m at universal's citywalk. his first time there. last time i was there must have been over 10 years ago. there were tons of people there. i don't think i saw a lot of asians tho. lots of themed restaurants and shops. a conglomeration of branded physical spaces. it was great hangin out with m. we havn't really caught up much one-on-one over the past few years since college. it was interesting remembering back and also seeing how we've grown and changed since then. some different life priorities. some same challenges.

seeking for soulmates

we were stopped by one guy doing on camera interviews for research and teaser material for a new spring dating/advice network show called "soul mates." the basic premise is that it identifies that most guys and girls out there have trouble approaching interesting people who catch their eye across the room at a club, bar, wedding, etc. maybe, what if that person were to miss that soul mate out there? they were doing on-camera interviews and surveys to see if people could relate to that problem. (of course, who the heck wouldn't?) they wanted to use the material as potential teaser material when the show would break, and also as a research reel to show to potential advertisers and sponsors of the show. well, it seems that i had about three conversations about relationship sorta growing pains over the past 48 hours, and i thought i'd help the guy out and be on camera...

it was pretty natural...the guy just asked questions and engaged me in a conversation. i talked a little bit about some of those experiences (personal and shared by friends) about feeling awkward, not knowing what to say, hesitations holding you back from taking the initiative, and social factors. i think both guys and girls do identify with this problem. i'd gander that it would be harder for girls to take the first step, mainly cuz of social norms for guys to be the initiators. i couldn't really think of a vivid event to share with him on camera, tho...so i relayed some of the experiences of some of my friends.

i chatted on camera for about 5 min. afterwards, the guy told me that if they used any video of me, that i would get $75. (i sure wish he had told me earlier, i woulda tried harder!) he also told me that it would be a separate deal (i.e. money-wise), if the producers wanted to use me on the show and were to fly me down for a weekend. i think that'd be pretty fun to do that...free weekend trip, potential national embarassment.

i don't think they'd really use me tho. first, i'm a minority. (altho i once did see an episode of blind date with two asians.) also, if i were to share about one of my biggest dating criteria, faith, i don't think that would translate very well for interesting tv. (altho if i were to share some of those viewpoints that i share with pastor j, that could be interesting.) and then of course there's my sparse, practically bone-dry, non-existant past history, which wouldn't give much material to talk about. i wonder...what if they were to portray me as a dateless guy who's had life-long hang-ups approaching and relating to girls? i don't think that's really me (instead i'm just picky and focusing on other stuff in life now), but if two years come and go with the same status, i'd start to really wonder.

i thought it was interesting that they asked people on tape and on paper if they'd be willing to pay for this sort of mars/venus advice...and if so, how much. maybe to prove the market for something like this, how valuable or popular this show would be. i think i'd probably watch a show like this (as long as it's not on cable...which i still don't get). the sociologist in me likes to learn how people approach each other, draw an assessment, and interact.

grubbing at wolfgang puck's

after walking around a bit, checking out all the eating spots...scoping out the l.a. breakers (a hip hop dance troupe)...then walking around some more...we
decided to eat some dinner at wolfgang puck's. we had some pale ales, and shared a spicy chicken pizza and a mushroom-mushroom pizza. it was a great time to really catch up with m...something i think we've rarely been able to do a lot one-on-one over the past few years. he picked up the tab, treating me out for my bday. :) he also picked up the tab for jy, who joined us late, coming from a church meeting. jy met up to hang out and also get me so that i can crash at jy's place in studio city.

sg bonding

tarnation. my last blog post was lost! gotta redo again...crud.

i met up with ay today to discuss a possible future in financial planning. a big departure from my creative goal, i know...but it may be a worthwhile and educational personal pursuit. would need a bunch of training and tests. i dunno...we'll see. i'll probably check out one of the training sessions in a couple of weeks.

class was cancelled today...so i had a little more free time than i thought. after a quick pit stop at the art store with ao (had to pick up some supplies for some of my three projects due this wed), i made it out to wy's basement bachelor pad for our sg kick-off. pasquale's pizza, sharing of embarassing moments and quirks (both of my stories had bathroom humor), a q-tip war (shot from straws...pretty fun), and a battle of the sexes board game. guys won of course.

l.a. life - saturday: art center, wedding, westwood, city walk

onward with the la recap...

morning at the the esi dorm

the past sat ap and i woke up early at about 7am or so from the college dormatory place in pasadena we were staying at. the place served breakfast. for about $3, you can get 5 items. only one entree. but you can pay more if you want. i had some sort of sausage/egg/bread combination creation. in all, staying at the esi training facilities at the william carey college in pasadena was a pretty good deal. it only cost us $15 per person for the nite to share a room in a suite. communal bathrooms, but that's ok...we were the only ones in the suite. seeing ap in the dorm bathroom brought me back to the old days of our cunningham unit 2 ghetto crappy dorm floor. eeesh.

international students in suits

we had some free time, so i dragged ap with me for a jaunt over to art center, not to far away. we toured the student galleries all dressed up in our suits for the wedding. the security cheerfully told us that art center has over 300 international students! what the? she must have thought that we were japanese tourists...walking around a hot la morning in our black suits, our casual clothes. oh well...it was still really great to see the work at art center. seeing the dimmensional illustration work, the graphic design advertising posters, the packaging comps, and of course the prototype cars...all incredible. i'm still iffy if i'd wanna pick up and go to la and go to a full-time expensive school like that, but the work is pretty convincing. it might be cool to go there for two years for a masters tho. i know that i'll want to at least pay art center a visit a couple of times a year, to see awe-inspiring work which will motivate and push me to go farther. i definitely was pushed by the 15 min that we were there.

norm's wedding

i somehow managed to find our way to the church in south pasadena...by piecing together partial maps and directions from the wedding invitation, mapquest directions from the dorm, and a bare bones map to art center. i did it with just two minutes to spare before 10:15, the deal i made with ap for the art center detour. we arrived with plenty of time before the 10:30 wedding. (however, it wasn't enough time for me to take another detour and buy a wedding card. doh!)

the church was beautiful in south pasadena. i think only about 140 people or so at the wedding. saw a few random people i didn't expect to see from the bay area, like lk and her bf k, who works for kamikaze records and used to do on-air announcing at cmc! after he told me that i could totally place his voice from when i used to watch the show in college.

i also saw this guy jt, who was helping with gifts. he recognized me (but maybe didn't know my name) from ltc, the weeklong aacf training conference about 4 years ago. (i also heard that the maid of honor was at ltc and recognized me also.) kinda amazing how that brief contact or being around people for a short period of time can stick in their memory. maybe it's b/c i look funny or something.

the actual ceremony was nice but a little funny. a couple of times, the audience didn't really know how to respond...to clap, to stand or to sit. i think the pastor could have done a better job prompting people. the ceremony did make me think, wow...one of my friends my age is married. whoddathunkit? i don't feel the heat quite yet tho...it'd be different if i was a girl. after the ceremony they passed out bubble things for us to blow at them. the picture with them coming out probably turned out pretty nice...i got to talking to pc and found out that he didn't have a wedding card either (nor did ay), so we made a rite-aid stop along the way to the reception/banquet. whew! otherwise my back-up plan was to use the ripped off cover of a daily bread devotional booklet (jt's idea) and to write a note on the back. i dunno how appropriate an image of a penguin would be tho.

banquet

we then drove over to the new otami hotel in los angeles...sorta near downtown. it was a pretty nice hotel. great reception and ballroom. inside, i was sorta surprised by how good of a floor location my banquet table had. i'm used to being stuck along the edge with the other young people. my banquet table was only half-full tho. about 3 or 4 people didn't show up. oh well. at my table, was ah and pc, buds from cal. also at the table was gl and her bf j, also from the bay area. nice meal. i had chicken. the slide show after the meal wasn't really all that. it lasted too long (15 min), had incredibly slow music which could have put people to sleep, and had photos which had the color contrast blown out...so that the whites were too strong. but the worst thing about it was that the orders were not in much of a discenable logical order. there'd be multiple photos from one event (too many) in clumps throughout the show, with some photos shown 2 or three times! it wasn't in chronological order at all either. you'd start off with them as kids, then in college, then dating, then back as kids, then college...not good. the couple knew each other early on in high school. there were times when i couldn't figure out if some of the older photos of the groom were with his future bride or with another japanese girl.

i know that when i have my slide show for my wedding, it's gonna be darn good. maybe sorta pbs...documentary style with narration and with the camera panning or slowling zooming in towards the focal point.

westwood

afterwards, ap had to take off to meet up with a girl, which was totally cool, so i was searching for a ride. i ended up hanging with m (aka tofu00). he was the best man, so i had to stick around for about an hour afterwards for his wedding wrap-up duties. we kicked it over at westwood near ucla, were we went to the coffee bean and got a bunch of 25 cent cookies at diddy reese. good stuff. it was actually n (the groom) who first took me there years back.

we weren't hungry to eat yet, cuz of the banquet food, so i suggested we go and kick it over at city walk. more about that later.

Mo's Burgers

i grabbed a quick dinner with my bud h from school. we were gonna go to tommaso's (best pizza in the city), then decided to check out city lights bookstore. (a first). it's the famous epicenter of beat poetry in sf back in the day. lots of interesting poetry and beat books, as well as normal ones. i saw for the first time here that kavalier & clay is out now in paperback. (it won the pulitzer. also btw, michael chabon will be doing a reading and signing in october.) after the bookstore we wandered around a bit more. i remembered mo's on grant and vallejo, and so we ate there. it's known for it's best burgers.

Influence Quiz

just saw an interesting dateline special about the factors of influence. it pitted a pretty lady, a handsome guy, a tenancious attorney, and an old lady in different contests to persuade other people. ultimately the attorney won. on the dateline site, there was a survey testing one's knowledge of influence. i only got 40% correct. one question i did get correct was that the the six most fundamental principles of influence to be discovered by social psychological research are consistency, authority, reciprocity, liking, consensus & scarcity.

Q-uite the bday

taking a break from the la recap. i can't let ds scoop me on my own blog and my own bday...

i didn't do much during the day. had lunch with my mom at nagano sushi on geary. we had some good stuff. i had something called a sunrise roll, which had raw quail eggs, which was kinda odd.

for dinner i ended up back in the neighborhood a couple of blocks away. ds helped get together some friends to go to Q, which i've been to about a year or so ago. it's a funky cool casual joint in the richmond on clement street, where with great down-home cookin with a twists. it was a first for everyone else to go there, and they liked it a lot. here's a blurb from citysearch: "With the warm brown tones of a comfortable pub and the modern metal artwork of local artist Dan Das Mann, a distinctly San Francisco flavor informs the surroundings. Handmade metal tables and engaging colorful lights hang low from the ceiling. And while you wait, you can enjoy the bar's diverse selection of wine and microbrews."

i think this is one of my favorite restaurants in the city, and i'm glad that i got a chance to make it a memorable one with this event.

i sampled the mussels and calamari for the appetizers. my entree was the daily special, peppersteak with mashed potatoes and green beens. the sangria was excellent. (better than the yellow sangria i had in dc.) i hopped around different seats to try to do the meal mingle and talk with different people. Q gave me some sort of chocolate cake with a candle and people sang for me. then when i think it's all done someone busted out a small mini-cake with a three candles, and people sang again. i wonder where that came from.

e gave me this book, dating for dummies. he made me open it in front of everyone too. i know that the real reason he gave it to me is because he wants to borrow it and read it for himself later on.

l.a. life - friday

just had my 6th wedding for the year. this was my 4th wedding in 5 weeks. what made this wedding unique was that it was in la, and that it was one of my college guy friends who is my age. (only one of the other 5 weddings was for a guy bud my age.)

friday i drove down to la with ap again. we got really bogged down on the 101 by gilroy...so it took a little longer than we had planned. once we crossed over to the 5, i drove the rest of the way down. we stayed at a college dormatory in pasadena, where a missions org was doing it's training. ap had friends there. i had planned to meet up with cw around 7 or so, but we didn't really get there til about 9. began to worry if i was gonna have trouble meeting her, since she didn't have a cell and there was no way of paging me if she found the place, since it was locked. i also wasn't sure if she even had my cell, but everything worked out...i waited outside for a bit and she found the place. (if she didn't find it or didn't find me outside, she'd of had to call me from a pay phone!)

cw and i went over to old town pasadena. it's quite the hot spot. i was here last time i came down, but not at nite. after walking for a bit in a circle checking out the busy nite life, we settled at boba world, a small la chain of boba spots. they actually own boba.com! this place is also a franchise partner with noodle world! i decided to try the flavor of the month, green apple cooler. (i'm usually kinda hesitant about these artificial flavors, esp when it's a bright green, but i figured what the heck.) the sign read, "delightfully sour, our green apple cooler is a perfect thrist quencher for those hot summer days!" the packaging for the drinks was pretty interesting, with a sealed top, which makes it spill-proof. you puncture it with a straw. it's kinda fun...sorta like capri sun puncturing. after chatting for a bit til closing...we went to find some place else still open. cw took me to monterey park, to some chinese or taiwanese dessert place which used to be the place to go for ucla people. (walking in, i saw this guy i met two months ago from evergreen...i shoulda talked to him, but i didn't. he was pretty nice, welcoming ap and i to his church group. oh, well...maybe the next time in la.) we ate the ice dessert with a sweet rice thing, some beans, and some other stuff. i also got a chance to see her europe photos of her contiki tour. interestingly, i learned from her that the roughing-it tours are mostly guys and the kush tours are mostly girls. i probably could have lasted to stay out longer, but i was sharing a room with ap and he was pooped. finally got back to the dorm at about 1 or so. it was a good thing, cuz just about then, i felt my internal battery life begin to drop.

finally getting back to the dorm, i realized that i forgot my toothpaste. (i always seem to forget one thing.) ap forgot his toothpaste too. i brushed with water.

the other greg wong

i got a few more e-mails from the other gw out there. it turns out that he went to my church for a time and works for my friend's company! i had heard that there was another gw in the bayarea from a friend telling me about another friend's evite. such a small world. i wonder if there's more we have in common.

d.c. monday

still playing catch-up from my trip two weekends ago...

monday am, i met up with my college bud bert again. i took the dc metro out towards where he lived, where he picked me up. he took me to silver diner, a 50s themed place, sorta along the lines of mel's. good breakfasts. we got around to catching up more about life out on the east coast and down south. i think it'd be cool to one day take a trip with him somewhere...thru america or to another country. (i know you'd be a good travel bud, bert!)

after i took the metro back to the hotel, i met up with my parents and my grandma, and took a trip back to the left coast.

d.c. sunday

we slept in a bit. had a really great, somewhat expensive brunch at the park hyatt. really fresh seafood. fantastic stuff. i was totally stuffed. after hanging around a bit in the hotel lobby, i noticed that there was a national conference for the deaf there. i don't think i really recall seeing deaf people really engaged in silent conversation with each other until then. kinda interesting. there was a hotel concierge person who could also do sign language to communicate with them. earlier on i had seen someone in the restaurant trying to communicate in vain with a deaf person. life must be extremely frustrating and patience wearing for the deaf.

afterwards we had some free time to separate. under my sister's recommendation (and from some others too), i decided to go to the holocaust museum. i'm not too into history museums, but my sister highly recommended it and said that it was one of the best things to do in dc. with such high a recommendation, i had to go to it. i went off on my own, since no one wanted to go with me. i took the metro to the smithsonian (it turns out that it was only about 2 blocks away from the other museums.) tix for the permanent collection were sold out, when i got there at 2:30, which really bummed me out. but there was a lady in front of me who encountered the same thing. we lucked out by visiting the ticket desk, and after asking and hanging around a few minutes, were able to get a few extra tickets that were available. my lucky day. :)

tix are limited in order to control how many people go thru the exhibit. i sorta wonder if part of this ticket waiting is purposeful experience design, to emulate how hard and limited it was for the jews to get passports or to be granted safe access during the holocaust. (it wasn't that hopeless tho to get exhibit tix, but it can seem like that to the unprepared visitors.) the exhibit is huge...4 floors. you have to go thru an elevator to get to the top and then pretty much go down a more or less set path of exhibits, learning about the holocaust and jewish culture/population before, during, and after the war. the whole museum exhibit experience was incredibly designed and emotionally impactful. it was supposed to be a testimony to this period in history and a reminder of what happened. i think it does truly affect people who go to visit and does a lot of good to societal awareness of this extremely dark period in history. not only do you learn about the evils of the nazis, but you also see how so many countries around the world turned their backs as the persecution grew and grew, decimating a race.

experience wise...the tone is set with black walls, spotlights highlighting the exhibit. very industrial looking interior architecture. walls and ceilings are somewhat like wire cages. multimedia exhibits, artifacts, models, photos, and written summaries incredibly inform people of practically every aspect and pertinent way of life during this time. i think i spent 90 min to an hour just on the first floor. when you start off entering the exhibit, you pick up an identifcation card summarizing the life of a real person. the guy that i picked up was a jehovah's witness german, who helped to aid the jews, and was killed at age 20. incredibly somber stuff. i could go on and on. btw, an initial glance at the website for the museum, doesn't reflect the incredible design of the exhibit, deisnged by ralph appelbaum associates. (i think that could be an incredible career area, designing museums to be a societal impactful and educational interactive experience. maybe my upcoming branding retail spaces experience design class could lead to something in that arena.)

on the way back to the hotel, i got caught in a flash rain storm. i was trapped in a doorway with a bunch of other strangers for about 5 min b/c i didn't have an umbrella with me.

after bumming around georgetown some more, i met up with my friend bert of azntv fame (well...almost fame, since azntv is now no longer and never really got off the ground). a close college bud, this is the first time i saw him in about 2 years since he moved out to dc. we went to sequoia, another good seafood place (but not as good as kinkead's). it was great catching up with him. he's gonna move back to atlanta and work for chicken-fil-a.

d.c. saturday

ok...finally catching up.

sat in dc i slept in. i was sharing a room with my grandma and my sis at the westin grand hotel in georgetown. i had stayed up til 4am the nite not so much b/c of jetlag but b/c i was sorta in my working mode, fiddling with pix for the soon-to-be-re-released lumps website. after a late start sat morning...we got lunch at kinkead's in georgetown, just a few blocks away. my dad was walking around that morning and found it. it just turns out this is supposedly the best seafood restaurant in the city...we really lucked out. food was really great and so were the portions. (bert also told me later that this was his favorite restaurant.)

afterwards, we went walking for a bit...and went over to gw university. the other day when i was walking by and saw a "gw" sign, i knew that i had to pay a visit to the gw bookstore. went crazy and got a bunch of gw stuff (my bday present from my sis, uniquely from dc). i was only interested in stuff that said "gw" not really gw university or george washington. the more prominent the gw the better. so i ended up leaving with a "fratboy" gw long-sleeve grey shirt with a pocket on the sleeve i think for smokes (on clearance too), a gw rubber ducky with a backwards blue cap, a stone-khaki-colored abercrombie style gw hat (yellow initials in a dark blue circle), a gw cloth necklace to hold nametags or keys (there's a circle r after each gw), and a gw athletics long sleeved blue t-shirt. (i'm glad that the gw colors are blue and gold, good ol cal colors...or at least appear to be.) i also took a bunch of pix around the different gw signs. now i would never really weat personalized clothing with my initials; not my style. but b/c these items aren't personalized but actually have my initials originally to represent something else, and when i wear it (esp not in dc), i co-opt the original meaning for my own identity...that's kinda funny and more my style. (so if anyone were to give me something monogramed or embroidered with a "gw"...that's not really as cool to me as found stuff with "gw.")

my fam and i went on a boat ride along the potomac. it was an hour long, but seemed a whole lot shorter than that. maybe it had something to do with the fact that i was asleep for about 20 minutes of it. the weather was hot, and the ride was relaxing.

we then bummed around the georgetown shops for a bit. (i stopped into fao schwarz and found a marvin the martian spin-pop, which i plan on reconstructing into a "spinoodle" a rotating spaghetti fork.) i went into dean & delucca for the first time, and found a really cool bottle of water from norway. i got this cylindrical glass bottle, just b/c of it's design. (it only cost $2.35.)

sat nite we celebrated my bday early, in order to celebrate with my sis. we found another great restaurant, just by walking around. paolo's. an italian ristorante (with several locations in dc). really good service from the chinese waiter. great food. good portions. fun, pop music playing in the background. cool, nite atmosphere. modern italian cuisine. afterwards to make my bday celebration even more memorable, we sat and got drinks nearby at cafe sole. the sangria wasn't really all that, but it was nice sitting out by the fountain.

bday break

gotta catch up on my blogging backlog. not only do i have to finish dc, i need to catch up on my la weekend for wedding # 6 this year. and i got some stuff today for my bday going on, so it might have to wait a little longer. yep, i hit the big 2-5. maybe it'll hit me later on.

the d.c. trip

so...here's the lowdown on my trip to our nation's capital, my sister's home for the summer and it turns out the next 3 mo, as she works for the post.

friday:
arrived at dulles at 8am. i had caught a midnight red-eye and tried to sleep on the plane. i think i managed to only get 4 hours of sleep of the 5 hour flight. i also was sitting next to a baby, but it wasn't really too bad. i nabbed a super shuttle to go to the westin grand in georgetown. the driver had a really tough time finding the exact address, and one of the fellow passengers had to help him out. finally they see it and he lets me off. i pay with my credit card, and i forgot to tip. i was scrounging around for some bucks, but can't really find anything and he goes off. shucks. didn't mean to be cheap. but it was a good thing i didn't tip him. after walking into the hotel and asking for a room under my mom's name, my dad's name, my grandma's name, then my name...he tells me that there are no wongs in the system! i didn't really believe him and was gonna walk up to the room number my mom told me, and then i see the big M on the front door. M for Monarch. it turns out that the crum-bum super shuttle dude dropped me off at the wrong hotel! aye carumba. but the good news is that my hotel is only across the street. whew.

finally got to the right rooms. family was still sleeping. grabbed breakfast with my pop at the nearby park hyatt, then went back to the room and napped. after separating from mom and my grandma, my dad and i went to visit my sis at the post while on the way to the smithsonian. sis took us around to the different departments, met her recruiter, boss, editor. nothing too out of the ordinary or impressive. passed by bob woodward's office. (she's met him and i think been to his house.)

on to the smithsonian museums. i didn't remember much about the layout from 11 years ago, but there's a collection of different smithsonian museums along the green. all free. we didn't care to go see the air and space museum since we went there a decade ago. was more interested into the newer stuff. we crammed in 4 or 5 muesum exhibits in a few hours. first up was the freer gallery of art and the arthurm. sackler gallery. they form the national museum of asian art for the us. the brand new exhibit was on "worshipping chinese ancestors." talked about the history and nuances buried in those old empoeror type scrolls. some based on the living person. some are based off of a photograph. some are based on the dead people. a lot of heritage and nuanes which i picked up on. i later bought a couple of postcards of the chinese and asianpaintings.

we then moved on to the arts and industries building, which had a great exhibit - "on gold mountain." it's based on lisa see's book about 100 years of her family's chinese-american heritage. roots back from when her family immigrated over, grew up in la chinatown, and so on. interesting to learn about the roots of the early chinatown. this exhibit actually started in la at the autrey museum...and what we saw in dc was a smaller version of it. still very interesting. motivated me more to try to put something together for my family's long stretching path in america. i really should. i sure hope that it happens before more of my grandparents pass away and more history is lost.

then in the same building was a very cool and well-designed eductional experience - "brain: the world inside your head." 3d-displays. interactive kiosks. one sorta cleanly gruesome, yet informative display about a guy who's skull was impaled by a metal rod, yet lived thru the experience. this rod went thru or right by his eye, thru his brain, and out his skull. yet he was still alive and went on to live...but his personality was completely changed (for the worse...grumpy, quarrelsome). this accident led to the discovery of how certain sections of your brain control different things.

next door in the same building was an exhibit of photos from the recent book - "game face: what does a female athelete look like?" interesting photos. but not really too into it. maybe if i was a female athelete.

on the way out of this building i took a quickie peek at yet another chinese-american exhibit - "gateway to gold mountain: the angel island immigration experience." it had some of the famous inscriptions and words carved into the walls of angel island. i actually missed this exhibit when it was here at angel island. i later found out from my grand-ma, that a good family friend, soon yee, was the one who did the chinese caligraphy for the exhibit.

we managed to make it to one final museum...the hirshorn museum and sculpture garden. the national museum of modern and contemporary art. pretty stimulating abstract paintings by clyfford still...often containing vertical life elements, life lines. something interesting is that later on in his career he made replicas of his own works...making additional versions . he did that when he believed the importance of an ideas merited survival on more than one stretch of canvas. also saw some stuff by tacita dea, who worked in a variety of media...film installations, photography, sound. (i wish that i could one day be pretty capable in all of those mediums.)

dang. i can't remember where we ate for dinner that nite with my sis. shoot.

i know at the end of the day i was pretty tired. not just from walking around to all of those places, but b/c i had been up since 5am pst. i'm feeling tired just thinking about that day.

boy am i pooped. gotta update the rest later.

dc weekend

got back monday late afternoon from my weekend in dc to visit my sis with my fam. it's been 11 years since i was on the east coast...and 11 years, ago i was in dc...twice the same year. a good weekend full of seeing new sites, new museums, new food, and spending time with family. also got a chance to hang twice with by, who i hadn't seen in 2 years. i'll have to update more later...once i find all those business cards and pamphlets from all the places i went too. the weather this weekend there was humid, and rainy. hot too. but bearable...since i was in asia. anyhoo...more to come.

jho slideshows

the xwarp wedding and lumps life. woo hoo, more photojam!

r&r's wedding

sunday i went to r and r's wedding at norte dame in belmont. first outdoor wedding experience. nice sunny weather, but a bit breezy. they also didn't have mikes outside, which made it difficult to hear. the banquet was inside a mansion on campus. very nice. american buffett. r sang for r. small wedding...only about 170 people. didn't know too many people. was at a table with j, and 5 other strangers (4 girls). at times the conversation was stifled and stiff. j kept forgetting everyone's names and he tried to text-message me to ask them their names. (we were sitting next to each other.) finally he just handed me his phone and i tried to type it out. but soon after he forgot their names again! .... anyhoo, it was a nice wedding, but they didn't have too much of a program other than the serenade and best man's toast. (i like seeing slides shows and some games...or somehow gaining insights into the couple's relationship.)

clones everywhere

recently just got an e-mail from a greg wong in the bay area, who checked out my site. he also said that he went to my church for a little while and is just two years older. how weird is that?

man o man...i'm letting this blog slide. shoot. it would be so much easier if i had broadband access at home still.

museum free day

i hung with jho, jj, b, f, m, jw and rl to go to the ansel adams exhibit at the moma a few days ago. free day! after that we bounced across the street to the hip hop exhibit (a second time for me) at yerba buena. you can check out our day of fun and illegal photo taking inside of the museum. don't tell!

rush hour 2

after meeting ziyi, i definitely had to see rush hour 2 opening nite. went with a bunch of lumps at amc for the 11:45 showing. the entire crowd except for 2 people were asian! i liked this movie. faster and funnier than the first. a must-see.

brother-in-law's bbq

we had a lumps guys' grub yesterday...and this time we had ribs (my suggestion). i helped to get take-out from brother-in-law's bbq on divisadero. pretty good. $18 for a slab. we got 5 slabs. this place continually wins awards and is the sfbg's best of the bay.