the sony meteron hook-up

i hung out yesterday with the 3 d's to go to meteron. we had the hook up on a special sony employee appreciation day at the meteron. fat discounts galore at all of the stores in the metreon. it was a great time to hang with the guys.

ds helped me to get some stuff at the action theater (anime/japanese stuff store). with the discount, cds were 50% off. recently i wanted to try out some techno music, cuz i think it will help me to be a better designer/artist. it's funny, but just playing this sort of continuous music in the background when i'm working on projects, really helps to get into sort of a mode. i like the faster stuff. anyways...i ended up getting two cds...

1) perfecto fluoro: oakenfold (which ds raved was the must have for me...even tho it's 5 years old. ) according to the website, it really pushed forward goa trance. (whatever that is...anyone wanna enlighten me?)

2) deep dish yoshiesque two. i kinda got it cuz the box design looked pretty well-done, and on the song listing, i recognized the chemical brothers and leigh nash of sixpence none the richer. it also has two cds: westcoast and eastcoast. and it came out this year. so i figured it'd be a good thing to have. so far it's not too bad...not as fast as the oakenfold. i think this is a blend of vocal house, dark instrumentals and tribal drums. a few more vocal riffs tho. i think all of this music will grow on me. if you're interested or wanna listen to samples, check out the mtv review.

ds and i went onto the microsoft sf store. good deals for us there. some things like journals were 50% off.
i got a reconstructed leather portfolio case for 30% off. (now i just need a quality portfolio book to show around to get me a job or get into school!) we were talking to an employee there and heard that at the ms store, people came in early and bought up the vaio laptops. they blew out their whole stock of them...for something like $700! (30% i think.)

afterwards we bummed around downtown more all together. we ate at wolfgang puck express in the macy's cellar. i had a birthday coupon (buy 1, get 1 free), which let us get two pizzas for only $13. not too bad. it was my first time down in this re-done macy's cellar. a pretty good food court. it also has ben & jerry's, jamba, tom's cookies, and one or two other places.

i went to niketown (where i really took notice of the environment design) and the moma bookstore. we later tried to go to the william stout design bookstore in southpark, but that location was closed every sat for this summer. shucks. if you've never heard of this place, it's the most well-known architecture and design bookstore in the city. really great stuff there.

shaolini soccer

we went back to the d house to chill and relax. we ended up waching a vcd or a movie that beat out rush hour 2 in hk recently: shaolin soccer. i didn't really know what to expect. i thought it would be some cornball movie that i wouldn't really like. well, it was a littel corn-ball, but it was also hillarious. a lot of stoopid funny humor. one famous guy in there, stephen chow. the flik's all about a bunch of rag tag shaolin wash-ups using the martial arts abilities to play soccer. i didn't really enjoy the closing outtakes. (maybe cuz i don't understand chinese tho.)

jay and silent bob strikes back

after cooking the d's and grubbing at the house, d and i went to go see jay and silent bob strike back. i've been wanting to see this movie for a long time. i saw all of the other kevin smith view askew movies (altho i did fall asleep seeing dogma on dvd...but it was really late and i was tired) (and i havn't seen mallrats...but i have the rental sitting on my coffee table from blockbuster. i liked the movie. (d didn't.) i understood a lot of the stuff, since i've seen the other view askew movies, know a lot about kevin smith from his high profile as a great comic book writer. i really enjoyed the way it poked fun at hollywood and even at itself as a movie. i liked seeing ben affleck and matt damon rip on each other for all of their past movies. the characters purposely break the 4th wall a few times. (it's the invisible camera wall by looking at the camera (into the audience). if you go watch the movie...stay til the very end of the credits. kevin smith puts out shouts to people in a special listing following everything.

whew! busy day! i'm almost tired again from writing about it all.

yesterday stuff...

six times across the bay bridge

i helped m move stuff to berkeley yesterday. drove the old volvo station wagon to transport a dresser and bed matresses back and forth. had to make two trips, since all the stuff wouldn't fit in the trunk. what's pretty funny is that the volvo trunk doesn't open from the outside, cuz the lock is busted. so you have to open it from the inside. it was a funny site to see us try to open it when the trunk cabin space was full with stuff. we took turns crawling in along the side then reaching for the interior trunk door latch.

we got some lunch at baja fresh on shattuck. been there once before. we bumped into one of m's friends, eric, who recognized me. he guesed correctly that i was one of vw's friends, but m helped me figure out later on that i had met him after the christmas musical at our friend's place last year. really small world. two random connections. since he works with vw, he told him that he saw me. vw then im'd jho that his friend saw me. then when i called jho later on, he surprised me knowing that i was at baja fresh earlier. so funny.

moving m made me go across the bridge 4x. the other 2x were later on in the nite, when i had to leave lumps early and go to the oakland airport with my mom to pick up my dad. he had just come back from dc from helping my sis move in.

a whole lotta driving in one day!

sorry to disappoint all of you guys. glad you can stop on bye. i lagged with the posting. here's what i've been up to...

seybold sf

yesterday stopped by seybold by myself. jho was gonna come but couldn't make it. i checked out the booths, particularly the digital cameras with interest. i'm really looking to get a digital camera. (can you imagine how great this blog would be with daily photos?) altho i loved the size of my aps elph, i don't think i want to get something that small. looking to get a compact camera, with a lot of great functionality. i think i want at least a 3.1 m camera. jho suggested the canon g2 or the nikon cool pix. the good (and i think unique) things about those cameras is that you can see what you're shooting on an lcd screen that tilts. oh so helpful for taking those clandestine photos of hip hop museum shows...or trying to take candid pix of people on the street. i'm still trying to sort out the different types of media...but i digress. (lemme know if you have any good suggestions.)

branding enviornments class

everyone liked the frantic, friendly, and big mood boards i created for the look & feel presentation. i spent all nite scanning in over 40-50 shots. it was worth it. i did get some feedback tho...and that was to think about the presentation composition of my boards. when presenting to a roomfull of people, the images i selected may be too small (particularly on my "big" board) and some my get lost in a clutter of a ton of images. they suggested that i might pare down the number of images, by picking some that particularly resonate with what i want for the experience. a really useful lesson...to really think thru your presenation. something i've learned from other art center classes.

enterprise

yeah, i'm an on-and-off trekkie. i liked voyager, particularly when they had 7 of 9 and the borg, but i didn't care at all for DS9. this series is the supposed first voyage to anywhere in m galaxy. billboard says first voayage, first capatain, first enemy. i really like scott bakula from back in the day of quantum leap. man, did i really like that show.

downtown with jho

it was jho's bday today, so i hung out with him. we went downtown, went to a few stores, and ate lunch on the patio of the cheesecake factory. nice day to lounge outside.

i had to got to virigin and borders to try to find some books and mags for my branding environments class. i needed to find photos that describe "frantic, friendly, and big." my three look and feel attributes for a hungry hippos brand restaurant. i needed books with some cool photos and images. i did get a chance to pick up a few cool books and mags to borrow a bunch of images for my class presentation.

hungry hippo design research books

- bars pubs cafes: hot designs for cool spaces

a rockport book highlighting some of the coolest and exciting bars, cocktail lounges, night clubs, pubs, coffee houses and cafes in the world. a bunch of them are right here in sf: hayes and vine wine bar, mercury, the red room, and backflip. i havn't been to a single one of them. i should go...just to experience the design. ny is the only city that has more places featured in this book.

- retail & restaurant spaces

another rockport book. it's an international portfolio of 41 designers. i pulled a lot of great images here.

- california crazy & beyond

now this is a really cool book. it's from chronicle books (which really puts out great books). looks into the postmodern roadside vernacular architecture...like restaurants in so-cal shaped like giant dogs or giant cowboy hats. lots of great photos. a great read if you're going to take a road trip thru ca. it's pretty similar to roadsideamerica.com and even credits it as a reference. another cool thing is that it's by jim heimann, who is an art center teacher. definitely a keeper book.

- what a character! 20th centruy american advertising icons

another really great book from chronice books. it's full of bright, quirky, kitschy characters from commercial popular culture of yesteryear. i saw this book months back, and finally decided to get it. maybe it'll lend inspiration in desiging hungry hungry hippo characters, or else some characters for something else. there must be a website somewhere dedicated to this type of subject.

hmm...just did a quick google search. there's a museum on advertising icons! creatabilitoys. seems that there are a bunch of other books on the subject.

i also picked up a few magazines...
- communication arts (the interactive design annual)
- nylon. looks like a mag on design culture. it has an article on japan stuff. the mag was cheap, too. $3.
- nest. a quarterly of interiors. it was a little expensive...but it came with a cd by dj spooky and won the national magazine award for outstanding design. it came in a transparant plastic slipcover. i figure reading this magazine will help me to learn more about interior design and help me with my project.
- time. i picked this up cuz it's an important issue to have. all about 9.11.01. might be somewhat collectible too. definitely a historic keepsake.
- people weekly. also all about the day that changed america.

boy, do i have a lot of reading to do! i won't be keeping all of the books tho. will probably return the rockport ones.

grow or no grow?

i've been experimenting a little with a slightly new look, since i've been pretty much the same the past three years. i figure that my willingness to try new things and to grow personally should extend to my appearance a little, too. if one were to never have the courage or openness to change how they look, then one will quickly get behind with the times be looking pretty outdated and passe.

so for about two-three weeks now, i've tried to let some of my facial hair grow. not really a full goatee (especially since i can't grow one completely). rather, growing just along the base of my chin and end of my jaw, shaving the rest around it. (i think shaving the mustache area gives a cleaner look. i think overall...it's more stylized.)

i did a quick search, and it seems that this style is called chin-whiskers. i know i've seen this style on some designers and some asians who are more into the creative thing. i also know it's more in now.

i sorta like the look on me and i sorta don't. it definitely makes me look less clean-cut and a little scruffier (and also a little more like a designer). people's opinions on it have been mixed. a few girls told me it was kinda cute or interesting...some said to get rid of it. a bunch of my guy friends don't really like it, but their personal styles are more conservative than mine. my parents and one grandma sure don't like it. early on, my mom joked that she could count the hairs on my chin. (she couldn't really.)

a couple of people are surprised how full it's growing. i think it could be fuller...once some of the shorter smaller hairs grow. dunno if i wanna wait that long.

for my lumps small group, we had an activity where we draw each other. kk, who drew me and can't draw too well, made me look something like a goat-boy and a devil boy. the picture was pretty scary...the chin-whiskers/goat thing combined with my spikey hair and thick eyebrows. it must have ben the worst drawing of me that i've ever seen in my life!

i know i won't keep the chin-whiskers forever (and maybe not even that long). i'll definitely get rid of it for an interview for the right job. it's kinda fun to play around with my personal image and to see how people react. maybe i'll keep it long enough just until my friends get used to it, so that a clean-shaven greg will look new to them again. i just hope that it doesn't be a big turn-off when i make an initial impression.

moving day

helped a few friends move today. went over to berkeley, to my old apartment building. my friend who was moving was my old neighbor three doors down from me during my college apartment years. i think it's probably the last time i'll step in the building. sigh...the memories.

afterwards i went over to a few other places to help move stuff, since some of my other friends were sharing the same van.

gen-y cops

it's been a while since i've gotten the chance to watch an hk film. i'm finally getting around to watching gen-y cops. my cousins gave me the vcd a while back, but i just havn't had time. the story and dialogue is pretty bad. a few of the action shots are ok...but i really can't stand a bad plot or cheezy characters. i had heard that jaymee ong is in this movie, but it turns our she's barely in there. shucks.

checking out APAture

after dinner tonite i went to check out the free gallery reception for APAture. art about asian-american identity in different types of media - illustration, painting, crafts, sculpture, installations. i thought that i might run into someone i knew, but i didnt. sorta surprising.

hangin with the big boys

i later met up with e and f at f's place...just a few blocks away. really nice place. we talked about life, relationships, missions, perspetives, strategies, lessons learned. as i was learning more about f, he was giving me all sorts of tips. he also shared an observation about how i interact in the large group, which was pretty interesting. gotta see now if i really do what he said.

fritz fries and crepes

after hanging at his bayside apartment, we hopped in the car and went to fritz in hayes valley. (around hayes and gough) i had actually noticed this place earlier in the week with my sis, but we were too stuffed to get anything then. they got savory crepes. i got a large size of their belgian fires and got pesto mayonaise and curry ketchup. they had all sorts of different kins of dipping sauces. great place to go for a snack or just to hang. at the end of the place is a sort of open garden with small tables. sat and sun nites it's open to midnight and 11pm, respectively. they also have a dj spining albums. pretty cool. gotta go again.

hungry hungry hip-hippo

after a trip to toys r us and a lot of childhood game research on the net (particularly yesterdayland), i finally picked which childhood game i want to work with for my branding environments project. yes, that extremely loud, frantic marble-munching game...hungry, hungry hippos.

(you've never played it? check it out.)

my other choices were clue or twister. my sis thought i should do this game. i also called up my teacher a couple of hours before class, and he thought if i were to design a branded restaurant (one idea i had), twister or hungry hungry hipppos might lend itself better to a theme. so i went with the hippos. it also had the most posted memories on yesterdayland. remember henry, harry, homer, and happy hippo?

anyone ever been to the hungry hippo restaurant back in the day on van ness? no connection to the game tho. i remember the sign of the restaurant when i was a kid, but i never went in. i think it was just a local place.

i'm probably going to develop the hungry hungry hippo restaurant as a children's restaurant (like chuck-e-cheese) or like a fast food place.

theme song from the commercial...

"Hungry hungry hippos...
Open up and there it goes
It's a race! It's a chase!
Hurry up and feed their face!
Who will win? No one knows!
Feed the hungry hip-hippos"

jj's bday

my sg and a couple of other people got together to celebrate jj's bday on tue. she's into cheese enchiladas and never ventured out to the mission, so that's exactly where we had to go for dinner. i researched some places on citysearch's top mexican food list. we tried to go to chava's, but it was closed. so we ended up going to roosevelt's tamale parlor. it was probably a better place to go b/c of the neighborhood (borderline portero hill). mc and ww were driving nice cars, and 18th and mission (chava's) wouldn't have been so great a hood.

food was pretty good and filling. most people either had the beef tamale/taco/enchilada combo or the chicken one. (i think $8-9.) really filling. good food. afterwards we went we hung out at jj's place for a fruit tart/cake and hanging out.

the road trip across america...almost

one of my life dreams is to take a road trip across america. for about 24 hours, that was the plan to happen later this week. to go with my sis and dad in a car driving to virginia in 4 days. but plans changed and the trip was cancelled. slight chance it can happen with my sis coming back (probably) in jan.

i asked friends on advice on the national roadtrip, and here's some of the advice i got:

"it depends on which way you are going and how much time you have. I went across on highway 80. Which runs across the northern part of the states. We stayed over the first night in Salt lake city, utah; then to Cheyenne, Wyoming; then went to Des Moin, Iowa; then to Chicago. I would say, that heading up to Wyoming to see yellowstone National park would be a good experience (but it is a little out of the way). We didn't go there but would have if there was time. The only other place that would be worth checking out would be Downtown Chicago, but that's only if you like cities. It's really clean and flat (as compared to S.F.). I don't really have too much to say about the other cities other than they are a lot smaller and more "homely". We planned our trip by checking out the tour guide books at the bookstore and AAA stuff." - pc

so i've driven accross the country about twice... well for the
cali to indiana leg, and over a dozen from indy to DC. so, the big
question is how long do you want to take on the trip and what would you
like to see... or not see. the fastest route (the one i used most
recently) is to take i80 all the way out to cheyenne, wyoming. take
i25 south to denver, then follow i70 east all the way out to i270 which
will then connect to the DC beltway (i495). the schedule of days would look
something like this (assuming you're not driving non stop).

day 1: SF to Salt lake city (this is really long ~15 hours, i have a
good tolerance for long distance driving and was ok with it. you
can easily break it up by staying in Reno and hitting SLC the next
day).
day 2: salt lake to denver.
day 3: denver to Kansas city
day 4: KC to indianapolis (you'll hit st. louis around lunchtime).
day 5: indy to DC (another long day ~11 hours) note that i70 becomes a
toll road just east of pittsburgh. you can also take i70 to i79 south
to i68 east (which will then merge back into i70). there's really no
time difference. - jy

way we took for the first leg...
ca to salt lake city utah, which you can do in about 13 hrs or so?
stopped to see the mormon temple in slc.
headed northeast to wyoming...saw the grand tetons and yellowstone,
camped at yellowstone. then to mt. rushmore. then stayed at a hostel
in deadwood (south dakota i believe). then drove through chicago to
indiana. we only drove all night 1 time cause we wanted to stop and
see some of the sights. don't know if you guys are going for fastest
way to get there or want to get some sights in too. - ky

o sent me a great link. www.roadsideamerica.com/. really great stuff. never knew about the muffler man before. i checked out points of interest in the bay area. learned that there's a pez musem in burlingame!

ad school presentation

thurs was my final presentation nite for ad school. i burned the midnight oil rushing to get my projects done. it wasn't too bad. i did try to do the drink-coffee/sleep-for-20-minutes/wake-up-refreshed thing, but it didn't work too well. i ended up sleeping past my alarm, turning 20 minutes into 5 hours. next time i'll set 2 alarms. oh well, it's better for my health to sleep.

presentation went ok. most of the teachers from this quarter of school were around to judge and see the work.

lumps retreat

after lumps, i went home and worked hard on the nametags for retreat. i inputted by hand and manual adjusted the size, spacing, and kerning for about 1-- nametags. i think i spent a few hours hard at work designing them. too much time, but they looked great in the end.

running around town fri morning before leaving taking care of errands, i finally left for santa cruz at around 3 with dl and jm. we stopped off at the boardwalk. it was sorta strange that nothing was really running, except for the arcade. i guess the season is over. ended up at the retreat site at around 8. overall the retreat was pretty laid-back. it's a shame that our original speaker from chicago had to cancel, but jw our assistant pastor filled in. his messages could have been a little better if he had more than 24 hour notice that he was the speaker.

some of the highlights included pc giving an excellent egg shaker solo at the campfire, great sg times, ek spelling out his name with his butt, wet tp appearing mysteriously on the guys' cars, freshly baked buns, hot cinnamon rolls, milbrae's drink-concoction challenge (extremely gross and memorable), and playing the compatibility board game with tm, kc, jm, and jl. it was a great weekend of bonding with lumps and getting to know some new people.

was extremely pooped after the retreat. made it to scbc's late late service, where pastor j spoke about psalm 23, related to the attack on america. great sermon. i was telling the other gw about it. too bad that sermon isn't online.

thinking about branded environments

as i finished up my work wed nite for the miami ad school, i started a brand new class thru the art center at night. it's a free class, since they i got a scholarship from them. what i'm taking is a "branded enviornments" class, taught by two guys at landor, which does creative design and branding consulting.

the end project for my three month class is to create a branded physical environment based on an existing brand or a childhood game. the example they gave was to take a brand, like in-n-out, and to logically extend the brand to something new. concepting and designing something like an in-n-out hotel, or an in-n-out classic car brokerage place. pretty cool stuff. the envionrnment could be anything...a restaurant, hotel, retail space, trade show kiosk, car rental thing, anything at all. i'll probably pick a childhood game as my brand, and then i'll have to dissect the brand - identifying the attributes and finding examples of the look and feel of the brand.

anyone have ideas for any cool childhood games? some cool ones that come to mind for me are twister, clue, simon, rubix cube. scotland yard was pretty cool too. i don't really wanna do monopoly or risk.

more nostradamus dispelling

a more thorough examination of the nostradamus myth.

after my mom got all excited after receiving the myth perpetuation, i had her forward the myth-busting link to her friends to drop some science on them.

i knew that it was coming soon from her cuz her friends *always* buy into it. especially her friends t and l. they always forward junk to my mom and all of their friends. earlier today, i told my sis that i bet my mom gets e-mail fwds about this and the flight numbers. (nothing on the numerology yet. i had my mom tell her friends to forget it.) my mom has this one friend who always seems to fall for all of the hoaxes, and then my mom sends me the e-mail or tells us about it. i can't stand it.

infinite monkeys

another link from x...infinite monkeys. "An infinite amount of typing monkeys in an infinite period of time would eventually type every written work of Shakespeare." if you explore the links on the site, they're really hillarious.

stuff like this really pushes me again to try to come up with a good cool concept for a site and for t-shirts. if anyone has an idea, and needs a collaborater (or an illustrator), lemme know.

thoughts on current events

But the Lord reigns forever, executing judgment from his throne.
He will judge the world with justice and rule the nations with fairness.
The Lord is a shelter for the oppressed, a refuge in times of trouble.
Those who know your name trust in you, for you, O Lord,
have never abandoned anyone who searches for you.
Psalm 9:7-10 (NLT)

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.
I do not give to you as the world gives.
Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
John 14:27 (NIV)

who am i?

i'm continuing on an e-mail chain thing with my lumps sg. via e-mail, you answer 35 questions about yourself and pass it on. you forward on the list with your personal answers included. people receiving it do the same, adding their info on. it's fun. nickolay sent it to me about a month or two ago, but i never got around to doing it til now. you can copy and paste the questions from below, and change my answers to yours. do it and lemme know! i expanded my answers a little bit here.

1. LIVING ARRANGEMENT
- house in the sunset. born and raised here.
2. WHAT BOOK(s) ARE YOU READING NOW? -
- 6 chapters in design (just started)
- the lost daughter of happiness (half-way thru, but in a 7 or 8 week break on it)
- the international inductive study bible (nasb)
- niv bible on my palm
- jacob: following god without looking back (men of character series)
- story: substance, structure, style, and the principles of screenwriting (a lotta good lessons on narrative that can be applied to crafting experiences.)
3. WHAT'S ON YOUR MOUSE PAD? -
- no mouse or pad. i'm using a tablet. (wacom graphire)
4. FAVORITE BOARD GAME? -
- scotland yard. perhaps clue. not taboo. (i've been playing that game for over 10 years and know all the answers by now.)
5. FAVORITE MAGAZINE? -
- wizard. (a comics magazine). also read all the asian mags on the stands (yolk, giant robot, A magazine). also browse all of the design and graphics mags. (print, comm arts, how, artbyte, digital). i also browse anything advertising related. i also read browse various men's lifestyle mags, mainly for the style and gear stuff.
6. FAVORITE SMELLS -
- hmm...pizza.
7. FAVORITE SOUNDS -
- fast dance music (pop, freestyle, r&b) to get ya going.
8. WORST FEELING IN THE WORLD? -
- hearing about a tragedy involving a loved one of friend. especially in current events today.
(that wasn't me this week, thank god)
9. THE FIRST THING YOU THINK OF WHEN YOU WAKE UP IN THE MORNING? -
- "hello? who's this on the phone?"
10. FAVORITE COLOR? -
- burgandy red or else some sort of blue, not navy (too boring). i think if i were to buy a car, silver or metalic blue.
11. HOW MANY RINGS BEFORE YOU ANSWER THE PHONE? -
- one.
12. FUTURE CHILD'S NAME? -
- hmm...i dunno. something original or not too common. i thought of one before. shoot.
13. WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT IN LIFE?
- living for god. his kingdom.
- related...doing what your heart tells you to, what's true to you, staying true to your convictions and dreams.
14. FAVORITE FOODS. -
- cheezy itallian food with meat. i also like burritos at el farrolito and taqueria cancun.
15. CHOCOLATE OR VANILLA -
- vanilla. i don't eat chocolate at all. never really did.
16. DO YOU LIKE TO DRIVE FAST? -
- yeah, but i know people who drive faster.
17. DO YOU SLEEP WITH A STUFFED ANIMAL? -
- nope.
18. STORMS - COOL OR SCARY? -
- cool, if it doesn't affect me physically. (getting rained on, struck by lightning)
19. WHAT TYPE WAS YOUR FIRST CAR? -
- 1980 bmw 318. hand-me down from family, from my grandfather, originally from my uncle.
20. IF YOU COULD MEET ONE PERSON DEAD OR ALIVE? -
- jesus.
21. FAVORITE DRINK?
- the sweet house tapioca drinks (watermelon, mango, strawberry). too bad the irving sweet house closed. the new place isn't as good.
22. WHAT IS YOUR ZODIAC SIGN? -
- virgo
23. DO YOU EAT THE STEMS OF BROCCOLI?-
- yes. broccoli is good with cheddar cheese, but i havn't done that in a long time.
24. IF YOU COULD HAVE ANY JOB YOU WANTED WHAT WOULD IT BE?
- art director/creative director. something also that allowed a lot of travel.
25. IF YOU COULD DYE YOUR HAIR ANY COLOR WHAT WOULD IT BE?
- bright redish brown. perhaps with some chunky, lighter blonde highlights. once i wanted to dye it blue. i think if i could, i'd try the do i got in beijing...perm, reddish-brown dye, cut short and spikey. i'd totally do it again, if not for how much it would cost here (a lot cheaper in china), and the potential damage that all of those chemicals can do. (i didn't know that at the time i went thru the four hour process in the salon.)
26. EVER BEEN IN LOVE? -
- can't really say so.
27. IS THE GLASS HALF EMPTY OR HALF FULL? -
- half-full...but in my perspective, actually 3/4 full.
28. FAVORITE MOVIE? -
- fight club. as for a fav scene for a funny movie, the rhino's butt scene in ace ventura II. i laughed so much i cried.
29. DO YOU TYPE WITH YOUR FINGERS ON THE RIGHT KEYS? -
- yup.
30. WHAT'S UNDER YOUR BED? -
- millions of dustmites. old shoes. random junk.
31. WHAT IS YOUR FAVORITE NUMBER? -
- i used to say 13.
32. FAVORITE SPORT TO WATCH?
- probably football. but not too often. something that's fast and won't put me to sleep.
33. SOMETHING ABOUT THE PERSON WHO SENT THIS TO YOU.
- nickolay is the lead singer of msg.
34.THE PERSON YOU SENT THIS TO THAT IS MOST LIKELY TO RESPOND -
- jj
35. THE PERSON YOU SENT TO WHO IS LEAST LIKELY TO RESPOND -
- el. also a lot of people who havn't been to our small group yet. in addition, a lot of people read this blog without a single peep.

e-mail junk about the bombing

i really don't believe those numerology myths circulating about the flight numbers of the hijacked planes. x doesn't either. i did come across the nostradamus quotes, and i didn't know what to think about it. this site says it's bogus.

having problems with reblogger. will be taking it off. post counter not showing.

the moment you heard

will probably be ingrained in everyone's memories forever. this day (9-11) is one of the biggest days in american history. in my life, it compares with or surpasses the challenger explosion and the 89 earthquake. this is bigger than pearl harbor...bigger death toll, multiple locations, unknown enemy. i heard on the news that the last time there was a big attack on washington d.c. was back in the war of 1812. two weeks ago or two weeks from now, my sis woulda been in dc working at the post, but she's home now on a break.

these images will be burned into everyone's memories forever.

so where were you? i was working a temp job doing webcasting at the ritz carlton for the b of a securities conference. i had to be there at 6:30 am...so pretty soon after i got there, i was hearing people talking about it. actually i heard a little something about it on the radio driving over, but it didn't register. in the webcasting room, we were hearing radio reports over the net, heard news being streamed into all of the conference rooms. i stole away to go downstairs and get breakfast, and everyone was talking about it. a lot of top companies were represented at the conf, many with offices at the wto. people were worried, shocked, dismayed...wondering how they were going to get home...speculating and spreading rumors as news was leaking out. lots of travelers are stranded. i heard tidbits like there were 11 planes hijacked, that the palestinians had accepted responsibility. (not quite true.) i heard about the two crashes at the wto, a reported car bomb outside of the white house, the pentagon hit, the supposed camp david crash...crazy stuff.

they ended up cancelling conference events for the day and later all for the rest of the week. i left and met up with my mom, who was nearby doing her exercises at nearby huntington park.

lots of speculation about sf being the next target. the b of a building is the tallest on the left coast supposedly. the transamerica building the most famous building out in the west. early in the am i was thinking that i would hear about something to hit out here bet 9-12 pst...when everything was getting started. a lot of businesses closed down today. i'm sure that they didn't want to potentially be close to a potential epicenter of disaster on a day like this. schools closed down. i wonder what the impact will be on the children of this generation. (like the scare of the atomic bomb a few decades back.) it will be so sad if kids have fears to fly on planes in the coming years...what if this were the start of wwIII? it crossed my mind a few times today. america will definitely strike against the aggressors.

how does this impact you or your family and friends? my sis was planning to go to phoenix for a journ conference and to europe in a week or so later. doubt that's likely now...glad that my bud b isn't in dc anymore...my bud jho was in ny for a week ago and had left there about two days ago...glad they're all safe. another bud j is about to go to china to teach. who knows when he'll be leaving now?

i heard pres george w bush give his announcement. he didn't say too much...but he did say a lot about good vs evil and the enemy trying to destroy what america represents...freedom.

i'm watching the news and commentary now on tv. america will never be the same.

Yahoo! News - Reuters Photo - a diagram of the destruction of the world trade centers. unbelievable. scary stuff.

pay it forward

i finally got around to seeing this film, but on dvd. i wanted to see this movie when it was out in the theaters last year, but by the time i was finally ready to watch it, it was leaving the theaters. i liked it. good movie. altruistic. funny. good acting. original concept....i watched it by myself. my sis just came home, so now she's watching it right now in the living room where i'm at now.

national family association conference

accompanied pw and cl to stop by the national lee family association here in sf. altho i was only around for the kick-off, i gained some insights into the family association life. these conferences are the biggest events of the year for them. sorta interesting to me since my gung gung was so heavily involved and at the top level. lots of picture taking. the mayor was there. we went to lunch with a at the holiday-inn (i had crabcakes which weren't too bad). a was telling us even more insights into the association conferences, the good and bad about them, the importance to the community. it was interesting for me to hear about it from someone else, other than my grandfather.

afterwards we shopped around chinatown. pw was looking for a chinese music karaoke dvd to learn to sing a chinese song. pw didn't find anything super great, cuz the help wasn't too helpful, and their equipment didn't work well...so we couldn't really preview it. pw's gonna try to find something on the net and hopefully be able to preview samples too...

after some more bumming around, we met up with r. we shopped around the bazaar shops then hung out at union street for a bit. we stopped into a bunch of the boutique shops. also went to my favorite (cheap) place to get hair products...head to toes. (great prices on the salon stuff and chinese-owned!) picked up a new supply of kms gel. also picked up some samplers of kms molding paste. they didn't have pomade tho, which was a bummer...been thinking about trying that out. the guy also suggested manipulator (made by bed head), but there aren't samples for that. i also had to run back to my expired meter, so i figure maybe next time.

pix in blogger

i was just chatting with ds and showing him some cool blogs. we got to wondering how they put the pix in...and finally figured it out. :)

the right link is that famous hk pic of my clones in the bluestar exchange store in hk. people have gone over for me looking for the place, but to no success. i still owe comabound for taking that pic for me. i still show it to people now and it continues to amaze how much it looks like me.

breakfast with o

met up today with o for our regular bi-weekly thing. we tried to go to miss millie's in the castro, but that was only open for weekend brunch. so we ended up going to boogaloo's in the mission. pretty good. i think i got some sort of cajun breakfast. place was good...but not the best breakfast place i've been to so far.

resfest

went with e to go to the resfest at the palace of fine arts. we saw the "high risk" shorts. some edgy stuff, some funny stuff. i think i fell asleep during one of the gruesome ones. (not good...i'm beginning to think i need to pick up coffee.) there was a really great and funny short about a guy getting shot on purpose for the body art of it...sorta like tattoos. it was so hillarious. another one was called "earthlink sucks"...all about how earthlink blows. it was a vengeance thing cuz they had those orange and black commercials that ripped off this guy's art style. (i actually wonder if it was the ad agency that was at fault.) another one from the uk was aobut hating one's neighbor...he pretty much ruined the guy's life, got him fired, blew up his house, killed his dog, gave him another dog...which ended up to his demise. all b/c he couldn't stand his laugh. a lot of great shorts. also picked up a bunch of cool free mags (artbyte, paper). :)

new im friends

i talked to a couple of new people online. j and the other gw. i found a link to j's site off a link from x's site. j's a cal bear too and is a friend of a friend of my friend bert. (she's heard of you bert and i think met you a while back.) j's a nite owl too.

gregwong similarities

i've mentioned the other gw before. the other gw sent me the following e-mail...

> by chance do you live on XXth Ave.???
> I called my optomotrist, and there's GW who goes there.
> Is it you? I go to Drs. X and X in downtown.
> That would be too coincidental!

well, it turns out that was me in hs, when i used to go there. so, a few more late nite quick replies on e-mail...

he writes back...

> geez...that's you?!
> I live on X th!!!
> do you still live on (X-1)th?

well, i still do live there. incredible. then he im's me today...

othergreg: is your middle name K----?
gw: yeah
gw: howd you know? (it's a very unique name and no way he could have guessed)
othergreg: hehhee...that was you!!!
gw: what?
othergreg: in my final year at Cal, I kept getting e-mails to your address
othergreg: hehehe
gw: you went to cal too?
othergreg: and my girlfriend at the time accidentally e-mailed you a few times.
othergreg: HAHAHAHHAa
gw: holy cow
gw: how funny
othergreg: I recall gregory k---- wong...and thinking...oh a coincidence.
othergreg: and then I see your AIM name.
othergreg: makes sense now.
othergreg: :-)
othergreg: yeah...just my luck.

it's so weird how many similarities we've found out so far...
- both went to cal
- both went to scbc for a time
- about the same age (difference by two years)
- bday about a week and a half apart (his was the other day)
- both live in sf...one avenue apart
- both had the same optometrist office at one point
- indirectly had our paths cross in school by wrong e-mails

it's getting scary. just today i happened to cancel this credit protect thing, and when they were pulling up my record, they said....did you know that there's another gw in sf? (i told her i did know, and actually just got in touch with him). the csr said that it's pretty scary and that i should be concerned. it's the biggest way that credit mix-ups happens. (now, i wasn't too sure whether to completely believe her b/c i know her job is to sell the service to me.) something else pretty scary...she also told me that our ss#'s are very similar!!!

if anyone out there has every encountered something remotely similar to this, please let me know! also...if you've had cases of credit mix-ups with someone with your name. i'm starting to wonder if i need to use my middle name regularly. i usually don't.

i think i'll be meeting the other gw in a week or so. he might check out my church service again. it would be really interesting to see my friend's reactions. i'm secure enough in my identity to hang out with another greg wong. i know some people wouldn't. :)

i have seen pix of him online...we don't look that much alike. whew.

the other sf gw

got an e-mail out of the blue from the other gw. he had just talked to his optometrist and they said that they had another gw in their records, one who supposedly lives one avenue over from him! and i confirmed it for him, it's me! how weird is that. all of these random connections all about the same time. well...after e-mails and some im's were exchanged, i also learned that his bday is today (a week and a half after mine) and he's now 27 (two years older than me). i think we might be finally meeting up sometime late next week. what a really small world.

shanghai noodle

after my all-niter, i had plans to meet up with cc for dinner and catch-up. we went to this place which i had read about a while back in the sf weekly, called shanghai noodle. the article had caught my eye describing stinky tofu, something which very few places here serve. (i had it three years ago in beijing. not really my thing. sorta like a really stinky, soft, pungent cheese.) from the write-up the food looked pretty interesting, so it was on my to go list for a while now. i also like shanghai food.

it really is a hole in the wall. a converted store. awkward small space. very little decor. practically none. it really reminded me of a cheap restaurant in asia, b/c of vacumous interior, somewhat awkward lighting, and waiter dude who didn't really understand what we were asking in english. a sign of authenticity to us. well, we ordered the green onion pancakes (fried and good), the sweet soy milk with chinese doughnuts, a shanghai noodle with beef stew (which was so-so), and another noodle (maybe it was seafood). all that for about $24 total between the two of us. i'd consider going back again. too bad seating is sorta small, otherwise i could get lumps ppl to hang out there.

an all-niter

since i had all of my final projects due wednesday nite. i really pushed my self in the last two days to finish my three projects. (as you can see from my mulitple updates, trying to take design breaks.) i hit 7-11 monday nite at 1am getting two bottled frappachinos and got two more the next nite. alberston's closes at midnight supposedly.

my projects came out ok, but i ran out of time to finish one of them. my spinoodle packaging was a good start and i'll revise the colors for panel presentation nite next thurs. my library infoscope location finder kiosk was pretty good...but i gotta tighten stuff up design-wise and typographically.

i really can't remember the last time i pulled an all-niter and stayed up so long. i did do it last year the nite before i caught a flight from thailand to america (very fun and worth it), but it's been a long-time that i've had to do a nite with absolutely no sleep. when i finished school, i figured my paper days of buring the midnight oil like that were gone and done. i might be having more nites like this in the near future.

after my class, i got a chance to talk with my teacher g, which was pretty cool. also ran into my old boss, jl, and i was out feeding my meter. (but i got a ticket later on after it expired.) phooey. oh well...i just lined up some part-time work which will help pay the bills. anyhoo...talking with jl, confirmed with me more the depressed state of the interactive industry, and he shared with my his perspective that it's not about the medium. also that companies like sun are still struggling to integrate a lot of stuff and that crm (the old hot thing) is going by the wayside.

googling personal info

random surfing got me to realize really just how much personal info you can find out there. just entering different variations of entries of my friends names and e-mail addresses into google really pulled up a lot of stuff. have you ever tried it? google can possibly pull up a random guestbook posting from years back! you can sometimes figure out where people work, their contact info, their school, their friends, hobbies, classs, old projects...the list goes on.

if you enter my name...other gw's still pop up (which is good). i'm glad that my name is somewhat common. but if you have a unique name or even e-mail handle, it's really easy. if you enter other variables like the college attended or the city or some group, you can narrow down searches.

i just changed my contact e-mail above. i don't think i'll ever post that other e-mail anywhere anymore...just to be safe. (of course it's cached now in google, so it's preserved forever on record if you dig enough.) i'd like to keep that personal one safe. maybe i'll make unique e-mail addresses wherever i post personal stuff...just so i can backtrack it if it ever gets back to me.

if anyone doesn't believe me, e-mail me, and i'll show you just how much stuff i can pull up on you. probably more than you realize. people are always telling me that i'm really good at finding stuff on the net. be aware.

okay...i better get back to work.

reblogger rocks!

kewl. i got reblogger working with no problem. even tailored the line a little. all of this mild tweaking of the template is easing me slowly into getting dirty with html. anyhoo, if you're reading this, take the time out to comment on my entries. i think posted comments are much cooler than guestbooks, which are a tad outdated. i think they were big in the mid 90s.

i'm pretty sure that there aren't too many people who read my blog. i think i can count you regulars on one hand! (you are either privileged or else share a small, minority opinion that my life is interesting.) if i include you other random occasional readers, i fill up two hands.

blogging thoughts

i've taken a break using my gregwong.com address for outgoing mail, ever since i've been having computer troubles. it's set up now as an incoming forward. but i think i'll be setting outlook up again to use it pretty soon. once that happens, the casual advertising of my blog thru my address will probably get more curious and observant people coming to my blog. i still very rarely tell people about the blog (at least people i see regularly). i'd rather let them discover it on their own. especially since a lot of those regular people could figure out all the people i casually mention. (still have to have a tiny shred of privacy, ya know.) i don't mind telling people i don't see so regularly about my blog, so it can be a way for them to still be in contact with me and learn my latest and greatest. even if it's one-way communication. but now with reblogger...it can be two-way!

so comment already!

i really ought to be crunching on my projects...but instead i went to 7-11 to get a couple of bottled frappachinos (albertson's closed at midnight), did some random surfing, and now attempting to install reblogger!

more web addresses and e-mails...

finally tested out gregwong.org, gregwong.net, and gregwong.cc. all of em pointing here. any e-mails to any registered, existing gregwong domain now go to me. :) i've had this for a while thru namezero, but never tested it til now. e-mail with any username will currently make it's way to me. (e.g. joey@gregwong.org.) is that easy or what?

on a similar note...friends observe and comment that it's funny how i have so much "gw" clothing items (which i snagged in dc a while back).

one of these days (soon) i'll design a real gregwong page.

working weekend

besides the lomo fun...that was about it for my labor day weekend. i spent the rest of it at home working. i'm now paying for taking long weekends traveling the past two weeks...and doing no work. in addition to having to finally finish up a brochure project for ch by today...i have three projects to get done by wednesday. i'm only about halfway to go with all three. aye carumba. maybe i better make a run for coffee now...it's gonna be a long nite. i hope to get my initial design done tonite so that tomorrow can be my day to print and mount stuff.

past two nites i was up til close til 5am. then slept for about 4-5 hours. i expect tonite to be like that. i get into my zone in the wee hours.

i passed up a labor day picnic in tiburon today cuz of my classwork stuff. i had to go over to jho's house twice so that he could upload about 20-30 megs in completed graphics files for ch. it wasn't possible over my 56k line.

joe's coffee shop

after trip #1 to jho's house, i stopped by a random place for cheap food to go on geary. (i originally wanted a burrito, but didn't want gordo's. but maybe it's a good thing i didn't get a burrito, since they always make me sleepy.) anyways...i noticed some big "to go" letters on an awning at this place on geary and 26th. a chinese-owned coffee shop. i got a burger and some fries for $3.95. pretty good deal. they had a lot of cheap meal combos for breakfast and lunch, mostly all under $5. all american food, i think, but i did notice two guys having potstickers with their pancakes.

the decor here is pretty makeshift and temporary looking...sorta like a chinese-restaurant. also looks sorta like a really messy old kitchen. food was ok...not too bad, but nothing special. only thing was the cheap price... i wonder how breakfast is.

i'm now contemplating making a run to albertson's to get a six pack of frappachino's. my sister drank most of my thai iced coffee.

lomography

i learned on the squidlist about the lomography summer sampler contest in san jose. until i got the e-mail hyping the event, i had never heard of the lomo camera and wasn't aware of the cult following and popularity of this low-tech analoge camera. well, it's a lot of fun and lomography encourages a shoot from the hip sorta style, fast and spontaneous. anyways...there was a contest which lended free lomo cameras and gave free film for people who wanted to compete. ds and jl came along to participate with me.

they had a list of a to z items of things you had to capture on film as creatively as you could. things like...the compaq carousel, naughty knickers, a queen, a childhood memory, a mummy from the egyptian museum (where i stealthily snuck some pix :P ), a zebra, a dancing pig, a queen, a shark...a lotta interesting stuff. we went all over sj and went to places i've never been before. we found a lot of things at the arts fair in the civic center. it was all a really fun (and free) experience. can't wait to see how the pix turned out.

walking a dog

until today, i've never walked a dog before. after the lomo event, i walked d's dog oreo around the block to relieve himself. he was sniffing at every bush, marking his territory and leaving some deposits. he was pretty obedient...and would respond if you yell his name and clap your hands.

shau may

the taiwanese dessert place that i went to in monterey park is called shau may. supposedly every chinese/taiwanese person from la has been there or heard of it.