catching up...

jury duty

on tuesday i had to go downtown for jury duty. it wasn't bad. i had been called before but never was called to a courtroom. this time most of the called people had to go to one courtroom and sit to be on a panel. from that panel of 60 or so, they randomly selected about 30 to be prospective jurors, who get quickly interviewed by the judge and then the lawyers. after that they select 9 folks for the jury. even tho i was just sitting in the panel (the first group), i had to be attentive the whole time to the process, in case i get selected to sub in. they told you to put away your reading materials when the judge comes in and talks.

it was a really interesting experience for me. first time in a court room. it was a small claims civic case. landlord and lawyer against some schmoe about rent stuff (witholding rent, evicition, poor upkeep of place...something like that). the schmoe seemed to me and some other people like a textbook example of some guy in a movie doing a poor job defending himself. he spoke out of turn a few times. didn't follow the judge's directions. the judge had to correct him for the same thing 4 times in a row! he also talked way too much...it's funny tho. there was one lawyer in the panel, and she was very impressed by the job he was doing! pretty funny. anyhoo, those of us not selected for the jury were dismissed at noon. done for the rest of the year. i wonder who the case will turn out. i bet the schmoe will lose.

when prospective jurors were being interviewed, they had to share their name, where they live, education, occupation, marital status, occupations of adults living with them. it was really interesting stuff. there were a lot of people who were from pac heights. also people came from all walks of life. from state student to retired. some were unemployed. some have really interesting jobs. this one girl drives street sweepers for the city between 11pm - 7am. she also races cars around fresno. these cars which are built for destruction or get banged up. maybe a demolition derby race car driver? it was really interesting and everyone in the room was pretty entertained when she shared....i really shoulda schmoozed and talked to her during a break. shucks.

funny coincidence...greg c from church was the court clerk on duty. we saw each other when i was waiting to go into the room. when i walked in, he said "hello mr. wong" over the loudspeaker. i just smiled and nodded back. i wonder if he prevented my name from being randomly selected. will never know. glad i don't have to be on the jury (for only a 2 day trial)...but it would have made for an interesting life experience.

roboto metropolis

i caught metropolis at the lumiere with ds last nite. the other ds had hooked up the pass with an asianweek promo i had told him to sign up for. (pick up asianweek on thursdays, and the sfbg and sfweekly on wed to get the hook-up on free movies.)

the movie was great. an anime reduz of the classic metropolis movie. done by the same writer of ghost in the shell, but this is much more cartoony. really great 3d animation of the city scenes. soundtrack is cool, but when they play that one song at the end, it felt like it was out of nowhere to me. a lot of social commentary embedded about an automated utopia and the pitfalls of technology. also sorta like blade runner and ghost in the shell in talking about souls of machines. anyhoo...this was a good movie. (too bad ds fell asleep for a bit...he'll have to rent it on dvd.)

here's the rotten tomatoes report...

"One of the best animated films I have ever seen."
-- Roger Ebert, CHICAGO SUN-TIMES

"A near perfect fusion of computer and cel animation."
-- J. Hoberman, VILLAGE VOICE

"Both beautiful and distant."
-- David Hunter, HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

"The urban landscapes are detailed down to the signs on the kiosks, and the color palette, with lots of somber blues and pinks, is dreamy and evocative."
-- Mick LaSalle, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

"A hallucinatory tour de force of color, perspective and scale, virtually encapsulates the history of Japanese animation."
-- A.O. Scott, NEW YORK TIMES

"A film of staggering technical and visual virtuosity, filled with utterly amazing images, that's also entertaining and engaging for children and adults on several levels."
-- Michael Wilmington, CHICAGO TRIBUNE

boy...i feel tired. i've been playing with the blogs too much. busy day ahead...more newness later.

meyers-briggs

i just retook it. a short version of the test. i thought i was entp. maybe i was wrong. it says that i'm entj.

You are:
moderately expressed extrovert (33%)
distinctively expressed intuitive personality (67%)
slightly expressed thinking personality (11%)
slightly expressed judging personality (22%)

check out the analysis of an entj. i don't completely agree with it. e.g. the very first thing it says is "I don't care to sit by the window on an airplane. If I can't control it, why look?" the truth is that i love to sit by the window on an airplane and look out to the sky. (altho for long flights, it could be a pain when my knee starts to bug me and i need to stretch it. hurts like a mother after a few hours. every single time.)

from my blog posts, do you think i'm j-judging or p-perceiving?

snow lumps video

click here to download and view the action packed "fight club" edition (not for faint of heart). big props to jho for putting this together. i'm in two snow tumbles at the end.

first impressions

during the tahoe trip, we shared some about first impressions of people. i think it's really interesting how people read other people. the impression that you make upon others upon meeting them. sometimes people get bad ones, sometimes really warm good ones. one person said that i just seemed like one of the guys, upon meeting me...but later learned of my cultured and artistic interests, which was cool. another person thought something totally opposite, and thought that i really stood out, cuz he met me when i was sporting a goatee and was dressed kinda dark. hearing how people read others (correctly or incorrectly) and how some people made a big impact on others, is really motivating me to be super conscious of how i first interact with people.

it was interesting seeing how af interacts with people. esp with random strangers, making small talk. i so need to do that much more than i usually do.

small world

met a guy, jw, who's a friend of a friend. originally from seattle, just moved to the area. it turns out he's christian. i gave him the fellowship card, and he may come out this thursday. swell. i got to hang with him and a few other unemployed friends at sweet inspirations. it's interesting hearing his take on the bay area, after being here 6 mo. he goes to the same church as my sis in the south bay. it's interesting tracing different circles from different states out a few degrees and seeing how they intersect.

lumps of snow

the bp ec tag team

lovely landscape

i really enjoyed the ride home from tahoe when we were passing thru the mountains with trees covered by snow. i really like the thin trees which were pretty bare bus covered with snow. it was a really peaceful scene, seeing white draped all over, the low clouds hovering over. i took this shot from the backseat window of jt's car. (this pic is now my wallpaper, replacing transformers.) the landscape around me was pretty mesmerizing. it also helped to take my mind off of going to the bathroom for a little while. i really had to go badly.

tahoe fun

long weekend in tahoe with lumps. loads of fun. great car bonding time. snow hike. snow fights. snow football. eating. covert operations. emergency bathroom break. roadside mexican food. davis boba. pretty trees. lots of pix to come...

in the printing business

yay. my photo printer is working well. really amazing quality prints. i can now highly recommend the epson photo stylus 820. there's a $50 rebate going on right now til beginning of feb. check on techbargains.com or on the epson site. that rebate along with my blue pricematch should bring the printer down to $80.

too bad the paper and inks are slightly expensive. but i think it's cost effective in the long-run.

yay, i finally got around to correctly posting a digital pic on my blog. 600 more pix to go. j/k.

if you don't know who i am, i'm one of the dudes in this picture. this was after the lump photo safari when we all went to eat at go go's. last week in december. it was fun cramming so many people around the table. the way people were mixing together, it felt like lumps three years ago.

put things off for 3 mo?

late into the wee hours of the nite (or rather the early morning), when i was packing for tahoe and trying to finish up my portfolio...i figured out that it may be better for me to apply to art center for the fall. i think more scholarship monies are available then. if i wanted any shot at trying to qualify for a full scholarship, it's only for the fall not the summer.

i was really hoping to have everything together to send off for summer admittance by next week. deadline's feb 1, and the semester starts mid may. i'm also not completely prepared just yet. and the clock's ticking on me. no work can be done this sat or sun. i dunno...we'll really have to see.

i also just remembered that i have jury duty next monday. if i get called and selected, well that may be a big time suck for portfolio preparation. so that might just help me to decide for the fall.

i guess there are a lot of things that i could do in the summer...work and save money, travel europe, summer missions. even different opportunities with people this summer. looks like i'll have to be open to god's leading. i'd really hate to have a big limbo year from last fall (when i started thinking about going to a full-time school) to this coming fall (which would be when i could possibly start school). i'm also really eager to be pursue something 110% too. also seeking to really embrace a change. i really don't know. i guess a weekend away in tahoe is perfectly timed now. was gonna do some portfolio work there, but i really don't know.

another thing is that jc is probably applying for the fall. it could be really convenient for us to start at the same time.

this sorta reminds me almost 4 ago, when i pretty much decided over easter weekend how i was going my summer (really away for the first time, off to china).

the best situation that i can hope for next week is that i'll have the luxury of completely finishing my portfolio to my heart's content and send it off. i bet with a phone call later on, i can change my admission status from summer to fall. maybe i could even send it down and see what the admission guy thinks my chances are. timing to be all the way ready next week is gonna be super tight. been falling off of my schedule. shoot.

nothing too terribly exciting today...

no mfa for me

well, i did talk to ad on the phone today. we've been playing phone tag for the past week. he's the head of the digital media graduate program at art center. i was considering applying for that, but it turns out that the undergrad bfa program for graphic design would be a better fit for me, since i can learn the fundamentals of design better. maybe if i spent more time really revising it, i could get into the mfa program (10% acceptence rate), but to be a solid designer, i think the bfa program is the way to go.

visitor

yay. am came with me to lumps tonite. she called me up and asked if i was going to church. she had learned about lumps when i met her at the cafe. i meant to invite her today, but i was rushing around doing stuff, and it slipped my mind. very glad that she called. i think she'll be back.

i'm so pooped...

back to school

jc and i checked out city college this am. we're just about registered now to take art 103 - modernishm period. interesting stuff so far. jc said that i almost fell asleep. not good. esp when i'm sitting in the front row right in front of the teacher. sigh...maybe i should have something like i'm narcoleptic.

walking around like a city student felt more like i was in high school again, rather than college. sorta strange. we were booking it across campus twice, rushing to get the add form and then back again to where we came from to go to the arts building.

the teacher's not too bad. scott, d at teacherreview.com.

looks like we'll be taking it m, w 9:00 - 11:30. it's early, but at least it'll free up the rest of the day, rather than being smack in the middle. taking it so that i can lighten my load, if/when i enroll full time at some school. never took it in college. i sorta wanted to before. i should have.

the hippos keep going

rv put on a social wine and cheese event at her place so that i could showcase and share my hungry hungry hippos project. (the hippos look like they continue to have legs.) a great schmoozing thing and a time to get feedback on my work. in the afternoon i quickly made up some temporary business cards with my inkjet and heavy stock. they turned out ok. i met up with rv around 4, then we went shopping for food and wine. she picked up a lot of good ca wines at cost plus's world market. i learned that it's an excellent place to get wine. other places will charge 2x for the same wines. after that we headed to whole foods. rv got a lot of breads, cheeses, some latkes, and some other good foods. i've never been to whole foods before. it was so funny...while there i bumped into my dad! i didn't even know that he goes there. i knew that my mom goes there. didn't know my dad goes. he got a chance to meet rv briefly.

the presentation went pretty well. about 10 people came out. all older people...most creative people in the industry...aa came out as one of my invited guests. after she was introduced to a few people, i realized that people would probably assume that she's my gf. she's about my age, had a personal connection that wasn't work (lumps), and is chinese. not to mention that she was the only one of my friends who came out. (what could i have said...she's just a friend, not my gf? ha. it didn't really matter much to me.)

the presentation went pretty well. there was a time for q and a too. when aa asked me some questions during the forum period if if i've considered business model/marketing of the hhh, i knew that would cause those people who were thinking that she was my gf to reevaluate that assumption. (some probably concluded then that she wasn't my gf.) this perception of mine proved to be correct at least for one person. i drove home one girl who i met who said so. it was pretty funny, as i recounted to that girl exactly what she was thinking...about how i knew aa. ha ha. so funny. i think i'm an ok assesser of people and can figure out what conclusions people can draw when presented with certain info. not bad, eh?

i continued to get a lot of encouragement in my endeavors, and i feel that how i'm looking into career scenarios is exactly the right way to go about it. i told people that i'm looking into school and work, and we'll see which door swings open wider in the next couple of months. (right now, i'd say that the betting odds on me going too la for school are about 50-60%.) met a few people who could possibly give me some freelance work. all that remains is getting my stuff together and launching my gregwong.com portfolio.

this has been the 5th time which i gave my hhh presentation since my real class presentation. once to jc and jw, another time to the extended family, last week to cj and kl (old teachers of mine), once to rv (by herself) and now this time to a lot of rv's friends. i can't imagine doing it too many more times. hopefully i'll get to present it to some potential investors who could back real development of hhh. that's what a few people have been encouraging me to do.

a church website

my la bud, pat sent me a link to a church website that he thinks does a good job in presentation. the site's not too bad. really great and thorough content. i think the organization and layout could be a little better. not too consistent and could be organized better visually.

some good ideas that i can gleam for the upcoming launch of lumpsofclay. anyone know of other really great organizational sites for inspiration? lemme know.

in my reading and surfing research into design schools, i see a lot of great ideas and presentation methods. some schools present a lot of information well, and also use effective design to reinforce and communicate their culture and school life.

here's a topline overview of the last few days...

saturday

portfolio day at ccac

i attended the portfolio day at ccac with am, the designer i met at kaleo a couple of weeks ago. both checking out schools. i shopped my portfolio in progress to other schools. i got pretty good feedback all around. a great sign. people really liked the haircutting piece. one school accepted my portfolio on the spot, if i wanted to attend. i got a good feeling for how the schools are different. i think artcenter could be a good fit for me, since it really draws older students (avg incoming age is 24, 25) and those who are serious. like me now. i wouldn't have been able to hack it a few years ago. but i've grown since then.

apple store

before having dinner at cafe niebaum-coppola, i checked out the apple store a few doors down. very cool stuff. i discovered that they have a brand new iBook, which now has a bigger screen. i'm thinking that i really need a mac. possibly a top of the line iBook, or a mid-level powerbook. should probably get one in a month or two...the new iMacs are way cool, but i'm thinking that i prefer the portability. being able to get out to a cafe and do work, rather than being cooped up all the time at home.

sunday

still a schmoozing chipmunk

i've been reading the vault.com guide to schmoozing, that jc had printed out. it's really great stuff. teaching me to be a better schmoozer. if i can incorporate half of the tips in there, might life will be changed for the better. what exactly is schmoozing? is it a bad thing? here's how vault defines it...

What is schmoozing? Schmoozing is noticing people, connecting with them, keeping in touch with them -- and benefiting from relationships with them. Schmoozing is about connecting with people in a mutually productive and pleasurable way -- a skill that has taken on new importance in our fragmented, harried, fiber-optic-laced world. Schmoozing is the development of a support system, a web of people you know who you can call, and who can call you, for your mutual benefit and enjoyment. Schmoozing is the art of semi-purposeful conversation: half chatter, half exploration. Schmoozing is neither project nor process. It's a way of life.

i've been attempting to be a lot more purposeful in connecting to and staying in touch with people. a big thing on my new year's resolutions. (go check them out, and keep me accountable! you should be able to figure out what post it is.)

on sunday, i had the perfect chance...which i failed at. it knew the sunday morning church service special guest speaker. he and his wife were old family friends of mine. i was telling the wife, my, what i was up to and how i was thinking about design school - particularly ccac and art center. it turns out that one of her sister's (seated on the other side of the room) had gone to ccac. (jing ding!) she tells me to go over and introduce myself. so i go over, almost introduce myself, but instead get caught up talking to my aunt and uncle who was talking to my's sisters. then they get set to leave. i hesitate and wonder if i should let her go, then see my come up and ask if i had gotten a chance to introduce myself (no, i hadn't, i'm a doof). she then makes the introduction. (yay!) it turns out that this sister and her husband went to BOTH ccac and art center. (how's about that?) they have their own small biz between the two of them. we chat a little. i need to follow-up with her more, but she didn't have a card, or a website, and i forgot my name. (faboo.) looks like i may have to ask my aunt what her name is. i know that my mom knows the my's sister, but doesn't know what sister it is. dadgummit. oh well. at least i got the introduction. i should really kill my shy self.

i coulda joined them for lunch (with my aunt and uncle), and talked to the designer sister more, but i had to take off to north beach...

cafe greco chat

i met up at cafe greco in north beach with pw, art center alum and design RAW member. (i was a little late, cuz parking was terrible...very bad on my part.) we chatted about how to include my essence of san francisco project into my portfolio. i got a few presentation tips. i have the vision and road map of what my portfolio should look like now. i just gotta get it done. lots of hours ahead of me. (this realization just turned my upcoming boarding weekend in tahoe to a work weekend in tahoe...*sigh*...oh well...but i know it'll be worth it. ah well. i'll save money by not boarding.)

when i was telling pw about my different school/work scenarios, he whole heartedly recommend the school route. one reason being that your classmates (at artcenter) will quickly become the top designers and company heads all over. big thing to consider. it's been reinforced to me a few times recently how important that alumni network is.

dumpling dinner

sunday dinner was a bday thing for ms. it was a great time of catching up with her and some others i hadn't really talked to in a while. showed my pix from my digital camera. i like that it can double as a pocket photo album...it's amazing how far ms's life has changed over a year. she's really moved on in life. i think it'd take me like 4-5 years at the earliest to get to that point. we had a lot of reminiscing about the summer in china a few years back. even making dumplings reminded me of learning how to do it for real in beijing. that was a really great time.

monday

studying the art of schmoozing

i spent a few hours at starbucks reading up and finishing the vault.com guide to schmoozing. mentioned earlier. i'll post some tips i learned later. (that'll help me to process it myself, too.) it's a highly recommended read. worth buying, imo. luckily i got to read it for free.

book hunters

in the afternoon i met up with mw, who wanted me to go shopping with her for a book to explore christianity. i was more than happy to oblige. we ended up searching for letters from a skeptic, by boyd. it seemed pretty interesting from the capsule reviews i had gotten from friends. some people also recommended the case for faith, by strobel. that seemed good too. we found the strobel book, but the letters book was impossible to find. wanted to browse thru it since it looked like an easy read. we checked out b&n on bay (some books but no luck) then books inc on chestnut (nothing really). i thought that western christian bookstore might have it (i figured it'd be worth the long drive out there), but nooooo. in fact it had a pathetic selection of apologetics books for people wanting to explore christianity. we then headed out to stonestown borders. no letters book there, but they did have the strobel book and mere christianity by c.s. lewis. mw ended up getting mere christianity. it's supposed to be a great book. it's also cheap in paperback too. i pray that it can help mw seek out the answers she's looking for. i ought to pick up the book too and read it also.

pizza chef

at night, i stopped by pirro's pizzeria to visit dp. chatted for a bit, and he brought up my new experiences resolution. i was suddenly inspired to ask him to create a pizza. so he let me do a medium - half pirro's special and half vegie for an order that just came in. that was a lot of fun. the first pizza turned out well. i hope mr. park enjoyed the pizza. it was a delivery order.

tuesday

short story time at niebaum-coppola

back to niebaum-coppola, but this time the sf one. there was this free short story reading event hosted there by coppola's american zoetrope studios. his production and literary company. the story of the nite was "dating a dead girl". it's about this design professor who went on two dates with this girl, didn't like her, found out she died, then had to meet and interact with the mother and sister. pretty cool story. free wine too! i think i'll try going to more of these events, like their poetry readings. if you wanna go, lemme know. i think stuff like this will expand my creative horizons and thinking. bp, jc, and fl enjoyed the event too i think. i know a lot of my friends wouldn't.

moods

hung out for ds's bday. after dinner, we played moods, the gift that the other ds and i gave him. it's such an awesome game. you pretty much have to go around reading a given phrase with an assigned mood. e.g. say "wrestling is real" in a sexy voice. so hillarious. lots of fun. quick to learn and quick to play too. i think it's a brilliant game b/c it has a lot of social interaction and creativity. you're interacting directly with each other and you have to use your hammy personality and sharp wit in order to win. i won the first time. =)

i hope that this game become's this decade's taboo. (i'm so tired of that game, even tho i'm really good at it.)

crap. i just lost my blogger post. it was a huge one too. i spent like 45 min on it. dadgummit. i hate this. our phone lines are set-up funky now, so that when we get a call on one line, it knocks us off the second line. man...i'm gonna get on with my day and get offline.

cafe niebaum-coppola in palo alto

sat nite, my fam met up in the south bay to check out the palo alto branch of one of our favorite restaurants in north beach (which is having a short story reading tomorrow). the one down here has a nicer interior. bigger. nice tables. it's really great. our family really loves this place. we like it better than el fornaio, which is more expensive. this time they had tiramisu on the dessert menu, which was great. for dinner, my po po and i shared the rack of lamb and the pasta dish with the clams again. really great stuff. calamari was just ok tho. this place also has literary events too, like short story readings and poetry recitals. the korean manager was very nice. he also said that the last reading event had 120 people packed in.

cool church website

dy sent me the site for epic. it's pretty cool. i promise that the lumps site i'm doing will be sorta cool like this. this site is pretty rich in content too. like mp3 messages. wow. i think it's is what a church website should be like, if it's trying to be relevant to today's post-modern generation. something in epic's mission statement. they deliver pretty well on it. i gotta browse this site in depth when i have more time.

22 days to the planned relaunch of gregwong.com. i'm planning to work on it right after i get my school portfolio and app done next week.

the so-cal sojourn - pt III

back to last weekend's l.a. hopping...

sunday - church

jy, jc and i headed out to whittier to check out evergreen sgv, where cory ishida preaches. it split from evergreen la in rosemead (where ken fong is at) a few years ago. we had to go further to go to the sgv branch, past the la one. but i really wanted to check out cory ishida. i think more people know of ken fong cuz of urbana and possibly asian american church stuff. it's held at rio honda community college, but they just got permanent property. it was pretty huge still, this service had over 200 people. missed most of the young adults, since they're on a retreat. i bet i woulda bumped into a bunch that i knew. actually, i heard that one of my childhood friends is on staff there. hadn't seen her in many years.

i liked the service and the church. (however i like pastor j's preaching style more.) i knew of cory ishida, from my parents attending the jems family conferences way back when i was a kid. we visited evergreen a couple of times to check out the church years ago. in general, i think i like listening to older pastors who can be in touch and connected to today's world, b/c of the life experience that they can draw upon. real world examples that can be used to exemplify applications of the word.

one thing i liked about the service was the use of multimedia and design. looked like they had some simple motion graphics going on in the beginning, with the evergreen identity and their tag - "come, grow, go." the use of the screen was pretty good during the worship sessions. they didn't use the whole screen, parts were blacked out if unnecessary. i think that's smart. why use the entire screen if a big part is gonna be black? rather focus the attention onto the part with lyrics. they also had the logo screened in the back. i dunno what's up with the snowflakes tho in the background. (i'm sure you can tell that this inspired me to do a lot with lumps and the late late service...especially for lumps, now that we have an identity set for it. maybe in the next few months i can pull a lot of stuff together...like some motion graphics. time to play with flash. i was already intending to do customized backgrounds for the song base program.)

a few more people met up with us at evergreen. jc's friends - ma, c, and p. my bud, sh, also came out from pomona. while at church. b1 and b2 ended up sitting in front of us. they both went to cal and both recently got married (to other people). also ran into j, also from cal, down there. a couple of other people looked familiar from aacf ltc.

oh yeah...one thing...we weren't greeted very well. i think there was one hospitality supposed to greet people. she said hi to us. i guess she couldn't tell that we were knew. we walked up to the welcome table, and waited for someone to come back. we were waiting at that empty table for about a minute to get visitor name tags. i think it was the girl who said hi to us earlier, who was supposed to be there. so we just slipped thru and blended in. they do have other greeters stationed at the doors. they say hello and shake your hand, which is very nice. but i think it would be really good if they could notice that you were new (like we weren't wearing the permanent nametags everyone else had on) and respond to that.

afterwards, we headed out to monterey park (again) to get some thai food. it was ok. can't recall the name of the place right now.

getty visit

jc hadn't been to the getty, before so we tried to get in about 45 min before it closed. it's a must if anyone ever goes to la. architecture is magnificent and so is the art. going around 5, we saw a spectacular sunset, from high up on the hill where the getty is located. jc and i took a bunch of pix. we also saw a pretty cool rotating exhibit, called devices of wonder. it looked at a lot of cool devices of optical illusion, and things which played with the way they were viewed. very cool stuff.

chilling at the W

m had told me before that the W hotel in westwood is one of the places to be seen. we didn't get to go last time i was down, but it intrigued me enough to try to go this time down. jc, jy and i found the address in the phone book. walked thru the pretty swank and hiply decorated place. pretty awesome. i took a lot of stealth non-flash shots, just to remember this well designed environement.

volcano tea

boba drink #1 of the nite. this place is right around the corner from relaxtation. slightly better boba, but i like the environment at relaxstation better. the green milk tea boba was pretty good. pretty smooth.

karaoke and more boba in pasadena

jy had to go to meet up with her cousin y to practice their song for a wedding. it's a funny coincidence, but jc knew y from a year she spent in boston. he made the connection when he saw her in one of jy's pix. very small world. all of his other friends from boston knew y too. after hanging out for a bit, jc and i took off to old town pasadena (again). there we got more boba from boba world. i like this place. i was there last year.

afterwards we went back to pick up jy, then grabbed a quickie bit to eat at some burrito place. not too bad. jc and i ended up chatting for a bit later, while digesting our mexican dinner.

monday - the design schools pilgramage

finally...the reason why we took the l.a. visit altogether! we go visit the schools.

cal arts - valencia

we trekked north about 30 - 40 min to visit cal arts. i didn't really like it, despite being majorly backed by disney. the environment felt a lot like a high school. sorta grungey. performing artists. we wandered around a bit, and got a little lost inside. we saw a performing arts class doing tai chi. interesting.

temple
jc and i made it to this hip korean (with a touch or brazilain) restaurant - temple. it was great for us. the food. the environment (down to the bathroom.) even down to the men's restroom with the back lit. the lunch was great. in my seafood combo meal was really worth it. great fish, crab cakes, and alll of that other stuff.

art center - finally!

we finally make it out to pasadena to check out the school. really cool. i'm liking it a little more every time i visit. once i got there, i got a chance to finally chat with kenji, an alum also in aacf, on the phone. we see the galleries which are inspiring. pushing me to another level of presentation excellence. i chat a little with m in admissions. good chat. also met dw, from the art center-at- night. was able to grab a few minutes of time from ag, an associate chair of design. she rips into my portfolio, and identifies a couple of areas how i can improve, both the pieces and the presentaiton. fantastic advice. that alone made it a great trip to la. i also was able to redeem a $75 credit i had at the student store, from a scholarship. i got a really great portfolio, as a result of it. really making everything nicer.

i like the school, and it now feels like the right fit for me. i wasn't sure a year ago, when i first came down. i can imagine myself down here. curriculum wise, it's evolved to a better fit, since there's more of an emphasis on a transdisciplinary approach (sort of on the forefront of thought of a design education). we'll see if god opens or closes the door in the next couple of months.

dinner at carney's

back in studio city, we saw a huge billboard for this hamburber place, so we head over there. after a while, we found it. the place is inside an old rail car. we both got 1/2 lb burgers and shared a chili fries. i also got my dairy for the trip - a milkshake.

operation oj
we replaced the expired oj which we drank unknowingly in jy's fridge. we left two cartons of oj blends, along with a thank you note in the fridge. i'm sure it was a nice surprise when she discovered it. i like hiding thank you notes, or placing them strategically to be discovered after i've left.

neighbor motel

along the way back to jy's place, we stop by my friend's motel. mw was down for the weekend helping out the family. we unfortunately didn't get a chance to hang with her, but that's ok. i can see her up here.

empty flight back

we were sweating our return time to the burbank. but everything turned out fine. the place was only about 1/3 full. amazing. i had three seats to myself and so did jc. the bad thing, was that i wasn't able to make good on my resolution of being a friendly passenger to the lucky people who sat next to me. oh well.

my sis picked us up from the airport. it was a very long day, but we still had time to stop by ds's house on the way back. we shared about the weekend the 360 pix that were on my camera (i like how i have a mini-photo album in my pocket) and also prayed for our bro jl in the hospital.

whew. i'm tired. time for bed. more on this last weekend tomorrow.

the so-cal sojourn - pt II

back to the recap...

saturday - cool cars and a lotta driving

jc and and i got an early start to the day. his aunt called way early and woke us up. but that's ok. better to have a busy productive day than to sleep half of it away.

la auto show

i think this was supposed to be one of the two fattest auto shows in the nation. (the other being detroit.) bigger than the sf auto show. we lucked out and didn't know that it was during the dates we were in la. we somehow manged to make our way over to the convention center, with nothing really but this sucky hertz map. we had forgetten to get ahold of a real la map. (that was problematic at times.) the car show was pretty cool. i liked seeing the cool, futuristic concept cars. (something you might see in the trans dept at art center.) jc was like a kid in a candy store, taking pix of everything. some of the exhibit design was pretty cool, particularly the porsche one. we also saw one concept lexus car that's featured in that upcoming tom cruise movie where he's some sort of time cop...a whole lot to see. we spent almost three hours there.

roscoe's house of chicken and waffles

i had heard this place for a while. we figured how to get there from the car show by looking in the phone book. we ended up at the one on pico street, which was a slightly ghetto part of town. but it wasn't too bad. looking at the clientele, it looked like it was a pretty authentic place for southern fried chicken. i've never heard of fried chicken in combination with waffles before. great stuff. we both got fried chicken smothered in gravy and onions, with some waffles. that couldn't of been super healthy for us.

koreatown and little tokyo

we had a little time to kill before meeting up with m. we checked out koreatown to see if there were any cool hang out places. not really. mostly older people there. we tried to observe if we could tell any korean surgery. i couldn't really tell...afterwards we scoped out little tokyo, a drive away. sorta like j-town, but not as busy. there were a few cool shops with the imported japanese pop stuff.

the long long way

we then met to meet up with m in el segundo. unfortunately a combination of wrong directions, along with my faulty memory, we took the long run. all the way down to huntington beach. we still had that dumb hertz map and traffic was light. we finally caught up with m later. after chatting for a bit, she and her husband k took us to this place in hermosa beach - rajin cajun. really good stuff. maybe the best cajun food place i've been to. it was great chatting about so-cal life, creativity, movies, and some common people we knew.

black hawk down

we tried to keep out late evening to hang out with jy, who we still hadn't really hung out with. after getting a little lost on the way back to studio city, we finally got a chance to hang out and catch up. we ended up going to see a midnight showing of black hawk down at universal city walk. it was just ok to me. maybe it was too late and i didn't enjoy it fully. it was a long movie and my knee was bugging me after sitting there too long. also the movie was pretty gory, extremely war realistic...maybe a little too much for me. saving private ryan didn't bother me at all, but this one did a little.

it was sorta spooky walking afterwards in citywalk at around 3am when everything was closed. all the lights were out. a really different feeling. very few people around. it felt a little like a big scary amusement set after hours which you might see in the movies. we got slightly lost and there wasn't a single person in sight a few times. sorta eerie.

the so-cal sojourn - pt I

a beginning recap of last weekend. here goes...

friday - across town and back again

the nite before, jc and i crashed at my sister's pad in mtn view. she drove us to the airport early in the am. we got there 2 hours early, when we really only needed like 30 min for southwest. oh well...i was all set to talk up a storm with the lucky stranger who sat next to me on the plane. but unfortunately the plane wasn't full and i sat all by myself on my side. (jc sat on the other side.) shucks.

we rented a car from hertz. it actually turns out that we were misquoted on the price over the phone. major bummer. i think we're gonna send in a letter of complaint. anyhoo...our la ride was a mazda 626.

old town

we headed over to old town pasadena. jc and i met up with his boston bud ma in the designated place. j crew. i had gotten in touch with pc and al, who also came out to meet us in old town. we all ate at cheesecake factory. did you know that they have lunch-size portions for the meal salads? good deal. (on the way to the table, i ran into rl who's married now and goes to evergreen la for church. what a coincidence. i just glanced at a table and saw him.)

during lunch, we talked about the types of girls in la vs sf. the consensus of the people who lived in both places is that the girls tend to be prettier down in la, but the girls have better personalities up north. al, the only girl at our table, said that it was true. hmm...so what does that mean for girls who are transplants from one place to the other? that they have the personality and the prettiness?

venice beach

after a bathroom break at pc's place, we headed out to venice beach to scope the scene. we walk to the stalls, and see a henna tattoo place. (one of many). we all get tattoo's and get a deal on them. pc gets a band around his (huge) arm. al gets a barbed wire band around her arm. jc gets a popeye anchor on his inner forearm. i decide to get a huge thorny pattern on the inside of my forearm. i think it complements the shape of my arm well. (i got a bunch of compliments on it later.) ma gecko lizard on his arm. he takes my suggestion to have the artist draw it as if it's crawling thru a rip in his skin.

gets a ya know, i really coulda drawn all of those myself. (well, except for the one on my right arm, since i'm right handed.) maybe i should get some henna and do it. (i can put the new lumps logo on people. =)

there was an amazing sunset on the beach. very nice. now that's so-cal.

relaxtation

afterwards, we headed northeast a little bit. al took us to her favorite boba place over on in west la on sawtelle and olympic. relaxtation. the boba wasn't bad there. she also told me that this place has the rep for always having cute people work there. that was so true for the girl who served us. i dunno about those guys tho. another great thing about the place is the free internet connection.

savoy's heinan chicken

for dinner we headed out to monterey park for some heinan chicken at savoy's. supposedly famous stuff. i think it's malaysian food. known for it's ginger sauce. dinner was good. what was interesting was the company. we had friends of friends come out. there were people at the same table who were 5 degrees removed! al invited some of her classmates. ma brought one designer friend, jia, and another guy, dale, who brought his sister, jenn. i showed people my portfolio which i brought down. they seemed to dig it.

hollywood highland complex

afterwards, most of our now bigger group, all hung out at the new hollywood highland complex. a huge place. next to the mann's chinese theater (or whatever it's called now). lots of shopping. huge kodak theatere for events. it's gonna have the academy awards there in march. red carpet with celebs. we took tons of pix. fun fun. we also got dessert there at some italian cafe place. very busy long day. just the beginning of our weekend adventure. more to come.

profound thoughts

it was pretty cool how we were all mixing with friends of friends. i don't think i'd have it too tough going down to la. i wonder if la is more conducive to this type of mixing and hanging out. the warmer weather? more sunlight? i dunno. definitely people willing to drive further to hang out. i think this day made an impression on me to try to meet more people, with all the opportunities around me.

schmoozing social

i got an invite to my sister's friend's networking social. a little get together for people to network, share backgrounds and tips for seeking out jobs. i did it just for the experience. jw came down with me all the way down to the place in menlo park. it was really great. a huge kick in the butt. i heard some of the tips before, but this really made it real and relevant to me. picked up some good tips on getting interviews, calling up people, using the alumni network, even playing "mirror" with an interviewer. i think since the new year, i've been pretty busy reaching towards some career goals (or steps) but i know that i can do more. i've just started to do better on the networking side of things. i need to do a whole lot more.

my la trip was a great experience. more on that in another post, but i see how much potential i have to expand my network and connect to people better. for personal reasons, professional reasons, and also fellowship reasons.

i think it would be good for me if i tried to meet up with or get to know one new person a week. make that extra effort to meet someone new and step out of my comfort zones. call someone up and invite someone new to come out when i'm hanging out with people. i have the perfect opportunities...meeting people at church, fellowship, friends of friends, community service in chinatown. one person a week is really pretty low. by the end of the year, i should have at least 50 new contacts added into my palm. hopefully they're peopel that i've had some meaningful interaction with.

curve

after the south bay excursion, we met up with nl and tsj. nl had the hook-ups for some "that 80's show" party at some restaurant/bar called curve. we got in even tho we weren't on the list. it wasn't all that tho. no free food or drinks. we left within 20 minutes. oh well.

i saw the torch

picked up some grub at golden boy pizza. we headed down to justin herman plaza to see barry carry the torch. we parked a tad late, but saw barry on his way from the place. hounded by some reporters and photographers. we joined the crowd with our digital cameras too. i got a few picks. we also got picks with some kid, shawn williams. we didn't know who he was, but he carried the torch. i think he's a sports celeb for some reason.

i decided to call it an early nite for me. i needed to prepare for the portfolio day tomorrow and also wanted to watch making the band. unfortunately that o-town show is on tomorrow. oops. oh well. i guess i can catch up on my blogging.

meat chat

dw: "i'd probably wanna buy a porterhouse. it has part of the tenderloin in it and that other part. (i forgot the name.)"
dw: new york strip
gw: hmmm
gw: i also learned that if you want ground beef
gw: the best thing that you could do
gw: is buy the chuck roast
gw: and have the butcher grind it up
dy: and have it ground yerself
gw: so that you know where it's coming from.
dy: yeah
gw: yep
gw: fillet mignon is from the tenderloin
dy: you know the tenderloin district why it's named that?
gw: nope
gw: do you?
dy: because it has always been notoriously dangerous
dy: so the cops in that precinct were paid more
dy: enough that they could afford the tenderloin cut
gw: instead of a typical steak
gw: really
dy: San Francisco Neighborhoods: Tenderloin
dy: Getting its funky, florid nickname from the days when policemen were paid more to work its mean streets, thereby affording the cops better cuts of meat, the Tenderloin is moving up these days.
gw: interesting

meat 101

my po po just called me to check out the view on channel 7. it was all about the different cuts of meat. very interesting. where the different types of beef come from which parts of the cow, and how they differ in taste and fat. i learned exactly what the tenderloin is and that if i'm cooking a steak at home, i'd probably wanna buy a porterhouse. it has part of the tenderloin in it and that other part. (i forgot the name.)

salon de hong kong

i met up with mw who was gettting her hair done on irving at salon de hong kong. i never really stepped foot in there before. i ended up waiting over an hour for her to be finished! the last time i was waiting for a girl to get her hair done in a salon was a few years ago in beijing. (i was often waiting for 4 girls to all get their hair done...can you believe that?...i think i was pretty patient that summer. beijing salons also take forever...but anyways...) this time wasn't too bad. i got to browse thru the hk magazines (like all of them) and scope out the stars. i didn't see anything too inspiring in there, but i'm feeling that i need to do something different with my hair.

starting to feel like i did that summer in beijing. the itch to do something different with my appearance. i dunno about anything radical or permanent. but i know it's good to try new things and to experiment. to go for it. i remember picking that up from mcl back in beijing. i guess getting the tattoo was just an attempt at that. i do like it tho, but would never get a permanent one. (yep, it's henna. sorry to disappoint.).

i gave a multimedia presentation at lumps tonite about our new identity. i figured that it was best to cover up the tat with my jacket. (it's pretty big.) i didn't want to distract people from the content that i spent much of the day perparing. :P

maybe i'll grow the top of my hair a little longer so i could comb it slightly. or else be able to mold it more. maybe i should get that bed head stuff or some other paste. perhaps i'll get enough length on top to part it well again. but i'd like to keep the same basic outline of my hair profile. i've more or less had this current haircut for the past 3 years. (well, i think it looks better now, than it did when i was just in the prolonged-maintenance stage of my beijing perm/color/crop job.)

hmm...if i were to move to la. i wonder what i'd look like after 2 years...

after salon de hong kong, mw and i caught up at stars, the boba place. it's doesn't measure up to the old sweet house or relax station in la. i got a sesame boba. (ehh...just ok...) got a chance to see mw's old taiwan studio pix from love boat. pretty good. she used it as reference for her new do. we also talked about school plans. sort of for the same reasons that some go to b-school, i'm feeling that art center would be the right choice for me. not merely to get a paying job in a desired industry. but to really open up doors and pave the road for my future years on out.

trekking to alameda hospital

jc and i headed east to visit jl in the hospital. he was playing roller hockey on sunday, slammed into the boards, and his leg absorbed the impact. there was a clean break in that big bone right above his skates and he also broke that smaller bone. (i forgot my anatomy. is it tibula and fibula? beats me.) we picked up a mylar "get well soon" balloon as well as a couple of dinosaur balloons for him. we tried to find a rollerblader bend-o toy with no luck.

it took a while to get over there. that darned alameda draw bridge took forever to get lowered...we made it up to his room. we said hi. he said asked if we could come back in 5-10 minutes, cuz he was trying to go to the bathroom. whoops! he said that he knew someone was gonna come...after we came back, we talked for a bit. tried to take his mind away to la as we were recapping our trip (something i still need to do here). we got to sunday, when his old pastor came by for a visit. we had to leave soon after that.

shop talk with am

after dinner with the 'rents. i met up with am, who i met at kaleo about two weeks ago. tried to meet up for a while, but nothing ever worked out. we compared portfolios and i shared what i had learned about art center over the past year. it's good to have someone to talk to, who's in the same boat thinking about school and applying. i hope that i can possibly pick up a lot of freelance work like her.

coincidentally, after i gave her the fellowship card, she decided this past weekend that she wanted to check out church and came to scbc with a friend. too bad i missed her and was in la at the time. she liked it and may be coming around sunday am.

one funny thing, in a lot of ways, she reminds me of kl. my bud jq who met her before thinks so, too.

on posting trip pix

i may wait on posting the details on my trip until i can get the photos together with jc. i'll probably meet up with him tommorrow to get his pix and then compile them. i wanna put them online for sure. i think it'll be too difficult to integrate 200 pix (let alone 500 pix, what we shot) into my blog. i'm considering uploading them to either yahoo photos or else ofoto. i want it to be easy for people to order prints from some service. i'd also like people to see thumbnails of our photos (or a slideshow) since we documented our whole trip so well. i could possibly create my own low-resd pix page with fireworks or something like that, and upload the hi-res pix somewhere else. maybe instead of a index page, we'll do a photojam. dunno.

decisions, decisions. any suggestions on how to do it? e-mail me.

still hungry hungry

i visited two of my art center at night teachers today, cj and kl, and showed them my hhh work. that went really well. they had good stuff to say about it as well as some good tips for how to present it in a school portfolio as well as an online portfolio. also how to easily legally protect the idea by sending it to myself in the u.s. mail. chatting with cj was great. it's affirming my thoughts and decisions after visiting art center.

rv is helping me to plan a hungry hungry hippos party next week. a creative-social to share my work with some other professional people. looking forward to it a lot.

sparky's diner

i went to this famous 24 hour diner on church with ml after perspectives. been meaning to check out sparky's for a while now. we split a breakfast meal. it was great hangin' out and catching up.

if we are both in la in a year from now, we might just start up "lumps-la." the so-cal spin-off. :) i think that'd be pretty cool. i'm sure that by that time, there would be more lumps transplants too. while down there for the weekend, one of my la friends commented that it feels like there are no young adult christians...it was also really cool meeting friends of friends of friends, with a common bond of faith linking us together. that fellowship is missing from the scene down there. i thought that's kinda sad. as far as i know, there are no 20-somethings groups like lumps down there.

it'd be really easy to get a group going. people are willing to drive far to meet up, too. ml seems to be all over the la scene. so many people we discovered had known him or heard of him. he's almost like dl was up here. mr. guang xi. :)

jc and i had out a bunch of our handy dandy fellowship cards around. maybe we'll get some so-cal visitors soon. gotta share the love around and make it known. heh.

my blogger code

B5 d+ t k s u= f i o++ x-- e l- c
get yours or decode mine.

cutie quake

a really cool flash quake game. i scored 126! (no, cutie doesn't refer to girls.)

lego spidey - very cool!

industrious clock

dy sent me the link. very cool flash piece. simple, too.

california crusin'

jc and i got back from la tonite. flew back from burbank into sj. altho we didn't drive down, we put about 500 miles on our rental car. we sure were living the la life. the semi-touristy life that is. here's where our gas money went...

friday
burbank - pasadena - venice - sawtelle (west la) - monterey park - hollywood - studio city

saturday
studio city - la convention center - roscoe's chicken and waffles on pico st.- korea town - little tokyo - huntington beach (by accident) - el segundo - hermosa beach (got a ride from someone else) - studio city - universal city walk

sunday
studio city - whittier (got a ride) - monterey park (still got a ride) - the getty (we drove again) - westwood - pasadena - studio city

monday
studio city - valencia - beverley hills - pasadena - studio city - burbank

driving down there is something else. so many freeways. (btw, ever notice how so-cal people put the article "the" in front of all of their freeway references?) a lot of times we went south instead of north and vice versa, and ended up having to turn around.

it was a lot of fun. i think i'd enjoy living down there. trying something new. meeting new people. met friends of friends. at one dinner, there were people who were five or six degrees removed at the same table!

more thoughts on life and stuff i'd like to do in the new year. but i need to sleep after the busy weekend. more soon.

arrrgh. checking e-mail and blogs from the library at cal arts. why was my site down? i hope this works!

lots of fun in the sun down here. old town pasadena, saw old friends, scoped out venice beach, got a tattoo, black hawk down, relaxation station, volcano tea, meeting bunches of new people, evergreen sgv, la auto show, getty, the w, old town pasadena again, more boba...and now checking out schools. updates to come.

the so-cal school sojourn

heading out later for a creative trip to check out a school, see old friends (which are mostly girls...it's kinda odd that i don't know too many guys down there) , and have fun in the sun and smog. updates galore (and pix eventually) in a few days.

nice sf dining deal

fixed price meals at a lot of top restaurants. go here.

japan at the dawn of the modern age

i finally caught this exhibition at the presidio officer's club exhibition hall on the second time around with rv. really, really good stuff. i like the woodblock japanese art style. a really comprehensive collection during a historic time period. the audio tour points out the details and the back story very well. it unfolds like a historic movie or documentary of the times and culture. i highly recommend checking this exhibit out before it goes away on jan 21.

i enjoyed going with rv. she offers an interesting perspective on life and the arts. she's also be setting up a hungry hungry hippos party for me to share my project with others in the field. that'll be really awesome...btw, rv also says that she has some old chinese blood in her. she connects a lot to the chinese culture.

kimono story

later on, we attended this free lecture event was part of the moraga series hosted at the presidio. the speaker was america's geisha (the only non-japanese person to ever be trained as a geisha), liza dalby. pretty interesting stuff. talked about the fashion nuances, the cultural and societal significances, and evolution of the kimono. the room was packed with probably 250-300 people.

i wonder if kimonos will be a fashion trend, once the memoirs of a geisha movie eventually hits the theaters.

perspectives

last nite i checked out the sf perspectives class. it was really great stuff. made me re-examine the top line and bottom line of how i view my faith. altho i think i've got it pretty straight, it's so easy to get off centered. i know i really need to be on target this year, particularly these next few months as i make choices about career and life.

i wasn't planning on committing. i came by last nite to just check it out. but i think the class can offer exactly what i need, and it's probably the only time that i'll ever really be able to take the class for a very long time, if i were to go to school in the summer. still gotta figure out my finances and schedule tho.

i gave this dude, tw, a ride home afterwards. he goes to hoc in cupertino. ended up eating with him and a at crepevine. i wonder if he assumed that a and i were a couple.

bye bye blogspot

i'm moving my blog off blogspot. no more banner ad. go here instead and update your links. this is just step 1 of a brand new gregwong.com.

movers

i helped my sis move in to her new rented town house in mtn view. jc and jw helped my dad and i move a lot of furniture, clothes, and junk. we filled up the u-haul pretty well. for a break and a recharge, we tried to go to the palace in sunnyvale (supposedly the best korean bbq buffet), but it had to be closed on mondays. darn. oh well. next time.

my sister's new roommie is this chinese girl from cal who is a lot like phoebe on friends. my sis should have fun and a lot of interesting stories to tell of their adventures together. i've always said that i could write a whole sit-com, based on this particular girl's life. i'd actually have to tone it down in order to make it believable by audiences.

my reporter sis should strart documenting her life. it could be the great new chinese-american novel.

follow-up on the chance encounter

am from the cafe encounter called me up to chat about design schools and portfolios. chatted for maybe an hour? it's interesting that our backgrounds are somewhat similar. i'm slightly ahead of the game, since i've been taking some extension classes to build up a quality portfolio for a while. pretty interesting.

got to talking about backgrounds in college, and made a distant connection. it seems that her really good friend joy (whom i've met) is really good friends and a ministry partner with jq in iv aacf. now howsabout that? seems that she met jq a few years ago here in sf... it also seems that she used to go to a korean church in la, and hasn't been for a long time. she also had a bunch of close freshmen friends who were all in aacf. i know i met most the leader people at the aacf before from ltc. wowsa. small world.

i'll probably meet up again soon to compare portfolios. should be interesting. i actually found her stuff online thru google. heh.

it's pretty cool how a connection was made to a total stranger passing by in a cafe. i should do this more often. hopefully i'm on my to being a better schmoozer. i gotta keep reading jc's guide to schmoozing.

the man who wasn't there

i finally went to go check out this nominated movie with j. the only place in the city it's playing at is the bridge.

rotten tomatoes synopsis...

The Coen brothers' THE MAN WHO WASN'T THERE is a brilliantly photographed black-and-white absurdist noir set in Santa Rosa, California, in 1949. Ed Crane (the outstanding Billy Bob Thornton) is a slow-moving, barely talking barber who doesn't seem to want much out of life. He has virtually no relationship with his wife, Doris (Frances McDormand), who has more fun with her boss, Big Dave (James Gandolfini). But when a strange character (Jon Polito) lets it be known that he's looking for a silent partner to finance his dream business (something he calls dry cleaning), Ed sees a possible way out of his doldrums. Just like any good James M. Cain novel (which the Coens cited as a major influence on the story), blackmail, deceit, violence, murder, and double crossing ensue, all with the magic Coen twists and turns.

it's a pretty enjoyable movie. billy bob thornton's a really great actor, but i think russell crowe wins for best actor. the story was pretty interesting. i didn't really know where or how it was going to end. i think it was pretty clever, at times funny and unexpected. altho this is a great movie, i don't think all of my friends would fully appreciate this way cool flick.

37 days to chinese new year (and hopefully the launch of my new site.)

chance encounter at kaleo

i come here now and then. it has free high-speed access. i hung out with ap to work on some website stuff. yep, i'm on my way to completing one of my new year's projects. hopefully by this thursday. this one girl saw me using my wacom tablet and asked me how i like it. (i usually get comments from strangers or odd looks, whenever i'm at a cafe and using it.) it turns out that she's a graphic designer and she said that she got tendenitus from hers. (yikes!) she said i better watch out.

i got to sharing about what i was working on (the loc site). we go to talking and it turns out that she's like me...a designer in transition, not fomally trained, went to a uc, looking now into applying to ccac and art center. howsabout that! (jing ding!) i ended up giving her my contact info to tell her what i find out about pasadena. i gave her my contact info on the fellowship cards that i just had printed up. exactly what it was meant for. pretty darn cool.

this reminds me...i really oughta get my own personal biz cards printed pronto.

bocca rotis

ate at this place by west portal station for rw's bday. about 26 of us crammed into the private room upstairs. food was ok. i had some sorta sausage rigatoni. rw and i were playing with our digital cameras a lot during the meal. that's how i finally discovered how to turn down the super bright flash.

i gave him this book for his bday to help him with his toastmaster speeches. we talked about this a while back.

cityscape

back to here for the post dinner hang-out. i was just here the past sunday for my sister's bday. before that i was here two year's ago for tl's bday. i didn't stay too long. got to chatting with en. sorta knew who she was in hs, but didn't really know her. even tho we lived pretty close-by to each other and probably walked the same way. it turns out she just came back up to the area and was lookin for a church and fellowship group. what perfect luck that i had the new fellowship cards handy. it's so great having them now. hopefully they get put to good use. i'm praying for them to be useful. =)

a beautiful mind

you must see this movie. i saw it friday nite at 1000. read as little as possible about the movie and go see it. no, it's not a romance and no, it's not a spy thriller. it's a drama based on a real life story....and it's a great one. russell crowe is awesome.

happy day

i just learned how to turn down the flash on my s30 camera! yay. now i don't have to stand far away and zoom to the max in order to compensate. =)

words of wisdom

hangin out with my po po was pretty fun. i enjoy spending time with her and trying new places. she enlightened me some more on her life and experiences.

i learned that her family was pretty artistic (so maybe that's where i get it from). she's into chinese brush painting and doing funny little rhymes for our holiday cards. her brothers were pretty artistic too. a couple could draw pretty well, one could play the piano amazingly (and he was self-taught too).

another thing i learned was about how she goes out with her friends. one piece of advice she gave me was to keep my friends separate. don't hang out with them together. that is, don't force your friends to do stuff that you might enjoy doing with other friends, if they're not really into it. i can see the wisdom in that. i think for me b/c of my eclectic interests...there are few of my current friends who would enjoy doing all of that stuff with me.

ccac tour

yesterday i checked out ccac with jc. we're both coincidentally looking into schools. possibly as non-degree, possibly as second degree. we'll see how it goes. took a school tour there. the counselor leading the tour didn't really know too much. after talking to a lot of them, it seems that they really can't help me too much...and that i need to really talk to the dept heads to get my questions answered.

it looks my portfolio's in good shape to apply there. i just may need to add more observational drawing, if i want to waive out of some drawing classes. time to bust out the drawing pad and hang out on muni again, drawing strangers stealthily.

i never really took drawing classes, except for one at lhs. i pretty much learned on my own, thru imitation and observation. i know i could still improve a bunch tho.

houston's

i had dinner with my po po last nite, and we went to houston's. my first time. it was so good. great service and great food. i had the prime rib and she had the ribs. the meat was great. all the waiters and waitresses wear all black. nice ambiance in the place. pretty cool looking environment...black and red. we didn't have dessert there, cuz they all had walnuts, so we went to...

ghiradelli sg

we had ice cream. i had a strawberry malt. pretty nice time. po po hadn't been there for years.

bling bling

i just learned on mtv that new school platinum jewelry is called bling bling. i don't think i ever really knew the meaning of the term.

diary

i learned a lot about britney spears yesterday, watching her diary - a video journal/documentary - on mtv.

cribs

yep, i've been catching up on my mtv. it's sorta interesting seeing all of the rock stars homes and lifestyles. i'm filling up on my personal quota of tv voyeurism.

catching up

i met up with rv and had a nice time catching up with her. talked about creative and career stuff. she gave me a couple of fiction books to read. a tiger for malgudi, by r.k. narayan and wide sargasso sea, by jean rhys. both books i would never pick up on my own, but it's cool. something new to expand my horizons. i'm trying to read the first chapter of the rhys book tonite. the back cover calls it a "passionate and heatbreaking novel"..."and eerite and memorable trip"..."a triumph of atmosphere"..."almost hallucinatory quality." should be interesting.

we went to the presidio, trying to check out the japan at the dawn of the modern age: woodblock prints from the meiji era, 1868 - 1912 exhibit. unfortunately it closed early. we'll probably try again next week thursday. there's a free lecture there at nite i want to check out. here it is...

America's Geisha Presents "The Story of the Kimono"
January 9th, 7 to 8 p.m.
Liza Dalby, the only Westerner to be a geisha and author of several books including "Geisha", presents a slideshow and lecture on the history of the Japanese kimono. A question and answer session will follow.

sounds interesting? go check it out!

yahoo graffitti

i got sucked into playing this for like two hours tonite...or at least it felt like that long.

new for the new year

nothing too spectacular, but i saw a chinese vcd today. ds had alan and eric: between hello and good-bye. it was released back in 91. maggie cheung and alan tam starred in it. alan starring as himself, a big hk singer. the movie was ok. not too bad. story wasn't super original. dc said that it was just like beaches. a buddy/love-story triangle movie, only that beaches had two girls and a guy and came out earlier. one interesting thing about the movie was that it was filmed partly in san francisco. (speaking of hk movies in sf, i showed ds and dc my sausalito scenes from my vcd. they got a big kick and a laugh out of that.)

my new year's

forgot to post about what i did. somewhat mellow nite. kicked it at a house with some friends. ate. played yahoo graffiti online. (it's like a yahoo pictionary.) saw the countdown. played true colors, a group game which you learn what other people think of you. came home. blogged. that's about it...exciting, eh? never really had a really eventful new year's. that's gotta change soon. my parents had a later nite on the town than i did!

more resolutions for 2002

here's what you can look forward from me in the new year (hopefully this month). if you don't see it happening, maybe i need some encouragement...

finish some projects

- get my site off blogspot and dump this template for a designed one.
- create a an online portfolio showcasing my work.
- print out personal business cards.
- a new lumpsofclay site.
- family history report. finish mining the resources at the national archives in san bruno.

some old resolutions

- exercise. i havn't gone in the longest time, yet i still pay for 24 hr fitness every month.
- push my self to dilligently do one true new thing a day. yeah, i've been slacking some. in a way blogging helps me a lot to be accountable. thinking...what am i going to blog about if i don't do anything new?

renewed efforts

- pursue and strengthen friendships and relationships. especially if i'm entertaining the thought of going to a school starting in the summer, that would leave me 5 months left here. not too much time. i think i also have been observed to keep a good distance around myself when it comes to girls.
- finish reading the few books i half-read this past year.
- develop an income stream from creative work.
- rediscover a greater passion for an intimate relationship with god. know him and his heart and mirror that more in my life.
- seek out new areas god's calling me to apply my various gifts.
- get my hands dirty designing with all of the programs i half learned this past year.
- pick up ballroom/swing dancing again.

the introspective new year's rant

in 2001, i think i've started a lot of new things this past year, explored a lot of places and opportunities, and expanded my vision of things. i've gone out half-way across the bridge and looked around. now i need to finish crossing this one bridge path that i've started down. (there will definitely be more in the future.) it'll be so sad if i just stay in the same place over the next year. half-way there. half-way not. limbo. it's a nice break, and a good time to recenter and find yourself...but i think i'm ready to move out of it. i think i need to move on in life (mostly career, indpendence, drive) before i really regress. sure don't want that.

so this next year looks to really be full of new things. facing a big crossroads in the end of spring/early summer...where to go, what school or career path to do. it'll be setting (or limiting) my financial situation or lifestyle for the next few years.

i know a good deal of the next few months needs to be a time to really maximize and explore the potential and abilities i have. i don't want to end up just going to school out of default if i havn't really been working myself on my own. i'm sure the hardest that i could work myself would be less than what a school (like art center) would demand of me. so really pushing myself would be either just a good preparation or possibly a way to discover a path which isn't school. i hope for 2002 to be a time of realizing potentials, opportunities, and new discoveries.

i'm going to la in a couple of weeks. that times i went down to so-cal this past year, it's been a good time of recentering and reevaluation. in jan to sd for the wedding, it was good to take a step out of my normal routine and also be reminded about the rich spiritual environment that i've had in college. going down to la in may to check out art center and chat with a few different creative folk, it was really great to chat with people pursuing a creative dream. (hmm...this reminds me, i should get in touch with another creative friend when i go down.)

so that's about it. my year of blogging in review and what to expect for the next year. i'll be seeking god's guidance in all of this and just plain gotta buckle down and do the work i have ahead of me. i'll definitely be needing prayers and encouragement. feel free to drop me random lines about how all this stuff is going.

do you have any thoughts about what's in store for 2002 for you?. any new resolutions? i think it's always good to try to change and grow, and hopefully 2002 can be a great year of newness for you!