it's on the way!

yay! my portfolio/application is on it's way to pasadena (after a trip tonite to the midwest, cuz that's how fed-ex works.) it cost me $35 to ship that sucker.

i only drank two of the bottled frapps and one energy drink. i think the frapps have been giving me a little gas. ugh. i didn't sleep last nite. i feel fine now. i'm still wearing the same clothes as yesterday too. i'll go shower and change before lumps. :P

i got a lot done in terms of my app, but of course i ran out of time. i had to make do with some older versions of work, cuz i didnt have the time to re-lay it all out. one major bummer is that i didn't get the chance to include photos of my monster foam core model of my hungry hungry hippos restaurant. man, and i was hoping to impress them with my balsa foam carving technique. dadgummit. i tried to access photos from my archive cds, but for some reason they didnt work. i think something funky was happening with the laptop i was using. i think it's really time to get a mac.

i need to study for art history, since i havn't done squat so far. i was nodding like crazy in class on wed. i was cringing when jc was telling me just how bad i was. maybe i'll hit a cafe or something tomorrow. another errand i gotta do is go to the post office to send my s30 to canon. the lcd screen blew out. nothing but whiteness. not good. too bad i won't have a camera for my reno trip. shucks.

super caffeinated

this afternoon i bought a grande coffee frappacino from starbucks. later on i picked up a 4 pack of the bottled frappacinos and a hansen's energy drink from albertson's. hope it'll keep me going all nite. lots of last minute designing and printing to be done...sigh...

armadillo willy's

ate here for a super early dinner today. bbq ribs wasn't too bad, but i think i had better in oakland. i shared a belly buster with the guys after my run to newark on an errand to help return some vans.

the two week rewind

newness catch-up from the MCUP2K2 culture camp here...a lot that i could blog, but i probably won't get around to it all...foothill college, the best place for don tat, where to get cheap fake cds/vcds, street fair (cool small things), conversations with new people (guys, girls and cops), soysauce skills in the cathay house contest (my creative skills in action), boat tour (pretty view of the bay), being left behind (no sausalito for me), driving the misses, nite watchman (caught a live one!), way too much 4 seas food (yuck), great sushi (yum), prime time pizza (cool hang out place), pressures of leadership, a real world documentary (hope it gets finished one of these months), funky bubba, and guy sleepovers.

if these things sound interesting you can ask me about em. i got my major art center application sitting on my back right now, and i gotta finish it by thursday.

argh. why do i do this to myself? :P

back again

the server was being reworked. hope the blog's online for good now.

i've been pretty busy with application stuff, chinese new year stuff and family stuff. tonite i just had my family dinner to open the new year (we closed it a couple of weeks ago). never heard of opening and closing the new year? i hear it's an old village tradition to have two meals around new years.. we ate at great eastern in chinatown. it was ok. i liked the shark fin soup and the lobster. however, i'm very tired of all of the new year meals i've had to go to. it's like this every single year. it's now finally all over with this final meal with my dad's side of the family, which is pretty traditional.

no more chinese food for a month. :P

cgi web-head

more sneak peeks at the upcoming spidey book here.

working again on the portfolio application. yeah, updates have been scarce. been keeping busy running around town and some new things. i think the last time i was up at this hour was when i was working on hhh.

xinnian kuai le

more new year festivities. for dinner i ate at the far east cafe. our group was rocking the place in the private backroom doing karaoke. but that didn't compare to the old loud dude doing the huang fei hung song up on stage. he sure was boomin.

whew again

i tabled all of my pressing responsibilities and commitments to make room this morning to find time to work on my application portfolio. things were looking pretty tight, when i realized that monday is a holiday and i won't be able to drop it off on that day. i'll have to turn it in on tuesday. yay! one extra day!

chinese culture connection

i just had the hook-ups to attend and get really behind the scenes of an annual chinatown festivity event for the new year. this year's festivity event was run by some guy bubba. i've been around for a few years attending, but i knew about the scene for years beforehand b/c of my grandparent's heavy involvement in the family association and the chinatown community. all of my extended family on my mom's side would go to the festivity every single year for several years. i never went with them, b/c i was too young and had no interest. after i spent a summer in china, i think my eyes opened up to a lot of the culture, and i then began to actively seek out the culture sources behind me...seeing a lot of hk movies, getting involved in volunteering in chinatown around the festivities, etc. i sorta wish i had more time to be connected and immersed in this chinese cultural world, while one particular grandfather was still around. doing a little community work gets me out there to be stimulated and learn a lot of things through new experiences. i meet and interact with tons of people that are completely outside of my normal social circle (often mostly church centered). anyways...getting in touch with the roots is fun. at times exhausting, but i find that it's personally rewarding for me, in a lot of different ways that people wouldn't imagine. there's something more to chinese new year than a lot of food and hanging out with cool people.

whew again

i tabled all of my pressing responsibilities and commitments to make room this morning to find time to work on my application portfolio. things were looking pretty tight, when i realized that monday is a holiday and i won't be able to drop it off on that day. i'll have to turn it in on tuesday. yay! one extra day!

chinese culture connection

i just had the hook-ups to attend and get really behind the scenes of an annual chinatown festivity event for the new year. this year's festivity event was run by some guy bubba. i've been around for a few years attending, but i knew about the scene for years beforehand b/c of my grandparent's heavy involvement in the family association and the chinatown community. all of my extended family on my mom's side would go to the festivity every single year for several years. i never went with them, b/c i was too young and had no interest. after i spent a summer in china, i think my eyes opened up to a lot of the culture, and i then began to actively seek out the culture sources behind me...seeing a lot of hk movies, getting involved in volunteering in chinatown around the festivities, etc. i sorta wish i had more time to be connected and immersed in this chinese cultural world, while one particular grandfather was still around. doing a little community work gets me out there to be stimulated and learn a lot of things through new experiences. i meet and interact with tons of people that are completely outside of my normal social circle (often mostly church centered). anyways...getting in touch with the roots is fun. at times exhausting, but i find that it's personally rewarding for me.

hmm...been slow on the blogging...

random rant

i think one of my favorite movies is fight club. i think i really like movies that make you think and surprise you at the end...like the sixth sense. (i think i can get pretty involved watching movies, and occasionally jumpy...as some people know when watching movies with me.) one thing i think i like about fight club is the complexity of cornelius. i think at times i can be too much of a nice guy. sometimes people encourage me to be a little more sterner or forceful. to sometimes regulate more. i can also identify with the brad pitt character, tyler durden, at times too...using my skills to organize, get to know people, and recruit them. (sorta like that danny ocean guy in ocean's 11 or like the mission impossible guy, whateever his name is. yeah him who turns bad at the end...but i thought that it was sorta implausible to his character.) i think i can somewhat imagine myself building a clandestine group or operatives, nurturing teamwork and comraderie, and working in stealth mode. sorta like planning a suprise event or something, when a select group of people are in the know. then you have the little nods and acknowledgements in your group, invisible to people without the inside knowledge of the underground fight club.

anyways...are there any particular movie characters that you identify with?

whew

today was the deadline for one school application. i was crunching on preparing my portfolio for it. realized that i could add more stuff if i have more time. called the office and they said that today is the postmark deadline, so monday would be ok if i drop it off. just bought myself a few more days. i better not blow it if i wanna keep it a viable option. a bigger application milestone for another school is at the end of the month. man o man.

ate some sushi at miyake's. (a break from chinese food!) really good stuff. the first time i ever went to miyake's was back in 1995, right after the big game, coming back from stanfurd with cal aacf people. didn't have sushi then tho.,

my newbie blogger buds need to put spoiler warnings in their reviews of smallville. :P

gung hay fat choy

upon the stroke of midnight, i heard a ton of firecrackers go off for quite a bit of time. welcome to the year of the horse. sun nien fai lok. peace and prosperity to you and your family.

it sure seems like for the past few years around chinese new year, i can fall into this black hole time suck full of seeing family, eating a lot of the same chinese food to the point where i've had enough chinese food for the rest of the year (i quickly get more than my fill of crispy chicken...wouldn't mind more peking duck and shark fin soup tho), and seeing a lot of folks i havn't seen for a while. i enjoy it. every year i think i learn something more about the chinese culture and long standing heritage there is in sf. (also facts about my family...like my grand-uncle selling msg!)

my grandfather was a very high big-wig of his family association (at the top of the national dong). although it gets pretty routine very quickly, it's still a little interesting to see the pride and excitement that the older generations have at all of the new year festivities. at the very huge association dinners, you can see willie brown, reps from the board of supervisors and other city leaders. (some are non-chinese people...paying respect to the community and their chinese constituents).

i think i'm pretty fortunate to live in sf, the cultural epicenter of all of the chinese culture for the west coast. i've gotten chances to be very involved in the festivities and celebrations (which turn into a "roots" type of journey for this gen-5 boy). i know some bay area chinese-american people (not living in sf but further out) or else recent transplants, who don't have the appreciation or awareness of this chinese new year world. it's pretty cool to see some of them discover it and share the cultural world with me.

all of the busyness around new years is just beginning. it goes on for nearly two more weeks, and the eating and family times don't stop, with my grandfather's bday and my mom's bday all coming around. this year v-day falls smack in the middle of everything. (the last time that happened was two or three years ago.) still gotta get something for my mom.

if you're really interested in knowing more about the chinese american traditions and all that stuff...you can always drop me a line. i know some people don't really care too much about it, which is a shame. i think only a few of my chinese friends know the correct way to open and serve a fish (and also know why). i don't really believe in the stuff like not washing my hair on new year's. a couple of years ago i cut my hair on that day. (hmm....was that the year i started my work break? i dunno.) ahhh...whatever.

may you have many red envelopes.

pressure

feeling the pressure from deadlines and responsibilites all around me. really got get my projects and other stuff done. i think i'll be able to find a good deal of down time this next week. i think i'll probably be aiming a whole lot less too.

the la cruising show

finally got around to compile the photojams of my la trip a few weeks ago. big thanks to jho for the help. sorry, i took a ton of pix, so it's not very modem friendly. but if you have some free time and the bandwidth...you can enjoy my photo documentary of nearly every aspect of our trip - over 500 miles of crusing around la. the main point of our trip was to check out a school in pasadena, but we played for three days before we finally did that.

jason and greg's big LA adventure - part I
greg and jason's big LA adventure - part II

believe it or not, we did all of this between friday morning and monday nite of our long weekend trip! after viewing, you will probably have some burning questions, like...what's the deal with the tattoo? who are all of those girls? and what's so special about that chicken? if so, go back to my trip write-ups and discover the answers. otherwise, e-mail me yo questions and comments!

spawning blogs and going public

i think it's pretty amazing how many of my lumps friends are starting to create blogs. it's averaging like 2 or 3 a week now! if you are the unobservant type (or don't look at anything else on my page cuz you're so engrossed in my daily newness posts), my links list chronologically adds new blogs. i think it's pretty amazing, particularly since i was blogging for i think for over a whole year before any of my buds started to blog. (maybe that's b/c i had kept my blogspot a secret...just letting people who were observant of my owned url find out for themselves.) sorta getting ready to go super public with the site and really announce it.

i was hoping to share the news of a relaunched gregwong.com around chinese new year. (only 3 days away! i'll be eating way too much chinese food for nearly two weeks.) i'll probably need at least a week to get to that point of launching...but that would still be ok. i will probably bury my blog a little in a subsection linked from a main index page (also linking to my portfolio). still figuring things out about balancing my creative professional and personal content.

escape

last week, i watched the mtv's making the video for enrique's escape. (i think i like learning about the storytelling and production.) i never really cared for enrique too much before (no, didn't really like hero much) but i do like his new song escape. maybe i didn't like his accented english before, but it's ok here. i think i like the somewhat fast beat. and probably seeing the making of the video made it stick even more in my head. they lyrics are ok too, they're not really too sexed up like the video is.

american adobo

asianweek hooked it up again for me with a movie pass. (it's thursday now. go pick up the new issue and scope out any movie promos.) so i went down to the opera plaza cinema with my bud b to check it out.

about the movie...

A few times a year, Tere (Cherry Pie Picache) makes a terrific traditional Filipino dish called Adobo for her friends Mike (Christopher De Leon), Marissa (Dina Bonnevie), Gerry (Ricky Davao), and Raul (Paolo Montalban). Each time they gather at her house to eat, they talk about some new event that marks a pivotal moment in their lives. Mike wants to reconnect with his roots in the Phillipines. Marissa learns to face her fear of being alone. Gerry has to be honest about his true self. And Raul learns to respect the woman he dates. As each character follows his own journey, a series of funny and sad situations unfold, always bringing the five friends back to Tere's apartment to eat American Adobo. A cross between THE BIG CHILL and EAT DRINK MAN WOMAN, AMERICAN ADOBO is unique because it explores the issues of a cultural group rarely featured in American films today: Filipinos, and shows how they deal with issues of sexuality, self confidence, and race identity. The popular Filipino director Laurice Guillen presents this catchy contemporary film with executive producer Kevin Foxe (executive producer of THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT).

a lot of times early on in the movie, the characters were pretty one-dimensional and shallow. at one point i think the movie is going to end without any character development, but then it continues with it all happening in the end. but then the character development really happens in the end and it's more of a feel good movie (than a feel empty movie...which i was sorta feeling before). i really don't like the raul charcter. he seems like a caricature of a stoopid filipino player. (tho i'm sure that there are guys like that.) at times the acting felt a little weak and some lines cliched. ensemble cast was ok. sex was mixed into the humor quite a few times, and i think they played that card a little too much. at some points of the movie, it felt a little predictable. i didn't really like at one point when every single character was reading letters, cuz i was thinking...who really rights letters today? it's more e-mail! but in the end...things did come together to make american adobo and enjoyable experience.

i was trying to figure out which characters i identified with. maybe a little tere, even tho she's one of the girls. definitely not gerry!

the wave

anyone check out the new radio station, 93.3 the wave? "best adult r&b classic hits" been listening to it on the dial some. another good option for my itchy station hopping fingers. they just played "the hotstepper" and now they're playing j.lo. not too bad! i would link the station, but i can't find their website! (help?)

ugh. been starting to feel the loom of the next application deadlines. am reminded me of one due next week. havn't really done too much towards it this week. i think i may need to be an anti-social recluse for a while to get it done. i better call ccac tomorrow...i'm happy that i finally found my financial aid papers again. :)

art history

even tho i havn't been really drawing the past couple of weeks, i feel like i'm becoming a better artist just b/c of my art history class. more attentive to some visual details and meanings. cool stuff. now i gotta get off my butt and finish my portfolio!

msg man

i learned today that my famous grand uncle hk, used to sell msg. pretty darn interesting. i found this out by talking to sc, who knew my granduncle in the chinatown scene. lots of interesting stuff happens in chinatown. it's always been somewhat of an intriguing place for me, particularly after the summer i spent in china. culture and tradition there waiting to be discovered.

flat

had to change a tire on my way out to perspectives tonite. second time i had to do it ever. good thing i discovered the problem while i was at home.

i'm feeling a heck of a lot better now. i got probably a total of 14 hour of sleep in the day and night. went to bed at around 9pm. woke up a few times for phone calls. also woke up at around 3am and 5am, cuz i got too much sleep. i was bundled up like i was back in tahoe...ski cap, multiple layers. i can't really smell anything now...but i think i'm just about back to normal.

i didn't take any digital pictures yesterday. my nearly two month daily streak has been broken. :(

ah dink ah hab uh kold. mah nose is very wunny. ah hope mah throat doesn't get sore. :(

ad analysis

- the britney pepsi commercial was pretty cool.
- didn't care too much for the e-trade financial one. musical thing was ok. maybe they'll do more with the half-time show.
- bud light commercials were pretty funny. "so how much?"
- dolphin yahoo spot wasn't bad.
- loved the six degrees of kevin bacon for visa check card.

early bird rising

my dad woke me up early to give me a lesson like joey and the landlord on the rooftop. it was ok i guess. i had told him yesterday at dinner that i needed brush up lessons. looks like i'll be having a lot of em over the next couple of weeks.

house party hopping

semi-busy day today, after workin out and dinner with the family, stopped by g, a, and m's housewarming party, tagging along with my sis. i was the 2nd oldest person there. dru was the oldest...a couple of years older. some of the kids there were still at cal (aacf). the girls who live there are 3 years younger than me. so the youngest kids were three years under them. they looked so young...but they were cool. jf turned up there, which was funny.

afterwards, my sis tagged with me to the alice's cards/worship shindig. she was the second youngest there, just a little older than bp. we got there too late to make into the worship room. did get to meet and chat with some new people from cornerstone. that was good. also talked to ap about doing some web work for him.

it was sorta interesting going to two parties (with all xians) with such different feels. different interests, different energy levels.

full metal jacket

finally opened the dvd i bought a while ago to check it out. pretty good movie. parts are pretty serious. i think i particularly like the first part of the movie on parris island, when the new recruits get trained.

fellowship of the brothers

after a month long hiatus, o and i are gonna be meeting up for our accountability meetings again. this time, jf will be joining our fold, which is really great. we all have semi-flex schedules here in the daytimes. we'll be going thru packer's knowing god. we met up at kaleo yesterday and just caught up and chatted. i think it's really great how long and how far o and i have been meeting up since our thailand trip. we'll be trying to regularly meet up every other week, and touch base somehow the weeks we don't meet up. we'll also be reading one chapter of the book a week. having jf around will be good, adding another dynamic to our accountability and times. i know he'll help us be regularly open, honest and transparent. i've shared real fellowship with him for two years in college and since he came around lumps, been able to have some really real conversations.

i know some other guys i know are hungering or desiring to go deeper with other guys. to have what i consider real fellowship. i've always had the view that real fellowship rarely happens in the big massive large group fellowships, where it's tried to be programmed and structured (even though i would often be one to programming and structruing it). i think that a large group fellowship helps to foster and take a big step towards real fellowship...i.e. real accountability, spurring each other on, challenging each other towards application, honesty, transparency, and correcting each other. i think for people to find that real fellowship, really takes some intitiative and desire on their own part. they go out of their way to ask people how they're doing. to meet up with people one on one. i think fbj sought after that. (hmmm...would we be now, ogj?) . guys who are in discipleship relationships like ds and gl. some guys make it a point to regularly have lunch or dinner one on one with certain guys, to find that real fellowship. i think that's really cool.

i hope that the three of us, can be really equally committed and equally want those things for our walks and our lives. i hope that we can put into practice what it means to support "one another" as outlined in the word. (there are a lot of really great "one another" verses.)

if anyone wants ideas on how to find real fellowship and accountability for themselves...i'm happy to offer ideas. having been in a couple relationships like this, discipleship relationships, and creating a peer discipleship small group at one point. one really, really great book is connecting: the mentoring relationships you need to succeed in life. (yes, it's a christian book. anyone is free to borrow my copy.) it's by stanley and clinton and put out by nav press. aacf's ltc usually used material from this book, which really intrigued me to seek it out on my own. it has a model of a lot of different types of mentorin relationships, (e.g. the discipler, the spiritual guide, the coach, the counselor, the teacher, the sponsor, and peer co-mentoring.) good stuff. good ideas. it's not too heady and is pretty prgamatic. easy to read.

legend of the dogwood

i just learned that jesus's cross was supposedly made from a dogwood tree. pretty interesting stuff from this site.

As legend has it, the cross on which Jesus was crucified was made from a dogwood tree.
God decreed that the dogwood tree would from that day
forth never grow large enough to be used to make a cross.
Thus, the dogwood tree is a small, under story tree.
The flower of the dogwood has four petals which makes the shape of a cross.
The center of the flower resembles the crown of thorns with bright red,
clustered fruit in the center representing the blood of Christ.
The dogwood blooms in April when Easter Sunday
marks the resurrection of Christ after the Crucifixion.

again with the hungry hippos

i brought out the hungry hungry hippos presentation one more time. this time i showed it to chip r, who is partners with someone who is a partner of someone who saw the presentation at rv's. he and his gf are trying to get into the hospitality arena and wanted to see how my idea was presented. interesting guy. he used to be in advertising. he liked the complete execution of my concept.

bavc 25th anniversary party

i stopped by the bavc for some shindig. i was there to mooch a litle food, check out the scene, and pick up am to go to lumps. pretty crowded place. free food, wine, drinks. this was probably the most exciting day of the year there. i'm glad i found some tic tacs in my glove compartment.