counting crowns in prague

logging on from bohemia bagel in prague. the keyboard here is kinda strange. i just got the best looking latte ive ever seen. tastes good too. did a lot of walking and sight seeing. going to check out nite spots after this. heres a recap...

* in munich i walked around a lot lugging my rolling suitcase behind me. darn thing wouldnt fit into the lockers. i checked out the big clock tower, a couple of fancy and ornate churches, the virtualienmarket...a farmers market. went to some very strange museums - the easter bunny museum and the museum of chamber pots. walked many stairs and many floors at the deutsches museum. the mining exhibit was a fantastic experience and well designed spatially. it feels like youre going thru an underground maze...going up and down lots of narrow and wide passageways, some hidden from sight. also ate some bavarian grub at an irish pub. alles ist sehr gut.

* hopped on the lufthanza mini plane to prague. dang that thing was so dinky. fit about only 60 people. propellers too. nice view of the clouds.

* the prague airport really sucks big time. after getting off the plane...all the passengers were stuck in the passport control line for about 60 minutes. it took forever! the beijing airport back in 98 was almost as bad as this. that was just dealing with pure masses...but it probably wouldnt have taken an hour!

* made my way to the pension unitas...which used to be an old convent. or else an old prison. cant tell. its right next to the police station. its a little better than the munich hostel. lots of young kids running around. got in at about 21:30 and woke up the girls. enticed them to come with me to globe, the cyber bookstore-cafe, from where i posted last nite.

* getting into prague, reminded me a little of my first reactions to beijing and thailand...driving in from the airport. the areas by the roads arent too developed like in the states. a bunch of wide open spaces. an instant different sensation of space than i experience in the states. there were some reallz bumpy roads too.

* today hung out by the charles bridge. walked around mala strana a bit and up to the prague palace...the biggest palace on earth i think. impressive stuff. but i think i was more wowed by versailles. checked out a bunch of ornate baroque and gothic churches. i liked the stained glass by alphonso mucha in st vitos. i definitely wanna go see the mucha museum here. after lots of walking, we grabbed a bite of czech food recommended by frommers, which still proves to be the best all around travel guide, imo. then we hit up the old town. more and more walking. i dont think my steve madden tennis shoes offers the same support that my new balance shoes do. feet getting tired. i think i can feel the curves of the cobblestones a lot.

* had a really great italian dinner at kogos. my pasta and a drink came to under 7 dollars.

* we have some interesting conversations. one of us, but not me, really wants to try some beer. i dont think that person has ever really had one before.

* prague has a lot to offer for creative stimulation. architecture. exhibits. historic culture. artistic heritage. interesting experiences. we are rushing around a lot to try to make the most of our time here. its definitely somewhat inspiring being here. also when traveling with two people youve never traveled with before...you learn a lot about each other and yourself. how you differ from each other. whatīs edgy and exciting and whats not. who's open and who's not. traveling is definitely a growing experience and an invaluable one. if you do it the right way and with the right perspective, it can be as important as a formal education. itīs a shame that some people will never get that...or just exerience the world from a plain white bread perspective.

drat. i lost my post. oh well. i'm alive in prague. walked around in munich. my feet are tired.

in munchen

made it over to munich. ate just a so-so dinner. the keyboard here has funny placement of letters. some quickie thoughts...

* lufthansa kinda sucks. seat was cramped. too late to upgrade to biz class with my miles. talked to an ibm programmer sitting next to me. hes going over to munich for a month of work. sitting by the window doesnt let me walk around and stretch my legs. slept half the trip. food wasnt spectacular.

* took the subway for about an hour to get to the center of town. i fell asleep two stops before my destination and went 4 stops further. i got to the center and with the help of two florist ladies, realized that i still had to take an underground and a bus to get to my hostel. i didnt have the hostel on any of the maps on me.

* missed the free cafeteria dinner. it probably wasnt that good anyways.

* ate at a hofbrau munchen in scwabbing. it was just ok. sausage stuffs ok. i dont care for the liver and potato dumpling.

* weather is mild. sorta like sf. hope it doesnt rain. its supposed to.

* really interesting signage and ads around me. i could totally tell a different sense of design prevailant.

* hostel isnt anything too hot. its clean tho. trickz door locks.

time to go! deutsches museum and hofbrauhaus tomorrow. not sure what else i can fit in. off to prague in the evening.

the all mixed-up SF life weekly

check out some of my 37 pix in a somewhat mixed up order from the past week. lotso hangin out and catchin up with people.

whirlwind week

this week sure whizzed by. i didn't really do much thursday except designing the above posters about this concert happening this thursday. you can probably see a bunch of em on irving, specifically in the popular asian places in the sunset. two long hours at kinkos. 40 minutes to print one output to the color printer. sigh. colors were a little dark, but oh well.

friday i met up with john, our assistant pastor. we grabbed breakfast at j's pots of soul on octavia. cool place. i originally discovered it with o about 3 years ago. i still remember the conversation then too. it's really nice meeting up with people over breakfast...especially at interesting places. got to catch up with john on a lot of stuff and get his pastoral insights into everything going on ministry and fellowship wise. there's definitely a lot of bright stuff on the horizon. like vessels sailing towards the horizon, it'll definitely be an interesting journey for people. wish i would be around to be a part of it and help out, but i won't for a while. we'll see how the lord leads if i'm back in a year and a half or not.

explored a couple more new places. cup-a-joe coffeehouse, quickly on taraval, my tofu house on geary, and rohan lounge on geary. lots of good eating and meeting. definitely a refresher from the hard working AC designer life.

the start of the next wave of weddings

o, one of my good buds just got married today. everything was very nice, yet simple and uncomplicated. nice straightforward ceremony at st. john's. cocktail reception at the miyako. then nice dinner in the banquet room there. dancing too. music was just ok. reminded that i should really know how to swing and do all of that stuff. no slide show or games. i wonder if that's a chinese-american thing? the wedded couple was korean and vietnamese.

it'll be interesting seeing how the rest of the lumps weddings are in the coming months. this year is the wave of 3 weddings which i foresaw happening about two years ago from now. exciting stuff. all the guys are my age, which is pretty interesting. they all pretty much hooked up in the past 3 years, too. and so turns the next page of life.

i've shared about o before and how we'd meet up for prayer regularly. he's definitely inspired, encouraged and supported me in a lot of ways over the past few years. things i've seen in him which i think have pushed me to go to another level are hospitality, generosity, being more extrovertedly social, willingness to do different things, and an energetic enthusiasm about life. he definitely has that effect on people.

getting ready for the big race tomorrow

you know that reality show where they drop you off in some place in the world and you have to navigate your way around on your own to a destination? i feel like that's in store for me tomorrow. i'm doing a last ditch effort now to pack 2 weeks of stuff into a bag, and gather scraps of information on where i'm going right now. i don't know all of the currency rates. don't exactly know how i'm going to get from point to point. bus? taxi? trying to collect the addresses. wondering if i need a special converter for electricity or if my battery adapter can handle it. aye carumba. but i always thought that i can adapt pretty well to new settings, and have always managed to be resourceful. we'll see how i do all by myself from tomorrow nite to wednesday. flying across the world by myself. exploring munich all by myself. having my first hostel experience all by myself. navigating my way to and thru a foreign airport and onto another country all by myself. then getting transportation to a hostel an hour away in central prague all by myself tuesday nite to meet my travel buddies.

i just made my packing list about an hour ago. printing out addresses and directions right now. i'll be studying on the plane some. gotta remember the asparin and hope that the flight's not too painful. my knee often hurts a lot on long flights.

yeah, i'm getting a little nervous. not really sure what's ahead. i just hope that i get thru the next few days ok. getting excited for the adventure ahead. my po po told me to not be too brave (and be safe). we'll see how it goes. i hope i meet some cool new friends en route.

whelp. here we go. final crunch time to pack and get last minute stuff. take off time in 17 hours. ai-yi-yi! i'll probably blog once i get in to munich and at least every 2 or 3 days. um, if you don't see any updates here...it either means that the internet has gone down in eastern europe or something happened to me (and you should definitely pray for me)

auf wiedersehen! bis montag in munchen!

kept myself busy today again today. meeting up and eating. yes, this is the term break life.

breakfast at chloe's

breakfast with o. continued the tradition of meeting up and catching up. our thing has been to go meet up while exploring the best breakfast places in the bay area. we were running out of places to go. i hit up the best on digital city and the best on citysearch to find out what's left on our list. sears fine foods is closed on tuesdays and wednesdays. so was another place. but chloe's cafe was open. yay.

chloe's is a cute little place on the corner. parking was easy. place was pretty full for 10:15 am on a wednesday. i got the scramble which was really great. the pumpkin cinnamon special pancakes were interesting. the breads are all imported in from ill fornaio. breakfast was good...fluffy...not too heavy. i'd come back. but for the right occasion. i still have to try out the last few on the lists.

poster publicity project

did some photoshopping for a poster project. this will hopefully get produced and posted around the sunset to all of the popular areas. still gotta finish. time to put my type skills to use.

nope, i just can't seem to take a break. i need to be productive.

best beef dinner in the city

met up with po po for dinner tonite. went to harris.' my first time. last time she was there, was years ago with gung gung. man...this place definitely deserves the title for best steak place in the city. shrimp bisque was great. bread was fresh and warm. harris' steak was great. the prime rib was honkin' huge. sure some of the prices are high, but they give you twice as much meat as other prime rib places i've been to.

it was a really enjoyable and memorable time for both of us. service was nice too. she told me not to be brave while traveling (and to be safe instead). she also shared the advice that the best thing isn't living a long life, but living a full life. we both agreed that this was a place worth going back to. too bad there are still more new places to explore.

star wars designers

afterwards i went to the academy of art college (please note that this is not AC...a school of a much different reputation) downtown to hear a presentation awarding honorary doctoral degrees to the famous star wars concept designers...ralph mcquarrie and doug chiang. i had lots of other stuff to do...but i couldn't pass up the rare opportunity to hear these guys speak and talk about their work. any serious star wars fan wouldn't have passed it up...not that i am one. but i'm still interested in their incredible work.

really fascinating stuff. talked about the origins and backstories of creating the visuals for the first trilogy. i think i drifted a little bit tho. i blame food coma from the heavy beef... randomly i looked down at my feet and noticed for the first time that i was wearing two different shoes. very strange. this really means i need to get shoes of different colors...also saw some cool work from doug chiang's robota project.

doug shared that he starts all of his illustrations at about 1" by 2" big. lots of color studies to get it right. he prefers traditional mediums (~ markers), but b/c of time demands he does most digitally. that's definitely the way. i really goota hone my craft and perfect my technique. i picked up a couple of tips (which i've heard before), like focus on the shape of your drawings/figures and look for the easy read.

before sunrise

after that i headed to blockbuster, picked up before sunrise and met up with my third travel buddy, suzanne. we watched it in preparation for vienna. tony was right in recommending it. great visuals and scenery. interesting dialogue and narrative too.

don't think i'll have time to watch too many other movies...like talented mr ripley or the borne identity. shucks.

busy day. it's nice to be productive. still got work hangin over me. time to finish it up.

the first-weekend-back-in-SF life weekly (pt. 2 from the past week)

bummed a connection. see some super fab 78 pix of the first weekend of my break.

you can see
*my poster hangin in the gallery
*j's project getting prepped for the gallery
* the sunset off of the 5 north...
* an OG who just turned 30
* a small easter lunch
* the crazy line for cheap gas
* sunday lunch peeps
* cherry blossom festival sights
* and a fishy guy turning old

busy busy and zipping about

i've been loving my break. i certainly haven't been lounging about too much and wasting my break away...

monday
* went to my in-law uncle's dad's funeral. it was a filipino / catholic tradition. very interesting. they took communion at the ceremony but my family didn't participate since we're not catholic. my mom said that the pope recently said that only catholic people should take communion with them.
* vietnamese sandwiches and boba with sis. i wish i knew where in LA to get good vietnamese sandwhiches.
* photo shoot for a poster project at the park
* dinner with mom at naan n curry.
* met up with my euro travel buddy and planned at borders...to the point of falling asleep while reading.

tuesday
* studied munich at barnes and noble in san mateo. i'm getting really nervous and also excited at the same time. it's almost overwhelming how much i ought to be planning for...train transfers, currency exchanges, mapping out locations, selecting things to do. not just for one place...but up to 4 or so places! good thing i'm only at one place by myself and can rely on the girls to share the planning. i'm also getting exhillirated by all of the thrilling prospects of places and things to do. lots of museums, castles, and cathedrals. lots of food. lots of tourist traps to watch out for.
* went for a day hike with a bunch of people to land's end. very scenic. nice change of pace.
* had dinner with the parentals at toku sushi...or whatever that place a couple of doors from kitaro on geary is called. it's a little more expensive than kitaro for sushi, but it was good food.
* saw smallville with the millbrae clan. it was cool hangin out.

there's so much that i need to get done this week, it's nuts. still finding time to see a few more people. still got a lot of planning to do for the trip. i think of the three of us going, i'm probably the biggest planner. one of us seems to be very much go with the flow and we'll figure it out when we get there. another one i think takes a lot of comfort in the security of set plans. me...i'm sorta in the middle. i like to plan not so much for the security, but to really try to discover the best of what's around. that's why i'll take an hour online looking for the best coffeeplace or breakfast joint to go to in SF or LA. i like to prepare myself to make the best decisions for exploration.

just 5 more days! zoinks.

the time-for-a-break-from-LA life weekly (pt. 1)

i'm back. been bouncing around here and there. zipping around to see people and go places, even tho i'm not stackin up my schedule with appointments. (that means, that if anyone wants to hang this week...that i can easily find time for ya.) i've been busy. all the photo excitement can be an album in itself. but first here's 54 pictures from my last week of the term in LA. no longer access to a dsl conmnection, so here's the most of my last 2nd term week before i hit the road. couldn't upload and share the past few days of pix. i will when i can bum off my friends' bandwidth.

from my attempted post yesterday on sat

back to the bay

i'm back in sf. it's been a busy day and a busy couple of nites. last nite i cleaned up the place, hung out with alex a little bit, who was crashing at the pad, and watched one hour photo. a really good sorta freakky movie. robin williams is great!

tore up the place looking for a lost library book. had to take care of it before i went back home. lots o little errands to do before driving up. borrowed a microdrive off of bobby to shoot over a thousand pictures in europe. i can't believe that i'm going in about a week. yikes.

stopped by the gallery at school and saw my earthworks poster up. hooray. some validation of my work and my semester. but in all actuality, i know that the work that theyt select is sometimes finally based on color. hooray.

tore up the 5 caravannig with j. stopped in kettlemen's city for some carl's jr. this was the first fast food burger that i've ordered all year...but it was the $3 for the $6 restaurant burger. once i got in i picked up liao to hang out in the sunset. made a wonderful foods stop along the way. after that we stopped by frjtz on hayes, i had a ginger beer (with some slight bite), dropped him off at the hotel, stopped by crepevine to see a couple of guys again. went back to the pals' place in the sunset. finally at home now.

it's been a long day.

good friday to you

my brain feels like it's been watered after being dehydrated for a bit. that's what well-needed sleep feels like. one day to work, play and hang out in LA before heading back. what to do.

i ran out of socks. even the white ones too. i think i'm going to buy some today instead of dealing with the machines. i'll just take my laundry back with me anyways.

alex is crashing at my place tonite. met him in lumps last summer. don't know him to well but he's passing thru looking at ucla dental.

lightbox picnic today. it just fell to me last nite to get the food. drat. if i don't do it, it won't get done. i'm going to start organizing things a bit more for the future. i'll see if i can get some 6 foot long sandwiches or something.

i rented one hour photo last nite but was too tired to watch it. hopefully tonite.

should probably get around to cleaning up tonite too. place is kinda thrashed from finals and not caring.

i was thinking about going to the asian hip hop summit tonite at boba delight in k-town. we'll see.

missing out on the AC parties since i'm leaving tomorrow. oh well.

the final day: it is done

i finished second term. i'm too tired to be excited. yes...more of the same zany sleepless adventures of greg. last time i slept on/sorta in my bed was 1am wednesday am. then i powered thru the day until the late afternoon. after doing some research in thai town, i was driving home when i decided to pull over even tho i was just 15 minutes away from home b/c i thought i was too tired and need a nap. i think i snoozed for an hour. can't tell.

after that i powered thru the nite with just one energy drink, determination, and a readily approaching deadline. i got about 75% of what i was hoping to do...(but i think it's still A quality work). i ended up getting into class this morning about 2 hours late. i picked up rachel who needed a ride and also wasn't ready. class was good. it went long waiting for my crit. i think i took a nap on a table for about 30 minutes or so waiting. finally i got my crit done, and rushed across pasadena to get j another ink jet cartridge, since i thought he needed it for his class stuff in 30 minutes, but that wasn't the case. after getting it, i went back to school and was 10 minutes late for my next class. but that's ok.

my class crit on my earthworks poster went well. i think i got one of the best reviews in the class. we'll see if it's up to gallery snub. i think i got a good chance with it. they took away my teenage drunk driving ads for possible display. we'll see. if i get something in, cool...some validation that i'm doing good above par work. if not, oh well.

time to snooze. i've been up for about 40 of the past 42 hours.

lucky golden turd

the latest hit from japan. anyone going over soon and wanna bring back a load?

the final push

went to sleep at 8:30 for a half hour nap before smallville. i finally woke up again at 1:30. oh well. i guess i can catch the episode on the wb's big sunday rerun. glad i got my 5 hours in. hope to focus now.

i got my earthworks poster printed at school today for $27. it could have turned out a little lighter to be perfect, but oh well. i didn't want to pay $60 to get it right. i'm also going to mount the 22" by 34" poster by myself. hope it goes ok. didn't want to mount it tonite in case i made a sleepy goof. personally i'm only doing this full-size blow up just for the final. if the poster is 80% or 90%, that's ok. altho i'm really happy with the design of it, i'm not going to put it up in my room or really show it to too many people after this class. unless it makes it to the student gallery. but then what. i still don't think it's worth another $30...especially when i'm trying to scrimp here and there for europe.

ate at el toreo with henry while i was waiting to get my poster printed at school. we got burritos. dang, they were huge! it just zappped me into zonkville (causing me to miss my smallville stop)

it's almost over. i just gotta work on thai elvis now. man, i've been saying that everyday for the past two weeks. it's the final project. everything else is done and in the can. i'm so glad i finished my type exercise book three weeks ago. everyone else in my class has been cramming on it this week. ha ha. even if it's just B+ quality work (hypothetically)...i'm so tired of it all that i don't care to revise it for a slight grade bump. it's not going to look that much better as a portfolio piece in the long run and thats what i care about.

okeedoke. time to go to the 24 hour ralph's a block away and get a hansen's energy drink!

designing before dawn

it seems that my most productive hours are from 1am-6am. maybe that's when desperation starts to overcome the procrastination. perhaps it's b/c there's no one online...no new e-mail, no aim buddies, no new blog updates. maybe it's b/c my roommate is also doing work during most of that time, too. third nite in a row i've finally settled into my groove at that time, just to be followed by a couple of hours of refreshing winks.

powerhouse poster makers

went do powerhouse way out on beverly to get a linotype proof positve output made for our type posters. it's the only place in LA it seems that can print wider than 12." it just so happens that simon made us design our posters to be 13" wide. i think i drove about 40 minutes to get there and probably a little longer to get back b/c of traffic. and in the rain too. grrr. the good thing was that we got our 50% student discount and also saved some money putting all of our poster onto one file. yay, the convenience of having a powerbook to change files on the spot. i sure hope that they crop it ok. i'll take a picture of the result for sure. it's costing me $17...which isn't that bad. some people have to pay $80 for their type posters to be done! print graphics can be such a rip.

pie n burger

met up with tony tonite for dinner. took him to pie n burger for his bday. (tho i just found out it was his bday today.) this was the first burger i've had all year. i had some of tony's fries. still trying to not eat fries still. i made an exception, b/c it wasn't one of those greasy fast food chain restaurants. it was one of those greasy hamburger diners which was different. i'm sure i'm saving on a lot of fat by avoiding those foods. anyhoo...the burger was good. so was the strawberry shake. and the apple pie a la mode.

the lots and lots of work LA life weekly

man...i think our electricity bill is gonna be shootin high again. we've been pullin a lotta long or all-niters. i just now finished up my acrylic sculpture (above). j is doin an all niter. i was up til about 6 am yesterday too working on stuff. of course...that's b/c i started workin around midnight.

anyhoo. click and see 53 pix mostly of a lot of work. some of it is mine. i took a lot of pix of the super thursday open studios at school. i'll be doing some of that entertainment and product studio stuff in a year or so. not making the dimensional, product stuff...but on the graphics side. so go ahead and take a peek at the AC life.

trip planning

met up with erica today to figure out the europe trip. starting to worry a tad about finding accomodations. gonna go budget and hostel for most of the trip. hope to do more writing work in my week off to get more trip money. it's sorta tricky doing planning when the three of us won't be in the same city until we get to prague. i'll be doing more planning next week with suzanne i suppose once i get back to sf. anyone been to budapest? thinking about that place too now. it's cheap. much cheaper than vienna.

ghetto wallet guy

met up with dave and rhon from the church small group after urban mosaic. grabbed a malaysian bite to eat. probably one of the best things that happened this term was meeting them and having fellowship with them...even tho the group was really small and just getting off the ground. they're both really cool and pretty hosptiable. i think that they stand out as the first (and only) guys that i've met since moving down here who i can feel a connection with and that i can also respect in terms of having an active and mature faith, especially in terms of involvement at church. also helps that i can connect to their life perspective b/c of age, even tho i'm in school and they're not.

dave will be up in sf this week for work. if you get a chance to meet him thursday nite, ask to see his ghetto rubber band wallet and get a good laugh.

faith and the popular arts

on thursday after my long day i went to fuller seminary to check out their seminar on faith and comics and stuff like that. it was part of their spring art week festival thing. heard a comic book writer, the cartoon producer of johnny bravo, the co-director of mulan, and a 3d comic book artist...all christians...speak about their work and how their faith plays a part in their career and life.

it was a very cool thing. someone asked the comic book writer, jim krueger, why doesn't he write christian comics that shows how someone prays really hard and has god answer. his answer was sorta that it wouldn't be right to script or assume how god would answer and act. also something like how it would demean god into fiction...something like that. it was all pretty stimulating. in a lot of his stories, he writes about heroes that point to god. not directly...but in terms of their action of saving people, the forces that they encounter, or their imperfection. he also confronts the over rationalization of the world that some people hold, which i also find pretty interesting. something like what would a world look like if we had no greater purpose. it would be incredibly depressing. he talks about that in earth x, and some of those thoughts shook up people's perspectives on life it seems. it's pretty cool to realize the power that lies in popular culture and storytelling.

i'm thinking about how to pursue my education based on storytelling and the narrative in the many class choices i have at AC. there's so much stuff that i would love to take. thinking about taking a couple of classes in the language of the moving image. i gotta also balance picking up technical and new media skills to. part of me also wants to take more drawing and entertainment classes. there's so much that's offered at AC. i gotta decide wisely how to navigate thru it all and keep in mind where i wanna go.

mexico missions meet-up

friday nite we met up with janelle in azusa on her way down with her mexico missions trip team. i wanted to get her boba since she couldn't leave. i was intending to get her some fruity, non-lactose drink...but then j suggested getting this fruity drink at phoenix cafe. so i said sure and ordered a couple. i didn't realize that it has dairy in it...coconut milk. ugh. so then i went back to my original plan and got 2 fruit boba drinks at lifehouse a few doors down. (it's buy one get one free there.) too bad there were out of watermelon. so i got mango instead. in the end i had three drinks for myself.

it was great meeting up with her and her sis. good time catching up and encouraging her on in her week without fresh running water for her trip. it shouldn't be too bad. i haven't had to ever take a week without showering before. when i went to mexico for my missions trip back in high school...i think we paid to go to a public bath house twice.

elvis stitch

i finally got around to watching lilo and stitch. i liked it. i had to watch it three times tho to get thru the whole thing. put it on the player friday nite, but fell asleep in the middle since i was so tired. i missed lilo meeting stich and all of the elvis stuff. (elvis is the reason why i wanted to watch it anyways.) tried to watch it again last nite, but got busy on the phone during the middle segment again. so i had to rewind and watch it again after i saw the ending.

the finals bachelor life

we just got back from lunch after church. went to super b man's teriyaki for the 2nd time ever. man that place gives you so much food. that's like our lunch and dinner for about $6 total. eating at these teriyaki bowl places definitely is much better and cheaper than cooking ourselves with that deal and also considering the opportunity cost too.

almost thru the finals time. my last week isn't too bad. still have time to go out and live a balanced life. i just hope that the production of my posters go ok. our place is kinda the pits still tho. when you get overwhelmed by projects...your new set of pressing priorites really affects the lifestyle you lead.

travel horizons

as things are slowly shifting off my plate and the end of this term is in site...i'm starting to think about distant lands in just two weeks. getting excited. i think i'll pretty much have just a little over a week to do research. it should be interesting.

i'm already thinking about how i'll document and share my travels. probably not gonna do the shutterfly dump. that just won't do it justice. but what to do...an imovie? a mini-site? i dunno. we'll see.

i'm gonna get ready to start devouring a lot of books, websites, and movies about munich, prague and vienna. anyone suggest anything?

upbeat again

today was a pretty good day. i felt SO much better getting 10 hours of sleep. i feel like my normal, ol' perky, upbeat, smiley self. (i only included that last adjective cuz a couple people at school recently told me that i look happy and smile...which i don't really realize...of course this was before my really tired, draining weeks.) i don't really think i smile that much more out of the norm, but maybe i do. or maybe it's just that some people don't smile much at all.

sometimes you just don't realize how bad of a spot or a condition you're in until you get out of it. you just get used to the feeling and you slowly descend. and you don't realize what type of a rough situation you're in until you're out of it. talking about health and rest, but it also parallels sin and being distant from god.

no money for me

i chatted with a couple of my friends. one person got $500 renewable each term. one dude got $1000. a couple got $1400...sigh...good for them. (the dept had over $50k to give out this term.) i knew that i wasn't going to get anything. i already resigned myself and knew my fate. some ppl who got money last term got money again this tern. i figure a few people have $3-4k...maybe more of scholarship money. our tuition is close to $11k. some ppl like me are still stuck paying the entire thing. especially if we already have a degree...we don't qualify for pell grants...sigh. kinda unfair huh?

at the same time i can see some good things about the whole set-up. it totally motivates the students to push their craft and presentation each term and not get too lazy. there's a fat dangling carrot in front of us continually for those of us who don't have big bucks in our pockets. i think it probably makes a big difference in terms of the quality of work that comes out of this crazy place...in contrast, some other schools give lots of money up front and that's it. (like a lot of money.) so they don't have as much money pressure that some of us AC students feel.

ah well. i know my stuff is going to be so much better next term. i'm thinking that i will take that extra class next term now. sure it might kill me if i were to knock myself out for it, but i think i'll try to stick to the perspective of what's best for my portfolio and my work...and that grades are still meaningless to me. it's a hard shift, especially when you came from a good academic background...not like some right brained kids here.

anyhoo...i'm almost done with the term. i just gotta finish get a couple of posters printed for a lot of money, finish up my materials stuff (hot glue my acrylic sculpture, wax and buff my wood sculpture, make a graphic interpretaion of another), and finish my thai elvis pages (take reference photos, final pencils, ink, scan, color and output). i'm so glad that my workload has finally lightened.

temporary insanity

sigh. in my sleep deprivation i fell victim to passing along the sars rumor e-mails. usually i'm smarter than that. educate yourself about the sars urban legends that are currently going around.

you know you're dead tired when...

* a classmate passes you by in the hallway, take one distant first look at you and say that you look tired.

* you have difficulty speaking your normal eloquent and coherent way. it's like your brain is lagging behind your mouth slightly. sorta having to pause to catch your breath or keep up. or to refocus your thoughts on what you're about to say.

* you get very conscious of your beating heart. sorta like it's out of sync half a beat or pounding somewhat noticeably.

* you don't use your sleep clothes b/c you aren't sleeping in your bed. you just take a quick nap on the couch or on the floor (on big pillows). you just change from one set of day clothes to the next set of day clothes.

* you only brush your teeth once a day. that's if you remember to brush on your way out. not sleeping screws up your normal nighttime dental hygeine cycle.

* you eat a meal, and 2 minutes later you're energy level bottoms out. super food coma due to lack of sleep.

* you start to get familiar with the radio djs on all of the time shifts.

that's been my day. just like the last couple. well, the worst is done. it was worth the energy looks like. i'm at a pretty good position in most of my classes. as long as there are no printer problems. i stayed the last 3 hours of class to do work on my powerbook as opposed to going home and getting some sleep. i wanted to maximize the opportunity i had to get instant feedback and guidance from my teacher on my revisions. it's faster and more time efficient in the long run.

on a side note. no scholarship for me. i knew it. that's not unexpected tho. got some feedback. i'm going to do so much better next term. that's in the back of my mind for the quality of the piees that i'm turning out now.

ok...time to sleep! yay.

waiting to print

i'm sitting here in the lab with 27 minutes left to go til class. i got my work done last nite...but i'm trying to knock out more layouts to push my progress as far as possible. the only reason why i have time to blog now is cuz i'm waiting for my dang computer to process the honkin 493.9 mb file. maybe i'm doing something wrong.

more about sleep and work

i took a 4 hour nap yesterday afternoon while watching the news about iraq. i guess i could have gotten better quality sleep...but i couldn't miss out completely on that historic moment. after that i was up all nite trying to crank out earthworks poster layouts and drawing up thumbnails and layouts for my thaielvis graphic novel thingy.

it's definitely worth trying to spend as much energy as possible to push the work further. especially now that the end is near. i think it's a big part of the AC work ethic and being a designer. just gotta keep plugging away at it. i think i knocked out about 35 type poster layouts the other day. i did about 15-20 at nite. got my class crit. did another 7 during our class break. got another crit after class. did another 4 more. went back and caught the teacher for another crit. then did another 5 or so more layouts right after that. getting a quick turnaround in feedback and revisions definitely helps you to push the work further as fast as possible. and it's all made easier having a powerbook.

i made it thru the nite without any energy drinks or coffee. that's b/c i was all out. i did take one of my jolt cola candy pill things. three of them equals one can of jolt. so i think one of em equals one cup of coffee. does that sound right?

man...printing is going so slow! it's gotta be the mega huge file size. i'm printing a poster. 22" x 34." so big that you gotta tile 4 of the large super sized pages together. this thing could cost $30-$70 to print out. it all depends where you go. i'm gonna have to spend $20 printing out my type poster on a linotype output. good grief, huh?

sleeping in the library

this morning i did get an hour's worth of sleep tho. i laid out on the library lounge chairs and konked out for an hour. i would have slept in my car, but i didn't have an alarm on me, and i couldn't trust my cell phone reception if i asked my classmate to call to wake me.

darn the heck. it's still not printing. i sure hope that i don't run into major print problems when i'm outputting my final. i gotta also mount the thing on foam core too. i hope to avoid the rush too. probably 1/2 of all the graphics students all have to print out posters from a vendor.

too wired to be tired

i just got back from nate's getting a little help on type homework. i'm gonna miss his help over the summer when he's gone. it certainly helps push me farther along in preparation for class. i picked up a 40 oz coke slurpee on the way home from 7-11. gonna need the boost to chug along a few more hours to finish up exploration layouts for my type poster. just like everything else, it has to be 90% there for class tomorrow.

i've been up since 1am yesterday...been awake for about 25 hours. hopefully i'll get to sleep by 4 or so and get 3 or 4 hours of sleep. today's been pretty productive. no stopping yet. gotta keep it up and make it thru thursday.

paper writing 101

i didn't get much accomplished too early b/c of the heat last nite. it just made me wanna nap. i probably conked out for a few hours. but i had to crank out my propaganda paper. i think i have a pretty good method of writing papers, which most people don't do...

i use the outline view form in word. i don't think most people know how to use it. it's easy to bang out your different ideas and rearrange the order. it's like 5x easier than doing it in the normal view mode in word. it helps me to structure my thoughts pretty well. i need to pass this tip on to my cousin. he's about to start cal. (go bears!) i don't think i figured this out until my sophomore year.

anyhoo...this should all work pretty well if you gotta write a speech, research paper, proposal, whatever. it's a pretty good way of looking at your thoughts as a whole...since you can hide and unhide sections. if all this is news to you, be sure to try it. you'll be on your way to faster and more efficient writing. however this doesn't help at all if you get distracted easily like me. having to take surfing breaks. i think i hit the blog subscription checker probably a half dozen times last nite. ugh.

i finally finished my paper at about 7:30 am. i'm glad that's over with. it's only a 4-6 page paper and i really shouldn't be caring about academic grades anyways. i could have probably picked an easier topic to cover too. but something in side of me just made me push for the complete experience. i ended up writing about that extermely disturbing play i saw for this class - "songs of joy and destitution." oh my, there certainly was some sick depravity in there.

hopefully i can get a few winks now before i have to go to the cafe to study. i just know that as soon as i fall asleep (if i can in this 90 degree heat), my study bud is gonna ring my door.

getting hot here

my it's getting warm. the so-cal heat is sure getting toasty. too bad i had to wear long pants today, since i had to work in the shop on my acrylic project. no shorts allowed for safety.

wandered over to monrovia to go to absolute acrylic to get some sheets to cut up and sculpt. spent $15 on some brand new and scrap sheets. southern monrovia is an industrial area with a lot of vendors of the sort. there are also a lot of mexican food places...speaking of monrovia, i just found out that my neighbors are gonna move there in about a week. anyone wanna take their apartment and be my neighbor? it's a nice neighborhood with everything within walking distance. lemme know pronto!

afterwards i stopped by fuller seminary and explored a little there. they had this lunch time thing (with free pizza) to kick off their spring arts week. it was definitely a different slice of life wandering around the campus. much more like a real campus than AC. i think their cafeteria food is better from what i could see. they have a very nice prayer garden. now i know where to go if i want to get away for a quiet time with god. the arts thing was cool. saw some comic book pages up. took pix. i ate a lot of pizza and got free lemonade, yay.

i then hopped over to school and spent about 4 hours in the shop. cutting up acrylic sheets. wiping off the dust. sanding the edges. wiping off the dust. sanding corners round. wiping off the dust. (i could have done all of that in a much more efficient order!) then using the heat sink for at least a couple of hours, which was about 250 degrees hot and open air. i was sweating a lot. chatted with an industrial grad girl my age who used to work in advertising. that was a nice diversion.

finally left the shop around 5ish. came home and myself a red bean milkshake. yum. it's kinda nice to be able to come home and have it still be light out.

lots of work tonite. must be productive.

the people watchin LA life weekly

the general theme to this week's upload seems to be a lot of random shots of people. classmates. houseguests. meal buds. broomballers. after church hang-outers. and fellow boba drinkers. so go ahead and see the 45 pix from this past week. mostly since thursday.

lazy weekend

this weekend seemed to make up for a lot of stuff i didn't do the past weekend (which was pretty much all work). i didn't do that much work this weekend. hung out for a bit... slept a lot on saturday...barely did any work.

did grocery shopping (long overdue) at hawaii supermarket (for the first time). it's a very well known local asian market. there's a slight waft of durian in the air and there are garish christmas trimming decorations decorating the aisles.

went back to ebcla for the first time in a couple of months today. we tried to grab lunch at this one place called heavy noodling but that turned out to be a letter grade C, so that scared us away. we were thinking about eating at rowland heights, but one person said that there was a case of SARS there, so that also scared us away. we ended up going to some random chinese place in monterey park that looked busy...monterey park bbq. it was pretty good. we only paid $6 each after tax tip and splitting. nothing like the cheap food in new chinatown down here.

headed to urban mosaic tonite, since i wanted to continue to be regular there and i also didn't feel like doing work. after getting a free meal there, i went to boba delight with some AC lightbox kids. the hot tao milk tea was good. found out that there's the asian hip hop summit next week on friday...the end of my term and the nite before we go back to sf. checkin that out could be the perfect way to unwind after the final two stressful weeks of the term.

now's the start of the final push for the term! gotta get to work.

discovered yet again

hmm...they just posted my site on aarisings new sites again. that's kinda weird since i think i was added there a couple of years ago. altho i think this is sorta a different site than it was when i started.

way back when i started this site to merely journal the interesting new and creative experiences i had. that was when i was back in sf. now my life path has led me to LA to study graphic design full time at AC (for a second degree after working a few years...i always have to slip that one in.) i now encounter a ton of new experiences, people, and life revelations, adjusting to life in a new place...the first time i'm really away from the bay area.

now that i'm away from the bay, this blog has become away for me to stay in touch with a lot of people. (many of whom are in lumps - my young adult fellowship up in sf.) i've gotten in touch again with some other people, who have discovered my blog thru links on other pages, like aarisings. some LA people have gotten to know me pretty well, by following my adventures shared on this page. i wonder exactly which of my classmates and acquaintances down here in LA read the page. (on a random side note, it seems that LA people down here aren't as technologically adept as people up in SF.)

since i've become a compulsive camera carrier in the past 17 months since i've had my s30, i take pictures all the time of what ever's cool and interesting, new places i've been to, and different social settings. i post weekly shutterfly albums late sunday nite on my LA life weeklies. i guess it all adds up to a truman show documentary experience of my life sorta. hah.

well, who knows how long i'll be in LA. i still would like to be in SF after i decide to leave school (whenever that is...at least thru next summer). whenever the right opportunity entices. having a traveling, exploring mindset causes me to constantly be curious about exploring and discovering the different and best experiences. i'll be exploring munich, prague and vienna in a few weeks...lest there be an outbreak of SARS or something horrible like that. i'm definitely starting to look forward to that as a needed refresher and cultural stimulus

so that's the gw.com recap. any of you just tuning in or silently lurking around catching up with what i'm up to...please tag a comment or drop me a line.

time for me to study now. gots to write a paper on propaganda, draw a mini-comic about a coming of age of a young thai elvis, design a type poster based on the font akzidenz grotesk...and do a little paying work - writing some 3rd grade level - TOEFL style english passages.

pix-arama posted in my LA life weekly tomorrow.

hot illustration stuffs

check out 83 pictures of the best of the best from all of the illustration work put up on display at AC this past thursday. students are assigned spaces by lottery to put up elaborate displays for 24 hours.

seeing this definitely makes me wonder what i'm capable of if i were to go the illustration route. i guess i'll never know.

boomin broomball

i'm slightly sore. just slept for about 11 hours. i just played broomball with a bunch of evergreen la church people. dave and i got connected with thru may. it's interesting playing on a team with everyone and no one knows your name or who you are. most of em just knew that i was the crazy guy running around with all of the protective rollerblade gear. wearin it definitely empowers you...to go after the ball.

my gosh. i spent the last hour tweaking the code to get it back to how it was before.

sorta free friday

my daily blogging schedule has been off track as you can tell. this week was definitely pretty rough. with the exception of my 8 hour knock-out on monday, i don't think i've had more than 3 hours of straight sleep until last nite. but that sleep wasn't so great. i crashed on the couch trying to finish reading the paper (almost finished it) while waiting for my laundry.

spent most of last nite staying in and cleaning up. i did spend about a couple of hours wandering around earlier and exploring. went to the south pas farmer's market. that place is so great. lots of free samples. too bad i couldn't find anyone to go with me, but it was definitely relaxing wandering around there by myself, checking stuff out, trying samples of fresh fruit and foods. it's also too bad that it was dark already. woulda been nice to spend time out there while it was light...speaking of light, it's daylight savings time this weekend, right? time to spring forward!

the illustration scholarship displays were up yesterday. so much cool stuff. i'm just learning to draw compared to what most of them showed. it'll knock your socks off. i'll post the pix soon.

time to go to work!

i hate it when you change into a fresh pair of contacts, just to lose one the very next day!

all day all nite

i've slept three hours and have been up since 2am. had to do my work still before type class. lost the motivation last nite to work on stuff. that's the general feeling with all of my classmates, after we've poured ourselves into our scholarship portfolio. it's pretty anti-climactic. for me even more so, since i know how i pretty much blew it with my last rush hour of slop. oh well. gotta think about next time.

saw one guy's portfolio from my term that he submitted. some pretty nice clean stuff in there. he paid and had a book binded, perfect bound. i guess i could have done that too. he'll get something for sure.

class choices

on somewhat of an up note...i got the classes i think i want. just need to get into claypool's design class again. back for more punishment and meticulous craft. i hope i can get in.

i'll be taking design 2, type 2, graphic design 1, principles of visual narratives, history of visual communication. also currently signed up for recorded image, but i dunno about that class. don't think i wanna take a saturday class for the summer, altho i think i can flex my schedule to accomodate the sat weddings. if i drop it, i'll pick up another class. should it be form and iconography (logo and mark design) or a film narrative class to substitute -- language of the moving image? or even a drawing/entertainment class?

i gotta make some choices about what i wanna do and figure out my timeline. there are so many good classes here it definitely is like being a kid in a candy shop. next term should be a heavier load for me. i think i can handle it. i definitely wanna push myself especially since i'm probably not getting a scholarship, to make the most of my school buck. at least take on a heavier burden now, since none of the stuff that i'll be cranking out will make it into my professional portfolio. i'm still learning the basic design chops at this point.

in flux in sf

was surfing an sf agency and saw that sfi was acquired by bss. in wonder if that's some place i'd like to work in a couple of years. i think i know a couple of my creative ex-coworkers are there.

i interviewed at sfi way back when i was fresh out of college. wonder what it would be like to work there. i'm sure it's evolved a lot since the boom.

they have a really nice blog zine about design, branding and popular culture. it's called influx. i'm gonna start monitoring it now. i need to continue to be abrest on industry trends and be in touch reading with the real world...not just be stuck up on the design school enclave that's AC. it's always refreshing reading adweek and the wsj marketplace sections. i've been so slacking in reading my la times tho.

i think i'll take a nap. lots of work to do tonite. 2 more weeks left and i'm out. looking forward to the break. a nice trip and change of scenery will definitely recharge me. i need it.

the lots of work LA life weekly

not so much playing. ate out a couple of times mid-week. lots of pix of my work. here ya go...a paltry 54 pix.

charged up in the rear

i've been getting a lot of really strong static electricity zaps getting out of my car. sometimes so noticeable and surprising that it causes me to cry out. tonite as j and i were going to baccali for dinner, i got out of the car and yelped. i got another static electric charge. this time the zing from my super conductive car door had gone thru my jeans and hit me in the butt. i never thought that was possible. any one got an explanation for me?

maybe the electro magnetic field of my body is out of whack. maybe it has something to do with my internal energy or something...with circadian rhythms and chi out of whack.