Gura's Blog

2011-04-12T01:55:00.000-07:00

I have wondered a while whether I would ever reveal on this public blog more details about the journey I find myself on. A path that dramatically changed my perceptions about my identity and my relationships. It has tested me physically, spiritually and mentally. It has made me consider things I would have otherwise taken for granted. It has made me face the darkest sides of myself.

It has taken me 3 years to even get to this point. To write these words. To give voice to something that has frequently brought me to tears that rendered me speechless.

I would come to find it is an experience that is more normal than not, but one that is often experienced in silence, alone, anonymous.

In fact, I have been writing about the experience, just not here where one can attach my name to it, but somewhere else in the ether where I can be nameless. It has helped.

But the writer in me starts to call out, wants to give a voice to the unspoken. I just don't know if I'm ready.

is back to writing...

2010-11-12T11:20:00.001-08:00

I cracked open a blank journal yesterday and started writing. Alot has happened, alot is happening. Most of it I haven't been sharing publicly. In this day and age of blogging and facebook, that seems almost blasphemous.

Over the last few years all the talk shows and self-help books talked about honesty and talking to someone and telling someone. I believe it's important to be honest with oneself, as for being honest with everyone else, eh, they can probably get in line.

What is this world without noise. Without chatter. Why are there still some things people just don't talk about?

Going back

2010-08-04T00:44:00.000-07:00

One of my students recently went to the Exploratorium's Tactile Dome. A journey in complete darkness that you must feel your way through. The first time, you're just looking for the one way out. The next time through, you get a chance to feel around and see if you can find anything new.

The last few kali classes, I've been going back to the classic style. What I call the classic style is the style that I saw when I first practiced, what can be recognized as "typical" Filipino Martial Arts.

As I've watched the students practice, I've noticed some things that were missing. Little things. Subtle things. I had to go back. We've dropped stuff along the way.

I've been teaching for 12 years now and it feels like I'm beginning again. The first time around I kind of stumbled along trying to remember what was taught to me and repeating that method. This time around I'm getting a chance to see new things, how things connect, why this movement was needed to get to this movement. Each time I teach nowadays there really is something incredible to learn and uncover.

So I've been going back. The Classic Style. yes. The percussive left hand. We started with the left hand percussive because it's the only way anyone knew how to use it. Then people learned how to blend and manipulate. But then to go back to percussive really tests ones accuracy and sensitivity. When you return to something, do you go back to the way you did it then or are you able to return to it as another layer? Do you have a deeper understanding of what you did before? One of them simply defaulted to how they had learned it. I remember when I defaulted. I didn't think there was much more else you could do with the technique. Once learned, it was boring and repetitive. I just didn't know its potential.

Simply using the left hand was difficult for some. It forced them to move their trigger, stop using muscle, and learn to follow their weapon. Instead of forcing the weapon (typically right hand) to do everything (hold the weapon, generate power, manipulate for accuracy), we move the power and accuracy to the left hand. It's a switch in brain thinking. But when they did let go, you could see their entire bodies relax.

In high school, my track coach told me to "run faster." I didn't understand what that meant. I was running as fast as I possibly could go. I instinctively tried to contract my legs more, to harden, to run faster which only resulted in me going slower.

To go faster, one has to create mechanisms to spring them to go faster. The mind only knows one voluntary speed. The body has to be taught what faster feels like.

What it takes to actually go faster is contrary to the instinct the mind takes.I don't need more muscle to be hard, I need the muscle I have to relax. I need my joints to swing. I need muscle and joints to work together to store spring energy. I need less control to be in control.

Next week I think we will go pick up another piece we are slowly losing: to see and not see. Too too easy to fall back into the habit of tunnel vision in sparring.

We did a bit of it today and my student said, "I'm not a very good liar." in reference to how the technique uses some "magic". I told him, "I'm not lying to you, I'm showing you exactly what I'm doing. It's not my fault your looking in a different spot when it happens."

the circular nature of the spirit

2010-08-02T14:52:00.000-07:00

I've been reading posts from Eileen, Leny and Jean on Eileen's mom's reading talking about the Dawac, healers she remembers from her childhood.

At the same time, there's a facebook email thread that someone included me on about the roots of the word Kali. (There are constant complaints my Filipino Martial Artists, usually non-kali folks, who believe that since the word was not documented, then it couldn't have ever existed.) I keep trying to delete the thread, but it just keeps coming back.

I also watch a stroke recovery progress through the memories of their life, rebuilding and reconnecting.

All this leads me to how does one search for a forgotten past.

Much of the memory of the Philippines faded quickly from my parent's memories as soon as they set foot here. A consequence really of needing to focus on building a new life in a different country, which rolled into the craziness of kids and work. There are few things that remind them.

I remember my mom tell us a story here and there of her grandfather, the abulario/local healer. He walked on fire and didn't get burned. When I met him, he was near 80, deaf and blind. Not sure if he remembered my mother, his eyes always in half trance.

When I took up Kali, the sticks I brought home triggered other memories not just from my mother but from her siblings. How he had sticks, but never taught his own sons. How he moved just like me. How when he slept he raised his arm to the sky and no amount of force would bring that arm down. Without knowing it, I had stumbled upon a memory and lineage I didn't know existed before. Was I genetically programmed to move in this way? Was there still a spiritual connection that brought me to this place, to pick up where 2 generations had left?

As I carried these stories with me and told them to others, they too had stories. A collection of anting-anting. The trance healing dances of their mother. The more I explored this Kali movement, the more I triggered memories that people wanted to share as if they wanted to keep the memories together, connect them to something living today.

I've come to terms with the lack of "proof" or written knowledge. I'm tired of people wanting "proof" that Kali ever existed. What does it matter if it existed before if it exists now? Why can't I rewrite my own history in the way colonizers have rewritten mine for centuries at a time? Why must history always be written to be proven? Why can't I carry my history in my body?

My teacher always felt that we were discovering new techniques, only uncovering ones we had forgotten. We have been exploring the movement of our basic human structure for thousands of years, surely someone somewhere in that time did this movement in this way.

I have no issues with wanting to document what is currently known. But this inverse that if it isn't written down then it does not exists, irks me like bible fundamentalists. And I know they copied me on that "thread" to "hear" what I have to say about this. And while they may honestly just want to know, I refuse to walk into a discussion based on prepositions that if I cannot show proof of my name, then I do not exist. So I refuse to respond. Just because the Spanish wrote about Escrima, does not make the existence of Escrima more legitimate than something that is not documented. There's something very colonized about that idea.

Close relations of the person in stroke recovery ask each other, how old do you think he is now? We watch as his body relearns movement, his mind relearns his life. He memories and stories bounce around a general age range and never in linear form, more like an interwoven tapestry. They hover. If you could relive your life, would you forgive yourself? What bits of your life are retained, who do you remember, what do you remember? What parts do you hang onto and should you? it's like his mind is repacking his bags: folding, reshaping. His personality may reflect this fragmented memories: the brash young man, the young boy on his own, encounters that changed his life, regrets. He must rebuild, bit by bit. Who can say what "normal" is anymore?

In searching for the forgotten past, I treat it like a treasure hunt. Stories here and there giving me clues to something larger. I note things I hear repeated and confirmed as possible truths. The clues are not "substantial" for academic standards, but they are big enough for me. If our history is shattered where do the dust particles go? Do they still exist. Or are they hidden in plain view, the way we traded pagan gods and gave them Christian saint names?

I know there are questions of the past I will never have answered. I also know there are answers I have that I cannot reveal. There are many things in this world where writing them into words kills the very spirit we wish to pass on. There are some things that have to be experienced.

I had to come to terms with what I could not have and have taken pleasure in what remains. I see them as points on a strand. They repeat and connect. There are confirmations if they strum the right way. It is possible to seed these stories. It is possible to create your own. These stories, these affirmations, remind me that if it existed before, it can exist again.

Quadratus Lumborum

2010-07-21T21:28:00.000-07:00

Last couple of days I've had a stiffness in my back, kind of middle and the side. I got a massage and asked her to work on that.

I've always had issues with that side of the body. I could always bend more one way than the other. She said the muscle was the Quadratus Lumborum. And that she fines that when we feel vulnerable, it's this muscle that activates to protect us. It connects the lower back to the pelvis and runs just under the kidney.

Then it all made sense.

What I've been doing for my health. What I want in my life. The blockages I've been experiencing in those areas. I get it now.

It's all connected you see. The answer we want is always in front of us. Everything is a mirror: our bodies, our homes, what we wear, the people in our lives.

I think I'm going in the right direction. It was the first time with some help I could reach that muscle. I have a ways to go. Whenever I think I had already past a turning point, there is yet another turning point. I hope I have time.

there can only be one

2010-07-08T12:01:00.001-07:00

I know you are not yet whole. That the person before me is a fraction and fracture of your whole self. And yet, I do understand, that we both know this is for the best. Fractured selves feel pain readily, but I want you to know I leave in love. Hate is not the only source of Pain.

Up until this point you have known me and seen me as clearly as truth. Up until now you knew me better than myself and made sure I recognized my own lies. Never ever lie to yourself you told me and always held the mirror up so I could find my own truth.

Until today.

Today I do not know who you see. Your eyes that are always distant as if seeing everything from afar. So far, I can no longer feel your presence on this earth.

I do not know the woman you speak of when you talk of me. Have we fallen so far that you must fill in the gaps? You have made me who I am today but I am not that woman. And yet, the message is clear. It is what exists in the periphery. This is truth.

Doors have closed between us. The path diverged below my feet. It is time. As you said, there can only be one. I do not deny that this is true. Yes, you are the one.

Perhaps you felt the tremors between us. Perhaps I felt them too but didn't want to.

In parting I walked away. In the end you've never lied to me. In parting you told me to turn my back, and to not follow you. We both know where that path ends. You gave one last message to my guardian, let her know she has always been loved.

In love, there is can only be one truth.

elements

2010-07-02T10:30:00.000-07:00

Earth creates metal that attracts water which nourishes wood that feeds fire that burns everything to earth.

Earth muddies the water that douses fire that melts metal that cuts wood that breaks up earth.

Then there are yin and yang states of each one, yet another permutation of these cycles. I don't really understand all of their yin and yang states, so I will attempt to seek possible examples of what they might be.

Yang fire will clear an overgrown forrest and open it up to new growth. Is Yin Fire like the earth's core or the sun's fusion?

Yang water will cause great flooding, yin water will carve something as spectacular as the Grand Canyon.

Is Yang Metal like armored plating and yin metal the edge of a blade?

Is Yang Earth an earthquake or a mountain? Is Yin Earth the dust that settles on riverbanks eventually creating solid land?

Yang Wood can be like the ivy that envelops and kills a tree or the grandeur large redwoods or other canopy trees that form the forrest. Is yin wood the sprouts of plants that find their way in every crevice? Who they can split sheer rock and find a place to hold onto and grow?

Lava is an awesome combination of fire, earth and metal.

There is always another layer.

To draw the sky

2010-06-30T10:57:00.000-07:00

How do we know what we don't know? How do we know what we can't see? What is that space between leaves, the shape of shadows, the space in between in between? How between sounds like the Tagalog word "bituin" or star. And like the stars, the space in between is vast and unknowing, yet shines in the night sky to let us know it is there.

Bringing it back online

2010-06-30T10:48:00.000-07:00

I was offline for quite some time. The offline real life has a way of doing that. Most of my day to day online interaction happens on facebook nowadays. But things have happened that have made me consider going back to blogging.

I'm on a new journey.

It's a bit of a lonely journey in that it's time to put the pieces together. Hopefully an incredible journey of uncovery, exploration, imagination, and if all goes well, in the end mastery, though there's no guarantee.

Previously, I blogged about random anything. But I think now, I will focus this writing around the journey.

I recently posted to my cousin's blog where he was discussing media and communication. I said, "blogging is just about as close to being archaic on the internet as email." Blogging has become "old-school".

But there's a benefit to "old school" and in this case there is the luxury of longer sentences, stream of consciousness that go beyond 140 characters, which I believe leads to longer meditations on ideas versus sound bytes and attention deficit quality of other communications. And that's what I need. I need to meditate.

the quiet life

2009-08-03T15:24:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted here much at all though I've wanted to post reactions on the various personal and/or global experiences over the past couple of months...but then I haven't.

And while I continue my avid presence on facebook, even there, my public life has come down to chit-chat snippets.

I see all the links to community events and think briefly about going, but then don't. Sometimes there are truly other things that get in the way, others, I get the feeling of, "that's not where I need to be."

I've listened closely to that "need to be voice" as it's served me well.

And I know as I add people to my facebook list of people I met in various community events and organizations, they must wonder, while I also wonder, "I haven't seen in a long time."

I told someone several months ago that I found myself in an "observation" phase. I still find myself there. Quietly taking care of things that I could not take care of when taking care of the community.

Someone asked if I was going to participate in this event next year and my reply was, "I have not yet decided how I plan to participate." I think my choice of words are important. I don't attend things just to attend them so much anymore. I haven't been that interested in attending Filipino events much either. Because the question is, how am I engaging and participating and not much simply attending. All I know is that this is not the direction.

I'm not sure if there is any direction right now and perhaps my direction that I need to delve is not horizontal but vertical. That perhaps my direction is the depth of the plain.

I don't think this quiet life will last forever. I do envision a time when I will return to "saying" something either here or artistically or even socially. But that time is not now.

It's real, not practice

2009-06-12T00:17:00.000-07:00

Sometimes people wonder when we actually get to practice the moves we learn in kali in real life. It's not always apparent. But it is there.

It has been interesting these last few weeks that I find the lessons of kali reverberate not just in what I'm teaching in class but in every day life. There are some choices I've made to put me in a certain direction, there are others soon to be made that will test my "eye" for quality. And the consequences for these decisions are very real, they both impact my life and others.

I have to take into account not just the present day but the future and I have to predict the next few years the same way I set up and predict the direction of my opponents. I have to understand the wave that I create from this choice.

I have come to understand the choices or more often than not the non-choices people have made before me. To not act, to not choose, is a choice that more often than not postpones the inevitable to the future, which in this case is my present. The choice doesn't go away, it just makes whoever gets the choice down the line even harder. One of the difficulties of the budget situation is that people want to choose not to choose, to hope someone else will bail them out or grant them forgiveness. Neither is around in any abundance. But what it does is that because individuals at the bottom cannot make the hard decisions, that decision moves up the chain and the farther and farther you are, the larger the blade you need to make a slice.

There is only so much one can do to avoid being cut, but no doubt one will get cut. How deep of a wound do you wish to suffer?

This is where my training and I mean all of my training from the kali to the leadership development to even 6th grade crossing guard captain has brought me to.

I know that change is painful. Mostly because people do not change until it hurts. It being whatever it is they're in now. The other incentive of course is pleasure. They change because the thing they are going to is more pleasurable. But pleasure is difficult to measure once someone is acclimated to the pain of their present state.

I know from kali a delay in decision making, a delay in acting determines how deep is the wound.

I regret I was unable to made these choices earlier and yet I did not fully have the tools to do it. But regret has no place here. The proper choice is both about its decision and its timing. And I have to believe that when I make the decision, when I act will be the proper time for everything to happen.

I imagine in the Year of the Ox, an Ox plowing the rows in a field. I hope that if I keep plowing that by the end of this year I will have a nicely sown field that will give me great harvests in the future. I can only hope.

watching a lifetime

2009-05-31T00:41:00.000-07:00

It was rather appropriate watching "Up" tonight, the latest Pixar movie. There's an opening sequence that fast forwards through the main character's life with his wife. It is a sequence that is succinct and effortless that shows a man who once experienced joys and adventure and even now alone attempts to continue on this journey together.

I had spent most of the day at the funeral for Uncle Cef. He was 81. He and his wife were one of numerous families part of the Barkada. Many of them lived in Oakland, and many of them were nurses. They raised their children together and many of their children's children consider each other cousins even though there are no blood ties. For many years, I thought us and the Barkada were the only Filipinos in Oakland.

When my parents arrived in the US in 1970, they were met at the airport by my dad's uncle, the first cousin to his father. When they arrived, they stayed at his house, and for a time next door at Uncle Philip's. They were adopted by this Barkada. My sister's first babysitters were these women. Auntie Esther, a nurse at Kaiser, had been there the day each of us were born to welcome us into the world. My sister and I called most of them auntie and uncle. Their children, about 6-7 years older than us, were our cousins, though technically they would have been 2nd cousins once removed. In a time, when my parents had left their parents and complete social structure in the Philippines, the Lomuljos, the Monteclaros, the Prados, were the family parties we attended on a regular basis. The graduations, the weddings, the baptisms and now funerals. Mostly funerals now.

With my parents out of town, and my sister pregnant, I was left as the lone representative of our family to pay our respects for Uncle Cef. The "old" family as I called them. It's been some time since we last saw them. Uncle Cef and Auntie Esther had come to our wedding 3 years ago. We had seen him and his family all together for their 50th wedding anniversary 2 years ago.

Yesterday and today, we listened as family, friends and their grandchildren, memorialized him: his humor, his strength, his helpfulness. The priest had gathered the family at the casket for the final prayers. I flashed back to their wedding anniversary, as the same priest had the family gather around them then too. A moment of great joy juxtaposed with great sadness in my mind.

I re-acquainted myself with the aunties and their children, who of course all knew me way back when. I learned the names of their children and their spouses. Their children's children seemed confused by all the strangers that knew their family. Where did these people come from? How did they know their family? Even though, I could say to many of them, I remember when your parents were married, and when you were born. I remember. I know.

I came to discover other people I had known from other circles, connecting again here. A fellow from work, a student from kali class. They were friends of the grandchildren, the newer family. The grandchildren were strangers to me. I was connected to the earlier years, their grandparents, their parents before we had all moved on with our lives. The circles that repeat and reconnect were palpable.

I had brief conversations about where I am now. It was just a sight to recognize faces and remember when we were all a bit younger. That seemed like enough, to see that we were still here. To remember a time when life wasn't complicated.

When I left the reception and greeted Auntie Esther, she seemed smaller than ever, impish now, but still always with the loving sparkle in her eye. "I remember" she tells me, "I know you. I know you when you were a baby and your sister too. And now all of you so grown up. I remember. I know. Thank you for representing your family. Regards to your parents."

I looked around the room with a mixture of sadness, joy, and gratitude. Those who I had known and who had known me were now passing. I would no longer know their grandchildren as those lines grew thin. Yet, I was grateful to them for what they had given my family, for us. How they had opened their doors, their guidance, to a young couple separated from what they had known to provide the example how the values of family, community and barkada played themselves out on this American plateau.

I don't know much about the aunties and uncles of the barkada. I was too young to learn their last names, or know about where they originated in the Philippines nor how they came here. I only know of the family parties in orchid and rose filled backyards and how I had to mano po a line of elders in the dining room. I am anak ni Rebecca at Narcing. The second daughter. How tall I had become from the baby they had once held in their arms.

The cycle of this "family" is coming to a close as the memory of our connections disappear with the Barkada generation. The elder children in each family will complete for their parents the last of the obligations and tributes to the other families when their parents pass and this will close the circle. This is the way of things. We have already gone on to form our own barkadas and families that are still growing. Those too will come to this moment of goodbye.

"Up" seemed to reflect this day. What memories do we take with us? What do we hold on to? How do we continue on? How did that life teach us how to live this one?

Thank you Uncle Cef for what you brought to this world. Goodbye.

fyi

2009-05-29T17:24:00.001-07:00

thank you to everyone who emailed about the post I pulled. Your well wishes and prayers are well received. As an FYI, he's out of ICU and into rehab. Alot of work ahead of him, but he's inspired with the reward of "real food".

pulled one

2009-05-22T14:35:00.000-07:00

i pulled a recent posting mostly because I didn't want to be as public as I ended up being. But thank you everyone for your kind words in reaction to that post.

grateful

2009-05-22T11:00:00.000-07:00

Over the years we've explored truth. The school's name uses the Visayan word for truth, Kamatuuran. And how do you know when you find truth? Can it be possible to find pure truth, stuff that isn't tainted by the slightest bias? There are honest emotions, but do they automatically remove truth.

2009 has been for me an exploration of emotion. Ironic as my training has often been about controlling emotion and keeping it in check to be able to think clearing in times of action. But this should not be confused with ignoring emotion or believing in its non-existence. There is always a time to mourn.

I find my emotion rising in moments when it is time, in the quiet moments alone when there is not one else to face but yourself. There is a difference between the temporary and the permanent state. That momentary sadness is different from the depression of being unable to experience joy.

It is part of what the body and soul endure to come to a peace and understanding of experiences that have gone by. It is a new thing to navigate. And I cannot yet possibly imagine the depths in which this path may go.

But I awoke today with the sincerest of joy and gratefulness in my heart. And I recall when my grandmother passed, my family had spilled out to the hallway of her room in tears and a nurse comment, "someone was well loved here." That to love and appreciate we risk the greatest of temporary sadness in order to continue to experience the recurring joy and love.

Love endures.

it's easy to doubt

2009-05-18T23:45:00.000-07:00

It's easy to replay the past in one's mind and wonder if you did everything you could. It's easy to research what you might have done and question everything that happened because it doesn't match the perfect way. It's easy to be critical when the results are a probability instead of a reality. It's easy to beat yourself up and feel guilty about not doing enough or not doing something exactly right. You will always be wrong. Hindsight might be 20-20, but it shouldn't make you blind.

My training, my training has always told me to be critical, to question, to improve. There is a fine line between critical study and guilt ridden regret. The difference is the result. Guilt is based on what could have been. Study is about what you'll do next time. It's a vital difference.

The difference between carrying a burdensome past or building a new future.

Today was a time to reflect on the weekend. Was tricky to concentrate on work with a play by play re-looping in my mind. I cried remembering my fear and doubt. I cried remembering the sadness and my own helplessness.

Then an email asking, should we have done more?

And the answer is always, "we did what we could do at the time we needed to do it."

How do you know?

Because someone is alive to hug his kids, hear his wife say I love you, and for him to reply, "I'm a very lucky guy."

This is what really needs to replay in our minds. This is the proof that we did something right, maybe not perfectly, maybe not exactly the way it should have been, but that doesn't matter. Hugs matter. I love you matters. Being alive to experience those things matters.

there's a reason

2009-05-18T09:12:00.000-07:00

Correction: Saturday was the 3rd time in my life when 911 had to be called. All 3 times, not for me, but for people who happen to be in front of me.

Saturday was the 2nd time in my life when 911 had to be called. I guess all those human physiology classes and Red Cross emergency classes have paid off. I guess that means God had me at the right place at the right time to help my friend get immediate assistance after his stroke. I pray for his wife who must now be the emotional and physical strength for their family. She is a strong woman who can endure.

While still cognizant and talkative though slow and slurred, my friend still has a long way to go, alot of therapy ahead of him. We are grateful for hope.

I was glad to have been there for them. I wish I could do more, but now we are just in the waiting period as the doctors figure out how it happened and try to find the stroke source to lessen the chances of second one, so he can proceed to rehab.

It is now Monday and the happenings of Saturday morning are just now replaying through my mind. I must remind myself, that we couldn't have done anything better than what we already did. That he got to the hospital and was able to get treatment in the first 3 hours and the hospital has a specialist unit in strokes. To be grateful that it happened the way it did, when the alternatives could have been much worse.

His wife remains at his bedside reminding him how much she loves him, reminding him who's a lucky guy, and that he still has alot to do, alot of things to see. It's up to him now to find his way back.

It is what he has for years trained in me. The test of your skill is not in practice, but somewhere out there at a time when you need it the most. Who you are then, is who you really are. It is how you live your life.

not here, there

2009-04-27T12:22:00.000-07:00

Haven't posted much here for various reasons. Mostly because other parts of my life have needed a bit more privacy. But I have been online, mostly on facebook and still contemplating the necessity/usefulness/do-I-really-want-to of twittering.

Rhett and I are working on a couple of books together. One is on getting into college. We're finally writing down all the advise we've given to younger cousins on how to get in, though Rhett is far more successful at getting people into med school (which will be the next book). So I've been studying how other people sell their own books outside of the poetry world and the use of Web 2.0 (twitter, facebook, etc) in marketing and promotion. I'm still not sure how it works. Though picking up hints and tricks here and there.

I have also been posting here posting about the photos and photo products we've been selling online. The photo below is BY FAR our most popular item with someone buying one every other week or so. It's easy to see why. We have an 11x14 of it hanging in our home.

Eiffel Tower Postcard by exquisitephoto
Make postcards On zazzle
Browse Ile-de-France Postcards

Live or Memorex?

2009-03-30T23:54:00.000-07:00

I've always been fascinated by technology and how we both we communicate with each other through it but also how it shapes what we say. So when the Kindle 2 came out and it was a product that people were really engaging in, I immediately thought about how does this affect poetry. We know it's a medium for novels and prose text, but what about the poem? Since I still had the layout files for Kali's Blade, I decided to transform the book into Kindle form. Because if I really want to know how this medium changes the face of poetry, I might as well dive right into it.

And not only put it up on Amazon, but also sell it at the special price of $0.99. Unlike the web, which shaped language, the Kindle brings about another important avenue for authors, the price of poetry. How does interacting with poetry on your iPhone change the experience? How does not having physical media to print change how authors make their work accessible to the public? And is the public willing to pay for it? If so, how much?

We know a good poetry book from a small press might sell 100 copies. 1000 copies would be astounding! But even author's who get their texts on their friend's reading course lists will be lucky to hit 1000 copies sold. Let's be honest. Plus how much of the actual cost of the book does an author really get? Not much because of the labor of production. But how many copies could you sell on-line for the right price? And while less and less people have room for shelves, there is growing storage on their computers. But do we want to interact with poetry through technology?

Right now Amazon isn't charging people to put their books on Kindle, so any price is a good price for now, but I suspect like the cuts publishers and distributor's take on paper books, how much Amazon eventually charges will affect the profitability of all of it. And since we're talking business, what of the publisher's, small print distributor's, and book stores? And even the non-businesses like Libraries? Imagine that libraries truly simply become cafes with reading tablets, instead of vast halls of books.

I'm not judging right or wrong, good or bad, I'm simply exploring possibilities. I've already had some lively exchanges with Jean and I'm looking forward to having lively exchanges with any of you!

Kindle Edition (will be up in a few days)

or

Print Edition

drama on the court

2009-02-12T00:29:00.000-08:00

I've been attending rehearsals all week to prep for the kali demo we're doing during the Warriors game Thursday night for Filipino Heritage Night.

As Tuhan described us, we're not the typical martial arts demo with drills and tricks. Over the years we went from the drills to bringing a more theatrical element to the demonstrations. Part of this stemming from how we've used the kali in "non-martial arts" settings like poetry readings, modern dance shows, and theatrical presentations. It's less about the techniques we're actually doing, but the story of the lives of the people.

It's been a personal endeavor to not only bring a kali demo to a non-martial art audience such as in "When I was Jaspar John's Filipino Lover" for the Small Press Traffic Jubilee but to also use it to bring other arts into a martial arts venue, like when Eileen came to read during a women's martial arts camp.

Many martial artists I've talked to have often lamented how audiences just don't really care for the martial arts demo. Alot of that has to do with the saturation of martial arts fighting in just about every movie and show that has a fight scene. But also I think in a world where most weapons that are used one never has to ever see the person you're attacking or the one attacking you, hand-to-hand combat in close proximity is an anomaly, something found out of context. Where fighting scenes are often thrown into movies to keep the action going but not to progress the plot, we don't really understand what it means anymore.

Which is why I've enjoyed the direction we (and I mean in how Tuhan and the school has approached demos) have taken to bring a context back to the martial arts. To have the audience understand how it integrates, to give it a different life with story and character, to give them a chance to find the connection with themselves. That this has meaning not just to the people who practice but to the people in the audience.

I won't give too much of the plot away, but I get to be the villain. Muwahahahaha! Villains are fun! I've played the heroine a few times before which was fun too, but the villain always gets to play it up and I get a chance to just throw myself out there on the floor. I'm looking forward to the cathartic release. Kali has always provided me with what I needed at the moment.

public service announcement: duets that should never happen

2009-02-08T21:14:00.001-08:00

In watching the Grammies, here are some awards missing from the ceremony:

Duets that should not happen or are clear examples that one half of the duet is really not as talented as well they might be.
Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift - Miley totally oversang her part. She should thank Taylor Swift for graciously adjusting
Stevie Wonder and Jonas Bros - um well, yeah, just about anyone next to Stevie might as well look like a bad back up singer

Best intro of a performer:
Craig Fergeson

Most inspiring and dramatic performance and entrance:
Jennifer Hudson - The way her voice came on the stage before we could see her was a testament to her talent

Best backup performances:
all the choirs and string orchestras - can't sound bad with those backing you up. oh yeah and plastic bucket drum corp rocks too; marching band, not so much

Held his own:
Jaime Fox filling in for the Four Tops tribute

Only guy who could get the ENTIRE Staples Pavilion singing along:
Neil Diamond - how can you resist Sweet Caroline, ooh ooh ooh!

Sad that they were an asterisk to the entire show:
lifetime achievement awardees - seemed like the whole night it was like Oh and btw, we gave these people an award

reset

2009-02-02T08:51:00.000-08:00

The body has a way of resetting itself. I spent this past weekend resetting. It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. At least nothing some sleep and ibuprofen can't handle.

We even reset a room by removing a large table in it that mostly encouraged piles of stagnant stuff. The new space makes me happy. In the clean up, I found an unused spafinder and see's candy gift certificate.

Waking up this morning I find myself in a bit of a daze. Partially wanting to just hide out some more, and linger. I'll have to save that for another day. Perhaps when I get around to using the spafinder card.

perspective

2009-01-22T11:11:00.000-08:00

A friend on facebook commented, she couldn't wait for year of the rat to be over.

Looking back over the year, it was a year of so many new experiences and milestones. Of realizing potential that was there and of trusting that that potential will manifest itself into something real.

It has marked what has been set to be the next 12 years of my life, of all the things this will include. Though not the greatest starts, more like sputtering trials, there is hope that the pieces of my life will get into gear.

A year of firsts can be an emotional rollercoaster with the newness of things elevating both the joy and tragedy of the moment. It as helped a great deal to gain perspective from people with much more experience with all of this than I have. There's something to be said about a trusting yet nonchalant voice in the midst of what at the moment was quite a personal disappointment. There are times when one doesn't need empathy, one simply needs perspective.

That all of this is not as hard or difficult or traumatizing as it may seem at the moment. It is simply a small thing. And an experience that may open the door to something greater, so stop the quibbling, get a move on, it's not an end, it's a hiccup.

There are still a few scary hurdles, no doubt. Risks to be taken. But it all seems less scary when it really isn't a setback or an end, but a means to a beginning.

Year of the Ox is coming in. A time of resolve and steadfastness. I'm looking forward to it.

funny for the day

2009-01-15T22:55:00.000-08:00

In regards to the airplane that crash landed in the Hudson, a co-worker said,

"After that, I'm totally going to pay attention to the emergency evacuation procedures and stop playing my DS. I just figured that if we crashed we would all automatically die, so what's the point? who knew those flotation things even work?"

OK I thought it was funny, but I can get into that morbid funny bone state at times.

funny moments on TV

2009-01-13T23:17:00.000-08:00

I was watching that new show called the Doctors. The one woman on the panel is an OB/GYN.

Two funny things:

1. There was a very nice couple in the audience. The wife looked to be like 7 months pregnant. The OB/GYN talks about how women have the choice between a vaginal or c-section and each has pros and cons. The guys didn't understand why women just don't go vaginal and go c-section if it looks like plan v doesn't work. But the OB/GYN was super adamant that women should be informed and choose as the medical establishment can't really agree on a best way.

And here's the kicker, while the OB/GYN is arguing for choice, she says, "if YOU only knew all the different ways a vaginal birth can go bad, then you wouldn't be saying that!" pan to pregnant woman in the audience with this shocked expression of "OMG how am I going to get this thing out of me?" I mean she had real fear and dread on her face about the idea of giving birth. um, yeah. maybe we should have left the pregnant woman in ignorant bliss. Sometimes we don't need to know what doctor's are thinking.

2. The hubby noticed her eyebrows and the furrows in the OB/GYN doctor's forehead. He, as is his way, became really shockingly distressed about the asymmetry of her eyebrows, because well, messed up eyebrows disturb him. That in and of itself is funny. But then he also became very distressed by the deep furrows which he said almost made her look Klingon-ish. OMG! His hysteria was hysterical! Though this occurrence was not as funny when he pointed out the eye make up of a KQED fundraising spokeswoman that was downright scary and made her eye pop out every time she lifted her eyebrow which was often. But I digress.

Hey sometimes you have to find the entertainment in entertainment.

started a new blog yesterday

2009-01-02T10:34:00.000-08:00

I started a new blog yesterday, though at this point I'm not ready to reveal publicly its location. I haven't quite decided yet. I might not ever. I did find it helpful to finally be able to write about things that are only semi-public at this point in my life.

It's been a while since I've written just for myself.

a brand new year around the corner

2008-12-29T11:02:00.000-08:00

2008 was a building year for me. By the end of 2007 I had been thrust into new leadership positions and areas of steep learning curves. A shift had been made, thus 2008 was about getting my mind, body and spirit to adjust to those shifts.

By the end of 2008, I think I came out of it on a very good note. I still had learning curves to go, but I had good momentum, particularly in the leadership arena. And in the end surprised myself and was surprised by the recognition I was receiving. One of my last messages was that training time was over, and that I had the skills to run with it.

As as my direction turned yet another door opened. One that will dramatically change not only my life but the lives around me. A direction I've always wanted to go in, and glad I'm here, but still feeling a bit timid about being able to do this. It is overwhelming on so many different levels and even more so after all these holiday celebrations. But I guess that's not the real question, because like it or not there is no turning back.

If 2008 was the building year, 2009 is the being year. There is no question now who I've become, and no more reason for me to question it any longer, especially when there are so many people recognizing it in me. It's not so much believing in myself as it is believing in them, in the people who have watched me come to this point and new all along without a doubt that I would make it here.

At this moment there seems to be no room for the past or the future, just room for the present. The future I can't even imagine and the past seems like a completely different life. So living in the present seems good for now. Take each day as it comes. Knowing the eventfulness that 2009 will bring, taking each day as it comes might be the best thing to do.

G-G-Great Reads for your winter reading

2008-12-18T02:31:00.000-08:00

Hey folks, Galatea Resurrection Numero 11 contains Katherine Levy's review of Kali's Blade as well as a long list of other possible reads this holiday season!

In addition, Senor Priego has come out with the The Amazing Adventures of Gravity & Grace.

two days seems a lifetime away

2008-12-14T08:42:00.000-08:00

We had our Leadership program graduation on Thursday. I had been selected by my peers to be one of the two student speakers. It was quite an honor. And while I had no idea what I was going to say until finishing up a little after midnight just 9 hours prior to giving the speech, it was very well received. I was stunned by the praise.

It was a whirlwind of a program that really changed the way I viewed my job at Cal. I've actually come to see it as an actual career. I never really thought I would have a career, but here I am.

The graduation was filled with several campus leaders including Chancellor Birgeneau and the two Associate Chancellors. It was my first chance to actually hear Birgeneau speak. And while I've been impressed by the stances he's taken on diversity and affirmative action, after seeing him in person, I'm even more impressed by his walking the walk. For all my years at Cal, I have never seen a Chancellor's cabinet as diverse as this one. He's created several posts that truly bring leadership in the areas he's concerned about: sustainability and diversity.

In the same way Chancellor Tien was often a robust and engaging personality that drew people to him, Chancellor Birgeneau is relatively soft spoken but look at the people around him, the ones who come to Cal because of him, and you begin to understand a man of immense integrity.

The two Associate Chancellors at the graduation were women. One, Linda Williams, who was recently hired from the Office of the President was our keynote speaker. Many people may have heard of her from the SF Chronicle reports on the compensation "scandal". What was crazy about that article is that she did nothing wrong, didn't break any laws, and followed policy. Now the policy wasn't the best thing in the world, but she wasn't in a position to change that policy but the article made her sound like she was evil for doing it. The policy has since been changed.

What's impressive about Linda Williams is that she started out as an administrative analyst and has risen through the ranks. The other impressive thing about her is her frankness and ability to hold onto the things that ground her that allow her to keep going while being attacked. I don't know about you, this is the first time I've met an Associate Chancellor at Cal who was an African American woman. She didn't speak in that austerity you would think of Associate Chancellors, since previously most cabinet positions were of faculty who had Phds. But she still spoke with the authority of experience and confidence of knowing who she is.

The "scandal" the SF Chronicle tried to point out, ironically, is common practice amongst companies that are downsizing. It came straight from the consultant playbook as the Office of the President was reducing its size and staffing. However, what that corporate playbook didn't consider, which doesn't even exist in the corporate world really, is that staff could move within the system. If a company lays off X number of people, those people are not going to find work in some other branch of the company a few months later, unlike in UC. The policy was indeed shortsighted, but it has been rectified.

The real irony of all these SF Chronicle articles, is that they talk about how much of the taxpayer's dollars are wasted, which lowers UC credibility in financial times and makes legislatures more like to cut UC. However, when there is less funding from the state, the costs get funded elsewhere and those two areas are student fees and corporate partnerships. Remember the BP partnership that so many people rallied against? Well, lack of state funding forces UC's hand to go in that direction more and more. Traditionally, endowments at UC are not as high as their private school counterparts since alumni who pay taxes in the state figure their taxes eventually go back to UC, but the reality is that less and less of that money goes back to education.

And how does one be a leader in these kinds of times? How do you keep going? How do you maintain a sense of self when every decision is scrutinized?

Now that the leadership program is done, these are the kinds of questions I ponder now. And while I now have a career, I'm not quite sure where I would like to climb. The high from Thursday seems a lifetime away, but maybe it's because I'm now living a different life.

step it up

2008-12-01T10:59:00.000-08:00

If I'm reading the signs correctly, each turn seems to indicate that I need to step things up, need to move things along, for the time of waiting is nearing a close. Yet, I need to be sure in my timing and diligent with the details.

I ran hurdles a few times in high school. We didn't have a big track team, it was a handful of people, so I got to do alot of events I normally would never have been asked to do. It's a similar feeling. In running hurdles I always had a bit of doubt in my stomach that worried about smashing and crashing over the hurdle, catching a back leg or worse catching a front foot. I can see why horses sometime pull up in those equestrian events. It's not like it was an event we practiced much.

Next week I've been selected by my peers to give the graduation speech for our leadership program. I don't know what to say yet. It's quite an honor to be selected as a leader amongst leaders as it were. But I have to admit there has always been a bit of back and forth with me, taking on the spotlight and being back up. I've been known to thrive in the spotlight, take the leadership role when necessary. I'm compelled to really.

But in these moments where I stop and think and get a chance to look around, there's a part of me that is always a step behind, who didn't get the memo about all of this. Especially how the days and years go by faster and faster. Even the person you think you are is not completely the person you are.

For a brief moment, there is a second when I look around and think this is not who I am. But the trick is, not to run away from where your journey has taken you, but to incorporate and bring those sides of yourself together because there's no going back. And the only way to see yourself with truth and clarity is to know where you are. It isn't a struggle if you don't want it to be.

The Babaylan book is coming out soon. My essay in it was more a continuation of Coming Full Circle. It feels right that this essay is coming out now. The time of waiting will soon be over. The time to declare is already here.

head and shoulders

2008-11-24T13:10:00.000-08:00

We've been going to a yoga class once a week. Yes, we, the hubby and I. After several weeks o the Wii Fit, it gave the hubby confidence that he would actually do a yoga class. Hell, he does the tree pose better than I can.

The instructor at the club is quite good and knows how to make corrections in people's bodies and gives alternatives for the people who can't do the poses to the entirety. We get there early and often the instructor of the kick boxing class just before it often tries to honestly promote the class, but you can hear the snarkiness in her voice. What can I say? Yoga is slow and most people only know how to go fast.

I've noticed that I still have alot of stiffness in my upper back and shoulders. I can't raise my arms straight above my head. Maybe if someone moved them into position I could hold them there, but otherwise I can't get them there. I always like yoga class as I always feel taller and lighter afterwards.

This past weekend had kali seminar on double weapons, which was quite a workout for the upper back areas, then went to Sunday class where my body told me, that this was enough.

So here I am Monday, resting in bed with the laptop and a hot compress wrapped around my shoulders, hoping to loosen up all the muscles that have gone awol on me. And I thought I was making such progress too! Though I find myself still doing a bit of work, since I can prop myself and the laptop in such a way that I can still rest, which I can't do even in my ergonomic workstation and chair.

I'm hoping this is my one step back to make two steps forward which is a typical habit in my body. But I guess after I heal from this, I should look to strengthen and lengthen.

getting my life back, but not really

2008-11-24T11:52:00.000-08:00

The last month been spending finalizing our paper for the Leadership program I've been involved with in the last year on Change Management in Energy Efficiency Computing. It was a really challenging research topic on how to create change at UC Berkeley. Considering I had spent alot of my undergrad years wondering how change happens on a large bureaucratic campus, and now 10 years after graduating participating in a project that looks into that very topic.

For Berkeley it comes at a timely occasion. As the campus looks to conserve funding and expenses, plus has pledged to lower green house gasses, finding ways for the campus to adopt technology faster helps on both ends.

I have to say that I lucked out on this topic and the group I was with. While I don't think the group was adverse to conflict, we also weren't prone to arguing for the sake of arguing. Maybe it was because it was a tangible topic or that we had so much work to do and so much data to cover we just didn't have time to argue. In all it was a very good balance and in the end I wouldn't have wished for a better crew to work with.

I was team lead for the last two weeks which left me with leading the group to get the paper to the copier and get our presentation ready a week later.

Our presentations for all the papers went really well. Some comments from our sponsors who were the VC Administration, VC Research, and the CIO of the campus included that they thought the 5 year plan was "doable" (that was great to hear since we had never done a 5 year plan for the campus), but that we gave them things that they could do right now. One of them even printed the flow chart that we created on how IT change happens on the campus and had it in his pocket with him. Plus we got through the presentation with plenty of time to spare for questions. I was assigned the shorter presentation part on explaining the technology to a non-techie crowd, and the thinking on the fly part of Q&A, as we anticipated that the crowd might ask more techie questions, which they did.

The Assistant Chancellor as well as much of the Chancellor's cabinet was in attendance. I remember in undergrad how I didn't know any of the names of the people who actually run the campus and how their realm was such a foreign concept and here I was presenting to them and pondering how they think and what kind of information do they need to know. The Assistant Chancellor came up to us later heaping much praise on how she was amazed at our transformation from just a year ago. She was our program mentor for a few of us.

All in all, probably one of my best days I've ever had working at UC Berkeley. I was telling a friend I felt like something has changed. He replied, it really changed a year ago. Heh. I guess it did change a year ago, it's just taken me a while to get used to it and finally feel the actual change in motion. The day of presentations was the first time I had felt like I had a career instead of a job. I've certainly known that since becoming a manager I've been seeing a different side of Berkeley, a much more exciting side where I get to work with an even larger range of people.

The group is going through a bit of withdrawal, figuring out what to do with all this spare time and figuring out how to get back into doing our regular work. Fortunately for me, my group is actively involved with a couple of the implementations so this paper has gone from research to reference guide, which is exciting. Getting a chance to test out what we came up with, plus being involved with a project that really makes an impact both economically and environmentally for the campus is quite satisfying.

All those years of community organizing and campaigns in the end was change management, so it's funny, how I feel like this is a new beginning for me, yet coming full circle and heading around for another turn. Year of the Rat is always an interesting year of surprises.

Will the real Sarah Palin please stand up!

2008-10-31T21:02:00.000-07:00

We thought it would be fun to see how many Sarah Palins we could muster for the office Halloween party. So 4 of us got out our knee high boots, fanciest power suit, and various accessories.

Since I couldn't find a pair of glasses, I went for the pre-Palin years as Miss Wasilla 1984 complete with sash and flute, though I could no longer play mostly because my braces got in the way. I attached a toy MK47 with McCain-Palin stickers in the proper red, white, and blue. One the Palins worked on her Alaskan accent, while another attached various price tag stickers on her clothing and yet another decided to show off her hockey mom skills. We didn't have a Joe the Plumber or a Joe Six Pack, so we settled for the Six Pack body armor of the Dark Knight.

New Manager

2008-10-29T23:13:00.000-07:00

Our manager retired just about one year ago. I thought he was going on a long vacation, so he asked me to be acting manager. Then a week before he went on vacation, he announced his retirement. So, the Acting Manager position became an ongoing thing. It's been quite a learning curve since then.

I actually found that I enjoy management. A couple of years ago I knew I was starting to feel burned out on doing desktop support. All the skills that I had acquired organizing cultural events, participating in political campaigns, producing books and publications and strategical thinking from kali started coalescing together.

More recently, I applied for the permanent position and after 4 different interview sessions was given the position! whoo-hoo!

But I have to say, wow, what a time to be a new manager! Absolutely one of the most challenging situations I've been in with the budget crisis abound, but also getting in on some of the green IT projects that will save the campus hundreds of thousands of dollars. It's exciting every where you look!

At around the same time as the acting manager position, I entered a leadership development program on campus. We split into groups to work on various projects. Ours in the Green IT project, exploring how and why people adopt technology. It's quite fascinating, getting this in depth view of the campus workings. Our project is in its last weeks and it's a crazy crush of work.

For more of my group, Green IT will end with the end of this project, and for me it will only be the beginning as I've been tasked to find a way to develop ways in which the campus will adopt these technologies that will hopefully save the campus hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

I had to talk to my staff today about how the budget situation will play out for us. There are alot of questions I just don't know the answer to. And I had to tell them, I just don't know. All I know is that it's bad, and really really bad, like never seen it this bad before. All I can do is to keep them as informed as possible on the changing landscape. It's certainly not an easy time to be a manager, much less step into a brand new managerial position. At the same time, the amount of hands on experience I am getting while learning on the fly is astonishing. It takes alot of focus and concentration, planning and replanning and then preparing the staff to be ready for who knows what. No one can guarantee anyone a job, what you can give them is that you'll treat them with as much honor and respect as you can.

There are always lessons to be learned. And in rough economic times, one is tested on how well you've learned those lessons.

Singles week: reviews

2008-10-26T01:27:00.000-07:00

So the hubby has been back for a while, but I haven't posted my reviews yet since I've been going through the 3000 pictures he and his brother took in Washington DC. Anyone know how I can make Aperture serve out the photos, so I can do picture editing while he plays WOW?

Anyway here we go:

Sunday: Crab Festival, Berkeley - this was kind of disappointing since it wasn't that big of a food festival with 3 different food sellers. The crab cakes were the best things to eat, but not sure the long lines were worth it. We watched the chefs slice and dice, but decided not to stick out to see the winner. Our friends picked up their kitchen knives (apparently Sur La Table has a month where they sharpen knives for free in September). We found lots of oversized rustic items at the Napa Style store which we deemed to be Spanish Ranch style but larger than life. Like the futon sized padded lounge chair which was super comfortable but the size of a double futon.

Afterwards headed to Sea Salt for their Happy Hour which happens every day and where you can get $1 oysters. Love 'em! Having not gotten our shellfish fiend on at the festival, the five of us, essentially had oysters, drinks, and dessert for dinner. Yeah, so worth it!

Monday: After going to the survivalist boutique store, G and I went to Weird Fish in the Mission, a pescatarian restaurant (veggie and fish only). I should bring my brother here. Food was relatively decent in comparison to strictly veggie places I've gone. The chowder was not famously delicious, and the appetizer was salty but I went with the Mystery Fish which was wonderful. That day's mystery fish was mahi mahi. The sweet potato side was really good, fluffy and sweet. The white sangria was tasty. Desserts were a mixed bag as well, the faux chocolate chimichangas were blech, but my peach/berry cobbler was delicious. Overall, it's an interesting menu, and a nice place to bring your vegetarian friends.

Wednesday: Since I was in San Jose, I called up K for recs on San Jose restaurants. He and his wife often rave about this one Vietnamese restaurant so I figured I would try it while I was down there. Unfortunately, googlemaps got me lost somewhere on Lawrence Expressway and I had to call K at work to get me out of here.

[Aside: As much as San Jose is in the Bay Area, whenever I drive there, I always feel LA-ish. The street layouts, the repeating architecture of freeway, tract homes, and mini-malls that get me flipped around. While getting lost, I remembered why I neither live nor work in San Jose. Did I mention I had to leave the house by 6am to beat the traffic and get there by 7:30a? Yeah, I know the way to San Jose. I just wish I knew how to get around it!]

Anyway, I finally found the place and realized immediately the "better" route to it. The restaurant was called Bun Bo Hue, so of course, I had to order Bun Bo Hue which is a rice noodle dish, with tendon, beef, pork patties, and pork blood cubes. It was yummy! OK grumpy googlemaps is forgiven! I do not know how they get that kind of flavor in their beef tendon. It's right off 101 right at Lawrence Expressway, right at the mall there. Though K & A tell me, their cousin has informed them of an even better Vietnamese restaurant. Oh really? I told them they were driving next time.

Thursday: I made it down to the Trappist in Oakland where a friend of mine met up with me. You want the nice cozy high ceiling cramped-ness of Europe, then come down here. A chalk board hanging above lists the beers of the day including their alcohol percentage ranging from 4%-8% or so. My friend's Belgian beer, served in the appropriate Belgian beer glass, had a nice rich caramel flavor to it. My Witches' Wit was more light and fruity like a Hef. I'm thinking I will go with the fuller body Belgians next time.

On the back of the beers of the day board they listed a very special beer that would probably knock people out much faster. It was tempting, but since I didn't have dinner, I passed, rather than passing out. If you don't like the specials board, then flip through the thick menu of 15 beers on tap and 150 beers in the bottle. My friend had to go to his Squash match (squash is one of those games I have absolutely no understanding of), and I decided to head home for leftovers, though I pondered going to Tamarindo next door and ordering their Hot Chocolate again. yummy! Trappist was pretty packed, though we managed to get a table. Not alot of elbow room so feel free to get cozy with your neighbor but try not to spill any of the fine fine beer.

Friday: I headed into the City after work for one of my last acupuncture treatments for my arm (whoo-hoo!). Best part about the acupuncturist is that she's across the street from one of the best French bakeries in the Bay, Tartine. I love their croissants, nice and crisp and buttery just like you stepped from the boulangerie! After the treatment, I had trouble coordinating with the guy who was recording my radio literary review, so I decided to try out Palencia/Filipino Cuisine in the Castro. We don't go into the City much anymore, and considering the trouble, for us to go back there it needs to be good. I mean, there are a ton of very good restaurants in the east bay, so why bother with the bridge and parking if you don't have to? I manage to find parking a few blocks away which was pretty damn good for a Friday in the Castro.

I call up hubby from the restaurant to figure out what to get. I went with some serious signature dishes which I felt would capture what kind of Filipino Cuisine we were talking about: kilawin ng hipon, karekare with tripe, halo halo for dessert, and calamansi juice. The Calamansi juice was fresh and didn't even have the tinge of pith in it at all. Delightful! The Chef offered up a taster of pureed jackfruit with pomegranate seeds, mint, and vanilla salt, which was an excellent blend of flavors and made me look forward to the rest. The kilawin ng hipon had a coconut sauce on it with tomatoes, which I thought made it a bit too sweet. I enjoyed more of the bites that had a bit of salt which balanced it out more. Again, it was a fine dish, that could use a touch of improvement. Karekare was a nice smooth sauce as if it was strained, but it blended well with the fried bagoong. Lots of veggies: banana heart, bok choy, sitaw. It was regular meet cubes, but the tripe was impeccable! The tripe could be pulled apart with a fork. I could see how he used the firmer meet and the consistency of the tripe to give the mouth the feeling of oxtail without the excessive fattiness. I asked for a wine pairing, and received a glass of 2006 Pinot Noir from 1001 in Mendocino. The thick berry pinot went well with the karekare. Each made the other taste fuller, an excellent pairing! Halo-halo had the works: cocogel, pinipig pandan, ube jam, ube ice cream, red beans, makapuno. The toppings were served on tasting spoons that allowed the guest to mix to your taste. I of course, dumped them all in. The ube jam was really really good, but it made the ube ice cream disappointing. It would have been better to contrast it with another flavor of ice cream I thought. Still, one of the better halo-halos served and it was huge! Enough for two! Palencia is not your grandma's cooking so don't even think about comparing the two. I did, however, appreciate the direction he was taking Filipino restaurant food and really bringing a heightened awareness of the food's flavors.

Would I go again? Yes, just to see what he's coming up with and tasting the different choices he's making in the food. A long way to satisfy a Filipino food craving, but a great place for the Filipino foodie mind to ponder the possibilities. And along the spectrum of Filipino food in the bay area, Palencia is certainly filling in the sparse high end spectrum, which I gratefully appreciate.

Whew! Maybe I'll add links to the restaurants later. I rested from driving on the weekend and spent it cleaning up our place with the help from my mother. All for now...

Hear ye! Hear ye!

2008-10-21T11:30:00.000-07:00

Some time during the 5 hour program of Pilipino OURstory 2008, they will be broadcasting a review I did of Eileen's last two books, "The Blind Chatelaine's Keys" and "The Light Sang As It Left Your Eyes".

The review is about 5-8 minutes, though I don't know what they will edit it down to for broadcast. In any case, they plan on posting a longer version of the review online as well. My first take was 20 minutes long. What can I say? Eileen's books make one prone to blather! After the initial blather I was able to segment and isolate themes to make it easier on my sound editor.

Will post the online link some time when it's up. But if you're in the Berkeley area 94.1 on Sunday evening 10/26 5p-10p!

urban survivalist boutique

2008-10-13T22:40:00.000-07:00

I picked up my friend G, who is in town for a work convention for dinner tonight. She asked, since I had the car, if we could stop by some store her brother had been txt nagging her about and their only store was in SF. She had been planning to take a cab from downtown to the place.

It's actually quite far, over in the dogpatch neighborhood, which I didn't know was called dogpatch if it weren't for the signs noting the historical value of the neighborhood. It's a mix of warehouses and housing.

The entrance to the place is basically a warehouse driveway. You think you're walking into loading dock.

G looks around inquisitively, "is this is?" "This is the address." I reply.

It's a pretty hip looking place. Most of their clothes were in that army fatigue muted black, greens and browns. Her brother tells her it's the hottest thing and that because she likes outdoor stuff, she would love the place. It's like the next REI he says. I did notice a display for various water resistant matches.

Me, never having been part of the hip crowd much less any crowd starts to walk around the store to figure out what they really sell, while G calls her brother in Chicago to ask him about the supposedly great jacket that they have.

"Do you have the Roger?"
Ranger?
"Yes the ranger!"
Size and color?
"Do you have it in gray?"
Oh, our gray is really the black

Gray is their black? I ponder while looking at a rack for various indestructible cases for your iPod and other techie gear. The jackets and sweatshirts are made of that microfiber feel type material with lots of zippers and pockets. Price ranges I saw were close to $400 for a jacket.

G finally gets off the phone. THE jacket he wanted is out of stock but that they'll be getting more in December.

We both walked out of there more bewildered than before. What was that place? Who wears this stuff? Who buys this stuff?

What is the customer base that needs a $400 muted color jacket with lots of zipper, velcro and pockets, water resistant matches, and indestructible cases for your iPod?

G isn't exactly sure why her brother thought she would like the place. There wasn't anything there that she could actually use for her camping and crabbing trips. And come to think of it, her brother doesn't camp, so how would he know what to wear?

There was this pretension of being rugged, but not outdoorsy. It had the young hip look of not really being a storefront but a warehouse as if we were getting stuff right from the source in some back alley in a part of town that probably doesn't get alot of foot traffic. You'd have to know this place was here to go there. There was this down and dirty hardness about the gear.

I mean if you really wanted camping type gear, the stuff at army surplus is as good as you can get. The government invests alot of money in good equipment and clothing. So why this stuff?

That's when we realized we had stumbled upon, what we dubbed, the Urban Survivalist Boutique. Young, hip, urban who doesn't want to look like the Suit they have to wear during their 80 hr a week jobs. And yet, they still make a decent wage enough to buy into the look. But I am still perplexed by the dichotomy. Do they feel like they're just surviving? Do they have some sense that they think the world will come to an end, and that one day, they'll need those water proof matches stored somewhere in one of many pockets to build a fire to keep warm? But wait, their iPod will still have some juice.

I asked G, so what does your brother do for a living? He's an investment banker. Well, then, maybe he will need those matches one day.

singles week: temescal restaurants

2008-10-11T21:43:00.001-07:00

I get to be single for a week while the hubby takes a brotherly bonding trip to Washington DC.

In the meantime, I get to do a few things that I don't usually get to do while he is around: reorganize and redecorate a bit and try out a couple of hotspot restaurants.

I'm the kind of person that needs stuff out in the open when I reorganize. I like to spread everything out then try to regroup, but of course we don't necessarily have the room. The other thing I like to do, is try something out for a few days to see how it feels. Both habits mean that I don't finish redecorating projects or even start them if I can finish them in a day. As the hubby gets frustrated with clutter, especially clutter that falls along pathways through our place.

I've started changing out some of the photos we have up on the wall with ones we more recently took. And I found a wall space to put up more family pictures.

The other thing I get to do is try out some crowded bars and restaurants that I've been wanting to try. The hubby, again liking the space, doesn't like going into crowded bars and restaurants. Tonight I tried Pizzaiolo on Telegraph. It was crowded as usual even though there are ample tables that go all the way to the outdoor patio. It was a 30 minute wait to get a seat at the bar, which is fine by me.

I had a the spicy butternut squash soup (about as spicy as the sprinkle of dried red pepper garnish on it, so not spicy at all), one of their cocktails called the Derby, the squid pizza with aioli and tomatoes and the bread pudding with pluots for dessert. Yeah, I overate a bit as I hadn't calibrated my ordering for one person. The drinks are strong, and the paperthin dough on the pizza has just enough structure to deliver the delicious combination of ingredients to your mouth. The squid pizza was excellent, it wasn't too chewy and some of the tentacles had a nice crunch. The bread pudding was a nice light tasting dessert with a cookie crumb cookie and a slight tartness from the pluots that balanced out nicely. Overall I really liked the place and the food, though if I came with others, I would make reservations.

The other day I tried Bake Sale Betty. I bought a tray of their brownies and the fried chicken sandwich that alot of people rave. the brownies and the strawberry shortcake I got were really good! But I don't see what people are raving about in the fried chicken sandwich. I have to admit that the chicken is perfectly fried with a fine golden crunch batter, plus it's alot of chicken. But the rest of the sandwich didn't really support the chicken. I thought the cole slaw would bring more contrast: either a sour or tartness or maybe a creaminess to the crunch, but it provided neither. The thin slices of jalapeno pepper gave it a nice kick, but stepping back, it basically looked like an American version of a Vietnamese sandwich. And I can get 3 of those for the price of 1 of these in Chinatown. I think I like Vietnamese sandwiches better.

Tomorrow I go to Spenger's in Berkeley for a Crab Chef Challenge. All I know is that there's lots of crab and that's all I need to know.

Monday, I'm set to go to the City after work and meet up with a friend in town for a convention. She said she wanted seafood and that the place not be a dive. OK. Drop me a line if you have any suggestions.

Thursday, I may continue my trek of places the hubby doesn't like going to, by finally visiting the Trappist, a European style bar that specializes in lots and lots of beer. The place is barely up to fire marshal code in terms of aisleways to the door, but if you want to feel like you're in Europe without hopping a plane for 12 hours, this is the fastest way to do it. I might go there with a coworker, then also try the new tapas wine bar, Mono Restaurant in Jack London. They have Happy Hour on Thursdays. But we'll see if we make it that far.

Friday, I head to the City once again but this time to record a book review for an upcoming Filipino Roots episode for Filipino History Month that will air on KPFA. I'll reveal the books and the author when I get the air date and time.

There's swag

2008-10-06T14:28:00.000-07:00

Ernesto continues as our bestus campaign manager for the Tabios/Bautista 2008 ticket running on the Peace and Poetry party ticket.

Yes, indeed, we have swag:

campaign materials

2008-10-05T11:56:00.000-07:00

Ernesto continues to do a fine job as the Tabios/Bautista 08 campaign manager.

We even have some "press":

http://www.tsgnet.com/pres.php?id=46832&altf=Fjmffo1Ubcjpt/&altl=Njdifmmf1Cbvujtub

The Peace and Poetry Party marches on!

(Thanks to another friend for the link to this site!)

write-in candidate

2008-09-30T09:34:00.000-07:00

Muchas gracias, Ernesto, for your endorsement as VP on the Tabios Presidential ticket.

And as part of the economic platform, I'm going to take the advise from Oliver de la Paz, who "suggests we all buy shares of poetry and that we invest heavily in language." As shares of poetry have a guaranteed immeasurable rate of return and our investments in language have the trickle down effect of communication.

road ready

2008-09-28T23:08:00.000-07:00

Coming home I noticed the neighbors having a garage sale, so we stopped by. We managed to score for a really good deal a large Road Ready Case that previously housed video equipment. I thought it would be a good box for the hubby to store various lens, camera bodies and equipment. It has that adjustable foam which can be replaced for $80 which is twice as much as we paid for it.

Should be good for the hubby's upcoming trip with his bro to Washington DC. Every few years his bro and him take a photography heavy trip. The last time was Yellowstone. This time it's to something more urban. I'm not sure what I will be doing the week he is gone, but I'm sure I'll find something to do.

sensitivity

2008-09-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

I have a feeling that as the acupuncture treatments progress I seem to be getting more and more sensitive as I found out this morning in kali class. There was a cumulative build up of sensitivity to the point that any little touch or strike could make me jump out of my skin. Alot more information for my mind to incorporate and for the body to understand.

rock n roll

2008-09-28T09:06:00.000-07:00

We spent Saturday driving around from South San Francisco (to take the twins to their first swim lesson), to Union City for a money group meeting, then back up to Vacaville to visit Tomo Hiteo at Rock N Roll Sushi.

While we had been bringing the twins swimming at our pool, this was the first time that they would be in a large pool with tons of other kids and people in it. The class was half an hour, the hubby and a friend of the sister-in-law sat in the bleachers while the sister-in-law and I took the kids in. The first class was more of an orientation to the water, with ages between 14 months and 3 years. We learned a few songs that the adults would lift the kids in and out of the water. I think the adults got more exercise than the kids, since we had to lift them in and out of the pool. The class was only 30 minutes, which I think was just right as one of the twins hit her breaking point in terms of information/sensation overload and started melting down. We managed to get them dressed and walk the block and a half back to the house.

At money group, had a discussion of the various bailouts, what do they mean, how we got into this mess, and kinds of things to prepare financially to weather the storm. Another member showed off their Warriors Season tickets that they thought they wouldn't be able to afford for another 10 years, but that through their personal money management were able to jump in now. We also gave some tips to one member whose husband works at a call center and who has to deal with a slew of irate callers day in and day out. It's a difficult job with little training on how to really deal with people. We gave him some tips that essentially create a game of it, where he can doodle what he thinks the people look like, since he's an artist or put in a dollar to a jar whenever he's answered the "crazy of the day". When you are faced with dealing with that many irate people on a constant basis, it's easy to start to think, maybe they're normal and I'm crazy. Hopefully, the change in mindset of how he views his work will help him with his stress levels.

We couldn't linger too long at money group, and headed back up to Oakland to pick up a couple of friends to head to Vacaville. We hadn't seen Tomo since he left a restaurant in Pleasanton. Fortunately, he often calls us when he lands at his next restaurant. But, we hadn't been able to get up to Vacaville til now. We had almost forgotten how dining with him is more a culinary stimulation than a dining experience.

The experience is rather very simple. Sit at the bar, ask what's fresh, point to other interesting things, tell him you're full, then stop. It's actually challenging keeping up with how rapidly he prepares the next dish. None of the items are on the actual restaurant menu. Often, his coworkers nor the regular patrons there have any idea the level at which he can prepare dishes, so he gets quite a crowd when he serves things. He understands that most people want what they know as sushi, the rolls, some sushi, so for the most part he prepares that. But if he gets a chance to test out his constantly developing menu on some one, he will. You can see the wheels of his mind turn when you simply ask for uni (sea urchin). In any case, the food is always always extremely fresh. We ask for some things, then he offers up others. For example, we had quite a few scallops since they were very very fresh that day.

We've been watching him develop his "menu" and watched him go through a phase where he was obsessed with southwest flavors: bbq, cactus syrup, hot sauce. When we saw him last, he commented how Americans love to taste the sauces and not the fish, which he commented with a bit of disdain. But I noticed how he actually started to use more and more sauces, layers of them, yet in every dish, none of the sauces overpowered each other nor masked the flavor of the fish.

Our menu included the following dishes that I can remember for now:
-Salmon (sashimi is basic sauces)
-monkfish liver - which he marinates in white wine for a week to get rid of the heaviness. this dish is topped with roe and gold flakes, on a leaf of sashimi leaf that has a minty-basillyness to it.
-marinated oyster wrapped in smoked salmon and topped with roasted rice
-a slightly spicy fish cocktail
-uni served on top of sweet-shrimp with the tail toasted crunchy so you could eat that too
-scallops in a milky green tea sauce
-super white tuna - topped with a thin slice of jalapeno
-bbq hamachi - on a mini flame pot fueled by vodka and rubbing alcohol. I had this in one of the first times we met him, when he used a different fuel. The alcohol left no extra bad flavors on the fish. We took it off with the fish half cooked which made for a lovely texture contrast.
-tako/octopus - a relatively simple serving, which is fine because his octopus is so tender, steamed for 17 minutes, no more, no less; he tells us octopus is good for women to eat, enhances mental capacities (we're not sure why it only works for women)
-aji/mackerel wrapped in sashimi leaf and seaweed, tempura fried with layers of green tea sauce and soy sauce - a great crunchy outside with the fish melting in the middle

ooh I think this is all of it. I had only remembered 9 dishes last night, but it looks like we made it through 10. whew! And while we were all full, none of us felt heavy. What I love about Tomo's food is that the freshness and marrying of flavors really makes you feel lighter. We also drank an ultra premium sake, I think it said Heikkenien or something like that on the bottle.

And again, the second the first dish was in our mouths, the 2nd dish was already plated to be served.

The drive back, the hubby drove, speeding back at 80 mph feeling energized from it.

Distance is not an obstacle when the experience you get at the end is really immeasurable.

maybe it's the weather

2008-09-22T01:03:00.001-07:00

Maybe it was the last weekend of summer, but ended up doing many things this weekend that brought into the forefront of my vision the changes happening at so many different levels/layers of my life. I mean I just don't even resonate in the same way anymore.

Of course, Sunday morning in kali class, I was confronted in full force to these things. And I ended up being very emotional in class, which is not so rare of a thing. Even though, by practice, I've learned to, when going for the kill, to be emotionless, kali in and of itself is a very emotional thing. And I've probably cried more time in kali class facing reality than I have cried in pain.

Sunday morning it seemed more confusion than actual physical pain. I felt like I had no real way to communicate to my body. It was all such a foreign language. And a language, that even on a basic level of picking up visual queues, I could not understand.

Tuhan would demonstrate a move, we would watch, he would demonstrate the technique on us, then have us do the technique. And when it was my turn to do the technique, I went completely and utterly blank. And then I came to realize rather quickly that my body felt like it had been rearranged, like when someone else organizes my room, I can't find anything. The passageways I had travelled to make my body move in certain ways had been moved. And so went the morning, where I had to very consciously think about every move I did or was supposed to try to do.

I have been going to acupuncture 1-2 times a week and that had been changing my energy around, but I don't think I realized part of that until today.

I had written before about being lost in your own body. It was like that again today. The emotion seemed more from the confusion of being lost than actual pain to the body. But it wasn't just that, but also layers of fears that didn't have a voice until that moment. The difficulty of fear is that once it creeps in, it is quite hard to get out.

I did what I could throughout the class to keep my mind on other things to keep the full on tears at bay. All of this made for a very exhausting class.

I had to confront the fact that even though I have made various decisive moves regarding enacting changes in my life, that while I desired these things, I also hadn't whole heartedly accepted the changes. There's a difference between saying and doing, wanting and having, trying to be as opposed to actually being.

If there's anything that the fear, uncertainty, lack of confidence, and emotional outpouring was telling me yesterday, was not the struggle of becoming, it was the struggle of accepting. Acceptance has always been the harder thing. To accept that I was no long trying to be anything, but that in fact I already was and it was time to own up to being something. People notice the change in ourselves faster than we ourselves notice the change. While we look into the mirror everyday, we often keep the image of ourselves of who we once were, our last iteration as it were.

That my fear came from this dissonance between who I thought I still was and who I actually am now. As if one part of my brain didn't get the memo, like really really bad jet lag. Once I realized that, then it was a matter of bringing the two realities in sync.

Today, I've been reminding myself to breathe and believe, to take a leap of faith in myself. I am reminded watching my nieces learn to swim, how they had to get over the fear that just because you are not touching the ground or that you are not in someone's arms, it doesn't mean that you are not being supported by something, that you have no other way of holding yourself up. Though, too, it doesn't hurt to ask for a pair of arms once in a while.

I have felt the changes in season so much more powerfully this year than previous ones of my memory. And this, in California, where we're not known for our changes in "season", the seasons seem more than dates on calendars and changes in weather. Perhaps it is the unconscious sensing of all these cues that our ancestors observed and followed.

In the end, I have to accept the person I am in order to focus on what needs to get done.

Blind Chatelaine's Keys

2008-09-18T22:10:00.000-07:00

Just got our copies of Blind Chatelaine's Keys. You just have to get a copy for yourself, plus get the special value deal over at The Blind Chatelaine herself where you will get 3 books for the price of 1.

I know, the math, is weird, usually you have to buy 2 books to get one free, but in this case you buy 1 book and get 2 free. But so goes the mathematical theories along with the economic theories of poetry, it's like the parallel opposite universe where up is down and down is up. Poetry always has a way of flipping thing upside on its head.

Yet if you're into the sci-fi/fantasy type realms, feel free to peruse the pages of the Blind Chatelaine's Keys because you will feel like you're in some other universe. As with people without sight, it is not the words on the page, but feeling the space in between. Reminds me of 2nd grade when the teacher pointed to a row of trees and asked us not to draw the trees, but the sky above it, which forced us to see the space between leaves and branches and how the sky permeated into the ground. Somewhere between the otherness the biography of someone appears, of someone there and not there, fiction and real.

It is also a rather interesting view of biography, from the vantage point of the Other and what one inspires. And the mirror is not necessarily the prettiest thing as it also reflects a harshness at times, but the Blind Chatelaine is not afraid of this reflection because it is still an honest one. It is often the critic artists are most fearful of, but their reactions to the Chatelaine's work is a collaborative effort of inspiration and reaction. This exchange that runs from pure and sublime to downright harsh.

The harshness can be found in part IV, "To bring a poem into the world, is to bring the world into the poem" a juxtaposition of poems involving a young boy with an ongoing narrative of a letter that begins, "Dear GOVERNMENT AGENCY IN CHARGE OF CHILDREN," a plea for someone to save M. It does not sugarcoat nor make assumptions. There is a melancholy in wanting to love a boy whose life experiences in ten short years may become the ingredients to an adult sociopath, that even in the adults we see as monsters had at one point an innocence to them. That even love may not enough for someone who does not know how to receive it. That even a child understands the veneer we hold up to the world, makes the reader question the views of others in creating biography which brings us back to the secrets beyond the page which are both secret yet apparent.

Lady of the Mountain

2008-09-17T21:31:00.000-07:00

Eileen's post on sculptures in progress and the huge woman rising from the mountain reminds me of the silhouette Maria Makiling in Laguna.

It is said Mount Makiling is the profile of Maria at rest. A spirit that brings both abundance and punishment, is known for her stunning beauty as well as her trickster nature.

I would suspect the woman that emerges from the mount of Galatea shall exude a similar guile and beauty.

blog no blog

2008-09-15T17:14:00.000-07:00

I keep meaning to put up a blog post, but then never really finish as I've been in waiting mode for a while now.

waiting for my teeth to move into place
waiting to hear about the hiring process at work
waiting for my arm to heal through acupuncture treatments
waiting...

In the meantime, it's not like I'm standing still, there are lots of little things to do resumes, warm herb compresses, group interviews, etc.

In the meantime, lots of time with family in between, hanging out with various co-workers more.

But I'm getting to a point where I can finally see things coming together. And I can see what I need to start planning for what comes next. It's not quite at the excitement of fruition, but it's nice to feel like I'm on the right direction. Sometimes you don't get the things you want right away, sometimes they wait for you. They wait for you to be ready, to receive the gifts life has in store.

out on a date

2008-08-24T17:38:00.000-07:00

We went on a date Saturday night, but not just by ourselves but with another couple.

Often when we've gone out with couples, we've gone with couples where we we've been friends with one half of the couple already. This time around we went out with a couple we as a couple had met as a couple which was a pretty different experience since we were both getting to know each other as a couple and as individuals in that couple. Even the hubby was more conscious about what he should wear. And I have to admit that I wore a nicer outfit.

They brought a bottle of wine, which is how we first met them. And we found ourselves both trying a restaurant new to us in Albany. The food was quite good, better than some of the other tapas places we've tried.

I'd say the date went well and we hope to get together again some other time soon.

on pins and needles

2008-08-23T08:56:00.000-07:00

I'll be going twice a week to acupuncture for the next few weeks. I hurt my right arm in kali seminar a couple of months ago and just haven't been able to lift it up like I should, so finally got around to going to acupuncture. I see a good 20% improvement each time I go that lasts a few days, then tapers back. The 2nd treatment, again the arm advanced some more. I decided on treatments twice a week rather than the once a week with herbs.

I opted for acupuncture as opposed to my regular doctor simply because western medicine doesn't really give you much advise on musculoskeletal things. Usually it's a combination of stretching, resting, and aspirin. I tried that for 2 months with not much progress.

While I get stuck on pins and needles, other things in my life are also in the awaiting news that will hopefully be resolved by the end of the month. I'm hoping for good things.

But while I wait, I've become thoroughly addicted to Joss Whedon's completely online show, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog starring Neil Patrick Harris. It's like a blend between the Tick and the Buffy episode, "Once more with feeling". NPH plays a low end villain hoping to get into the big leagues of villainism. He's roommates with "Moist" who is well, moist. His superhero is Captain Hammer who comes off as a big bully. And of course there's a love interest and songs in between. What's not to love?

the cycle turns

2008-08-08T01:05:00.000-07:00

Being on facebook is interesting as people announce just about everything and now with over 300 friends, they say alot. There are quite a few babies being born this month, people finding out they're having babies, weddings, etc. Outside of that, a friend's father passes, another friend's grandfather is dying. It makes me aware that all of these things are always happening, that I shouldn't obsess over a small portion of this cycle.

The friend who's father died, she's in her 40s, her father well into his 70s/80s and numerous strokes. But like Filipinos say, she's an orphan (regardless of how old she is). She and her siblings must now face the fact that mom and dad are no longer there to give advice you never heeded anyway or be a sounding board or be there to announce the next great thing in your life. They are now the elders.

The friend whose grandfather is dying is trying to decide whether to see him before he passes. He lives across the ocean and it's expensive. She's stepped upon a sore wound in her father regarding her grandfather. They never did get along, but that was something a 6 year old doesn't comprehend when her grandfather lived here. There are nasty words. I try to tell her the words are less about her and more about him. And she must find her own peace. She wants to know if she will regret if she doesn't go. It really depends on whether she has found peace. But I warned her not to take on other people's guilt she may receive if she doesn't go. This whole thing may be really nothing. At the same time, it feels like this is less about her healing than the healing of her father. Why does the oldest daughter always seem to be the brightest mirror for a father?

There are a few pictures of some of the babies that have been born. I have to admit I think some people post way too much on facebook and by that I mean, the beauty of childbirth is shown through the baby and not pictures of the birth. Thank you very much! There are some things I just don't want to know about people.

And while sometimes I envy those in the parts of the life cycle I wish I was in, seeing everyone's lives on facebook, I come to realize I am always in the part of the cycle that I need to be in. That yes, there is a part of life that we live out, but that there's also a part of life that comes to us. And while we do what we can to encourage those parts of our life cycle to come faster, they don't. There is a time for every season, di ba?

an indulgent monday evening

2008-07-29T00:04:00.000-07:00

We signed up for the Pride Vineyard mailing list. Usually wineries advertise how they are holding an event at the winery, but this time they held a tasting at the Ritz-Carlton in SF. Mostly to introduce their new wine maker who learned the ropes from Robert Foley. I immediately replied, which was a good thing, because it was immediately filled.

In order to make it to the city on time, we went to work early so we could leave early. We had a wonderful time and particularly liked their Cab Franc, the Viognier (I don't know how they get those flavors out of that grape, but they do, time and time again), and the reserve Merlot. All of those were quite wonderful. The Chardonnay and Merlot were not as good as when we tried it a year or two ago at the winery. And we have to say that the Reserve Merlot beat out their Reserve Cab Sauvignon. Fortunately, they also offered wonderful food to soak up the lovely vino we were drinking.

We also met another couple who actually lived on our side of the bay and hit it off with them much of the evening.

We could have stopped with the Pride wine tasting and ended our evening there. That in and of itself was plenty indulgent. It's fun saying, I went to the Ritz-Carlton for a winetasting. But, no, we had already made it an evening and had reservations at La Folie, a french restaurant 5 min from there to continue the fabulous drink and food.

We had the 3-course meal there. Rhett ordered an item called warm pig feet sweetbread, which you know we had to order. OMG! I can't describe it. All I know is that it fell apart with the touch of a fork, and just had astounding flavor and texture. I had a starter with three seafood tastes including one with uni, seaweed and keffir lime infused roe. This was quite good but on the delicate palate side. For dinner I had the salmon and Rhett had the halibut with the optional shredded truffles. And now we know why people kill for truffles. As an apertif, Rhett had an absinthe martini made of course with our favorite St. George Absinthe and Hangar One Vodka. I had a blueberry mojito which was good, but not quite what I had expected. Accompanying dinner, we had a Chablis Grand Cru 2002 from Burgundy, France, which was nice and crisp and paired well with the savory food.

I packed up half of my salmon so I could make it through dessert, a vanilla brioche in peach soup with buffalo mozzerella. But what I love about dining at restaurants like La Folie are the little extras they throw in, these small dishes that keep your mouth live waiting for the next thing: the poached egg, the taste of cherry and creme fraiche to cleanse the palate, and finally after dessert, the petit fours.

What I love about great food and wine is the adventure and excitement from something new and particularly like in an evening we had, the layer upon layer of flavors and textures. It's one thing to say, yeah I can taste the particular ingredients, it's another to say wow, taste how they blend and merge together to create something else. And grant it the mind comes out a bit relaxed and sleepy from the wine, but there is an added layer buzz on how the mind is engaged. It's the same sensations that I love when I travel and visit some place new. So being able to get that here, without leaving too far from home, makes living in the bay area that much more addicting.

time to move things around

2008-07-27T22:46:00.000-07:00

Spent Saturday driving in traffic for nearly two hours to finally find parking then hike a mile or so to the Berkeley Kite Festival. We had never gone. I had always wanted to go. Though I think if we ever went again, we would stay at the hotel right next to the park. The kite festival was entertaining and fun. We got to watch the Japanese team try to launch a few of their kites and watched as another that was in the air took out another large kite. Those guys are working hard to tame the air. Plus their kites are scary when they come down, built with light wood and paper. I always like watching the choreographed kites that chase each other like an elite squadron.

Walking back we passed by the Takahara Sake tasting. The sake there was decent, but didn't feel anything was fabulous enough to buy a bottle. They even had a raspberry flavored sake, one of their modern mixes. But since we had gone to Hangar One and tasted their real fruit infused vodkas, you could really taste the difference. But the nice part about this place is that it does introduce alot of people to sake.

Sunday went to Kali class in the morning. My arm which I injured last month still isn't up to par but have been working around it. It was quite a workout mixing through numerous weapons: 3 sectional, staff, stick open hand. I'm not sure what it was, but the hits seemed to all hurt more today. At the end my body rebelled with a nice sharp pain between my shoulder blades. Tuhan did some onsite chiropractic moves on my neck. Thus I spent the rest of the day with really great posture because I really couldn't move otherwise. For me this is usually a sign to rearrange something in the house as I'm sensitive to environment changes. The body is telling me there's something that needs to get unstuck.

Anyway, today's energy went into unstucking the thing known as the hubby's closet. I had reorganized my own closet to better reflect what I've been wearing now. The hubby wasn't sure about me touching his closet, but then I showed him mine. We pulled a couple of boxes which I'll bring to the downstairs closet. I then refolded his clothes while he decided which shelves and drawers the clothes would go in. Later we went to Bed, Bath and Beyond and picked up some shelving and various other gadgets, like a hanger caddy, and a tie hanger.

I've been reading the book called, "The Influencer". It discusses the ways that influence works and how people are influenced and uses examples like Delancy Street and the Carter Center ridding the world of Guinea worm disease. It breaks down influence into 6 sections: Motivation and Capability on a personal, social and structural level. I might write more about this later, but certainly if you like "the Tipping Point" I would say, "the Influencer" is a good follow up.

Somewhere in my brain there is a significant and tangible relationship between the book, the closet, and the kites. I just don't have time to discuss that at this point.

Tomorrow is a wine tasting at the Ritz-Carlton. Time for bed.

falling into place

2008-07-24T01:25:00.000-07:00

Been having a pretty decent last few days. It happens that the leadership project I got assigned to runs hand and hand with the work that I'm doing, so it feels like I'm wearing two hats every meeting I go to which is has it's good and bad points. It does feel like everything is work. At the same time, I don't have the problem like some of my cohort who can't find the passion to get into the project they're doing because it doesn't relate at all.

Best part of the last few weeks is that all these things I've been planning months ago are finally coming today. That in and of itself is quite satisfying. Managerial work tends to be tending to alot of different things, things that get done when you eventually get around to them, but things that don't really have major milestones or end points necessarily. So it is nice to see things take shape as it were.

Also reading in the meantime, a book called "The Influencer" which describes how to use influence to change the world. They give examples like how does Delancy Street managed to reform so many people without a counselor or psychologist. Or how do you get people to adopt health habits to save a community from a worm disease.I'll probably write more of this book later. If you liked "the Tipping Point" I think you'll like this book as well. It's really a strategic and systematic view for creating change.

when the news suddenly becomes front page

2008-07-12T21:16:00.001-07:00

Most of the time when I watch the news, I don't make much of it. I really like international news, and then I perk up during sports and weather. Last week I had remember seeing a story about a man who was killed by a motor vehicle. Some guy had gone crazy and jumped the curb. They showed his picture and I thought he looked Filipino.

Before I jumped out of my chair when Filipinos were noted as "killers" on the news, since Filipinos never made it to the news like that. I mean really, there is a stereotype that only single white males go off their rocker and kill folks and everyone else kills folk because of some gang or vendetta. And up until then, the only Filipino you saw on news was Marcos or his wife. That all changed with Cunanan, who made national news taking out a famous designer. Since then, Filipinos have hit the American news: the student who stock piled explosive to go columbine at a local college, the Filipino who held a woman in his parent's home against her will.

But yet, while surprising, the stories never made me think any deeper than the story they reported. I didn't think too much about their families, their children, their parents.

I found out today that the Filipino who had gone nuts in Alameda is 3 degrees away from me. Meaning, we've attended parties together though I never spoke to him personally. The story really became the heartbreaking story that all of them are. A family is shattered, both for the victim and the killer.

Suddenly, I felt a sadness, a remorse, a failure. So many questions. Was it mental illness? Were there signs? Did they have problems? Money, marital, stress? What of his children too young to understand? And his wife who is suddenly married to a murderer? And really, ultimately, the question that could never be answered was there anything any of us could have done to prevent this?

Because in the end, they are our community. Before he killed man, he was and still is a father, a husband, a friend. He was part of a community. And that same community must step up now for his wife and his children, and the family their husband/father destroyed.

i want one

2008-07-11T14:35:00.000-07:00

I got this vid from Guro Rocky.

The first half of the video is super impressive with the guy standing on the umbrella like a tightrope walker and the splitting of the watermelon. The 2nd half whacking the heavy bag wasn't that impressive.

Which brings me to this weekend's Kali seminar on Canes. We already train to be able to use the regular umbrellas which can be utilized in many nasty choky, joint lock, strangling ways. And this is just the $5 umbrella you get at the store. Frankly, I'd like to replicate the watermelon slicing and dicing at home. I wonder how heavy it is.

fuzzy logic

2008-07-08T18:24:00.000-07:00

One of the things on our wedding registry 2.5 years ago was a fuzzy logic rice cooker. A fuzzy logic rice cooker is a high tech device with numerous settings for different kinds of rice from sushi, to regular, to porridge or just steaming or reheating.

The rice cooker basically stayed boxed at my mother's house in their garage. But as we are making way to make space for various cooking items and the fact that my cousin's roommate is taking off with their household rice cooker, we decided to pull out and finally use our wedding gift and hand off our old rice cooker.

I think we waited this long partially because we were scared of the thing. What do you mean you don't just push the button?

The rice cooker came with a rice recipe book with all sorts of stuff to make with the cooker. I haven't really been into the cooking mode lately, but the new cooker and recipe book have got me excited to try some new recipes.

For now, we are cooking an inaugural 2 cups of basmati rice and we'll see where it goes from here.

reading the signs

2008-07-03T15:34:00.001-07:00

while strolling around Berkeley:

-EBMUD water conservation project next to VLSB: half the lawn is watered with underground drip pipes the other uses the regular sprinkler heads

-Cody's Books, large "Now Open" banner on top of the building, with a lengthy detailed apologetic letter on the door saying they are closed for good. Books still on the shelves as if left as a museum piece on Shattuck of the glory days of bookstores.

-Kellogg Building, where Ben & Jerry's is, was the first high school accredited by UC Berkeley, but too far and expensive for most Berkeley citizens who lived along the water in west Berkeley

-A license plate frame, "Yeah, I'm a bitch, I'm just not yours."

Levende East

2008-07-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

Alot of good motion happening for us yesterday so we decided to celebrate. Got some checks for work we had done! yeah! The hubby left 24hr and joined Club One. Yeah!

[The hubby had not been to 24hr in over a year, mostly because he found the place not very well kept. We took a visit of Club One on Sunday and really enjoyed the tour of the facilities. Really kept up, lots of amenities, classes included with membership, no gym bags allowed in workout area, brand new machines. Plus we lucked out that they were having a deal on registration. And the best part is that the hubby is inspired to go to the gym again with his goal of getting rid of the last 20 lbs and maybe even building up some muscle. We shall see.]

Anyway, we decided to roam around Old Oakland and check out one of the new restaurants in that area and we happened upon Levende East. With it's high ceilings and dark but comfy interior, it was definitely a sit and linger kind of restaurant. There were high tables for just cocktails and appetizers or nicely padded leather chairs for longer dining.

Here's what we had:
-warm bread with olive oil, chive, basil: we loved the warm bread, dense warm with a crusty exterior. could easily have this with a salad for a complete meal
-fried calamari salad: had a good balance of flavors
-indian styled mini lamb burgers: asked for medium rare, but still a bit dry. probably better if the lamb patties were thicker. A bit disappointed
-Kennebec fries: fries were nice and crisp with a bbq chip flavoring with a sour cream and chive dipping sauce. Decent, but not my favorite
-Duck confit with cherries: this was fabulous! And really made up for the disappointing burgers and fries.
-Upside down Martini
-forgot the other cocktail name: but both were really refreshing, not overly fruity or sweet, good balance of flavors so the alcohol was not overwhelming
-blueberry new york cheesecake: with more of a blueberry gelatin topping and graham cracker garnish. the hubby loved it and I found it quite enjoyable as well
-key lime pie: I had to order this because I know it's not something that I would bake at home. loved it! nice thick home made graham cracker crust with sweet black berries balanced off the key lime well. I wanted to finish it off even though my body said no more.
- 2006 calaveras viogner: dessert wine that was the pairing with the key lime. It was more of a parallel pairing. They were delightful if given some time between tasting the pie then sipping, but not together or immediately after the other.

Service was attentive but not overbearing. Our waiter knew his stuff and gave excellent recommendations. Never had to ask for water or a refill. Overall, a nice upscale, trendy but not snobby, restaurant with plenty of parking. We would go again and take people with us.

I'm glad Oakland is expanding its realm of sit down restaurants that are not all on College Ave as it allows people to explore the many wonderful neighborhoods that Oakland has.

2008-06-30T00:02:00.000-07:00

Pandango sa Ilaw Filipino Dance Card

Recently posted some more photos for sale over on our Zazzle site. This one from UC Davis' PCN. I really love how the blurriness gives the photo an abstract look that enhances capturing the motion and feel of the dance.

Haven't felt like blogging about much anything else, but hope you enjoy the photos.

Is Google making us stupid?

2008-06-25T10:24:00.000-07:00

I got turned on to this Atlantic Journal article that discusses how our use of the internet changes how we think.

I think writers have been discussing internet as a medium for quite some time. The article even discusses how each new technology changed the way we delivered information to each other had its naysayers that it would be the end of human brain function. And indeed there were pros and cons to each. Going from oral to written allowed vast amounts of information to be archived, but it also prevented access to only those who could read and interpretation and recording up to those who could write. The printing press causes phrases to get even shorter as it was time consuming to put in each word.

But it's not just google. Our language has transformed in ways because of blogging, and texting. And the way we use language changes the mind and body.

It's been a fascinating article that has stimulated various discussion with people I've sent it to particularly around techies who are always around technology. But also writers who constantly obsess over the page size of journals and paper.

The thing I find about Google is how we are redefining "source". I've googled some phrases to essentially get the same exact article word for word on 90% of the links sited. If this were a book, there would be a citation in regards to where this is from, but the internet barely had the original author's name, much less any reference to the dozen other sites that had the same article.

I know that Wikipedia attempts to try to have people verify their sources to try to really bring about true data, but even Wikipedia by its nature must succumb to the democratization of truth. If everyone says that this information is correct and no one steps up to correct it, then this is the "truth". And you have a younger generation that cites the internet as its source in their research papers.

Another question, is not just with Google, but do we take what we expect from Google and do we place that same expectation to other things in our lives. Do we presume that the first answer we get (how many of us troll to the 5-6 page of google searches) is the answer we need? And how much do we expect that the fastest answer is the most accurate answer? Or that we think that the answer we get is the entirety of the answer we need? How our knowledge becomes dwindled into summary.

On the contrary, if our minds are not filling with information necessarily, then what does that free our minds to do? If I don't need to know how to draw that parabola in Calculus because now my graphing calculator does it for me, then what other things can I free my mind to think about and process? At the same time, what are the skills and benefits of understanding how a theory was derived that I am losing because this computer did it for me? What knowledge is lost, what knowledge is gained? And in the end, how does this transform how we think and what we think about and ultimately the different directions society takes itself in.

The title of the article of course is meant to be provocative, but really it seems like how is google changing what we think of as stupid.

cuz they said please

2008-06-22T00:57:00.000-07:00

Sunday mornings I usually go to my teacher's kali class in the morning in Oakland Chinatown, unless I'm out of town, have a family function or what not. But I got an important phone message that changed my plans for tomorrow.

Today my dad wanted to see what wooden bowling lanes were like since Albany Bowl is all synthetic. So we went over the hills and into the hotter interior to Clayton Bowl in Concord. Although the walk to the building was scorching, inside was empty and cool. We played three games. By the third game, my arm was worn out and decided to try hitting the pins with as little strength as possible, which we call Guido-ball, named after a guy named Guido who bowled in such a fashion. I made it to the pins maybe twice. Guido could get there every ball with 9s and strikes nonetheless.

Since we didn't have a Father's day lunch we him and he scored a 200 game, we decided to head to Benihana which we passed on the freeway and had the entertaining dinner at 2p complete with shrimp tail tossing and onion volcano. The food was tasty though not completely to die for, but hey you go there for the entertainment.

My phone rings and I get a call from the sister-in-law that I decide to check later.

The message has a small little voice say:

Auntie, Can I go swimming tomorrow in your pool? If you have time. ok talk to you later. bye.

OK maybe not that articulate and it was completely coached by her mom in the background and every other word was kind of mumbled and slurred a bit. Like swimming is more like "schwimming" as if this 2.5 yr old has watched Wayne's World too many times. But oh so cute. You can't help but smile and laugh.

I called the sister-in-law back and let them know we had time in the morning to go swimming. As much as I like going to kali class, going swimming in the morning on a day like today sounded like a MUCH BETTER proposition.

Kali has taught me the value of making sure to take advantage of opportunity. And one never passes up the opportunity for joy.

J'aime le creuset

2008-06-18T22:01:00.000-07:00

The oxtail and beef stew turned out quite yummy: oxtail, beef, carrots, celery, onions, and a bottle of pinot noir from Livermore. Oh, and a couple of tablespoons patis. Now we just have to find a place to store the lovely red pot til we figure out what to cook next!

cheap drinks

2008-06-16T11:32:00.000-07:00

It's been a food filled weekend.

Scored a couple trays of leftover bbq pulled pork and now I'm trying to discover different ways to work that into dishes. I gave most of the food away since the two of us can't eat that much meat.

Saturday was a fun filled day. In the morning kali seminar focused on ground fighting. Of course, it turned out that I was one of the few people who could still really do the ground fighting with the rule of thumb being, "if you can still pick yourself up off the ground..." Alot of the guys in particular had already worn out their knees from the years of hard hitting karate and tae kwon do styles. Part of it looked more like movie stunts, like lying on your back and rolling away before a 3-sectional staff comes crashing onto the ground where you were. So yeah, you better move, I don't care how tired you are. We also practiced some throws on the grass and tumbling which I hadn't done in years and wasn't all that interested to tumble on the grass. All I can say is that gravity is exhausting.

Afterwards, spent the afternoon swimming with the nieces. They arrived around 3. We went to greet them at the mini-van where the parents were cleaning up both of the kiddie seats as the twins decided to puke in union. oh yeah. While we went swimming, the hubby did laundry of the car seat covers and accompanying clothing. That's not a whole lot of lounging either since the twins weren't all that happy sitting in their nice inflatable seats. And it took us forever to inflate those things! But I liked the water so much more than the ground. The nice part is that the kids aren't too grumpy when it's time to come out of the pool, since now they know that they can come back fairly often.

Since the sister-in-law is part of the Rosenblum Cellar wine club, we headed to Alameda and got there about 30 minutes before closing and tried out 5 of their wines. I ended up buying a bottle of their North Coast Zinfandel and the Santa Barbara Roussanne which is perfect for a nice summer day. The hubby stayed in the car with the kids. 2 out of 3 of them were fine with the whole thing.

Next stop was Hangar One, which is down the street from Rosenblum. A $10 fee gets you a glass and taste of all their spirits which was at least a dozen from their liqueurs to their whiskeys. We shared it between the three of us which was enough to just coat your tongue with a taste. You can get completely wasted if we had gotten one each. Then they wanted to try some absinthe which is a separate $10 tasting but again you get to keep the glass. They have one of the best absinthes on the market today. We waited for the ice to melt. Between the three of us we only managed to drink half of the glass, so I switched places with the hubby to watch the kids in the van.

Remember the 1 out of 3 kid? Well by the time I got there she was into full on tears, so I let the twins out of their car seats with the instructions that they remain in the mini-van, which was fine with one and only momentarily fine with the other because she was still concerned as to where mommy and daddy were. I took that one into my lap and ran through the gambit of songs she knew from "I have two hands", "Twinkle twinkle", and "itsy bitsy spider". And even though she kept crying a touch, the songs kept her from all out bawling.

The parentals and hubby returned. The hubby, with a bottle of their Qi White, which is a mixture of white tea and their spirits which I like so much better than Qi Black (though I have to say that their Qi Black is vastly improved from the initial batch I had tried over a year ago).

With the kids happy about swimming and the adults happy about the absinthe tasting we headed to our parentals house to give grandma and grandpa some enjoyment. E, the eldest, remembers the house and the people inside, so she loved being there. The twins, went into their shy mode for a few minutes before finally relaxing and running around. They still weren't sure about mom and dad, but they did like the bowl of fresh grapes they provided and couldn't get enough of eating those.

Sunday, went to class. I woke up with my sore and achy legs. Just because I can do the movement doesn't mean I don't pay for it the next day. The hubby had been interested in learning to braise food for quite some time but we didn't have the proper pot that went from stove to oven. Fortunately we had numerous gift certificates from Williams-Sonoma that were still unused (I love that California law that doesn't allow gift certificates to expire.) We ended up getting a 5.5 quart Le Creuset in flaming red, which felt like was half off since the gift certificates. We followed that up with watching Iron Man which was an awesome movie (again using some gift certificates), dinner at Fuddrucker's, then grocery shopping at Ranch for the oxtails and veggies to christen the Le Creuset.

Whew! The hubby finished cooking it at around midnight so we haven't tried it out yet. We'll find out tonight.

Grant it I need a weekend from my weekend, I am glad we have such a fun filled life.

Abstract Eiffel

2008-06-05T01:06:00.000-07:00

Sorting through our photos of our Europe trip last year (we did take hundreds of photos), I found this set of light painting eiffel tower photos. These are all free hand, extended exposure. I especially like the ones where the Eiffel is still clearly distinguished in the blur. Must have been all the inspiration from having walked through the Pompidou anniversary retrospective exhibit.

I posted them to our Your Exquisite Photos site on Facebook. I'll try to post an example in the blog post directly later.

Did I mention

2008-05-30T22:56:00.001-07:00

Did I mention we got the Wii Fit? Nintendo is onto something. It's so much fun! OK maybe not the push ups. But it certainly makes the yoga workouts more interesting as it provides feedback on where your center of balance is. And I love the ski jump game where I can re-enact the "agony of defeat" from ABC Wide World of Sports safely from the living room.

I've gone at most 45 min but usually go for 30 minutes. I only wish some of the exercises lasted longer than a minute, like I can do several turns in a row rather than have to click through screens. The time bank is cute as it keeps track how long you've played. You really do start to sweat after 30 minutes and don't really realize how tiring it is until you are.

Skiing and snowboarding are alot of fun and I look forward to what other game companies can do with the new device.

Count 'em...two!

2008-05-30T22:39:00.000-07:00

I don't know what the Chatelaine is complaining about 20 strawberries harvested. That's at least enough to fill a couple of baskets.

We have harvested...drumroll please...2 ripened strawberries, which managed to survive and early infestation of aphids, a heatwave, then touch of a cold spell on my wooden railing box on our balcony in Oakland. Twenty compared to two is fan-freaking-tabulous!

A few months ago I had asked some of the local plant sellers at the farmer's market down the street, what grows well in semi-shade. They told me fushia (which did not), nasturtiums (which are growing like mad but have yet to flower), and a strawberry plant. I bought all three having nothing to lose. They inspired me to clean up the balcony which had been a wreck since the building got painted and take down a cart full of junk from the deck. Stuff I thought I might have wanted to plant. Got rid of several spider plants and jade plants and tons of leaves from the near by tree.

For the past couple of months, I've had to go out each morning and take my soap water bottle and peek underneath each of the leaves and stems looking for those translucent green bugs. Aphids creep me out, they're like leeches of plants. I dislike most things that "bloodsuck". Fortunately, once the rose garden down the street came into bloom, the roses were much tastier than my lonely strawberry plant where an aphid must face a slippery torrential rainstorm every day.

The last week I've been watching the red coloring migrate it's way to the tip of the fruit. They had been a nice full bright red for two days now, so I decided to pick them today. Decently juicy though not too flavorful. I guess they could have gone longer on the stem. But while I've been able to keep most of my plants alive, most of those were indoors, I'm still not the great green thumb, and didn't want to push my luck.

Having a balcony makes all the difference living in the urban realm. I'd like to have a backyard one day with fruit trees, but for now will have to settle for my shady balcony.

there's always something

2008-05-30T01:27:00.000-07:00

Was chatting with a recent college grad. She was chatting with a friend who still had a year left. They talked about guys. Her friend was worried about finding someone and not being alone when she is older. They are in their early 20s. Her friend didn't think she could understand since the college grad has and has had a boyfriend for a few years. The grad didn't know what to say to her friend.

I found it all rather funny.

At 23, you worry about finding the love of your life or wondering if the one you got is the love of your life
At 33, you worry about having children
At 43, you worry about your marriage
At 53, you worry about your children again
At 63, you worry about retirement and wonder where life went
And hopefully you don't think you spent most of your life worrying.

Another friend of mine, who is older, often reminds me there is no time in this life to think about what you didn't have. That you really have to appreciate the things you have in the moment you have them. But I must admit some days are harder than others to have that appreciation of life. Why is it so easy to think of what is not there than to see what is?

I admire the faith another friend has in her God. That God gives when you are ready, and that He gives when it is time. A part of me looks back on the life thus far and her words ring true. And then there are the impatient moments when you want to be ready now or doubt you'll ever be ready. But that is the great leap of faith, is it not? To release yourself from doubt. To find happiness in the moment.

And of course there are various amounts of worrying and each person takes their own order of worrying. At 23, I had broken up with the guy I dated in college, graduated from school, got a job, lived on my own for the first time. I don't remember ever thinking about whether I wanted to be alone or not, I do know I wasn't looking for a boyfriend. Then the eventual-hubby came into my life and never left. I can't say I remember thinking if I was ready or it were "time".

The strange reality of each moment of life is that it always feels like it has been this way for eternity for good or for bad. Even when we had gone out for only a few months, it felt like he had always been here.

And I have to really believe that the people that enter my life before and after this moment have always been here, are here now and will always be here.

Though I don't blog as often anymore, I seem to keep coming back to this idea of the past, present and future always existing in the current moment. A tessellation of time. Oddly enough, I'm finding a great deal of comfort in that. Let me stop now before this becomes some bad episode of star trek.

still amazed

2008-05-25T21:33:00.000-07:00

I didn't make the seminar above, so it's been especially fun watching the videos from it. I continue to be amazed at the amount of trust, skill, and commitment that is required of the parties involved in order to even pull this drill off relatively safely. While there is a need for safety (it is a real knife he's using, and the blade did scratch the surface of her skin at some point), it's an aspect of safety that cannot be tentative. There cannot be fear from either side. Fear is what makes the had slip, the muscles harden. It makes the body inflexible and unable to react in subtle small ways that make the difference between getting scratched and getting stabbed.

There really has to be a commitment, a full commitment of the person getting "cut", of the person with the knife, and in the spirit and intent of the knife itself.

I have been in other instances where the live knives are circling the skin in close trajectory and perhaps I've never thought about it before, what it really takes to be able to practice in this way.

Oddly enough I was not at that seminar because I was doing a demo somewhere else. Where I did demo the live knife and I did demo it with someone I had never played with before. And there were many many things I just couldn't not even attempt doing because it was someone that I just met. Even in the little that I did do I had to get past any lingering fears. There is a moment just before where you think, "Dear God, I hope this works!". There is always doubt just before you leave yourself to reach beyond what you think you are capable of. But then the moment comes and you must leave that doubt behind.

changing weather

2008-05-17T00:22:00.000-07:00

A friend on facebook commented to my update of "why do I always get sick when the hot weather hits?" and reminded me of how the body dislikes rapid change. My body does not take heat well. My body especially doesn't take rapid heat fluctuations well. I know this because I picked up another cold right when the heat hit. This cold is not so bad if it was regular weather, but it is dreadfully horrible in this heatwave.

Yesterday the wind kicked up all sorts of crap into the air, and in order to survive the office that is our "easy-bake oven" I took refuge in the air-conditioned bathroom that felt like a chilly 50 degrees, though I'm sure it was more in the 70s, splash some water on the face, arms and neck which dried by the time I hit the office just 20 ft away. Repeat. No, I'm sure that didn't help any either. In the evening I went to bowling which wasn't much cooler, yet threw one of my best series of league coming 9 pins short of bumping the top woman in the high scratch series category and 9 short of my ultimate league goal of a 600 series. (I'm so close I can taste it!).

Afterwards, I was going to go get gelato with my sister to celebrate the 218 game I rolled in the 3rd game, but as soon as I sat in the car, the body just started giving away. The nausea, the headache, the exhaustion. Hmm...feels like heat exhaustion. I had drank water all day and ate nachos during the game to try to get some salts back in the body. I went to bed and the slight itchy throat that had given me a bad but livable cough earlier in the week, got worse.

So rather than put my body through those extremes again, I decided to stay home. Grant it I don't have AC, but our place is predictable in temperature and there's a shower if I can't get my body cool enough with an electric fan and gatorade. That seemed to do the trick. While I still created a pile of used and blown tissues next to me, I am able to type this post without a sniffle nor cough. Home was warm but not dreadful and I jumped into the shower twice, once in the morning and once just before dinner, which we had outside in a restaurant patio, which was lovely.

And while my body dislikes the current heatwave, I can't imagine living someplace where the weather is even more extreme. Maybe my body will toughen itself out eventually if I did, but for now, I am still a California weather wimp.

nothing and everything

2008-05-17T00:01:00.001-07:00

I had to repost the comment I left for Formosaneijia regarding his post on "traditional vs mixed" arts because it led me to an a-ha regarding the direction I am seeking:

I agree with the “third fork” that taijiquestion offers but in a different way.

The mixed MAs or “cherrypickers” as it were, if I may borrow from my basketball playing days, do pick and choose but I find they most often only pick and choose from another style that may be technically different but not necessarily different in terms of the energy. They are in essence picking the same things from different styles. I can’t explain it in any other way but that it “feels” the same. Even when I see hard stylists do taiji, few ever get the subtleness of the movement which even for a taiji practitioner takes years of practice and training. There is a lack of depth. And so they look like a hard stylist just faking on the surface tai ji movements. When we seek depth are we truly learning something “new”? not really, but we are seeing it in ways/directions/energies/styles that we didn’t see it before which make all the difference to that technique.

However, for the traditionalists, how far do we take “tradition”? When does it begin, what is this tradition and that is not tradition? Does the oldest thing win? I find traditionalists very arbitrary in what they deem tradition. And to retain tradition, can the next generation really do what the previous generation can do? Are there not subtle and even not so subtle differences in the technique and style based on what each new generation lays importance to? So even as traditionalists say that this is unchanged for X number of years, it truly has changed, in the same way English or any other language has changed.

So where is the universal language? I often think of learning martial arts as I learn languages. How fluent do I want to be? How does my base language block or enhance my ability to take on new languages? It’s one thing for me to take a couple of semesters of French to get by as I travel in Paris. And I find that my native English gives me some building blocks to learn French, but will I get the subtle nature of French humor. How do I get beyond the words and simple phrasing to really start to think in French? How long will it take for me to be able to switch easily into the different languages I know with ease and grace? What will it take for me to be able to do so?

I can see the importance of tradition in order to help tap into the “new” discoveries, but tradition is not the “whole” thing in the same way for all the ancient fossils we have of dinosaurs we can still only guess at what they might have looked like and sounded like and we will never really know. I think traditionalists lack the understanding of why this tradition is relevant now and they understand less of why it was important then. It’s like holding history in a sieve, each step forward, a little bit more is lost through no fault of our own. And no matter how much we try to “record” it visually, we cannot yet capture the feeling.

Because of these “holes” it is important to look at other styles for clues to the gaps. The difficulty in this, is letting go of your previous thing. It is so hard for me to really let go of English even as I become more and more versed in other languages. English is where I return to when I am doubtful. So going back to the language analogy, are we really speaking French or are we speaking English with French words? This becomes most visible when going from English to a non-Romance language where the thought processes to create it are completely different.

I believe there is a medium in which one truly can become fluent enough to really mix languages. I knew a friend who spoke English, Chinese, and Spanish, and when she spoke with her father and sister, they mixed all three. When I asked her how she chose what words, she said it was instinctive and more often than not, she chose what would make the most efficient sentence. For a native english speaker, I found how they spoke enchantingly beautiful and could not fathom how their minds worked to create that beauty. But I do realize now that, I did envy her and in learning languages, that was the end goal for me. Not to simply learn enough to get by, not necessarily learn a language so I can read the deep linguistic versions, but to be able to go in and out and merge them with such fluidity.

This is what I think is the true third fork. Not the bag of tricks of mixers and not the traditionalists with their texts plus addendum. This is where I think the passageways of knowledge lie to really bridge between worlds so one becomes both nothing and everything.

It struck me that to break out of the ideas of either/or, to transcend dichotomy, it's not about what you are as opposed to what you can become. As what you are is a temporary thing, while what you can become is well the moment we are always stepping into. Not to say it's not important to know who we have been (ala "know history, know self"), but this is no longer the end point. I cannot live in the past, and actually I cannot live in the present or the future either. It seems that we always live in the transition and interplay of these three things. We live in all of these moments in every given moment whether we are conscious of it or not. I am nothing, yet I am everything. Life just got alot more interesting (again).

stuff

2008-05-13T23:10:00.000-07:00

Though I know I've been doing alot, at times it's almost like I've been doing nothing. And that nothing would include not putting the clothes away and the recyclables piling up.

Am working with someone to revamp our photography website to be flashier. I would go and learn the Flash program myself, but I took a stab at it and realized I couldn't be bothered nor did I really have the time/capacity/interest to really learn it, especially when I have a flash expert in my midst. Who says I'm not learning to delegate?

We have been having yummy food weekends. A pre-mom's day dinner at Sea Salt. Then this past weekend at Downtown (Berkeley), and a spontaneous invite from a soon-to-be-married couple who asked us out to Bay Wolf so they could check it out for their rehearsal dinner. We had never had dinner with them as a couple before, though in the times we had hung out, we got a sense that it would be interesting. And it was in a very positive easy going, close the restaurant down chit-chatting vibe.

What was nice about the dinner, as the bride-to-be put it, was that there was no need for either side to be "careful" as it became clear early on, that none of us were all that sensitive to any off-hand remark anyone put out there, as none of us were easily offended in any kind of way. The conversation was intriguing yet jovial and ran the gambit of all sorts of conversation. Of course about their wedding, but also families and those dynamics, all the way to what nerdy engineers build when they join a fraternity.

Spent mother's day babysitting the nieces while their parents went house hunting. They had been taking the kids with them previously. I'm not sure how they actually managed that. The twins now know the word, "out" and "going out". Funny moment from the weekend. It was time for the twin's naps. Apparently, the routine is that they get their "dede" or bottle of milk. N went to uncle and asked for her dede. Uncle had trouble finding the bottles, which of course made N very stressed. While N continued to ask for her dede, her sister C quietly pressed her finger into N's chest and said, "No dede" to which N would cry even louder. C did this several times, "No dede" with the pointed finger emphasis. Oh, how they learn to push each other's buttons early and often! Uncle finally found the bottles, but uncle was used to making formula and not warming up regular milk, so the twins got water. At this point, N wasn't going to argue about whether it was milk or water. I'm not sure she had the vocabulary to express concern over that, though I'm sure in her mind she was thinking, I need to be more specific about the dede. Afterwards they ended up taking a nap on the living room furniture along with auntie who was wiped out from the morning's kali class.

Work continues to be a learning experience as there is always something: staffing, budget, projects, etc, etc. It's really neverending. But I can't say I was bored yet. Spent today in training on a lecture about positive politics and influence. In the end, is that you're just trying to understand where the other person is coming from. Though, the lecture didn't say much on exactly how to find the patience and time to be more understanding. I guess that's the part we have to figure out.

The day ended well as our mentor enjoyed the case study presentation our group had worked on for 3 weeks. Oh yeah, the instructor reminds us before the presentation, don't stress, it doesn't really matter. Oh yeah, almost forgot, this is just practice. I still don't know if I want my career at Cal to head to upper echelons. Our mentor is rather high on the ladder. I watched how she most graciously made time to sit through our "doesn't really matter" presentation when really she could have occupied herself with many more pressing things happening on the campus today.

To celebrate we went to Jupiter's for a round of drinks. Always, always celebrate your accomplishments.

an inadvertent side effect to rising rice prices

2008-05-07T09:21:00.000-07:00

With the world shortage of rice, you have Costco limiting the number of bags (from what I hear Filipinos have been hoarding bags to ship over to the Philippines). With Myanmar's paddies devastated by a cyclone, the rice prices may not come down any time soon.

However, I was reading in the Wall St Journal today, one effect of high rice prices is actually helping save one of the Philippine's wonders, the Ifugao Rice Terraces. The terraces have been in decline as the younger generation opts to live in the city and earn easier livings that way but also from giant 2 ft earthworms that they believe were introduced to the area in the 1940s from Malaysia through fertilizer. Many farmer's didn't have the resources to keep up with the worms which essentially make the mud swiss cheese and cause terrace collapse. It is said that 25% of the rice terraces were abandoned because of the inability to keep up with the land.

But with the price of rice tripling in the last year, farmers have additional resources to plug up the earthworm holes and find that the younger generation sees the climbing prices of rice and are postponing their moves to the city to help on the farm. Some farmers have even bought additional land to extend their rice producing acreage. They stay with the idea that if they farm, at least they themselves will never go hungry and they can sell off the extra.

Also with tourism on the rise, the younger generation finds it easier to stay on the farm while selling pictures while wearing the traditional garb overlooking the scenic view of the terraces.

They are also connecting with specialty sellers to market this aromatic regional varietal of rice as the niche market of specialized foods expands to a wider market worldwide.

Grant it there are the greater issues of world food production, but on another level, the crisis raises the status of what had always been seen as the lowly farmer and the importance of the farmer to the global economic systems.

jubilation

2008-05-01T17:19:00.000-07:00

Have I mentioned how facebook has a way of sucking you in?

It's kind of crazy as I find myself adding people I haven't seen in ages, it's like looking through the roladex of your life. And even though you don't really hang out with most of them that often facebook is a place to poke them and send them other cordial, cute messages and play silly games like biting vampires or parking cars. For someone like me who loves little things that occupy less than a minute or two of attention span, facebook is a complete time sink where you can also peruse what people are up to.

Not so much for my generation who are in our 30s, but much more so for people in their 20s, you can find just about everyone you may have ever known. For me I can't really expect alot of people to be on facebook necessarily. My generation still knows what actual privacy is.

But one day while I was sick I decided to cruise through the searches and see if I could find people I knew from junior high and even elementary school. I found three people and two of them wrote me back.

One of them is Josh Staub creator of Jubilee Animation and the writer/producer/director/animator of the award winning animated short, The Mantis Parable. I've only known Josh from four square games and tag and I remember we worked on a project together in like 5th grade but I don't know exactly what that was about, but I do remember that even in 5th grade he had a drafting table like serious artists and wasn't just for doodling.

I hope to get a copy of The Mantis Parable soon with a review here soon.

hypermiling

2008-04-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

I was reading an article about hypermiling. Essentially it's all the little things you can do to conserve gas while driving which mostly means trying not to step on the brake as little as possible. The smoother you're able to drive the more gas you save.

I already do alot of the hypermiling techniques like taking your foot off the gas to slow down before a red light and leaving a large braking gap between me and the next car on the freeway. I never thought of this because I was saving gas. I was mostly doing it because my car is 39 years old and lacks anti-lock brakes like all the newer cars. Slamming on the brakes on my car will make the wheels lock and can make the car skid. Also being that old, my car weighs a ton, so it doesn't really start up quickly nor brake quickly.

One of the hypermiling sites talks about how drivers got a lot better mileage in the 80s. I think part of that is because we all used to drive cars that weighed a ton and when you were driving they felt like you were driving a ton.

The most interesting part of the site is the link to a claim that by "surfing the traffic wave" you can actually destroy traffic by cruising at a speed so you time it so you don't hit the waves of traffic bumps. That can probably work in the bay area where my LA relatives tell me there's traffic for no reason. I'm not sure if this will work in LA where, well, that's real traffic.

If anything, the practice of hypermiling makes a person a more careful and thoughtful driver and I'm all for that!

end of the ornery

2008-04-30T08:53:00.000-07:00

I've been not just ornery but ARnery the last five days or so, as my body tackled that nasty cold going around along with the braces finding an opportunity to yank my neck and back every which way all in time for the lovely weather weekend. It really is enough to make someone go from ornery to arnery.

I hate being sick. As much as I like sleeping in and relaxing, I hate being sick. Plus my body has a way of delaying sickness in time for the weekend where there are no excuses but be sick. I'm not much for sitting still.

Anyway, I got to Tuesday night and I just didn't want to go to class, still being sick and all, but I went anyway. I teach the class, so I can teach without actively contaminating the students. Being in the agitated state I was in, decided to explore the recent lessons of restriction and repression, how rules, objects, locations, words, both guide us as restriction but sometimes fight against us as repression. When and how does a weapon feel so awkward that you can't do what you want to do, how sometimes you give yourself alot of restrictions to force you in a different direction than you're used to, and how somewhere between being restrained and restricted there's an avenue of wondrous freedom.

It was an interesting exploration of what holds us back and how much weight we give to the context in which we learned something. For instance, all the students started out frustrated since they were stuck with the pair of weapons I asked them to use and really only learned a couple of really basic techniques to use them that didn't really work in a fighting situation. Then I gave them a different technique to use, but a technique they were used to doing in another context at another distance. This too was difficult for them to get their bodies to do and it took a while for them to adjust, but once one of them did he said the things that he thought held him back disappeared. They didn't matter.

I can see how sometimes being in the mode of studying can be the greatest restriction. When studying something we create in our minds alot of parameters about the way something should be done in order to create a repeatable event. The parameters let us study the affect of a certain trait, say speed or force. We do a form or repeat a technique over and over, changing speed, observing what happens. But to jump from this, the technique to actually using it and applying it, the parameters we set up for ourselves to execute the technique become a hindrance. In our minds we think the same rules should apply but they don't.

I came out of class lighter, the pain in my neck from my body resisting the adjustments had gone away, I had a surge of energy that I hadn't felt in a week. There is so much more to learn!

the wind turns up the soil 2

2008-04-20T22:31:00.000-07:00

Turbulent winds break branches, swirl soil into dust storms
In a blue blue sky so clear, so still
Dreams filled with people known only to each other
In my memories, red stained rooms
Your touch reveals, a small crouched man atop the swings
A double-take in the corner of my eye
Extend through to create long lines, muscles unuse to expansion
Return to a sorrow the wind dries a mirror's reflection

the wind turns up the soil

2008-04-20T21:57:00.000-07:00

Spent yesterday afternoon in Livermore winetasting that area. We ate at Garre. They are a restaurant/winery. Their spinach/crab dip appetizer was quite good. The duck confit was overly sauced for my sister's taste. The meatballs and linguine were more meatballs than anything else and slightly overpacked. But a decent meal overall, not great, but decent.

The wind kicked up outside and we walked by the Bocce Ball court where a group of friends popped open a couple of bottles of wine and aimed for the small white marker ball. Their tasting room was free. We tried their flight but weren't really impressed by any of them. I was sipping and spitting since I was driving afterwards. Maybe they needed more time, maybe more aeration and maybe we won't buy a bottle right now.

Next stop was Bodegas, where my sister loves the pinor noir or was that petite syrah. They carried a very tasty flight. I bought a bottle of the merlot. The wind whisked away any warmth between the doorway to the car. And my sister thought her tongue was done, but I convinced her, eh, let's try one more, a threesome, so we stopped by Steven Kent and LaRochelle which sit on the same lot. Steven Kent was packed with folks since it was in the middle of their winery row, called Tesla Road. They set aside large blocks of gruyere for you to carve and a table full of costume jewelry for sale. Lots of distractions. The wine was a bit better than Garre, but the price and the taste just didn't work for us.

Off the main building was nice cute building marked LaRochelle. It looked closed. But when we entered, there were tables and wine glasses lined up on each side of the tables. For $15, you could pick one of two flights and share a food pairing for the wines. Hmmm...ok...we could find room in our stomach for this one and we could sit in the car while I waited out the wine consumption. We had a great time here, nice leisurely sipping, with a full plate for various cheeses, olive and fig tapanade, and truffle mousse to mix and match. My sister got one flight and I got the Pinot Noir flight. We found the Pinot Gris just as the description noted, "assertively acidic". Fortunately the triple creme French cheese killed its assertiveness and really brought out the softer fruity side. I ended up buying a couple of bottles of an Oregon Pinot Noir that I thought was both good and at a decent price.

My sister tells me that they don't want to be like Napa. And even though they don't want to be like Napa, some of the places sure price like Napa! Alot of young wineries here many which cropped up only in the last couple of years, so it'll be interesting to see how they develop.

If you like Colma the Musical

2008-04-16T17:03:00.000-07:00

received this today from the makers of Colma, the Musical:

CALL FOR EXTRAS!

We're seeking extras for our musical feature, Fruit
Fly, by the makers of Colma: the Musical.

We're shooting this Saturday and Sunday - doing a song called "Public Transit" appropriately enough on Muni one day and BART the other day. We're looking for extras to play commuters on their way to work in the city. However, the fun part is that our extras
actually get to be part of the performance - with some minor lip-syncing to the song and basic choreographed movement (not dance). So it's a chance to really perform in the film.

The shoot times are Saturday 4/19 from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm on Muni downtown, or Sunday 4/20 from noon to 4 pm on BART.

Anyone interested can email our Associate Producer
Krystel at krystelgapasin@yahoo.com. If possible,
send a photo, contact number and day available.

Once you email Krystel more info will be emailed to you about the shoot.

left-facing bird

2008-04-07T20:06:00.000-07:00

In the evening, no, early morning a left-facing bird came to my window and whispered in my ear.

espetus

2008-04-04T20:52:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I stayed at home most of the day: slept in, did laundry, cleaned the other half of the balcony, cleaned the bathtub, vacuumed. It was rather relaxing since usually when I'm doing chores it's as if I'm trying to cram them in just before going somewhere else that there isn't time.

Afterwards, went bowling where I got to play with some of the toddlers roaming around (one guy brings his daughter on a regular basis and another brought his granddaughter). The kids are quite friendly and in general will let most of the women there carry them. Though they have some reservations about some of the guys. We're all in the same section of the alley so people keep a general eye out for the kids when it's their parent's turn to bowl. We managed to win 4 games and remain in 1st place!

Today, the hubby decided to join me on vacation and took the day off. The morning I spent taking a cartful of stuff from the balcony to the reuse and recycle shelf in the garage: plastic trashcan, five cinderblocks, a wooden plank, a neglected jade plant, and bag full of dead leaves from the surviving plants. I'm not sure how we got all that stuff on the deck in the first place, the thing is only 20 sq feet or so. But so goes with the rest of my life of weeding, and refocusing.

In the afternoon we headed to Golden Gate Park and wandered around. Ate at the de Young cafe but didn't tour inside. We asked the security person at the museum if the metal had been the bright orange color. She said yes, and it will eventually turn into the green color like the Statue of Liberty. "I'm not sure how you design ugly, but they did." I'm not sure what to make of the building, but it was striking in terms of the angular design and the texture of the metal. It will take a bit longer before it reaches its green hue. But I do think it's a daring design in the way that it's ultimate look with really at the whim of the elements. It's very chameleon-like. The Academy of Sciences is still closed, but I'm looking forward to it opening as we could see the two domes of the rooftop gardens emerging. With the two museums across from each other it will really be a dynamic contrast in architecture.

Went instead to the Japanese Tea Garden and took pictures of all the flowers. Even with a bit of a crowd at the garden it was a serene place to walk with various alcoves shaded by large Japanese maples or bamboo. The cherry blossoms were gorgeous!

For dinner with went to Espetus, a Brazilian Rodizio style restaurant. All you can eat, but fancier with better service. A metal disk on your table rotates between green and red. They have a salad bar for starters, then when you switch it to green, they come by with long skewers of meat (and roasted pineapple with is wonderful!). Our friend told us they had 12 different dishes on the skewers but we only got through nine of them before we couldn't go any further. But it's hard to resist saying yes. The hubby kept saying he was done, then when the next new thing came, he had to have a taste. We decided we'll have to come back another time with more people to try the other dishes. High grade meats infused with wonderful flavors. And their cheesebread is so yummy! (cheese is just baked right in)

It's back to work on Monday. So I still have a couple more days to stay in vacation mode.

wandering parnassus

2008-04-03T12:33:00.000-07:00

Went to the city again yesterday. Spent the morning sitting in the UCSF food court reading and occasionally surfing the web on the local kiosk (not bad for a 9 year old iMac). Contemplated buying a house lease-to-own, as it might be a good time to do this during a bad housing market and slightly worse financing market. Thought of an invention to amplify your cell phone alarm sound when using it as an alarm clock. Wondered if I could get paid to do what I was doing that morning. As I realized I not only like creative writing, I just like any kind of creating thinking and doing. Can I get paid for creative services and have the time to sit around and think?

Alot of the leadership and management work I'm not doing has been pushing me in this direction. Using my creativity to lead and manage in such a way that provides actual, tangible benefits and change. Maybe not in a huge global way, but in my own small ways. Thus the brain has not been producing alot of poetry or been involved poetically lately. But that's ok, I'm enjoying expanding the use of my creative brain to other areas.

For lunch we headed to Joe's Cable Car Restaurant that was featured on Food Network as one of the best burger places and they were right. We often go to Barney's, but even Barney's doesn't have that certain sweet smell that only fresh ground beef has when it's being cooked. You can order a 4, 6, or 8 oz burger. I got through half of the burger before I realized maybe I should eat a few fries too. Table service was quite excellent along with the milk shakes and onion rings. I don't think I'll be able to go back to the fast food franchise burger joints again.

Afterwards, spent 40 minutes looking for parking around UCSF. While my sister went to work, I wandered the neighborhood. Stopped in an organic grocery and bought some blood oranges that I thought would be nice to photograph and eat. Then travelled down the street and found a place that does mani/pedis, though my sister said there was another place a block over that was much better. Oh well. In any case, I had a relaxing time. Though most of the business there was for the tanning booths. I have never been to a tanning salon, as tanning is a strange concept for me since Filipinos tan practically instantaneously. I watched the regulars go in and just head to their assigned rooms. Must be a necessity in SF since there is a lack of full on continuous sunshine in many parts of the city. Having only recently delved into understanding beauty and make-up, the beauty secrets of caucasian women have perplexed me. So, most blonds aren't really natural blonds, except maybe when they were a kid? And you use an airbrush to spray on a tan?

The owner of the place was there lounging in one of the massage chairs for the manicures with her cute corgi dog. She's done well I think. Certainly created a business with all the various things she uses herself and found a good location for it. A relatively easy business to upkeep. And has time to just hang out and read magazines.

Unfortunately I couldn't stay long enough for my toe nails to completely harden, so I messed up a toe, but that's ok. The french tips on my hands look nice.

I've been enjoying this vacation of doing, well, nothing. Sleep in or wander the city, sit in a cafe or get my nails done. I still have a couple more days of this. And tomorrow the hubby will join me for the wandering. We're going to try to go to Espetus, a Brazilian rodizio restaurant in the city that we heard is fabulous. It's one of my first vacations in a long time where I didn't really think about work, ok I answered one email and that was it. But none of the stress of wandering what is at work and if the work is piling up.

As I've adjusted to the management and leadership training, I've taken on a different kind of pacing. Part of that is realizing that things get done when they get done. There is always something that will come up, but because there is so much stuff coming up, you just have to learn to focus on what's right in front of you, then on what's next. You start to quickly assess if this is a problem for now, tomorrow or yesterday and then adjust to that. Because everything can't happen now and everything can't be done by tomorrow, and even though someone wanted it, they didn't really need it done yesterday. Being able to keep this kind of perspective is critical and while it makes it sound like well then you don't get anything done, in fact you end up getting so much more work done because you're not spending your time or energy worrying about something else that doesn't matter at the moment. In tech support, it's a bit harder to control the pace as everything seems to need to be done now.

It's a pretty good way to live. Life is good!

what I did on my week off

2008-04-01T15:46:00.000-07:00

I've been posting the photos I've been taking in our in home studio up on the zazzle site. Same place to get your ligo sardine can tie, and such. Feel free to give stars to the products you like. I haven't been able to put up all the photos yet and will slowly get to all of them soon.

create & buy custom products at Zazzle

Change o' plans

2008-03-31T17:27:00.001-07:00

A last minute change of plans has left my trip south for another time. Nevertheless, it wasn't a reason to cancel my vacation from work. So I'm going to tourist around here for the week. Fortunately late last week I was inundated by people giving me recommendations to their favorite restaurants, so I'll be restaurant hopping this week.

Friday hitchhiked a ride from my sister to the City and pasyaled (window shopped) around Bloomingdale's, ate a very yummy Cookie Crunch Beard Papa with Strawberry filling. Afterwards, came back to the east bay and ate at Sea Salt for there $1 oyster happy hour which is 4-6p every day! My sister and I slurped through a couple of dozen.

Saturday visited the sister-in-law and family which was an excuse to visit what some bowling buddies called their favorite Filipino restaurant Kuya's Asian Cuisine in San Bruno. It's quite good I have to say. We believe the cook came from years of working at Ong Pin. The Kare-kare had a nice thick sauce and the boneless bangus sisig was delicious! The tortang talong was huge and yummy!

Today I had lunch with the hubby at Rudy's Can't Fail Cafe in Emeryville. I had always driven by and it was almost always packed. We got in just before the noon rush. Americana food so I had the chicken fried steak and the hubby had the pulled chicken sandwich which was a bit dry. They're open til 1am which is great since there are so few late night options. They have some crazy alcoholic concoctions like Guiness Stout with a shot of expresso. They serve some good beers and wines including Guiness Stout on tap. The place has that kitchy road house kind of appeal with a row of barbie-esque dolls properly kitchified on display wearing the baby blue bowling jersey and a pin that say's Rudy.

Afterwards, went shopping at Bay St, which was nice, no crowds, lots of parking. I go a couple of winter season close out items and a facial scrub from Sephora.

Not sure what I'll do tomorrow or the next day. But it's been a long time since I've done a vacation at home and not because I had to go somewhere or do something. I've got a whole lot of nothing this week which is fine by me!

No tengo palabras

2008-03-29T00:21:00.000-07:00

Nada.

Happy Easter

2008-03-23T22:41:00.000-07:00

Been tired this week (can't quite get myself on a proper sleep schedule this week.) but ended up in kali class this morning anyway even though I felt rather low energy and uncoordinated. Got nailed in the ankle by a kick that just rattled me with pain. Hmm...I have a low tolerance for pain this week as well. I didn't have much luck protecting myself from the hits as it seemed like when I did move I ran into the hits anyway. It was just one of those days. But the sun was nice and warm and I got to play with fan.

Went home and worked a few hours on the very neglected balcony. Our building was painted and after they finished painting, I just never really got back to the balcony over the winter. So I spent a few hours today stripping away all the dead leaves from the various spider plants, aloe plants and orchids. I got a large basin of water to soak the pots in. I always feel a bit bad when the water runs off the balcony and down below to the lower unit balconies, but that's the consequence of living with units above you, gravity always works against you. But I'm liking the balcony railing pot holders. I will probably buy at least one more. It's nice having the pots off the ground to make it easier to sweep. The balcony had become overrun with just too many jade plants and spider plants and all the pots took up the room to actually spend time on the balcony.

At the farmer's market yesterday there was a nursery vendor and I bought whatever they thought might work well in semi-shade. The nice part is that they grew all their plants in Oakland, so I was hoping they had a higher rate of survival than say the ones from Long's. I picked up nasturtiums, a dragon flower plant, and a strawberry plant. I got all of those repotted in various containers. Oddly enough while digging through the pots I kept finding peanuts buried in the soil. The hubby reminded me that before they trimmed the nearby trees the squirrels often made visits to the balcony and my potted pots were much closer to them than the ground, the squirrels must have thought they would make a good hideaway. But then after the tree limbs were cut, they lost access to their stashes.

I stripped the various orchids in my greenhouse shelf down to their still green nibs. I was really surprised at how hearty orchids are. One, I thought was dead, still had a clump of white roots with green tips, a very good sign. Before I used to feel really guilty about killing plants. Mostly because my mother has such a green thumb and I felt like the plants reflected my lack of a nurturing spirit. As delicate of a flower orchids produce, they are indeed one of the more forgiving plants to grow. And while I don't beat myself up as much about killing plants, since plants tell you there is a cycle for them as well and just because there are no leaves or flowers doesn't mean that they are all and out dead. There are roots that survive simply waiting for their chance to grow and bloom again. Somewhere in there, there is a lesson on forgiveness and patience.

I still have another half of the balcony to fix and weed out. I think I'll take out some of the jade plants and spider plants. I just have too many of them. And spider plants are just so ridiculously easy to grow, they're almost weedlike. But that will have to wait for another time.

After a shower to get rid of all the dust (I felt like Pig Pen as I went from the balcony to the bathroom), we brought our plastic eggs across the bay to the nieces. Their older sister seemed to know what the eggs were about even though they had never brought her to an easter egg hunt. We filled the plastic eggs with animal crackers, goldfish crackers, raisins, grapes, and stickers. The twins had these cute Hello Kitty furry baskets that they used for bonnets, because really that's what empty Easter Egg baskets are for, to be used as bonnets. But since the baskets were furry they looked more like the London Beefeaters, but cuter and funnier. We hid the eggs in the semi-open, and even then there were a couple we forgot we hid, like the green eggs in the green kiddie chair that blended nicely to its surroundings.

The kids had fun opening up all the eggs, eating or dumping the contents on the ground. They ate them up as if they were starving. They played with the eggs for hours and hours, past a grumpy meltdown of one of the twins needing to possess all the eggs. Fortunately, the girls are really good at sharing most everything else especially food. They don't seem to mind sharing food. Even the 6 year old got into the act by throwing the eggs, which for her was quite an achievement since it was a physical act that she specifically initiated. Her genetic issue makes it difficult for her to learn repeatable acts, so feeding herself even by hand, or consciously picking up a plastic egg and throwing it, is a big deal.

The twins are picking up vocabulary quite quickly even though I think they speak to us in their twin language sometimes. But Nicky especially, is quite articulate, since she likes to copy phrases some she knows what they mean, others she just likes repeating. But both twins are quite good at saying please and thank you, words that are repeated readily on the Barney videos they watch. Go figure, Barney teaches kids good manners. But amazingly, when we were leaving, Nicky in particular thanked us for bringing the eggs. A sign that she's quite aware of what people bring and give to them and appreciates it. Catie will eventually speak to you, but not as much. They have their meltdowns that a good nap will often fix if you can get them there, but overall, so far they're shaping up to be some good kids.

Afterwards, Tikbalang, the spirit that often whispers in the hubby's ear to turn in very misleading directions, made us miss our exit home and we ended up on Piedmont Ave to stop for ice cream or gelato. We managed to find a parking space across from the gelato shop, but when we got there at 9:10, they had already closed. The woman inside, waved us in and opened the locked door. She was pulling out the gelato trays and defrosting the freezer but still took our order for two small size gelato cups. She piled the gelato high so the small cups were really more like the large size. We gave her a $4 tip. She really didn't have to serve us, and she didn't have to give us all that extra gelato.

All in all, a very good day. Got to feel the warmth of the sun, repotted plants that were giving me a second chance, got lots of wonderful hugs and laughter from some really cute kids, and topped the day receiving some awfully nice service for a sweet treat.

Easter along with the season of spring is the season of rebirth. But to be reborn there is an aspect of forgiveness and appreciation for the life you lived before. But as the 3 year old taught me, simply learning to appreciate the life you are given today and that is a small way we are all reborn.

JabbaWockeeZ

2008-03-22T23:55:00.000-07:00

I've been a bit of a JabbaWockeeZ fiend for the last few weeks after a friend got me hooked on Randy Jackson's America's Best Dance Crew on MTV. They are one of the two finalists with the winner to be announced on Thursday, March 27.

JabbaWockeeZ are from San Diego and all season have really brought a higher level of crew dancing. You watch them and they are actually painting a scene. There are the individual dancers but they force you to see how their movements interrelate with each other. It's breathtaking! The crew wears masks and gloves which gives them that Blue Man Group kind of feel, a level of anonymity yet creating a sense of unity in their movements. There's a link on youtube that strings all of their routines together and it's clear that they weren't just looking to create one routine at a time, they were looking to build a full story arc. This is hip-hop dance at a whole other level!

I don't have cable, so I catch the episodes on MTV or on youtube. The other Asian heavy crew was Kaba Modern, that I hear is from UC Irvine. They had pretty tight choreography too, half women, half men. They're big on isolations and intricate hand movements, which has worn weary on me. They made it to third place.

There's some uproar from facebook to youtube arguing that MTV rigged the voting so there would be a east coast (Status Quo is from Boston) vs west coast final. My reply to that, is that reality tv isn't about being fair, it's about ratings and according to the legalese of many of these voting shows there's a disclaimer about the producers having a right to not count votes they think are deliberately skewing the tallies (like a script or something that keeps registering votes). But whatever.

Status Quo, the other finalist, is an African American street crew from Boston that has been up and down this season. A very athletic bunch, they do alot more freestyling more often than not, but they represent that kind of raw energy in hip-hop.

In any case, I'm glad that the west side got major representation on the show. And I really hope the top crews get more opportunities from being on this show.

I have to admit I'm an addict for any dancing/skating/gymnastic type show on tv. If there's music and movement, I'm there. I'm not too into American Idol, but I can't miss Dancing With the Stars (especially with Kristi Yamaguchi on it).

feeling the green

2008-03-21T00:26:00.000-07:00

It took me a while, but I finally found some pot holders that can hang from our balcony railing. This weekend I think I'll spend alot of time getting the balcony back in shape. Part of having the living room so out of order is that we ended up blocking access to the balcony or didn't even want to go outside, and so neglected the plants.

A few of them are still duking it out. I'm sure the spider plants will come back to life and the fern just keeps on keepin' on. The jade plants seem to be better off when you ignore them. And I'm sure the aloe plants will be forgiving.

In any case, I'm much happier that the plants are off the ground as it was difficult to keep the balcony clean with all the pots on the deck. I think I'll get rid of the big deck pot after my failed attempts to grow a mini-tree. I just don't get enough sunlight on the deck for that sort of thing.

As much as I neglected the balcony plants I am excited to try to revive them because now I feel like I have the energy to do so. It's a time to expand again.

Easter this weekend and vernal equinox yesterday it really is a time of planting and eggs. While the new years had us think about our intentions, this is the time to set our intentions forth, to go from thought to action, intellectual to physical. Not enough to simply say what we want, but we have to do what we want and hopefully by fall we will be able to reap what we sow.

turning green: happy st. pat's day

2008-03-17T01:09:00.000-07:00

Decided to turn my blog green for the day, since it is St. Patrick's Day and don't you get pinched if you're not wearing green? At least that was the game we used to play in school.

Plan to head to Beckett's Irish Pub after work for a bit of St. Patty's celebration for a trip to the real Ireland will have to wait a while. A cousin of mine is heading to Europe on Wednesday as his very first trip outside of the United States. He'll visit family in Madrid and Paris then do his own version of European bar hopping as he travels to various beer loving countries. I'm both excited and happy for him! Once you get the travel bug, it's really hard to stop.

In the meantime, South America awaits and possibly Yosemite next month. And I've been cruising cruise tour websites hoping to plan a big family trip in 2009, hopefully with a stop to Alexandria to see the pyramids, which would the leave Australia as the last settled continents I haven't been to yet. But hope to add that to the list with a friend in maybe 4-5 years.

Sunday I went and bought the plastic egg easter thingys. We're going to visit the nieces and conduct an in house Easter Egg Hunt. I remember when we were small, we went once to a neighborhood easter egg hunt, but for the most part went around our backyard and house.

The twins are way to young to be introduced to a sweet tooth, so instead I filled the eggs with Disney Princess stickers and Mardi Gras type beads. We'll wait til Saturday to fill the rest with their favorite relatively healthier treats: raisins, cheerios, and gold fish crackers. It should be fun!

opening up

2008-03-15T21:29:00.000-07:00

Things are opening up. A couple of our organizing projects at home are really making a difference. And a few places I've been stuck with are loosening up as well. Even as the weather mixes from warm to cold to warm again, there's something about that dynamic weather energy that really gets me moving.

And while I've been getting rid of stuff I've also been bringing new usable stuff in.

One of the favorite things I bought was the Magic Ball Mop Holder. I bought two of them and they work great! I am usually skeptical of the "As Seen on TV" stuff, but this one actually does what it says it does. I put one in the office to display and store all the staffs, spears, and walking sticks and another in the closet for brooms and such. We had gathered quite a collection of sticks that we just kept leaning against the wall somewhere. They would eventually topple over whenever we closed the front door since we often leaned them against that wall.

The other "Love It" buy was the Zojirushi Electric Hot Water Dispenser. A few weeks ago I started noticing that the hubby was microwaving every hour or so. Eventually I asked him what he was doing because he wasn't heating food up. He said that he's been drinking warm water at night so he doesn't get into these dry hacking coughs. Hot water dispensers are just one of those Asian household appliances that you get after rice cooker and rice dispenser. Ok so I don't have the rice dispenser (yet). Fortunately for us, I had come across a $75 Amazon gift certificate so that cut the bill quite a bit. We got a fairly fancy one that electronically dispenses, but also has three different heat settings, auto shut off and a timer. I have to admit, it makes me drink more tea. So this has been a boon on the health side as when the hubby drinks more water, he drinks alot less soda, and an increase on the tea drinking.

The last thing we bought recently, again with the theme of new and effective was an ottoman for the living room. This 2 in 1 was great! I put one aside to put my feet up while watching television and the other we used as an end table for the sofa. I flipped the top over to get the food tray top and stored the throw blanket inside. I had been wanting an ottoman for a while, but hadn't seen anything that fit with our current decor. The faux black leather goes with just about everything and I love the extra storage. After a morning of kali seminar and an afternoon at a christening, I propped my legs up on it and I can't believe why I didn't buy one sooner. My feet are quite grateful. Plus since they are more on the sturdy and square side, they can be used as extra seating (if/when we actually have guests.

And in actuality that is the goal. The hubby has been getting massages at work since they are subsidized as one of their perks. He actually found someone who could massage him without him getting super ticklish. He came up with the idea that maybe we should have him come over for a couple of hours and do a table massage at home. This is quite odd for the hubby to say since he usually felt like our place should be in proper order before people should be let in and I usually don't care if it's people we know. But I argued his side for a change and said we should really get our place respectable looking for guests. Thus the quest to reorganize the living room because when it's done, we get to finally invite the massage guy over. I am indeed a fiend for massages. Is there really a reason to refuse a massage? Anyway, this has proved to be wonderful inspiration for getting organized.

when the lanes were silent

2008-03-13T23:11:00.000-07:00

While the 20-somethings start coming in around 10pm in large groups on an outing of their club or dorm floor, the leagues are full of bowling lifers. And while there are a few young folks (30-ish), most everyone is well into 40s and 50s and up. The day leagues are mostly seniors.

When we first started bowling I think we were treated with some skepticism, beginners who really weren't all that serious about competing, but then we stuck around for a winter league then a summer league and winter league again until we became some of the usuals, the leaguers. Many of them bowl twice a week. Alot of them have bowled some 20+, 30+ years. The bowling alley was their hang out place. You see and compete and play with the same people week after week. You wonder what happens to people when they miss a week or two.

This last week, Albany Bowl, lost 3 long time bowlers. One of them in our league. We had heard last week that his partner had found him collapsed and unconscious and that he was at the hospital in a coma. His partner had even come down to the alley last week to let us know what happened. Today we found out he passed away.

When we first played his team, we dreaded them. Fierce and quiet competitors that would quietly and quite deliberately put together a bone crushing game against you. While playing other teams were quite jovial, the silence was deafening with them. After a while, we found out that they were just the quiet types and well they didn't mean to look mean, particularly for him, that's just what his face looked like when it was neutral. The hubby was the first to figure out their funny bones and after that they were a fun team to play with. It was particularly interesting watching Oliver play his always very consistent games as he read the oil and its patterns.

At one point last year, his partner had fallen ill and we didn't see him for a while and didn't see her for quite some time but she returned this season. We had hoped it would have been the same for him.

There have been lots of studies about the number of relationships people have and how the younger generation doesn't join organizations or teams any more and where is out sense of community. And sure it's important to have the handful of really deep connections, but it's also important to have these tangential connections. Bowling league is one of those places where each week, you make your rounds and say hello to everyone, ask how they are doing life wise or bowling wise, compete against each other, and congratulate each other in the end. A few people have brought their grandchildren or children to play. They are small connections. These aren't people I write into my will necessarily, but for a few hours each week, there's a place to put things aside to have fun or be serious. For a few hours you are a community.

And so this evening we spent a moment of silence to honor and pray for those who passed away this week. There were still a few recreational bowlers still rolling balls down the lanes because they had no reason to pay attention to the announcer speaking to the league bowlers. For them the bowling alley, is just a place that could be any other place. But for us, once or twice a week, it's our space.

What to do with the other hand?

2008-03-13T02:06:00.000-07:00

In response to Eileen who asks, "what do you do with the other hand as you take down three baddies, Michelle? Sip tea? With pinkie delicately pointing to the sky?".

It's always that hand that you're not paying attention to, that makes everything happen. In this school we concern ourselves with the masculine and feminine sides. In this case my dominant hand the right one, is the masculine energy, where I hold the weapon, my power hand as it were. The left hand is the feminine hand, the ones that guides, directs, manipulates and counter balances the right hand.

But in this particular instance, the knife, what we consider a feminine weapon at least in the way we use it, is in my right hand. The Female Knife, what we call what I'm doing, isn't the Psycho-movie slashing or jabbing that you see in movies which is more masculine. The Female Knife is hidden. And in this case, it is hidden and protected by the left hand.

And here's the part that I think will be the most fascinating aspect...Tuhan described these hands once not has male and female, but as mother and son. The Son being the knife hand is being fed and protected by the Mother, the empty hand. If you watch closely, it's this open hand that makes contact and feeds the baddie to the knife hand. You see this when my hands are relatively close together when engaging the baddie. The Mother feeds her Son. While not engaged with the baddie, the Mother protects the Son by hiding him. So you see the knife disappear behind my left arm often. Then at times, the Mother allows the Son to venture off on his own but always nearby. You can see this when my knife hand shoots to the baddie's throat and my other hand is left behind clearing the baddie's punching hand. The Mother still tries to ensure the Son's safety even when she allows him to venture off. Afterall, can't have a cloistered Son, especially when baddies are around. The Knife must do what the Knife was meant to do and the open hand must encourage and allow that for it to be effective.

In any case, lately I've become quite taken by the fan as a weapon, which my sister had been practicing with for a while and had used them in her kali wedding demo. I didn't learn the fan explicitly. A couple of weeks ago Tuhan had me use it. (This is a typical expectation for black belts to be given a weapon then just use it and use it well, simply based on what you understand of weapons and what you've observed so far) I found myself quite into it and that especially when I got into really using it, I could feel the fan enter my body as I formed to the fan. I danced Singkil fan one year in PCN and have always loved the movement of the fans. There are still many things for me to learn about the fan, but it's so much fun to learn a weapon that feels rather natural.

Now, Fan, is a weapon where you can sip tea and hold out your pinky on, not only is it allowed, it is encouraged because it's what the fan wants you to do. You see, they often talked about how the Barong Tagalog was made so the Filipinos couldn't hide weapons, but how could they ban a Donya's fan? Pocket fans aren't as popular in the Philippines now that alot of people have electric fans and there is AC in malls, but I remember grandmothers would whack kids with those fans. Don't tell them a fan can't hurt you! There are weapon aspects to the structure of the fan, but I think what I like most about the fan is the weapon that it brings out of me: seduction.

Having said that, I'm still not sure what it means, but am intrigued to find out. Besides sticks are so unwieldy when traveling.

And wasn't bodyguard on that list of things Ninangs were entitled to along with computer tech support?

point and shoot

2008-03-13T01:06:00.000-07:00

We've been looking to get a new point and shoot camera for a while now. We bought our last one about 4-5 years ago. It's still a good camera, but it is feeling slow and doesn't take as good of a resolution as the newer ones right now.

We have the hubby's real cameras, then we have the point and shoot what is nice and pocket sized so we can take pictures whenever inspiration strikes, which is nice. It's like a writer needing a pen everywhere they go. Our point and shoot has gone to New York, LA, Europe. A nice workhorse of a camera.

It's easy enough to buy a 8Megapixel camera for less than $300. Our 4MP cost that much 4 years ago. I tended to like the Olympus brand and had several very good cameras that were Olympus, but unfortunately their P&S were heading the way of the Sonys, the ultra thin with huge viewing screens. I'm not exactly sure who likes that, but I sure don't. Every time I tried to pick on up, I couldn't figure out where to put my hand and fingers to grip in. Am I supposed to delicately hold it between the thumb and forefinger of each hand with my pinkies sticking out? And how do I do that without it slipping through my fingers? And how am I supposed to do it with one hand?

From experience I know that we often hold the camera out at strange angles and just click, just to see what we get. And I don't think I could hold most of those cameras with one hand without smudging up the screen doing it. I love technology, but I most hate crappy design that prevents me from using the technology well. I don't need a smaller thinner camera, I need one that I can grip with one hand without getting a hand cramp!

So we settled for the Canon Powershot that (after the discount that the guy gave us to guilt trip us into buying a warranty that we still refused) was less than $200. A great deal!

Unfortunately, the store we went to had a lot of variety but none of the Nikon brand the hubby holds most dear. We do like to stay within the brand family. And we do like to stay with name brands that have traditionally been photography companies, so no Sony or Panasonic. Kodak is probably the only exception (and this is only because they were the last to get into the digital game and their first ones sucked; I don't know if that's still the case).

The Canon Powershot A720 IS still used AA batteries! (whoo-hoo!) While the others are running off of the Lithium batteries that run longer and hold more charge, for us they are not a good thing when we want to travel. When we travel, we don't want to remember if we recharged the camera, much less find a place to recharge the camera properly. And frankly, if you're desperate, you can get AA batteries everywhere in the world. And it's easy enough for us to have a stock of recharged rechargeable AA batteries with us. I know manufacturers are moving away from that as well, but like the rest of this post, obviously I dislike much of the direction of the P&S camera world right now.

In any case, I'm quite happy with what we got and it fulfills our biggest sell points: feels good in the hand/easy to grip, AA batteries, 8MP, good price. The pictures are pretty darn decent, especially the macros and the digital zoom ain't bad. The flash is really strong, so I don't know how long it will take to diminish the batteries using that, which is fine cuz we like using natural light whenever possible.

For accessories we got one of those small flexible tripods that you can wrap around anything, rather than precariously sit the camera on some ledge as well as a 2GB SD card. It's amazing that there's 2GB on something slightly larger than the SIM card in a phone. (That's postage stamp for folks unfamiliar with SIM cards). The guy tells us it'll hold about 600 photos one one card. The hubby then looks at me and asks, "Is that enough?" This coming from a guy who shot some thousands of photos on our 3 week trip to Europe. Um, 600 should be quite sufficient for me. Thanks!

new spaces, new places, new faces

2008-03-12T11:42:00.001-07:00

Can you feel the year of the rat really kicking into gear?
I see it all over the place as people take steps to their new lives, new phases.

I managed to find a new space to teach Kali. Cheaper than my "fill-in/temp" space. It's shared with a couple of other martial arts groups. Narrow but long, so nice amount of space to do stuff. And lucky me, Tuhan decided to drop by to check it out as well. I no longer worry about him visiting as if the health inspector was coming to check my restaurant. But it does give me a chance to understand the differences in the way I teach and the way he teaches. It's a way for me to easily compare and contrast the direction and choices I've been making in teaching and in training.

I'm excited about the new space. It's different from the previous places I've taught at not only in shape but in energy as well. I'm looking forward to the things that will open up for me there.

Looks like travel is coming into my life again. I'm off for a weeklong vacation at the start of April. I'll have to leave the hubby at home this time, since it was an opportunity with a narrow window. The hubby likes the long planned vacations. These slightly spontaneous ones are rather hectic for him, but I love them! I love the feeling of being able to take off. I don't even mind the numerous plane jumping (best way to get a cheaper flight at the last minute). Once due to plane technical issues it took me 24 hours (don't count the time zone change) to get from Manila to SF, so everything after that is well not bad.

He'll get his chance to travel since he's planning a trip to the east coast with his brother later this year. I won't be able to attend due to work commitments. And we might take an in state trip in a few months.

But underneath all the excitement and fun stuff, we're still doing the basics underneath it all: the long term planning, the day to day chores, the paying of the bills.

When I was younger I was all about the excitement and neglected other things, but as we move along I found I need both. Have to take care of the little things, and have to have the excitement and trips and such. But it's the little stuff, the small things that sometimes you hate to do, but you gotta get done, makes the big stuff easier to get to and more satisfying to have. When I didn't take care of the small stuff, vacations were more stressful, but now it's not so bad. I know I'm doing what I need to do when I need to do it.

Life is good.

pass the vinegar

2008-03-08T19:19:00.000-08:00

Someone out in the world came by our Zazzle shop and bought our lumpia magnet (Thank you!)! It will soon grace someone's freezer door where all appropriate packages of lumpia are held. Thus, the hubby's photography enters someone else's life in another way.

Lumpia Magnet
by

exquisitephoto

Get this custom magnet
at Zazzle

Every day should be the International Women's Day, dammit!

2008-03-07T08:41:00.000-08:00

Ernesto Priego is a rockin' writer and live DJ over at his podcast.

Today he's posted a song in tribute to all the women he knows. Here's what he says:

It's a humble way of celebrating your intelligence, beauty and strength.

Every day should be the International Women's Day, dammit.

I know it's until tomorrow, but I didn't know if I'd have time to post it, so here it is one day before the Day.

You can share in the celebration as well, by popping on the headphones and listening to that song and other songs Señor DJ E has posted!

I love market day

2008-03-01T17:43:00.000-08:00

I love going to the farmer's market, wandering the stalls, sampling the fresh fruit. The one by our place also has numerous restaurant and specialty food booths with Afghan, Indian, Thai, Vegan Soul Food, French pates and meats, and bakeries.

We take our bayong and take the nice stroll down to the park. It seems like every grocery store is selling reusable bags now, but they really can't compare to a serious bayong that you can load to the hilt and still have it so the handles aren't cutting into your hands. Americans, we're just new to this idea of reusable bags for purchases.

We might have an idea of what we might want to get: bread, some fruit, but for the most part we just wander and see what's there. Often we buy something to inspire us for the weekend meal.

Today's shopping included:

-1 pomelo
-1 original belgian waffle with powdered sugar (that I ate on the spot); they also had nutella and whip cream, but I settled for the basics. It was very good. A really dense waffle, a real breakfast.
-Ceviche - made with sole and another fish; The guy's mother made it, I had to buy it. C'mon, his mother made it! You would have bought it too!
-Sashimi grade salmon- We cut it up and had it for lunch and dinner
-Chicken duck pate with truffles - we got that from the French guy who sells all sorts of sausages. I wanted to try the Cassoulet, but that was $29/jar.
-guacamole
-cheese-mint sauce, lentils, cilantro pesto and two spinach balanis from the Afghan vendors that give tons of samples
-1 sweet french loaf that was soft as a pillow
-1 cheddar cheese loaf
-1 cabbage for the corned beef I bought at costco the night before, which I'll attempt to cook in the slow cooker tomorrow night. It is March afterall.
-1 samosa with cilantro and yogourt sauce from the Indian stand. I wasn't as enchanted with her sauces, but the samosa was very good.

Oranges were tasty, but the strawberries seemed out of their element for this time of year.

In less than an hour we had walked and sampled the entire market, and hiked back up the hill. I can see why my grandmother enjoys going to the market. Here, we only go once a week and keep everything in the fridge. But in the Philippines, they go every day, early in the morning. She likes to go and get the loads of vegetables and meat for the day's meals relying on her 80+ years of knowing what is in season, what is not. Then bargaining with the vendors.

I'm not sure if I would like going to market every day, mostly because I probably wouldn't have time to, but it is a different kind of food cycle. A different way of interacting with the people who make or grow the food you eat.

choices

2008-02-27T20:25:00.000-08:00

It seems like every year for the last couple of years I've been looking for a new place to teach.

From teaching several years at Pusod, I ended up at OACC, but after a year in the back studio, I got this itch. This feeling I needed to go somewhere else. The place was feeling small. So I found a nice large space down the street which was alot of fun, lots of space to do staff and triple sticks. But, alas, the space couldn't get their feet off the ground and I had to leave.

Each space we live in, where we work, where we regularly hang out presents lessons for us to learn. The walls that shape us, the energy that permeates. We've all been to places where we walked in and just felt something was not right. The place we lived in, in college, is not the place we need to be in now. The hardest thing is for people to make the move, to admit that's it's time to go, time to go someplace else because it's scary, it's hard, it's work.

In the meantime, I've bounced my class to several different places, from my low ceiling rec room to a small room, back to OACC. It's OK being back at OACC, but I know, I know I can't stay. The interesting thing is that each space I've taught at has given me different lessons, showed me different things. And each time I've moved the own martial arts training has moved in different ways. Each place gives you opportunities, each place gives you challenges.

Yesterday, I checked out a space. I would have to move the class to another day, but it was big with mats, and equipment. Next week I will see another space that's probably narrower and smaller, but on the regular night I teach. And I can see that it's more than just the numbers, I'm much more sensitive to the energy of a space than before, both of the shape and of the people who use that space. It's no surprise why similar people congregate in the same place, they are attracted to it.

And as I go and visit various locations, I've been trying to imagine the different challenges and opportunities of the spaces. Do I choose a place that's good/ok or do I look for the place that feels right. I think my choices before have mostly been by necessity and experimentation, but now I feel like I'm at a point where I can hang out for a bit and be patient. Wait to see if a really good space comes along. Because in the end it's not simply a choice of where I want to be but also a choice of where I want to go.

favorite place on the web right now

2008-02-24T22:59:00.000-08:00

My favorite place on the web right now is not Facebook, though I spend quite a bit of time there. No, my favorite place on the web right now is a place called, Live Mocha. It's a social networking site focused on language learning. They provide basic lessons in English, French, German, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, and Hindi.

So far I've signed up for the French and Spanish lessons. I've only glanced at the Chinese and Hindi. I don't think I could learn Mandarin on the internet. Those languages still intimidate me into terms of learning them. But it is nice to be able to keep up with the French and strengthen the Spanish.

The nice part is that it also provides written and speaking segments where you record statements that are then "graded" or commented on by a native speaker of that language. So, I've commented on written and oral statements submitted by those studying English. I haven't tried the other forums yet, but look forward to getting practice time with native speakers and such over the internet.