夕陽無限好

Changed the banner picture again... the picture was taken last night before going to the Rainbow Missions dinner, at around 5.15pm. It was REALLY cold and I didn't dress enough so I was like running here and there to keep myself warm.

A self-selfportrait :-) The background was exposed for three minutes and I stood in front of the camera for about 20 seconds. It sort of created an effect that I'm disappearing from Seattle....

Haha, doesn't that match what my fate is going to be?

Looking around, all but one friends who joined the company around the same time as me have all left. Those days of rushing to a Japanese class looks like yesterday.

When we were still, considerably, young.

***

Went to the drama last night. It was unplanned. The story was so familiar... and I found our pieces here and there...

夕陽無限好, 天色已黃昏.
本想去憑愛去換最燦爛一生,
想不到長吻帶來更永恆傷感

你在哪兒?

我沒法控制狂風的方向
也未能知曉 那日方可重見艷陽
但我知主的手總會守在我旁
前景雖灰暗 信念未搖晃

我沒法掌管潮水的升降
也未能阻擋遍地冰霜 隨處跌盪
但我知 主恩典 足夠克服駭浪
無力的心可變堅壯

【神啊！你在哪兒】 (listen)

***

I was about going to the drama after the dinner, then mom called and said uncle went to the hospital because of kidney's problems.... and then I searched on the web too see if I can find anything about him, and I found it! Looks like the situation wasn't that bad as I imagined.

****

The house was so quiet tonight.

Quiet time. I've longed for.

****

This week's assignment was to do tungsten/continuous light. We went to Macrina and had brunch before the studio. The food there was very good. I love the French toast a lot, but I heard there is a even better one on Broadway.



****

Recently I found that my knee is a little bit uncomfortable... no pain at all, it's just very tight, very uncomfortable...

work... from home.

work... from home.
Originally uploaded by euqus.

It's been a long time I haven't gone back to work during weekend and stayed late at night because of a project.... and I'm silly enough taking a polaroid of my tiny cube bringing it back home :-)

Speaking work "from home", I think I do have a lot of work I have yet to do, especially taking care of the lawn...

愈痛愈美麗 ...

《愈痛愈美麗 ── 與死神共處的276天》

以前的她，只會瘋狂玩樂，飲酒、食煙、落pub、飛車......

誰 知， 癌 魔 卻 突 然 來 訪 ....

***

年輕人,常說自己心中有團火.於是拼了命地往"理想"跑去.不眠不休地工作,玩樂…面對友人情人,比對有同血同肉的家人更親... 可能,我就是眾多年輕人的其中一位, 你們好,我名叫夢特嬌.
-- 夢特嬌.全

strip mall 中的驚喜!

WOW!!

Izumi is a pleasant surprise!

Although the restaurant is in a strip mall, it's totally another world once you step inside.

If you like authentic Japaense food, you must try this one. You won't regret.

誠意推薦:

Deep Fried Tofu
This is not an ordinary deep fried tofu. The batter is very thin and crisp that eventhough it's soaked in the sauce for a long time it's still very crispy. Be careful it is SUPER hot so don't eat it all at once, or else you'll get your mouth burned--seriously.

Izumi Makunouchi
You can't miss this one. This is a lovely dish that includes sashimi, sushi, teriyaki (beef loin and chicken), and tempura veggies--all packed in a very nice traditional bento box. If you order the bigger size, it's enough to share among at least two people.

Sushi Rolls
They have all kinds of rolls, but we just ordered a scallop one. It was 范特西!

What you can happily miss is their Ebi Tempura. Not surprising.

Oh, their service is .... OK, as long as you are not served by this one waitress.

She's so funny.

First of all, we ordered one ebi tempura, but she said that it only comes with three shrimps. We found out that adding one extra shrimp cost $2, so I ordered one more. She was so confused, and didn't believe what was written on the menu. So she went back to the kitchen and asked if this was true..... I know... menu could be changed, but wouldn't YOU knew already? (haha, it turned out that the tempura wasn't that good... it must be the least ordered item--my bad choice...)

Then, we made our other orders. She insisted the portion of each dish was VERY small, and pushed us to get one more Makunouchi, which was the most expensive among all we ordered... We decided to make other orders at a later time and she looked REALLY upset about this idea...

OK, food was served. She put some salads on the table while we're chatting. After a while she passed by, and kind of yelling to us "Why don't you start eating!!! You should start eating NOW! Or else I can't serve you other stuffs!!!!"

Oh well.... wasn't this really entertaining :-)

Apart from this, the quality of the food is really good. No reservation can be made, so expect some wait time if you go during the peak hours.

I will definitely go back.

Izumi

12539 116TH Ave NE (Cross Street: NE 125th Street)
Kirkland, WA 98034-4310View Map
(425) 821-1959

BIG thanks to Peggy for this good find, and her parents :P

不捨得

不捨得。

不捨得。

都話不捨得!

I'm so fondled the packaging I really don't want to open it up...

Sigh.

I'm so addicted to Polaroid recently :) When I peel off the paper cover, that moment, 那一剎, is like peeling off the covering of a dream, a gift.

Hum, I guess I'm more like a camera collector then a photographer :p

Sigh.

掙扎。

掙扎。

但..... 有捨 ..... 才得。

無情調...

Today's title is totally unrelated to what I'm going to say :)

Anyways, it's 12.45am now and I started to have my dinner...

Yeah, Tuesday is hectic day--I stayed in the lab for six hours, again. And this time without food AND drinks! Seith is really a perfectionist, but also an excellent instructor. I've never met an instructor who is willing to stay two more hours just for the students. Sometimes I'd think... does he have a family??

After the class I started cooking noodles, and I added purple cabbage into it. I wonder why it created such an awful greenish color??

Oh, here's the print of tonight... if anyone cares. It took me 10 test prints to come to this final version. I've done something wrong even with this print, but hopefully no one notices it... Oh well, as long as I got a pass from Seith I won't "care" too much :-)

I started to like the tedious and tiring printing process. I know... it wouldn't help me too much on how to capture "good" pictures, but it does train my eyes to see color better. On the other hand, I think I'm getting used to the high bar set by Seith, and started to appreciate it--yup, that half a point change in a color filter (in a scale of over a hundred) does change the entire picture a lot!

【香港廣告經典系列】香港寬頻 - 生有限、活無限。

古道風勁

Interested in joining the 苗圃茶馬古道2007 ? It's a charity walk organized by the Sowers Action after 行路上北京 and 助學長征. Looks like the connection walk requires the participants to walk for a month, and you need to raise HKD20,000.

The full route is:

由雲南普洱茶的產地（今 西雙版納、思茅等地）出發→下關（今 大理）→ 劍川 →麗江→ 鐵橋城 →中甸（今 香格里拉）→迪慶→ 阿墩子（今 德欽） → 馬兒敢（今 西藏芒康） → 八宿邦達 →昌都→波密→拉薩 The entire trip needs almost four months to finish, and the longest connection route takes 39 days to finish, which is from 香格里拉 to 拉薩!

39 days of walking.... that reminds me Jesus fast in the dessert for 40 days... How did he do it?

****

I was browsing around Amazon and found out this book. Looks really good, although people started to dislike Howard Schatz's work because of exarggerated digital editing.

Nevertheless, I think Schatz captured the most beautiful body form, and enhanced the wonderful body lines digitally. Afterall, it's not easy to master digital darkroom techniques, IMHO.

I really wanted to check out this book, but that $250 used book price tag scared me away....

Talking about books, I finally found a newer feature on Amazon that I like - Amazon Upgrade (and a related service launched at the same time called Amazon Page) that was launched last November. I purchased my first online book :-) The good thing I like about this service is that you can search keywords on the book you purchased.

And of course, you can always sell the physical book...

Oh, talking about body, I'm planning to visit this exhibition!

****

Had a marathon meeting today from 9-6... discussing the future direction of JF. Looks like a lot of challenges are lying ahead!

心慌慌

So I found this knife sitting in front of my house when I get back home late from the class.... I don't know about you but this seems to be dropped from someone who was planing to break in. Hum.... I guess I'll have to buy extra insurance on my stuffs!

***
Am I too crazy about my hobby? I stayed in the school from 5-11... six hours ! It's more than the time I stay at work, not to mention that I didn't have dinner until after school...

bauhaus rocks!

Finally I met someone who loves bauhaus/mid-century modern furniture! I took a look at the pics of his condo and the furniture look awesome! It seems that he really know these stuffs since his father was an architect in Chicago back in the 70's and his house is filled with this sort of stuff.

This Amazonian likes taking pictures too!!

Talking about Chicago, the SAIC is the top design/art school... but looks like a BFA wouldn't be that useful....

wedding moo

If I were to get married, I'll probably print out these stuffs as my inviation 'bookmark' that no single one is the same :-)

找到了!

So the two rings found where they belong to! Congrats!! It was tiring and stressful--I mean, really stressful-- since there were a lot of people who know how to take formal wedding pictures in the party :-) But I think I did my best... Oh, a coupled people complained to me that they can't take good pictures because the MC explicitly said that flash shouldn't be used during the ceremony because "that would affect the photograher taking good picutres"..... Hum..... How could this request come from me? I didn't use flash anyway?! I know where this request came from... it'd be best not to "put the photograher on the table"....

The wedding was great, fun, and touching other than hauling 40lbs around the entire day.

***

I needed to take some formal portaits for the studio class today. My friend said that I'm going too fast learning photography. I guess... the classes are just a jump start giving me pointers to where I can start taking technically correct pictures. It's a life long learning process to perfect in this art. And perhaps, without the classes I would never ever take pictures so frequently...

***

Went to Peggy's place for dinner. She cooked really well! All the dishes were really great, especially the soup -- super sweet! This pic was so funny.... they put a ball in between them to replace me :-) Both Lexin and David were pretty quiet during the dinner.... but when we brought up this topic they were both excited and were like woke up from sleep all of a sudden.....

Hum, looks like there are more competitors then I thought!

Thanks Peggy for cooking and the food, and Lexin for cleaning up all the dishes!

We should definitely do this more often ~ka!

心痛

The second roll of film for the photo class was processed and this time I chose to do the contact sheet in a commercial lab. And when I picked it up today, I found the total cost was $20!!!

Processing a roll costs about $7 including tax, so the contact sheet alone costs $13!!

心痛!

I guess I'll go back to my own lab and do the labouring work from now on.

****
Went to rather big dinner party tonight at Maneki. Their monk fish liver was awesome!! Also the black cod cheek was really good too. I feel hungry again now just to think about it.

****

I received the school catalog a few days back. It costs 10,000EU just for a year's tuition fee, excluding all the living costs.

But the idea of studying in Florence for a year sounds "fun" :)

My friend's starting to talk about getting into the food industry, but I guess it's going to be boiling congee without rice again. It's good though to keep talking about the dreams... at least this makes life a bit more excited.

****


Got some free flowers again because someone forgot to pick up with the Pike Place basket. Coincidently in the color class the instrutor showed us some slides about color relationship. Looking at the flowers sitting in my bathroom, I can't help but praise Him that God is truely the master of all ages!

****

The Polaroid 195 ROCKS!!!!

I took a few self portraits with it. Too bad this floral arrangement looked as if I were gone to the better place or what. Oh well...

Capture this time...

This looks like a pretty neat idea! From now till 11/8, you can capture your moments in this digital time capsule in the form of any digital media! The data will be sealed and entrusted as long as human history exists (or until Smithsonian Folkways Recordings can no longer keep it :)

I was trying to find a photo of mine that fits into the various categories of the time bottle, but I can hardly do it...

May be I should start taking self portraits from now on...

Oh, btw, looks like mostly female wants to do this thing... the ratio is like 3:1 according to this data :)

家, 很遙遠...

「如果你覺得 神很遙遠, 你想是誰搬家了?」

風花雪月 獨家試愛

Bought some sunflowers before the hotpot last night the 追月夜--I have been thinking of getting sunflowers for the bathroom for a long time :-)

Got some pretty good food for the hotpot. I picked up deboned duck feet from Won Tone and it turned out really good. Crisp in texture, and rich in flavor!

Watched 《獨家試愛》afterwards, which was full of surprises... I'm shocked to learn that marriage of young couples in HK can be that messy. I mean, extramarital affair can happen to couples of all ages across all generations, but the way 方力申 and 鄧麗欣 chose to resolve the problem was so cildish. Also it's too bad the movie described messed up relationships pretty good, but failed to bring to the viewer a hope, a more positive view point towards the problem.

What surprised me though, was that this movie was a hit in HK! I searched on how people responded to it, here's a quote:

10分
我好鐘意ｓｅｅ呀!!

haha, it's pretty ho see ge, if you lower your expectations :)

Went to studio again, and this time ho gor was my model. After finishing all the requried steps by the assignment, we started playing around with the light :-)

Got the rug!!!

Finally! I got my dream rug!!! It's actually two smaller rugs that can tied up to become 9'x12'

You know, craigslist is really helpful. Whenever I need something, I can always get something good.

The rug is from, again, some rich people :-) Like last time when I get the dinning table, this couple who sell the rug to me lives in some gated monster house.... I chated a bit with them and found out that the husband worked for SAS in the IT department, and he retired like 10 years ago. Since he worked at SAS, he got a chance to get the beautiful hand woven flokati from Greek.

interesting facts

Went to David's house this past weekend. The steaks that I pan fried was pretty good just after I took them off from the pan, but they got really stiff after cooling down. I guess that's a good lesson to learn.

****

Got some funny data from the website stats... here's the keywords that brought people to my blog... interestingly, why would I relate to the one highlighted??

(well, it turns out to be a blog that has these two words in totally unrelated context)

10/05/06 00:12:43
"made in kitchen" seattle (Google)
10/04/06 12:20:34
"match.com" subscription (Google)
10/04/06 08:20:32
"taoming@" (Google)
10/03/06 22:26:45
"team lunch"+"unsuccessful" (Google)
10/03/06 19:47:08
polaroid 195 (Google)
10/02/06 16:25:08
Lewis HINE (Google)
10/02/06 15:37:52
hotell i norrland (Google)

BTW, I saw several times people searched for '"made in kitchen" + seattle ' since they were up for business :-)

****

I'm learning Ruby now. Yeah... I decided to leave and all of a sudden someone made me to get shape up technically.

I guess it'd be a good idea to learn a new language. As my friend suggested, it's always interesting to learn the philosophy behind a programming language.

OK. I'm all up for the challenge. So the following (remaining?) six months will be a bootcamp towards a new territory.

小事數則

Finally Seattle has started its raining season... argh, hopefully we'll be able to see the full moon on Friday. Luckily I was able to catch Sunday's sunbreak and went to Arboretum to capture the beautiful autumn color change. It turned out not too bad :-) Oh, and I developed my first color contact sheet tonight in the class! The studio ones were not exposed quite right though, since I forgot the golden rule in color photography -- it's much safer/better to be slightly overexposed. Ha, and not to mention that I must have incorrectly set the ISO of my light meter. But despite that, the studio print still came out OK.

Oh, talking about the studio pictures, I have chosen a small set of that thanks for the blessings from my model Peggy :-)

I also added some product shots I took during the weekend. I'm a bit disappointed though since I couldn't create the effect I was hoping for (like having the bottle outlined by the light, etc). let's see what the instructor is going to say tomorrow.

****

Had a lot of meetings today, that I skipped lunch again--second time within these two weeks. It's not a big deal to a lot of people out there, but it's big to me since, you know, after working in the same company for so many years, you'll start 'respecting' lunch more than anything else :-)

Talking about work, our team has a lot of openings! It's almost doubling the size of the current one. If you don't know, I'm working in a team that's responsible for the Advantage program, which is something that's based on consignment business model.

*****

Got a big rug recently that doesn't really fit my house. I'm going to resell it soon!