june 30

today we moved to the basement of lawson commons. ‘not really a problem even though we don’t have any window here, and we don’t have slight idea if it’s sunny or raining outside. we’re using company laptop so going around is not much problem. we even bring our laptops at home everyday after work. there will only be four working days this week! yehey!! 4th of july, friday, is US independence day. no office work. the group is planning to go to albertville, a town 30 miles away, for extreme shopping!!! this will be the biggest sale during our stay here, so i guess i would be spending some fortune this weekend.. ‘just have to be wise not to overspend.

also in the basement is a company gym, and i’m surprise that people workout during office hours! haha. the gym is bigger than the free in the apartment, so could probably use the facility after work sometimes. the other bad thing in the basement (apart from no sense of weather outside), is that  we don’t have pantry here. so, we have to get our coffee at the 2nd F, and bring it inside the elevator, down to the basement.

i was not able to go around this lunch time, let’s see tomorrow.

on other things, coldplay’s back with their newest album carrier, viva la vida. have to say it’s another successful catchy release from the band. there’s a line up of concerts for 2008, including a trip to japan (tokyo and osaka, why not go the philippines too?). i’ve seen them before for their x&y tour in hong kong, and the show was really overwhelming. they will also be going to saint paul, mn this coming november and the venue is just 3 blocks across the office!! which is still, walking distance from the apartment!. the sad thing though, is that i won’t be here then!

endangered species kang kong

good morning sunday. overslept last night, the gang went to see sunday mass but since i just woke up when they’re all ready to go, i missed it. as for yesterday, did my laundry and cooked sinigang, we already have all ingredients except for the vegetables so wilson and i went to the farmer’s market to get fresh produce. it’s a couple of blocks away from the apartment. one of the nicest thing i like about this district is the accessibility. there’s several groceries, parks, library, museums, pubs, fastfoods, etc..all within comfortable walking distance from home.

however, in the farmer’s market yesterday morning, they don’t have kang kong. the closest we could ever have is a vegetable called bat choi. from hong kong, i knew that kang kong is called tung choi, (choi is literally vegetables, tung means hollow, emply space). the farmers/vendors are of asian origin, and i tried asking for tung choi but they don’t have it. anyway, sinigang tasted decent i guess…but i’m surprised that some of my colleagues cook it in a way like you do a nilaga. they don’t saute it, just boil the meat and put all the vegetables. as i’ve been learning from my mom at home, i saute garlic, onion, and tomatoes first (however, we don’t have tomatoes yesterday), and then put meat, fish sauce, then tamarind power, and then the soup. and since, i’m the head chef (haha), we did it my way.

sorry i don’t have photos of sinigang.  maybe next time.

PICS

The Landmark

downtown saint paul is old. architecture is archaic and the neighborhood itself is an attraction for someone coming from asia, where the environment is totally different. some of the roads are even paved with cobblestones, there’s a lot of small parks, colorful flowers hanging along the sideways, small alleys with overlooking black metal stairways of old brick apartment buildings, huge rectangular trash bins on the level, random newspaper flying around. the 2 missing things are: stray dogs, and muggers. really typical american suburb i only see from movies before.

across the street from the office, there’s lot of places to see, the rice park and landmark in front, science museum farther left, a public library, and ordway (center for arts facility). i’ve been to the landmark for 2 lunchbreaks already and i haven’t seen everything in it. landmark center is a restored old federal courts building, has been a postal office, and now it’s a cultural center and houses diverse arts, history, and cultural collections and antiques. the building, from the outside, is like a castle owing to several turrets. as i’ve seen from posters, there’s a musical keyboard exhibit in the basement of landmark (by the schubert club), so it’s something i really wanted to see. after walking around the ground level first where we met uncle sam, a computerized american friend telling the history of the building, we then proceeded at the basement. the collection they have is outstanding! the antique keyboards are fragile, and a lot of them are so delicate that they’re hands-off to the public. some of the collections, however, are playable, and it was a grand opportunity to sample a 1935 wurlitzer grand among others! the oldest original they have is a spinet originating from the 1500’s! cool! it was also my first time ever to hear an authentic music box, and the sound it produces is so amazing, it’s captivating, and you wouldn’t imagine that the sound is coming from a piece that has probably survived world wars! i mean, it’s indeed an antique, a magnificent invention. it’s not something like chimes from a jewelry music box, with a plastic ballerina dancing. completely far from that. something more complicated. the sound is a whole orchestra. astounding!

more pics

and so, it’s friday today, my second weekend! so fast! =D

Angénieux retrofocus

i’ve been using the “wide” lens often due to space constrictions..although the quality is a bit impaired, intense vignetting and the actual sides of the lens being visible, i still find it very useful to take a bigger angle.

i have 2 adapter lenses, remnants from fz50. one is a wide, and the other is telephoto lens. by experiments, i’m surprised that inverted telephoto gives me a wider picture than the wide adapter! and because of that, i’ve been using the inverted telephoto lens much..

a bit curious about the effect, i found out that a lot of wide lenses are actually inverted telephoto lenses.

Angénieux retrofocus

some of example (shot at the same distance):

shot at 28mm (tamron 28-75)

shot at 28mm (tamron 28-75) with inverted telephoto lens on top

weekend, etc.

i can’t log-in i.ph yesterday, so this is a late post. for my first weekend, cooking and laundry of course. the place we’re staying is called galtier’s apartment, and although they have a common room for laundry, it’s not free..and since a couple of colleagues are staying in an apartment just across the street where laundry is free, i think i will be doing my washing there..hehe.. in fact, i already left my detergent powder in carmi’s place. haha

because this is going to be just a short stint compared to previous stay in hong kong, i have to be very wise in spending per diem. frugality, but not to the point that i’ll starve! it’s easy to cook here because grocery is just along the way going home from the office, and we have sufficient time to cook dinner, which will also be our lunch the following day. i also brought with me some food packages and supplies from the philippines, so it’ll save me from buying things like shampoo, soap, toothbrush, etc…

ok, not to sound like i’m having a destitute livelihood at the moment, i’m just preparing my financials to something big coming in the future. no! you’re wrong, i’m not soon to have a child to support, that’s extremely far from my personality. haha.

so apart from laundry and cooking, we had a small gathering last friday at our place, just some beer, and poker games. the next day, saturday, we went to mall of america. it’s not as big as mall of asia, but the items on sale are really tempting! it was season ender sale (summer started last june 20), and i ended up buying a vintage shirt, although i’d eyed on a lot of things!! like a swiss army laptop backpack, more shirts, a slipper from skeckers, and some shirts from fossil. good thing, a friend was able to remind me about saving money, and honestly, it’s not really hard to resist the urge to buy. i mean, it’s not that i need them badly. i guess i have more than enough shirts, clothes, and shoes back at home, and what’s more important right now is to set my property as liquid as possible. having said that, mutual funds is undescribably a great disappointment right now. *sigh* could you imagine that my lost is closing to 50,000.00 pesos already!!!

going back to the weekend, sunday afternoon was spent in tita letty’s house, a filipino here in saint paul. she’s been here for 20 years..and at the moment, living by herself in an apartment a few blocks away from galtier’s. colleagues from manila (who were here earlier) met her before, and now, it’s becoming a trend to have some gathering at her place whenever newbies arrive. they played basketball while i took pictures in the area. then, we had palabok, chicken, fish, shrimp, rice, and finishing it with homemade avocado ice cream. yummy. thanks tita.

to good to be true, there’s another dinner later today, also at a friendly filipino’s place. it’s so nice for these people to be preparing food to people they hardly know. probably because this place is unlike other states where filipinos are the next most populous nationality after americans, they long for some kabayan to share banters, hear stories, and as good as it gets, our group has lots of them.

good morning monday

i’m here for a week already, really fast. in the office today, and probably meet our boss from manila ’cause she’s around. weekend was busy with: cooking food, doing my laundry, going to the gym, taking pictures, went to MOA (same name as our MOA, it’s Mall of America hehe), and reading.

i’ve finished 2 children’s books recently. artemis fowl (eoin colfer), borrowed from anna. although i’ve heard many good things about this book, and it’s highly acclaimed as rival to rowling’s series, i only give it 3 out of 10 stars. the plot is fairly simple, and the storytelling is not as marvellously done for my liking. it’s the human world with unhuman characters like fairies and goblins. artemis, a young brilliant human, son of a crime lord, is in the middle of a secret operation (illegal) to bring back their lost family fortune. by doing so, he devised a plan to capture a fairy and ask golds for ransom. capturing a female fairy, captain short, seems to be too easy in the beginning, but things unfold unexpectedly as he found himself trap in his own plot. human, you don’t know what you’re dealing with.

second book is things hoped for by andrew clements. ‘bought this book from fullybooked before leaving home. it’s a sequel to things not seen. clements has become my favorite young adult book writer. it was written very very well and because i liked the first book, i was curious what happened to bobby from the first book. although some characters are from the original, bobby and alicia, the focus of the second book is gwen, a young musician living in new york with her grandfather. she’s just a typical girl, soon to enter university and working out on auditions to top music schools (julliards, etc..) when eventually her grandfather went missing. with only a week before her auditions, she has to manage living by herself and stop her uncle from disturbing their place as he’s eager on selling the house which he co-owned with gwen’s grandfather. she then met bobby (things not seen, trumpet player), also doing auditions in new york. they joined a few days of adventure, living in new york, finding out what happened to gwen’s grandfather, and spotted another invisible man. the mystery of gwen’s grandfather was revealed at the end, as gwen’s big audition came. the only bit i didn’t like in this book is the invisible stranger gwen and bobby met. it’s really out of place, and i think it was just added to have, at least, a connection with its prequel, things no seen.

Getting back

at my 4th day here in saint paul, i’m beginning to get back my energy from sleeping and resting a lot. in the beginning (and even now), it’s hard to get sleep at the right time..and broad daylight at 9 or 10 o’clock pm didn’t help much! i always wake up at around 2 am, and there’s lot of moment that i just lie on my bed half-awake half-asleep. after staying for 2 nights at the hilton inn (paris hilton’s family’s line of hotels), i now share an apartment with wilson. it’s galtier apartment, 2 or 3 blocks away from the office. today is the first day of summer here, but the weather is pleasant in the morning so i’ve been walking on my way to work each day.

the apartment is a 2-bedroom, with a sala, kitchen, 2 bath, and a balcony! (which has access from my room, so great!) the view is amazing with traffic at distance, taking-off and landing planes on the far right, old bricks buildings nearby, greeny mears park in front, a bridge, and a river afar. it’s nice to feel the summer breeze and take pictures from the balcony. my room is medium-sized, with lots of storage spaces and an adjacent bathroom. it has a digital clock i’ve been looking and wanting for ages!!! (big red-led display with alarm) i have to look where to buy it here. everything’s fine so far, but the television cable is not working (’have to report), and the internet we got is wired. i ordered a router from amazon, and it should be coming today or tomorrow. we’ve been cooking our meals to stay healthy and of course to save money. the first meal we cooked is fried chicken with vegetables, and then last night (as well as for my lunch today), we have porkchop and nido soup (i brought from manila). the place has a small gym, laundry room (not free!), and a pool.

it’s friday today, and i’m not sure if we’ll go outside later. i’ll probably try the gym after preparing dinner. we went to univesity avenue this lunch time to get some asian stuff. it’s a long street of commercial shops specializing in asian good and merchandise. we went to a grocery and bought more vegetables, philippine-brand fish sauce, vinegar, and soy sauce, and a 25-lbs sack of rice. ’went there with a manager from the office, tuan. thanks.. and then we dropped by the apartment to unload the goods. unfortunately, i unloaded everything including tuan’s 2 plastic bags of 5 coconuts. from the apartment, we went back walking to the office and too bad, tuan left the office already. ‘really a shame that after his kindness, we stole his coconuts.

pics

High

it’s my third day in the city today, and to catch up with the pictures, let me begin with some shots taken from the very loooong plane ride to minneapolis from manila. i settled with an itinerary like this: manila → somewhere-in-the-air-for-a-while → manila → tokyo → seattle → minneapolis-st. paul. the total travel time is a gruesome 18 hours, 16 hours of which is in flight.

japan airline is the best economy class seat i’ve ever had (so much better than cathay). i sat on the 2nd level of a 747, food was a tasty bowl of japanese oyakudon, complete with dessert and a cup of ice cream! it’s heavenly spacious with my own private cabinet on my left side (so it’s easier to get things compared to getting it from the overhead cabin) which also works as a table put your things on top of it during the flight (like books, pillow, mp3). the stewardess are japanese (cute) hehe and they even wore oversized japanese apron when serving food! really courteous! the safety video instruction, unusually, is in computer animation, and announcement are done in nihonggo, english, and tagalog.

northwest airline. nothing but… bummer!!

pics

hotel hopping

south-east asia → philippines → metro manila

delayed and cancelled flights are not too bad afterall. northwest paid for a night each in dusit thani, and manila hotel, inclusive of buffet breakfast, lunch, and dinner! a good way to start earning pounds! hehe

dusit thani, in makati, has this thai-inspired architecture. rooms are nice, but for some reasons, i got a smoking room! the smell’s a bit pungent even though i don’t smoke because they were all around the carpets. food was great! and since it’s in makati, there’s something to do around while i waited for my flight bookings. i stayed here for a saturday night, and expecting i would get a flight on sunday morning, i headed to the airport dawn of sunday only to find out that i still have to stay for one more night in manila! this time it’s manila hotel along roxas boulevard.

manila hotel is old, yet grandeur. it’s the oldest hotel in the philippines built in 1909 to rival Malacanang Palace. the chandeliers in the lobby are enormous, and the live chamber music is pleasing. in the middle of manila, facing manila bay where i lost my camera before, i avoided going out at all and spent time sleeping in my room, eating lunch and breakfast, shower, and took some pictures of manila bay coastline. it has a 13th floor (in fact, i stayed on this floor), which added to the scary atmosphere of being alone and the historically aged building.

more pics

NW-02 Flight More Pics

http://yossarian22.multiply.com/photos/album/47/NW-02_Manila_-_Narita_Tokyo_Accident_-_June_14_2008

no worries really, i’m all in one piece. thank God!