one. i’m flying out to tokyo tomorrow morning…word! nihon, here i come. again. third times a charm. this’ll hopefully (hard not to be) the best japan trip yet.

two. todays my last day at my current studio…bye bye west village! change was inevitable, and this was probably a good time as any to move on. the fact that it’s capped by my trip to tokyo makes it all the better too. k…so i really don’t know what else to put into this post. yea…hrmm…k, whatever…fin!

mmm…its been two weeks since i got back to nyc. and in that time i’ve eaten out at waaay too many japanese eateries. setagaya, menkui-tei, and a new ramen place, ippudo. i mean, im going to tokyo in two week…you’d think i’d be able to wait a bit. wait, hold up…have i mentioned this before? hmm, i dont think i have…whups. yea, im off to tokyo (again) in two weeks…woot! this will be my third time there, putting it up there (soon) as one of only two cities i’ve travelled to more than twice…the other one being london. anyhoo, im digressing. tokyo will get its own post…

ST JOHNS
last weekend was minks wedding, held at st. john the divines. holy shit that place is massive. as we approached it from 110th st, i saw a small chapel and went, “hmm, the photos made it look so much larger…“. as we actually round the corner from 110th st, we see the building behind that one, which turned out to be the actual st. johns. yea…the small chapel was just the synod…ha!

the wedding itself was very formal, very solemn. i felt bad for even shuffling and making ruffling noises in the space. after the wedding ceremony, we headed over to the aforementioned synod for the reception for food and music. and after that we headed to k-town for some tofu specialties at cho dang gol. it was gud.

BAR-CRAWL
for whatever reason, di and i decided to head out bar-crawling saturday nite to relax with some liquor. we started at bond st, a sneaky little bar that ive probably walked by thousands of time, but never knew was a bar. sneaky! after going thru two rounds of high-priced drinks and really yum nigiri’s (hello $$$) we headed to…um…the bar next to the noho star. yea, name escapes me. it was a speak-easy, very chill. well it was when we first got there. after our first round, we looked up and noticed the entire place was packed…wow. we eventually got the munchies, and eventually made our way down to the lower east side to kampuchea for some cambodian noodles and a cold glass of hitachino. yum yum…

anyhoo, i want to relax on my bed now and watch no reservations, so im just going to end this post here without a clever closing paragraph. theyre overrated anyhoo…unless this paragraph talking about a lack of a clever closing paragraph is in fact itself a clever closing paragraph. whatever…my nose is running. argh…allergies…

im going home in two days…hooray! much love to amsterdam, which has been feeling more and more like a second home, but there are too many things i miss in nyc. friends, food, and various other words starting with “f”. hopefully (preferably) the next time i come back to amsterdam, it wont be in a work capacity. and hey, i might even be able to get out and see the sights for once.

JIMMY WOO
last weekend was technically my last full weekend, so we went oot for some lushing and clubbing. lysha and her friend alice came by the office (i was working til the last second) and we headed out for some indian foodage at purna. the vindaloo wrecked alice (lysha and i got much milder selections), but she soldiered on. we first went for some pre-clubbing drinkies at suzy wongs…which i deduced had an asian theme going on (durrrr). the drinks were good tho, and the lit bamboo encased in glass i dig. we then migrated to jimmy woos (asian consistency!) to get down with our bad selves.

REMAINDERS
i tried making the most of my last week in amsterdam, so we squeezed in one last dinner together with lysha and (new friend!) alice…this time at bird thai in chinatown. we got a selection of dishes, most of which were hotter than they expected them to be. i didnt mind (thought it was just mild), so i kept noshing away at the food. the restaurant didnt seem to have thai ice tea tho…what the dilly. after dinner, we took dessert at häagen-dazs in the rembrandtplein. they luvs their häagen-dazs here…there are actually numerous ice cream parlours where you can just relax and unwind with a wide assortment of teeth-rotting confections. it was yum.

i think we get tomorrow off, as a sort of recompense for the evil hours we put into our current project. so ill probably make one last walk of the city for photography. unless the weather is shit (very likely), which in that case, ill just come back and dick around wikipedia.

work…burning…brain. er…*drooool*. this incessant work and little time to play is melting my brain. ill be reduced to liquified sustenance in probably a week…i need to get out of here.

in happier days, i did go out a number of times for beer, food, or a combination of those two (my brains already lost the details…so, meh). then i decided to break out and head over to london this past weekend to visit hosan. it was supposed to be an ok weekend in terms of work, but yea…that wasnt the case. oh well, tickets were already booked…ciao! so i flew over to london (obscenely fast) for some r+r. oh, first an aside. tube from heathrow=the suck. like seriously, fuck you. nothing better than stalling in the middle of nowhere and not knowing why. what shouldve taken maybe 30-40 minutes turned out to be almost an hour and a half. i hate you tube…learn to express.

so after i finally made it to southwark, i met up with hosan for a late din at…some place somewhere. she had to work a bit the next day, so i spent the better part of the morning and afternoon wandering around areas of london i hadnt been before, mainly the eastern areas which i just never bothered with the last 2 times i was in london. the weather was shit too, so i had to duck into tube stations on occasion. at the monument station, i happened to see posters for the emperor’s terracotta army exhibit happening at the british museum. so i was like, woot, im there dude. i tubed it over to the british museum, where i ran smack into the biggest crowd of people id ever seen in london. shit. and as it turned out, the exhibition was sold out too for the day. fuck. aw well, i wandered the halls of the museum anyway…i just didnt leave a donation. ha! take that.

we met up later that night and ate at vinoteca, then headed to a party in bricklane (?) with some of hosans friends where i drank budweiser! except it wasnt budweiser…it was some czech beer named budweiser. right then. the next morning we had brunch (lunch really) in chinatown, then i had to jet off back to amsterdam.
look, pictures! yay!

gosh thats a long title…

in other news, the whole studios been working incessantly since i got here (well…not since, but well before too), but i did have time to meet up with lysha last friday. i hadnt seen her since, well, since i was last in amsterdam (duh). my coworker gabor joined us too while we hunted for food around chinatown. we ended up at new king and ordered ourselves a nice and wholesome chinese dinner. except we ordered 2 dishes with chinese broccoli…oops. we roamed the leidesplein afterwards for some beer, but all the spots were filled up with british tourists…sigh. we migrated over to rembrandtplein and settled down in the cafe of escape instead, and drank away the rest of the night. ah relaxing.

the new animator arrived monday too…tianyi from shanghai. im the unofficial translator, because her english blows. which is funny, because so does my chinese…yay! k its not that bad, but i do need to whip out my chinese-english dictionary every so often. and when i say “every so often”, i mean every other word. we took her to chinatown tuesday just because we blindly assumed being chinese meant she only liked chinese food…ha! we actually ended up back at new king because they have the best chinese ive had in amsterdam so far. and we didnt repeat our chinese broccoli mistake from the past friday and instead ordered a pretty rockin’ set of food. <3.

beautiful amsterdam weather…woot.

ah back in the city of canals and shitty weather. except the weathers not shitty! its actually been sunny the two days ive been here so far…tho ive been told that this is a fluke, and the poop weather should return shortly. they apologized for the inconvenience. theres something to look forward to.

JUST FRIENDS
first and foremost, a random aside. i am undoubtedly at this point, the almighty ruler of the magical kingdom of “just friends”, where everyday is a fun adventure in how not to start a relationship. thats me…i rock. on the bright side, i have a date to my friends wedding in march. youre probably asking yourself tho, “but wait…shouldnt he not be writing this in his journal, in case said person comes across this entry?” and i just have to retort, “at this point in my life, do you think i care?” none at all.

the other question youre probably asking (if you know me well enough) is “shit on a stick, shouldnt you know better by now?” apparently not…apparently not.

LUNAR NEW YEAR
in other news, we had a relaxing hot pot thursday nite at anna’s for the lunar new year. its the year of the rat…cheer! i think. rats are kinda dirty…but i suppose the chinese spin the rat in some kind of lucky, yet headstrong kind of way. we even got red bags from the resident married couple…because the rest of us are sadly single.

MAY
saturday i visited my sis in new jersey to see my new niece may…woo! my sis was still recovering from her 27 hours of craziness, but she was back home with my brother-in-law and my mom, who was living with them for a few weeks to take care of both may and my sis. may has my sis’ nose and mouth, and dave’s eyes. we said he could have the ears too, but hopefully she has my sis’ hair…because dave has a jewish fro.

pics are already up on flickr…woots.

IPOD
oh and in other other news…yea, i got myself an ipod touch. lolz at joo! yea, i knock apple all the time, but like the nano before this, im all for quality shit. the only thing i had against the touch was itunes, its paltry storage capacity, and its price. the capacity ive learned to deal with, the price i can deal with too. itunes tho…fuck i hate itunes, you piece of shit software. i actually had to hack apart the install files (thanks to yukichigai) to get itunes to stop being a dick and install on xp64. the hate, btw, comes not from itunes not being able to work on xp64, but from itunes not WANTING to work on xp64. but after i installed itunes and got the touch up and running, i started loading my movies onto it…woots! i could only rip 6 before i left…but gosh theyre sweet.

omg i have a niece!

i just noticed how long my archives have gotten. five years…holy shit thats a long time to be blogging. or not blogging, as has been the case lately. i still remember posting five times a day every day when i first started…craziness. yea, those days are over.

SAKE, TAKE ME AWAY
it was pretty good weekend, following a pretty grueling week. friday couldnt come any faster. a few of us were so glad it was friday that we snuck out and went straight to go get liquored at en. i dont even know how much sake i had…i just know i had enough to dissolve the meh of the week away. it was like a calgon commercial, except with alcohol instead of bath products.

APARTMENT HUNTING
my parents finally had a chance to come into the city to check out apartments with me…woo! they admitted that they really couldnt apply what they know of jersey real estate to ny real estate, so it was good for them to just come in, see the apartments, and get a feel for what it is to buy real estate in manhattan (700 sq ft? for serious??) our broker francesco showed us a number of apartments, saving my personal favorite (the one i saw with g+r) for last. we saw a number of nice apartments around washington heights, but my favorite was still hands-down the best. even my parents were thoroughly impressed…yay! the only stipulation was that they didnt actually see the apartment. they saw a similar unit (for sale too) in the building. but that one was enough to impress them, and they liked the building too. the views out to the hudson river were a plus too. heres to crossing my fingers, getting a mortgage pre-approval, and seeing if they want to move on it…

after my parents bailed on me for a party they had that night (of course), i met up with sally to go watch juno. ah juno…<3. good movie. it lived up to all the glowing reviews it got, and kitty pryde makes for a good disenfranchised pregnant teen. i heard tho that meet the spartans still became the number one movie this weekend, which makes my brain sad. what the fuck is wrong with you people? its like you actually like pulling your eyes wide open and getting pooped on your eyeballs. ugh.

we followed up the movie with some setagaya. not counting minca since i havent been in a while, i have to say that im starting to prefer the ramen at setagaya over those at rai rai ken, oh noes! minca still has the best broth tho imo. <3.

PASSPORT BLEH
and tomorrow i have my passport renewal meeting in the morning. im a fucking citizen…why is it so difficult to renew my passport in a timely manner? i hate you people.

oh and one other thing i got to do this weekend. i got to play with my new 17-50mm lens while apartment shopping…yay! its just a starter lens, not expensive and not low-light friendly. but i wanted a wide angle before i get shipped back to amsterdam. woo…