journal, photo journal, travelogue

prague 2009 day.01

by m3ntal
prague 2009

hokay…i finally finished photoshopping the shit out of my photos, and they’re already up on my flickr. once they were up, i got a bit complacent and never got around to actually posting about my trip. whups…heh. but i wasn’t worried, because i actually had the whole trip logged in my iphone, so there wouldn’t be a need to sift thru the photos to jog my memory, or to make shit up to fill the gaps of memory…whichever the case may have been. but yay for thorough recaps! well, thorough enough anyway. the iphone keyboard blows testicles…i wasn’t keen on typing away on that fucking thing…

elaine flew into nyc early saturday morning at some ungodly hour from phoenix. we hung around my apartment some before heading out for brunch before the flight. the flight itself was fairly uneventful, aside from the dude in the safety instructions video who looked like a cross between ted danson and ivan drago. “i vil brreak you…then vasten your seeet-belt“.

DOBRY DEN PRAHA
we got into prague early morning sunday…like at another ungodly hour. we couldn’t check into the hotel yet, so we dumped our stuff off with the hotel staff and went wandering the early morning streets. our hotel was right off of wenceslas square, so we headed up and down that for a bit, then wandered south into nove mesto, then north thru the stare mesto. we ended up crossing thru the charles bridge into mala strana, then hradcany, and almost all the way to prague castle within an hour. yea…so we had to stop ourselves, otherwise we’d have nothing to do the rest of the trip. we headed back south into mala strana and took a lunch break at a place called luka la. czech (the language) was noticeably absent in that area, and not because of tourists necessarily. maybe it was a big overseas college area or something…loooots of english spoken by the younger-than-me people we saw.

we made our way back to our hotel, the yasmin (the picture above is of the lobby…woot), and checked in. i think we passed out for a bit before heading out again late afternoon. we wandered some more along the vltava river, saw the fred and ginger building (it was just ok), late afternoon/early evening beering at potrerena husa in the smichov neighborhood, then a czech dinner at krusovicka pivnice…i had schnitzel. yum yum.

foodage, journal

may in september

by m3ntal

ooh…a slight chill is starting to blow thru new york city. at night anyway…and early morning too. it’s actually making my apartment uncomfortable, given that they tend to crank the communal a/c regardless (which affects my bedroom, but not my living room), so i may go to bed slightly hot, but wake up freezing. its weird.

so here’s the typical summary of my life up to now. having had this journal now for 6 fucking years really takes its toll on the quality of writing im willing to expend on these posts. not that my oldest posts were in any way eloquent. i can say however that i probably put a bit more effort into writing them. whatever, thats not the case anymore. so rewinding back…plusan and her friends showed up in the city right around my birthday. it was the first time in nyc for a few of them. i met up with plusan for brunch in the morning at cafe henri in west village, but i technically spent the majority of my birthday in woodbury commons shopping with them. for 6 and a half hours. yea. well, i insisted…so we could have time to hang out. regardless tho…i just wanted to highlight. SIX. AND. A. HALF. HOURS. after we got back into the city, we immediately headed to kun jip to nosh.

friday nite i met up with them again at jadis for some wine and relaxation. saturday was our reservations at gordon ramsay’s maze, which was good, but surprisingly unspectacular, given how big of a raging dick he is about food and cooking. we followed this up with my mini-berfday drink-ups at en (like last year, yep)…sake and food all around. we even rounded out the nite with a bit of a crawl over to ear inn afterwards til the wee hours. ah fun fun. and sunday i made breakfast at my place for plusan…then a pinkberry run before they caught their flight out of the city. bai bai!

hmm…what did i do the rest of the time? oh right…korean with sally, then dinner with hosan at city winery (that place is massive) along with follow-up drinks at en (i like the place…deal with it). then i made my way back home to see my niece, whos now all grown and stuff and is talking and dancing around. shit they really do grow fast. after that, i bussed it back into the city because we had a rooftop party in my building. that was all kinds of awesome…ill admit i hadnt even been up there since i started looking to buy there in the first place. and now we wind up at this week, where i had intended to meet up with sara for ramen at ippudo. but because that place is still overrun by fucking nyu kids, pushing wait times to an hour (for ramen…seriously!?) we decided on setagaya instead, where we waited approximately 2 minutes after we ordered before they brought our hearty bowls of ramen out to us. <3.

prague is coming up fast…word. this time next week, i will be on a plane headed over the atlantic. wait, is it friday?

* checks email *

this time+1 day…yes, i will be on a plane headed over the atlantic. woot.

foodage, journal

summer rewind

by m3ntal

septembers right around the corner…where did august go? oh right, it came and went with a plethora of video posts from io9 and gizmodo. damn i still harefield road, dinner with building-mates at yo in yo out, a mini reunion with joan and joyce at flea market (i hadn’t seen joyce in months, and joan in…erm, 5 years?), burger brunch with hosan at blue ribbon bakery, followed by a mid-week sake tasting too at satsko, and whew…let me catch my breath.

* pause *

k…along with excellent pork chop house with troche and pho (the beef noodle soup was particularly excellent that day), and gina’s brief return to nyc this week…celebrated with hasaki and drinkies at scratchers. oh, and tomorrow’s my birthday. rock on.

FRONT YARD
as for the picture above…i spent this weekend putting up the tree graphic i had custom made from dezign with a z. it’s erm, actually about a foot below where it should be (you should see a bit of the tree trunk above the couch). but yea, that didn’t quite work out as planned. that was about as high as i could conceivably get the graphic, short of getting a mid-life growth spurt of a few inches.

compared to the original rendering also, i over-stretched the vector file i sent them. not to mention the couch i decided to use in the rendering was actually lower than my actual couch…doh! but aside from what appears to be griping (they’re not actually…just observations in hindsight), the tree actually looks pretty damn good on my wall. much dezign with a z. now to work on my bedroom (and maybe even get that rug)…

foodage, journal

summer doldrums and half blood princes

by m3ntal

summers already half over…crikeys. and it hasnt been much of a summer either. between all the thunderstorms and chilly weather, its really only been summer for like, 5 days. maybe 6.

the term “summer doldrums” comes to mind to describe this summer so far. it cant really be helped when a good number of friends are either out of work, worried that theyll be out of work, or in general just feeling in the dumps. bleh. well, life goes on anyhoo, and hopefully this time next year, we’ll be back to “normal”…

friday was an choi with di. an old co-worker of hers was one of the owners (tho he wasnt there that night). relaxing little place with good vietnamese. we roamed for drinks afterwards too…id been cooped up in my apartment too much and was in no mood to go home.

i lazy’d around the apartment saturday, photoshopping up my atlanta trip (ooh, i keep meaning to make another post about that), and other odds and ends. sunday was harry potter and the half-blood prince with max and patsy at the imax. oooh…imax, and 3d, word. the movie was pretty damn good, even if i was disappointed with a few changes they made from the book (oh noes…im becoming like one of those people!) as a movie tho, much of it made sense in terms of streamlining and focusing on specific themes and narratives. its just…you know…there was suppose to be a big fight! ah well…

the rest of the summers looking a little dull til the end of august. *sigh*

journal

4th of july down south

by m3ntal

i keep forgetting that i have pics i have to shop…yar. they are of course, from 4th of july weekend. and ive been sort of using that as an internal excuse to put off posting. and its not that im intentionally putting off shopping up the pics…im actually quite excited to. they are the first pics taken with the new canon mark ii…word. ill um…get to them this weekend. maybe.

4TH OF JULY
in other news, 4th of july was a nice break from the tedium that is city living. before that tho, i had din with renee monday at delta grill, which i hadnt been to in forever. i still <3 their cajun cooking, but wouldnt mind more cajun options to choose from. we then roamed midtown afterwards, wandering thru the pedestrian streets of times square (weird), then lounging in front of rockefeller the rest of the night.

thursday night tho, we caught a flight down south of the mason-dixon line to visit g+r in peach tree city, georgia…just outside of atlanta. first thing you notice…golf carts everywhere. ya, everywhere. they hot rod around in them in lieu of cars…makes for an interesting spectacle. g+r cooked for us the entire time we were there, and combined with alot of lazying around…yea, we were fattened up. we also took a trip to the atlanta aquarium, which makes up the bulk of the photos taken. that place is massive, tho it does lose a bit by not being next to the ocean. theres still something about approaching the boston aquarium right on the wharf. still nice tho.

upcoming events for the near future…finally getting around to painting my walls, with help from fonz. itll hopefully look like the previously posted renderings. hopefully. and the new potter movie in imax the following weekend…wooha!

journal

too many things to update!

by m3ntal

ahhh…the world is too connected! between facebook, twitter, and a general lack of enthusiasm, its hard to keep up with posts. im essentially posting about the same topics repeatedly through too many different medias, each less well-written than the last. the obviously preferred medium now is twitter, where laziness is actually encouraged. then again, everybody and their sister is now a twitterer…heh, i guess like a few years ago, when everybody and their sister had a livejournal. i stick with all of them however, since its fun being an early adopter (tho the main motivator for being an early adopter is really so i get to reserve my preferred usernames).

but whatever…this year, which i had pretty much written off as total shit early on, is shaping up to be a pretty good year. it could even be as rockin’ as last year…which by all accounts, was pretty damn rockin’. in the last few weeks or so, ive agreed to shoot my friends wedding, planned a prague trip in september with a friend, picked up a new canon 5d mark II (oh noes, im a traitor!), and am flying off to atlanta to visit g+r over the 4th of july weekend…whew.

BAI BAI NIKON
first and foremost, yep…i have bailed on the nikon camp and am now firmly on the canon team. this is in no part a fault of nikons…i still <3 nikon. but most of my friends use canon, and i wouldnt mind terribly borrowing their vast array of lens. it was also a good time to switch (if i needed to) since i only had digital lens, and with the purchase of my first full-frame…its a good a time as any to start fresh. so my first official canon lens is the spanky canon 17-40mm…woot. i dont have it yet however, tho i have the body. its a pretty nice and expensive paper-weight til the lens arrive.

HELLO PRAGUE
and then theres prague…word…prague…woot. id never been, and honestly hadnt thought about visiting til a friend recommended it. and then it was an instant “fuck yes” in my head. its still a ways away tho…september, sigh…

journal

more ideas

by m3ntal

yay, its getting nice out again. although shitty weather will occasionally roll thru with little to no warning. mother natures being a dill. but we did have brunch this past sunday at mogador with anna and sally, then an afternoon stroll around east village with a pit stop at alphabet scoop for some ice cream. later at night was dumpling night at my place with di and caroline, where i taught them the fine art of dumpling wrapping. they of course ignored most of my instruction, and just made whatever shape and form they wanted…blargh. we ate the whole batch tho…yum. and now its monday again. tho i woke up thinking it was sunday. that was suck.

oh, but i did make more revisions to my planned wall coloring. ive decided to also add some custom graphics! which will ideally be printed and sent to me because fuck if im going to paint those.

oh…and since id expect the same of people using my work, the living room tree design is by dragon artz.

journal

what to do

by m3ntal

the good thing about doing architectural 3d viz for a living is…hey, when it comes time to figuring out ur own apartment, you can just render it! which is actually what i shouldve done when i first got my apartment…i mightve actually figured out way beforehand that my kitchen “workstation” was retardedly oversized (its now my computer desk). but hey…springs sort of here, and i said that id paint my walls when that happened. so now its time to pick a color. ive got friends for and against the various colors im looking at (orange, dull blue, hunter green, chocolate, striped variants, etc). the grayish neutral colors kind of say “hey…im an adult, and ive got a mortgage, and im totally responsible” while the bright orange says “fuck, im 30??“. and lets be honest…we know which camp im in. but i need input eh. im currently leaning towards the “30-something denying” orange, but could be convinced in any direction really…

journal

lengthy recap, and star trek!

by m3ntal

bi-monthly recall…heh. well ive given myself over to keeping my runabouts in my iphone, so its alot easier to recall what ive done now as a result…woot! there were various din meetups with various people…brunch with sean and anna in the upper east side after their baptism, mediterranean din with kayako in the upper west side, din with jess, m’s bday at shebeen, belgian beer with the korean posse at vol de nuit, mal’s going-away drinky’s at dba, belated bday din with m at oh taisho!, and finally….star trek! whew. oh, and ya…house (warming) party at saras in bklyn. it just sounded more dramatic with that long recap ending on star trek and all. and hrmm…yea, that was a long recap. i guess theyre usually shorter because i forget nearly everything and don’t bother noting 50% of the things i do. ah well.

STAR TREK
yea, it rocked. thats my review. i just dont feel like writing any kind of lengthy exposition about its strengths, weaknesses, whatever. what i will say is that the fine art of getting to the theaters hours before the showing during premiere weekend seems like a dead/dying art. i was the first in line! thats just wrong…especially since i got there “late” only an hour and a half before the showtime. tsk tsk…lost art….