archive | favorites, journal, travelogue

the rest of 2013

by m3ntal

vnc|ire | irish gothic

2013 hasn’t exactly been a dull year, though judging by this journal, you’d be hard pressed to guess that. but as it were, free time seems to actually be a bit hard to come by these days. and when there is free time, i actually forget i even have a blog to post to. maybe i should repin my blog to chrome again. regardless, here’s some fun and noteworthy entries to add to this journal.

VENICE/DUBLIN/BALLYFIN
our friends iris and brendan were getting married in ireland this year, so q and i made some plans around the trip in july. q actually flew out first to travel about europe, and we then met up in venice to see the biennale. i hadn’t actually been to venice since my first time back in college in 1999. some 14 years ago…holy crap. they were still using the lire the last time i visited. now on the euro, things weren’t as cheap as i seem to remember.

our first day there we took a trip out to the island of burano. we strolled the streets and canals lined with pastel-colored buildings, and then had dinner next to a vineyard at venissa. the other days were filled with various venice roamings, and then the biennale itself the day we were to fly out to ireland. we were then in dublin for 3 days, took a trip to the giant’s causeway, hit the bushmills distillery, saw old friends, and then headed to the actual wedding venue for the final leg of the trip. the wedding venue was at the manor estate, ballyfin, which to say was bloody fancy would be an understatement. we were living at downton abbey, wayne manor, the xavier school, or whatever analogy you’d like to make to signify the level of fancy it was exuding…which was to say, considerable.

HONG KONG AND THENSOME
which leads us to the most recent “noteworthy” entry. my girlfriend q takes trips to hong kong most summers to see her friends and family. our ireland trip drained my accounts a bit, so i declined to accompany her this year. or so i told her anyway. in reality, i decided to do a bit of covert planning. while she was planning her trip, i was actually getting in touch with her friends behind her back, for a number of reasons. i contacted two of her closest friends in hong kong to get in touch with her family for me, her friend in london for possible ring sizes, another friend in hong kong that she was taking a side trip with, and numerous other friends for various advice and whatnot. yea, it’s what it sounds like. i did most of my research and sleuthing while at work, away from her prying eyes. this included information on diamonds, engagement rings, the various classifications of diamonds (dear god, every guy should be warned, and then schooled about diamonds sometime in their lifetime), as well other various diamond-related subject matter. suffice to say i became somewhat knowledgeable about diamonds in a relatively short amount of time.

after some prodding to get q to finally book her tickets to hk, i booked my flight and hotel literally the day after in secret, and then i asked her friend she was taking a side trip with to make sure that the trip (to thailand as it were) was to occur hopefully the weekend i arrive in hong kong. after q flew off to hong kong, and as my trip soon came up, i had already 1. made plans for dim sum with her parents the day after i arrive, 2. had high tea plans with her friends for “consultation” the day after that, and 3. procured a ring.

some notes i thought i’d mention when trying to keep anything a secret. one, web browsers note everything you search for, and will “tailor” ads accordingly. therefore if you’d like for engagement ring ads to NOT show up in those ads, might i suggest browsing in private windows and/or clearing your cache daily. also, best not to keep facebook nor gmail logged on your home computer where they could be easily seen by said girlfriend. yea, that was funny. thank god for logmein and my overly paranoid state. and lastly, chatting with said girlfriend while keeping up the appearance of being in the states while you’re actually in asia and in the same time zone as her is as easy as turning off all location settings on your tablet and phone.

i land in hong kong literally the same day q flies out to thailand. i thought there’d be one of those moments in the airport where i’d have to sneak around with a hat and shades, but thankfully my flight flew in 6 hours after hers left. the dim sum the next morning with her parents went fairly well, and they were of course ecstatic, as well as receptive to our sneaky plans to surprise her. the surprise plans were further refined with her friends the next day until everything was finalized. her friend v suggested a restaurant (zhe jiang heen as it were…i thought i’d note that for posterity), went ahead and made reservations, and then sent the information to everyone involved. so the next day i wandered about hong kong a bit while i could until i had to retreat back to my hotel (to avoid any possibility of running into her when she got back in the afternoon). come dinnertime, i meet up with her two friends again and we make our way to the restaurant in wan chai, messaging her family the entire way there. they had a room booked (so empty seats wouldn’t be suspicious) and q was sitting with her back facing the entry. so moment of truth. as her family collectively raised their camera phones (at her confused face), i strolled into the room and laid a bouquet of roses next to her, greeted her, gave a highly abbreviated speech to her dumbfounded face, and popped out the ring. for the record, she did say yes (after a number of minutes trying to process the situation).

as for the rest of the trip, we spent it eating and drinking with friends. light breakfast and/or dim sum, afternoon tea, dinner, and then drinks at night…rinse, repeat. oh and no photos, because we were a bit preoccupied.

archive | favorites, photo journal, travelogue

kyotokyo 2011

by m3ntal

ah japan, how i love thee. this having been my fourth time visiting the country, one could argue my fascination with japan borders on fanaticism. and hey, it’s possible. i have no loyalties to my own cultural upbringings, heritage, whatevers…i can love america and taiwan, and still have a profound appreciation for japan.

so having said that, with all my trips to japan ever being awesome, and my last trip there especially being all kinds of awesome, this trip still had to live up to three prior trips of pancaking layers of super. this trip was actually a bit of a last-minute vacation. i had already taken a vacation that year…to beijing. which was meh, but nevertheless still a vacation. my cousin cindy, who i’d kept in touch with since our trip back in 2007 and one of only a handful who was fluent in english (she was raised in new zealand), messaged me saying that she would be studying in kyoto for a year. and since we’d had a prior chat about how i loved japan, etc, she said i should come visit. i thought for about a millisecond, then said “fuck yea” and proceeded to book tickets and hotels. not long after that, word got around my office that i was off to vacation in japan, so the director of communications asked me if i wanted to do a presentation of my vacation when i got back. i figured…sure, why not? a week or so before i flew out, i had a thought tho. slideshow presentations are boooring, and i hate making boooring presentations. so i thought i’d make a time-lapse video while i was there. i’d always wanted to make one, and it seemed like a nice evolutionary step from my usual photo-ing.

(more…)
archive | favorites, cin3ma | international

k3loid

by m3ntal

i forget sometimes that i have a blog :p jk…well, not really. but it’s the holiday season, and shit is crazy yo. catching up with friends before the new year, holiday parties, and oh yea…headed to kyoto next week…word!

i posted this to facebook, but it’s probably worthwhile to have it in my blog too (for posterity and all). k3loid, by big lazy robot. a friend of mine i used to work with worked on it. and if his friends are anything like him, then they must be all insane cg gods. enjoy.

archive | favorites, journal, photo journal, travelogue

beijing/shanghai 2011

by m3ntal

cn | gugong.five

i didn’t actually know what to expect from my trip to beijing. for one, china’s been on the ascendant for the last decade, and this was also my first solo trip (though i did have friends there). but i’ll be honest, there weren’t terribly high expectations. my opinion and the opinions offered by my family were, to say the least, colored by our nationality (taiwanese) and the fact that china was (and still is) looked down upon as, well…hicks. yea.

first, the family history lesson. unlike a number of modern taiwanese who came in the 50’s to flee the civil war, my family has resided on the island since by my estimation, the early 1900’s (at the latest). we are fifth generation taiwanese, possibly older since my parents readily admit that anything before that is unknown since their ancestors then were pretty much illiterate. both sides of my family are thoroughly taiwanese, and have no familial ties to china whatsoever. it’s easy to see and feel the vast difference, socially and culturally, between someone from taiwan and someone from china. but nevermind all that…it sounds way too serious for the purposes of this post. the point was to establish that china was just like any other country i wanted to visit, and that i wanted to visit and see for myself what all the fuss was about.

BEIJING
THURSDAY | i landed at beijing airport mid-afternoon. i’m still deaf in one ear for half the day as they still hadn’t popped from the flight…ow. beijing airport is massive. like…stupidly huge. there isn’t nearly as many people as where i came from (newark liberty), but the terminal is twice the size…wow.

i drop my things off at my hotel in dongzhimen and head out to wander around. people can’t seem to drive for dick…i spent the day dodging traffic. not just cars…pedicabs, bikers, even other pedestrians. seriously, fuck you. when cars have the right of way, it sucks donkey dick being a pedestrian.

what’s up with all the hairballs floating in the air?

i met my friends dora and erick later in the day at their architecture studio (dora’s a college friend and erick’s her bf who together run their own studio), but headed back out to let them finish up their work. i roamed the central business district, scoping out the cctv building and the burned out shell of the adjacent hotel (which a friend’s roommate had worked on…then cried about when it went up in flames).

the skies are perpetually gray…weird.

we hit up yunnan food for dinner (yum yum) with their friend, then went to a live concert at the austrian culture thingy (?).

FRIDAY | you know how to spot foreigners in the city? when it’s mid 70’s and they’re wearing shorts. seriously…beijingers dont seem to fancy wearing shorts the minute it hits the 70’s. i wait anxiously all year to break out my shorts. i first headed to the train station to grab tickets to shanghai. beijing main station…what the fuck is that place? it took me 15 minutes after wandering aimlessly to figure out that the ticket hall was a separate building. the main station itself feels like a halfway house.

i walked towards the forbidden city down the fancy-pants avenue leading towards tianamen. now i know where all their civic improvement money goes. i head into the forbidden city, and it’s immediately apparent that they don’t take care of it as well as i wish they did. it’s a fucking shame. i get the impression they’re not much for cultural preservation yet…everything just seems like a potential commodity. seriously…the forbidden city! hundreds of years of heritage? hello?

i headed out the north entrance of the forbidden city towards the hill to the north to get some pretty landscape photos of beijing and the forbidden city. after coming back down the hill, i walked thru some of the local hutongs, then up wangfujie (a main shopping avenue), then along whatever that road is called adjacent to it. my feet are destroyed…oochies. i meet up with my friends again at their studio and we headed to dinner at 1488? 1467? some year-sounding number. whatever…beef noodle soup place near sanlitun in a modern renovated hutong-ish area…that was yum. we then hit up sanlitun for drinkies at miga, then kokomo til god knows when. both were rooftop bars, and if you ignore the buildings beyond, the english being spoken and the nyc drink prices could’ve led you to believe you were back in manhattan. kek.

SATURDAY | i slept in late, because i don’t even know what time i got back to my hotel. we met for brunch at vineyard in…some new-ish hutong area. i wandered around afterwards on my own, then met up with alice who’d just gotten in from tianjin…woot! den mother’s here to lead the way! we drove to the 798 art district and roamed for a good while, checking out the art galleries and still-derelict factory spaces. even if they say it’s undergoing gentrification, i still think it’s a cool area to wander about.

we headed back into beijing proper to the area just south of tianamen (as you’re noticing, i don’t have the slightest clue what any of the areas are called). alice dragged me through the alleyways to a small shop that serves the best donkey sandwich. donkey! yea i was a bit apprehensive about eating a donkey…but it tasted pretty good! we didn’t nosh too much as alice had another place in mind…beijing pot stickers! (all counted as ‘appetizers’ before dinner proper). yea those were yum also. we headed out of the hutong back to the newly demo’d and rebuilt area that looked like a chinkified disney main street. there was even a ‘taiwanland’ nearby that i’m told is not associated with taiwan at all (in a cultural-exchange thingy way that is). so weird. we took in some fancy drinkies at the capital m with sweet views northward toward the qian men gates. swanky.

we met up with dora and erick later for dinner…chuan’r? i think that’s what they’re called. lotsa yum skewers and a big spicy fish that wasn’t meant to be big and spicy, so they had to take it back, scrape off all the hot shit, and reapply with normal non-spicy shit. still delicious though.

SUNDAY | dora, erick, and the third partner effi had meetings on sunday, so i strolled thru sanlitun a bit on my own before having to duck out of the pouring rain. i headed back to the hotel when the rain didn’t let up and just spent the rest of the afternoon vegging in front of the television.

worth mentioning…hearing english names ‘translated’ into mandarin…funny. hearing danny devito ‘translated’ to beijing mandarin…disturbing.

i headed to the southern train station in the evening to catch my night train to shanghai. shanghai…woot!

SHANGHAI
MONDAY | so it’s not just beijing people…it seems like a significant portion of the population are seriously deficient when it comes to social etiquette. cripes. i walked from the french concession to the bund looking for some place to cool off, because my ability to determine scale on a map seems to be deficient. that was a long fucking walk. i hit up everything i could inbetween though…the parks, taikang lu, and whatever else my little guide book could offer up. pretty.

hmm, this place is humid as balls.

i gave terence a call once i hit the bund, who actually offered up lunch…woot! i taxi’d over to meet terence for lunch at jing tai fung. shao long bao…yum yum, that place rocks. afterwards i dropped my things off at his apartment and took a bit of a nap as terence headed back to work.

after composing myself, i headed back out to check out xintiandi. when that place lost my interest, i subwayed over to pudong, since i didn’t really care for the alternative…the super duper sightseeing tunnel pink floyd laser light show. pudong…wow, what is this place? it’s just full of lights, gleaming new skyscrapers, and wide avenues. having a plethora of towers to scale, i chose the jin mao tower since it had the clearest view out towards shanghai proper, with the oriental pearl dildo tower in view also. the newer bottle opener tower was right behind the jin mao. up on the observation deck, you could look out to the humidity hovering over the city like a yellow blanket…frightening. you could also peer down to the lobby of the grand hyatt 25 floors below. fucking scary…

i spent the rest of the evening strolling about the waterside, watching the lit boats make their way up and down the huangpu river like a parade. later at night, terence took me out for yunnan food at lost heaven, then drinks at a bar where you had to find the secret switch to open the door. cheeky fucks.

ps: chatting briefly with our waitress at dinner, i learned the following: if you look chinese, but you tell them (in chinese) that your chinese isn’t so super, they probably think you’re mildly retarded.

TUESDAY | i spend the majority of my train ride back to beijing reading the engrish on the broadcast screen. i’m having a “delighted voyage“, making sure to “watch my belongs“. lulz. the station announcements are also all preceded by kung-fu music.

of note too…those annoying people you usually encounter on trains talking obnoxiously loud on their cells? that’s everybody on this train. fuck you all.

i got back to beijing in time for dinner, and proceeded to get a call from dora asking if i could swing by their studio to help a bit on their competition (due the next day). suffice to say…i spent the rest of the night cranking out a rendering. i can’t seem to escape renders…lulz! i didn’t mind though. it’s the least i could do for them showing me around beijing.

WEDNESDAY | we met up for lunch near chaowei soho, then i wandered south past the second ring towards fancy-pants department stores. a dust storm kicked up that day though…i hate eating sand. not cool. hmm, my journal entries ended here. ah right…we had peking duck later for dinner, then headed out for drinks at…some hidden pub at the workers stadium. dora and erick retired early since they were pooped, so effi, mitsu (effi’s friend) and i continued on to go clubbing til some ungodly hour. it sounded like a good idea until i found myself crawling home at 4am. it’s worth mentioning i had to catch my flight home thursday. derp!

CONCLUSION
beijing is a weird city. it took me a week to process all of this, and i came to the conclusion that it’s not a fun city if you’re on your own and if you like to wander around aimlessly. because a car will hit you. all my fun derived from my friends taking me around (this is expected of course). but various cities are wandering aimless-friendly. london, tokyo, barcelona, etc are all fun to stroll thru and take in the sights. beijing…not so much. shanghai was though, if not for the face-melting heat and humidity.

would i go back to beijing? meh, maybe in another 10 years. shanghai though may need it’s own proper vacation.

archive | favorites, journal, photo journal, travelogue

scotchland 2010

by m3ntal

man a month past oh fuck nearly two months lol…and i finally get around to posting about my trip to scotland. better late than never eh.  and i even decided to give the flickr slideshow a whirl.  i don’t know why i never used it for my past trips.  has it always been there?  mysteries…

the thoroughness of this recollection of the trip is suspect at best, given it’s based purely on the photos taken.  i didn’t bother jotting notes of my trip, since most days were taken up with drinking.  lots of drinking.  fuck, so much drinking.  i have a newfound fear of drinking with glaswegians now.

GLASGOW
i arrived wednesday morning.  max came by the airport to pick me up…him and patsy had been in scotland for a while already sorting out wedding details and concurrently having their work visas get fucked.  that’s another story tho…and not even mine to tell.  so moving on…i dropped my luggage off at the hotel before we roamed glasgow.  this was my fourth time in the uk, but my first time in scotland.  the other three times were based solely in london (and a side trip to the english countryside).  we grabbed lunch with one of max’s friend who works for the company both max and i used to work for (it was a scottish firm). after lunch, we went for my kilt fitting.  yea…kilt fitting.  word.  i’m in scotland for a wedding, fuck yea i’m wearing a kilt.  a nice one at that.  made of alot of wool…in the mild/warm scottish spring weather.  i would regret this later.  but for now, i just wanted a kilt.  we roamed some more afterwards, and most likely drank beer.  it’s sorta fuzzy.  i was most likely groggy and jetlagged and inhaling coffee later in the evening.  anyhoo…moving onto the next day.

EDINBURGH
max and patsy had wedding details to sort out, so i took a daytrip out to edinburgh.  there was something weird about glasgow as we were walking around the day before, and i figured it out when i got to edinburgh…no asian tourists!  actually, hardly any tourists at all in glasgow.  in edinburgh tho…yea, everywhere.  definite tourist city…and rightly so.  it’s very picturesque and touristy, with it’s royal mile, closes, and of course, edinburgh castle.  pretty place.  tho one aspect let me down.  i was hoping they’d play up more of the haunted aspects of the castle…which they didn’t.  at all.  sad.  i also decided to climb up arthur’s seat, this massive hill in holyrood park.  i don’t know what i was thinking…that was a bad idea.  i have enough things in my life to remind me that i’m out of shape…i didn’t need a vacation to remind me too.

i got back to glasgow in the evening and we went to a house party. more drinking ensued.

MAX AND PATSY’S WEDDING
we had lunch with max and patsy’s family before the wedding in the afternoon.  from there on out it was a brief wedding reception, then nonstop drinking til i don’t know what time.  3am?  4am?  i don’t remember.  and that wool kilt and ensemble?  yea, that was painful.  i stripped off the wool jacket shortly after the reception, but still had on the wool kilt and wool vest.  blargh.  on the flipside tho, the sporran was totally rockin’.  i kept my wallet and iphone in there.  handy.  it’s like a purse…but manlier.

POST-WEDDING
we had lunch with max’s family the day after, and then roamed glasgow.  we drank more at night.  yea.

AMSTERDAM
i planned a nice one day layover in amsterdam before heading back to nyc.  it’d been years since i saw lysha and alice, and i thought it’d be a nice place to (ironically) detox after scotland.  lysha lived out in ijburg, and we just laid on the beach in front of her apartment for most of the day.  we grabbed dinner in amsterdam, then roamed the canals for a bit.  <3 amsterdam.  i also really wanted to see the old neighborhood…the amsterdam branch of the company i worked for was shuttered months prior, and the old animation space was turned into an underwear shop.  how sad.

REMAINDERS
oh, i got my niece a mini-kilt and a clan pin from edinburgh, and my brother-in-law a bottle of bowmore whisky.  you’re welcome dave!

archive | favorites, journal

clubbing spaces of yore

by m3ntal

new york city’s an infinitely changing city.  it always has been and always will continue to change…that much is stating the obvious.  but aside from seeing old photos or hearing about the city of the past, it’s not always as easy to relate to or personally see until you get to a point in your life where you can slow down, look around, and go “what the…where the fuck am i?“

case in point…we’re moving into a new office sometime in september.  our space is still being renovated, so every so often we get an email showing the progress, with subject lines reading “new photos of the tunnel” and “tearing down walls at the tunnel“.  and i kept going “the tunnel, the tunnel…what the fuck is the tunnel?”  whereby the reply was “that’s the name of the building“.  a light bulb goes off.  i put two and two together.  i knew we were moving to the far west side of chelsea, but it took me an embarassingly long period of time to realize that the building we were moving to was in fact the old site of the club “the tunnel“.  fuck…am i now old enough to be working in an office housed in a space where i used to club when i was in high school and college?  admittedly i wasn’t a massive clubber…more of a wannabe raver that clubbed occasionally when i wasn’t raving.  but i’d been to numerous new york staples in my youth (tho the majority one or two times at most).  and even then, i only have slight recollections where most of them were even located.  most are gone now…nyc clubbings mildly comatose these days.  not that i would even know if it wasn’t.  so it got me wondering what happened to the other places i used to go to when i was younger…

the tunnel | welp, now i know what happened to the tunnel…it turned into my new office!  i don’t have many memories of this place.  in fact, i don’t have many memories of most of the clubs i went to, save a few.  the thing was, back then, i didn’t really pay much attention to the area.  i just remember dark side streets, lights all around the entrance, and late night food vendors lining the sidewalks.  it’s probably easy for me to say that the area probably didn’t look anything like it does today…

palladium | see…this one i already knew about.  the palladium was (one of?) the largest clubs back in the day.  it’s now the nyu dorm called the palladium on union square south (hint…trader joe’s resides in the ground floor).  i recall union square being pretty shitty back then.  it’s cleaned up nicely.

limelight | it’s a mall now.  if you told me ten years ago one of the best known clubs in nyc was going to be turned into a shopping mall inside a church, i’d laugh hysterically, then maybe go “for serious?  are you a time traveler?“

twilo | i have a higher than average amount of memories of twilo…but still not much.  i remember the bouncy ball chairs upstairs tho.  i was trashed this one time and bouncing around on them for an indeterminate amount of time.  i stopped going long before it became spirit, tho i don’t know if its still around.  it still says spirit on the awning on google street views…

wetlands preserve and vinyl | these two i lump together because i have the most memories from both these places.  partially because we went so many times, and partially because i was sober every time.  in high school, i ran with the ‘white hat’ crew…the majority of which liked to see jam bands and whatnot.  a small fraction of us frequented clubs however.  so when we headed out, these two places filled our needs quite well.  wetlands was a jam band venue for the likes of dave matthews, from good homes, moe, etc…while vinyl featured the likes of françois kevorkian and was literally down the block.  so we’d head in on a weekend, split up between the two venues, then meet up again at three in the morning.  both are long gone now, replaced by fancy pants luxury apartments.  i googled the addresses yesterday and barely even recognized the area…

archive | favorites, foodage, journal

hello josie

by m3ntal

crap, the journal has yet again fallen to the wayside.  i’m going to blame….*spins the wheel-o-blame“…my job this time.  for inundating me with short deadlines and then making me tired once i get home.  ya.  for real.

i had on the agenda a massive post ala anna’s year-end photo recollection, but that’s turning out to be taking muuuuuch longer than anticipated.  so fuck it.  i’ll post it when i post it.  in the meantime tho, a recollection of the year thus far.  it’s already halfway thru january…time just continues to fly right by.

JOSIE ELLA
first and foremost…welcome josie ella to the world!  my new niece. ella was my suggestion too.  she rocks.  niece’s rock, because i get to be a proud uncle without having to deal with the actual parenting.  it’s a win-win situation.  a concern we’re having at the moment however is, given her older sister’s astonishingly advanced developmental state (i know parents/uncles/whatever always say this…but seriously, this is not hyperbole), we’ve postulated that she may in fact turn out to be functionally retarded.  or something.  too many awesome genes were invested in may.  we don’t know what was left for josie.  i know…feel the love emanating from her uncle.  just kidding, we <3 josie.

REWIND
two weekends ago was hot pot at my place with jen di, sarah, and crew.  i’m very much liking a semi-regular hot pot to be honest.  it’s a social activity that involves everything i love…eating, drinking liquor, and watching movies.  we followed this up with thursday noodling at the excellent pork chop house with di and em.  they’d never been, so i felt like it was my obligation to wise them to the goodness that is taiwanese cuisine.  we headed next door after dinner to apotheke, which was hilarious considering two drinks cost more than the entirety of our dinner a few feet away.  they however did send us free rounds of their mulled wine, called gluwein.  very soothing.  after apotheke, we migrated to the whiskey tavern to meet up with more people and continue our drinking (with the addition of tater tots).  i felt like shit the next morning…it was super.

and hmm…yea, i didn’t do shit this past weekend.  doh!