January 2004 Archives

a song i keep running into...

i know you think that i shouldn't still love you
or tell you that
but if I didn't say it
well, I'd still have felt it
where's the sense in that?

i promise i'm not trying to make your life harder
or return to where we were

well i will go down with this ship
and i won't put my hands up and surrender
there will be no white flag above my door
i'm in love and always will be

i know i left too much mess
and destruction to come back again
and i caused nothing but trouble
i understand if you can't talk to me again
and if you live by the rules of "it's over"
then i'm sure that that makes sense

well i will go down with this ship
and i won't put my hands up and surrender
there will be no white flag above my door
i'm in love and always will be

and when we meet
which i'm sure we will
oh what was there
will be there still
i'll let it pass
and hold my tongue
and you will think
that i've moved on

well i will go down with this ship
and i won't put my hands up and surrender
there will be no white flag above my door
i'm in love and always will be

dinner was sooo good tonight! i love wednesdays, always good eatin'! first week - japanese curry, second week - sukiyaki, and this week - bulgogi and daeun jang jigae thanks to youngji:)

the night was going to be capped off with a korean movie that the carolina theatre here was supposed to play (2009 lost memories), but be it by fate, or UPS (which lost the film reel), we were denied such pleasure! and do you know why?? cuz mr. paik and ms. hu aren't allowed to see anything but freaky, depressing, disturbing, and/or upsetting films... 2009 lost memories, i assure you, is none of the above.

the last movie we watched? the butterfly effect.

okay okay, so ashton kutchner can't play any other role besides dude, where's my car, so what the hell were we expecting? well, the first half of the movie was the kind of stuff we tried so hard to avoid, and hence, downright unnecessary. but luckily we had brought a newbie in to share in our wicked movie-going experiences, and between this girl grabbing ms. hu's thigh and punching me at scary scenes, it was overall very amusing :p one thing i will commend the movie on though - it's the way the ended it with the last scene. yup, sometimes you just gotta let things go.

oh, i guess this has turned into somewhat of a movie review... well, here's what i think: don't waste $7 watching it in the theatre. the awful acting brought to you by ashton kutchner smeared itself all over the potentially decent plot, and there's no way you can ever get past it. unless you bring thigh-grabbin' arm-punchin' alice. in which case, by all means, watch it! :p

how can you say that? you don't know me... *i* don't know me!
- ashton kutchner, the worst line in the butterfly effect

link, after a hard day of eating

definitely gonna be a house cat in my next life. nothing but eating and sleeping, with the occasional entertaining of your owners. hope i won't be allergic to myself by then :p

tonight's week 3 of the duke iron chefs! this week brings korean iron chef bae, with her family recipe of bulgogi and daeng jang jigae! *drooool* fukisan, fukisan? hit it, oto!

test shot @ norfolk, virginia
t-max 400 @ 800, pentax 50mm f/2 @ f/5.6

i finally got all my camera stuff on saturday morning (slr body, 50mm prime lens, film scanner), so i drove up to norfolk to learn b&w film development from pete. it was much easier than i thought, and quite fun as well. i imagine my darkroom (which'll essentially be my bathroom) should be set up by the end of this week. from here on out, no more digital photography! :)

so this picture was from the practice roll of film i took with the pentax k1000... the theatre sign in the background is a bit overexposed, due to my unfamiliarity with the light meter and balancing. but the film development turned out pretty darn good for a first try!

campanile - florence, italy - canon s200 digital camera, auto

... just waiting on my pentax k1k... my film scanner should be coming saturday! woohoo!

Comme tout le monde j'ai mes défauts
J'ai pas toujours les mots qu'il faut
Mais si tu lis entre les lignes
Tu trouveras dans mes chansons
Tout c'que je n'ai pas su te dire

Il y a des fautes d'impression
Des "Je t'aime" un peu brouillon
Malgré mes accords malhabiles
Tu trouveras dans mes chansons
Tout ce que je n'ai pas osé te dire

Tu trouveras...
Mes blessures et mes faiblesses
Celles que j'n'avoue qu'à demi-mot
Mes faux pas mes maladresses
Et de l'amour plus qu'il n'en faut
J'ai tellement peur que tu me laisses
Sache que si j'en fais toujours trop
C'est pour qu'un peu tu me restes
Tu me restes

Il y en a d'autres que tu aimeras
Bien plus belles, plus fortes que moi
Si je n'ai pas su te retenir,
Sache qu'il y a dans mes chansons
Tout c'que je n'ai pas eu le temps de te dire

Le temps vous endurcit de tout
Des illusions, des mauvais coups
Si je n'ai pas su te retenir,
Sache qu'il y a dans mes chansons
Tout c'que je n'ai pas eu le temps de te dire

- Natsha St. Pier

http://translation.lycos.com/lycos
the translation is a bit shoddy, so it would help to know some french ^^

merci, kay, pour les chansons, mais je pense toujours qu'il serait meilleur en Japonais :p

i like this one.

and give me love over, love over, love over this.
and give me love over, love over, love over this.

note to self: don't engage yourself in a two and a half hour movie when you're ready to fall asleep on the way to the theatre. :p

went to go see cold mountain at the carolina theatre with, among other people, mr. jesneck and ms. hu. the thing is you gotta understand - every movie that i've watched with mr. jesneck has been of the absolutely retarded variety. the rock? tomb raider: the cradle of life?? and more recently dreamcatcher?! (a special wtf?? goes to that last one). and every movie that i've seen with ms. hu has been of the absolutely depressing, unsettling and in the end irresolute type. needless to say, the combination of both of them has produced a somewhat weird movie-going experience. last time it was mystic river. this time it was cold mountain.

now, cold mountain wasn't a bad movie. nor was mystic river actually. but trudging through war, oppression, and strenuous longing sort of put me in a trance in my half-conscious state of being (a la an insomniatic ed norton in fight club). all in all, though? i thought it was okay. the screenplay was done well, and it had the much-to-be expected balance of humor, drama, and romance coming from a hollywood film. the cinematography was excellent, and the pace was appropriate. i'm not sure if i would have enjoyed as much if wasn't so zonked out, though :p

sapna, mridu, gianmarco - canon s200 digital camera, auto

(pic: this should bring back some happy memories for some of my readers...)

so at a friend's friend's birthday party yesterday, i ran into a girl who was wielding a pentax k-1000! mine should be coming in next week, but wow ... such a solid camera! and the light meter is sooo cool! you gotta love old-school equipment before everything turned into plastic. like the old-school transformer toys made in the early 1980s... you know, when megatron was made out of actual metal and felt like a real gun. i also got an awesome deal on a minolta film scanner, and should be planning my trips soon to norfolk and new york to pick up a thing or two from my bros ("photogs").

heart rate = ( (HR[max] - HR[rest]) x %X/100 ) + HR[rest]

where X = % of max exertion, or very simply
60-75% - easy workout
75-90% - moderate workout
90-100% - hard workout

age = 24
HR[rest] = 72 bpm
HR[max] = 195 bpm (statistical)

2 miles @ 6:40/mile resulted in a heartrate of 180 bpm. back calculating that says that i'm exerting about 87.8%... not bad! but could be better, i suppose. i'd like to get my target heart-rate down to around 170 at that speed. we'll see how the numbers change when i'll revisit this in another month or so.

i can't wait till the weather warms up again so i can start biking again... such an efficient way to commute. it's too bad, though, somebody stole the tool kit from under my duct-taped seat (grrrrr...).

as ridiculous as it may sound, my room didn't come with a ceiling... for those of you who haven't been to my apartment, a large 900 square foot by 18-foot high space is merely partitioned to create rooms, with each partition about 12 feet high. why? historical code required that rooms in these renovated tobacco warehouses can only be sealed off if they have access to a window. since there are only about 2 windows per apartment, you can imagine how tricky it is to seal off two bedrooms while still maintaining a living space sans a huge whole in the wall. privacy is a lost luxury here at the west village complex...

historical code has changed, yet the apartments have not... so, it was time to take matters into my own hands! with the help of my roommate, constructing a ceiling was a simple enough plan. it goes something like this:

london, england - canon s200 digital camera, auto

i've retouched and edited about twenty-some photos from my summer 2003 trip to england, italy, and france... most of the pictures were crap, but some were salvagable. i'll post them now and again until the photos from my soon-to-be slr come out. man, i can't wait to get my hands on the pentax k1k. speaking of which, i gotta keep a close eye on ebay... 2 days 9 hours remains! *drool*

london, england - canon s200 digital camera, auto-everything

i'm bidding on a pentax k1000 on ebay with a 50mm prime lens as my foray into serious photography... taking this path with a fully manual camera is perhaps the best, albeit slowest, way to learn this art, since it won't be a matter of point-and-shoot anymore, which is another bad thing about digital cameras... that is, its all too tempting to just be trigger-happy with digicams since erasing/retaking pictures is an immediate process. composition takes thought, and digicams, for lazy folk like me, tend to take away the thinking out of photography (as may or may not be apparent from the photos i'm posting).

this picture was taken summer 2003 on my trip to england, italy and france... one of the better ones out of the 80-some i took. props go to my bro for this better intepretation of the photo (in tone and structure).

someone i haven't spoken to in a long time IMed me after listening to the transcription of a piano solo from this entry. while she really liked it, i realised the tempo was way way off. it was certainly rushed, probably because i was new at the whole piano thing when i was recording it. for correctness' sake, i re-recorded it to a more lyrically pleasing tempo. you can listen to it here. i hope it sounds better!