Tuesday, February 24, 2009

so....Guatemala

so here i am, Guatemala.



after like 12 hours of travel(including layover time...)

finally arrived at Guatemala City, Guatemala, the night before yesterday.



the first thing I saw getting off the airport, was a sign on the skybridge saying: Funds By Taiwan in chinese characters.

which confirms what I heard before, that the Taiwanese government helped Guatemala to build those public infrastructures.




hmm. the airport is quite well done though. lol



back to the topic.



Guatemala

it's a place I never seen with my own eyes.


(I thought all the countries in central america was all the same as Argentina before, and I never really been to Argentina. lol)



spent my yesterday doing all the small touring stuff and meeting people.



still a bit tired from the travel.



to be continued....


night my friends...

Friday, February 20, 2009

Ready!




So now I got all my film here.


I can leave for Guatemala in no time.


Except that the flight is on Monday...
and I haven't packed up anything yet....




and after my mom helped me squeezing out a bit of blood from my nasty right thumb, it's really getting better now!


Oh and I still have to get a pocket aize Spanish dictionary too.



Can't wait!





Wait for my mail from guatemala, chelsea!

update.

So it's time for some little review of my current life again.


1. Got all the 10 cavities fixed.(spent 1.5K on it.....not good at all)

2. Still remaining an astonishing 145lbs, it has been like this for a while.(a very long while)

3. Losing my hawaii tan.(Oh I won't miss it... terrible farmers tan.)

4. Messed up right thumb by smacking the car door before I pull all my arm out. (Bad bad move.)

5. Not sure about other things, haven't went through a full body check for a while. (oh my body fat percentage must be rocketing to the sky!)

6. How can I have no thoughts of all the things what I learned back in my school years in Taiwan? There must be something that has a problem: My brain. or the Education system in Taiwan.(I prefer the answer is not my brain.)

7.I'm going to Guatemala to visit Sara and have a 17 day vacation before school starts. Which is also the first time in my life to travel to some place that I never been in before and know very few of the language.(I'm a noob...)

8.I'm so going to drink tons of liquor when I'm in Guatemala.(I hate beer, it makes me puke...) (Don't bash me LDS people...)

9. Still single after all these years.(how can some people takes it as an accomplishment.... )

10. Planning on visiting Hawaii this thanksgiving, since I still have a one way ticket haven't used.(Can't wait.)

11. My average bed time is around 2:30 am.

12. I gave the swimsuit edition to my dad as a gift, and he loved it.(I missed his birthday present...)

13.I'm running out of Burt's bee's lip balm. need resupply!

14.I sold tons of crap to get the money for the fare to go to Guatemala, but I spent a ton of them in the process...(Just can't control myself)

15. I have to pay $800 of tax for what I earned last summer being an internship in my dad's company.(I recieved the 1099-MISC form, which counts me as a self-employer, crazy tax is killing me.....bad company too..)

16.I really want apple the cramp the new Intel Core i7 processors into their new Macbook Pro's asap.(Even if they do, I still won't have to $$ to buy it.)

17. I'm running out of $$$.

18. I'm still unemployed.

19. I'm not an alcoholic. Am I clear?

20. Jesus Antonio Molinar is still a mexican(not a dirty one anymore.)

21. I'm turning 20 this year. I wish it was 21 though. (Guess why?)

22. I can never understand why my parents think that going to the Olympics is one of the last things they will do in their life.(DUH!!!!!)

23. I'm still going to the Vancouver 2010 winter Olympics no matter what my parents think as it is crap.

24. I wish I didn't had as much Hollister clothes. (They are over priced.)

25. Freak! A phone is a phone, a camera is a camera, an iPod is an iPod. Why do people always want everything in a single device. It's only makes the device nothing. (iPhone is an exception, but still I think the camera on it sucks like crap.)

26. Woman are beautiful. Men are handsome. Do not disagree with me!

27. Dr. House is my role model, not A-Rod.

28. I still love A-Rod.

29. I don't believe in Jeter.

30. Red-Sox's smells bad. Bad bad bad.

31. I just ordered 5 years of Time Magazine.

32. I really feel stupid sometimes. As if nothing I learned in high school made sense, was just a bunch of numbers and names.(The education systems fault!!!!!!!)

33. I learned more in my History class last semester than all the things I learned in 6 years of high school.(Oh my.)

34. Math is okay for me. Literature is my weakness.(Any one needs a tutor?)

35. I look like a mormon when I'm in BYUH, but in fact I'm not.(Who cares?)

36.I go to church just to socialize. (Pretty realistic huh?)

37. Chelsea Owens is the most amazing living individual I ever seen on this planet. (not saying you guys aren't.)

38. I want to meet Babe Ruth.(I mean the snack bar)

39. My green card has the pictures of all 43 presidents of United States of America.(Too bad I got it 2 years ago, so it's missing Obama.)

40.I want to play resident evil 5 on a PS3!!!!(So I can watch Blue-Ray movies too)

41. I'm too sensitive, emotionally.(Makes me girly sometimes)

42. I need more mass on my upper body.(Working on it. estimate finish date.... unknown)

43. If I had to choose from jelly beans and my own snot, I will choose my snot.(I mean it.)

44. Cockroaches are the most evil things in this world. (Thank you kung fu to kill that one on the wall for me last semester..)

45. Photoshop is overrated, abused. The amazing thing is not the computer but the artist's hands and his imaginations.

46. I still got debt to deal with. goodness...

47. I am off Dr. Pepper these days. Seriously.(James it's all your fault...)

48. WOW sucks.(lol)

49. I will still punch you if you ask me where is Taiwan. And I will burn down your house if you say Taiwan belongs to those evil Communist Chinese scum bags.(Is that a bit too intense?)

50. Call me Ting. Not Ding. Ting Ting's welcomed.

Monday, February 16, 2009

trashed up thumb.

I trashed up my thumb.

the thumb on my right hand.

it looks like a pumped up black lolly pop now

it looks like a boy thumb with faded black nail polish


so this is how it happened:

Yesterday I went out driving to get something with my mom

it was in a hurry.

I jumped out the car, somehow the door closes faster than I thought before I can get my hand clear.


!SMACK!

the car door close, and I realized I thumb is stuck there.

I yelled HOLY S***!!!!!!! in my mind.

sucked it up till I got my things and jump back in the car.


no bleeding on the outside on the thumb, but totally messed under the nail

just nasty


Totally nasty.



Basically I'm partially disabled now.

Can no longer enjoy a good warm shower, no longer can enjoy the happiness of writing, holding a chop stick, every thing related to my right hand.


for how long? At least for 5 days......



wish the swell and pain goes away before I head to Guatemala....

Friday, February 13, 2009

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Guatemala or Alaska?

Exactly.

Guatemala or Alaska?

This question popped up after I finish chatting with Sara.
She invited me to go visit her in Guatemala.

Hmm. Since I haven't been to any other country in central america, hey, this is a perfect opportunity!

But still?

Which one will you choose?



Two totally different places.

Both quite exotic(maybe Guatemala a bit more than Alaska?)

Both cost almost the same airfare.

Both got friends to crash with.

Both doesn't require me VISA or any application things.
(In fact, I was surprised that Taiwan has a diplomatic relationship with Guatemala, so I can visit for 90 days the longest. )

Both going to be great places to take a lot of photos.

But I can only choose to go to one of them this summer.

Alaska or Guatemala?




Guatemala?

Hmm.


I got 1300 bucks to save before summer comes....thats basically the only issue I got now.

Voluntary work?

IMG_7187


Today was tired and productive(not in a $$ sense.)

Had to(forced by Mom) go help out a family friend's Flower store business.

Grabbed a cup of latte by Starbucks on the way there.
The shop was cold, really cold. Colder than outside, like 40F only.
I was kinnda under prepared for the whole thing, did not expect the shop to be this crazy cold so I didn't wore thick enough.
My hands and legs weren't able to warm up to whole time. Nothing worked.


So my job was to keep the register and write all those little message cards that goes with the flower.
My good hand writing(according to a lot people) help a lot.
But it was just... duh.

I wished it was not an voluntary job but rather than a paid labor thing.

Later on I was sent to deal with the roses.
The roses were beautiful. Some of them had like milions of small spikes.
I felt like the better that rose is, the more spikes it had.
Gave me a headache.

from 9 to 6.

Stressful. Valentine's week is stressful.

It's not a hard job, but ain't easy too.


Cause I'm ain't getting paid, so I get to complain here.






And I still got 5 days to go.(Holy crap)

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Film Camera Obsession.

The Canon EOS3

IMG_7175

IMG_7167

IMG_7166


Got it for $250 on Craig's list. Maybe not the cheapest when comparing on ebay, but it's in really good condition.
The owner took good care of it, the camera is 10 years old but looks like brand new w/o scratches.
He only shot 150 roll's on it, which is about 5000 photos. Not very much. A good news for me.


the EOS 3

although it's about 10 years old since it came out in 1998. But it still has a bunch of feature that a lot present digital SLR's can't compete with:

the state of the art 45-point area focusing sensor.(which is the same with the EOS1V, EOS1DMark2N, EOS1DsMark2, it was still the fastest and most advanced system in the industry until 2007)

The 7 frames-per-second burst. (There's still a lot of SLR's of today can't this speed.)




He's gonna be my new baby for a while.


I need to get more film to feed him.

film junky.






okay.

So a few days ago while going through craigslist trying to sell my keyboard, I accidently found the camera that I was looking for decades(you know what I mean)

it's a film camera.

A Canon EOS3 film camera.

Came out in 1998.

it's like one of the best 35mm film camera still can compete with the wave of digital age.


It's in good condition.

The seller posted it for $250.

For that camera, it seriously is a pretty good price.



And talking about film camera's. I was thinking about building a darkroom in the storage.

I always wanna to develop the film by myself.

Brought a book, called "Build Your Own Home Darkroom"
it has almost every information I needed to build up my dark room.

Excellent!

Doesn't it sound crazy still doing film during these digital days?
I donno. I started photography by shooting film. I missed it. I loved it.
Digital did deliver the convenience, the speed, the low price tag.
But film still has great advantage over silicon sensors these days.
The color, the dynamic range, the gratitude, the personality of each film.
It's all something that digital lacks of.
It's like the classic chucks that never goes out of fashion.



Since I got no funds right now (I put all the money on the camera)
Gonna study it for a while, make up a plan, and wait till I get the time and money to do it.



If I can get that darkroom working. It would be dream come true.



Oh so I'm gonna get the camera maybe tomorrow, super exciting.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

so it was the stupid 2012 thing

so everybody heard of that thing yeah?!



hmm like two days ago, I just stupidly went on the net and learn what the heck is it talking about.

I donno why I just kinnda went into a depression mode, yes, depression.
I started to freak out.
Worrying about the things that could happen, about the things that I haven't done and bla bla bla.
It was awful.

I saw jesus(not Jesus Christ) on msn. So I went to ask what he thinks about this 2012 crap.
He gave me a brief about the whole thing. And also told me that in the bible, no human kind can predict the end of the world.

But still I wasn't sure of what to believe.

And I joked that it was Adam's fault that he ate the apple that made us human think, the reason why I'm confused now (It was a bad joke.lol)

So then he told me to get my book of mormon(Yes, even though I'm agnostic, still I do have one.)
He told me to go to 2Nephi 2:22-25


22 And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.

23 And they would have had no achildren; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no bjoy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no csin.

24 But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.

25 Adam fell that men might be; and men care, that they might have joy.


jesus told me to read 25 out aloud, and go back to read 22 23 24, and 25.


"25 Adam fell that men might be; and men care, that they might have joy."

this was what it was all about that made me almost cried. At least eyes full of tears.

I felt a warmth that I never felt before.

jesus called me a sissy. lol


That moment I just felt so overwhelmed by joy, and I was so thankful of all the friends that I knew in my life.
I don't know how could I get this far without them.

I really don't know.

It's nothing about god.

but still....



I stopped to think about the whole stupid 2012 thing.

And I went to sleep.