Hello, Lovine.com

I asked Kat to remind me to appreciate things for what they are, and to smile. No matter what the world gives... and when it decides to take it away.

Alexis and Nika, you will always be in the celebrations of my life, and all the people who were blessed to have known you. I love you both.

Pictures from the gig at the Hotel Cafe a few hours ago.

That's Dave Navarro and Billy Corgan. At a 165 person capacity venue, gigs like these are what dreams are made of.

Kat just sent me a text message:

Today a new boy pulled his pants down and peed on the linoleum with all his glory. I just scrubbed the floor clean Friday

Happy Monday, everyone.

Just about to finish packing a bag for an Alaskan cruise with the family for the week. I'll be a zombie later since we need to leave the house in 2 hours. Hurrah!

My new toy will keep me company through lonely times. This thing is great!

I've been awake for more than 24 hours, the brave recipient of jet lag and a very long exciting day. Before I post videos of the amazing $6 Flaming Lips gig in San Diego, I will need to digress and talk about a big blooper I just made.

Since I'm wide awake and partially functional at 5AM, I realized that the sprinkler system was going off schedule at 4AM. I remember setting it before I left for my trip, to follow the legally mandated Mondays and Thursdays. Long story short, I didn't read the instructions on the control panel (conveniently in bold and all-caps) that states that the push pins were to be inserted on days that you don't want the system operating. Of course I had it all wrong, and I've been watering on all opposite days. And to think, I was so proud of switching over to save water. And remembered wondering why the neighbor kept on watering his lawn in the middle of the night everyday. Apparently, it was mine. Ugh.

There must be some common denominator that allows you to end up where you are, to believe in what you believe in. At the end of the day, how different are we really, from each other? And so I always make it a point to understand where each person comes from, what someone has to say. That's one of the reasons why I enjoy listening to right wing conservative AM radio, because it gives better validation to understanding what you believe in when you hear something that you don't necessarily agree with. Fortunately, the world provides you a myriad of different answers, which may not even address the questions to begin with. The best part is that the world probably doesn't even care, as you're left to fend for your own beliefs, and struggle to find your own place.

Beer is good, but friendship is better. But what's best, is having the good and the better all at the same time.

Woke up at 3:30am this morning, to the headache inducing chatter of the phone alarm to catch my flight out of Guam. Didn't help that I was up till 1am watching crap on the telly, although I must say the Celebrity Roasts on Comedy Central is quite a riot. I stay in an apartment unit on top of our store, two others which are occupied by a manager and another employee. I spoke with the manager yesterday and told him to take me to the airport at around 4:30, since my flight was at 6. Looking back on it, I don't remember if I had told him whether it was AM or PM.... so there I was, pacing outside his door, trying to bang on it, but he was probably passed out. With a flight leaving in an hour, I had no choice but to leave and figure out how to deal with the car, since getting a cab was impossible in the rain at such an ungodly hour.

Left the car at the short term parking lot in the rain, and trusted that they would be able to figure something out. Caught the flight out to Manila, and to my surprise, I knew one of the attendants - who I haven't seen in probably 8 years. I must admit it's very weird having someone you know give you your breakfast on the plane :P

So I get in Manila for a few hours, and head out again to the airport to get to Cebu, where I'm writing this down in my room at a wonderful bed and breakfast. Getting out of the airport was a string of random things that I just need to write down. First was Vince's huge backlit ad space on top of the baggage carousel as municipal mayor and poster boy for Titay's. Second was the family on the motorcycle that zipped by when I crossed the street. It was a young couple with not one, not two, but three kids sitting in the middle of them on a standard issue motorcycle. Very cool. Then as soon as I cross the street, I catch a glimpse of this lady's right nipple as she was openly breastfeeding a baby boy on her lap.

I've come a long way today, and it doesn't seem like it'll slow down anytime soon - need to rush out to have my Barong Tagalog fitted, and go to this barbecue heaven place that Jorel keeps on bugging me about. I need a damn nap.

I just changed my wallpaper. During the early days of web 1.0 in 1996 when I started to dabble with websites, I began to obsess about creating my own content, and making do with what I had to have something that I could completely call my own. Which eventually led me to taking a lot of pictures, then scrambling to places where I could take more.

Each adventure that brews inside my heart is a cacophony of echoes from what I've seen in places and times when I chose to deviate from the safest routes. The trips that mean the most, are the ones with lots of gray that allow the trip to take on its own meaning, without having to struggle to color within the lines and boundaries that we are apt to give. The cliche is there for a reason, because it holds true when the destination stops to matter at the end of the day, and you find yourself lost in the moment.

In the middle of each journey, I always pray that my eyes are kept open, that my ears are kept awake, and that I am given the grace to realize that I am neither here nor there, that we will always be transient in the beauty being shown to us. We are numbed by what we already know, which dangerously dilutes our ability to view ourselves outside of the picture we've painted in and over our heads.

So fragile but weighs so heavy in my heart, the simple beauty of trying to make your life, your own.

Hafa Adai! Was leeching off free WiFi for almost 4 hours at a local coffee shop here in Guam. I must say that broadband internet is starting to rachet up the basic commodity ladder required for survival. Can you imagine life with no intarwebz?

It's been a fairly productive Sunday afternoon though, as I draft emails and start picking up more ground on network diagrams and flow charts I've neglected over the year. While polishing off dinner I wondered if my productivity is a result of being in a different environment that lets me out of my comfort zone, and places me back to a more visible core path of meaning. But then I quickly realized that the increase in productivity is most probably attributed to having no internet access the rest of the day to distract me. They say that the simplest solution is the best answer. Unplug, simplify, get to the point. The world waits for no one - especially for the Jack of All Trades, Master of None.

Reporting from the international lounge at LAX. After a series of mini-adventures that unfolded throughout the week that threatened to derail the airtight schedule of the next few weeks, I'm just glad that my ass is in the sterile zone waiting for departure. The bags were slightly overweight with only a 3lb cushion for my personal stuff, and my glasses decided to ditch a screw so now they're being held together by a paper clip.

I'd rather be making rockets

I had to sort out a mess with the flagship carrier airline, who informed me less than a week of departure that my bookings could not be honored because of a US law that does not allow them to basically usurp similar routes that customers can get through domestic carriers (read: LAX-GUM costs almost 2x vs. LAX-MNL-GUM-MNL combined). Long story short, I had to throw a Saipan leg of my journey out the window to accommodate a 72 hour window wherein I'll be lollygagging in Manila.

And to top it off, I found out during check-in that the GUM refuel ain't happening, it's a straight flight, and the 'cabotage law' monkey wrench that effed everything over disappeared in an instant. Thanks for all drama! It's so great to finally be 28. :)

The familiar adage floating in the VW forums rings true.

If you want it done right, do it yourself

As usual, it applies to the machinery of life as well.
Sigh.

Only takes the world a split second to take your breath away. Get out there, and find out what really matters.

Kat and I are big fans of analog. We've always had a thing for vintage and classics, warm saturated tones and colors and what not. This is a print from her Diana F+ Lomo that's fitted with Fuji Instamax film (basically: polaroid) that makes instant prints. Pretty dope, but took her awhile to get a framing technique together (which is still far from perfect). We have dozens of prints in various states of failure, many pitch black, total white, or of our friends with no heads. So basically, its pretty accurate and depicts real life very well.

Meanwhile I'm holding a box contraption that blocks out light of a Kodak Duaflex III, which is a medium format camera. I point my camera through the viewfinder to come up with a picture of, well, a picture of what a person sees when looking through the viewfinder (TTV). It's a pretty big square piece of glass, and really cool looking through it. It's amazing how the image can pop out - it's basically my own portable camera obscura.

We've all been conditioned to think that perfect is always better, that you want clean, pure, expensive, unadulterated. Yet the warm hiss and pop of vinyl, the saturated tones of a lomo print, the struggle of a 79 VW bus traversing a grade, these embody for me the beauty and soul of art. It's more fun making mistakes, it's a lot more beautiful, than being perfect.

So much has happened that I wanted to write about, but I'll probably just back-date the posts to coincide with what I wanted to write. I couldn't update since I moved out of Blogger and moved to my own install of WordPress until all the dust hath settled. The biggest hurdles were porting the old comments over from Haloscan and choosing a new theme to go with it. Well, there's still some loose ends that I need to fix and fortunately there is always a late night awaiting me at the end of every day. Long days, can quickly turn into very, very late nights.