fpac. 2008.

 

san pedro.

hey people. i went to fpac this weekend with a couple friends just to chill cause we really didn’t have anything else to do on that saturday. so we took a drive down to san pedro instead. for those of you who don’t know what fpac is, it is the festival of philippine art & culture. i have been to one of these since tyrone lue was a laker. weird fact on whhy i remember it, because my family and i went to his autograph signing before we went to fpac. so it had to have been at least 5 years old. so anyways, i mainly wanted to go because of a couple of the headliners, ms christine “happyslip” gambito and ms camile velasco. more on them in a bit. but before we hit up fpac, we had to do some stuff at frank and sons, i wish i was strapped with cash cause i could have spent a lot on there. but anyways on to fpac.

 

thai food at a filipino event. good thing there are long lines.

so me steve and paolo finally get there. there was a little parking situation where there were signs put up saying you should park on 22nd street. but it was further out than 37th street. that was wayyyy too far, so we looked for parking at the event, and found one sorta fast, in an illegal type way. everyone seemed to be parking along the coast and curb of the road. signs were clearly posted no parking and no stopping, but hundred of people disregarded the signs. so by the time we get there, we hadn’t eaten yet. and it was already 1:30. we headed straight to the food stands, we look and the filipino food had a long ass line. so we decided to eat at the thai bbq stand. and thats where i found my cousin scott, he also was celebrating his 24th birthday. happy birthday again. anyways, while we were inching closer to the cashier, i decided to go in line for smoothies at another stand. and there was this girl there that looked familiar, but i just couldnt lay my finger on it. until that night when i found out it was paola’s sister. its a crazy small world. and so as we were bringing our food to the benches was pass by the bakitwhy.com booth. i look to my right…….. it was christine! so i get to the bench get a little antsy and then eat eat eat eat. i finished eating and then headed out to see her. 

 

i got her digits.

i had a cameraman and a videographer with me to capture this event. and yes, i youtubed it. first question i usually get is, why did i let her sign my powerbook. it is because the very first video i saw of hers was her mac beautiful video. thanks sister. in it she sings about her powerbook, and i find out that we have the exact same one. a 12″ g4 powerbook. and shes a mac user as well, and when i watch this video, i like the part where i ask her if she could sign it and everyone just goes “wooowwwwww”. that was pretty cool, but here it is:

yep. you cant really beat that. or can you? so after my happyslip moment, we finally got to go around the place, check the sights and sounds of what fpac had to offer. they had many booths there on clothes and stuff. they had some good designs and some ghetto ones too. and so while making the rounds on the grounds (it rhymed) we got back to the main stage….

 

guy in the blue! its Travis Kraft !!!!!!

you need to press play on that. i really wanted to meet him too. he was selling his dvd there on how to cook filipino food. i bet its pure comedy too. oh well.

 

korean friendship bell.

since i haven’t been to san pedro in ages we decided to get out of the place for a bit and check out the korean friendship bell at the top of the hill. it seemed like an awkward place to put a korean bell, but after checking out the view, it felt like a good place to have the bell at. i just remembered that they did a scene in hamlet 2 here. its the part where his wife is doing a photoshoot. go watch the movie too. but yeah, we chilled there for a while, and came back down as soon as we heard camile starting to sing. we barely caught the last parts of it and as soon as she finished, she went to her booth in where she was going to sign autographs and such.

 

yesssur. its camile.

oh man was she awesome, ill go straight into the video this time:

this absolutely made my day. when she said she knows me, you could see myself smiling for days on in.  pause at :38. =) and its like that every time i watch it.  she does explain how she knew me, but for those not wanting to watch it, she watched one of my video responses from her first video. in it i say whuttup and that i support her and the camiletv crew. and for her to remember just a kid with a youtube account, it truly meant a lot. and i would have to say it was better than happyslip. but i love them both. we left during happyslip’s speech just so we dont run into the heavy traffic on the way out. after that, we went to some halloween stores and ate some yoshinoyas .. lol at yoshinoyas. but that was about it. my crazy day. im going to save this document, sign off, and then look at my powerbook. =) . my powerbook says ” i hope you do wonderful things on the wonderful machine.” i thank her for writing that, now i have to live up to it, which i can’t and won’t let her down. and now, im going to go to sleep. 

 

oh yeah, the vmas really sucked hard. i have so many issues on it in which i will blog on it in another episode. blah. peeeeeeace out people.

i am 8-bit (take 2)

its a great show. here’s info if you want to go:

World of Wonder Storefront Gallery
6650 Hollywood Blvd
Hollywood, California

monday through friday from 12 pm – 7 pm.

free admission, free parking if you can park on the side, free posters, and free stickers.

GO! and have fun.

up north. day 4. delayed.

 

well, i got the case of laziness with the blog after i drove back from up north. and it has been a couple days since i got back, i kinda blame it on my olympic fever. so anyways, heres a glimpse of what i did for day 4. we packed up from the hotel and left about 11 o clock in the morning. we were heading out and found out we were going to hearst castle. honestly, i’ve never ever ever ever heard about it until we got off the freeway to head to it. if you’ve never heard about it, the hearst castle is basically about a guy who wanted to build his dream house (castle) on the hill by the pacific coast. 

 

 

welcome to my crib.

 

the outside of the crib is quite impressive. nice marble figures and concrete steps that overlook pacific coast highway. its quite the good look for anyone trying to be pimp. our travel guide, betty, was quite funny, and a bit ghetto, maybe thats why i found her to be funny. she seemed like the type who says “ummm hmmm” at the end of all her sentences. and she usually followed it up by saying sweetheart or darling or sugar. she was cool, but too bad i didn’t take a picture with her. 

 

hearst neptune pool. not bad.

 

it was a hot day, and you know what they do? they show you the coolest pool in the world. i could have sworn i saw jay-z on here before. there were a lot of antsy kids moving around in the tour and wanting to dive in. she also did say there was a $750 fine. damn, 750!!!! thats madness. but it sure looked nice to jump in. 

 

theee hearst castle.

 

that castle was pretty large. the architecture looked like it had a lot of spanish influences, and looked like a cathedral more than a castle. there was a nice garden of flowers right behind where i took this picture and also included some egyptian artwork just chillen in the garden. the house also had a big fountain with fish and lilly pads , and heres a photo:

 

my attempt to look professional.

and inside the castle, we got to visit a couple rooms and dining room as well. they were so so, but the room that you enter in was pretty nice. there was lots of nice art work embed in the house itself.

 

a nice column.

 

and lastly, another nice pool. it was underneath the outdoor tennis court. its pretty nice, and also has a diving tower. the pool makes a t shape in a very romanesque style pool. the water was clear enough that you can see the mosaic art that was underneath in the pool. i havent seen that before, and the floor had 23kt foil inlaid too. 

 

pool

 

then after that there was some movie that you watched in an imax screen. it was weird to see an imax screen in the middle of the pch. but anyways, we headed home after that. FINALLY. and yeah, im at home, in so cal. it was a great time out in the bay. and you get my endorsement, but so cal is still where my heart is at. =). good night for now.

up north. day 3. DADS BIRTHDAY!

happy birthday dad. 

sadly there wasnt much to take pictures of. plus i’ve said im tired, but im tired more than ever. we went to great america! and it was just… iight. it was pretty empty too. lots of carnival games and jail bait. yeah i said it. there were a few rides here and there, and i found it funny that the line that took the longest was a kids ride. i went with my niece, ada, and so she wanted to ride psycho mouse. for so cal people, its the really weak roller coaster in california adventure, i forgot what its called, but shit was weak. haha. and it took like 30 minutes to ride that. we practically finished the whole park before 3 o clock, and by then i was pooped. so when we went out to gilroy i knocked out reallllllyyyyyyyy fast in the car. 

we finished up the day back at the hotel and had dinner for dad. we got food from patio filipino(?) i think thats what the name was. but it was some good filipino food. and for the rest of the night we just watched the olympics, which i am currently still doing right now. but im feeling a bit sleepy, im going to try and see a little bit of the usa vs greece game, but i don’t know if my eyes can take it anymore. 

sorry no pictures this time around, but when i get back home ill upload more and make a review of the trip. so ill talk to you guys later. peace out!

up north. day 2.

 

day 2.

 

 

so day 1 is in the books. i felt tired, even when i got a good full 8 hours of sleep i woke up at 9 or so. i felt like i could have gone longer. but we wanted to go on further with the sites that frisco had to offer. we started out going to union square’s shopping district. we had quite the adventure trying to find parking. we went to one that JUST got full as soon as we got there, and then circled around this one block by the bloomingdales entrance about 4 times to get in. it was weird.

 

yes, nike town. i love you.

so, we found parking, and got to it. we went walking out to powell street, and headed to the trolley. and in typical tfc fashion my family wanted to go on it. i just noticed that “tfc” is very convenient in the qwerty keyboard. but anyways, the line was too long and we said fuck it, we will walk to union square. and so we got there, i went off on my own to go to the four corners of union square to see the hearts of san francisco. i went to three of them, and went to the fourth and i saw niketown. i knew i was heading in the right direction. 

 

i want this in my room.

so i went in saw a few things, and loved the layout of the china vs usa mannequins. i didnt take a picture of the gold kobe mannequin but it was cool too. cool store of course, and i came out with a kobe blue usa jersey. i had to rep my boy and my country. i really wanted a chris paul for conceited reasons. but they haven’t received any in, which i was actually very shocked to hear. i saw dwight howard’s jersey though, but i guess those vitamin water commercials helped him out. as i was walking out, kuya and ada were going up the escalator. so i followed them back into the store.  shopped with them for awhile and started to head back and go look for more stuff to see.

 

chinatown, without olympics.

we headed up and went to china town to eat lunch. it was a good walk to burn some calories right before we quadruple our calorie intake. we went to the far east cafe to grab a bite. i will say it tasted like every other chinese place i’ve been to, but it was ok. after lunch we went back to where we started, i visited the apple store (it feels like its a must for apple owners to go in the store, even if you know you aren’t going to buy anything). i will say, i like their stairs. i hit up virgin records, i was tempted to buying into their 10 dollar section as usual, but decided not to. went across the street to old navy, picked up a few things and that was it. oh yeah, i went to the mall where bloomingdales was in, and went on the escalators. yeah, i know i’m lame. oh yeah, i didn’t take a picture of it, but there was a small shop in the mall where they had hair extensions, it was called “soho”. not lying either, i thought it was hilarious. why do you want your store to be called that?!

 

look at them go.

after that, we went to some pier close to alcatraz. it was a very nice place to take some photos on. and the birds were on point that day. they didn’t crap and they wanted to be in the pictures. there were flying v’s and lines of big ass birds everywhere. it was pretty nice to behold.

 

my models.

i really liked this photo cause all of these birds seemed to have lined up for me. again i took pictures of the city and along the beach they had. i actually have more pictures of these seagulls on my computer, but who wants to see my portfolio for seagull pictures? and i see no hands being raised. 

 

AWESOMENESS !

yeah, im never going to leave my heart in san francisco, but i sure can leave my name there. i like frisco even more because of that. paul avenue! woot woot!

and i know this maybe out of order for you nor cal people, but i had to end tonights blog with this picture.

 

WORD.

up north. day one.

 

the beginning.

day one of my random ass trip to the bay. started off getting up at 2, and leaving at 3. even though we didnt leave til 3:30 in the morning. my dad took over the wheel and started the first part of the trek. i was fine just as long as i could wake up before sunrise. i never got to play with my camera for a sunrise setting, so i took advantage of it this time around. i only got one good shot, and yeah that was it. there wasn’t much of a landscape to deal with anything in bakersfield. 

i guess our first real rest stop was at monterey bay’s fisherman’s wharf. we ate some breakfast and decided to head on out to monterey bay’s aquarium. if you have never been to that one or (for my locals) the long beach one, you guys should definitely get educated. 

 

it's absolutely amazing.

 

i got more time to play around with my camera in there. i shot off about 130 rounds of picture taking in that place in an hours time. for 25 bucks its well worth it and its great to chill, especially out on the back deck near the ocean.

 

they will eat you.

those fish were big. this was like the imax screen with imax sized fish. there ever was a second level to watch this tank. i tried to go up there so i could take a picture of all the fish, but it was too humongous it couldn’t fit in my slr.

 

look at the art work.

real fresh idea to put frames around the tanks! the aquarium had this real nice jelly fish exhibit. it was cool, had all types of jelly fish and these cool rooms where they were stored. one of my favorite rooms was the one that had tanks on both sides of a small hallway and two mirrors that bookended each other. so if you were at one end and looked down to the other end, it looked like the room went on forever. it was real trippy, and so cool. some girl almost hit the mirror cause she thought it kept on going.

 

my cousin would be mad if i didn't post a picture of one of these up.

so yeah, they had all types of animals there, even penguins.  in their section they had a small plastic bubble enclosure so you could get close to one without having your eyes get poked out by their beaks. it was an interesting idea, and with the popularity of happy feet, i guess its a win win situation. too bad that chihuahua movie is going to bomb btw. 

 

what happened to it?

so after a fun filled afternoon, we went to the golden gate bridge. it was so weird that day. we went to the north side first and it was sunny, cool with a strong breeze. we did the usual asian family tourist picture taking catalog and then started to head on back to the south side. as we were parking at the other end, the fog started rolling in, it was getting darker due to it.  so we got to the other end, and me and my giants color attire wanted to walk a portion of the bridge. i left my jacket in the car, and holy crap was it cold. clouds were colliding against me and the breeze was cooling me even more. but i got through to maybe 1/8 of the bridge before i headed back. i just wanted to walk on the bridge cause actually, i don’t think i ever have. but too bad i couldn’t see it all the way.

 

they weren't lying when the sign said "photo spot".

after that, decided to go out and find something to eat. and we went to the nice pier 39. there was a store called krazy kaps with all this weird junk and fake sunglasses and stuff. but they had a “krazy” deal with it, 1 for 6 bucks or 3 for 12 bucks. who can say no to that? try it. so i bought 2 pairs and got my niece a pair. we both opted to get some whack looking shades. i got the fake kanye stunner shades and the “gold plated” elvis glasses so i can get hyphy. im sorry if im a little late with that. and my niece got shutter shades with laker colors. my mom laughed…… at me. =/ lol. 

 

coooooooool night.

and so we drove back. oh yeah we went to the crooked street as well. did a lot for day 1 actually. and yeah im tired. i shot this one out of the window and actually liked the look of it. very much a city feel. we got back to the hotel in time to see the mole! and yeah that craig is the mole damnit! i was leaning on mark, but all three of those guys were giving me a hard time on picking. but craig did a good job and mark did a better one. i love that show, it better be there next season, and id love to join it! =)

ok day 2 is coming up. its 12:30 and i need some much needed sleep. ill keep the pictures coming. until tomorrow!