weekend at cornell university

So my sister and I visited our brother at Cornell University up in Ithaca this past weekend. It took a 5-hour and 30-minute bus ride to get there, and it was not a pleasant or particularly scenic ride, but it was all worth it as soon as we got off the bus, breathed in the fresh air and hugged our brother who met us at the bus stop in Collegetown. We only really had maybe 27 hours in Ithaca, and we spent maybe 10 hours of that sleeping and wasting away Sunday morning because we were so pooped. I wish I could have taken more pictures, gone around and really enjoyed the beauty of the campus, but for now I guess these random pictures will have to do. We'll be back in May for shoti's graduation anyway, so I can take all the photos I want then!


Duffield Hall at Cornell University (Below)

should i stay or should i go?

I haven't written anything here in a while. The past few weeks have been crazy at work. Of course, my schedule isn't as crazy as other friends here who are in Finance, but being in a creative rut in this industry is hard when you need to produce something beautiful and worthwhile every day. I feel tired, drained and dazed. Nothing I do seems to look good enough anymore.

I don't know if I'm just feeling this way because I'm confused. I'm not sure if I should stay in New York for another couple of years when I get my work visa or just go back home for good in December. On one hand, I love it here. The freedom, the city, the wonder, the job, the experiences. On the other, all the people I love (or should I say most of the people I love, I love my friends here too!) are back home and I feel like my real life doesn't really begin until I go back to Manila. I don't think I will ever know where my life will actually lead me until I go home. It would seem like an easy choice to just up and leave for the Philippines, but something's holding me here. I don't know what it is, but I somehow can't say goodbye to New York just yet.

I wish I didn't have to make the decision myself. I was hoping God would do the decision-making for me. If I get the visa, I stay. If not, I go back. But from the way things are working out, it seems I will have to do the yes or no myself. I feel like I've made a mess of the situation by delaying the thinking I should have been doing two months earlier. Eeeepp. They say you'll just know when it's time for you to go home. But being the indecisive me that I am, I don't think it's going to be that easy for a while... at least I have only one more month left to suffer through this uncertainty. If I don't have an answer by mid-November I should just go home.

my new watch

Woohoo! :) My mom bought me a Glam Rock watch that I absolutely love. I had no idea what Glam Rock was before she mentioned she got me one. She had gone along with my aunt (who loves watches) to purchase a white one and she thought I could use a black one for the fall! Yes, so I could use it for fall here in New York! *laughs* Mama's so cute.



I'm surprised the watch cost so much though considering it isn't as "famous" as, say, Philip Stein. I have to take real good care of it. I've had two watches taken out of commission and needing repairs already this year. (It wasn't my fault though! I have no idea why that Folli Follie supposedly automatic watch just stopped working and how that Toywatch broke in two places at once when I didn't even hit it against anything. Tsk tsk.)

Anyway, my only complaint about this watch is the leather strap is still too stiff and it hurts my wrist a bit. I will have to wear it for the next few weeks to "break it in"! I don't think I've ever done that for a watch, haha, but there's always a first. And I like it anyway, so no complaints. :)

tattoo design (updated!)

Here's a tattoo design I made for a friend. :) I just needed to put this somewhere online so we could show the design to some of our friends before she commits to it! This key design features her initials and the New York skyline.




Update: September 11, 2009

So she finally got her tattoo made at a place called North Star, which is supposedly award-winning, whatever that means in this kind of business. I'm not sure if they have their own version of the Grammys or Oscars. *laughs* But anyway, this is how it turned out! :) So realistic! And it feels gratifying for me to know she likes it! The tattoo artist was proud of his own handiwork too. I think he did an amazing job with the shading and making it look dimensional.

curly hair and a new blazer.

I was bored this afternoon waiting for Derya to come over and pick up Yessa's Electric Zoo ticket which she forgot even after asking "Do I have everything I need with me?" right before she left haha! :) After he picked up the tickets I decided to curl my hair for the heck of it! I haven't had my hair this long in a year and a half so I thought I could play around with it to help me decide if I want to chop it off again or not. (Sorry Marts, I know you hate curly hair, but haha, it was fun to have this hair for a day at least!) :) I think I'm going to keep my hair long through fall, and then we'll see what happens when I go back home to the Philippines in December.



I was amazed that the curls held even after an afternoon spent going to Borders and buying a book, having a tall iced White Chocolate Mocha and a slice of Banana Walnut Bread at Starbucks while reading the newly-purchased The Poe Shadow by Matthew Pearl and going to Daffy's for some bargain shopping. And I didn't even put any kind of product on my hair! Anyway, tracking back to that blazer I bought. It's a size 6; I was hoping to find a size 4 but it was the only one of its kind I could find, so I got it anyway. It's roomy and androgynous, which is exactly why I couldn't resist. I know I have way too many jackets for my own good, but, oh well! It was $29, that's not too much to pay for a blazer anyhow.



Hmm, this boredom is not very good for my wallet. I keep going out and buying stuff! Tsk tsk. Well, at least I'm not spending AND damaging my liver like I usually used to do on the weekends. At least I get something more than inebriation for my money when I shop!

Tomorrow is going to be a good day though! Biking and then afterwards a picnic at Central Park, woohoo! :) I can't wait! Those are the kinds of days that make me happy I'm in New York. Last night we went to watch a Mets game at Citi Field. I've never seen a baseball game in my life, not even on TV, so it was a novel experience! I must say, it was a pretty relaxing sport to watch. Everyone was just hanging out drinking beer, eating hotdogs (and Shake Shack burgers! I never get tired of them!), and just having a good time. :) I think I enjoyed it more for the atmosphere than the actual sport itself. *smiles*


Citi Field in Queens

boring saturday.

So I woke up at 11 am. Lounged around in my pajamas for a while and then decided to take my shower so I could go out and buy some food. After I showered though I realized I was too lazy to go out so I ended up eating Cap'n Crunch Peanut Butter for lunch. I did some Red Mango work, then paid for my cellphone and our electricity and internet bills, then calculated how much Yessa and I owed each other (because we keep putting things on each other's tabs), watched Season 2 Episode 1 of Code Geass, and started looking for apartments online because our lease is up on September 30th. Hay. So it wasn't an extremely uneventful day, but it just wasn't exciting or happy.

Anyway, because I only had cereal for lunch, my stomach started grumbling at around 5:30 pm. I thought I'd wait it out for a bit, but the growls wouldn't stop so I finally gave in at around 7:00 and headed out to Saint's Alp Teahouse for some Chicken Chop and Black Milk Tea (Yum! This was what I was actually craving for more than the food!) I was so worried that my tummy would embarrass me on the jam-packed elevator on the way down! Luckily it kept quiet for at least that minute. It resumed its complaining as soon as I stepped out of the apartment building! *laughs*

So after my 30-minute subway ride and walk to Saint's Alp, I ate dinner (alone) while writing a to-do list on a sheet of paper I brought along. How nerdy and loser-ish. But, I didn't really care. I was with my jumbo mug of Black Milk Tea and everything was all right with the world. *grins*

It was around 8:00 pm when I finished eating and decided I would walk the 45 streets and 6 avenues back to the apartment. I don't know what got into me, but I was wearing comfy sneakers, it was a cool night and I was bored out of my wits. I had nothing better to do with my time (or at least, I had no work that I wanted to do at the moment. I still have some pending work lying around.) So I started on my trek uptown.

After a few stopovers at 1) a vintage clothing store with the coolest booties, 2) Aldo, which now sells these $60 MJ inspired oxfords that Yessa bought last week (love them!) and 3) H&M (where I bumped into Daniel, our production intern) and an hour and a half of walking, I finally arrived back at the apartment! The "cool evening" had disappeared because I had worked myself to a sweat from all the walking. But I must say, I'm pretty happy I got to do a little exercise.

Back at home, I again started looking for apartments that are up for sublease (and it's not easy at all!) I e-mailed a broker I spoke to before I came to New York back in late 2007. I'm hoping he gets back to me soon so he can help us out. Apartment hunting is never fun. And moving is even worse! I am dreading the day I have to box up all my stuff and move again.

Anyway, I finally gave up on the apartment search for the night and decided to do a little art project instead. I've had an empty gold frame behind my bed for a while, so I decided to finally put something in it. I cut up an Urban Outfitters paper bag and used that for the matting.



I then looked for a hummingbird picture on the internet, stylized it in pink with some gray layers, printed it and put it into the frame. And ta-da, I have new art for my wall. Yey! At least now I've done something semi-productive with my day. Now I can go to sleep. Good night!

studs studs studs!

I found this gray blazer at Daffy's for $19 and thought it would be fun to see what I could do to spruce it up and make it current.



So, I bought some silver studs and decided to adorn the collar part of it. It hurts to do it with your bare hands, and my right index finger especially was a bit sore afterwards from folding down all the metal backs of the studs. But, I must say, the 2 hours spent planning and studding was worth it in the end, at least for me!

Here's how it turned out. This has been hanging on my closet door for close to a month now but it's been so hot that I haven't gotten the opportunity to use it yet. So, I guess I will have to wait for fall to come along before I do.

our new toy!

My brother loves playing the guitar. And like many other aspiring guitarists, he posts his videos on Youtube to share with the world. Well, recently, my mom watched his latest video which he recorded using his 3-year old Dell's internal microphone and an external webcam while wearing his worn-out pajamas. While in person his newly acquired Taylor guitar sounds really good, on video, well, let's just say his recording method didn't do his playing any justice. His sloppy outfit didn't help matters either. "Why did you take a video of yourself while wearing pajamas?" my mom asked. She didn't comment on the playing, but that actually means it didn't sound very good because otherwise she'd be all gushing about how much my brother's playing has improved over the years.

Anyway, so when it came time for shoti's birthday, my mom asked me to do some research on microphones that would do a better job at picking up an acoustic guitar's sounds. We eventually bought my brother a Behringer Xenyx 1204 mixer and an Audio Technica AT2020 microphone over Amazon. I didn't know his Taylor 514-CE had a built-in pickup, so the microphone turned out to be an unnecessary purchase (but I can use it to record my singing if I want to! And Yessa can sing to her heart's content with shoti's guitar!) but we were excited to try things out and see just how big a difference we would hear.

After two trips to the Guitar Center on 14th Street to get the proper cables, and after hours of trying to figure out how to work a mixer (which for the longest time looked like a very scary-looking and intimidating object with tons of knobs that controlled things I never knew existed - hello equalizers, trims and gains) we finally successfully recorded a song onto Garageband and later on to Photobooth. Hallelujah! You can hear this new recording on his Youtube channel. Yey!

I also tried patching my Korg keyboard through the mixer and it recorded onto Garageband beautifully! Now I think my mom's dreams of a band are finally coming to life. Shoti and I can't wait to tinker around with the recording and possibly make a tune of our own! Wheeee! We love our new toy :D

happy.

Since I'm not in the mood to write in paragraphs, I'll write in a list instead! Some things to be happy about this week...

1. I finally got my ID at work! I had been using the Guest Pass for the last 6 months (yes, 6 months!) so receiving my very own ID with my face on it is a big, much-awaited event! Now I can go into the MoMA for free (and bring one other person along for free too!) And I have yet to mention all the other cool stuff that comes with having our company ID like discounts with Apple and Verizon among others. Now if only I can get my hands on a list of these benefits so I know exactly what I can do with my new key to the world.
2. It's restaurant week in New York! We're having dinner at La Masseria (W48th St. between Broadway and 8th Avenue) tonight. I haven't heard anything about this restaurant before. Aldrich made all the arrangements (including choosing this restaurant out of the 200 or so choices) and so all the rest of us have to do is show up and eat! *laughs*
3. We're going to Lake George this weekend! There will be around 15 of us, in one house for 2 nights and 2 days! It's supposed to be a hell of an adventure and a whole lot of fun :) Our drink captains, Jolo and Claud, supposedly bought enough booze to knock everyone out for a week. While I have no plans of getting wasted (please God, never again!) it will be very interesting to see how this weekend will turn out. I'm looking forward to nights spent sharing stories and musings on life around a campfire under the black star-sprinkled sky with the scent of roasting marshmallows filling my nostrils. This is going to be good, I can feel it. :)

apple store and saint's alp!

I was finally able to get my Saint's Alp Black Milk Tea fix last night when D (Diana) and I stopped by for some Chicken Chop after we attended a free AIGA/NY event at the Apple Store on Prince Street. Alicia Cheng and Sarah Gephart from MGMT. Design were there as a part of the Design Remixed series to talk about the work they've done at their studio and their process. It was pretty interesting for me to see the range of projects that they got to work on. The most famous project they've done is probably the design for Al Gore's The Inconvenient Truth book (which had around 85,000 copies printed on its first run.) I have yet to read the book, or to even watch the documentary (shame on me!) I must remember to find some time to do those things soon.


I've always wanted to read this.
Anyway, it was also great that they were real sports about showing one of their "stinker" projects to the audience. :) I found the whole presentation quite entertaining, in large part because I found Alicia's deadpan voice quite funny! She would say these half-jokes in a straight unemotional tone that somehow made whatever she said seem funnier to me. Go figure! *laughs*

What I found amazing is how they were able to keep all the different aspects of their lives in sync: their friendship, their business and their respective families. They have two children each but the way they talked and carried themselves made it seem like juggling motherhood and their careers was the easiest thing in the world. I guess it's to be expected from two Yale MFA graduates right? Now if only I were as smart or gifted... Hmmm... I have to figure out first where I'll be in the next 5 months. I don't even know yet if I'm staying here or going back home in December. Tsk tsk. I hope the answer finds me soon!

craving for milk tea.

The smell of food is making me hungry. I'm not sure what I'm having for lunch yet today. And it's still much too early to grab something to eat. I usually wait until the clock hits 1pm before I go out and buy my food. I find the afternoon doesn't feel as long if I do that. And then comes the 4:30 pm trip to the kitchen for some English Breakfast Tea with milk and sugar. Yum! Although that still doesn't beat actually going to Saint's Alp Teahouse and getting myself a jumbo cup of their Black Milk Tea. Even my sachets of Lipton Milk Tea Gold are better than what we have here at the office. Maybe I should grab my stash in the apartment and stock them here instead. I'm suddenly itching to walk down to 9th street for that Saint's Alp milk tea, eep! Nooo! I musn't. It's such a waste of lunch break time. Maybe I'll ask shoti to meet me down here tonight to have dinner there instead. :) Ah yes, that sounds like a plan!

feeling geeky.

I just received my Pantone Essentials Plus kit yesterday. :) Happy happy joy joy! It's very reassuring to finally know how the colors of the things on my screen will eventually turn out on paper! :) Excuse the somewhat nerdy nature of my happiness today. I just love how it comes in its own carry case. And how everything looks like it has its own place in it. Yeyyy! I'm looking forward to lots of happy color-matching moments. :) *laughs*

WD-50 tasting menu

So it turns out I didn't find the time to write the review I wanted. I'll post the pictures and names of all the dishes from the tasting menu first. For now, they will have to speak for themselves!



Cobia, chinese sausage consomme, endive, sherry vinegar



Everything bagel, smoked salmon threads, crispy cream cheese
This was our unanimous choice for favorite dish of the night! That bagel is actually ice cream shaped like a bagel! The sweetness mixed with the smoked salmon threads (it's like our ma-hoo or pork floss! except I guess it should be hee-hoo because it's fish! haha) There was a bit of a boo-boo that happened to Anne's dish though. She found a strand of hair inside the ice cream bagel, so we promptly had it returned. The server was very apologetic and to make up for it, the sous chef gifted us with a bonus dish brought out later on!



Foie gras, passionfruit, chinese celery
The taste of the passionfruit filling delicately and seamlessly gives way to the richness of the foie gras. I never knew the combination could work so amazingly!





The bonus dish!
Shrimp noodles, zucchini, mousseron mushroom, chamomile yogurt



Scrambled egg ravioli, charred avocado, hamachi
This tasted like a very sophisticated breakfast dish. A bit of Japan meets America. We loved the freeze-dried bits of potato. They're so tiny but they packed a lot of potato punch. They tasted like hashbrowns or fries!



Cold fried chicken, buttermilk-ricotta, tabasco, caviar



Snails, red lentils, juniper, orange
Our least favorite dish. I ended up taking only a bite of it because it was a combination of two things I never quite liked in food, snails and oranges. Don't get me wrong, I eat oranges, I love orange juice, but I just don't like them in savory dishes. So, I couldn't bring myself to take another bite.

The server noticed my bowl was still almost full and asked "It's not your favorite?" I said no with a sheepish smile. Then she asked, "Would you like to replace it with something else?" And I said, "Okay!" So they gave me another dish in its place! This might be standard procedure for restaurants of this caliber, or it might not be, but I was so impressed by the level of customer service they've been displaying so far!



My replacement dish! So much yummier!
Smoked eel, spice bread, black radish, campari
I was so happy to be having this that I almost forgot to take a picture of it! We had almost finished picking at this new dish when we remembered. So, I ended up with a shot of the half-eaten plate instead. Shoti and Anne joked that they should have left their snails untouched too so we could all have this instead!



Duck leg, popcorn pudding, kalamansi, lovage
Who knew kalamansi jelly could taste so good with duck? We were so happy to see the Philippine lemon, our Philippine lemon, on the menu that we couldn't wait to see how he'd infuse the flavor into the dish. The jelly was a pleasant surprise!



Lamb loin, black garlic romesco, pickled ramp, dried soybean
I'm not a big fan of lamb, but this was probably one of the best (if not the best) I've ever tried. Shoti loved it, and why not? The combination of the perfectly cooked, still pinkish lamb with the black garlic romesco and the freeze-dried edamame was delightful.



Vanilla ice cream, balsamic, raspberry
I never knew the Italians drizzled balsamic vinegar on top of strawberries on top of their ice cream! This was WD-50's interpretation of the dish. Winner!



Hazelnut tart, coconut, chocolate, chicory
This was our favorite of the three desserts! Good ol' chocolatey happiness.



Caramelized brioche, apricot, buttercream, lemon thyme



Cocoa packets. Chocolate shortbread, milk ice cream.
Would you believe those packets are made out of chocolate too? Named "chocolate leather", the packets housed what tasted to me like crushed Ovalteenies! Yum! We're still wondering how they were able to make the chocolate leather... so cool!

waiting for adobe illustrator to move

The thing I hate most in the world right now is waiting for Adobe Illustrator to finish saving documents. I know it must be torture for my computer to be working with such big files here at work, but it's equally torturous for me to just sit here and wait, not being able to do anything else. Such a waste of time. I could be done in half the time (maybe even less) if the saving and the moving objects, and the printing didn't take so long!

Anyway, I have a bunch of tasks that I should finish this week:
1. Design some marketing promos for Red Mango (Philippines),
2. Buy myself some Pantone guides,
3. Pick a paint color for the walls of the den bathroom,
4. Decide on the layout of our room back home,
5. Create a mood/inspiration board for our room and
6. Reply to a ton of emails!

But tonight, I am planning on doing something that's not remotely related to any of the items on my to-do list! I am going to write (or at least attempt to write) a review on WD-50 which a friend visiting from San Francisco, my brother and I tried out last night. The tasting menu set us back $170 each! (Eeeep!) So our pockets all have holes in them now (and there's no shopping for me for the next 3 weeks!), but it was a completely one-of-a-kind culinary experience so I like to think it was worth it! After all, when (and where) else will I be able to taste an ice cream bagel?

So, just watch out for my next entry which will be complete with a blow-by-blow photographic account of the 11 or so dishes we had last night! :) You'll be salivating by the end of it all. As Liz would say, "Nom nom nom!"

stripping it back.

So, I decided to completely strip my blog back. I chose a template (with just a few minor tweaks in the colors) to bring it back to the simpler days. It was a bit hard to use my blog. It functioned like a bad website with links that led to dead ends so I like it much better now that it's back to the bare bones. Now if only I can bring myself to update this regularly. Not that I have anything interesting to talk about. Pfft. Ah, whatever. I just needed something to get my mind off work. It's so hard to design stuff when you don't have any good ideas. Inspiration, come and find me please!

a new look for a new year

So, I decided to update my blog's look to better reflect who I am now. Yes that's me on the picture on the left. And yes, that is my pink half-filled hamper waiting for Sunday to be emptied. I'm sorry for the stripes, I'm just really into them right now. I will take pictures of my cubicle at work and post it here just to show you how far this obsession has gone! Haha

There are still some kinks that need to be worked out here, but I shall slowly figure them out. I haven't tinkered with html for quite some time now so bear with me. I've included a link to my portfolio website though right there on the left, so if you fancy a peek, be my guest!

Anyway, I thought Yessa and Cel were coming back to New York on Sunday, but apparently they won't be back until Tuesday! Tsk tsk, looks like I'm going to be getting a whole lot more "me" time! I better get creative and do all the things I haven't been able to do recently. And since the weather will be perfect this weekend, I just might go around the city aimlessly and snap some photographs, take in the sights, maybe visit a museum. There should be lots to do! And oh! I really want a Shake Shack burger too!

Update: March 7, 2009

So I ended up being quite the productive bee. Here's a little something I cooked up! It's not supposed to represent anything... it just came out of doodling. I'm thinking of buying a lighter warm gray COPIC pen for the upper part of the background eventually. Those pens cost quite a bit though, $6.49 each at Lee's Art Shop! But I really like how they look all watercolor-ish, so I just might go back and buy some more.



Also, I bought a new pair of shoes! Hehehe, they're white and pink croc leather loafers! I just couldn't pass them up! They're totally me and super unique, so even if I don't really know when I'm going to be wearing them yet I bought them anyway. I left my silver loafers back home in Manila, so these will perfectly fill their places, hehehe. And did I say they're extremely comfortable?



Anyway, JV, Tracy, Neil and I are off to watch Watchmen soon at the AMC Loews Theater at Lincoln Square. Yey! It's supposedly good! I hope it lives up to the hype.

i hereby resurrect thee.

I can't believe it's been more than two years since I last wrote here. Time keeps disappearing under my feet. Who would have thought that I'd be here in New York writing this? Or that I'd already graduate from my AAS degree in Graphic Design? Everything just swept by, and it's sad that I never got to chronicle these last two crazy years of my life.

I haven't been writing in my journals the way I used to back in college. And the instances of college writing were even less frequent compared to high school. It seems that the older I get the harder it is for me to pick up my Pilot G-Tec C4 (yes, it has to be that pen! haha) and just write down whatever comes to mind. Often times I find myself with pen poised on a blank line not knowing what to write. And then I put the cap on my pen back on and close the journal again without having ink touch paper. Tsk tsk. So, I thought maybe it's time to type instead. Maybe I could jumpstart the habit this way.

Anyway, I mostly decided to resurrect this blog because I'm just incredibly bored here at our empty apartment now. Cel and Yessa flew off to Long Beach, California this morning for a trade show for Yessa's boss and so I'm all by my lonesome for a week. I thought I'd be better at biding my time, but hehe, I now have nothing to do except maybe eat some of that Fage Yogurt that's tempting me all the way from the fridge. Of course, there's also my bed calling. I could always tuck myself in early and get some 11 hours of sleep before I have to wake up for work! Haha, but that's too much, even for the sleepyhead that I am! So... I'll just have to find myself something to do.

I did actually resurrect another hobby today. Drawing! I dusted off my mini sketchbook and got my pencils out of my art toolbox. I thought I'd be really sucky by now, not having drawn anything really for a year, but surprise surprise, I still have the hang of it! Yey! I guess it's like riding a bike then, you never really unlearn it. You just get back on and ride. I kind of missed drawing... just tuning everything out and focusing on light and shadow... so I think I'll keep drawing a little something every other day from now on. :)