boo and poo’s land

it has been a month and half since i last posted… here’s what i’ve done in the past 6 weeks:

- sub-teaching an english class at a high school

- laying down my personal goals for the future

- stay rooted to home instead of globe-trotting (*wifey and me patting my back*)

- get a nice screen print done by david choe of obama (see the image below)

what will i do for the next 6 weeks:

- sub-teaching other classes

- bouldering and camping in bishop (anyone want to join us there during gobble week?)

- scouting grad schools

- ditching my web design career (yep, you read it correctly here!)

- vote! (and you should, too, otherwise you’re dayum hopeless!)

we just got back home yesterday all the way from shanghai… we were there to attend our friend’s beautiful chinese wedding banquet, but we stayed there for a week to explore shanghai.  it was my third trip to shanghai and it seems like i’m making a trip to shanghai for every decade (1989, 1999, and now 2008) and i can safely type that shanghai has transformed from a small city to a huge metropolis.  i recalled on my first visit to shanghai, there weren’t that many tall buildings.  the tallest building i recalled was a hotel and there were many two-story hu tongs along the streets.  flash forward to almost 20 years later, many modern buildings have replaced the old houses.  8 new subway lines running with 3 remaining lines left! i think there was only 2 lines back in 1999.  to make more room for the people to live in shanghai, there are many apartment complexes around which definitely looked like a lego city.  too many cookie cutter styles around that i’m little worried that shanghai may not have its own identity at all in the future.  the only signatures that shanghai have is the bund along the river as well as the yu garden, but then shanghai is rapidly changing and finding its own identity, it’ll probably take some time itself to be more attractive in a few years before the world expo takes place there in 2010.   hopefully, i’ll be able to see the completed shanghai in another decade! 

Two years ago, I purchased a nice original print, “Get Acquainted by a Faile Girl” by this artist, Faile, for only $275.  It was a huge print, 38″ by 24″.  It had been stored in the basement for a while since my wife wasn’t so fond of this print.  She was concerned that we’d get a few oldies visit our home with my parents, so not quite an appropriate print to hang out in our home for a while.  Check out this print:

Fast forward to now… just recently, I had to part this print out as I need to finance a purchase for an original art piece by Bruno 9Li.  I’ve placed this print in E-bay recently, and in almost two years, the price has appreciated exceedingly more than I could have imagined.  Count to the final seconds, a bidder has won this auction with a staggering bid of $5001 for this print!   So, this print was quite a nice investment in exchange for this Bruno 9li’s original painting that I’ve been eying toward.  Here’s the painting:

See Bruno 9li’s painting

Finally, our painting has found a new home in our dining room which will probably be a nice conversation starter since the painting is somewhat huge… at least 56″ by 24!

So, while I find stocks to be boring, I go for art ’stocks’ here where I love to research on artists’ background as well as their works and having art in our home does keep me entertained often on the contrary to those stock certificates!

http://techon.nikkeibp.co.jp/english/NEWS_EN/20080613/153276/

now, if the us politicians can sway their eyes into producing new innovations for the future instead of depending on petroleum.  imagine how much US history would have changed…

now sorting the pictures for a slide show someday soon…

today is the last day of my teaching days for now! earlier, i told my boo that i was feeling so chained to work that i wanted to get out of SF for a while and travel DOMESTICALLY (not internationally!) she said to go ahead and do it! but yet, i get the feeling that i should just simply stay local and finish some errands that i’ve been meaning to finish, but never did! sometimes, i feel so lucky to have susie hold me as a balloon because i could be a balloon that just flies away to reach for the higher sky, yet sometimes it’s really nice of her to knock my senses out and focus on our long term goals…

lately, i’ve been hitting a plastic rock gym and getting myself in shape for some fun climbing. my grips aren’t as strong as they used to be yet my techniques have improved lately. i’ve noticed myself that i’ve been trying to conserve my energy as opposed to powering myself up like i used to… i guess my 10+ years of experience has shaped my climbing mentality. hopefully, i’ll be able to do a great session at castle rock near santa cruz someday soon!

every time i walk along the busy sidewalks in the heart of san francisco, my mind keeps telling me to come to these same spots during the wee hours of the mornings with my camera. that way, i’d find many great photo ops with no human beings in my sight. i just truly love how the san francisco runs without human beings in my sights. last night, after we were kicked out by borders as it was closing at a local mall, we were one of the last people to leave the mall’s grounds. i told my darling to take a glance at the empty floor of the mall’s 3rd floor. all the shops were closed in and it was pretty dead yet i knew that the photo would look wonderful. but i didn’t bring my camera with me this time. that lead me to me thinking, how wonderful it’d be to work as a graveyard janitor for a few months with my camera daily. i’m sure that a regular janitor may not even care about how lucky he is to see all eerie, quiet moments everywhere. i think that’s something i’d LOVE to be in his shoes just for that moment because many people don’t even get the opportunity to get that glimpse of moment in their lifetimes.

blah blah blah… i guess it’s just one of those things that keeps fluttering in my mind occasionally because very often, i don’t see many photos of these kinds of eerie moments anywhere…

After almost of two months here in the elite America from the world (maybe with exception of China and the strong Euro countries), Susie and I are starting to get settled down. We did a few ‘bandage’ repairs on a few eye sore places around our home. I just started teaching ASL just two weeks ago at a local high school here. After the academic experience in Madagascar, I’ve been pondering whether I would like to teach in the future as a new career from my design career. I have to say that I’m bit burned out from doing the design stuff for a while, yet I don’t get the motivation to do the new design at this moment. Heck, I got myself a new Macbook Pro, and the Adobe Studio is waiting to be dissected by me. Yet, I haven’t been able to find the passion in it that I did back in the past years. Also, I have been rummaging through my belongings in the storage room and I kept getting the same question, “Why did I have this?” while my new friends at Madagascar aren’t able to get these luxuries that I got 10 years ago. Definitely, the trip to Africa has given me a humbling experience despite my addiction to globe-trotting experiences. So far, I think Madagascar journey has been a wonderful chapter, especially when my darling, Susie, has been going through some ‘hellish’ moments there. At this moment, with my usual I will just follow the path whatever I see in front of my eyes, though I do have the itch to escape out of America. But with the majority of foreign currencies going banging hard against our weak dollars, I’m just glad that I’m going to stay hermit in America for a while This is such a jolly time to save $$$ for the education, family, and nature!

just before we left for africa, i have been following tessar lo’s paintings (http://www.tessarlo.com) for some time through his sister, alice. since he was having a breakthrough with the LA art scene, i just knew that i had to get a commissioned painting from him before his schedule gets too crazy. while i knew that his paintings emphasize the colors of emotion, they do remind me well of my darling as she likes to be emotional occasionally. so i decided to surprise her with mr. lo’s painting by the time we get back home from africa. i thought it would be a nice present for her by the time we get back home.

mr. lo and i have corresponded through a series of emails when i was back in madagascar and finally, we have come to the correct image of what i would like to see for susie. since susie was born in the year of tiger and she absolutely LOVES to sleep as well. also, her mind likes to flutter around sporadically and the fact that she is an introvert, i thought that it would be a perfect fit for a girl and tiger to be associated to represent susie.

once we got back home, the painting was ready, but it was waiting in LA and i have arranged with mr. lo to pick it up in LA because we had a wedding to attend in LA a couple of weeks later. but unfortunately, mr. lo was out of town and had his roommate take care of it. for the past two weeks, i had told susie that it took me almost a year to prepare for this surprise. she was being suspicious occasionally about the surprise and begged me to know what was it…

finally, when we got to the place where i was supposed to pick up the painting, i told susie that we were going to tessar’s place to pick up something and immediately, she knew that it was a piece of artwork. but the question still remains, what kind of artwork???

so, here is the painting that susie and i have found to be very sorrowfully beautiful and we hope that you do agree…

The whole painting

Close details of the girl sleeping

Close details of the tiger - you know how the tiger is supposed to be fierce… but in this painting, she shows to be sad yet her massive body indicates that she is capable of conquering the world.

mr. lo did a marvelous job using the background to captivate the beautiful aura of a dream. also, notice how her dress ‘melts’ into the background.

I have always loved to see how can one get a different perspective from standing at a different angle. I just think that many people tend to look at the painting directly at the T-intersection.

Once Susie saw the painting, her face just glowed and I am elated because if she didn’t like it very much, I would have been doomed to spend $$$ for nothing and she’d be going crazy on me!

Anyway, I will post up a couple of pictures of the murals that my students and I did in Madagascar at the school sometimes later. Also, Mr. Lo was gracious enough to contribute some painting supplies for the students. thank you, mr. lo!