granted to the true artist

moved!

2010-06-16T23:22:00.001-07:00

never to return again!

save this link!

2010-06-13T19:35:00.000-07:00

(photo: thepHvalue)

KCRW's first summer concert series with Hot Hot Heat. "Thank you forever 21 choices for melted ice cream! yum. fermentation."

Unpredictability is my responsibility.

2010-06-12T22:53:00.000-07:00

Billabong's Design for Humanity fundraiser at Paramount's New York set. Epitome of LA glamour. Lot's of long legs, short skirts, high high, really high hot heels, and dazzling folks. Can't forget taco trucks! Or Cool Haus and The Grilled Cheese Truck...

New York, concrete jungle where dreams are made of
There's nothin' you can't do
Now you're in New York
These streets will make you feel brand new
Big lights will inspire you
Let's hear it for New York, New York,
New York

So close, yet too too far...

(all photos taken with my eris! now officially starting a fund for a new camera!)

2010-06-11T20:21:00.000-07:00

summer daze

2010-06-11T19:27:00.000-07:00

sometimes i can't believe it

i'm moving past the feeling

into the night

2010-06-10T10:30:00.000-07:00

HAHA Singapore, you're funny.

This dude's amazing. He's in Singapore for a "research." I wish I was part of your "fatties galore" project. Did I say fatties? I mean foodies.

2010-06-09T15:42:00.001-07:00

only in the land of pika...

Sarah, hope Umgie is doing well :)

Coming through my friends. Excuse me.

Come to me little one. Let me whisper you a secret.

2010-06-09T15:22:00.000-07:00

longing for my own pad...

longing for a job first.

2010-06-08T11:56:00.000-07:00

Ladies and Gentleman, an alarming announcement.

Here comes the storm!

Hold on tight.

Supervise all children.

Balloons still for sale.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

2010-06-06T16:22:00.001-07:00

is missing.

I miss you city.

white space

2010-06-06T16:10:00.001-07:00

too much of it can be a bit unnerving.

jumping up, jumping down...falling up, falling down?

a pretty little thang

2010-06-03T18:46:00.000-07:00

handmade doilies, antique keys, fairy books...wedding essentials.

meow.

lost

2010-06-03T18:40:00.001-07:00

find me! leave your niche and come join mine.

lazy me

2010-06-03T18:14:00.001-07:00

post-modern aesop.

yelping for more

2010-06-02T16:30:00.000-07:00

I announced that I changed my yelp location to Fullerton.

I spoke too soon.

After scrolling through my pictures, I realized that my heart, or stomach rather, is still strongly attached to the bay area, because obviously so, "I left my heart in San Francisco."

Of course, all my pictures have to do with food. Some people think I have an uncanny predilection for phenomenal food, as if I can know which herb perks up that 6,000th taste bud, which cheeses melt away perfectly with which beef flank, which mountain that wild morel came from.

Quite frankly, I don't even know what an endive looks like. Actually, now I know because I looked it up. Confession--I really don't know much about food.

All I know is that when eaten with joy, with people I admire, sitting by the window cast in the right amount of sunlight or dimly lit by artificial lighting lightening up our faces in an oh-so flattering manner (yes, each meal is as picturesque as it sounds), food cannot help but be incredible.

I've had plenty of mishaps, but I always exit the building with a fat ol' grin on my face, knowing that the past hour or so, I've spent it with the most remarkable person/people I know.

(My google calendar just alerted me that I have PP103 lecture in 10 minutes. I'm feeling a tear well up.)

Anyways, look at this beautiful sandwich.

A lemon chicken with fennel and some other good stuff. Get it at Summer Kitchen Bake Shop. I think I might like it better than Gregoire.

The egg salad sandwich with curried chicken with currants, pine nuts, and some other good stuff.

This was my very last meal at Berkeley (I don't consider a scoop of rose vanilla at ici, which I had afterwards, a meal). I got to eat with the very first person I met there. Her name is Sarah Lin. No better way to end my 4 years.

I'm heading out to Dland now, my 3 time since I've been home, and I arrived 3 days ago. I guess the happiest place on earth comes close.

happiest place on earth

2010-06-02T16:24:00.001-07:00

Truly magical. It gets to me every time.

Summer Bed Rolls

2010-05-23T01:01:00.001-07:00

Eagerly awaiting my lazy summer days.

Going to invest in a bike and color my way around Fullerton. It could use a little bit of vibrancy.

Will throw myself one final graduation party. I will be the only one invited...going to do some major mind blowing wishing and dreaming.

Catch up on some good books and let them take me out of life for a bit.

Finally, play with my baby milo. Who is cuter than all of these cats combined. I've seen her in all of these perfectly pokeable poses.

I consider myself very well accomplished.

Sex in the City

2010-05-22T00:20:00.000-07:00

Without the sex. Lacking in the glamour. Still living the high life!

Like a T-mobile ad.

Thank you Steph for relenting.

The cutest store ever. Art, food, community...if it were this easy.

Amen.

The city architecture never ceases to smile back at us in a reflection.

Now we're looking more like the fab four!

Last weekend in the Bay Area

2010-05-21T23:49:00.000-07:00

And how will I spend it? FOOD FOOD FOOOOOOOOOD.

Banana Cream Pie at Mission Pie!

Macaroon and Pear Frangipane, also at Mission Pie. The smaller, rounder one wins, like someone I know...HAHA wow

Half clam garlic and italian sausage at Tommaso's. But get the lasagna. Read my review on yelp.

Another Banana Cream pie at Tartine. This and the bread pudding complete my culinary experience.

Tastes better than it looks.

Nabolom. Walk there. Walk back. You'll need it.

Pork at 900 Grayson. No greater love than when a (wo)man puts a pig to her lips.

Limon Rotisserie. Thanks Brian for the recommendation!

Juicy, succulent. You gotta stop being vegetarian for this. Yes, I'm talking to you.

Fish and Shrimp!

Yucca fries are not yucka!

I will drink Sangria only here. I will build up my tolerance with only this. If you wish to see me a big strong girl, bring me here and buy me a drink!

Cupcakes and flowers. What more do you need?

So much more but there is no more blood in my brain now. Good night.

farewell my friends! (for now)

2010-05-21T22:58:00.000-07:00

Graduation after graduation...great meals, one after another. This week has never been so tiresome and rewarding.

Brian, you are an amazing person and an even more incredible friend. I can't wait to hear about all your adventures! I hope all we dreamed about/hoped for will be ours in no time :)

You are more like my discipler, but we made a great team. Thank you for loving me unconditionally!

I am going to bawl watching you leave! I am so so honored to have lived with you for 3 years. I am going to publish your book. Can I write your foreword?

Jamie, you complete us. You completed me. Thank you for loving me, teaching me, showing me true life, and bringing me into the light!

Though I searched for you for more than 45 minutes, I would have searched longer if need be. I love you so much Vicky, and I'm so glad you lived with us this year. You are so hilarious and humble. One of my college highlights is getting smacked in the head by the purple bird poo-fruit and winning our relay race. First place out of 1 team! Yay us!

Thank you Simon for helping me find Vicky. I like seeing you randomly everywhere.

When I look at you, I see a woman of righteousness, rare intelligence, and unexplainable beauty.

Like 2 peas in a pod. I think we did well bringing joy unto everyone around us. You are the key ingredient to my enlarged heart.

Thank you friends :) I love Berkeley because of you!

I have such talented friends. I wish I had more time to learn from you.

It's not yet over!

Pizza My Heart

2010-05-19T02:43:00.001-07:00

I've been eating a lot of pizza lately. Emilia's, Gather, Pizzaiolo.

Emilia's. Two people devoured that thing with very little to spare.

Gather. None to spare.

Next to people, I will miss Berkeley's food culture. I will most definitely miss pizza the most. Only because each pizza meal has been shared with my favorite people ever.

Read my article on pizza in the Naked Bear!
(scroll down to "Naked Bear Magazine" and click on the link! You'll have your own online copy. If you want a paper copy, ask me! I have plenty to hand out/send to you.)

Please do not turn me in for copyright issues. Yes, I know that there is a chain called "Pizza My Heart." I am from SoCal. We don't have that there. Only realized after it was published that it was so popular up here. I'm being honest!

FAIL

2010-05-18T18:01:00.001-07:00

I tried to start my love posts. I already failed. Maybe next week when I'm home. As of now, here's a little story. Perhaps a love story. Probably not.

There was once a beautiful princess who found herself under the soft, rounded white teeth of a hungry, vicious dinosaur monster.

Ahhh!! She cried, "SAVE ME, HANDSOME PRINCE!!"

Lo and behold, a prince to her rescue!

Yayy! As she was about to fling her arms around his powerful, muscular shoulders and plant a huge kiss upon his silvery armor, lo and behold! Another prince to her rescue!

Princess cried, "What shall I do? I have two lovers and only the capability to plant one kiss!"

Just then, one of the second prince's lovers came and threatened to take away his manhood.

"You whore jerk!" She cried. Her shrill beckoned another damsel. Soon, they all started shouting, "Heartbreaker! Heartbreaker!"

THE END.
(No, this story has no real life relevance or parallels. I just took a series of pictures at Love at First Bite and as I was flipping through them, they told a story! Something cool enough to note--I didn't have to move any of the figures. ) If you have a better story, please share!

I will miss you

2010-05-18T17:14:00.000-07:00

I've decided to publicly write out my appreciation and love for you here.
It's going to take a long time.
It's going to be really hard for me.
As my previous posts show, all I do is upload pretty pictures and let them do all my talking/thinking.

The previous few sentences took me 10 minutes to write. I'm not suffering from writer's block..I just can't conjure up the right words to express the things inside of me called "feelings," which apparently I have too much of. (I am going to break a lot of grammar rules here but just bear with me please.)
Perhaps this is where poetry comes in. But haikus and limericks are the extent of my poetic nature. Yes, I love them but they are still too restrictive. Being succinct and symbolic will have to take the back seat.

Also, I'll usually just stick up a picture of us and write something stupid and cute like "we're cute! :)))" But that won't do justice. Although I will include a picture of us in your cap and gown.

__________________________________________________________

If you are here, I love you so so much. I really do. You taught me how to love. I am going to miss you. I am going to cry my eyes out for you over the course of this next week. Just wait for it.

These will be in no particular order.

organic gardening decal

2010-05-16T11:29:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back, Emily and I harvested bokchoy, arugula, fennel, mint and fresh garlic from our decal garden.

Bon Appetit! That's my super simple pasta--grilled fennel, fresh garlic, olive oil, lemon, fresh herbs, and salt & pepper!

A close-up; it tasted a lot yummier than it looks. When it comes to me cooking, I must eat with my eyes closed.

Emily's signature face =o)

Meanwhile, Sarah was busy baking these beauties.

No, I am not judging her :p

how fitting

2010-05-15T00:52:00.001-07:00

There's nothing I love more than kitsch made cute and intricate.

back in business

2010-05-14T22:50:00.000-07:00

I am now a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley. I am jobless. I dread studying for the LSAT. In a week, I will be leaving my favorite city in the world. I wake up every morning thinking how much I will miss my roomies. The list goes on.

Still, I AM SO INCREDIBLY JOYFUL.

The secret will have to come later.

"Too Cute,"

2010-03-30T21:31:00.001-07:00

Emily says. "Too cute."

Click on the links! I guess cute graphics make paper writing so much funner. I take back my WHY??!!

why??

2010-03-30T20:55:00.001-07:00

Cute graphics and all, but WHY? FutureFarmers WHYYY??!! Not why the cute graphics but why are you so elusive? I am writing a 4000 word paper on FutureFarmers. I am so tired, hungry, and confused. I wonder if cute pictures cover up the inability to fully describe. I wonder if that's how people perceive me.

Jessica Vilay told me that "why" is a cultural trigger--it makes people defensive.

Please, explain yourself!

fat cat

2010-03-29T23:22:00.001-07:00

My cat sits here daily, thinking of her lover, reciting this ancient Chinese love poem in her head.

Plums are falling,
Seven are the fruits;
Many men want me,
Let me have a fine one.

Plums are falling
Three are the fruits;
Many men want me;
Let me have a steady one.

Plums are falling,
Catch them in the basket;
Many men want me,
Let me be bride of one.

No, I do not think like my cat.

a spectacle

2010-03-29T22:56:00.000-07:00

"One who feels pleasure in simple reflection on the form of an object, without having any concept in mind, rightly lays claim to the agreement of every one...For the ground of pleasure is found in the universal, though subjective, condition of reflective judgments, namely the final harmony of an object with the mutual relation of the faculties of cognition which are requisite for every empirical cognition." Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, Introduction

I will miss our shared aesthetic judgment, our shared humanity.

girl

2010-03-13T10:21:00.000-08:00

John Rice: The most important thing for her is to be liked. The difficulty is that there is nobody in the world who thinks she is important.
Josef Albers: Her brain is much better than her mouth.
Rice: When you bring a person here you make a kind of engagement and it seems unadvisable to give up until we have done all we can.
Albers: I think she is more valuable than many of the other students. SHE MAY STAY.

happy together

2010-03-01T16:34:00.000-08:00

We should learn from each other's strangeness. And then love each other even more and be happy together.

inspired by black mountain college...

perfect

2010-03-01T16:30:00.001-08:00

bisexual: said of a flower with both stamens and pistils - also termed perfect

rebellion

2010-02-28T11:51:00.001-08:00

Rebelliousness can be a sign of health, "certainly to the adolescent and even still to the post-adolescents up till twenty or twenty-two years of age." Mrs. Moellenhoff

Uncanny

2010-02-25T21:40:00.000-08:00

He has filled them with skill to do every sort of work done by an engraver or by a designer or by an embroiderer in blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, or by a weaver—by any sort of workman or skilled designer.
Exodus 35:35

Choose and Possess

2010-02-25T08:28:00.000-08:00

"Very few of us can own things without being corrupted by them, without having pride involved in possessing them, gaining thereby false security. very few of us can resist being distracted by things. we need to learn to choose the simple and lasting instead of the new and individual...this means reducing instead of adding, the reversal of our habitual thinking."
-Annie Albers

Out

2010-02-23T22:48:00.001-08:00

The only way out is down.

Dreamy...

2010-02-22T18:14:00.000-08:00

Deep within the winter forest among the snowdrift wide
You can find a magic place where all the fairies hide....

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know. -Ernest Hemingway

Take Care of the Soul

2010-02-22T18:08:00.001-08:00

"We investigate and worry and analyze and forget that the new comes about through exuberance and not through a defined deficiency."--Annie Albers

happy doodle land

2010-02-20T14:52:00.000-08:00

is where I want to be!

yay for Chippie Cam!

hallo baba!

on a side note...

Denise: I've been in the library for so long and I haven't gotten anything done
Me: Aww, why not?
Denise: the volume thing on my computer is kind of frozen. so it's on my screen and it won't go away. it's distracting. i can't concentrate.
Me: Why don't you restart it?
Denise: I tried. It's just floating there.

For some reason, I found this really funny.

Halloween next year!

2010-02-19T23:15:00.001-08:00

Thinking about it already. Yes, I am slightly crazy right now.

STRESSED

2010-02-19T23:08:00.000-08:00

does not spell desserts backwards. I don't care if it does literally. It just can't make sense. Desserts are just too good. I really need some now.

Yes, I am farting elephants out of my brain.

wow

2010-02-19T09:51:00.000-08:00

I miss my cat. I really do. Whenever I was sitting at my desk working, she would come up to me and paw at me, asking me to play. and then she would bite me. True love.

Yes, milo can eat cookies. She just doesn't like them.

Hello there! Milo's pupils get really big whenever she sees her beloved laser pointer.

It's time for a makeover.

any words you would like to say Ms. Milo Joe?
(jk, that's her favorite feather toy!)

you

2010-02-19T09:40:00.001-08:00

how we should feel about Jesus

not quite there

2010-02-16T22:17:00.001-08:00

When discussing the progress of our papers...

Lily Cheng: if it were compared to a pregnancy, it'd be like...if the couple were still...like does he like me? does she like me? what, what?

hearts galore

2010-02-16T20:44:00.001-08:00

If only my point and shoot could do this!
Time to be saving.

Pupil Free Day!

2010-02-16T10:13:00.001-08:00

A happy ending to a 6 day weekend!

The Proper Way

2010-02-15T23:55:00.000-08:00

In honor of Chinese New Year. Because Chinese people invented chopsticks, I'm assuming.

Why do we have just one way anyway? If it works, then it works!

Paul Klee

2010-02-15T00:20:00.000-08:00

Paul Klee believed that the pivotal thing for the process of artistic creation is that "infinite spark" that is the essential condition of art "in the highest sphere;" art exists in a region where the "light of intellect gutters and goes out." The obtaining of this "infinite" or "secret" spark is "a blessing that is granted only to the true artist."

The images here either carry this spark or leave a little twinkle in my heart. I hope you feel/think the same way.

a new pair

2010-02-14T23:55:00.000-08:00

is what I need. Or rather want.

love notes

2010-02-11T22:53:00.000-08:00

Send one. Your loved one is in need of one. Yes, including me :)
Modeled by the very beautiful Ziwei Hu. Thank you for teaching women how to make beauty.

My New Home

2010-02-09T21:39:00.000-08:00

I moved from here!

It's going to take some time adjusting. Please hold.